In response to the starvation in Gaza, Israel has become the target of relentless global criticism — from the media, the United Nations, and government chambers around the world.
Has the Jewish state and its military made mistakes during its protracted and brutal war with Hamas? Certainly they have. No army in history has waged war without error and Israel is no different. Such is the tragic and inevitable cost of conflict — even in a just war, such as Israel’s battle against a terrorist organization bent on its destruction.
But the portrayal of Israel as the villain of the world is not only patently false — it is a modern reincarnation of an age-old and pernicious antisemitism.
Throughout history, Jews have been scapegoated. Accusations have taken many forms. During the Crusades, the Inquisition, and countless pogroms, Jews were demonized as infidels who refused to abandon their faith, even under threat of death.
In modern times came the economic and political libels: that Jews controlled global finance, commerce, and the levers of power. These accusations were often contradictory — Jews were cast as both the masterminds of capitalism and the architects of communism — but always with the same underlying theme: Jews as manipulators, greedy and untrustworthy, enriching themselves at others’ expense.
But perhaps the most grotesque of these charges has been the blood libel — the medieval accusation that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, particularly to bake Passover matzah or turn it into ceremonial red wine.
This canard has returned in high relief. No longer content to accuse Jews of killing individuals, the world now accuses the Jewish state of attempting to annihilate an entire population. Israel is not merely charged with war crimes — it is vilified as a genocidal regime, guilty of starving and killing civilians en masse.
While Hamas commits atrocities against its own people, uses its children as human shields, hoards humanitarian aid, and starves Israeli hostages like Evyatar David — forcing him to dig his own grave — the international community blames Israel.
Meanwhile, genuine humanitarian crises elsewhere are met with near silence: Uyghur Muslims detained in Chinese camps, Christians slaughtered in Nigeria, Yazidi women enslaved by ISIS, Rohingya Muslims driven from Myanmar, and mass killings in Sudan. These tragedies barely register in the headlines, let alone spark sustained outrage. There are no emergency sessions of the UN, no massive street protests, no cultural boycotts.
The spotlight seems to shine only where it serves a pre-existing bias, selectively illuminating one nation while leaving vast fields of human suffering in the shadows. This is a double standard which is yet another blatant expression of antisemitism.
The truth is that never in the annals of warfare has a nation supplied its enemy with food and aid while its own citizens are still under fire. In the aftermath of WWII, the United States did feed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan — but only after their surrender. Yet Israel, astonishingly, has allowed 1.8 million tons of aid to enter Gaza during the ongoing war.
Much of that aid lies idle, as my grandson Eitan Fischberger, who was embedded on the scene, noted in The Wall Street Journal. It has been blocked by a United Nations that refuses to facilitate its distribution — insisting that only Hamas’ Blue Police, not Israel or even a U.S.-backed group like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, can be trusted to deliver it. As Fischberger wrote, “put simply, the UN would rather work with Hamas than the Israelis or the Americans.”
Some claim Israel has lost the battle for global opinion. Perhaps there is truth in that. But Israel has articulate and capable spokespeople making its case. The deeper reality is more sobering: the truth is irrelevant to those who are unwilling to hear it. Much of the world, still infected by an ancient hatred of Jews, has closed its ears.
They join the long line of accusers who, over centuries, have condemned Jews as the scourge of civilization. In time, history has exposed the lies behind those charges. So too, in time, will the truth come out and condemn the defamers of today — those who, under the guise of human rights advocacy, are resurrecting and amplifying the oldest hatred in the world.
Weiss is founding rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx and a longtime activist for Jewish causes and human rights. His most recent book, “Defending Holocaust Memory,” is scheduled for publication this fall.
