What they mean when they say Israel’s “policies”
What they mean when they say Israel’s “policies”

We hear it from the usual suspects, that they are not anti-Israel, nor even antisemitic, except for Israel’s “policies,” namely Benjamin Netanyahu’s.

Remove Netanyahu from the equation, and snap, they all become Theodor Herzl.
So that’s it – that simple. Remove Netanyahu from the equation, and snap, they all become Theodor Herzl.

Speaking of which, Israel did not come up as a topic during the most recent debate among the 12 Angry Democrats contending for 2020, but separately, that same day, we learned that three members of the House Squad, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar got together to endorse Bernie Sanders. 

Of Democrats, I think of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and a man going to trial and finding people “acting pretty sore. They were the jury.”

Some may ask, what is it about Bernie that AOC and her crowd like so much – his Socialism or his antisemitism?

On the antisemitism front, they would all furiously deny…deny…deny. No one in the world admits to that bigoted inclination.

Only, they would say that they object to Netanyahu’s “policies.” It’s what they all say to keep themselves covered high and righteous.

It’s how they do it so cleverly at The New York Times. They blame Netanyahu for the rise in worldwide antisemitism.

Before moving ahead, listen, throughout my years, and throughout my books and columns, I have been diligent at using that word sparingly, if at all. It is so damning, and we do not want to be reckless. Jean Paul Sartre, I think it was, asserted that after the Holocaust, nothing worse can be said about a person than to call him or her an antisemite.

The term was coined in 1879 by Wilhem Marr, a European who saw what’s going on and meant it not for Semites in general, but for prejudice that targets Jews specifically and particularly.

So there is no squirming out of it even if you are a Semite of another kind. 

Let’s not kid ourselves, the only “policy” that’s kept Netanyahu in office all these years is his commitment to stand tall for Israel and his refusal to bend.to the whims of the antisemitic world. Yes, antisemitic. There is no other word. Nothing more precise has come along since that man Wilhem Marr.  

Netanyahu’s big flaw, to their eyes?

He has refused to relinquish Jewish territory, despite those eight years of an unfriendly Obama, and despite a perpetually hostile UN -- and that is what rankles them out there who want Israel diminished and ripe for the taking. More to their liking were some previous prime ministers who were ready to make concessions that would cut Israel to pieces.

These were prime ministers who offered away practically all of Judea and Samaria, plus Jerusalem, and one who actually gave away Gaza, to Israel’s everlasting pain.

Those they term as good policies. The more harmful to Israel, so much the better. They would not put it that way, of course.

They would say that for the sake of “peace,” Israel must agree to deals that give the best of the land to the Palestinian Arabs – so why is Netanyahu being so “intransigent?”

Doesn’t he want peace?

Yes, but first and foremost he wants Israel.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He is the author of the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” His Holocaust to Montreal memoir “Escape from Mount Moriah” has been honored from page to screen at CANNES. His Inside Journalism thriller, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” is being prepared for the movies. Contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com