Whoopi Schvartza is an Anti-Semitic Mutation

[Binyamin Yisrael]

February 4th, 2022

ג' אדר א תשפ״ב 

Parashat Terumah

At the beginning of 5782, Rabbi Doron Perez wrote an article in HaMizrachi magazine comparing anti-Semitism to a virus. He quoted Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who wrote, “By mutating, anti-Semitism mutates, and in so doing defeats the immune systems set up by cultures to protect themselves against hatred. “ This week, we got to see two examples of these mutated forms of hatred for the Jewish people.

The first was in the comments of Whoopi Goldberg on The View, where she said that the Holocaust was “not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.” This is one new form of anti-Semitism, using American identity politics to minimize the Jewish story, and to lecture us about whether the Holocaust (!) was racism or not.

The second mutation of anti-Semitism this week was the new report by Amnesty International, saying that Israel is an apartheid state. The report has been debunked by many analysts, and we are thankful to the US ambassador to Israel who correctly referred to the claim as “absurd”. For any of us who have walked around Israel, seeing Israeli Arabs freely moving, working, and governing in Israel, we know that the claim in the report that Israeli Arabs face segregation and cruel domination is total nonsense. But this is a new form of attack, using law and human rights to attack the Jewish state.

How do we respond to these attacks? Of course, we need to call out the lies and ignorance. But we also cannot be defined by our critics. When they attack our story and our state, it only encourages us to continue writing the next chapter for our story and our state. We are proud to be bringing the Torah of Eretz Yisrael to the USA, and to have campaigned for our communities to be able to travel to Israel. We are proud of our work in strengthening embattled communities in Israel, and our work to support farmers in the Shemitta year. In the face of attacks, we will keep writing the Jewish story and building the Jewish state - and we invite you to join our movement in doing the same!