Erasure - Column 6
Written by Lana Melman for the SOUTH FLORIDA JEWISH JOURNAL. Originally published on July 17, 2023.
Throughout history, many different societies have attempted to get rid of their Jews.
Every year at Passover we recite the story of a jealous Egyptian Pharaoh who ordered the death of Jewish baby boys. Three thousand years later, Hitler exterminated over 70% of Europe’s Jewry. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, and from Portugal and Spain in 1492. Millions of Jews were killed during Spanish Inquisition, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and by the pogroms throughout Europe.
The lesser but related tactics of isolation in ghettos and discrimination in education and professions in the West and the Middle East made it difficult for Jews to thrive. Terrorist attacks against Jews in Jerusalem in the 1930s and continue in Israel in modern times seek to push us out of the region.
Today, antisemites use a more subtle but equally aggressive tactic to get rid of us: erasure. Movements on both the right and left are trying to revise our history and rub out our identity. The leaders are Holocaust deniers, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (NOI) ideology, and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel that seeks to delegitimatize the Jewish homeland.
Holocaust denial refers to the rejection or distortion of historical evidence that documents the genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. Despite Whoopi Goldberg’s claim on an episode of The View, it was not “white on white” violence; it was a well thought-out and nearly successful plan to eliminate the Jewish people, first throughout Europe and then the world. The Holocaust is as much a part of our collective memory and identity as slavery is to America’s Blacks. As Holocaust education slips off the pages of history books, Holocaust denial becomes more credible, and a piece of us is getting erased.
The Nation of Islam ideology denies Jewish roots in the land of Israel. Its revisionist theory claims Jews are not the true Hebrews of the Bible, and our symbols, such as the star of David, have been misappropriated. Farrakhan argues that the Jews who migrated to the region after the Holocaust were impostors who stole the land from its rightful inhabitants – today’s Black Americans.
In fact, the archaeological evidence for the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is vast and spans several millennia. Excavation at sites such as Jerusalem, Hebron, Jericho, and Masada have unearthed ancient synagogues, ritual baths (mikvehs), and numerous artifacts related to Jewish religious and daily life, confirming the existence of Jewish communities in these locations.
Despite this outrageous case of identity theft, Farrakhan’s message has resonance, and he is regarded as an inspirational leader in many circles. In 2020, comedian Chelsea Handler, raised as a reform Jew, put aside Farrakhan’s anti-Jewish rhetoric to applaud him as an inspirational leader when she posted (and then deleted and apologized for) a video clip of him speaking on racial prejudice. Actresses Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Aniston, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jennifer Garner, perhaps uninformed about Farrakhan’s ideology, shared or liked the clip (before deleting) without addressing his antisemitism.
Playing a different card out of the same hand, BDS negates the origins and aspirations of modern-day Israel and Zionism.
BDS denies our indigenous connection to the land and recasts the Jews of Israel as white colonizers and oppressors. It appeals to Western guilt about European colonization, a sin for which Israel bears no responsibility. Unlike the colonists from England, Holland, France, Belgium, and Spain, Jews were refugees fleeing persecution, not representatives of a mother country. They did not steal the riches from foreign soil; they purchased the land and turned a desert into an oasis in their ancestral home.
BDS leader and co-founder, Omar Barghouti, maintains that there are “no dual claims” for two indigenous peoples and that only the Palestinians have an inalienable right to be there. This dangerous fabrication is being mainstreamed into our educational system. It is botting out our Middle East heritage and undermining the legitimacy of the Jewish homeland.
Most Jews are outspoken against Holocaust denial but are more likely to empathize with or excuse elements of NOI and BDS. Many fear backlash or false accusations of racism if they protest the latter two, but we must discredit those who seek to erase us regardless of who is speaking. Demanding recognition of the historical and religious ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and the true nature of our national aspirations is crucial for our future.
Silence never ends well for the Jews.
Read the original article here.
Lana Melman is a contributing columnist for the South Florida Jewish Journal.