Recently, there has been a disturbing rise in open hostility against Jews and the state of Israel. In Paris, a performance by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra was fire-bombed by anti-Israel protesters in an open attack on art and identity. In Birmingham, UK, the build-up to the soccer match between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv showed how sports, which usually unites diverse fans, became a battleground for hatred. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators demanded the cancellation of the match, exclusion of Israeli teams, and chanted slogans such as “from the river to the sea” and “Death to the IDF.” To treat these as “just protests” misses the moral alarm bell this should be sounding across the free world.
What’s more alarming: in many of these protests the line between legitimate speech and incitement to genocide is being blurred, if not outright crossed. In New York, hundreds of protesters carrying Palestinian flags chanted for the elimination of Israel and often invoked the slogan “from the river to the sea,” which by its context erases the Jewish state. At the United Nations building in Manhattan, activists held banners demanding “revolution until victory” and displayed flags of organizations linked to terrorist ideology. When the right of existence for a people becomes the target, we’re no longer in the realm of protest. It crosses into the realm of existential threat. Free speech is sacred, but the right to live is fundamental.
It’s time for leaders — political, corporate, religious — to draw a firm line. Freedom of expression does not include a license to advocate mass murder and genocide. When protest slogans demand the end of a nation and the eradication of an entire people, that crosses the boundary between political action and persecution. Demonstrators who proclaim “from the river to the sea” while accusing Israel of fascism are blind to the fact that they are practicing fascism themselves. They label Israel “apartheid” or “dictatorship,” while mobilizing slogans of annihilation. Tolerance for free speech cannot become tolerance for a call to genocide. When the right to worship and exist is denied, speech becomes violence, and the gap between protest and persecution collapses.
We’re witnessing a strident call to support terrorists in the annihilation of the Jewish people. The cheering of imagery affiliated with Hamas or Hezbollah, the chants of “Intifada until victory,” the targeting of Jewish students and community members all raise the question of how societies responsibly protect speech while preserving life. If you stand under the banner of anti-fascism, but embrace calls for elimination of a whole people, you have become the fascist. Now is the time for people of faith and conscience to stand in the gap before the Lord, to defend what is right. Psalm 83:1-4 says, “Do not keep silent, O God! … They have said, ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.’” May we stand up for Israel and the Jewish people. Standing down in silence is complicity.
Sources
https://www.apnews.com/article/00616ea0fbcef57c80fcecb100bbdbd6
