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MUTATING VIRUSES

The Delta Variant and Demonization of Israel – Part 1

Rabbi Doron Perez

arallel to the different vari- Antisemitism as a virus understanding and confronting the
ants of the coronavirus that dynamics and dangers of antisemitism.
have spread havoc, illness One of the first people to compare
Pand death all over the world, antisemitism to a virus – systematically In this article I will highlight two: its
we have also witnessed the muta- and brilliantly – was Rabbi Jonathan ability to change form and mutate,
tion and dissemination of another Sacks zt”l. Already in 2002, in the wake and its highly contagious nature – its 2
destructive global virus, spreading of the outrageous attacks on Israel at tendency to spread fast and furiously.
hatred and demonization in new and the UN Durban Conference against
unimaginable ways – antisemitism in Racism, he began to speak vocally Mutations and contagions
its mutated form of anti-Zionism and about the dangers of a new strain of Just as viruses are able to change their
delegitimization of Israel. antisemitism. Although having never biological properties and mutate, so too
personally experienced any type of
In the wake of Operation Guardian of antisemitism, he wrote: – continues Rabbi Sacks – has antisem-
the Walls, the systematic delegitimiza- itism mutated into different variations
tion of Israel reared its ugly head again. “So when I began, in 2002, to alert our over the last two millennia. From Chris-
Remarkably, global social influencers, community and the British public to the tian Judeophobia and anti-Judaism to
media personalities and celebrities phenomenon of the return of antisemitism, secular racial antisemitism culminat-
with tens of millions of followers came it was against inclination and experience. ing in the Holocaust, and most recently
out in public defense of an internation- Yet it was real, dangerous and consequen- to a mutation of radical Islamic hatred
ally recognized terror organization. tial. Evidence was too blatant to be ignored. of Israel and anti-Zionism. In short,
Hamas’ charter unequivocally denies The emergence of a virulent new strain of either hatred of Judaism, the Jewish
Jewish sovereign rights in any part of antisemitism, after 60 years of Holocaust people or the Jewish State.
Israel and is totally committed to its education, interfaith dialogue and anti-rac- In the last HaMizrachi, I quoted the
destruction by any available means. ist legislation, is a major historical event...” ingenious insight of the Vilna Gaon,
The cynical reign of terror over its own “The best way of understanding antisem- who traced these very same three
citizens and the unprovoked terrorizing itism is to see it as a virus. Viruses attack mutations to Biblical times, to Israel’s
of Israeli civilians, Jew and non-Jew the human body, but the body itself has an three archenemies: Moav, Edom and
alike, with indiscriminate firing of immensely sophisticated defense system, the Plishtim.
rockets, was not only overlooked but the human immune system. How, then, do
justified. The never-ending demoni- viruses survive and flourish? By mutating. The latter, incredibly defined by the
zation has continually eroded Israel’s Antisemitism mutates, and in so doing Gaon as denying the Jewish people “any
very legitimacy, penetrating the moral defeats the immune systems set up by cul- sovereign presence or form of gover-
immune system of the uninformed tures to protect themselves against hatred.” 1 nance in the Land” is parallel to Pales-
masses. Violent attacks on Jews and tinian denialism and their demonizing
vandalism of Jewish community cen- There are many properties of biolog- of Israel today. It is a single-minded
ters around the world soon followed. ical viruses that assist us in better opposition to Jewish sovereignty and

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