Hard Coded

Islamic antisemitism will take some beating...especially if we look away from its roots. 

Each new generation of committed Muslims is exposed to a series of supposedly sacred texts which contain multiple antisemitic references. 

There is no direct equivalent in the other two 'desert faiths' in part because they came earlier and there were no Muslims around to hate on while the key books were assembled. This is one reason why all the 'Islamophobia' whataboutery whenever antisemitism is discussed in Britain is a bit of a red herring. 

Now clearly it is possible to be a Muslim who has no issues at all with Jews just as it is possible to be a Christian that's completely fine with homosexuality. But that doesn't mean we should ignore the fact that millions of people in these belief systems lean on scripture in order to condone and sometimes also preach bigotry. 

Or indeed that the Quran has a load more horrendous and explicitly dehumanising things to say about Jews than the Bible does about gays. ('Apes and pigs', 'apes and swine' etc. Surah Al-Baqarah 2:65–66, Surah Al-Ma'idah 5:60, and Surah Al-A'raf 7:166). 

In disparate other sections Jews are described as 'cursed'.

Beyond the Quran itself, there's that 'Gharqad' Tree Hadith, included in the Hamas founding charter, which exhorts the Islamic faithful to go out and murder any 'hiding' Jews they might locate. 

This is representative of is one of the key issues I have with all forms of scriptural religion in the wider sense: one can do all sorts of things that may work to change the balance of attitudes across society, improving people's willingness to live together in peace (which often means not taking everything so damn literally!), but those texts with imagined supernatural authority simply never go away, and there never ceases to be a danger of relapse via a return to the letter of the ancient word...which always appears to benefit from protections that other parts of the culture and the conversation clearly lack. 

(Meanwhile in the US, CAIR is pursuing actions against children who share AI-generated memes connected with nonsense tunes on Roblox which they deem insulting to Muslims or their beliefs. Baffling double standard?) 

The sheer Imbecility...

Like, 'if this bunch of fringe nutjobs are anti-zionist, anti-zionism can't be antisemtism, cannit?'

Yet one can't just plug into this isolated aspect of another group's extremism: Neturei Karta openly fraternises with Iran and Hezbollah.

Here in Guatemala we have Lev Tahor, a highly comparable sect of ultra-orthodox, ultra-insular Jews disowned by the mainstream, and by Israel.

They too are rigidly anti-zionist, yet they are also into forced underaged marriages plus denying education to girls and have been repeatedly investigated by the authorities here for child neglect/abuse and kidnapping.

If I were to amplify just one aspect of their worldview — that a Jewish state must not be permitted to exist before the Messiah shows up — conveniently ignoring other aspects of their beliefs and practices, I would surely be outing myself as some sort of morally-deranged moron.

But many on the Far Left, aka 'wokerati', fully engaged by a set of modern human-rights infused doctrines, are seemingly fine with sidling up to cultish clusters whose motivations are wholly theological and apocalyptic.

And this is precisely why so much hate has been enabled by their public demonstrations. They have accepted as fellow travellers fundamentalisms which are far more committed, uncompromising and ultimately serious than their own.

Collaborations with contrasting forms of militancy of questionable compatibility have never worked out well in the longer term for progressive movements and are anyway deeply damaging to the coherence of their cause.

And it goes without saying that the appropriation of Jewish voices, fringe or otherwise, in order to ziz zag around charges of (the oldest) chauvinistic prejudice, can not only be negligent as outlined above, it is also by nature unprincipled and probably further indicative of the very prejudice it is apparently seeking to camouflage.