In these very difficult times, when so many people seem to have lost their powers of reason along with their moral compass, I draw strength and comfort from the many people I encounter who remain sane and decent, who are horrified by the onslaught against Israel, the Jews and western civilisation and who understand the connection between them.
I was particularly moved to receive this message from a reader:
I am a former Muslim atheist in London. Day to day, I see antisemitism and casual hatred of Israel around me in conversations, on the streets, and in public life. I am writing to say, please do not lose hope.
Your writing has given courage to people like me who refuse to look away or stay silent. Whatever our differences in politics or theology, my solidarity with the Jewish people is unwavering. I will always stand up for the right of Jews in the United Kingdom and in Israel to live in safety and dignity, free from intimidation and dehumanisation.
Thank you for your voice, your clarity, and your persistence in hard times. If there is ever a way an ordinary Londoner can help by speaking up, writing, or showing up, I am willing.
I was so impressed by this person’s intellectual integrity and moral courage that I wrote back to ask him how he had extricated himself from the assumptions that he indicated had been part of his upbringing as a Muslim. He wrote back:
I began by listening to the New Atheists, including Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. Little by little, my religious convictions eroded. Even after I became an atheist, I still saw myself as pro-Palestine, because I accepted the usual progressive story in which Israelis are the oppressors and Palestinians the oppressed.
Only after watching Sam Harris’s video “Why Don’t I Criticise Israel?” did I begin to grasp the profound moral difference between Israel and its enemies. Today, I am as pro-Israel as the editor-in-chief of Jewish News Syndicate, because I now understand this as a religious conflict rather than an ethnic one. The kind of jihadist atrocities that strike Western Europe every few months strike Israel every few weeks.
Israel has long stood on the front line of the fight against jihadist ideology, and it deserves unequivocal support. As Sam Harris put it, “We all live in Israel, it is just that some of us have not realised it yet.”
This brave person needs to be very careful about where he may or may not speak out. May he stay safe. A small light shining out like this from the gathering darkness should give us all hope.
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her work on her website HERE
3 comments:
“so many people seem to have lost their powers of reason along with their moral compass” - nothing more needs to be said MELANIE
"Sam Harris’s video “Why Don’t I Criticise Israel?”"
Sam Harris doesn't criticise Israel because, like Melanie, he's Jewish.
Liberal-presenting, scientific rationalist and devout secular Humanist (vis a vis America) Harris quickly drops all of that when it comes to his coethnics in the illiberal Jewish state of Israel.
Anon 8.37 ässerts ""Sam Harris doesn't criticise Israel because, like Melanie, he's Jewish". And yet we find the following comment in the very video Anon 8.37 considers to be his smoking gun.
”"I don't think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible."
Sounds suspiciously like crtiticism to me! And by the way, his mother was born a Quaker; his father was born a Jew and he is on record as saying they were "unreligious". So I'm not sure how that automatically makes an avowed atheist "Jewish", far less beholden to Israel.. As Harris points out in the video, Israel is not a theocracy, and one could easily argue that its Jewish identity is more cultural than religious.
All of which shows the motive for Harris'position is rather more nuanced than Anon 8.37 would have us believe. And that's a polite way of saying he is wrong.
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