We've lit the candles for the first night, while thinking of those murdered and wounded while celebrating the holiday at Australia's Bondi Beach. Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish victory over those who would oppress and deny us religious freedom.
A word on the situation outside the United States (I'll have more to say on the U.S. soon) and Israel. Between 80 and 85% of the world's Jews live in the United States or Israel. Another 8% live in three countries (about 400,000 in each); the UK, France, and Canada. Two of those countries, the UK and Canada, have governments hostile to Jews, while France is more neutral, though Jews constitute the overwhelming majority of hate crime targets (including assaults, rapes, and murders) and, more recently, cancelled the traditional national Christmas and New Years celebrations on the Champs-Élysées in Paris because of fear of terrorist acts by its Muslim population.(1) In all three countries the toxic combination of leftist politics and a growing Muslim population has left Jewish populations at risk. Absent a dramatic change in political culture, the future is not good for the Jewish communities of these countries.
In the next tier are two countries each with about 100,000 Jews (together, about 1.4% of the global population); Australia and Argentina. Australia can be placed in the same category as the UK and Canada, with a government hostile to Jews and a rapidly growing Muslim population.(2) Argentina has an antisemitic history but its current government is led by a man who identifies as Jewish so, at least for now, it has the brightest prospects of all.
As Hussein Aboubakr Mansour wrote in the wake of Bondi Beach:
Any sober observer must be honest. Outside the United States, there is no Western political establishment with either the will or the capability to address this problem, let alone reverse its growth. The future of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is likely to be increasingly Jew-free and increasingly dysfunctional.
One of the prayers we say when lighting the Hanukkah candles is "Blessed are you Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in those ancient days at this season." May that happen again.
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(1) France has deployed 7,000 soldiers across the country to protect “places of worship and sensitive sites.” The deployment, originally meant to be short term, has become open ended. The French Ministry of Defense states “our commitment is long-term, for as long as this situation requires.” Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin echoed the message, “the terrorist threat is permanent.” President Macron has already admitted this is a war with no end in sight.
Interior Minister Nunez: “We’ve dealt with terrorism, we’ve dealt with separatism, now we’re tackling infiltration" and looking into “the links between representatives of political movements and organizations and networks supporting terrorist activity or propagating Islamist ideology”.
In May, Macron received a government investigative report that Islamists are infiltrating France's republican institutions and are a threat to national cohesion. The report (leaked to Le Figaro), drawn up by two senior civil servants, found evidence for a policy of "entryism" by the Muslim Brotherhood into public bodies like schools and local government. According to the report, "entryism means getting involved in republican infrastructure… in order to change it from the inside. It requires dissimulation… and it works from the bottom up."
The report goes on to say that the Muslim Brotherhood was losing influence in the Middle East and North Africa, and so was targeting Europe, backed by money from Turkey and Qatar. This is not an effort limited to France.
"Having given a Western look to the ideology in order to implant themselves in Europe, (the Muslim Brotherhood) tries to lay down the roots of a Middle Eastern tradition while concealing a subversive fundamentalism." The "Western look" the authors refer to is dressing Islamism in the robe of the fashionable academic jargon of settler-colonialism and the oppressor-oppressed framing.
The report states unequivocally that “Hatred of Jews,” is a core ideological element, often laundered through anti-Zionist slogans. Just like American college campuses and every university Middle East Studies Program.
According to The Free Press, "The report details a wave of online influencers—trained in Brotherhood institutions, fluent in grievance politics, and calibrated for younger audiences. Some present as activists fighting “Islamophobia”; others cloak Islamist ideology in therapeutic or entrepreneurial language."
Interestingly, in response to the report, French intelligence agencies recommended the government get tougher on Israel in order to placate its growing and unruly Muslim population. Macron took the advice, recognizing a Palestinian state in September. It's not going to work. The Muslim Brotherhood target is Western Europe, not Israel. All that recognition does is show weakness.
UPDATE: Jan. 17 - Further on the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood within European institution, on January 9 the United Arab Emirates excluded UK universities from its approved list for state scholarships, citing risks of radicalization by the Muslim Brotherhood on British campuses!
SECOND UPDATE: Jan 17 - French journalist Nora Bussigny authored a new book, Les Nouveaux Antisemites (The New Antisemites). Bussigny, who is not Jewish and has a French father and Moroccan mother, infiltrated France's anti-Israel movement. She told Times of Israel “I saw with my own eyes to what degree Islamists, far-left so-called ‘progressive’ militants and feminist, LGBT and ecological activists are closely linked in their shared hatred of Jews and Israel." Despite the Zionism language she found it was their shared hatred of Jews that drives their movement.
“While undercover, I identified classic antisemitic stereotypes, reformulated by simply substituting the term ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew,’” she told the hearing. “This rhetoric was flagrantly apparent during training by the Urgence Palestine organization in which I participated. The speakers spoke of a supposed ‘Zionist conspiracy’ in France in which ‘Zionists’ control the media and have infiltrated the government. These accusations are nothing but a faithful reworking of traditional antisemitic tropes, already observed historically on the extreme right.”
She tells the paper, "My concern continues to grow regarding the future marked by the persecution of Jews . . . I’m very, very afraid for France. I think in the long run, this might be a lost cause, but I’m among those who are going to fight until the end.”
THIRD UPDATE: Jan 28 - On Jan. 22 France’s National Assembly voted to call for the Muslim Brotherhood to be added to the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations. It is the first major EU nation to do so. The resolution emphasizes that Hamas, already on the EU terror list, originated as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, making the parent organization’s exclusion a logical inconsistency.
(2) In 2000 the current Australian Prime Minister led demonstrations in Sydney in support of Yassir Arafat after he walked away from accepting a Palestinian state at the Camp David talks and prepared to launch a series of suicide bombings against Jews. After decades of Australian support for Israel by all governing parties, the current PM withdrew Australia's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. No surprise, since his man Arafat shocked President Clinton and others at Camp David when he denied there was ever a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount! And, to this day, that is what Palestinian children learn in school. Since Oct 7, 2023, the PM has demonstrated on numerous occasions that his animus extends to the entire Jewish people.
For more on the lies about the Temple Mount read this THC post which provides some background, along with an account of the 2015 New York Times article propagating this fake news. For more than a decade the Times has viewed its role as creating a permission structure to allow progressives to become anti-semites.
Billy plays most of his solos with eyes closed.
Lyrics from Mr Tambourine Man with Dylan's handwritten changes inserting "in the jingle-jangle morning). Below is the Cash Box Top 100 for the week in September 1965 when Like A Rolling Stone displaced The Beatles Help! at Numero Uno. The Top Ten also includes another Dylan song, It Ain't Me Babe by The Turtles at 7.
Below: Pete Seeger is often portrayed as strongly objecting to Dylan's turn to electric. Pete's contention is that his objection to Dylan at Newport was that the electric music was so loud it drowned out Dylan's lyrics. This is a 1968 letter from Pete to his father about the recent release of Dylan's album John Wesley Harding. I really like the last paragraph: "Maybe Bob Dylan will be like Picasso, surprising us every few years with a new period. I hope he lives as long." He has done so. If you are in any doubt listen to Oh Mercy (1989), Time Out Of Mind (1997), Love and Theft (2001), and Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020).