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- Scoop: Internal Project Esther documents describe conspiracy of Jewish ‘masterminds’ seeking to dismantle Western values

NEWS | DEC 6, 2024, 6:21 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Scoop: Internal Project Esther documents describe conspiracy of Jewish ‘masterminds’ seeking to dismantle Western values

Arno Rosenfeld

A presentation meant to win supporters for the Heritage Foundation’s plan to fight antisemitism draws a line from George Soros to Antifa and pro-Palestinian protests

George Soros, depicted on a poster at a demonstration in Macedonia in 2017, was is among the targets of the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther. Photo by Getty Images

The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, a conservative plan to counter antisemitism, sees the problem as one in which a handful of “masterminds” including Jews like George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are seeking to “dismantle Western democracies, values and culture,” according to internal Heritage documents obtained by the Forward.

The documents, a pitch deck that Heritage used in trying to build support from Jewish foundations and other organizations, also outline several tactics the group plans to use to undermine a collection of anti-Zionist nonprofits and progressive groups that it refers to as the Hamas Support Network. The actions include identifying “foreign members vulnerable to deportation” and enlisting law enforcement to “generate uncomfortable conditions” for progressive activists.

A slide from the presentation about Project Esther. Graphic by Heritage Foundation

Heritage did not respond to an inquiry Friday about the presentation.

The think tank, which also produced the controversial Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump administration, has struggled to attract Jewish supporters for its antisemitism plan, which appears to have been assembled by several evangelical Christian groups.

Project Esther focuses exclusively on left-wing critics of Israel, ignoring the antisemitism problems from white supremacists and other far-right groups. James Carafano, who runs the Heritage Foundation’s antisemitism task force, said in October that “white supremacists are not my problem because white supremacists are not part of being conservative.”

Eclectic group of ‘masterminds’

The promotional presentation includes two slides headlined “antisemitism’s ecosystem.” One features a pyramid topped by a list of “progressive ‘elites’ leading the way.” In addition to Soros and his son Alex, who run the Open Society Foundations, it also includes the Pritzker family and the Marxist academic and author Angela Davis.

George Soros has funded a variety of progressive causes and long been a boogeyman among conservatives; Alex recently took over the family foundation. It’s less clear why JB Pritzker, who was first elected governor of Illinois in 2018, was on the list, or his broader family — his sister Penny, who served as a Commerce Secretary under President Barack Obama and a special envoy for Ukraine in the Biden administration, is on the board of Harvard University and has compared pro-Palestinian protesters at the school to the Klu Klux Klan.

Politico reported in May that Pritzker family members ran a foundation that funded groups, including Climate Justice Alliance, which had also participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. But subsequent reporting cast doubt on those ties..

“That’s a completely false story,” JB Pritzker said of the Politico article at the time. He also chided the Chicago City Council for calling for a  ceasefire in Gaza early this year.

Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

The Heritage Foundation has described Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who is Jewish, as one of several “masterminds” responsible for American antisemitism. Photo by Getty Images

Heritage also accused lesser-known individuals of leading the network, including Neville Singham, who The New York Times has described as a charismatic millionaire “known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes;” and Manolo de los Santos, who runs a “movement incubator” in New York City.

The pitch deck draws lines from these figures to “Backers,” including foundations both large and small, like Tides, which helps individual donors funnel more than $1 billion to various liberal nonprofits; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and Wespac, a tiny charity that sponsors several of the most radical pro-Palestinian groups in the country (and whose board chair is Jewish. Activist movements like Antifa and Black Lives Matter are also included on that tier, below which are “organizers,” including the nonprofit groups Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine and Fight Back, the arm of a Chicago construction workers union.

In the presentation, the work of these leaders, funders and organizations is described as “violent activity” directed at Jews, including “riots.” One slide includes a photo of a violent 2017 demonstration in Paris.

A plan to ‘neutralize’ the network

Project Esther’s strategy to “neutralize” this network, according to the documents, includes six distinct “lines of effort” with different outcomes.

The version of the plan publicly released on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack in Israel,  had criticized American Jewish organizations for not taking the threat posed by the “Hamas Support Network” seriously enough. The pitch deck says that Heritage plans to “conduct tailored outreach” to Jews and identify “key influencers” who can help unify the community behind Heritage’s strategy.

The presentation included a list of specific tactics Project Esther would deploy to “neutralize” the Hamas Support Network. Graphic by Heritage Foundation

Referring to the activist network as a “cancer,” the group also calls for passing  legislation to counter it at the federal, state and local levels. One goal is to get groups  designated as “TSEs,” an abbreviation for “terrorism support entity,” which can have severe legal consequences.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to make fighting antisemitism a priority in his administration. He has suggested that he’s open to at least some of the tactics referenced in Project Esther, including deporting international students who protest against Israel. And the project was assembled by a group that includes the America First Policy Institute, a think tank staffed by some of his top advisors.

No major Jewish organizations appear to have  participated in drafting the plan, or publicly endorsed it since its release.

Arno Rosenfeld is enterprise reporter at the Forward, where he covers antisemitism, philanthropy, sexual misconduct and American Jewish politics. You can reach him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @arnorosenfeld.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/680626/project-esther-heritage-jewish-conspiracy-antisemitism/ at Dec 9, 2024 at 2:23 AM EST.

Opinions

- Israel accidentally helped spark regime change in Syria — what’s next?

- Amnesty International’s genocide report is profoundly flawed — and everyone who cares about Israel should read it

- We’re watching Israel self-destruct — at the hands of its own leaders and citizens

- Amnesty International makes it crystal clear: Israel is in desperate need of a reality check

OPINION | DEC 8, 2024, 2:37 PM EST | UPDATED DEC 8, 2024, 6:29 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Israel accidentally helped spark regime change in Syria — what’s next?

Dan Perry

Israel has a chance to reshape the order of the Middle East. But its leadership must be wise enough to seize it

Syrian rebels celebrate their victories in a lightning-quick toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Photo by Ugur Yildirim via images via Getty Images

On Sunday morning, a lightning offensive by Syrian rebels ended with the dramatic fall of Damascus, marking the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime after 13 years of devastating civil war. This moment, one of the most consequential in the Middle East’s recent history, was set in motion by a chain of events that few could have anticipated — least of all Israel, whose own military campaigns inadvertently played a pivotal role.

The fall of Assad highlights a classic case of unintended consequences. Israel — like the West — was long ambivalent about the fate of the despotic Syrian regime, which was a bitter enemy, but a weakened one that seemed to have made peace with Israel’s usurping of the strategic Golan Heights.

One of the main reasons Assad was able to cling to power was the critical support he received from the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which until recently was the largest non-state army in the world. It will take a while to understand exactly what happened in Syria, but it is unlikely to be a coincidence that Assad’s toppling came so quickly on the heels of Israel’s thrashing of Hezbollah in the recent Lebanon conflict. That shift almost certainly emboldened the rebels to make their move.

Israel now finds itself at a critical juncture. Its successes against Iran’s regional proxies have reshaped the regional balance, but they should not be heralded as an unqualified success: They are victories that have created new serious risks. To secure lasting benefits from this moment of upheaval, Israel must act decisively to stabilize Gaza, address the Palestinian issue, and forge a new regional order alongside Sunni Arab states.

In a sense, the roots of Assad’s collapse seem to trace back to Hamas’s catastrophic decision to invade Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The brutal assault set off a war that upended the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Ba’ath regime of Assad — key components of this alliance — have now been decimated, in what can only be described as a spectacular strategic failure.

In Gaza, Israel’s relentless campaign has systematically dismantled Hamas’s leadership and military capabilities, reducing the group to a scattered insurgency. Hezbollah, which escalated the conflict by opening a second front from Lebanon, has met a similar fate. Israel’s recent, decisive responses to Hezbollah’s year of rocket barrages on Israel’s north have left the group’s leadership decimated and its ranks of fighters significantly thinned.

Iran, the architect and financier of these groups, has suffered grievously as well. Israeli strikes on Iranian bases and assets in Syria and Iraq inflicted heavy damage, while Tehran’s inability to protect its proxies laid bare its vulnerabilities. The collapse of Assad, Iran’s key ally and the linchpin of its arms pipeline to Hezbollah, represents a further devastating blow to its regional ambitions.

And the consequences have extended beyond the Middle East — again to Iran’s detriment. The war fractured the Democratic coalition in the United States, as progressive and centrist factions — as well as Jewish and Muslim voters — clashed over President Joe Biden’s support for Israel (too little for some, too much for others). This division certainly assisted in President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory — a development likely to usher in a tougher U.S. stance on Iran.

For Israel, all this comes with a double-edged sword.

The dismantling of the Iranian axis represents a strategic triumph. Yet the ensuing risks are manifold. The rebel forces that now control Syria appear to be dominated by factions with troubling histories, including ties to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups — especially the most vocal group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. While the West’s focus on Assad’s atrocities led to a tacit tolerance of these rebels, their potential to transform Syria into a failed state — or, worse, an Islamist stronghold and terrorist haven — cannot be ignored.

Moreover, Assad’s collapse may trigger a power vacuum that invites rival powers, from Turkey to Russia, to assert influence in Syria, creating a new set of challenges for Israel. The chaos could spill over into Lebanon and Iraq, further destabilizing a region already on edge. Israel, for all its military might, cannot fully insulate itself from the ripple effects of a fractured Syria.

There will be voices within Israel celebrating the weakening of Iran’s axis as a historic achievement, but such triumphalism would be shortsighted. If Israel had a wise government — which, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it very much does not — it would seize the moment for a paradigm shift.

The most immediate challenge is Gaza. The war cannot drag on indefinitely without further eroding Israel’s international standing and risking greater instability. A sustainable resolution requires the swift return of hostages and the restoration of governance in Gaza, ideally to the Palestinian Authority with backing from Arab states.

Beyond Gaza, Israel has a unique opening to reshape the regional order. The fall of Assad weakens Iran’s grip on the Middle East, but enduring stability will depend on Israel forging alliances with Sunni Arab states. A grand coalition that includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates could serve as a bulwark against Iranian ambitions, fostering economic and security cooperation and representing a powerful statement against Iran’s chaos-driven agenda.

Forming such an alliance would be a way to tap into the intriguing opportunity presented by the presence of non-Islamist rebel factions amid the successful rebellion in Syria; some of them seek to establish a moderate, democratic Syria on the ruins of the Ba’athist dictatorship, and a few have even hinted at peace with Israel. Such voices would certainly be encouraged by a more pragmatic, less bellicose Israel, especially if the Jewish state proved itself capable of working smoothly with some Arab neighbors.

Israel can either seize this moment in a way that actually would mark a victory — or it can continue to drag on the Gaza war, imperiling the opportunity, because doing so is politically convenient for Netanyahu, allowing him to delay the inevitable accounting for the debacle of Oct. 7. That would not only compound the tragedy, but it would also risk the country being drawn into the chaos that inevitably follows the fall of a dictator.

Dan Perry is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. Follow his newsletter “Ask Questions Later” at danperry.substack.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/opinion/680815/syria-israel-assad-netanyahu/ at Dec 9, 2024 at 2:23 AM EST.

OPINION | DEC 8, 2024, 2:22 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Amnesty International’s genocide report is profoundly flawed — and everyone who cares about Israel should read it

Nadav Ziv

Amnesty’s record on Israel warrants skepticism. But there’s still much we can learn from the group

Amnesty International officers present the group’s new report alleging genocide by Israel in Gaza on Dec. 4. Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images

Amnesty International’s 296-page report accusing Israel of genocide comes after 14 months of gaslighting. Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, people and groups billing themselves as pro-Palestinian have repeatedly justified, mocked, and denied Jewish and Israeli pain. I have personally cut ties with former close friends who praised the murder of Jews and called out far-left groups for their Hamas apologism.

After a period like that, how could any of us trust international groups and institutions when they’re so often biased against Israel — remaining silent or issuing tepid statements amid horrors like Hamas’ sexual violence?

Yet we should not let those concerns distract us from what is right about Amnesty’s flawed report: The war in Gaza must end. Hostages are dying — and so are far too many innocent Palestinians. Amnesty’s editorializing aside, every Jew should read the stories of Palestinians in the report, much as we might ask others to bear witness to our suffering. These testimonials point to an inescapable truth: Whether the charge of “genocide” is warranted or not, Israel’s far-right politicians have co-opted a war of self-defense into one of gratuitous violence.

The Jewish community has reason to be skeptical of Amnesty International. In 2010, one of the group’s officials called Israel “a scum state.” Three years later, Amnesty’s now-Secretary General Agnès Callamard falsely implied that Israel assassinated former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — although the organization eventually distanced itself from that claim. In 2015, the only resolution to fail at Amnesty International’s annual meeting was one that would have directed the organization to fight antisemitism in the United Kingdom.

The U.S. State Department has already rejected the claims of genocide in Amnesty’s latest report; so too did the German government, and Amnesty’s Israel branch. In a joint statement, Jewish members of Amnesty from around the world alleged flaws in the report’s process. Criticisms from people who are otherwise aligned with Amnesty’s work constitute serious red flags.

And Amnesty’s anti-Israel bias can be seen throughout the report. For example, it generalizes references former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made to “human animals,” and his supposed orders to “eliminate everything,” as referring to all Palestinians — even though The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg has unpacked how Gallant was clearly referring to Hamas.

To allege genocide, Amnesty also focuses on “the conditions of life imposed on Palestinians in Gaza” before the war. Aside from a brief note acknowledging Hamas’ pattern of violating Palestinian civil liberties in Gaza, Amnesty has little to say about how the terror group, which has governed the strip without elections since 2007, itself imposed many of those awful “conditions of life,” including by systematically diverting much-needed international aid. A section on the pre-October 7 landscape lambasts Israeli security measures, yet glosses over the legitimate foundation of Israeli concerns.

And yet even with these obvious failures, we shouldn’t dismiss everything in the report. Nor should we group Amnesty with some groups on the far-left that have taken to defending Hamas. On the one-year anniversary of Oct.7, Amnesty mourned the attack as“atrocious.” The report clearly calls out the “deliberate mass killings, summary killings and other abuses” committed that day, and frames many of these as war crimes. The group says it will focus on Hamas’ acts in a “forthcoming publication.”

But most importantly, claims of genocide aside, the Amnesty report aligns with what Israeli security experts who are committed to the country’s well-being have already pointed out: The war no longer has a strategic purpose.

Again and again, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has foiled attempts to reach a hostage deal. Israel defense officials have tried, to no avail, to push for one: Under Netanyahu, the government simply has no interest in ending the war. Recent operations in northern Gaza were ordered without serious consultation or intelligence to justify them. Security officials now warn that the government may be moving toward annexation, and that the war is endangering the lives of the hostages.

Former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, a one-time member of the Likud Party and far from a left-wing peace activist, recently suggested that Israel was committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Yaalon said he was “speaking in the name of IDF commanders who are operating in the northern strip” who “reached out to me expressing fear about what’s happening there.”

No one can credibly accuse him, as the military’s chief of staff during the Second Intifada and defense minister during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, of not caring about Israel.

The Amnesty report reminds us who we should actually be listening to to understand this conflict. Not self-serving Israeli politicians, but rather Israeli security experts and Palestinian civilians who have suffered from the pointless extension of this war. Here are two incidents included in the Amnesty report that every person, on any side of this war, should consider:

- Mohammed, a 42-year-old with three children in Deir al-Balah, said “you have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, and there is no clean water, no toilets, all while the bombing never stops.”

- Ahmad Nasman’s parents, sister, wife, and three children were killed in an Israeli airstrike. “My body survived but my spirit died with my children,” he said. Ahmad spent four days searching through the rubble before he found the body of his three-month-old child Ayla. His five-year-old, Arwa, was completely decapitated.

If you’re skeptical of Amnesty, then you can turn to a separate document compiled by Israeli historian Lee Mordechai that chronicles similar stories, such as that of an Israeli tank running over 62-year-old Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour after his hands were zip-tied. Many other credible sources that capture similarly horrifying stories — like that of 19-year-old software engineering student Shaban al-Dalu, who was burned alive at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli airstrike started a fire. His family had already been displaced 15 times.

Reflexive pro-Israel claims of “But Hamas!” are their own form of gaslighting. They do not take into account the needless extent of this civilian suffering. Agree or disagree with Amnesty’s conclusions; the details included in its report as well as other sources should make all of us take a step back.

In the summer of 2019, I traveled to the West Bank to speak with Palestinian officials and residents. There, I heard conspiracies about Israel funneling rockets to Hamas, and hopes that the country my family lives in would disappear. I also heard painful testimony about people’s struggles to obtain work permits, and their relatives who were killed by Israeli forces.

That experience and the Amnesty report share a similar lesson: We cannot let misrepresentations or lies about Israel make us turn away from overwhelming evidence of Palestinian suffering.

Right now, Israel continues to recover the bodies of hostages; many of the more than 100 hostages still in Gaza are now presumed dead. Edan Alexander, from my hometown of Tenafly, New Jersey, is still in captivity, separated from his loved ones. Just as Edan deserves to come home, no Palestinian, no person, should ever endure what Mohammed, or Ahmad Nasman, or Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour, or Shaban al-Dalu did.

No matter what they think of the recent report, there is one point on which Amnesty, Israeli generals, the families of the hostages, and the Israeli public all agree: It’s time to end this war.

Nadav Ziv is a writer and researcher whose work covers antisemitism, Israel and misinformation. He also collaborates with academics and Democratic politicians and activists to communicate their stories and ideas.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/opinion/680794/amnesty-international-genocide-report/ at Dec 9, 2024 at 2:23 AM EST.

OPINION | DEC 7, 2024, 2:36 PM EST | UPDATED DEC 7, 2024, 4:12 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

We’re watching Israel self-destruct — at the hands of its own leaders and citizens

Dan Perry

Netanyahu’s government relies on three groups whose aims would destroy the country as we know it (and possibly altogether)

The author, Dan Perry, then a Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, interviewing Benjamin Netanyahu in 2003. Courtesy of Dan Perry

The author spent 28 years as a correspondent for the Associated Press, many of them covering the Middle East. He was born in Israel and has lived in Tel Aviv with his family since 2018.

TEL AVIV — My wife met four friends for lunch the other day, and returned with the following report: All four, successful and prosperous Israeli women in their 50s, were considering emigration. One had a professorship potentially awaiting in the Netherlands. Another has already bought a property in Greece. The U.S. and U.K. were possible destinations for the other two.

None of them want to leave Israel, she explained. All are patriotic and proud. But they simply cannot fathom living out their days with a front-row seat to what they have concluded is the slow, steady self-destruction of the Israel that they love.

That is the version of Israel they grew up in, the Israel that lives in the imagination of most American Jews. It is the Israel that was led by Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Whose cultural icons were the deeply humanistic authors A.B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz — or fictional characters like the Zionist officer Ari Ben Canaan, whom Paul Newman played in Exodus. Its modern champions are tech wizards responsible for an astounding proportion of the digital era’s innovations.

I’ll call that Israel the “liberal” Israel, although “modern,” “moderate” and “mostly secular” are equally accurate. Democratic. Some people might simply use the word “sane.”

There have always been odd aspects to this Israel — like religious control over marriage and divorce; tolerance of settlement madness in the occupied West Bank; and a pronounced militarist streak. But since the country’s 1948 founding, and despite existential threats from its neighbors, Israel for many decades managed to remain, at its core, a liberal democracy that took seriously the rule of law and had rational government systems whose procedures and outcomes were similar to what you’d find in many European nations. This Israel, in 2022, had a per capita GDP pushing $50,000, higher than the United Kingdom, Germany or France.

But that Israel, which my wife’s friends treasure, is under relentless assault from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing extremists upon whom his political survival depends. It is ironic that Netanyahu, the most Americanized leader Israel has ever had, is also the person most responsible for the possibility that Israel will mutate into a country that bears no resemblance to the United States, and which would be inhospitable to the vast majority of U.S. Jews.

Three paths to disaster

The author, at age 3 after the 1967 War, standing atop a captured Egyptian tank, his father propping him up from below. Courtesy of Dan Perry

I was born into a nascent Israel in 1963, some three years after my parents fled Romania. I remember the 1967 War; the panic and the euphoria both seared my mind as a little kid. Soon after we moved to Pennsylvania, but I came back to Israel as an adult, leading the Israel bureau and later the Middle East region for The Associated Press. I have lived in Tel Aviv full time since 2018.

My wife’s family moved to Israel from Romania when she was a baby, and she has pretty much spent her life here, save for our foreign-correspondent stints in London, San Juan, and Bucharest. We both served in the Israel Defense Forces, as did our two daughters. So we are not bystanders to the country’s potential self-implosion.

How did Israel change from the Jewish democracy of our families’ dreams into a potentially authoritarian state on the road to something that might be called apartheid? Why would anyone seek this transformation? Is it a bug in the operating system of human nature? Or a feature of Judaism? Perhaps a plague of the Middle East?

My reading of the situation is that Israel, having drawn in Jews from all over the world, is a microcosm of all the world’s wonder — and all the world’s craziness.

The country’s different “tribes” want different things. Three of its fastest-growing tribes are core to Netanyahu’s coalition, and seek to remake the country in three somewhat different ways. No analogy is perfect, but I see these three models: A fake democracy run by an authoritarian figure with vast power, as in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan; a theocracy, as in Iran; and a dominant ethnic group running roughshod over others, as in Vladimir Putin’s dystopian Russia.

Netanyahu himself may not want Israel to actually resemble any of the three. But many of his supporters want it to incorporate various elements of each, and that’s the direction of travel. The prime minister has repeatedly proven that he cares about little except clinging to power. If this goes on, at some point soon, a return to sanity will be not just difficult, but perhaps impossible.

A toxic, fanatical ferment

Each of the three nightmarish scenarios sought by Netanyahu’s coalition partners maps onto a distinct tribe of Israeli society. And each is driven by fanaticism, grievance or a toxic combination of the two.

Interest in the authoritarian component, which I compare to Turkey, comes from Netanyahu’s Likud Party and many of its supporters. Netanyahu took what was once a mainstream political movement that attracted qualified conservative candidates, and transformed it into a mafia-like personality cult whose leadership roster includes many people with criminal records.

Israeli police officers arrest Haredi protesters demonstrating against the end of the draft exemption this summer. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images

The drive toward the theological component, which I liken to the hated mullahs of Iran, stems from Israel’s Haredim. Shortly after the country’s creation in 1948, its founding leader, David Ben-Gurion, struck a deal to exempt some 400 men engaged in full-time Torah study from mandatory military service. Likud’s first prime minister, Menachem Begin, entered his own pact with these insular Orthodox Jews in 1977, when they accounted for perhaps 4% of the country’s population, and the government removed a cap on the number of exemptions.

Now, the Haredim make up about a sixth of the population; projections suggest it will be a third in 25 years. They want the military exemption — which has until now been implemented through informal arrangements — permanently enshrined in law. They also want adults who study in seminaries instead of working to continue receiving government subsidies; for their community’s schools to be free of requirements regarding the teaching of math, science and English; and for the wider society to ignore their marginalization of women and intolerance of LGBTQ+ rights.

Haredi leaders also want to eviscerate the country’s secular court system, governed as it is by principles of justice and equity; religious courts are all they require.

The third group is the far-right elements of the former National Religious movement, the backbone of the settlement enterprise in the West Bank and those now agitating to resettle Gaza. If they have a patron saint, it is the U.S.-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, a radical whose signature ideology was expulsion of the Palestinians and whose overt racism was until recently overwhelmingly rejected in Israel.

Itamar Ben-Gvir (left) and Meir Kahane (right) Photo by Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images and PL Gould/Getty Images

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s minister of national security, just last month marked the anniversary of Kahane’s death by visiting the late rabbi’s grave with a group of far-right activists. He and the equally heinous finance minister Bezalel Smotrich proffer a vision of Jewish supremacy in which Israel rules over the West Bank and Gaza but does not give citizenship or other rights to the more than 5 million Palestinians who live there. Some are openly promoting policies of so-called “voluntary” expulsion of these Palestinian residents, which the former Likud defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, last weekend denounced as “ethnic cleansing.”

Their constituents occasionally maraud and pillage in Palestinian towns and villages. The Netanyahu government does all it can to look the other way. The courts, which aim to stem this criminality and bristle at efforts to legitimize it, are the enemy of this rabble as well.

That’s why, in the 10 months between Netanyahu’s return to power in December 2022 and the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre that sparked the current war in Gaza, the government set about neutering the courts.

The proposed judicial overhaul called for the government to appoint puppet judges, and also would grant it the right to overturn said judges’ decisions should they forget to act like puppets. It sought to defang various civil service gatekeepers as well as the free media; make it vastly easier to ban Arab parties from the Knesset; and strengthen the parallel (and hitherto mostly toothless) religious court system.

If executed, it would perpetuate the rule of the Netanyahu coalition beyond his lifetime. It could be fairly termed regime change.

‘But why are they so mean?’

For Israelis of the old liberal school, the genuine rage at the system fueling the so-called judicial “reformers” is shocking — as is their loyalty to politicians for whom Israel’s long-term well-being is at best a collateral concern. They seem, too, to delight in the pain felt by people like my wife’s lunch partners.

The reforms were initially sidelined by a massive protest movement — the largest the country has ever known, with hundreds of thousands pouring into the streets every Saturday night for months.

A protester waves the Israeli flag during a March 2023 demonstration in Tel Aviv against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images

Pilots threatened that they would shun reserve training if the judicial overhaul went through. Economists warned that tech investments would dry up. The heads of the security establishment repeatedly warned that this level of social schism was inviting attack.

That attack came on Oct. 7.

Netanyahu is a clever politician. He went into war mode, declaring that any accounting for the intelligence and tactical failures that allowed Hamas terrorists to breach the Gaza border fence and rape, murder and kidnap Israelis must wait until after Israel declared victory. He then engineered a strategy in Gaza that cannot yield such a victory — a sort of forever war, since there are always more Hamas militants to target.

Meanwhile, he refuses to even discuss Gaza’s future — which can only feasibly be either a disastrous long-term Israeli military occupation, or a return of control to the Palestinian Authority, which Hamas expelled in 2007.

The remaining 101 hostages taken on Oct. 7, many of whom are presumed dead, have been essentially abandoned while the tragedy grinds on. The Palestinian death toll is enormous; displacement and destruction even more widespread; starvation and other public-health crises loom. While Hamas is certainly to blame for sparking this war, with callous disregard for its impact on Gaza’s civilians, Netanyahu is obviously complicit. They are among history’s most twisted bedfellows.

Now Netanyahu’s assault on democracy, briefly put off by the war, is making a tentative return.

There is once more talk of changing the system of appointing judges. Netanyahu’s cabinet has decided to boycott the liberal Haaretz newspaper, calling it aligned with Israel’s enemies — a dirty move right out of the authoritarian playbook. Coalition members are promoting a new bill to either privatize or disband Israel’s public broadcaster, clearly because it does real journalism that is sometimes critical of the government. Some Netanyahu allies are agitating to fire the independent-minded attorney-general, who drives the religious factions mad by blocking some of the government’s sabotage.

An Israeli friend of mine, a 40-something tech executive who has been living for years in London, watched with horror a turbulent recent hearing of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee regarding the selection of judges. MK Simcha Rothman, who heads the committee, seemed to be having the time of his life, his glee and disdain for the Israel of yore unmistakable. “But why are they so mean?” she asked of the Netanyahu acolytes running the proceedings.

I put that question to another friend, Eytan, a 59-year-old sociology professor who has bought a refuge in Cyprus, where many thousands of Israelis have already settled in the past year. “They think demography is on their side,” he told me. “They think they’re going to win, and that’s why they’re so mean. They do all this because they can.”

Who will fight for a lost cause?

Human beings can tolerate almost anything if they think that it might eventually stop. But there is a sense among Israelis who oppose Netanyahu and his coalition that the situation is hopeless — that it is not a political pendulum that might someday swing back. It increasingly appears to be a case of demographic destiny: The religious sectors, Haredi and settler alike, have way more children than the secular and liberal tribes, and they are obsessive about preventing attrition from their ranks.

Haredi families celebrate Purim in Jerusalem. Photo by Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The Haredim in particular, with seven children on average per family, are doubling their proportion of the population every generation. Unless this changes, they will be the majority in less than half a century. Given their lack of military service and low workforce participation, a majority-Haredi Israel would be an impoverished country that might not be able to defend itself from the surrounding Arab states.

Israel’s current greatness is what makes this all so heartbreaking. Heartbreak is an unbearable form of suffering — and that is my wife’s lunch companions are making plans to leave.

Data on exactly how many people are thinking the same is spotty — but everyone who lives here knows the phenomenon is widespread, and potentially snowballing. Official state figures reported by The Jerusalem Post show that 40,600 Israelis left the country in the first seven months of 2024, an unprecedented rise of about 2,200 more departures per month than in 2023, which itself marked a bump up.

Beneath those numbers are many troubling indicators gauging sentiment and intention.

For example, a July 2024 survey revealed that a whopping 62% of Israelis are considering relocating abroad, with most people citing security concerns and political instability as their reasons. A 2023 survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute revealed that approximately 37% of Israelis either hold or plan to acquire a foreign passport.

And there is considerable anecdotal evidence of Israelis like Eytan buying properties in neighboring countries, or as far away as Portugal. Real estate experts in Cyprus say that Israelis are the second-largest group of property buyers in recent years, behind Russian investors.

“At the moment, 7 out of 10 clients are Israeli buyers in Larnaca,” a coastal city in southern Cyprus, said Kyriakos Vasileiou, the real estate agent who sold Eytan the apartment he bought there earlier this year. He said the reason was “the situation, with the war” — plus outrageous house prices in Israel.

This is a drama in a country where emigration is still referred to as yerida, Hebrew for “going down” — and the opposite of making aliyah, or “going up,” the idealized term for moving here as a Jew.

I’ve had innumerable conversations with people who would not be quoted because of the stigma that still attaches to those even considering departure. They’ve made clear that part of what is pushing them away is fear of military service under an entrenched government that is viewed as having violated the basic covenant of fighting only wars that are widely supported by the citizenry.

Simply put, many liberal Israelis cannot stomach sending their children to guard illegal West Bank settlements overflowing with Haredi Jews who refuse to put on uniforms themselves.

The author with his wife and daughters in Tel Aviv in 2022. Courtesy of Dan Perry

As a result, many successful Israelis I know with young children are trying to come up with contingencies for evading the draft notices that will arrive when the kids turn 17. This is not about cowardice in the current war; Israel’s youth have been quite brave and their families willing to sacrifice. This is about not wanting to fight for a lost cause, amid the frustrating sense that the collapse will have been self-inflicted.

A two-state solution — but not the one you’re thinking of

The three groups with which Netanyahu has made his devil’s bargain — the would-be authoritarians, the Haredim and the radical settlers — in themselves do not add up to a majority of the country. But there are other groups that push Netanyahu over the hump, especially Israelis with roots in countries like Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and Algeria. These Mizrahi Jews tend to be more traditional, more concerned with security, and socially conservative.

But when the economic disaster that will inevitably derive from the political changes under Netanyahu really hits, they may wake up. When growth grinds to a halt; when investment dries up; when the burden of supporting the exploding Haredi sector starts being truly felt in their own wallets. This awakening might, of course, arrive too late. Convincing them to think more clearly is the urgent challenge.

Meanwhile, in their desperation to hold onto the “sane Israel,” some speak of partitioning the country in two. Borrowing a concept from ancient times, they speak of a modern “Israel” along the overwhelmingly secular and liberal coast, from the Tel Aviv metro area north to Haifa, and a separate entity called “Judea.”

The second state would have Jerusalem as its heart, plus the less populated areas of the Galilee in the north, the Negev in the south, and the West Bank Jewish settlements. As far as the liberals of “Israel” would be concerned, the religious fanatics and nationalists of “Judea” would be left to fight the Palestinians in the West Bank to their heart’s content, with their own resources.

The name “Judea” harkens back to a split in the ancient Jewish kingdoms around the 11th century B.C.E. It makes some geographic and demographic sense, given where the people live, a little like Red and Blue America. But Zionism did not contemplate two homelands, and the practical challenges of dividing up the military and defending the rump coastal state are probably too great.

For Eytan, my wife’s friends and myriad others, it may make more sense to just leave than to watch Israel careen toward suicide.

The perils of a binational future

Alongside the demographic and economic doom portended by Haredi population growth, Israel’s intransigence regarding the Palestinians could lead to its self-destruction.

Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of settlements there are pushing the country toward a de facto one-state solution, which is no solution at all if you care about the future of any sort of Jewish state.

Some 3 million Palestinians currently live in what Netanyahu and his allies refer to as “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical names for the territory west of the Jordan River. They have neither citizenship nor voting rights in Israel.

Some 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the same territory, enjoying not just Israeli citizenship and voting rights, but access to Israeli schools and other public services. When these settlers and Palestinians clash, they are prosecuted by different justice systems.

A Palestinian woman inspects her damaged home following the 2023 attack by Israeli settlers in the West Bank town of Huwara, south of Nablus. Photo by Zain Jaafar / AFP / Getty Images

This reality already undermines Israel’s democratic principles. If Netanyahu, backed by a future President Donald Trump, goes further and annexes the West Bank without giving its Palestinian residents citizenship, it would cement an apartheid-like system — and risk Israel losing the dwindling support it has internationally. The likely trick of only annexing specific areas where Jews live, creating an impossible non-contiguous map for a never-to-be Palestinian state, will fool no one.

That one-state option is obviously unsustainable. But granting Israeli citizenship to West Bank Palestinians would erode the Jewish majority. And the Jewish majority would be eliminated altogether if Gaza’s 2 million residents are included, and totally overwhelmed if Palestinians living abroad were granted the right of return. Israel would effectively become Palestine, and the Jewish exodus likely accelerate exponentially. That is, to anyone who can count and think two steps ahead, the end of Zionism.

That’s why, for all its problems, the only sustainable path forward for Zionism is a two-state solution: Israel and a sovereign Palestinian state coexisting side by side. To preserve that possibility, settlement expansion must stop and a partition be imposed. Without some version of this, the Zionist dream of a Jewish and democratic state is dead.

In search of a tipping point

Solving Israel’s challenges may be beyond what a badly divided democratic society can achieve. They rather tend toward paralysis.

Netanyahu’s right-religious coalition by definition opposes any action to head off the twin dangers of the Palestinians and the Haredim; the two-pronged suicide is actually its defining project, despite the illogic of it all.

And it may well play out even if the current coalition falls, as polls show it would if elections were held today. The question is whether a successor government — even if it were from the moderate camp — would actually take the decisive and difficult steps that are needed to derail the current dynamic.

These include cutting Israel off from the West Bank and Gaza, even without a possibly unattainable peace treaty with the Palestinians, and cutting off the flow of funds that enables Haredim to continue having large families and men who neither serve in the military nor enter the workforce.

If Israel continues on its current path, I see a terrible few decades ahead.

For starters, a world that is already deeply concerned about the Netanyahu government’s prosecution of its war in Gaza could actually start to sanction Israel and Israelis, making travel abroad, business partnerships and academic collaborations uncomfortable or impossible. With Europe such a situation is already imminent; with the U.S., it may take another generation. But eventually, international powers will force Israel to extend citizenship and voting rights to Palestinians who live in the cities and villages between the settlements — or suffer devastating divestment, as South Africa did in the 1980s.

What’s more likely is a tipping point will come at which the liberal Jews will flee en masse, rushing to sell their (currently overpriced) properties before the market collapses altogether. That’s how markets work.

Reason to hope

I think modern Israel can still be saved. Doing so will require prying masses of working-class voters away from the Netanyahu coalition by making them understand where this is headed. Some people say that if this doesn’t happen in the next election, scheduled for October 2026, they’re getting out. My best guess is that Israel could still afford two more election cycles — but certainly no more than that.

I see the tipping point as being five to 10 years down the road. It can be forestalled if the Netanyahu coalition is decisively defeated, and drastic action taken.

The author and his wife, Iris Perry, at a pro-democracy rally in Israel in 2023. Courtesy of Dan Perry

But what is clear to me is that there is no way that modern and democratic Israel, as currently constituted, survives if versions of the right wing-religious coalition are still in power at the end of the decade. The so-called “Startup Nation” — whose tech-savvy protagonists are the most mobile of all — will become a fading memory. Without the pilots and the entrepreneurs and the professors and the kibbutzniks, and with Jews overall consigned to minority status in the territory they foolishly insisted on controlling, Zionism will be indefensible.

Israel, in this scenario, would not live to see its 100th birthday in 2048. It would be the third time in history when an attempt at Jewish sovereignty did not make that milestone. It will have been undone by fanatical nationalism and a mutation of religion, not by enemy hands.

The Jews would become an overwhelmingly diasporic people once more. Many will likely intermarry, and many of their descendants, perhaps, lose their Jewish identities. A century hence, the Orthodox may be left as the main expression of Judaism.

I understand well that by stating clearly what is going on, I’m giving succor to Israel’s enemies. What I am describing is not so different from what the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said years ago — that Israel is like a spider web that will be easily swept away by the winds. I have no wish to prove Nasrallah right, or to give his remaining followers headwind. But I have concluded the false Messiahs of the Netanyahu coalition must be defeated, or they will drag Israel off a cliff.

To huge swaths of Israeli and American Jews — including my family — that would be a tragedy. Would my wife and I leave ourselves? I have lifelong ties to this country, and she can hardly imagine another permanent home. At least one of our daughters very much wants to stay, and is not inclined to let “politics” affect her life.

So I intend to do what little I might to save the place from itself. But should such efforts fail, it will be because the Jewish people gathered here have proved incapable of not making catastrophically stupid choices. On a philosophical level, that’s a legitimate outcome.

The world will go on (until it doesn’t), and the Zionist story will serve as yet another cautionary tale that choices carry consequences. Mistakes exact a price, and if enough mistakes are piled on top of each other, sometimes it is fatal.

Dan Perry is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. Follow his newsletter “Ask Questions Later” at danperry.substack.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/opinion/680662/israel-netanyahu-future-west-bank-gaza-haredi/ at Dec 9, 2024 at 2:23 AM EST.

OPINION | DEC 6, 2024, 2:36 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Amnesty International makes it crystal clear: Israel is in desperate need of a reality check

David N. Myers

Think what you will of genocide allegations; what’s inarguable is that the divide between Israel and the world is growing

A Palestinian girl looks for salvageable items amid the destruction on the southern outskirts of Khan Yunis in Gaza on Jan. 16. Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images

It’s become increasingly clear that Israelis see and process their country’s military assault on Gaza in one way, and much of the rest of the world sees and processes it — and other Israeli actions — in a very different way.

This is not a mere matter of a polite divergence of opinion. It is a vast chasm that will generate increasingly weighty legal and political consequences. Without a significant measure of reality-checking and re-alignment, which is highly unlikely, Israel will find itself more and more isolated in the world. The latest chasm opened up when Amnesty International issued a report on Dec. 5 that declared, “Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” the report concluded.

Many Israelis saw it differently. The local chapter of Amnesty International in Israel held to the view that the high bar for determining genocide had not been met, while also stating that “the scale of the killing and destruction carried out by Israel in Gaza has reached horrific proportions and must be stopped immediately.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli foreign ministry responded with its own polemical shot across the bow: “The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies.”

But the Amnesty International genocide claim is not a one-off.

On Nov. 21, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant — whom Netanyahu had fired mere weeks earlier — along with Hamas leader Mohamed Deif, whom Israel believes to be dead. The warrants elicited a predictable response from Netanyahu’s office: “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions leveled against it by ICC.” The United States chimed in by expressing that it “fundamentally rejects the Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials” based on what it called the prosecutor’s rush to judgment and procedural errors.

The ICC warrants may be the first step toward a new era in the relationship between Israel and the world. Israeli soldiers traveling abroad were recently called home by the IDF to avoid being arrested on charges related to their service in Gaza, based on complaints filed by pro-Palestinian activists. Such a move would previously have been unthinkable; now, Israel clearly senses that the international balance has shifted out of its favor.

It is unsurprising, then, that the U.S. and Netanyahu would join together to oppose both the ICC and Amnesty International’s determinations. But it is essential to note that the Israeli and U.S. governments are outliers in the global order.

It is not just Palestinians and their Arab neighbors who have applauded the ICC’s decision. The European Union, through its foreign minister Josep Borrell — as well as the United Kingdom, and a host of European countries — have declared their intention to uphold the mandate of the ICC in this case. One commentator, Le Monde columnist Stéphanie Maupas, described the decision as “a historic turning point” that indicated that international law was now going to be applied to Western-aligned leaders, and not just figures from the Global South, who account for a large majority of those indicted by the ICC.

The growing divide in how much of the world sees Israel’s actions in Gaza, and how Israel characterizes them, is likely to expand further in coming months and years.

Indeed, Israelis are likely to become more defensive and combative toward the international community,and especially legal institutions such as the ICC. They remain in the throes of the immense trauma triggered by Oct. 7, which has not only caused ongoing pain, grief, and rage, but also prompted profound moral and political blindness. Few Israelis pay attention to the staggering numbers of Palestinians, including tens of thousands of women and children, who have been killed by the IDF in Gaza.

It is perfectly understandable and justifiable that many in the country, with the notable exception of Netanayhu and his far-right supporters, are focused on the return of the long-suffering Israeli hostages as their primary concern. (They are working to realize pidyon shevuyim, the Jewish principle of redeeming those who have been taken captive.) Sadly, they are not able or willing to grasp that Israel’s military campaign has displayed wanton disregard for human life, or that disregard will bring more global condemnation.

The political theorist Michael Walzer has made the essential point that a just war must be waged justly. Yes, Israel had the right to respond to Hamas after the massacre on Oct. 7. That is the first part of the equation. But the second part requires that Israel wage a war that maintains scrupulous adherence to the laws of warfare and international humanitarian law. As many observers have argued, Israel has violated these laws and norms by mass displacement, restricting access to food and other essentials, attacks on mosques, hospitals, and schools, and a repeated failure to distinguish between enemy combatants and innocent civilians.

Israelis now face a profound moment of reckoning. The renowned Russian-Hebrew poet Yehuda Leib Gordon opened a famous 1863 poem by addressing the Jewish people: “Awake, my people! How long will you sleep?” It is now time for Israelis — and their American supporters — to awaken to the realization that their view of reality is grossly distorted. They must re-align their values and understanding of human rights with the rest of the world — or they, not just their leaders, will continue to face ever-intensifying consequences from the international community.

David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/opinion/680494/amnesty-international-israel-genocide/ at Dec 9, 2024 at 2:23 AM EST.

Culture

- In ‘Wicked,’ the power of propaganda takes center stage

CULTURE | DEC 6, 2024, 3:58 PM EST | UPDATED DEC 6, 2024, 4:00 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

In ‘Wicked,’ the power of propaganda takes center stage

Olivia Haynie

The campaign against Elphaba echoes Nazi messaging about Jews

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, fully embodying her role as the Wicked Witch. Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Many pieces have been written comparing the story of the hit-Broadway musical Wicked — a riff on the backstory of The Wizard of Oz — to that of the Jewish people. The musical, which was just adapted into a blockbuster film by John Chu, explains how Elphaba, who was born with unnaturally green skin, came to be known, unjustly, as the Wicked Witch of the West. And since the movie came out, numerous writers have argued that Elphaba’s story of persecution and discrimination is particularly Jewish.

However, the similarity goes beyond simple persecution; Wicked is a parable about how propaganda can be leveraged by authority figures, whether against Elphaba or the Jews, and the different forms it can take.

Gregory Maguire, the author of the novel upon which the musical is based, first became interested in the power of words after reading a 1991 newspaper headline comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler. His immediate emotional response to that allegory made him realize how built-in word associations can cause us to form an opinion on an issue with no additional information.

In Wicked, Maguire wanted to examine how language is used to prompt violence against minorities and dissenting voices in a society. The one-word trigger is not “Hitler,” though, nor the Nazi’s hatred for anything described as “Jewish,” but “wicked.” As in the Wicked Witch.

In the film, after Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) refuses to help the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) in his persecution of talking animals, she flees the Wizard’s Emerald City. However, the Wizard and his co-conspirator Madam Mirabelle (Michelle Yeoh) try to discredit her before she can tell the Ozians about the Wizard being responsible for the disappearing animals.

They make nation-wide broadcasts about a shadowy and undefined “evil in Oz,” embodied by the “Wicked Witch.” They don’t actually define what about her is so evil and wicked but manage to get people terrified of her just the same.

Similarly, the Nazi party in Germany would vaguely reference the greediness and evil nature of the Jews, creating a public idea of the Jewish people as a malevolent force. “The Jews are our misfortune” was one of the favorite slogans of Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer.

These words were often accompanied by disturbing caricatures of Jews, portraying them as greasy, hook-nosed, conniving imps. Similarly, in the movie’s opening number “No One Mourns the Wicked,” Elphaba is portrayed as a giant, ugly green monster with a lolling demon tongue.

But why do the Ozians so easily believe the words of the Wizard? As Wicked portrays it, it’s because the Wizard has built himself up as an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent being. In a very Jesus-like fashion, the public believes him to have fulfilled a prophecy and become their savior.

Elphaba discovers, however, that the Wizard’s power is completely fabricated. He lied about having magic. The booming voice and giant wooden face he uses to talk to Oz obscure the fact that he is actually a pretty physically unimposing, powerless guy.

Hitler also carefully crafted his persona, and would practice his speeches to the most minute detail to make sure every part of his performance emulated power. It wasn’t just his words he would style, but his mannerisms, his gestures and his uniforms.

In Nazi Germany, aesthetics were core to conveying the gloriousness of Hitler’s regime. The Nazis appropriated Roman imagery, using the architecture of the world’s most iconic empire to symbolize the era of power and strength Hitler claimed to have ushered the country into — nevermind those who were losing their lives in the process. A focus on classical art, and a hatred of modern, so-called “degenerate” art, also communicated the fascist values of the regime.

Similarly in Oz, the splendor of the Emerald City, the Wizard’s home, parallels the splendor the Wizard has brought to the Ozians. And in the city, far from the countryside where the newly-silenced animals are being shackled, it is easy for Ozians to forget the price others are paying for their big emerald buildings.

Maguire’s story is not just a lesson against counting people out without having the full story. It’s also a strong warning about paying attention to leaders who seem too good to be true, looking beyond their words and recognizing manipulation in its most artful form.

Olivia Haynie is an audience intern at the Forward.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/680590/wicked-hitler-propaganda-nazi-jews/ at Dec 9, 2024 at 2:23 AM EST.

Table of Contents

The Forward: 2024 Dec 8

News

Scoop: Internal Project Esther documents describe conspiracy of Jewish ‘masterminds’ seeking to dismantle Western values

Opinions

Israel accidentally helped spark regime change in Syria — what’s next?

Amnesty International’s genocide report is profoundly flawed — and everyone who cares about Israel should read it

We’re watching Israel self-destruct — at the hands of its own leaders and citizens

Amnesty International makes it crystal clear: Israel is in desperate need of a reality check

Culture

In ‘Wicked,’ the power of propaganda takes center stage