One of the most famous letters ever written was by the renowned French novelist Émile Zola. It was published in 1898 under the title “J’Accuse” (I Accuse). Zola accused the President of France and the military command of prejudice for knowingly convicting an innocent man of treason. That man was a Jew, Alfred Dreyfus. Zola was not Jewish, but he had a conscience and a dedication to justice. The letter caused a storm of controversy in a hypocritical, antisemitic France, but Zola succeeded. Dreyfus was released and eventually pardoned.
Zola wrote that he must “dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it. My duty is to speak out, not to become an accomplice in this travesty … I shall proclaim the truth, with all the revulsion that an honest man can summon.”
There is no equal to Zola today, but the times demand another letter unambiguously standing for truth in a world losing its collective mind, again using the Jew and the Jewish state as a scapegoat. Here is my modern version of “J’Accuse.”
J’Accuse:
the churches for their silence. Silence is complicity. Other than Evangelicals, who are staunch supporters of the Jews, where are our Christian friends? Jews alone cannot stop antisemitism. We need support in word and deed from other faiths. Gatestone Institute wrote about Hassen Chalghoumi, an imam from France, who headed a delegation visiting Israel. During a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, the imam said: “You [Israelis] represent the world of brotherhood, the world of humanity, the world of affection, the world of democracy, the world of freedom.” There should be more like him and his colleagues of all faiths.
Silence is complicity. Other than Evangelicals, who are staunch supporters of the Jews, where are our Christian friends? Jews alone cannot stop antisemitism. We need support in word and deed from other faiths.
J’Accuse:
the Western world and the mainstream media for hypocrisy. Russia’s war on Ukraine is noted and the conflicts in Africa and elsewhere virtually ignored, but Israel is hysterically vilified for responding to a war it did not start. Israel’s response is declared “disproportionate” by countries that carpet-bombed Germany, dropped atomic bombs on Japan and bombed indiscriminately in Vietnam and Cambodia, not to mention the very disproportionate “shock and awe” campaign in the recent Iraq wars. Melanie Phillips calls the situation an “unhinged, vicious obsession with tiny Israel, the focus of a civilizational disorder that is dragging down not the Jewish state but the West itself.”
General Yoav Gallant and John Spencer write in The Defense Memo that “Two million civilians died in the Korean War, averaging over 50,000 per month. More than 10,000 were killed in the liberation of a single city, Mosul …. Cities were flattened in the campaign against ISIS…Today, only one military – the IDF – is expected to achieve battlefield success without error, without civilian harm, and without criticism, even as it faces enemies who deliberately try to make this impossible.”
J’Accuse:
academics and arts and cultural organizers who betray their sacred trust of free and open intellectual enquiry and who promote politics, not education. They use crude intimidation instead of serious, intellectual engagement. As Matthew Arnold said, education is about the best that has been thought and written, not the debasement of Western civilization, undermining the good to portray it as only oppressive and racist. Cancelling Jewish or Israeli events, talks or movies or disrupting award ceremonies to protest Israel is uncivilized, intimidating and an undisguised form of Jew-hatred.
J’Accuse:
people who think they are informed about the Middle East and elsewhere because they check their iPhones to receive social media that are swamped with nefarious sources manipulating public opinion. People who have not studied history leave themselves open to being used by those with a malignant agenda. We are in an era of smart phones and dumb people.
J’Accuse:
Jewish self-haters. They appear in the press and on TV parroting the haters’ venomous distortions in an attempt to curry favor with them. Court Jews always end up being disposable. They should know better. Phillips wrote that “other people revolt against their own religions, cultures or countries. Yet with Jewish haters of Israel and Judaism, this takes on a pathological form. They obsessively seek to expunge Jewish particularism from themselves and the world. The damage they have done is incalculable.”
J’Accuse:
myself and others like me for being naïve and thinking that Jew-hatred had finally ended after the Holocaust and that multicultural North America was a true and reliable home for Jews. It is sickening to realize that the country where you were born and raised is no longer safe for you, not because of the loud, intimidating, violent minority, but because of the silent majority. They sit by and do not affirm the rights of Jews and the values of their own country. It is disheartening to witness their lack of understanding that antisemitism is not a solution but a symptom: “It starts with the Jews but never ends with the Jews” is not a cliché. It is a proven fact of history.
“It starts with the Jews but never ends with the Jews” is not a cliché. It is a proven fact of history.
Jews were demonized when living in the Diaspora for 2,000 years and now are demonized as a state. But Israel, in the words of Bret Stephens, “does not exist to placate the feelings of the detractors and defamers. It exists to protect Jewish life and uphold Jewish dignity in a world too intent on destroying both.” Jews have survived worse. Israel will survive this current outrageous slander. The question is: Will the spineless, soulless Western world survive?
Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.
