DAR AL HARB-ISRAEL / U.K.: MELANIE PHILLIPS, THE CASSANDRA OF THE 21ST CENTURY

A modern Cassandra
By ANSHEL PFEFFER

Much has been written over the last couple of years of the exodus of Jews from France. In the face of a wave of violent anti-Semitism, thousands have left Paris, Strasbourg and Marseilles for Israel.

In certain middle-class neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Netanya and Ashdod, it's impossible not to notice them. Last week's aliya figures from the Jewish Agency disclosed another trend: Quietly, without fanfare, another community seems to be on the move.

Immigration from Britain was up by 45 percent in 2006. In absolute numbers this might not be a high figure - 720 new olim, up from 480 in 2005. Perhaps it's just a statistical blip, but all the same, it's the highest number of British olim in decades, and when it's added to unknown numbers of young British Jews who reportedly are leaving for other shores, such as the US, a worrisome trend begins to emerge. Are the Jews of one of the most successful outposts of the Diaspora beginning to leave?

Melanie Phillips has never been an official spokeswoman, but in her writing over the years she has never shied away from her Jewishness, and she is currently one of the most outspoken voices in a community which traditionally has been very careful not to rock the boat. On a visit to Jerusalem this week, she expressed no surprise at the aliya statistics.

"I wouldn't have thought it's quite so high," she says, "but I'm not surprised by the fact that it's jumped, because Britain's Jews are beginning to think in an increasing number that there is no future for the new generation of Jews in Britain."

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"I question myself all the time. And of course they regard me as an extremist because I rock the boat, I make life uncomfortable for them. They will have to tell me what I say is untrue or exaggerated, and I will deal with these claims one by one."

PHILLIPS IDENTIFIES the radicalized and growing Muslim community as only one factor leading many British Jews to consider emigration.

"It's also not entirely because of the perception that non-Muslim Britain has become very aggressive towards Israel" she says, "though these are very important contributory factors. In my view, a very significant driver is simply the increasing Jewish awareness among British Jewish youth. There's been a dramatic increase in my lifetime of the number of Jewish children being educated at Jewish schools, a very considerable rise in Jewish awareness and learning that is all for the good. And such young people increasingly feel in large numbers that there is no future for them, or to be more precise for their children, in Britain, that it's not possible to live the kind of fulfilled Jewish life that you can live in Israel."

And this is perhaps the irony of the Jewish existence in Britain: On the face of it, British Jews have never had it so good. Their numbers among the higher levels of politics, culture, business and media are astounding, out of all proportion to the size of the community. But this, coupled with the resurgence of Jewish education, is the reason Phillips thinks that many of them are frustrated by the current attitude toward them.

"Somebody said to me the other day that he intends to make aliya as soon as he possibly can. He's young, he's got a small family, he's extremely successful in British terms, but he doesn't want anymore to live on the defensive. He doesn't want anymore to wake up in the morning and be worried about what he's going to read, about what he's going to hear, what people might say to him socially about Israel or about Jews.

"He's fed up with having to defend what is patently a just position, that is being made out to be a completely evil position. He's fed up with being made to feel as if he's a pariah, and that's a very important factor, people do feel this acutely. I believe that these young people who come to Israel think that there are more important things in the world than success, and that the future spiritual, religious and moral life of their children is more important. They also feel - and it's not an inconsiderable factor at all - that British public life has turned against them, that it's much more hostile than it was."

Phillips also identifies a growing divide between two parts of the community. "The Jews who tend to be most successful in the professional world tend to be Jews with an either secular perspective or not to have a very large attachment to Jewish life. They're not very religious, they don't play an active part in a synagogue, they don't have much cultural or religious feeling. That's not always true - obviously there are a number of very successful Jews who are Orthodox or indeed very Orthodox - but the Jews who have made it in Jewish life are overwhelmingly not religious, so that tends to create a distorted perspective. There seem to be a lot of Jews in Britain, but those Jews who are most active in public life tend to be the kind of Jews who are typically at the forefront of demonizing Israel because they are left-wing."

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"The idea that because there is no physical persecution, people shouldn't be feeling uncomfortable shows a complete inability to understand that there is a whole scale of social pressures which make people feel uneasy and uncomfortable. In certain professions, like journalism and academia, to be very publicly in favor of Israel - and I don't mean supporting the activities of the Israeli government at any one time, I mean merely taking Israel's side as the regional victim rather than the regional bully - can cost you your job."

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"Then it was latent, now it is blatant, it's open. Twenty years ago, one would have never ever read in a mainstream newspaper or heard mainstream politicians talk openly about the Jewish conspiracy subverting the policies of the prime minister or the president of the US, now you do."

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In such an environment, she feels she can't blame those Jews who are leaving Britain.
"It's up to people and I understand precisely why they're doing it. It's regrettable that the British Jewish community is losing its brightest and best, but I understand and sympathize very much with why they're coming here. It's entirely logical that with British Jews under siege as they are, an increasing number will choose to come here. It's absolutely inevitable. It doesn't lessen the fact that it's a tragic situation that Britain is effectively getting rid of its Jews.

"I think it's tragic above other things because there's a fight to be had in Britain, and one of the problems of the spinelessness of the British Jewish leadership is that the fight has not been had, that the lie has not been countered in public and that the Jewish community has allowed itself to be spineless. And if you're spineless, people kick you.

"I believe there is a fight that must be had because it's a fight not just for Britain but for better values. If the Jews allow themselves to be persecuted out of a country like Britain, it does not augur well for the wider fight to defend the West. And I don't think it right that the Jewish community just sidles out of history."

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"It's the siege mentality of Israel - that everyone else can go hang as long as Israel exists with American support. This is a poison that is seeping fast through the West. Other European countries are showing similar signs, and Israel is very shortsighted if it thinks that in time it won't be to Israel's own detriment that this has been allowed to happen.

"I think its understandable that Israel thinks that all Jews should live in Israel, but the fact is that they don't and for Israel simply to shrug at this is morally reprehensible. If all the Jews lived in Israel, it probably wouldn't survive. Israel needs Jews around the world."

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"I'm not saying for a moment that Israel should stop fighting the military fight, of course, but behind the military fight is a battleground of ideas. The Muslim Brotherhood has spent the last 50 years spending; billions of dollars of Saudi money have gone into guiding Europe to the ideas of Islam. They understand something that the West does not understand, that Israel has never acknowledged - that the way to fight the war of civilizations is first of all to command minds. It used to be a project to enlighten Britain and Europe and to bring truth into the public mind. The problem is that it has been stopped and the lies come instead.

"The Israelis are always on the defensive, responding to accusations. What they should be doing is making the case. They should be occupying the aggressive intellectual position, saying, 'Look world, these guys in the Islamic world are telling lies.'

"I'm an optimist. I don't believe that lies need only win, that it is inevitable. They'll only win if we allow them to, which at the moment is what we're doing."


Pertinent Links:

1) A modern Cassandra