Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan finally got what she desperately wanted: a 15-month suspension of her license to practice medicine in the UK.
Aladwan had become something of the poster child for Britain’s crisis of anti-Semitism in medicine, reveling in her growing celebrity and upping the ante with every social-media post until she had become a caricature of a Jew-hating paranoiac.
Aladwan responded to her suspension with a gleeful display of appreciation for having achieved her social-media martyrdom: “Thank God for everything. Let this decision stand as the definitive proof that there is no independent British medical regulation. The ‘israeli’ (sic) and jewish (sic) lobby decide who can and cannot practise medicine in Britain.… My gratitude to every single person who has supported our just cause is boundless. What an honour it is to sacrifice for our people. Free Palestine and Britain from jewish (sic) supremacy.”
Should it matter to the Jewish community that although Aladwan got what she deserved, it was also what she wanted?
Here’s a slightly different incident that has captured headlines this week. There is a park in Dublin named after Chaim Herzog, Ireland’s first chief rabbi and later president of Israel. Herzog cut an admirable figure. As Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli posted, Herzog joined the British military during World War II because Ireland was officially neutral. “He landed in Normandy, fought through Belgium and the Netherlands, crossed the Rhine, and entered Bergen Belsen, where he encountered starvation, mass death, and the ruins of humanity left behind by fascist cruelty.”
Chaim Herzog was also the father of current Israeli President Isaac Herzog. During the Gaza war, anti-Israel activists spurred on a campaign to get the Dublin city council to rename the park. The undisguised hatefulness of the petition inspired disgust even from Ireland’s prime minister. Amid the Jewish community’s uproar, a social media campaign to quash the name change from Irish Jewish activist Rachel Moiselle took off. Israel weighed in. Dublin backed off, pulling the petition at least for now.
It was a victory for the Jewish community’s determination to make its voice heard even amid the atmosphere of anti-Semitic intimidation prevailing in Ireland.
In other words, this was decidedly not what anti-Jewish activists wanted, in contrast to Aladwan’s case. Yet the reaction was the same. “The optics will appear to show these senior Irish politicians carrying out the instructions of the Israeli lobby, and it’s very hard to argue with a view when we see the actual result,” one council member said, according to JTA. Another added: “This was a full court press by the Zionist lobby, and they think they will win it. They will not win this.” A third: “I’m further convinced that whatever phone calls was made to our CEO and to other officials probably emanated from Israeli intelligence attached to the Israeli Defense Force.”
Should it matter to the Jewish community that pro-Palestinian Dubliners are angry about this result and claiming that it confirms the truth of popular anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?
This is a question American Jews were asking themselves during the uproar over remarks made by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: If Roberts was forced to resign, would that make it look like there really was a “venomous coalition” of “globalists” pulling the strings and setting their own rules?
Taken together, the three preceding examples give us the answer. The first and second cases tell us that anti-Semites will respond to any successful assertion of Jewish rights and dignity in identical ways, raising the specter of a powerful Jewish puppeteering cabal. The third case shows us that those inclined to scapegoat Jews or to paint them as disloyal will do so as a first, not as a last, line of defense. And no one who complained of Jewish influence will change their mind when the person under fire—in this case Roberts—suffers no professional consequences.
Anti-Semitism is a matryoshka doll of conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories are famously resistant to facts that would otherwise undermine their animating assumptions. Jews should stand up for themselves because it’s the right thing to do. Conspiracy theorists deserve no veto power. It is not the Jewish community’s obligation to save anti-Semites from the consequences of their own actions.
