JERUSALEM, Israel – For years, journalist and author Melanie Phillips has been one of the most articulate observers of the global social, political, and cultural scene, especially in Israel and the U.K. She’s traveled to many continents in the past several months, working on her latest book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege.
We had an opportunity to talk with her recently in our Jerusalem studios. To watch the discussion, click on the video above. The text of the interview is below.
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CHRIS MITCHELL: Melanie Phillips, great to be with you. After October 7th, you visited many Jewish communities around the UK, America, and Australia. What did you find out?
MELANIE PHILLIPS: I found in all these Jewish communities, people who were literally under siege, they felt under siege. They were living through and have been living through, ever since then, an unprecedented onslaught against them.
And they were absolutely bewildered. They were frightened, but they were mainly perplexed and horrified because, out of the woodwork – so it seemed kind of overnight – had come old-fashioned Jew-hatred with tropes and images straight out of the Nazi period, straight out of the medieval Inquisition period, and the Israeli war of self-defense was represented, itself, as genocide.
And this not only was so unfair and unjust, but it perplexed Jews because it was so completely deranged, and on the back of that, they were being held personally responsible for what Israel was doing or being thought to be doing.
CM: So you wrote a book called Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege. What are you telling the Jews in the diaspora?
MP: Well, I’m telling them as individuals and as Jewish community leaders, that they have to change their whole attitude to all of this. First of all, as far as individuals are concerned, most individuals are not combative; they’re not aggressive. They find themselves in social situations, at dinner parties, in the workplace, on campus, with fellow students, or with fellow faculty members, being assaulted by being accused of personally killing thousands of Gazan babies.
How should they respond? And they are at a loss as to how to respond. They’re not naturally combative people. They often don’t have any information. So what I’ve told them as individuals is, first of all, park your very understandable emotions of distress and anger. Don’t think you have to defend what’s being said. Indeed, you should never defend what’s being, or being accused of, because it’s innately preposterous, and if you try to answer a preposterous accusation, you’re kind of legitimizing the premise on which that accusation is being made. So don’t do that.
Treat it, if you can, as an opportunity, an opportunity to say something, just a sentence. It might be a piece of information. It might be a joke. It might be a question, a rhetorical question, just something that might open the closed mind in front of you just a crack. Don’t feel you have to defend the state of Israel; just try and open the mind a crack. And I give various examples of the kind of approach that might do that.
And for the Jewish community leaders who are, I’m afraid, beyond hopeless. They are understandably frightened; they are timid. Jews in the diaspora have always kept their heads below the parapet. They have thought that if they draw attention to themselves, if they’re too combative, they will create antisemitism. Well, now we can see the fruits of that approach.
We have unprecedented antisemitism in the diaspora against the Diaspora Jews. So what I’m saying to them is that they must take the fight to the enemy. They must also not play defense.
They must start accusing with, on the basis of truth, accusing the West: it’s governments, government of Australia, Government of Britain, of conniving in the big lies that are being told about Israel, which are not only reversing victim and aggressor, but are bringing in their train the onslaught on their own citizens, their own Jewish citizens in Britain, in Australia, in Canada, over which they over which they they weep crocodile tears and say they will do everything possible to counter this dreadful antisemitism.
They are helping cause it. Because what people really don’t appreciate is the absolute connection between anti-Zionism, anti-Israel and Jew hatred.
CM: Yeah, well, thank you for the book. I think it’s good for anybody, not only Jews in the diaspora, but for Christians as well who want to stand up and defend Israel. Thank you so much.
MP: Thank you.
