Sirens are going off in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva. Hamas is shooting missiles into Israel, and Hezbollah is sending small groups of suicide bombers into Jewish cities and towns on the Lebanese border. Meanwhile, Iran is making it clear that it has a nuclear bomb with the capacity to reach Israel.

This triumvirate of Israel/Jew haters is on schedule with a plan to destroy the Jewish state.

Israel responds with strength by closing its border with Gaza and positioning troops in the north. Quotes roll off the tongues of government spokespeople by the hour, declaring Israel’s right to defend itself, even pre-empting an attack, when faced with the threat of nuclear war.

Around the world, Israeli ambassadors are called into government offices and rebuked for their country fuelling the flames of war in the Middle East. They’re lectured by foreign ministers in Argentina and Ghana, and told these nations will sever ties with Israel if the Israel Defence Forces doesn’t immediately withdraw from the northern and southern borders and back down from a threat of a nuclear strike against Iran.  

The Doomsday Clock clicks one minute closer to midnight.

While all of this is happening, anti-Semitism creeps out of the boiler rooms of the hateful and begins to harass and vandalize shuls, synagogues, temples, Jewish schools and cemeteries and Jewish-owned businesses. Swastikas are scrawled on Jewish homes on Glencairn Avenue, Chabad Gate and Harbord Street.

Anti-Semitic noise heightens on the Internet, and Jew-baiting and Jew-hating becomes a little bit more acceptable. Angry youths openly wear T-shirts with hyperbolic anti-Semitic jargon, and university presidents punish Jewish students for protecting themselves against hateful mobs.

It’s difficult to gauge the temperature of the next anti-Semitic flare-up, but one thing is clear: during the recent war in Gaza, anti-Semitism surged in Britain, Greece, the United States, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina and many other countries.

Holocaust analogies were used against Israel, and political cartoonists everywhere were quite comfortable comparing then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert to Hitler. Jews were beaten up in Russia, and skinheads in places such as Belgrade thought nothing of threatening and pounding the crap out of our brothers and sisters.

Will the above hypothetical scenario happen? Will anti-Semitism soar while Israel and the Jewish world are under siege?  

Is it possible that something less, perhaps more civil, will engulf the world and all 194 countries will recognize Israel’s right to defend itself and the need to legislate against anti-Semitic actions?

It would be nice, but not likely. Not yet.

A brute is strategizing and preparing to knock us on our face. When the brute makes its move, Israel will defend itself. As soon as it does, malicious and nasty anti-Semitic men and women will try to intimidate and terrorize us.  

So why aren’t our leaders planning to create the largest, well-staffed, volunteer-based organization ever to protect our children and secure our future as Jews? What’s happening in our organizational offices and neighbourhood homes to ensure that you and I play a role in a strategy to fight back?  

Nothing, once again?  

Call your rabbis and community leaders and demand that they begin planning for a worldwide entity that will prepare us for “Esau’s visit” and that they embrace those non-Jews who want to stand next to us and wrestle hatred everywhere.

If you’ve ever attended a Holocaust education lecture, travelled on Birthright Israel or March of the Living, remember what you learned. Anti-Semitism can be fought. Just ask the Danish people.

Come on! Enough with the lectures and books. It’s time, once again.

[email protected]. Darfur?