I am honored to be here. I am also humbled by this opportunity to give a sermon. I am not versed in Torah, yet this week’s parsha is among the most momentous in the Five Books. Rabbi David Lieber called it the “hinge” of the Torah, for it contains the pivotal event in the history of the Israelites: when they were transformed from a band of freed slaves into a nation covenanted by G-d, and when G-d said they should be a sovereign nation—a “kingdom of priests” –to fulfill their mission.

This birth of the nation of Israel is awe-inspiring; its ramification for Jews and the world incalculable.

But perhaps it is not coincidence that this parsha came during my visit. For I am a historian who studied the forging of European nationalism, but for the past 8 years have been studying, teaching and writing about the Jewish people re-entering history as a sovereign nation in their ancestral homeland—about the rebirth of Israel.

Like the original birth itself, this rebirth is awe-inspiring.

I fear sometimes that we take modern Israel for granted. We have gotten used to it.

We forget now that every step of the way, the Zionists and then Israel faced insuperable odds. The outcomes were never certain, in 1920, 1948, 1967 and even today.

When Israel hoisted its flag as a member of the UN in 1949, the world asked itself, as historian Howard Sachar wrote, “whether only four years had passed since the Star of David had been identified primarily as the seal of doom worn by concentration camp inmates. The rise to independence of history’s most cruelly ravaged people transcended the experience, even the powers of description, of case-hardened journalists and social scientists alike. It appeared somehow as if a new law of nature had been born.”

The rebirth of Israel as a modern state is one of the greatest achievements of the Jewish people and of the modern world. Other European nationalisms pale in comparison with this almost mythic epic of the Jews’ ingathering and re-establishment of statehood after 2000 years, and of what they accomplished in just 100 years—a modern, liberal, democratic state with a booming economy in a region with no natural resources, a boisterous, ever creative society that is full of resourcefulness, ingenuity, and humanitarianism.

Is it perfect? No. Zionists sought statehood, not sainthood. But it struggles to live up to the highest ethical standards even when fighting wars, terrorism, and propaganda, and its soul searching, exquisite legal decisions fulfill in many ways the original birth—a people of the Law. As Alan Dershowitz said, Israel is “the best of nations” in the modern world.

But like Isaiah in today’s Haftorah, I am here with bad news, with warnings. The reborn Israel and the Jewish people are once again in danger. Pharaoh’s armies are gathering again.

Israel does not only face military threats. A massive propaganda war has been unleashed to make the world see Israel as the worst of nations, unworthy, one that should not continue to exist.

I come to you today as a messenger from the front lines of that war—US campuses where I teach, and StandWithUs, an international Israel education organization founded in 2001 to fight that war.

We are seeing the massive deployment of what some call a “new anti-Semitism.”

It is not about criticizing Israel’s policies or suggesting better policies.

It claims to be pro-Palestinian, but it is not. It is only anti-Israel. It does nothing to help the Palestinians.

It claims to be pro-peace, but it is anti-peace. It turns Israel into a Satan, and how can you make peace with Satan?

It falsely cloaks itself in the language of human rights and transforms those principles into a weapon against Israel.

It is characterized by the “3 D’s” identified by Natan Sharansky.

One: delegitimization—denying Israel’s right to exist. We hear the following: “you stole our land;” Jews are not a nation and have no right to a state; Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, is racism.

Two: double standards. Israel is accused, judged, and condemned by a standard expected of no other nation. Israel’s security barrier is portrayed as the worst of evils, yet many other democratic nations have identical security fences on disputed property, such as India and Spain.

What standards were used to judge Israel’s actions in the recent Gaza war? Israel was certainly not compared to NATO’s conduct in Kosovo and Afghanistan, for Israel far surpassed NATO’s standards. British Col. Kemp said no nation in the history of warfare had done more than Israel to protect civilian lives. But the UN Goldstone Report excoriated Israel as a war criminal.

Three: Worst of all—and the characteristic that is unique to Jew-hatred—DEMONIZATION—Israel is seen as a cosmic evil, a cancer contaminating the world.

Morals and facts are perversely inverted through a disfiguring lens. It puts a microscope on Israel’s flaws, exaggerates them, and then defines Israel by them.

Israel’s counter-terrorism measures are vilified by blanking out—or even justifying—the incessant incitement to genocide, the terrorism, including the thousands of rocket attacks in southern Israel, and the threats of Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Palestinians –and Muslims--are portrayed simply as innocent victims of the bloodthirsty Zionists.

Israel is equated with the worst evils of the 20th century—colonialism, Nazism, racism, Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

We hear modern blood libels. The IDF shoots Palestinian children in the back for sport Israel kills Palestinians to steal their body organs. Israel’s heroic action to save lives in Haiti was really an opportunity to collect body organs.

The Jewish state has been turned into the Jew of nations and attacked with the same medieval anti-Semitic imagery, the same inversion of facts and morality, the same intense fanaticism that once was hurled against Jews.

I wish I could tell you that these calumnies, this crusade, are limited to the Arab world where hatred of Jews and Israel is endemic, or to the fringes of society. But it is not. An energetic campaign and an “unholy alliance” have moved it into the mainstream of Western society—into Europe and yes, the U.S.

There is a new coalition of Islamist radicals, immigrants from the Middle East who bring their anti-Jewish prejudices with them, neo-Nazis, and the radical left.

Their views are echoed in the halls of the UN, by EU leaders –where anti-Semitic incidents have reached a level not seen since the 1930’s--and now by human rights groups like Human Rights Watch.

Worst of all, these views are the staple of the intellectual elites—professors, media, think tanks-- in the West where the new ideology of post-colonialism, New Left social justice values, and anti-American thinking dominates and has congealed into a new orthodoxy.

The “New Historians” have played a major role. They are the Jews and Israelis who are rewriting Israel’s history from the point of view of its enemies, who argue that Israel was born in sin and remains the most evil nation on earth.

These attitudes now dominate our campuses where professors who espouse them are molding the future generations, tomorrow’s leaders.

It can be terrifying to witness. On Jan. 21, UCLA’s Center for Middle East Studies sponsored a panel where two Jewish professors and two non-Jewish professors excoriated Israel, claiming it should be the enemy of all nations. Mobs of students in the audience cheered whenever one of the professors said Hamas could not be defeated. They broke into chants: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” I entitled my report on the event, “A 1920’s Munich Beer Hall at UCLA.”

When Israel’s sympathizers try to plan events, their posters are defaced with graffiti. Last fall, the graffiti at De Paul was swastikas. Unruly mobs demonstrate when pro-Israel speakers come, or scream out during their talks—as they did when Ehud Olmert spoke at the University of Chicago, chanting “War Criminal, War criminal.” Security guards often have to escort the speakers out.

And students face the “agitprop”—displays and street theater of anti-Israel groups. As one student from UC Irvine wrote:

Imagine walking on a campus past buildings where you have taken numerous classes with many peers, past the Student Center where you have eaten lunch many times, past all the familiar places where you have felt safe and accepted. Now imagine walking by those same places and seeing blood-stained flags of a nation that is part of your identity. Posters with “anti-hate = anti-Israel” and “Stop Israeli Genocide” parade in front of you. Displays surround you with images of cruel IDF soldiers, dead Gazans, Anne Frank, a symbol of Jewish tragedy, wearing a kaffiyeh, and of Israel’s barrier to protect Jews from terrorism, labeled an “apartheid wall.” It is as if everything Israel and Jews ever stood for is racism, bloodshed and war. You were a Jew; a proud Jew, a proud supporter of Israel. Now you are seen as nothing but a racist murderer on your own campus.

In this climate, anyone who dares defend Israel is accused of supporting evil. Professors and students often feel intimidated, and remain silent.

I am here with this bad news—and to call you to action. We cannot afford to remain silent.

We undermine ourselves-- As Nathan Alterman warned decades ago:

Then did Satan say: How will I conquer this beleaguered one? He possesses courage, ingenuity, resourcefulness and tools of war. And then he said: I’ll not rob his strength, nor bridle him, nor rein him in, nor enervate his hand. But this I’ll do…blunt his mind, til he forgets his cause is just...

We must not forget that this dehumanization can be a prelude to genocide. Why shouldn’t one kill a spreading cancer?

We must be aware that this perversion of human rights values threatens those very values.

Jews, once again, are the canary in the coal mine. It is no accident that Iranian students bravely risking death, imprisonment, torture, and execution are fighting the same enemy Israel is fighting—the fanatical Iranian regime.

At StandWithUs, we are fighting with all our might against this dangerous tide.

When anti-Israel demonstrators gather in crowds to demonstrate, shouting, as they did last January in LA, “Jews Back to the Ovens,” we are there counter-demonstrating, telling the attending news media that Israel seeks peace, that Hamas is the Palestinian people’s enemy just as it is our enemy.

When the UN gathered for its 2nd Durban conference in Geneva to repeat the anti-Semitic diatribes of Durban I, we co-sponsored a team of European Jewish students and provided them with signs and messaging. In their stark, dignified demonstration, their mouths, ears, and eyes were taped shut to symbolically ask why the UN is deaf, dumb, and blind to the suffering and human rights abuses committed in too many countries. The photo of their demonstration spread throughout the world, and came to define—and discredit –the Durban II Jewish hate fest.

When students were intimidated and felt helpless in front of the anti-Israel agit-prop, “ZioNazi” slogans and anti-Semitic speakers on campus, we mobilized. We empowered them to stand up for Israel by providing education resources like Israel 101 and “pocket facts”, signs and flyers, and thousands of pages of easy to use internet resources to counter the lies and tell Israel’s side of the story, provided advocacy training, and sponsored over 300 speakers for events at campuses across North America and Europe in 2009 alone.

When a Jewish UC Santa Barbara professor spammed his students with photos equating Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with Nazis treatment of Jews, we worked with students, community members and concerned faculty to endorse the administration’s decision to investigate whether the professor had violated standards of professional conduct.

When Spain became the first European country to impose an academic boycott of Israel, suddenly expelling Israel’s Ariel University Center from an international education competition, we were there with a petition with over 10,000 signatures, demonstrations in front of U.S. Spanish Consulates entitled “Shame on Spain, and letter writing campaigns to have the decision overturned.

We can fight back. We must fight back before the situation worsens.

The parsha today tells us of an extraordinary, revolutionary event in Jewish and human history. With a courageous leader, the Jewish people rose up against their bondage, and vanquished, with the help of G-d, Pharaoh’s armies. They did not use their new-found freedom to indulge in anarchy and self-indulgence. They used their freedom to accept new, higher laws –sacred laws of a free people. For freedom entails responsibility.

The Exodus story is the most subversive in Western civilization. It inspired peasant revolts against oppression in the 11th century. It inspired the Pilgrims who came to the uncharted wilderness of America, their promised land, for the liberty to follow their own vision of divine law. It comforted and inspired black slaves and the civil rights movement.

And it inspired the Zionists, who defied the bondage imposed on Jews by their own Pharaoh—their often tragic history of powerlessness and statelessness. With breathtaking courage, they recreated the Jewish State in our own time, believing Ben Gurion’s faith that “If you don’t believe in miracles, you are not a realist.” And like our ancestors at Mt Sinai, they are struggling to live up to the highest ideals of law and humanitarianism.

But Pharaoh’s forces are after us again. Jews world-over have led campaigns to end injustice against others. Will we also stand up for Jews and Israel? Are we worthy of our own legacy? Do we in the comfort of America, have the courage to stand up against Pharaoh’s new armies?

Each of you must answer that question—as though you were standing at Mt Sinai.