Antisemitism, the age-old hatred of Jews, is on the rise. White supremacists and neo-Nazis on the far right, and the anti-Israel “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement on the far left, (and crackpots like rapper Kanye West) have emboldened the haters, attacking both Jews and the Jewish State (Israel).

For example, a recent letter to the editor castigated Gov. David Ige for his agreement to exchange technology with Israel in the areas of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, water sustainability and desalinization. Letter-writer Robert Stiver called this an “ill-advised agreement with the Zionist regime” (a term meant to delegitimize the nation of Israel, frequently used by Jihadists when they threaten to wipe the “Zionist Entity” off the map.)

Sharing information about these vital topics is not “ill-advised,” but will benefit all the people of Hawaii.

The letter states that Hawaii is “occupied similarly to Israel’s decades-long brutal and illegal occupation of native Palestinian people’s holy land, where Jesus was born and ministered.” While there are Hawaiians who feel “occupied,” that doesn’t mean that the situation in Israel is analogous. Despite the relentless disinformation from those who claim that the Arabs are the only indigenous people in Israel/Palestine, the fact is that there are two indigenous peoples currently there (and the Jewish presence predates the Arab/Islamic presence by thousands of years). Jews are called Jews because they are the indigenous people of Judea, like Hawaiians are the indigenous people of Hawaii.

Just to set the record straight, Jesus (Yeshua) was a Jew (a Yehudi) who lived in Judea (Judah) 2,000 years ago during the time of the revolt by the indigenous Jewish nation against the Roman occupiers.

In fact, two-thirds of the region called Palestine (as there never was a sovereign nation called Palestine), is currently occupied by the Kingdom of Jordan, a Palestinian Arab majority state on the east side of the Jordan River.

In the remaining third, i.e., the area west of the Jordan River, the UN proposed in 1948 to create two states, one for Jews in the Jewish-populated areas and one for Arabs in the Arab-populated areas. Israel accepted the proposal, while the Arab leaders rejected it, and the surrounding Arab states invaded Israel to destroy it. Even though Israel was only 8 miles wide at its narrowest, Israel repelled the Arab onslaught. Had the Arabs accepted the 1948 UN proposal there would never have been any Arab-Israeli wars, and today a second Palestinian Arab state would be established in the region, one on each side of the Jordan River.

The baseless claim that Israel has a “sordid history of spying on Americans” turns the truth on its head, as Israel is one of America’s key allies in providing advanced technology to our military and key intelligence against America’s adversaries. For example, Israel is providing intelligence to the U.S. on how to counter Iranian drones that the Russians are using to bombard Ukrainian cities.

Stiver’s use of extremist rhetoric in referring to Israel as a “cancerous invasion” that can “take over and metastasize” reveals his underlying anti-Jewish ideology. He is paraphrasing without attribution Adolph Hitler’s 1919 speech which characterized Jews as a “racial form of tuberculosis whose spread must be stopped.” This was the ideology espoused by the shooter at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, who gunned down 11 Jewish worshipers four years ago.

Social media companies and corporate sponsors are finally responding to antisemitism by cutting ties with those who spread such vile bigotry.

I urge the Star-Advertiser to join those media outlets who commit to providing a forum for diverse ideas but who refuse to offer a platform for anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate speech.

Cliff Halevi, a retired telecommunications engineer, co-chairs the Honolulu Jewish Film Festival and was past president of Honolulu’s Temple Emanu-El from 2009 to 2014.