"Auschwitz
meant that six million Jews were killed, and thrown on the waste-heap
of Europe, for what they were considered: money-Jews. Finance capital
and the banks, the hard core of the system of imperialism and
capitalism, had turned the hatred of men against money and
exploitation, and against the Jews. . . . Antisemitism is really a
hatred of capitalism."
- Ulrike Meinhof, a left-wing German terrorist of the 1970s
21 March 2012
What a tragic, evil joke. A
drive-by shooter in the beautiful, almost magical, city of Toulouse,
France, murders three Jewish children and a teacher in front of their
school. Various VIPs issue statements about how terrible is this deed,
how unspeakable.
And yet at that very moment, the next round of murders, the next
slanderous and inciting antisemitic lies, are being perpetrated by
respectable people and institutions. There is no real soul-searching, no
true effort to do better, no serious examination about how the
anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hysteria is paving the way for murder and
fueling dreams of genocide.
The street thugs, fanatics drunk on the interpretations of Islam they
are being fed, and the mentally twisted may be pulling the trigger but
the distinguished, the powerful, and the honored are providing the
ammunition.
Here are three examples of such deeds in nominally democratic
countries — not Iran, not Syria, not Pakistan, where such things are
even more intense — but in supposedly rational places.
1. The Turkish Editor
Meet Mahir Zeynalov, an editor at Today’s Zaman, a Turkish
Islamic newspaper that is supposedly moderate. Meet the modern art of
tweeting. Here is Zeynalov’s response to the murders:
Mahir Zeynalov @MahirZeynalov: Gunmen attack Jewish school in France, vandals attack Jewish cemetery in Poland, Jews burn mosques and Quran in Tunisia. What’s wrong?
There are two ways to read this tweet. The more outrageous is this:
How can it be wrong for gunmen to murder Jewish children or vandals to
attack a Jewish cemetery in Poland if Jews are burning mosques and
Qurans in Tunisia? One act balances the other.
The other interpretation is this: What a world in which there is so
much hatred! Gunmen murder Jewish children, vandals attack a Jewish
cemetery, and Jews desecrate mosques and Muslim holy books.
Yet the second interpretation is almost as inciting to violence as
the first. We know from many experiences — including Afghanistan right
now — that anyone who burns or does anything to a Koran would set off
massive riots and bloody killings. And as for burning a mosque, such a
deed might well result in the massacre of every Jew living in Tunisia.
Tunisian Jews today are a couple of thousand terrified people who
would run in the other direction if they saw a Koran in front of them
lest they be accused of looking at it funny.
What Zeyanlov has done is
called a “blood libel,” a lie that might lead to the murder of Jews.
A Muslim taking Zeyanlov’s tweet to heart would feel justified in
murdering Jews, say children standing in front of their school.
2. The Dutch Cartoonist
De Volkskrant is one of Holland’s leading newspapers, favored by the intellectual elite. Here
is a cartoon that it has just run. The cartoon shows Geert Wilders,
leader of the conservative party that is very critical of Islam, getting
loads of cash from a hidden hand that is clearly referring to Jews or
Israel. Yes, the cartoon was written with a Hebrew text balloon,
helpfully translated into Dutch as Wilders saying, “Thank you very
much.”
So we have here the stereotype of the Jewish money behind the scenes
conspiring, in this case against Islam and against Holland. And of
course it is also designed to discredit Wilders. As with the Turkish
editor’s tweet above, this is based on a total falsehood. There is
hardly any Jewish support for Wilders’ party, which is, by the way, a
legitimate political force, and there has never been the slightest
evidence — even rumor — of Jewish financing for him, or Israeli
financing.
Holland is a country where two political leaders have been
assassinated and Wilders needs round-the-clock protection against
potential assassins.
What is the message here? That Jews and Israel are trying to destroy
Islam — as in the Turkish tweet — and are nefarious plotters attacking
innocent people. Isn’t it just, therefore, to murder Jews and Israelis
in self-defense?
3. Europe’s Foreign Minister
Exhibit three is Catherine Ashton, whose career was originally built
on running the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which favored unilateral
Western disarmament in the face off Soviet tyranny. She is now the
EU’s foreign minister. In response to the Toulouse shooting, she has
issued a statement here
that spends more time reciting the sufferings of children in the Gaza
Strip than about antisemitism and the demonization of Jews and Israel.
Left out is the fact that Gaza is ruled by an organization, Hamas,
that is openly antisemitic, openly preaches genocide, frequently has
carried out terrorist attacks against Israelis and Jews, and then
glorifies those who did the murders. Remember that the only reason
Hamas can rule Gaza is that Israel voluntarily withdrew from the
territory in a gesture intended to promote peace, something Ashton and
much of the Western media and governmental elites usually don’t mention.
When Hamas maintains a war with Israel, firing rockets, missiles, and
mortars, Israel defends itself. Hamas also deliberately sites military
arsenals and weapons in residential areas. Thus, civilians and even
children are accidentally killed by Israel in the fighting. This is
precisely what happens in other wars, including those being waged now by
EU countries.
Yet Ashton does not defend Israel or its right to defend itself. She
does not take sides against the terrorists. At best we get spurious
neutrality that is actually anti-Israel propaganda. Note that she even
refers to Palestine as a currently existing country even though the EU
recognizes no such country. So much for diplomatic responsibility. Her
“apology” and “clarification” came after criticism but she meant exactly
what she said and will do the same thing next time as she and other EU
officials have done many times on previous occasions.
Indeed, while Palestinian children are killed during fighting in
Gaza, let’s note the two most notoriously publicized examples of the
last week:
–A photo sent around, in one case by a UN official, purporting to
show a little girl as being injured this week was in fact a photo of a
girl injured in an auto accident several years ago.
–The claim that Adham Abu Selmiya was killed by Israelis has now been
shown to be false. He was killed by a bullet fired into the air by
Palestinians during a funeral.
–And what of the recent photo widely published purporting to show an
Israeli soldier menacing a child despite the fact that the man was
wearing a concocted Israeli army uniform and carrying an AK-47, a weapon
used by terrorists against Israel but never by Israeli soldiers,
showing that the photo was a phony?
–The downplaying or omission of the fact that Israel was defending itself from a barrage of missiles. In one case, a prominent Dutch newspaper published a photograph with the caption that showed a rocket being fired by Israel into Gaza, instead of the exact opposite.
In short, Ashton and many others are contributing to the demonization of Jews and Israel. If Israel is so horrible that it makes little children in Gaza suffer for no reason, shouldn’t Israelis and the Jews who support them be shunned, harassed, attacked, and murdered?
–The downplaying or omission of the fact that Israel was defending itself from a barrage of missiles. In one case, a prominent Dutch newspaper published a photograph with the caption that showed a rocket being fired by Israel into Gaza, instead of the exact opposite.
In short, Ashton and many others are contributing to the demonization of Jews and Israel. If Israel is so horrible that it makes little children in Gaza suffer for no reason, shouldn’t Israelis and the Jews who support them be shunned, harassed, attacked, and murdered?
These three examples are only a small sample of the hate poured out
against Israel and Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere. I could go on
with dozens more and so, perhaps, could you. From Sweden’s largest
newspaper claiming Israel murdered Palestinians to harvest their organs
to a Harvard professor’s tales of Jewish-Zionist conspiracies to control
U.S. foreign policy to the dozens of “academic” conferences on Western
campuses that demonize Israel, paid for by student fees.
What is needed is not more hypocrisy or professions of innocence or
expensive conferences where long speeches are made about the evils of
antisemitism by those who do nothing but get free plane tickets and nice
hotel rooms. The real solution is a real change in the behavior of the
mass media that pours out lies, the academics who slander and distort,
and the governments that refuse to stand by a democratic country and
people beset by terrorism and the world’s oldest hatred.
Oh, and one more thing is needed: the admission that the greatest
threat of hatred, “racism,” dehumanization of the “other,” and threat of
persecution today — as the statistics for Europe and North America show
— is not “Islamophobia” but antisemitism.
And none of those things are going to happen because the liars,
haters, apologists, and enablers will not acknowledge their own behavior
while those who are supposed to supervise them will not act. Hating and
lying about Israel and the Jewish people is too useful politically and
too entwined with the version of left-wing ideology, not to mention
Islamism and the dominant interpretation of Islam, currently so powerful
in the world.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Europe is no longer a safe
place for Jews to live. Yet it is accurate to say that it is becoming an
unsafe place for Jews to live, and certainly for those who wish to
express mainstream Jewish views and to practice their religion openly.
Meanwhile, the EU and various governments dare not admit that the
principal cause of antisemitic activity is radical Islam, and the
principal inspiration for popular antisemitism is trendy leftist ideas
that now dominate much of that continent and are spreading in North
America.
Thus, Jewish children are deliberately murdered by a terrorist in the
midst of France. In response, come get the formal statements and the
crocodile tears. Yet at the exact same time as the bullets are entering
the children’s bodies, as the victims fall to the ground, as the
ambulance sirens sound, the incitement and the lies and the slanders
continue, laying the groundwork for more hatred and more murder.
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