Posted on 02/02/2004 5:43:49 AM PST by SJackson
Only six decades ago, the world gasped in horror at the grim handiwork of man's inhumanity to man with the liberation of Auschwitz.
Every January 27 since, several European countries, including Sweden, Denmark, England, Italy and Germany, have called up memories of death and destruction to remember. With tears and public discussion of the cruelty reckoned as unique, they try to understand something that cannot be understood. For most of these 60 years, the civilized world took consolation in the certain belief that "never again."
The representatives of the European nations gathered once more to mark Jan. 27, but this year with a difference. For the first time, the Israeli government designated the anniversary as a "National Day to Combat Anti-Semitism." Something new had invaded discussions of the Holocaust — a not-so-new anti-Semitism, revived and rampant, that trivializes the Holocaust and hides hatred of Jews in the conflict between Arabs and Israel.
An Italian newspaper poll of nine European nations on the eve of the anniversary found that 46 percent of those interviewed across the continent say that Jews are "different," 9 percent do not "like or trust Jews," and 15 percent wish that Israel didn't exist.
What the Israeli designation of the anniversary recognizes is that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment are hatreds joined at the heart. Many of the Europeans who want Israel to go away don't even know why they do. Nearly a third of those interviewed concede they have no idea what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about. It's enough to know that Israelis are Jews.
Bigotry thrives, as always, in the mouth of the ignorant.
Sometimes the ignorant are among the most educated. The Alexandria Library in Egypt, funded by the Egyptian and Italian governments with support of the United Nations, includes a manuscript room where the holiest books of the three Abrahamic faiths — the Torah of the Jews, the Bible of the Christians and the Koran of the Muslims - are displayed in places of honor.
Not long ago, the director of the museum placed next to the Torah a copy of the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an infamous forgery that sets out an outlandish Jewish plot to take over the world. None but the most credulous anti-Semites have ever taken the book as serious work, but it has taken on new life with the Islamist resurgence in the Muslim world.
The director of the Alexandria Library described "The Protocols" to an Egyptian newspaper as a sacred book of the Jews, who misrepresent their victimhood by exaggerating the number murdered in the Holocaust. It wasn't 6 million, "only" 1 million. This "scholarship" went unrebuked by the scholar's colleagues.
The "new" anti-Semitism is fueled largely, but by no means altogether, by radical Islamists. The liberal and left chattering class in Europe indulge in "anti-Zionist chic" with articles and books disparaging Israelis specifically and Jews in general.
"We failed to appreciate that after the defeat of Nazism the poison of anti-Semitism only went into remission," writes Isi Leibler, senior vice president of the World Jewish Congress, in the Jerusalem Post. "Admittedly much of this is a byproduct of post-modernism, which has been imbibed by European culture, creating an environment of moral equivalency that trivializes every distinction between good and evil."
But it's more than academic amorality. The moral defense of Muslim terrorists, while denying any appreciation for the burdensome duty of Israeli soldiers defending the only democracy in the Middle East, is an exercise of a double standard that reduces the Jewish state to the role of scapegoat.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Why are such polls even taken?
I have an idea. Let's poll Americans about how they feel about Muslims/Arabs. I am fairly sure of the results.
If the results weren't so devastating, such attitudes would be entertaining to the point of mirth. I wish I could get someone to explain to me what it is about "Jew" that pushes such buttons.
I will confess that I was probably in my mid to late twenties before I learned that certain surnames connoted Jew. Naturally, I've been much more careful since then. Still, I've worked with guys that were better than competent at their jobs, in some cases better than I am (although that's pretty rare), only to find out later that some of these guys were Jews. Somehow I couldn't bring myself to find fault with either their work or their motives even after I learned of their Jewishness.
When I was in the Navy, I discovered one of the guys in my division was a Jew. Actually, he told me, so it didn't seem to me that he was ashamed of it or anything. As far as I know, he didn't cheat during our golf rounds either before or after I learned what he was...at least no more than I did i.e. your occasional mulligans and taking your (my) ball out of a hole before your (my) next next stroke.
Why is it that people can ascribe the motive of hope to the actions of nearly every generic group, from latinos pouring into Arizona to even people living in North Dakota, but somehow must find Jews to be slightly below vermine on the pecking order? I guess philosophers and writers such as Leon Uris and James Michener have tried to explain it, and still I scratch my head. Oh,well. The important thins is, never trust a Jew (or someone from North Dakota) to pilot a plane when you are a passenger, that is unless you don't know what his is real persuasion, then it's OK.
One difference that I can see is that some Muslims have actually done something rather harmful to Americans, and that they said that Muslim Scripture impelled them to do so, and that many (if not most) of the Muslims in the world celebrated them in doing that.
So American distaste for Muslims, even if it tars many innocents with the brush of the guilty, has at least a rational, if exaggerated, basis.
You can look long and hard through 4,000 years of Jewish history and not find brutality equal in total to the typical week's depredations carried out by believing Muslims in the name of Allah. Even the historical terrorists of 20th Century Zionism (Irgun, Stern) were motivated not by religious scripture, but by nationalism; and they did try to maintain proportionality in their attacks.
Now, you can poll Muslims anywhere in the world about Jews and you will see that they hate them and want them exterminated. It's not a healthy viewpoint, but it's universal in the Islamic world and the Muslims willing to coexist with Jews are so few and so anomalous as to be insignificant.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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