ANTI-SEMITISM, LOUD AND CLEAR

Anti-Semitism, Loud and Clear Written by Jack Engelhard Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Sometimes I wonder what's worse, hatred that speaks in whispers or hatred that speaks in shouts.

When hate-mongers come out of the closet, as they have today, is this regress or progress?

Listen to Philip Kurian, a senior at Duke University: ''It is well known that Jews constitute the most privileged minority group in the country.''

Now read the Bible, in the book of Exodus: ''Behold [says Pharaoh], the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.''

Is this not amazing how nothing has changed over the centuries, how anti-Semites speak nearly the exact same words across continents and generations? What's interesting, in this case, is that Kurian wrote that (and much worse) in Duke's student newspaper, the Chronicle, hours after that university held its first annual Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM) hate festival, thereby giving anti-Semites license to speak openly even after the event.

Hatred--in this case anti-Semitism--usually begins with shy whispers, advances to bold shouts, and the rest is history, and not good history. The Germans kept their hatred under wraps until Hitler came along and said it's okay, go ahead, shout it out. Several years ago, a proper Englishman (sorry, my computer lost the text but I remember this well) said that it is so wonderful that ''now we can say what we thought all along.''

Back to Duke (was this place named after David Duke of the KKK?) the pity of it is that Kurian is African-American, and probably too young to know that, back in the 1960s, Jews were the first to join up with blacks in the struggle for Civil Rights. Jews were there with the Freedom Riders at their peril. When Mississippi was most dangerous, Andrew Goodman, Jewish, James E. Chaney, African-American, and Michael H. Schwerner, also Jewish, marched right in, and were killed.

Personally, I feel betrayed, but the betrayals keep on coming so fast that it's impossible to keep score.

Kurian gives himself away not only by the substance of his hate speech, but by such innocuous phrasing as ''It is well known.'' That language is straight out of Der Sturmer, back when hatred went public in Germany with Julius Streicher. Yes, that is well known.

Kurian is co-founder of Duke's Center for Race Relations. That absurdity is also well known, and George Orwell will be laughing when he hears this, that his satire of 1984 has found a home in 2004.

I still haven't made up my mind as to which is worse, hatred that whispers behind your back, or hatred that speaks to your face, which, however, I'm beginning to believe, is phase two. Phase three is sticks and stones. Right now in America we're in phase two. Europe is already into sticks and stones, back to the future.

Over in ''O Canada,'' it's getting close between words and actions. Here's Mohamed Elmasry, president of Canada's Islamic Congress: ''All Israelis under 18 are legitimate targets of attack.'' Honest, I'm not sure if he said ''over 18'' or ''under 18'' but I'm sure about the rest, and I'm also sure that anti-Semitism is so open in Canada that hatred has a name (anti-Semitism) but no shame.

After 9/11, you'd think that Islam, that is, the head-chopping brand name of it, would have gone into hiding.

Some high-ranking members of the Presbyterian Church, indeed, are embracing hate and terror and trying to import European-style anti-Semitism back here to the United States. This won't work because American Christianity is practiced by the virtues of tolerance and lovingkindness. That's why the Pilgrims and the Puritans and the millions that followed came here, to escape all that European garbage. The very soil of Europe is drenched in blood crying up to the heavens.

Not so here, but some keep trying, like Ronald Stone, an elder of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A, who met with members of the terror group Hezbollah. That meeting, a stain on that church's leadership, along with its divest-from-Israel pogrom, took place in Lebanon, not far from where Hezbollah murdered 240 U.S.A Marines.

''We treasure the precious words of your expression of goodwill toward the American people.'' Thus grovelled Ronald Stone in comradeship with hate and terror.

Stone also said that he finds Islamic leaders much better company than Jewish leaders. Obviously, this man missed the flight to New York and toward the Twin Towers. He also had no children at school in Belsan, Russia, when his Islamic friends shouted Allah Akbar and then, as always, as practically everywhere…the slaughter begins.

So bigotry is out in the open. Killers are ''precious'' and ''treasured.'' Anti-Semites speak loudly and proudly, and the 21st Century? It is just getting started.

Postscript: I've just received an e-mail message from Ireland. The writer says that Islam is taking root over there as well, and when he asked a gentleman in a kaffiyeh why Ireland, the man said all the world belongs to Allah. The writer says he fears not only for the physical safety of himself and his nation, but for the moral risk of becoming prejudiced.

There's no answer, except, rude as it is, I quote from my novel ''The Uriah Deadline'': "Are you a bigot if by their words and deeds they turn you into one?"

About the Writer: Jack Engelhard is the author of the bestseller "Indecent Proposal," the award-winning "Escape from Mount Moriah," and the novel "The Days of the Bitter End," which is being prepared for movie production. Jack receives e-mail at viewopinion@aol.com.

For reference here is the article by Philip Kurian that is refered to:

October 18, 2004
The Jews
by Philip Kurian

You are not required to complete the work, yet you are not allowed to desist from it.

—Pirkei Avot (The Book of Principles), 2:21

Such describes the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam. Perfecting, preparing or repairing the world: a credo that, to many Jews, prescribes what role they should play in the wider concerns of our society. Judging by the opposition to this past weekend’s Palestine Solidarity Movement conference, however, I cannot help but conclude that the powerful Jewish establishment has distorted the meaning of this age-old teaching.

It is well known that Jews constitute the most privileged “minority” group in this country. Among the top 10 universities, Jews enjoy shocking overrepresentation: Only the California Institute of Technology has an undergraduate Jewish population below 10 percent, and four schools have particularly stark Jewish advantages—Harvard (30 percent), Yale (23 percent), UPenn (31 percent) and Columbia (25 percent). Keep in mind that, at best estimate, no more than 3 percent of all Americans are Jewish.

In his slim volume The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000), Jewish-American historian Norman Finkelstein argues that American interest in Judaism is “a tribute not to Jewish suffering but to Jewish aggrandizement.” The holocaust label, he says, arose from the real suffering of European Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, in turn giving rise to the Holocaust ideology, distinguished in its capitalization. He documents economic exploitation by this “Holocaust Industry,” which he calls an “outright extortion racket.”

Regardless of your political stance or position on the PSM conference, it is impossible to ignore the unprecedented outpouring of pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli support in defiance of free speech at Duke. Jewish alumni, faculty and staff have gone out of their way to lobby Duke to reject the PSM conference, mustering 92,000 signatures for their online petition and denouncing professors who have spoken out in support of free speech, as Duke’s chair of political science Michael Munger can attest.

Supposedly apolitical in nature, the Students Against Terror concert, headlined by Sister Hazel, kicked off this weekend’s festivities. The Chronicle reported, “The Freeman Center for Jewish Life funded 90 percent of the $80,000 event through the private donations from parents and alumni.” The Joint Israel Initiative, a coalition of campus Jewish and pro-Israeli groups, coordinated a series of events in opposition to the PSM, at a price tag of $25,000, more than two-and-a-half times what was spent on the conference itself. Four pro-Jewish, full-page advertisements appeared in the Friday, Oct. 15, edition of The Chronicle, with two directly condemning the PSM. We are dealing with a very well-funded and well-organized establishment, indeed.

Granted, I tend to err on the side of complete academic freedom; I would probably let the Ku Klux Klan hold a conference on campus, as long as it could be couched within the framework of serious discussion. But what Jewish suffering—along with exorbitant Jewish privilege in the United States—amounts to is a stilted, one-dimensional conversation where Jews feel the overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be criticized or offended. If the Duke administration had buckled under the influential weight of the Jewish establishment by not allowing the PSM conference, we would be suffering from the Orwellian notion of consciousness, where the only ideas that matter are the ones espoused by the powerful.

While Jews undoubtedly lay claim to a long history of racism and genocide that continues across the world today, this characterization does not transport perfectly to the United States. After World War II, overt anti-Semitism gradually subsided, in part because of American response to Hitler’s murderous regime, but largely due to Jewish association with whiteness and the privileges white skin affords. In short, Jews can renounce their difference by taking off the yarmulke. Clearly, this is not a luxury enjoyed by all minority groups.

When former President Bill Clinton nominated his first two judges to the Supreme Court, both were Jews. Remarkable in the slightest? No, of course not. But the American public still can’t get over Clarence Thomas’s cultural heritage, after being appointed by Bush 41. To be Jewish is to have the right to move seamlessly between the majority and minority, without constraint. Thus, Jewish-American appropriation of the “oppressed” moniker is disingenuous, belying the reality of America’s social hierarchy.

What’s worst is that the “Holocaust Industry” uses its influence to stifle, not enhance, the Israeli-Palestinian debate, simultaneously belittling the real struggles for socioeconomic and political equality faced, most notably, by black Americans. As the world-renowned historian John Hope Franklin mentions, the U.S. decision to authorize federal funding of a holocaust memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.—hallowed ground otherwise reserved for commemorating U.S. history—camouflages this nation’s guilt in our own crimes against humanity: the Native American genocide and slavery.

I do not ignore historic Jewish oppression or discredit the stark realities of the holocaust. Nor do I discount anti-Semitic sentiments that still persist in America. With the burden of Tikkun Olam, Jews were even some of the most vocal abolitionists and supporters of the civil rights movement. However, to preserve our democracy and honestly confront inequality where it persists, Jews must own up to their privilege in America, and use it more wisely.

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