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The "Oldest Hatred" (Mark Steyn Looks At Mankind's Enduring Hatred Of The Jew Alert)
National Review ^ | 1/10/2009 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 01/09/2009 9:52:04 PM PST by goldstategop

In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!”, and a protestor complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.”

In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”

In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”

In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from January 1st 2009 but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.”

In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”

In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.

In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports “fears” that “Islamic extremists” are drawing up a “hit list” of prominent Jews, including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse’s record producer, and the late Princess of Wales’s divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Islamic non-extremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation and other impeccably respectable “moderate” groups have warned the government that the Israelis’ “disproportionate force” in Gaza risks inflaming British Muslims, “reviving extremist groups”, and provoking “UK terrorist attacks” — not against Amy Winehouse’s record producer and other sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets of, ah, more general interest.

Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth. For the past sixty years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the “global community” — and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the UN refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don’t deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the “Palestinian Authority” has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian “nationalist movement” has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago.

So, as I said, forget Gaza. And instead ponder the reaction to Gaza in Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is a wee bit more of a stretch. Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let’s take a state that came into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift.

But, even allowing for that, what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do with Israeli government policy? Just last month terrorists attacked Bombay, seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers make for lively reading:

“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.’

“Mumbai terrorist 2: ‘We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China.’

“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill them.’

“(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering voices.)”

“Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims.” Tough for those Singaporean women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu populations in London, Toronto, and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted “Muslims must die!” or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls. CAIR and other Muslim lobby groups’ eternal bleating about “Islamophobia” is in inverse proportion to any examples of it. Meanwhile, “moderate Muslims” in London warn the government: “I’m a peaceful fellow myself, but I can’t speak for my excitable friends. Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it.”

But why worry about European Muslims? The European political and media class essentially shares the same view of the situation — to the point where state TV stations are broadcasting fake Israeli “war crimes.” As I always say, the “oldest hatred” didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt: Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a conventional nation state, and now they’re hated for that. And, if Hamas get their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else. So it goes.

But Jew-hating has consequences for the Jew-hater, too. A few years ago the poet Nizar Qabbani wrote an ode to the intifada:

O mad people of Gaza,

a thousand greetings to the mad

The age of political reason

has long departed

so teach us madness

You can just about understand why living in Gaza would teach you madness. The enthusiastic adoption of the same pathologies by mainstream Europe is even more deranged — and in the end will prove just as self-destructive.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Israel; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: antisemitism; deathcult; europe; fatah; gaza; hamas; intolerance; islam; israel; jewishcabal; jews; jihad; judaism; marksteyn; multiculturalism; nationalreview; operationcastlead; politicalcorrectness; steyn; wot
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To: Rembrandt

Of course. Hard to read it any other way.


21 posted on 01/09/2009 10:41:24 PM PST by Arguendo
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To: All
Required Reading:


22 posted on 01/09/2009 10:42:12 PM PST by BraveMan
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To: Will88

The question “why do they hate the jews” presupposes that the hater is rational. The better question is why is islam a religion of violence.

An antitdote to the anti-jewish types here with their Pat Buchannan style apologies for the jew haters was written by Mark Twain, “Concerning the Jews”. Really, when you get down to it, its hard to find a more moral people and generally better citizens than Jews in any country. They are under-represented in crime, and on welfare rolls.

Read that article of Twains, and stay anti-semetic, and you reveal your own shallow mind.


23 posted on 01/09/2009 11:40:19 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dogs earn the title of "man's best friend", Muslims hate dogs,,add that up.)
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To: DesertRhino; Will88

CONCERNING THE JEWS ...
The Essay (By Mark Twain)

“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of.

He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him.

He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Mark Twain

*******

Not sure if I got the original paragraphs in the correct places. However - this line concerns me:

“The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind.”

Perhaps this still applies to the Jews in Israel. Not so sure about those in the U.S. that voted overwhelmingly for Obama. :(


24 posted on 01/09/2009 11:49:41 PM PST by 21twelve
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To: MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
The secular Left has tried to suppress them just like anyone else but we Jews are tough and are finally fighting back, and taking no prisoners.

For what it is worth, I am a gentile who has championed Israel in my heart for years. If it came to that, I would die defending you. I fear that it is coming to that. That fear has occupied my thoughts more now than in the past. It is in God's hands.

25 posted on 01/09/2009 11:50:34 PM PST by lafroste (gravity is not a force. See my profile to read my novel absolutely free (I know, beyond shameless))
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To: goldstategop
It is a complete and utter mystery to me why any Jew would have voted for Obama...but...they did!
26 posted on 01/10/2009 1:08:17 AM PST by wintertime (Good ideas win! Why? Because people are NOT stupid)
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To: Arguendo
You can’t do this and expect to be popular

Why do you think that mature people would ascribe such a significance to being popular? It sounds very infantile... like you speak about some spoiled brats expecting every adult to give them a smack and a candy...

So please don't love, and even don't like us - JUST LEAVE US ALONE. Keep for yourself your frigging Security Council's resolutions, your peacekeepers and your hypocrisy. Leave Israel to do what's necessary for her people.

27 posted on 01/10/2009 1:14:05 AM PST by Neophyte (Nazis, Communists, Islamists... what the heck is the difference?)
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To: GeronL
jews would vote hamas before conservative
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What's with this? I am utterly baffled!

Yet, when the pogroms come, it will be conservative Christians who will take them in and hide them in their closets.

28 posted on 01/10/2009 1:16:55 AM PST by wintertime (Good ideas win! Why? Because people are NOT stupid)
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To: wintertime

when the pogroms come we will be targets too


29 posted on 01/10/2009 2:04:59 AM PST by GeronL (intermitten freeper)
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To: goldstategop
In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”

In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”

what? in their hatred, the muslims are actually admitting the holocaust happened? well, isn't that something...

30 posted on 01/10/2009 2:56:43 AM PST by blueplum
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To: goldstategop
In regards to Europe and North America I believe what you are seeing is the growing emergence of muslims in the public realm trying to influence public opinion. This is being combined here in the US with the typical far left anarchist and kook fringe. Many Jews in the US tend to sympathize with left wing causes which in turn bring them into quandary when it comes to supporting Israel. It's somewhat ironic that these demonstrations are now gaining traction since Zero won in November. I haven’t seen this level of venom when Israel preemptively protected itself on prior occasions.
31 posted on 01/10/2009 3:12:58 AM PST by RU88 (The false messiah can not change water into wine any more than he can get unity from diversity.)
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To: goldstategop

A great post, many thanks. Mark Steyn’s brilliant analysis laid out in clear, lucid prose. Jews have been hated because they’re smart and work hard. As a matter of fact, we shouldn’t get too comfortable since Americans are, in the world view, the ‘new Jews’. After Israel, they’ll come the Great Satan: the US.


32 posted on 01/10/2009 3:20:39 AM PST by hershey
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To: goldstategop

“i wouldn’t say that’s true of secular jews...”

question: is a secular jew jewish?


33 posted on 01/10/2009 4:20:12 AM PST by ripley
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To: hershey

The new Sec of State is a Palo sympathizer if not supporter. The new Prez of Muslim origins speaks for itself. US Policy will change severely soon.


34 posted on 01/10/2009 4:25:05 AM PST by doosee
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To: Will88
"Or perhaps because the standard of living and achievements in eduction, science, business, and most all fields of endeavor in Israel puts all Muslim nations to shame. Without oil wealth, the Arab/Muslim world would be little more prosperous than the world's poorest nations. Envy, and an ancient hatred that started with Mohommed, as I discussed in #12."

Very true. Look at that tiny, prosperous nation of Israel smack in the center of the backwards muslim countries. The muslims could be prosperous too, but their religion (cult) holds them back. And if the Israelis have a 'superiority complex', then let them have it. I haven't noticed any Jew pushing his or her religion on me or making threats against anybody who doesn't agree with them. On the other hand, the muslims try to push their religion on everybody else and threaten all who will not accept their sick "religion".

35 posted on 01/10/2009 4:53:40 AM PST by sneakers
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To: ripley
“question: is a secular jew jewish?”

According to Hitler & Muslims, yes.

36 posted on 01/10/2009 5:23:57 AM PST by Western Phil
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To: mrsmel

I have long thought that the destruction of Israel - in effect, a second Holocaust - would be the portent of the fall of western civilization. But western civilization is already declining so fast that I am not sure now which will come first.


37 posted on 01/10/2009 5:33:52 AM PST by Malesherbes (Sauve Qui Peut)
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To: 21twelve

I believe the secular Jews who renounce G-d for temporal
pleasures will lose their immortality. . . .and fade away.


38 posted on 01/10/2009 6:00:59 AM PST by doberville
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To: Arguendo

I don’t know, would you want to be one of the chosen people? They have 614 commandments, the rest of us only have ten. Which would you chose?


39 posted on 01/10/2009 6:04:01 AM PST by Jabba the Nutt (Barack Obama, the American Salvador Allende.)
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To: goldstategop
The Jews adopted and preserved the Canaanite language and since they and their pagan neighbors spoke Hebrew, it was very difficult for them to preserve their identity. The northern kingdom of Israel couldn't do it and vanished. The southern kingdom of Judah descended from the House Of David held on to the traditions and faith and managed to preserve those even in exile. By the time the Babylonians conquered Judah and laid waste to the First Temple, Judah, the middle of the original twelve sons of David, was the only survivor. And the tough one. As they say, the rest was history...

I thought Heavenly Father got fed up with the stiff-necked House of Israel(10 tribes and/or Northern kingdom) and He sent them into the captivity of the Assyrian king, and that His purpose was for them to loose their identity. Jeremiah pens Jeremiah 3:8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also. And Jeremiah told that king of Judah what was to be and the king refused to take heed.

Which Judah are you referring to, or which David are you referring to? I thought Judah was one of the twelve of Jacob.

40 posted on 01/10/2009 6:14:14 AM PST by Just mythoughts (Isa.3:4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.)
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