Posted on 04/30/2002 1:16:50 PM PDT by Pokey78
I used to listen with scorn when I heard my parents' generation say that a Jew must always – metaphorically – be prepared to pack a suitcase and run. However settled we might be, however safe we might think we are, we can never be fully, one hundred per cent certain that we are secure. "They can turn on us overnight."
I understood their paranoia. They had lived through the Holocaust, and some of them had seen things at first hand which I have only ever seen on film. But, I knew, things are different now. I had never come across anything but the most prosaic examples of anti-Semitism, or ever felt for a second as if I was merely being tolerated – and that that toleration could stop. Sure, I get anti-Semitic e-mails after any article I write, but it goes with the territory. Black journalists receive the same sort of rubbish and know, as I do, not to be disturbed by the BNP-style ranting morons. I simply delete and ignore their messages.
I could not imagine anything more fanciful than the idea that my countrymen might turn on me. I am the third generation of my family to be born here and as British as anyone. Israel is an idea, and a country, which I support; but it is a foreign country with whose citizens I have nothing more in common than a shared religion.
I now know different.
I wasn't shocked when I heard about Sunday's desecration of the synagogue in Finsbury Park. I was depressed, I was frightened, I was angered; but I wasn't shocked. Over the past year or so, I have come to realise that my parents' contemporaries are right. The pattern of thousands of years of Jewish history does not change in one generation. However settled we might think we are, our lives can change in an instant. No group was more assimilated than the German Jews at the beginning of the last century. By what arrogance did I assume that mine would be the first generation in Jewish history which could escape threat?
Don't get me wrong. I am not for a second suggesting that I will have to pack my bags and leave. Britain remains one of the most tolerant places on earth, and I can barely imagine the circumstances in which I might be forced out of my own country. But I have started to hear things which I never thought possible in this of all countries, not from skinheads but from the mouths of people who I would never have thought capable of such things.
I first realised what I had been denying to myself – that anti-Semitism is now acceptable again in polite society – at a dinner party. There were six of us. I had known three of them for nearly two decades; decent, liberal sorts, who had, as students, signed up with me to all the right causes: protesting outside South Africa House, boycotting Barclays and demanding "no platform for racists and fascists". I would have sworn in court that they had not a bone of racism or anti-Semitism in their bodies.
We started talking about boycotts; specifically, Greenpeace's campaign against Esso. Could it work? Catherine (I've changed the names) said it would if people stuck to their principles. That's what she was doing: she was boycotting anything Israeli.
I winced. Yes, of course I know that disagreeing with Israeli policy does not always equate to being anti-Israel, or even anti-Semitic (although I have yet to hear anyone call for sanctions against Saudi Arabia for funding the suicide bombers and calling for more "martyrs"). But I had a sense that she meant something more than she was saying, so I tried, calmly, to draw her out. It became clear that she meant she was really boycotting anything Jewish.
What did that mean: Jewish-owned companies, or Jewish-run companies? And how do you define the ones you are boycotting: "What about Dixons?" I asked her. "What on earth are you talking about?" she replied. "What's Dixons got to do with it?" I told her that Sir Stanley Kalms, the Dixons chairman, is prominent in the Jewish community. She'd never thought about Dixons before but yes, she said, she would now start to boycott Dixons.
"Don't get at her," demanded David. "She's only saying out loud what we all think: the Jews need to be taught that, terrible as the Holocaust was, you can't rely on that excuse for ever – and certainly not to justify what you are doing to the Palestinians."
As it happens, I believe that Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories. But this wasn't a conversation about the rights and wrongs of Israeli policy; this was about me and my fellow Jews, who stick together, are different from everyone else, and need to be taught a lesson. "Why do you say 'the Jews'?" I asked. "You mean the Israelis." Catherine stepped in: "Israelis, Jews, you're the same thing. See – you're defending them now aren't you? Why are you doing that? Because you're Jewish."
Whatever I know about my loyalty to this country, others have a different view. They think of me as Jew first, and then Brit. Whatever I do, whatever I contribute, I will always be an outsider. Maybe I am simply more conscious of it today than before that conversation, but I see now, for the first time in my 37 years, what my parents' generation meant.
I have no desire whatsoever to live in Israel. But knowing that it's there, as a refuge, now means a lot more to me than I ever imagined it could.
"Don't get at her," demanded David. "She's only saying out loud what we all think: the Jews need to be taught that, terrible as the Holocaust was, you can't rely on that excuse for ever – and certainly not to justify what you are doing to the Palestinians."
Look at this exchange. I think we talked about something similar the other day. Why do the Jews need to be "taught" anything? Are they getting cheeky? Sounds like the superior attitude of "teaching" the uppity blacks, etc. of the old empire. What is the "excuse" the holocaust is being used for? I've never heard it. Who's using teh "holocaust" to "justify" these recent acts? The racist is unable to address specific actions and events in their own rights. It's like the Holocaust was some uncomfortable fact that got in the way of a milder Jew hating discourse, and they're relieved to find something, anything, even if unrelated to get this burden off their shoulders. The premise is asserted as unquestionable fact here, validated by rage if not reason.
Maybe the author should start packing his bags.
He and his buddies were brainwashed to believe that everything evil is "right-wing".
In Italy, the best socialist speaker and editor of the party's organ "Avanti!" left the paper and the party for not being radical enough for him. In 1922, he established his own party on the base of trade unions. His name was Benito Mussolini.
Ask Pollard and his opponents, they'll tell you Mussolini was a right-winger in extreme.
Legitimately elected leader of the German people (thank you, Arafat's defenders, for the nice term!) Adolf Hitler led also his National Socialist Labour party. But ask Pollard or, for that matter, Tony Blair, they'll tell you Hitler's regime was the right-wing reaction.
Look at anti-Le Pen demonstrations in France now. There again, in the best leftist traditions, they libel a right-wing politician a fascist. But the silence of the same lefties when the synagogues, Jewish schools and kosher groceries were bombed in their freedom loving country was deafening...
He doesn't see that there are no "occupied territories," either -- nor '"decent" liberal sorts.'
But, as the abjectly-corrupt, mean-spirited, envy-motivated and hatred-and-rage-engined FRankensteinian EUrinal; under whose ever-tightening grip he lives; spirals Britain and its USSRe [United Soviet Socialist Republics of europe] partners down into the squalid socialist swamp of inevitable failure, increasing despair, bitterness, recrimination -- and Elena and Nicolai Rotten-KKKli'toon-styled kleptocracy, looting, raping and pillaging; he will come to know of the left's inherent fascist-totalitarianism and that his "decent liberal sorts" are Mao's Red Guard; Hitler's Brownshirts, Gestapo and SS -- and are Stalin's KGB.
In waiting.
I do not know whether you would be intersted, but here is a link to something I posted today: it is Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew.
That just about sums it up.
It appears that this guy has spent a lifetime supporting causes that engender devisiveness and now he is shocked that the chickens have come home to roost. If you pit class against class and group against group, you must be prepared to have people attack your group.
And I'd be happy to support such vigilante actions monetarily, so long as the Jews didn't cross the line into IRA-style terrorism; that is, go after those attacking them, don't just randomly blow up buildings to hurt innocent people.
more like part and parcel of left wing politics.
Fascists are not necessarily NAZIS. Fascists(socialist dirigisme) + racism=NAZI.
Complicity in the crimes which occurred in the Soviet Union. The denial is absolute. Check this out.
Not that it should matter to us Americans, but class consciousness is hardly dead in England, and mere money does not equal status. Some of the ancient families have land and money, some, especially in the gentry, where one finds most of the really old families, don't have very much, but all are well-known in Society in England and will be received if the go up to London for the Season. Jews, even very rich Jews, even Jewish peers, still generally are not received in the upper reaches of Society in England. I have had occasion over the past 40 years to make acquaintances among several of the European upper classes/aristocracies. Though not a Jew, as an historian, I have always been interested in the phenomenon of antisemitism and have listed with a close ear. In my experience, anecdotal as it is, the least antisemitic aristocrats are middle levels (barons and counts) of the German aristocracy (but not the Austrian) and the Italian aristocracy generally. The French, especially graduates of the Ecole Normal Superior, but less so graduates of the Ecole Polytechnique are the worst, followed by the Scandinavians (only the Swedes and Danes still have an aristocarcy, the Norwegians an upper class) and the British.
Suffice it to say that while public discussion of the Jewish Question has been taboo from 1945 until recently, it has always been known among the more intellectually minded circles of the upper reaches of European Society.
That was the whole point of the article, which you appear to validate. One would think that a Westerner, and especially an American, would judge another by his conduct, not bloodlines. When the author saiys he is "as British as anyone," he means that he is versed in and follows British traditions, knows country's history, pays taxes, probably has members of the family that served in the armed forces, etc.
That was exactly the point that, despite the alleged enlightenment and contrary to the stated aspirations of the British society, it is the bloodlines that matter --- and matter exclusively.
It is surprising that you find this to be so natural.
The English at home have hardly ever been accused of accepting non-Englishmen into their society. He shouldn't be the least surprised it's coming out.
Oh, how compassionate of you. So, you are born to patriotic parents, you grow up to be an honest citizen, you aspire to do service for your country ---- and all the while you are supposed to expect to be kicked out?
This is a pretty heartless remark.
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