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Antisemitism has taken many forms throughout its long career. It’s a frustrating rejoinder to those who believe that there is such a thing as social progress analogous to technological development.

Many of us think of Christian antisemitism, forged in the struggle of the early Christians with the Roman Empire, as the seminal form from which later Jew-hatreds sprang. There’s some truth to this.

The recent film (from the book by James Carroll) “Constantine’s Sword” comes down quite hard on the Catholic Church:

In Carroll’s telling, Catholic hostility to Jews goes back at least to the fourth century, when the emperor Constantine conquered Rome, carrying a sword fashioned as a cross. At the time, he says in the film, there were roughly the same number of Jews as Christians in the world.

In subsequent centuries, the Church’s attitudes toward Jews ranged from cold tolerance to frenzied orgies of religiously inspired mass murder. Among the highlights of this tortured history is the total destruction of centers of Jewish life situated along the Rhine river in 1096. As the Crusaders journeyed to the Holy Land to make war on the Muslims — armed with shields bearing signs of the cross and with priests in the lead — they warmed up for the battles to come by wiping out the Jewish settlements in their path. — Ben Harris (JTA)

There is no question that it was bad for Jews in the Christian world long after the middle ages. Discrimination, pogroms, even mass expulsions were their lot in Europe for hundreds of years. My own grandparents fled the Pale of Settlement almost exactly 100 years ago to escape violent persecution by the locals, who used Christianity as an excuse for their actions.

In the mid-20th century the anti-Christian Nazis and the atheist Stalin cynically used Christian themes to buttress their own antisemitic programs, and the Jews suffered mightily. And there were also Catholic voices raised against the Jews, even here in America (see Charles Coughlin). But a funny thing happened, in part as a reaction to the massive evil of this time:

The Church grew up.

In one of the most important documents of the modern Church, Nostra Aetate (1965 - read it!), Pope Paul VI does not dilute what he sees as the fundamental principle of Christianity — that there is only one way to salvation — but calls upon Catholics to understand and appreciate the truths (albeit partial, in his view) found in other religions. Most importantly, he demands that the Church treat adherents of other religions with respect and tolerance, specifically denouncing antisemitism.

Unfortunately, at just about the same time that the traditional host of the antisemitism virus began to reject it, a new one appeared. During the 1960’s, the Arab-Israeli conflict had taken the form of a proxy struggle between the US and the Soviet Union, with the Soviets taking the side of the Arabs. This led to such absurdities as fascist Arab regimes like that of Syria declaring themselves to be ’socialists’, but also to the international Left — which if not pro-Soviet was at least anti-American — taking a strong anti-Israel position as well.

Although not all anti-Zionism is antisemitic, there is a natural progression which has been followed here, and today the extreme Left has outstripped the neo-Nazi Right as a reservoir of antisemitic expression.

But the greatest outpouring of Jew-hatred today comes from the Muslim world:

Muslim anti-Semitism is growing in scope and extremism, to the point that it has become a credible strategic threat for Israel, according to a 180-page report produced for Israeli policymakers by the semi-official Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC)…

Among the report’s most worrying findings is the growth over the past three decades of uniquely Muslim roots to older European versions of anti-Semitism. Without discounting classical Christian Europe’s canards regarding secret Jewish conspiracies, the ritual slaughter of non-Jewish children and other allegations of Jewish evil, anti-Semitism in the Muslim world increasingly finds its own, Islamic reasons for anti-Jewish hatred through new interpretations of Islamic history and scripture.

From the Koranic story of a Jewess who poisoned Muhammad, to the troubled relations between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, radical Islamist groups and thinkers have been using extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric that has grown increasingly popular with the Muslim public, particularly in Iran and the Arab states. Using well-known Koranic texts, these groups have been mapping out the Jews’ “innate negative attributes” and teaching a paradigm of permanent struggle between Muslims and Jews.

The goal of this “Islamified” anti-Semitism, according to the report, is to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a national territorial contest which could be resolved through compromise to a “historic, cultural and existential struggle for the supremacy of Islam.” — Jerusalem Post

The report goes on to describe how — instead of European antisemitic literature being imported to the Middle East, it is now exported to Europe, where it influences Muslim segments of the population there. And in the Middle East, antisemitism has government approval in many countries which are allegedly at peace with Israel — like Egypt, where you can buy Arabic translations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on many street corners.

The most worrisome thing in the report is that antisemitism as an instrument of national policy, last seen in Nazi Germany, has returned:

At the heart of this surge in Muslim anti-Semitism lies Iran, with the regime’s support for Holocaust denial and hosting of anti-Semites from around the world, along with formal calls for Israel’s destruction by many of the country’s leaders.

“Iran is the first example of its kind since Nazi Germany in which a state officially adopts an active policy of anti-Semitism as a means to further its national interests,” the report notes.

It goes on to say that while Iran does not deny that Jews were massacred during WWII, the current regime seeks to minimize the scale of the Holocaust in order to reduce support for Israel’s very existence in the West, which it believes comes from feelings of guilt over the world’s inaction while Jews were murdered during WWII.

So one can understand, in the face of all this, my unconcern about Pope Benedict XVI’s promulgation of a Latin Good Friday prayer that calls for Catholics to pray for the Jews to accept Jesus as savior — something which does not contradict Nostra Aetate, although it is perhaps uncomfortable for some Jews, and although liberal Catholics may wish that the Church had moved further along the road to ecumenicism than it actually did.

Nevertheless, it’s unfortunate that other organizations, like the UN, have not followed the lead of the Church in this area. If the world has learned anything from the history of the mid-20th century one would expect firm condemnations — and real sanctions — of governments like those of Egypt and especially Iran, which today exemplify the racist philosophy that should have been buried with Adolf Hitler.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, anti-Semitism, Catholic Church, Pope, Nostra Aetate, Muslim antisemitism, Iran

One of the favorite themes of Neo-Nazis is that today’s Ashkenazi Jews aren’t Jews, that is, descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea, but rather descended from the Khazars, Caucasian nomads that converted to Judaism around the 7th century (some of them converted to Christianity and Islam too, but never mind).

Now an Israeli scholar, Shlomo Zand (or Sand) claims that Sephardic Jews aren’t Jews either, but descended from various North African tribes.

Zand is not a neo-Nazi, and he even admits that his ‘findings’ don’t reflect on the legitimacy of the State of Israel. However, since he believes that “the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way”, and also that “the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendants”, one can see that he is happy to provide ammunition to those who want an ideological foundation for their hoped-for destruction of Israel.

Zand, a historian who has heretofore written about 20th-century France, based his work on modern “studies that present unorthodox views of the origins of the Jews” (I can imagine). For a taste of the absurdity of his argument, here’s how the Jewish People was ‘invented’:

At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people “retrospectively,” out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace.

Of course the literature of the Jewish People goes back to long before this period. So Zand is apparently saying that at some point an influx of foreign DNA made the Jewish People not the the Jewish People, and therefore — knowing that they had been adulterated and therefore lost their birthright — they conspired to pretend that they were.

Even if we grant his genealogical point (which I don’t), certainly the ‘peoplehood’ of the Jews rests in culture and spirit and not physical DNA!

It’s argued that there is genetic evidence that links both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews to the Middle East. I’m not qualified to evaluate it, of course, but most importantly, even if many Jews were descended from converts, who cares?

I could similarly argue that many Palestinian Arabs are descended from Egyptians that came with Muhammad Ali in the early part of the 19th Century, or Syrians who migrated to Palestine when the end of Ottoman rule and Jewish development improved the regional economy. I could talk about how nobody ever heard of the ‘Palestinian people’ until 1967. But this, too, would be irrelevant.

What is relevant is that the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel is not dependent on the presence of converts in the genealogy of the Jews. It is not dependent on Jewish provenance in biblical times, just as it is not justified by the Holocaust.

The Early Zionists purchased land legally, often paying exorbitant prices for poor land which they then improved by draining swamps and so forth. The yishuv (pre-state Jewish settlement) built all the institutions that would become the state.

The Jewish state received international sanction in 1947 and was kept through a series of defensive wars, which in fact are still ongoing. Israel is no less ‘legitimate’ than Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia which were created at about the same time — and possibly more so, due to the UN Partition Resolution, and the fact that Israel is a democracy.

Although religious Jews (and many Christians) believe that the Jews were given the Land as described in the Torah, there is a solid secular foundation for the state as well.

Zand’s work appears to be another manifestation of mental disorder in the extreme academic Left in Israel, similar to the completely insane thesis that the IDF’s failure to rape Arab women is a racist phenomenon.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Academia, antisemitism, Shlomo Zand, Shlomo Sand

From Reuters:

Jewish groups complained last year when the Pope issued a decree allowing wider use of the old-style Latin Mass and a missal, or prayer book, that was phased out after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965.

They protested against the re-introduction of the old prayer for conversion of the Jews and asked the Pope to change it.

The Vatican last month revised the contested Latin prayer used by a traditionalist minority on Good Friday, the day marking Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, removing a reference to Jewish “blindness” over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to “remove the veil from their hearts”.

Jews criticized the new version because it still says they should recognize Jesus Christ as the savior of all men. It asks that “all Israel may be saved” and Jews say it keeps an underlying call to conversion that they had wanted removed.

Vatican II changed the ancient Latin version of this prayer, removing the phrase ‘perfidious Jews’. But then it created a new collection of prayers in various local languages — the vernacular liturgy — which was supposed to replace the Latin one. The prayer which appears in the vernacular liturgy does not mention conversion, but the Latin version still did, although ‘perfidious’ was gone.

The Latin ritual did not totally disappear, however. Some conservative Catholics continued to use it, but were required to obtain permission from their bishop.

The present Pope, as mentioned in the article, is encouraging those Catholics who want to use the Latin ritual to do so, and has removed the requirement for approval. But some Jews and liberal Catholics wish that he had simply translated the vernacular prayer back into Latin. Instead, he chose to create a new prayer that took a middle course — but still mentioned conversion.

We can understand the concern, given the long history of Christian antisemitism based to a certain extent on the stiff-necked Jews’ refusal to see the light. And we can also understand the Pope — and many other Christians — for whom a primary part of their belief system is that it is universal.

I think, though, that the concern is misplaced in view of the nature of antisemitism today. Consider this:

Britain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were “drenched” in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, an Israeli historian said Monday.

The problem of anti-Semitism in Britain is exacerbated by a growing and increasingly radical Muslim population, the weak approach taken by a timid British Jewish leadership, and the detachment of the British from their Christian roots, said Hebrew University historian Prof. Robert S. Wistrich in a lecture on British anti-Semitism at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. — Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

Wistrich goes on to argue that the roots of antisemitism in Britain are ancient, and of course they are entangled with Christianity. But it seems to me that today the major sources of antisemitism throughout the world are not Christian, but rather

• Traditional right-wing Jew hatred (neo-Nazis, etc.)

• The extreme anti-Zionism of the Left

• Muslim antisemitism and extreme anti-Zionism

Indeed, the desire to see Jews converted to Christianity is dear to Evangelical Protestants here in the US, a group which is generally pro-Zionist and which does not express views common to contemporary antisemites, such as “the Jews are responsible for 9/11 (or the Iraq war, etc.)”, or “the Jewish lobby controls the US government”. Recent violent acts against Jews or Jewish property in the US have mostly been perpetrated by neo-Nazi or racist groups, and radical Muslims.

I am personally less bothered by Christian prayers for my conversion than, for example, Hamas’ interpretation of the Quran which calls for Muslims to kill Jews.

It should be noted that critics of the Pope are not required to go into hiding because of death threats from Catholic fundamentalists.

Possibly those of us who are particularly worried about Christian antisemitism today are like the generals who always prepare to fight the last war instead of the next one?

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, anti-Semitism, Pope Benedict, Catholic liturgy

The rules of the game regarding anti-Semitic expression have changed. Here is a cartoon chosen by the editors of the Los Angeles Times to illustrate a violently anti-Israel article written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of the book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, a book which many have argued is itself anti-Semitic.

Anti-Semitic cartoon from LA Times, January 6, 2008

CAMERA has written a response to the Mearsheimer-Walt article, and has even purchased a full-page advertisement in (other) LA-area newspapers criticizing the Times for its distorted coverage and incidentally pointing out the similarity of the cartoon to one in a German newspaper of the Nazi era.

Last July, I called for a boycott of the Times after they ran a op-ed by Hamas mouthpiece Moussa Abu-Marzouk, in which he asserts that murder of civilians within Israel is justified as ‘resistance to occupation’.

But the Times is just one example of a more widespread phenomenon. The fact is that extreme anti-Israeli expression (which I have argued is often actually anti-Semitic) as well as outright Jew hatred are becoming more and more commonplace. The recent case of Ms. Magazine refusing to print a completely innocuous advertisement that was pro-Israel illustrates the degree of animosity toward Israel in some circles.

US college campuses are presently awash in anti-Semitic expression and have been for some time, as documented in a 2005 hearing before the US Commission on Civil Rights:

The excessive fascination with Israel and the tendency to hold it up to disproportionate scrutiny has turned over into attitudes and acts of hatred and anti-Semitism on many of the nation’s college campuses. There have been a number of examples. For instance, in 2002, at San Francisco State University, Jewish students held an Israeli-Palestinian sit-in hoping to engage the pro-Palestinian students on campus in a dialogue. What ensued as the rally was closing was a hate-fest in which pro-Palestinian students surrounded the 30 remaining Jewish students, screaming “Hitler didn’t finish the job” and “Die racist pigs.” In April, a flyer advertising a pro-Palestinian rally featured a picture of a dead baby with the words, “Canned Palestinian Children Meat – Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites under American License,” thereby reinvigorating the 900-year-old blood libel that Jews eat Gentile children.

During Passover of that year, a brick cinderblock was thrown through the glass doors of the University of California at Berkeley’s Hillel Building. A week after that, two Orthodox Jews were attacked and severely beaten one block from Berkeley’s campus, with anti-Zionist graffiti on blocks and buildings near the school. During a vigil for Holocaust Day, Jewish students who were saying the mourner’s kaddish, the prayer for the dead, were shouted down by protesting students saying a prayer in memory of the suicide bombers. Northwestern University’s Norris University Center was marked with a three-foot swastika in 2003, accompanied by the words “Die Jews.”

However, I doubt that even three years ago we would have seen the kind of mainstream presentation of extreme anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic views as appear today. One of the precipitating events was the 2006 Second Lebanon War, in which much of the media presented an image — almost entirely false — of a diabolical Israel, wantonly killing Lebanese civilians. In addition to made-up incidents, fake casualties, faked news footage and Photoshopped pictures, the war was presented as Israeli aggression, ignoring the fact that Israel responded to an invasion of her territory and the killing and capture of her soldiers. The fact that Hezbollah operated from civilian areas, using residents as human shields was also deemphasized.

There were two major reasons for this: one was the academic bias against Israel which has come to be widespread in the college-educated media as well, and the highly effective media management strategy employed by Hezbollah, which tightly controlled access by the foreign media and assured, sometimes by means of simple intimidation, that they reported what Hezbollah wanted in the way that they wanted.

In any event, the reporting of the war fed anti-Israel sentiment (already strong in Europe) in the US, and interestingly — but not really surprisingly — it seems to spill over into anti-Semitism.

Another factor has been the opposition of some left-wing elements to the Bush Administration, in which it’s become useful to blame “neo-cons” — many of whom are Jewish — for the invasion of Iraq, etc. And the fact that the US economy seems presently to be on a downward trend will certainly give rise to the usual scapegoating.

Anti-Semitism has a viral nature, in which it spreads and intensifies in proportion to its prevalence. So once started, it seems to take on a life of its own.

Technorati Tags: anti-Semitism, antisemitism, LA Times, Israel

What’s the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe?

Would you believe progressive, environmentalist, gender-sensitive Norway? A country that is ranked second on the UN Human Development Index (the US comes in 12th)?

Well, believe.

And it’s not because it’s full of Muslims, either. About 90% of the population is Norwegian-born or has Norwegian-born parents. 83% are members of the established Church of Norway; only 1.5% identify as Muslim (Wikipedia: Norway).

Here’s how Manfred Gerstenfeld summarized his article “Norway: Extreme Expressions of anti-Israeli Attitudes” in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs “Post-Holocaust Anti-Semitism” series:

• Norway, which gets little international publicity, seeks to project an image as a peace-loving country. Few people outside it are familiar with the extreme anti-Israeli expressions among the country’s elites. In recent years there also have been a number of anti-Semitic incidents.
• Anti-Israeli hate cartoons are published in leading Norwegian dailies and weeklies. Some are similar in message and venom to the worst anti-Semitic caricatures published in Nazi Germany. Israeli prime ministers are shown as Nazis or with the attributes of the Devil or animals. Also the most extreme anti-Semitic views disguised as anti-Israelism can be voiced in the mainstream media, such as those expressed by the author Jostein Gaarder in the daily Aftenposten in 2006.
• The current left-wing Norwegian government has probably taken the most accommodating position in Western Europe toward the Palestinian Hamas movement, which in its charter calls for the killing of all Jews. The first Hamas minister to be given entrance to Europe met with parliamentarians in Norway. The Norwegian deputy foreign minister was the first senior European official to hold talks with Hamas prime minister Ismael Haniya.
• Among anti-Semitic incidents in recent years were the shooting at the Oslo community’s synagogue, an attack on its cantor, and the desecration of graves at its cemetery. A number of Jewish children have been harassed in schools.

Read the entire article here — it’s recommended.

Technorati Tags: Norway, anti-Semitism

Sometimes stupidity becomes so overwhelming that one wants to… well, you decide:

An Iranian official has said that the U.S., assisted by Israel, is seeking to create a genetic and molecular bank to manufacture new types of unconventional weapons.

Addressing an international seminar on “The Consequences of the Use of Chemical Weapons against Iran,” Foundation for the Protection of the Values of the Sacred Defense head Gen. Mir Feysal Bagherzadeh said that the U.S., in collaboration with the Zionist regime of Israel, is forming a bank of the molecules and genes of the different world nations and peoples in pursuit of its hostile goals.

“This is not done in pursuit of humanitarian goals. Rather they are seeking to manufacture a weapon which could kill specific peoples in a limited geographical area,” he stressed.

[He said that] after the recent crash of a Thai plane, U.S. and Israeli experts searched for corpses of Iranian nationals in a bid to obtain their genes for the research. — MEMRI

To dispose of the scientific issue first, no, there can’t be such a weapon. Human genes are remarkably similar among ethnic groups. And even if there were a way to discriminate, populations — especially in the US and Israel — are very diverse. Who’s to say that the many Israeli Jews of Sephardic ancestry — like the current Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, whose mother came from Syria, or his predecessor, Dan Halutz, whose father came from Iran — are not likely to have characteristics similar to those of Syrians and Iranians?

But racists just love this kind of stuff. People who used to talk about blood now talk about genetics. The same Jewish genes that make Jews intelligent but irredeemably evil allow for targeted biological weapons, in this view! Of course, the most that can be said is that statistically one ethnic group may have a greater likelihood to possess particular characteristics than another.

Actually, what really separates peoples are things like education and features of culture. And cultures are prey to diseases caused by what one might call ’social viruses’, of which antisemitism is a particularly contagious and virulent example.

This particular libel is, in a way, perfect. The evil Jews, evil because of their Jewish blood, use this very same blood as a talisman to protect them against a fearsome plague that they start themselves! Shades of the well-poisoners who brought the Black Death on Europe.

Technorati Tags: Jews, antisemitism, Israel

I knew this was going to happen.

The Jews are now in trouble with both the Turks and the Armenians: the Turks because we are blamed for the genocide resolution’s Oct. 10 approval by the House Foreign Relations Committee, and the Armenians because several Jewish organizations opposed it.

It looks now as though the resolution will not pass the full House, thanks to Turkish threats to complicate the situation in Iraq. Does this mean that the Turks will like us? Fat chance. Antisemitism always plays well when a government wants to change the subject.

Technorati Tags: Armenian genocide, Turkey

Here is a story about how we are allowing our enemies to define us:

PALO ALTO, Calif. — An Israeli-American artist contends that a San Francisco gallery that displayed his paintings dropped plans to publish a catalog of his work after he proposed that the cover title of the collection refer to Zionism.

The artist, Alan Kaufman, said several of his Jewish-themed paintings were rotated on-and-off the walls at the Himmelberger Gallery near Union Square beginning in July. Some of Mr. Kaufman’s works bear the names of figures from the Hebrew Bible, while others listed in a contract with the gallery have titles such as “Anti-Semitism,” “Battle for Israel,” and “Flight of Israel’s Foes.” One canvas is named after an Israeli city near the Gaza Strip, Sderot, and depicts a figure crouched under a Jewish star as missiles fly overhead.

Mr. Kaufman said he and the gallery’s owner, David Himmelberger, were working closely on a catalog of the art as well as plans to exhibit it at other sites, when Mr. Himmelberger expressed discomfort with using the word “Zionist” in the catalog’s title and with essays that included references to Zionism…

Mr. Kaufman said the disagreement erupted on October 8 at a meeting with Mr. Himmelberger to discuss the layout and contents of the 24-page catalog. “He had a printout of the catalog with ‘Visionary Expressionism: A Zionist Art’ in front of him. He pointed to the word, ‘Zionism,’ and said, ‘I can’t do that,” Mr. Kaufman told The New York Sun. “I said, ‘What exactly is the problem? You know what my paintings are about.’”

“He said, ‘I don’t stand for that. … We don’t want to advocate any kind of platform here,’” Mr. Kaufman said. — NY Sun

One is hard-pressed to imagine what Himmelberger thinks Zionism is, since he is obviously not uncomfortable displaying Zionist art, painted by a Zionist (the American-born Kaufman is the child of a Holocaust survivor, served in the IDF, and does not try to hide his pro-Israel point of view). But calling it by its name, apparently, is taboo — or at least very bad for business.

San Francisco, of course, is a center of the radical left, and today antisemitism and anti-Zionism permeate the media and the campuses. So it’s not unlikely that the gallery owner really had very little idea of what Zionism actually is, and what it isn’t — for him, the word probably is synonymous with ‘fascism’ or ‘racism’. This is certainly what he would hear, for example, on Pacifica Radio’s KPFA.

Kaufman and some others are doing their best to reclaim the word:

Kaufman; David Twersky, a longtime editor and publicist for Jewish groups; David Rosenberg, co-author with Harold Bloom of “The Book of J”; Israeli writer Etgar Keret; and Polly Zavadivker, a Judaic studies scholar, hope to turn the episode into a cause celébre that will redeem Zionism as a concept and as a term.

“Zionism is the Civil Rights Movement of the Jewish People,” the five proclaim in a statement. “It is the answered prayer to two thousand years of ceaseless persecution at the hands of unpredictable host nations.” — The Jewish Week

Technorati Tags: Zionism, Kaufman, Jews, Israel

Some Israelis and some politically sophisticated Jews here in the US have, in a sense, been crushed by the weight of anti-Israel propaganda, and — while it is painful to say this — have become part of the problem. It’s hard to defend yourself when the lies are pouring in from all directions, and sometimes you wake up saying “wait a minute — did I fall for that?”

Daniel Gordis describes this from an Israeli point of view, but it occurs here, too, especially among those who would describe themselves as being concerned with “peace and justice”.

Cynicism is a dangerous disease, a cancer of the soul. Often, we don’t know we have it, until it’s too late, until part of us has died. It’s also contagious. And this country has stage-three cynicism. By cynicism, I don’t mean the occasional snide joke at a cocktail party. I mean a low-grade but constant self-loathing among many of the people I know at the elite of Israel’s intellectual and academic circles, for whom discussion of the Jewish State is more than passé it’s absurd. If you say something about the values inherent in Zionism, you sound odd. If you insist that the Jews have something unique to say and that having a State is our platform on which we can begin to articulate that “something,” they look at you as if you’re “cute.” As if you’d referred to a young dating couple as “courting,” or as if you’d just called a pair of jeans “dungarees.” You’re an anachronism, and no one “in the know” will take you, or your ideas, very seriously.

This self-loathing manifests itself in a relentless discussion of the occupation, with no reference to why the occupation began or to the fact that Israel doesn’t exactly have many sane choices that might end it. You see it when people insist Israel should “just sign a peace agreement already,” with no consideration of what’s unfolding in Gaza, in complete denial of the obvious fact that there’s no way that Abu Mazen can deliver on anything he promises before or during Annapolis. It’s the culture in which post-nationalism is taken as an obvious truth, with no recognition of the fact that it’s only when discussing the state of the Jews that people insist that the nation-state should be dismantled. It’s the conversational style in which every mention of an Israeli soldier has to be followed by an account of some act of barbarity, lest you appear overly nationalistic. — Daniel Gordis, “One Treadmill, Two Refugees, One College” [my emphasis — the entire article is recommended]

On the one hand, it’s important for all of us to be as well-informed as possible, and that means reading and listening to the views of the ‘other side’ and taking them seriously. This is necessary from both a moral and practical point of view.

On the other hand, the messages you receive in the media are carefully calibrated to have an effect. Many of the presenters are professionals, and they know how to bring about a result, to create an opinion in your mind, subtly and almost subliminally.

It’s important for all of us to remain focused on the basic historical facts, which have not changed as a result of post-modern, post-Zionist, post-anything-ism, so that we can resist being pushed into the pit of cyncism that Gordis describes so well, where we will become our own deadly enemies.

The opposition to the existence of Israel and the Jewish people — and that is what it is — is pervasive and well-financed, and has leveraged itself into almost a grass-roots movement in places like the UK and some US campuses. That doesn’t mean that the goal is any different than Hitler’s.

The Jews need to be part of the solution, not part of their problem.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews, media, Zionism

Barack Obama has appointed Zbigniew Brzezinski as his advisor on foreign affairs:

Concerns have been raised among Israel supporters in the US following the appointment of a controversial veteran political advisor by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Last week, Obama introduced Zbigniew Brzezinski as “one of our most outstanding thinkers” during a policy speech in Iowa on the Iraq war.

Brzezinski, aged 79, has been selected by Obama to advise him on foreign policy affairs. Previously, he served as a national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter.

One of the most troubling aspects of Brzezinski’s appointment for allies of Israel is his defense of the book, ‘The Israel Lobby,’ authored by academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. — YNet

Brzezinski has always been far from a friend of Israel (just Google ‘Brzezinski Israel’ for citations). Either Obama knows this and shares his point of view, or he doesn’t know it. Either way, it’s bad.

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The target of the raid on Syria was probably a nuclear installation. Although none of the reports is completely authoritative and we don’t know exactly what was hit, the condemnation issued by North Korea — which generally doesn’t concern itself with events in the region — is suggestive. Here’s some speculation, to be taken with a large grain of salt.

The raid itself, along with the visible improvements in IDF preparedness, has increased Israel’s deterrent power in the region. See the comments of Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, head of Military Intelligence here. I’ve always argued that peace is best sought through strength, not concessions.

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It’s about time. The government of Israel is (we hope) taking seriously the problem of defending the home front and protecting its citizens:

The government decided Sunday to form a new governmental branch – the National Emergency Administration – to be put in charge of coordinating the various government, security, emergency and civil services in times of national crisis.

Formed as one of the lessons learnt from the Second Lebanon War, the administration would be designed to provide the home front with an immediate response in cases of war, mass emergencies or natural disasters. — YNet

It’s not enough to have superior offensive capabilities if the civilian population is exposed. This seems to be an initiative of Ehud Barak, the new Defense Minister, who appointed one-time IDF Chief of Staff Matan Vilna’i as a Deputy Minister and put him in charge of home front defense.

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Victor Davis Hanson’s column in today’s Fresno Bee:

A new virulent strain of the old anti-Semitism is spreading worldwide. This hate — of a magnitude not seen in more than 70 years — is not just espoused by Iran’s loony president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or radical jihadists.

The latest anti-Semitism is mouthed by world leaders and sophisticated politicians and academics. Their loathing often masquerades as “anti-Zionism” or “legitimate” criticism of Israel.

But the venom exclusively reserved for the Jewish state betrays their existential hatred.

Read the complete article here

You can also read why I think some forms of anti-Zionism are actually manifestations of antisemitism here.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Israel, Brzezinski, IDF, Syria, antisemitism, Hanson

The UN/EU attacks on Israel seem to be reaching new levels lately:

A UN conference, held at the European Parliament in Brussels, heard an array of speakers call for a boycott against Israel and strategize on ways to achieve its international isolation, during the first day of an event billed by organizers as a gathering to promote “Middle East peace”.

The ‘International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace’ has been organized by the UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and attracted political figures and pro-Palestinian members of non governmental organizations (NGOs).

…British Member of Parliament Clare Short said during her speech that Israel was not interested in a two-state solution, and blasted the EU for “allowing” Israel to build “an apartheid wall”. “The boycott worked for South Africa, it is time to do it again,” Short was quoted as saying…

Pierre Galand, European coordinator of the Committees and Associations for Palestine, claimed that the conference was taking place despite pressures to cancel it, and blamed the Fatah-Hamas conflict on “Israeli policy”. — YNet

So we have two of the major organizations which should be responsibly working to solve problems and promote peace, taking the side of the forces which are trying to use the Palestinians as a club to crush the Israeli state.

The behavior of the UN is not surprising, with its plethora of committees, divisions, special functionaries, etc., all of which exist simply to damage Israel. By hosting this conference, which was clearly designed as an anti-Israel tool, the EU too demonstrates that it is officially partisan in this regard.

The UN, meanwhile, continues to plan the “Durban II” conference on racism that will be held in 2009. With Libya chairing the planning committee, it’s hard to imagine that it will be friendly to Israel:

On Monday, Pakistan called for the 2009 conference, dubbed Durban II, to focus on the plight of Palestinians. A number of countries also spoke of expanding the definition of anti-Semitism to cover all Semitic people, i.e. Arabs. — Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

This Orwellian attempt to define Jew-hatred out of existence seems obviously wrong and remarkably stupid to me, but the fact that “a number of countries” support it indicates the true extent of the antisemitic mindset — in which this seems perfectly sensible — throughout the world.

Technorati Tags: UN, EU, Israel, antisemitism, anti-Semitism

By Vic Rosenthal

Some time ago I wrote about Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel (see The Church of Antisemitisim). Last night I had the opportunity to meet his wife.

Ingrid Rimland Zündel is of German Mennonite extraction; so it wasn’t surprising that she has been in our valley — home to many Mennonites — more than once. Last night she spoke at a local Mennonite church.

I went with some trepidation, imagining the place packed with skinheads and Jew-hating survivalists from the mountains. I invited retired newsman Murray Farber (known on the streets of New York as “fearless Farber” some 60-odd years ago) to accompany me. Both Murray and I had family members in Europe murdered by the Nazis.

I needn’t have worried. The only skinheads present were involuntary ones, older church members. There was a total of 13 people in the audience, including Murray and me. One of the reasons for this became clear in the parking lot, where we met the pastor of the church handing out flyers saying that the event was not sponsored by the church, and that the content did not reflect its (or his) views. He told us that he had done his best to discourage members from attending. One of the members of the congregation, an immigration lawyer who had represented Ernst Zündel when he was deported from the US, had been very persistent in promoting the event.

Mrs. Zündel appeared to be a pleasant woman in her sixties, and spoke about her husband’s difficulties with the authorities in Canada, the US, and Germany. He was persecuted unfairly and terribly, she said, because of his tireless work to spread the truth. This is not allowed because the Holocaust “myth” is a huge “cash cow”, used to extort reparations from Germany and sympathy for Jews and Israel in the US. It is a fraud and a hoax, she said.

“There is an enormous amount of money flowing to Israel because of the Holocaust; that’s why the US, Canada, and Germany spent so much money prosecuting my husband”, she explained.

She insisted that nobody was gassed at Auschwitz — Zyklon B was only used for delousing. Of course the Germans were very angry at the Jews (!), and many of them were shot because they were “collaborating with the enemy and sabotaging us”. Anyway, bullets were cheaper than gas. But only 278,000 died in Auschwitz, mostly from disease. “There was never a Fuehrer order” to kill the Jews. “It was not in Hitler’s interest” for PR reasons to have a genocide.

As she spoke and warmed to her subject, she stopped seeming like a pleasant woman to me. I began to feel the chill of the 1940’s, when my parents and grandparents gathered around the radio, listening to the news reports from Europe and wondering about their siblings and cousins (none of whom, we later determined, survived the war). I began to feel the presence of something very old and very bad.

Americans need to wake up, said Mrs. Zündel, before they lose their freedom as Ernst has. The Palestinians understand “this criminal racket” but most of the rest of the world is “brainwashed”. The judicial system has been “co-opted”. We have been lied to about the Kennedy assassinations, 9/11, Vince Foster, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Holocaust. “The truth can free the world if it comes out”.

“There will be no peace in the US until this weapon [the Holocaust] can be taken away from what is plaguing this country”. She didn’t specify exactly “what is plaguing this country”, but she didn’t need to at this point.

Murray asked her about the evidence presented at the Nuremberg trials. “Nuremberg was a tool that allowed Israel to be created”. What about the testimony of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss? “He made his confessions under torture”. What about the Wannasee conference? “All lies”.

The local lawyer who had organized the event spoke a bit afterwards. He said that one of the problems he had in getting attention paid to Ernst Zündel’s allegedly illegal treatment by the US authorities was that “immigration lawyers are predominately Jewish”, so they wouldn’t take the issue seriously. He added that there is a “high level of control of a certain segment of the community over the media”, which prevents the truth from being known.

Murray and I didn’t stay for the refreshments after the talk.

Technorati Tags: Fresno, Holocaust denial, Zundel, antisemitism, anti-Semitism