Prof. Alvin H. Rosenfeld created a great furor with his essay “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism” published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) (PDF downloadable from the AJC here). It seemed to me that his thesis — that there’s a lot of antisemitism out there and some of it is starting to come from left-wing Jews — was unexceptionable; but it triggered a remarkably violent response.
Archive for the ‘Antisemitism’ Category
Rosenfeld replies to his critics
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007Syrians hate without drawing distinctions
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007The distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism, much discussed in the West, is a distinction without a difference to many in the Arab world.
Nationalism, in the sense of Syrian, Egyptian, or lately, Iraqi, has never been a powerful force. Even broader Arab nationalism never caught on among peoples who were far more closely identified with ethnic and religious groupings. So it shouldn’t surprise us that Arabs don’t make a big distinction between Israel and the Jews.
Surreal item of the day
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007“Small packets of sugar bearing the likeness of Adolf Hitler and carrying Holocaust jokes have been found in some cafes in Croatia, prompting an investigation, the office of the state prosecutor said on Monday.” — YNet (Reuters)
Those Croatian jokers again!
The Church of Antisemitism
Thursday, February 15th, 2007By Vic Rosenthal
A German court on Thursday convicted far-right activist Ernst Zündel of incitement for denying the Holocaust, and sentenced him to the maximum five years in prison.
The 67-year-old, who was deported from Canada in 2005, was convicted on 14 counts of incitement for years of anti-Semitic activities, including denying the Holocaust, a crime in Germany, in documents and on the Internet. — Jerusalem Post
What can one say about a man who wrote a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why?
Possibly that he’s religious, in some sense. What is faith if not an obsessive insistence on maintaining a belief against all reason and logic, and doing one’s best to promulgate it in every possible way?
There are differences, of course, between the Church of Antisemitism and other religious faiths. For example, most organized belief systems generally recognized as religions do not consider bringing harm to a particular group of people a primary goal, and many (but not all) of them actually preach tolerance.
Zündel’s point of view, actually, seems to be a kind of devil worship (where Hitler is the closest thing most secular people have to a devil). Zündel, creative and intelligent, is also unquestionably evil.
Evil is an unfashionable concept these days, but it’s easy to understand it and impossible to deny its reality once you look at people like Zündel. One doesn’t have to be a religious person oneself to see this. And although as an American I place great value on freedom of speech (and of course Zündel’s actions would not be a crime here in the US), I certainly am pleased to see him punished by the Germans, who, like many Jews, learned something about the reality of evil from the war.
I’m convinced that evil is real, objective and not simply a way to characterize ‘the other side’. Creatures like Zündel and Arafat are proof of that.
Technorati Tags: Zundel, Zündel, evil, Holocaust denial, antisemitsm
Toaff has second thoughts
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007I recently wrote about Ariel Toaff, the Bar Ilan scholar who wrote a book suggesting that the medieval blood libels against Jews might have had some basis in fact.
Now he has suspend distribution of his book to “re-edit the passages which comprised the basis of the distortions and falsehoods that have been published in the media.†Apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that what he wrote could have been used for nefarious purposes.
Of course one can argue that antisemites will distort anything, but still it’s remarkable that in today’s climate he would have missed this.
Now, of course, we’ll hear that the ‘Jewish lobby’ has ‘silenced’ him.
Technorati Tags: Toaff, antisemitism
