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Hosni Mubarak as a Jew. In the Muslim Middle East there's no difference between hating Israel and hating Jews (the picture is from an Iranian site).

The Quote of the Week is back:

This … is what sets post-World War Two anti-Semitism apart from its historic roots. Today’s anti-Semitism is all about denial: denial of the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish movement to reclaim the land of Israel; denial of a Jewish history in connection to the holy land and, in particular, the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people; denial of the Holocaust (while at the same time accusing Jews of Nazism); and denial of Jews to live free of anti-Semitism, hate and intolerance. — Avi Benlolo, “Canada Gets Tough on Anti-Semitism“

In the Muslim Middle East, they don’t make fine distinctions. Antisemitism is indistinguishable from anti-Zionism. Most of the countries in the region have already gotten rid of their Jews, so of course they hate Israel — it’s the Jewish state, the last remaining pocket of Jews. They hate Jews and Israel alike, the people and the state that so humiliated them. And they have the tools to do so, traditional Quranic antisemitism and the imported, modern European variety.

In Egypt, where there are at most a hundred Jews today, practically nobody has met a Jew. Yet “Jew” was used as an epithet to shout at foreign journalists during protests, and it’s probably a rare Egyptian that hasn’t heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which was made into a TV series) or Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a runaway best-seller.

Here in North America, we speak more carefully. Our obsession with any form of racism — a reaction, I think, to both the very real anti-black racism that was institutionalized in the US until recently, and to the Holocaust — gives rise to a cultural taboo against saying anything even borderline antisemitic in public. The anti-Jewish animosity that people, including no small number of Jews, feel in their hearts expresses itself as ‘criticism’ of Israel, and political ‘criticism’ is allowed. What gives it away is the viciousness.

Everyone will admit that the situation of Israel is special. More media attention, way more UN resources devoted to attacking it, every mildly left-wing group calling for a boycott of it — sometimes I want to ask, “hey guys, aren’t there any other issues?”

There are other things that are explained by the relation between antisemitism and anti-Israel policies. For example, can anyone understand why the Palestinian Arabs, of all the ‘oppressed’ groups in the world (I was going to say ‘peoples’, but they are less a people than the Kurds or Tibetans) have become the overwhelming cause célèbre among progressives and other do-gooders?

For example, how about the Kurds? Jeffrey Goldberg reminds us:

Other stateless peoples deserve independence as well, even those who don’t have Jewish adversaries, without whom the Palestinians would be just another unhappy group of Muslims in search of a token measure of political satisfaction. In other words, they would be Kurds, except less numerous and less subjugated. Oh, if the Kurds only had Israel as an enemy, the UN might acknowledge their existence!

But of course they don’t, and it’s unlikely that the Security Council will be voting on independence for Kurdistan in the near future.

Technorati Tags: Israel, antisemitism

Caricature of Avigdor Lieberman as a Nazi pig, displayed in an Egyptian demonstration

To find something to illustrate this post, I googled ‘Egyptian antisemitic cartoons’. I got 152,000 images. I picked one that was colorful, though not as bloody as most of them (this one was done by a Belgian named Ben Heine, but was popular in Egyptian media and on posters).

If you were to ask an Egyptian why a slavering mob tore down a concrete wall and furiously hammered on an inner door (video here) just a few feet from six trapped Israeli security guards in order to try to tear them to pieces, they would likely say that they were furious over the death of several Egyptians during the recent terrorist attack near Eilat, and angry about Israel’s ‘treatment of Palestinians’.

Never mind that a) several of the terrorists were Egyptian citizens, b) seven Israeli Jews died in the attack which was launched from Egyptian soil, c) it’s quite likely that one of the Israeli casualties, police counterterrorism officer Pascal Avrahami, was murdered by Egyptian soldiers or police, and d) Israel apologized!

Oh, and never mind that the ‘treatment of Palestinians’ is a direct result of about 100 years of murder and terrorism directed at Jews and Israelis by Palestinian Arabs.

The guards were armed and probably would have killed dozens before being overwhelmed. Then Egypt would have demanded an apology.

Nothing affected me personally more than this story, here in the words of PM Netanyahu:

During this long night, we were required to make many difficult decisions.  I would like to share with you one conversation from this night.  On the line was Yonatan, the security officer of the Embassy.  He and his men, six in number, were trapped in the Embassy building.  The mob entered the building and entered the office.  Only one door separated between the mob and Yonatan and his friends.  He sounded perfectly calm to me, and on the other hand understood the situation in which he and his colleagues found themselves.

During the ongoing event, he requested from the security officer in the Foreign Ministry one thing:  If something happens to me, he said, my parents should be notified face to face, and not by telephone.   I got on the phone line and I said to him, “Yonatan, be strong.  I promise you that the State of Israel will do everything in its power and will use all possible resources in the world in order to rescue you and your friends unharmed and whole from this situation.”

And thank God this morning they all landed in Israel.  A short while ago I spoke with Yonatan and his mother.  They sounded wonderful.

There is more than one story of what happened to Jews who were not so lucky. There was the lynching of the two reserve soldiers who accidentally drove into Ramallah (video here), and countless attempted murders in which Jewish Israelis were stoned or stabbed (horrifying video here).

Why do Egyptians and Palestinian Arabs, despite ‘peace’ treaties, hate Jews so much? The answer is simple: they are fed a constant diet of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda, by their leadership and by all Arab media. Here’s the way ‘peace’ is implemented:

1. An Arab entity like the Egyptian government or the PLO makes a ‘peace’ agreement with Israel. Israel makes concrete concessions, like returning the Sinai to Egypt, or allowing the PLO to return from exile and set up a government. The ‘international community’ makes massive aid payments to the Arabs. The Arabs commit (in English) to peace with Israel, and explicitly agree to stop hateful incitement.
2. The Arabs, officially and unofficially, ramp up incitement. Palestinian media glorifies terrorists and broadcasts the most horrible slanders against Jews and Israel. Egypt produces a TV series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and an Arabic version of Mein Kampf is a best-seller.
3. When the Arab masses inevitably explode in violence, the leadership blames ‘Israel’s treatment of Palestinians’, etc.

There are cultural factors that make this possible. The idea that a Jew could kill or humiliate an Arab under any circumstances is guaranteed to drive them wild. Arab politicians understand this, and it is always useful to divert unhappiness about the lack of food or jobs into anti-Israeli channels.

Israel and the West have made an error by ignoring the incitement, treating it as peripheral and unimportant. It is actually essential — if the Israel/Egypt peace treaty is abrogated, it will be a direct result of the incitement.

Update [12/3/2011 2301 PST]: added the information about the cartoonist, plus the fact that Israel apologized.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Egypt, Israeli embassy, Cairo

Richard Falk is the “UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” and has been viciously anti-Israel (as befits his mandate, which is to investigate “Israel’s violations of the bases and principles of international law”).  For what it’s worth Falk is also a “9/11 Truther” who believes that the Bush Administration was complicit in the attacks on 9/11.

Anyway, UN Watch caught Falk with an antisemitic cartoon on his blog the other day:

Cartoon from Falk's blog, showing Jewish-American dog chewing on a child's bones while urinating on 'Justice'

Falk first denied that he had posted the cartoon, then deleted it, and ultimately admitted that he had posted it without realizing that it was antisemitic. His ‘apology’ is fascinating:

With apologies, I realize that the cartoon that originally appeared on my blog devoted to the arrest warrants for Qaddafi and two others issued by the ICC had strongly anti-semitic symbolism that I had not detected before it was pointed out to me. I posted the cartoon to express my view that double standards pertained to the American and ICC approach to international criminal accountability. As soon as I was made aware of the anti-semitic content of the cartoon I removed it from my blog, although initially I denied such a posting because I did not realize that it was anti-semitic and was mistaken as to what was being referred to…

To be clear, I oppose any denigration of a people based on ethnicity, race, religion, stage of development, and believe in the human dignity of all people in their individual and collective identity. Beyond this, if we are to have a sustainable human future we must also make peace with nature, and treat animals with as much respect as possible…

Perhaps I’m missing something, but is Falk actually apologizing to dogs for comparing them to Jews or Israelis? It certainly seems that way!

Did I add that Falk is of Jewish ancestry and has described himself as “an American Jew?” But he was unable to detect antisemitism in the cartoon?

Nothing shows the truly abominable nature of the UN more than the fact that it is prepared to employ such as Falk. He is absolutely perfect for the job, combining the antisemitism and anti-Zionism of a third-world thug with a distinguished academic career to lend him an air of respectability.

Although I’m not a psychologist, the evidence of mental unbalance in this man is beyond question. Even the UN ought to be ashamed — although UN Watch reports that his term was “quietly renewed” this March.

Perhaps he’s as crazy as a loon, but apparently he’s a useful loon.

Technorati Tags: Richard Falk, UN

Recently I wrote a post about an obtuse remark by the British Foreign Secretary, which I called ‘Perfidious Albion‘. So I can’t use that title again. Too bad.

News item:

MK Amir Peretz narrowly managed to escape an arrest warrant issued for him in London this past weekend on suspicion of committing war crimes during the Lebanon War…

It’s almost funny –  some would suggest that rather than arrest him, they should have given a medal to the man who was probably the least qualified Minister of Defense in Israel’s history.

Famous 2006 photo of Amir Peretz scanning the skies through capped binoculars

But is is not funny at all that Israeli officials (Tzipi Livni and retired Maj.-Gen. Doron Almog had similar issues) cannot safely visit the UK. Although the British government promised to solve the problem, apparently they can’t or don’t wish to.

I’m sure most of my readers know about the history of Anglo-Israeli relations. After Lord Balfour — whose Zionism stemmed primarily from his Christian restorationist belief — it was all downhill, as Britain did its best to subvert the Mandate for a Jewish National Home in Palestine, reaching a nadir with the White Paper of 1939, which called for Jews to die in Europe rather than upset British plans for the Mideast.

Or maybe the nadir was reached in 1948, when the British detained men of military age in Cyprus, supplied arms to the Arabs, trained and led Jordan’s Arab Legion, and used their aircraft to spy on Israel’s armies for the Arabs’ benefit. Or when they stood by and watched (or worse) the massacre of the Hadassah medical convoy that April. Or perhaps when they planned to go to war with Israel on behalf of Jordan in 1954.

Remains of the Hadassah medical convoy. 79 people, mostly doctors and nurses, were murdered by Arabs on April 13, 1948. British troops, for the most part, stood aside until it was too late, and may even have prevented the Hagana from coming to the rescue.

It was a long time ago, perhaps, but I don’t think fundamental attitudes have changed.  Today, with the addition of millions of relatively militant ‘Asians’ — Muslims, mostly from Pakistan — who live in the UK, there are more reasons for British policy to be anti-Israel. And the distinction between Israel-haters and Jew-haters, always somewhat blurry, seems to be mostly gone as the two groups have become more or less coextensive.

In a 2005 article, Jonathan Rosenblum described the way British elites, the BBC, etc. have legitimized antisemitic discourse:

A few years back, Penelope Wyatt reported in the Spectator the remark of a liberal peer, “Thank God, we can once again say what we want about the Jews.” More recently, a liberal commentator tried to reassure Melanie Phillips that there has been no upsurge in anti-Semitism. No, he explained helpfully, the anti-Semitism has always been there. What is changed now is that the taboos against its expression have fallen.

“What you have to understand is that we are just so relieved that we don’t have to worry about the Jews any more. Ever since the war we were told that because of their suffering, the Jews were above criticism. But now [thanks to Israel] that’s no longer the case,” he said.

It goes way back, as far as the period immediately following the Norman Conquest, according to Anthony Julius, who wrote a massive book called “Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England” documenting the metamorphoses of antisemitism over the centuries. The more it changes — taking religious, racial and political forms, says Julius, the more it stays the same, hearkening back to similar images and themes. The blood libels of the eleventh century aren’t that different from that expressed by the cartoon that won an award from the British Political Cartoon Society in 2003, that shows Ariel Sharon biting the head off of an Arab baby.

Tim Benson, president of the Political Cartoon Society, holds offensive cartoon. Benson, who is Jewish, claimed to be mystified by the controversy.

It’s another story, but Tim Benson, the Society’s Jewish President was, er, outraged by the outrage:

Mr Benson said the cartoon was a criticism of Mr Sharon and his policies, not a harangue against Jews. “I’m probably the most hated person in British Jewry now,” he said. “Jewish groups around the world are up in arms. These hysterical idiots are coming onto my site and calling me a Nazi. Do they not want people to have the freedom to express themselves?

“You couldn’t meet a nicer guy than Dave Brown. Cartoonists depict George Bush and Tony Blair in exactly the same way. If a cartoonist attacks the Israeli prime minister, it’s not necessarily anti-Semitic. Dave left the Star of David off the helicopters in the background.

Benson, of course, massively missed the point, which is that Sharon’s policies did not involve killing children. So why this image?

The answer, of course, is that it gets its power precisely by ringing an ancient bell, one that is deeply embedded in the perfidious British soul.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Britain, antisemitism

Scene from Berlin, 1933, as Nazis call for boycott of Jewish shops.

Barry Rubin has a well-targeted piece today about the all-too-frequent incompetence of the press, especially in matters relating to Israel or Jews. It’s illustrated in part by a 1935 article from, where else, the NY Times:

After [describing how] Hitler excluded Jews from German citizenship and prohibited marriages between Jews and “Aryans,” (known in history as the Nuremberg laws) the article continued:

“The new laws, while in line with the anti-Semitism which has been a large part of the Fuhrer’s inspiration from the beginning are no doubt to be taken as encouragement to the Radical wing of the party….The best to be said of the new laws is that they may offer German Jewry the process of law in place of arbitrary bullying and local tyranny.”

So there you have it: Hitler was trying to appease the radical Nazis and the Nuremberg laws offered Jews some legal recourse.

This made me think about the remarkable parallelism between the antisemites’ treatment of Jews and the way the anti-Zionist world (that’s most of it today) relates to Israel, not by accident called the “Jew among nations.”

How many times have you heard that Israel should preemptively surrender to Arab demands lest ‘extremists’ disrupt the ‘peace process’? Or that ‘the world is getting tired’ of the endless conflict, and so Israel must hurry up and give up some aspect of its sovereignty before the world does it for them? President Obama played on this theme in his May 19 speech (“The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome.”)

Former CIA agent Robert Grenier made the following argument recently for Israel to immediately end construction east of the Green Line :

…the longer Israeli delay and obfuscation persisted, the more Palestinian willingness and political cover to engage in the process would be undermined, reinforcing the popular Palestinian conviction that the point of any process was to mute their resistance and play them for dupes, in an effort to gain time for their complete dispossession.

Permanently stop the settlements, however, and the whole negotiating dynamic changes. Rather than being motivated to delay, the Israelis suddenly become motivated to agree on permanent borders, so that they can continue building where it is legitimate to do so.

This is almost precisely the same argument as that in the Times of 1935! Give up your rights — then at least you’ll know what’s permitted you.

The delegitimization and isolation of Israel today is similar to that experienced German Jews in the 1930’s. One of the first anti-Jewish acts of the new Nazi government in 1933 was a boycott of Jewish shops and professionals. Jewish academics soon lost their jobs. Jews were constantly vilified in the official and unofficial media, blamed for every failure and problem in Germany. Jews were described as vermin (and what do you do to vermin?) When they were persecuted, they were blamed for their own persecution; when they defended themselves they were attacked even more furiously. Incidents were created (think of the Mavi Marmara) to serve as excuses for further victimization. Finally, Jews were expelled from their homes and forced to live in ghettos. Everyone knows the rest.

Replace ‘Jews’ by ‘Israel’ and ‘Germany’ by ‘the Middle East’ in the above, and every word resonates today.

The analogy of antisemitism to a virus can be overdone. But here it can be useful: the horrors of the Holocaust served to immunize the world, to some extent, against classical antisemitism. There are even laws against antisemitic expression in some countries; antibodies, if you will. But viruses mutate in order to neutralize the effect of antibodies. So if calling Jews ‘vermin’ is no longer acceptable, anything at all can be said about Israel. Antisemitism mutated into anti-Zionism, and now it is multiplying unchecked.

But don’t be fooled: the objective of the delegitimization campaign has not changed since the 1930’s. It isn’t about getting rights for Palestinian Arabs. It’s about getting rid of Israel, and the Jewish people.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews, delegitimization