Personal note:
This is insane. Anti-Semitism is approximately the most unjustifiable
prejudice in
human history and despite all the lessons of WWII it still persists. For
this we
can thank not only the traditional bogeyman, loonies of the far Right, who
are
no more than maybe a fourth of the anti-Semitic crowd these days, but the
political Left as a whole despite some exceptions, and a growing Muslim
population all over the continent. In case some people actually believe
establishment propaganda to another effect, Islam, starting with the Koran
itself,
is predicated on virulent anti-Jewish bigotry.
The Left has been abetted by diseased intellectuals like the late Edward
Said,
but the problem goes much deeper. The Left is thoroughly anti-Christian
now,
very unlike the situation in years past when Socialism could even be
considered
-at least in Britain and the USA- as a modern form of Christianity. But
that era
is gone and in its place is vehement hatred of Christian faith. Since Jews
are part
of "Judeo-Christian culture" they are easy targets because they are a
minority
in most countries; they are, in effect, substitutes for Christians, whom
the Left
is often reluctant to confront because of their far greater political
strength.
Yet, while this accounts for some of the phenomenon it hardly explains all
of it.
It seems to be the case that, since some time in the 1990s, the Left began
to attract bigots in ever increasing numbers. Why are bigots attracted to
the Left?
Maybe because the Left now harbors a set of values derived directly from
Cultural Marxism that depend upon closed mindedness, upon conspiracy
theories (although there is plenty of that on the Right also), and upon
hate of "the other." For the time being this rough analysis will have to
suffice.
But for the record, I regard anti-Semitism as idiotic, retarded, stupid,
and sick.
This is not some kind of free pass for Jews who are idiots or criminals,
or worse;
when criticism is due it should be given. But blatant anti-Jewish prejudice
is indefensible from any perspective. I regard anti-Semites as utter fools
who deserve not only rebuke but uncompromising repudiation.
Billy R.
=================================
Antisemitism on rise across Europe 'in worst times since the Nazis'
Jon Henley ("The Guardian," August 7, 2014)
In the space of just one week last month, according to Crif, the umbrella
group for France's Jewish organisations, eight synagogues were attacked.
One, in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, was firebombed by a 400-strong mob. A
kosher supermarket and pharmacy were smashed and looted; the crowd's chants
and banners included "Death to Jews" and "Slit Jews' throats". That same
weekend, in the Barbes neighbourhood of the capital, stone-throwing
protesters burned Israeli flags: "Israhell", read one banner.
In Germany last month, molotov cocktails were lobbed into the Bergische
synagogue in Wuppertal – previously destroyed on Kristallnacht – and a Berlin
imam, Abu Bilal Ismail, called on Allah to "destroy the Zionist Jews …
Count them and kill them, to the very last one." Bottles were thrown through
the window of an antisemitism campaigner in Frankfurt; an elderly Jewish man
was beaten up at a pro-Israel rally in Hamburg; an Orthodox Jewish
teenager punched in the face in Berlin. In several cities, chants at
pro-Palestinian protests compared Israel's actions to the Holocaust; other
notable
slogans included: "Jew, coward pig, come out and fight alone," and "Hamas,
Hamas, Jews to the gas."
Across Europe, the conflict in Gaza is breathing new life into some very
old, and very ugly, demons. This is not unusual; police and Jewish civil
rights organisations have long observed a noticeable spike in antisemitic
incidents each time the Israeli-Palestinian conflict flares. During the three
weeks of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009, France
recorded 66 antisemitic incidents, including attacks on Jewish-owned
restaurants and synagogues and a sharp increase in anti-Jewish graffiti.But
according to academics and Jewish leaders, this time it is different. More
than
simply a reaction to the conflict, they say, the threats, hate speech and
violent attacks feel like the expression of a much deeper and more widespread
antisemitism, fuelled by a wide range of factors, that has been growing now
for more than a decade.
"These are the worst times since the Nazi era," Dieter Graumann, president
of Germany's Central Council of Jews, told the Guardian. "On the streets,
you hear things like 'the Jews should be gassed', 'the Jews should be
burned' – we haven't had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those
slogans
isn't criticising Israeli politics, it's just pure hatred against Jews:
nothing else. And it's not just a German phenomenon. It's an outbreak of
hatred against Jews so intense that it's very clear indeed."
Roger Cukierman, president of France's Crif, said French Jews were
"anguished" about an anti-Jewish backlash that goes far beyond even strongly
felt
political and humanitarian opposition to the current fighting: "They are
not screaming 'Death to the Israelis' on the streets of Paris," Cukierman said
last month. "They are screaming 'Death to Jews'." Crif's vice-president
Yonathan Arfi said he "utterly rejected" the view that the latest increase in
antisemitic incidents was down to events in Gaza. "They have laid bare
something far more profound," he said.
Nor is it just Europe's Jewish leaders who are alarmed. Germany's
chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called the recent incidents "an attack on
freedom and
tolerance and our democratic state". The French prime minister, Manuel
Valls, has spoken of "intolerable" and clearly antisemitic acts: "To attack a
Jew because he is a Jew is to attack France. To attack a synagogue and a
kosher grocery store is quite simply antisemitism and racism".
France, whose 500,000-strong Jewish community is one of Europe's largest,
and Germany, where the post-war exhortation of "Never Again" is part of the
fabric of modern society, are not alone. In Austria last month, a
pre-season friendly between Maccabi Haifa and German Bundesliga team SC
Paderborn
had to be rescheduled after the Israeli side's previous match was called off
following an attempted assault on its players.
The Netherlands' main antisemitism watchdog, Cidi, had more than 70 calls
from alarmed Jewish citizens in one week last month; the average is normally
three to five. An Amsterdam rabbi, Binjamin Jacobs, had his front door
stoned, and two Jewish women were attacked – one beaten, the other the victim
of arson – after they hung Israeli flags from their balconies. In Belgium,
a woman was reportedly turned away from a shop with the words: "We don't
currently sell to Jews."
In Italy, the Jewish owners of dozens of shops and other businesses in Rome
arrived to find swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans daubed on shutters and
windows. One slogan read: "Every Palestinian is like a comrade. Same enemy.
Same barricade"; another: "Jews, your end is near." Abd al-Barr al-Rawdhi,
an imam from the north eastern town of San Donà di Piave, is to be deported
after being video-recorded giving a sermon calling for the extermination
of the Jews.
There has been no violence in Spain, but the country's small Jewish
population of 35,000-40,000 fears the situation is so tense that "if it
continues
for too long, bad things will happen," the leader of Madrid's Jewish
community, David Hatchwell, said. The community is planning action against El
Mundo after the daily paper published a column by 83-year-old playwright
Antonio Gala questioning Jews' ability to live peacefully with others: "It's
not
strange they have been so frequently expelled."
Studies suggest antisemitism may indeed be mounting. A 2012 survey by the
EU's by the Fundamental Rights agency of some 6,000 Jews in eight European
countries – between them, home to 90% of Europe's Jewish population – found
66% of respondents felt antisemitism in Europe was on the rise; 76% said
antisemitism had increased in their country over the past five years. In the
12 months after the survey, nearly half said they worried about being
verbally insulted or attacked in public because they were Jewish.
Jewish organisations that record antisemitic incidents say the trend is
inexorable: France's Society for the Protection of the Jewish Community says
annual totals of antisemitic acts in the 2000s are seven times higher than
in the 1990s. French Jews are leaving for Israel in greater numbers, too,
for reasons they say include antisemitism and the electoral success of the
hard-right Front National. The Jewish Agency for Israel said 3,288 French
Jews left for Israel in 2013, a 72% rise on the previous year. Between January
and May this year, 2,254 left, against 580 in the same period last year.
In a study completed in February, America's Anti-Defamation League surveyed
332,000 Europeans using an index of 11 questions designed to reveal
strength of anti-Jewish stereotypes. It found that 24% of Europeans – 37% in
France, 27% in Germany, 20% in Italy – harboured some kind of anti-Jewish
attitude.
So what is driving the phenomenon? Valls, the French prime minister, has
acknowledged a "new", "normalised" antisemitism that he says blends "the
Palestinian cause, jihadism, the devastation of Israel, and hatred of France
and its values".
Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust, a London-based charity that
monitors antisemitism both in Britain and on the continent, also identifies
a range of factors. Successive conflicts in the Middle East he said, have
served up "a crush of trigger events" that has prevented tempers from
cooling: the second intifada in 2000, the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006, and the
three Israel–Hamas conflicts in 2009, 2012 and 2014 have "left no time for the
situation to return to normal." In such a climate, he added, three brutal
antisemitic murders in the past eight years – two in France, one in
Belgium, and none coinciding with Israeli military action – have served "not
to
shock, but to encourage the antisemites", leaving them "seeking more blood
and intimidation, not less".
In 2006, 23-year old Ilan Halimi was kidnapped, tortured and left for dead
in Paris by a group calling itself the Barbarians Gang, who subsequently
admitted targeting him "because he was a Jew, so his family would have
money". Two years ago, in May 2012, Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah shot dead
seven
people, including three children and a young rabbi outside their Jewish
school. And in May this year Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman of Algerian descent
thought to have recently returned to France after a year in Syria fighting
with radical Islamists, was charged with shooting four people at the
Jewish museum in Brussels.
If the French establishment has harboured a deep vein of anti-Jewish
sentiment since long before the Dreyfus affair, the influence of radical Islam,
many Jewish community leaders say, is plainly a significant contributing
factor in the country's present-day antisemitism. But so too, said Gardner, is
a straightforward alienation that many young Muslims feel from society.
"Often it's more to do with that than with Israel. Many would as soon burn
down a police station as a synagogue. Jews are simply identified as part of
the establishment."
While he stressed it would be wrong to lay all the blame at the feet of
Muslims, Peter Ulrich, a research fellow at the centre for antisemitism
research (ZfA) at Berlin's Technical University, agreed that some of the
"antisemitic elements" Germany has seen at recent protests could be "a kind of
rebellion of people who are themselves excluded on the basis of racist
structures."
Arfi said that in France antisemitism had become "a portmanteau for a lot
of angry people: radical Muslims, alienated youths from immigrant families,
the far right, the far left". But he also blamed "a process of
normalisation, whereby antisemitism is being made somehow acceptable". One
culprit,
Arfi said, is the controversial comedian Dieudonné: "He has legitimised it.
He's made acceptable what was unacceptable."
A similar normalisation may be under way in Germany, according to a 2013
study by the Technical University of Berlin. In 14,000 hate-mail letters,
emails and faxes sent over 10 years to the Israeli embassy in Berlin and the
Central Council of Jews in Germany, Professor Monika Schwarz-Friesel found
that 60% were written by educated, middle-class Germans, including
professors, lawyers, priests and university and secondary school students.
Most,
too, were unafraid to give their names and addresses – something she felt few
Germans would have done 20 or 30 years ago.
Almost every observer pointed to the unparalleled power of unfiltered
social media to inflame and to mobilise. A stream of shocking images and
Twitter
hashtags, including #HitlerWasRight, amount, Arfi said, almost to
indoctrination. "The logical conclusion, in fact, is radicalisation: on social
media people self-select what they see, and what they see can be pure,
unchecked propaganda. They may never be confronted with opinions that are not
their
own."
Additional reporting by Josie Le Blond in Berlin, Kim Willsher in Paris,
John Hooper in Rome and Ashifa Kassam in Madrid
• This article was amended on Friday 8 August to correct the name of the
Madrid Jewish community leader David Hatchwell. This article was further
amended to correct the numbers of Jews who left France for Israel in 2013.
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