'TV 2 Norway investigate Norwegian anti-Semitism. The word “Jew” is a common insult in many communities in Norway. What role does the neo-Nazis’, muslim immigrations and the – BDS (boycott Israel) movement play – if any? And: Can old prejudices be joked away?'
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| Leftist brainwashing for little kiddies; see here |
"Yes I am. It is happening in Barcelona ..."
"It does concern me, but in Australia it's not as bad as the USA or Europe."Such naivity. Such ignorance. Evidently, those respondents are unaware of the findings of the recently-published study by University of Oslo academic Dr Johannes Due Enstad entitled Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015, which finds Muslims, not the far right, chiefly responsible for antisemitic hate crimes in every country except Russia.
'....Who is responsible for the attacks on Jews? In every country studied, except for Russia, the perpetrators are disproportionately of Muslim backgrounds. A British study cited in the University of Oslo report notes that the proportion of Muslim perpetrators increases in the wake of “trigger events” in the Middle East.
In what might be considered a clumsy attempt to downplay anti-Semitism, German authorities do not classify anti-Israeli incidents as anti-Semitism. This results in absurdity. A Muslim firebombing of a synagogue can be classified as an anti-Israeli event, but not anti-Semitic. If any country should know better, it should be Germany. Is Kristallnacht going to be reinterpreted as not anti-Semitism, but a demonstration for racial purity?
The only country where anti-Semitic incidents are not disproportionately perpetrated by Muslims is Russia, and it is the only country in the University of Oslo study where Jews do not fear to express their Jewish identity when appearing in public. This appears to perplex the study’s author, as Russia contains both large Jewish and Muslim populations.
Yet the issue is easily resolved. In Russia, the large Muslim and Jewish populations live in the same country, but are generally separated by a vast expanse of land. Most Muslims live in the Eurasian Caucasus region. Most Jews live in Moscow and Saint Petersburg....'See also Bruce Bawer here
"Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about antisemites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else....
The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe. And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyze a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why antisemites are convinced that they are not antisemitic.
First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticizing Israel is not antisemitism.
I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands.
Then I asked, Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did....
The new antisemitism has mutated so that any practitioner of it can deny that he or she is an antisemite. After all, they’ll say, I’m not a racist. I have no problem with Jews or Judaism. I only have a problem with the State of Israel. But in a world of 56 Muslim nations and 103 Christian ones, there is only one Jewish state, Israel, which constitutes one-quarter of one per cent of the land mass of the Middle East. Israel is the only one of the 193 member nations of the United Nations that has its right to exist regularly challenged, with one state, Iran, and many, many other groups, committed to its destruction.
Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. The form this takes today is anti-Zionism.
Of course, there is a difference between Zionism and Judaism, and between Jews and Israelis, but this difference does not exist for the new antisemites themselves. It was Jews not Israelis who were murdered in terrorist attacks in Toulouse, Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen.
Anti-Zionism is the antisemitism of our time. [Emphasis added, here and below]
In the Middle Ages Jews were accused of poisoning wells, spreading the plague, and killing Christian children to use their blood. In Nazi Germany they were accused of controlling both capitalist America and communist Russia.
Today they are accused of running ISIS as well as America. All the old myths have been recycled, from the Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The cartoons that flood the Middle East are clones of those published in Der Sturmer one of the primary vehicles of Nazi propaganda between 1923 and 1945.
The ultimate weapon of the new antisemitism is dazzling in its simplicity. It goes like this.
The Holocaust must never happen again. But Israelis are the new Nazis; the Palestinians are the new Jews; all Jews are Zionists. Therefore the real antisemites of our time are none other than the Jews themselves.
And these are not marginal views. They are widespread throughout the Muslim world, including communities in Europe, and they are slowly infecting the far left, the far right, academic circles, unions, and even some churches.
Having cured itself of the virus of antisemitism, Europe is being reinfected by parts of the world that never went through the self-reckoning that Europe undertook once the facts of the Holocaust became known.
How do such absurdities come to be believed? This is a vast and complex subject, and I have written a book about it, but the simplest explanation is this. When bad things happen to a group, its members can ask one of two questions: “What did we do wrong?” or “Who did this to us?” The entire fate of the group will depend on which it chooses.
If it asks, “What did we do wrong?” it has begun the self-criticism essential to a free society. If it asks, “Who did this to us?” it has defined itself as a victim. It will then seek a scapegoat to blame for all its problems. Classically this has been the Jews.
Antisemitism is a form of cognitive failure, and it happens when groups feel that their world is spinning out of control. It began in the Middle Ages, when Christians saw that Islam had defeated them in places they regarded as their own, especially Jerusalem. That was when, in 1096, on their way to the Holy Land, the Crusaders stopped first to massacre Jewish communities in Northern Europe. It was born in the Middle East in the 1920s with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Antisemitism re-emerged in Europe in the 1870s during a period of economic recession and resurgent nationalism.
And it is re-appearing in Europe now for the same reasons: recession, nationalism, and a backlash against immigrants and other minorities. Antisemitism happens when the politics of hope gives way to the politics of fear, which quickly becomes the politics of hate.
This then reduces complex problems to simplicities. It divides the world into black and white, seeing all the fault on one side and all the victimhood on the other. It singles out one group among a hundred offenders for the blame. The argument is always the same. We are innocent; they are guilty. It follows that if we are to be free, they, the Jews or the state of Israel, must be destroyed. That is how the great crimes begin.
Jews were hated because they were different. They were the most conspicuous non-Christian minority in a Christian Europe. Today they are the most conspicuous non-Muslim presence in an Islamic Middle East. Antisemitism has always been about the inability of a group to make space for difference. No group that adopts it will ever, can ever, create a free society.
So I end where I began. The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. Antisemitism is only secondarily about Jews. Primarily it is about the failure of groups to accept responsibility for their own failures, and to build their own future by their own endeavours. No society that has fostered antisemitism has ever sustained liberty or human rights or religious freedom. Every society driven by hate begins by seeking to destroy its enemies, but ends by destroying itself.
Europe today is not fundamentally antisemitic. But it has allowed antisemitism to enter via the new electronic media. It has failed to recognize that the new antisemitism is different from the old.
We are not today back in the 1930s. But we are coming close to 1879, when Wilhelm Marr founded the League of Anti-Semites in Germany; to 1886 when Édouard Drumont published La France Juive; and 1897 when Karl Lueger became Mayor of Vienna.
These were key moments in the spread of antisemitism, and all we have to do today is to remember that what was said then about Jews is being said today about the Jewish State.
The history of Jews in Europe has not always been a happy one. Europe’s treatment of the Jews added certain words to the human vocabulary: disputation, forced conversion, inquisition, expulsion, auto da fe, ghetto, pogrom and Holocaust, words written in Jewish tears and Jewish blood. Yet for all that, Jews loved Europe and contributed to it some of its greatest scientists, writers, academics, musicians, shapers of the modern mind.
If Europe lets itself be dragged down that road again, this will be the story told in times to come. First they came for the Jews. Then for the Christians. Then for the gays. Then for the atheists. Until there was nothing left of Europe’s soul but a distant, fading memory.
Today I have tried to give voice to those who have no voice. I have spoken on behalf of the murdered Roma, Sinti, gays, dissidents, the mentally and physically handicapped, and a million and a half Jewish children murdered because of their grandparents’ religion. In their name, I say to you: You know where the road ends. Don’t go down there again.
You are the leaders of Europe. Its future is in your hands. If you do nothing, Jews will leave, European liberty will die, and there will be a moral stain on Europe’s name that all eternity will not erase.
Stop it now while there is still time."Read the entire transcript here
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| Not the Gaelic lingo ... |
'Successive Israeli governments have failed miserably to meet the challenge of global anti-Semitism, not providing the leadership demanded of a Jewish state in these turbulent times and leaving Diaspora Jews to their own devices.
The global anti-Semitic tsunami, an unprecedented surge of feral hostility compounded by the Internet, emanates from a combination of factors: rabid Muslim anti-Semitism and violence, demonical anti-Israelism of the Left, and traditional cultural and radical Jew-hatred of the Right. It has impacted on Jewish communities everywhere but ironically is most acute in Europe, the continent drenched with Jewish blood during the Holocaust....
In the United States, the Goldene Medina, despite the strong public and congressional support for Israel, many Jews are stunned by the anti-Israeli hysteria generated by the Left and some liberal media and shocked by the toxic levels of anti-Semitism displayed on many college campuses.....
.Overall, Diaspora Jews are under enormous stress, confused and frequently divided as how to respond to the upsurge of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic onslaughts.
The global Jewish bodies purporting to combat these vicious trends all have limitations and have proven unable to provide the necessary direction on a global basis....
It is now crucial to create an umbrella organization to serve as an ongoing forum to exchange views, provide direction, and determine and coordinate global strategies against anti-Semitism....
But this project should not merely be perceived as a support for Diaspora Jewry. Israel itself has a major vested interest in creating such a global consultative body. We are currently being overwhelmed in the war of ideas and it is incumbent upon us to identify the anti-Semitic elements in the campaigns that seek to demonize us.
As severe as it is, anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism in Europe and most countries is more rampant at the grass-roots level than is currently reflected in government policies. Should we fail to reverse the tide, governments pressured by their Muslim communities and other constituents increasingly radicalized against Israel will inevitably lead to a further downgrading of relations with Israel...."Read Isi Leibler's entire article here
'Seventy years after the Holocaust, the antisemitic virus has re-emerged from the extreme margins of society to which it had been banished after the Holocaust. Not only is antisemitism out in the open, it is brazenly public and proud. The main difference between 1930s antisemitism and the 21st century strain is that in the 1930s it was governments and politicians which incited the hatred and perpetrated the murder. Today, the perpetrators are a combination of the far Right, the anti-Zionist Left, and major segments of Europe’s Muslim population....
Having been predominantly either bystanders or perpetrators during the Nazi attempt to murder every Jew in Europe, Europeans are again in a situation where their Jewish citizens are on the edge of another great abyss. The question remains: How will they respond this time? Will they acquire the backbone to defend and protect their Jewish citizens against murderous anti-Jewish ideologies? Or will they take the easy, but self-destructive, route and excuse the antisemites, appease the murderous ideology at work in Europe and elsewhere, and watch silently as the Jews are driven from Europe’s shores over the coming decade? '
'The Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, has condemned the attack on Jews as an attack on democracy. The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, last month expressed concern at the growing numbers of Jews emigrating from France as they flee antisemitic violence. Even the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, expressed concern that Jews, no longer feeling safe in Britain, are preparing to leave. Other countries in Europe are also facing growing antisemitic violence and are having difficulty protecting their Jewish citizens against harassment, assault, bombings and murder.
In Belgium, the Jewish Museum in Brussels was attacked and four people murdered in May 2014. In 2013, the last remaining Jewish school in Brussels instructed its students to remove their kippot (Jewish religious head covering) on their way to and from school, and only wear it safely within the confines of the fortress-like school building, due to the threat of physical attack.
In Holland, in late 2010, Frits Bolkestein, a prominent Dutch politician, advised Jews to leave Holland as it is no longer safe for Jews to live there. Earlier that year, the police in Holland had instituted a system of décoy police, where Dutch policeman dressed up as Orthodox Jews and walked the streets, in a bid to arrest or deter those who would assault Jews.
In Denmark in 2009, a school refused to enrol Jewish students as it could not protect them from harassment and assault. Other Danish school principals supported the move. In Norway, a survey by the Oslo Municipality in 2011 found that 33% of Jewish students in the town were physically threatened or abused by other high school teens at least two to three times a month. The groups that suffered the next highest amount of bullying were Buddhists at 10%, “Others” at 7%, and Muslims at 5%.
In Sweden, the Mayor of Malmo, where many Swedish Jews live, blamed the Jews themselves for assaults on Jews and firebombings of synagogues. Last year, a planned city walk by Jews and non-Jews to protest antisemitism in Sweden had to be cancelled due to security threats and the inability of police to ensure their safety.
France has experienced the most egregious acts of antisemitic violence in Europe since World War Two. In 2006, a young French Jew, Ilan Halimi, of North African background was kidnapped and tortured for three weeks for being a Jew. He died of his injuries. His attackers were French Muslims, also of North African background. In Toulouse in 2012, a rabbi and three Jewish children, aged under nine, were shot dead at a Jewish school by Mohammed Merah, a French Muslim of North African background. Jews comprise only 1% of the French population, yet 50% of racist attacks in France are against Jews....
A study in Europe in 2013 found that “26% of Jews have suffered from antisemitic harassment at least once in the past year, 34% experienced such harassment in the past five years, 5% reported that their property was intentionally vandalized because they are Jewish, about 7% were physically hurt or threatened in the past five years.” These figures do not include the acts of violence and vandalism of synagogues and other Jewish communal institutions.
Despite the focus on Islamophobia by the media and in political discourse over the last fifteen years, the reality is that attacks against Muslims are significantly less frequent than attacks against Jews. The evidence produced through studies by anti-hate organizations, police reports on hate crimes, and monitors of internet hate, show that the major targets of abuse and violence in Europe are Jews....
In Britain, the Scottish government compiles extensive reports on hate crimes from police records. Hate crime statistics in the Religion category shows high levels of attacks on Catholics (57-58%) and Protestants (36-40%), and much lower levels against Muslims (2-2%) and Jews (1-2%) over the 2011 and 2012 periods. However, these overall percentages, in the 2012 statistics for example, translate into quite a different picture when the population numbers of each religious category in Scotland is taken into account.
These figures show that there is one anti-Jewish hate incident for every 461 Jews, one anti-Muslim hate incident per 2,240 Muslims, one per 1,579 Catholics, and one for every 6,080 Protestants. Thus, Jews are subject to a much higher rate of attack. Jews are several times more likely than Muslims to suffer hate incidents, and are twenty times more likely than Christians to suffer hate incidents.
The International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH) conducts a country by country review and report on racist and religious bigotry on the European internet. According to INACH’s studies, prior to 2002, antisemitism had been the largest single type of hate on the European internet. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, there was an increase in anti-Muslim content; but there was a much larger increase in anti-Jewish content. From 2002, antisemitism became the absolute largest category of hate on the European internet. Incidents of anti-Jewish hate outweighed the combined aggregate of every other form of hate.
INACH’s study showed that up until the second half of 2000 virtually all antisemitism reported online was from ‘classical’ sources of antisemites and/or racists (eg neo-Nazis). By 2002, most antisemitism and Holocaust denial no longer came from ‘classic’ antisemites but from Muslim and left-wing web forums....'And she maintains:
'The watchword is Toulouse. When three French soldiers (two of North African background and one of Caribbean background) and four Jews (three of them young children) were murdered in March 2012, the French people came out in their thousands to protest the murders. A massive anti-racist banner read: “In France, we kill Blacks, Jews, and Arabs”. However, when the murderer was found to be Mohammed Merah, a French Muslim of North African background, the protests and anti-racism banners disappeared. While ever the murderer was believed to be an indigenous French person, of Right-wing racist politics, the masses of France were eager to protest against murderous racism in France. However, once the murderer was identified as a Muslim jihadist, the protesting masses melted away unable or unwilling to condemn murder when committed by a Muslim jihadist.
In a perverse response to Merah’s murders, there was an exponential increase in physical assaults on French Jews, with several being hospitalized. Bashings with iron bars and other assaults were perpetrated against Jews. The initial shock and horror of the murder of little Jewish children were transformed into a mania by Islamist extremists to emulate Merah, to give him hero status and to glorify his murderous deeds.
After this latest murder in Copenhagen, and the murders in Paris only last month, it remains to be seen whether Europe makes a decision to defend and protect its Jewish citizens. Many Jews fear that European governments will instead cave in to threats and appeasement and watch their Jews pack their bags and leave.'Julie Nathan's entire article is here
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| "Not antisemitism", huh? Stuttgart, Germany, this July |
'When chants of “death to the Jews” or “Jews get out” are common, violent assaults are rising and there are increasing calls for boycotts against Israeli and now kosher products, one cannot but help compare the situation with the 1930’s....
The difference ... is that today’s anti-Semitism is being waged against not only Jews as individuals, but also in the vilification and assault on Israel’s legitimacy, as the Jew among the nations, with false claims and malicious distortions of truth cloaked as acceptable criticism of Zionism and Israel....
In fact, for today’s anti-Semite, the term ‘Jew’ and ‘Israeli’ are interchangeable. They are one and the same. This was demonstrated perhaps most aptly by a recent pro-Palestinian protestor in Geneva, who charged at a Synagogue, with a sign exclaiming “Every Synagogue is an Israeli Embassy.”
Many Jews across Europe are now increasingly being forced to change their way of life, hide their identities and separate from their Judaism out of fear of anti-Semitism. Some are even openly questioning: is there even a future still left for them in Europe? ...'Consequently, Ostrovsky offers a five-way strategy to counteract the problem (read his article here)
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| Fun in the sun: a sinister new twist on an ugly old theme |
'a neo-Nazi gesture, regarded by anti-Semitism researchers as a modern day Nazi salute, is rapidly spreading among anti-Semites in Europe and is being used by individuals to fly under the radar of strict anti-hate speech laws in parts of the continent.
The “quenelle” signal, extending one’s right hand toward the ground while the left hand grasps the shoulder, was devised by Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a controversial French comedian who has been condemned in court several times for anti-Semitic remarks.
Over the past two months, the trend has gained popularity, prompting hundreds of Europeans to post online pictures of themselves performing the “heil” like salute. Many of the images were taken at sensitive sites such as in the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Anne Frank House and even the Western Wall....'The photo that I've reproduced above is one of the truly shocking collection shown here which demonstrate the depths of depravity to which some people will sink in order to mock and vilify the Jews.
"Antisemitism in Europe is at its greatest peak since the end of the Second World War and there are now places on the continent where Jews can no longer live and many others where no outward expressions of Jewishness are tolerated. Europe needs to deal more seriously with this rise in hate which is creating an untenable situation for the Jews of Europe. However, to really fight Antisemitism, the European Union first needs a fundamental definition which law enforcement agencies and judicial bodies can use to prosecute those who target Jews and Jewish institutions.
A back in Budapest
I call on all relevant European agencies to recognize and legally ratify the Working Definition of Antisemitism as adopted in 2005.
The lack of a unified and vigorous definition means that anti-Semites will continue to act with impunity knowing that their actions can not be prosecuted,” MK Ohayon. “We must not allow anti-Semites to define hate. [Emphasis added] Jews need protection before the law and the law needs guidance or it will be rendered useless and irrelevant.
It's back in Germany
There are many anti-Semites who have been fighting against the ‘Working Definition’ for many years so they can continue their attacks on Jews and the Jewish State. The European Union needs to tell these people that their racism and hatred will no longer be acceptable and their actions will be punishable before the law."Ohayon's call has been echoed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In a letter to the EU's Foreign Affairs chief, Baroness Ashton, written from Paris on 6 November, the Center's director for international relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, points out:
"The BBC Trust, in addressing a complaint, had upheld the definition, in characterizing as anti-Semitic, a broadcaster’s critique of comments on Israel made by a Member of the UK Parliament. The Trust has now, apparently, reversed its ruling following the Definition’s removal, claiming:
In the land of L'Affaire Dreyfus
‘A press officer at the FRA has explained that this was a discussion paper and was never adopted by the EU as a working definition, although it has been on the FRA website until recently when it was removed during a clear-out of non-official documents. The link to the FRA site provided by the complainant in his appeal no longer works.’
.... [He recalled the] hard work in negotiating the document and the delay in its publication. Nevertheless, its acceptance and dissemination represented an achievement for the EU in the struggle against anti-Semitism. Indeed, its removal is even more disconcerting just as the FRA is about to issue a further study of the worrying rise in anti-Jewish attacks across Europe."
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| A dark sentiment in Edinburgh |
"One can only speculate the reaction to a similar move related to Islamophobia."Adding his voice to the demand is Dr Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, who, notes the BBC synopsis, states:
"the fact that a quarter of Jews are not able to express their Jewishness because of fear should be a watershed moment for the continent of Europe and the European Union.
A darker one still on a north London pavement
The Jewish reality in Europe is of great concern and the authorities need to deal with incidents of hate and intolerance in a holistic manner, to really combat these manifestations before it is too late.
We would like to see concrete steps being taken, including creating legislation to specifically deal with anti-Semitism and racism, bolstering law enforcement agencies and ensure a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism, even, and perhaps specifically, when opinion-shapers and decision-makers engage in these forms of hate."When, incidentally, will the BBC, so politically correct in most things, adopt this spelling of antisemitism, one that, favoured by the Vidal Sassoon Centre, has been in use for a number of years, and which expresses the fact that since there's no such force as "semitism" there is no counter to that non-existent force?
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| Ben White reacts ... |
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| A child among her elders in Dusseldorf, 2009 |
So recalled the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Britain and the Commonwealth, Lord Sacks, earlier this year, against the backdrop of Germany's assault on circumcision. He went on:"Jews and Europe go back a long way. The experience of Jews in Europe has added several words to the human vocabulary -- words like expulsion, public disputation, forced conversion, inquisition, auto-da-fe, blood libel, ghetto and pogrom, without even mentioning the word Holocaust. That is the past. My concern is with the future. Today the Jews of Europe are asking whether there is a future for Jews in Europe, and that should concern you, the leaders of Europe"....
"I have argued for some years that an assault on Jewish life always needs justification by the highest source of authority in the culture at any given age. Throughout the Middle Ages the highest authority in Europe was the Church. Hence anti-Semitism took the form of Christian anti-Judaism.
It's back, in Budapest
In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day: the "scientific study of race" and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel. Today we know that both of these were pseudo-sciences, but in their day they were endorsed by some of the leading figures of the age.
Since Hiroshima and the Holocaust, science no longer holds its pristine place as the highest moral authority. Instead, that role is taken by human rights. It follows that any assault on Jewish life -- on Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state -- must be cast in the language of human rights. Hence the by-now routine accusation that Israel has committed the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and crimes against humanity. This is not because the people making these accusations seriously believe them -- some do, some don't. It is because this is the only form in which an assault on Jews can be stated today."
"Antisemitism remains an issue of concern today, not only to Jews, but to everyone in the EU. The ways in which it manifests itself vary according to time and place, and it affects Jews living in the EU in different ways. The FRA is conducting this survey to collect reliable and comparable data on antisemitism. This type of robust evidence will assist EU institutions and national governments in taking the necessary measures that will ensure that the rights of Jewish people are fully respected, protected and fulfilled across the EU, and the survey has been specifically designed with this goal in mind."Adds Jonathan Boyd, Executive Director of the UK-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), which is conducting the survey in partnership with Ipsos MORI, and with the involvement of well-known experts in Britain, Israel, and elsewhere:
"It is clear to all observers of contemporary Jewish life that antisemitism continues to be a major preoccupation and worry in Jewish communal circles. If it is ever to be effectively tackled, it is essential to have shared, reliable data. This survey is designed to provide that data: this is an important and unique opportunity for thousands of European Jews to share their experiences and voice their concerns with policy makers working at the highest European and national levels."
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| In the heart of Auld Reekie |
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| A beach in Gaza |
"Antisemitic criticism of Israel comes close to majority support in all European countries.
In that context we also need to discuss whether secondary antisemitism – refusal to acknowledge the crimes of the Holocaust – has taken the place of traditional antisemitism."The leftwing Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is to be condemned for the putrid if unwitting part it plays in fuelling all of this, as glimpsed in this example.
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| Eurabian Plights: A Scene in Brussels |
‘It is now a commonplace in Europe to regard antisemitism and the more recent phenomenon, "Islamophobia", as much of a muchness. Yet there are important historical distinctions between the hatred of Jews and anti-Muslim prejudice. While European Muslims are without question subject to discrimination and violence, no reasonable observer could claim that they face the prospect of a Final Solution-style extermination plan....
Last month, Richard Herzinger, of the German daily Die Welt, neatly captured the wrongheadedness of Europe's new political conviction when he stated that "it is not 'Islamophobia' that is the antisemitism of the 21st century, but antisemitism."
Writing in Libération last November, the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner noted that the idea of Islamophobia originated in revolutionary Iran. In Bruckner's view, allegations of Islamophobia allow Islamic radicals to blunt criticism of extremist Islam and rationalise the rejection of secular Western values. In short, "Islamophobia" is a gagging order. But ... Bruckner and the few journalists and academics who question the rhetoric of Islamophobia are a minority.
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| Eurabian Plights: A Message from Copenhagen |
The fact is, European societies have gone to great lengths to stifle any expression of anti-Islamic sentiment – even, some might say, at the expense of freedom of speech.
In 2008, for instance, the right-wing extremist Pro Cologne political party organised an anti-Islam conference. Thousands of demonstrators from all walks life took to the streets in protest against this "Stop Islam" event, prompting the city of Cologne to pull the plug on it.
By contrast, when four years earlier Walter Hermann set up his so-called ‘Cologne Wailing Wall’ exhibit – which includes a cartoon of a man wearing a Star-of-David bib and an American flag while devouring a Palestinian boy and holding a knife that bears the word "Gaza", alongside him a glass filled with blood – in Cathedral Square, the bustling pedestrian zone in the middle of the city, it was allowed to stand without protest.
.... Writing in the weekly Freitag, journalist Sabine Pamperrien recently described critics of the equating of Islamophobia with antisemitism as Winkeladvokaten – loosely translatable as "shyster lawyers", a term that the Nazis used to degrade Jewish lawyers during the Third Reich.
Eurabian Plights: In Old London Town
The same description was applied to the German left-wing politician, Gregor Gysi, by an Austrian neo-fascist and convert to Islam, Robert Schwarzbauer, who specifically branded Gysi a "shyster lawyer of Zionism" for his efforts to combat his party's anti-Israeli platform.
A significant contrast between antisemitism and Islamophobia – which the merging of them dangerously ignores – is that the former manages to bring together such uneasy bedfellows as radical leftists, fanatical Muslims and right-wing extremists.
.... German-Jewish philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued that the crimes of the Holocaust created such profound guilt among some Germans that they tend to ignore antisemitism, blame the Jews for the Holocaust, and hold Israel to moral standards they apply to no other country.
A University of Bielefeld survey last year found that 57 per cent of Germans questioned agreed with the statement that "Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians".
Conflating antisemitism with anti-Muslim thinking may serve as a release for German guilt. But it has dangerous consequences for European Jews and undermines the legitimate fight against radical Islamic terrorists who threaten Europeans of all faiths and backgrounds.’I can think of other reasons why conflating antisemitism and “Islamophobia” is invalid. Jews, who have have been part of European society for over a millennia, have always abided by the tenet that “The Law of the Land is the Law,” have never allowed their religious beliefs and observances to encroach upon the public domain, do not proselytise, and needless to say there is no equivalent of Jihad in Judaism. The "new antisemitism" of the nineteenth century – the rise of political antisemitic movements culminating in the obscenity of Nazism – was predicated on the perception of Jews as agents of modernity, whereas "Islamophobia" is predicated on the perception of Muslims as agents of pre-modernity. And of terror.
“does not recognise the superior authority of the law of the land, against which it therefore asserts itself.
.... [B]lind eyes are being turned to Sharia courts meting out not just family law judgments that oppress women, but even criminal sanctions, too.... [T]here has been ... an enormous growth of Islamic banking - despite the fact this serves as an umbrella for the financing of Islamic terrorism and is a vehicle for putting yet more pressure on British Muslims to subject themselves to Sharia law.
Almost every week, more examples surface of the way in which British culture is giving way to Islamic practices. As a recent BBC Panorama programme demonstrated, some Muslim schools are teaching their pupils to hate ‘unbelievers’ – all under the nose of Ofsted.
And a growing number of education authorities serve halal meat to all pupils – without even informing the public of this minority faith practice [Incidentally, halal meat was also served to an unsuspecting House of Commons!]. London hosts three Muslim TV channels — all with ties to fanatical Islamic organisations or regimes.
In short, Britain is being steadily Islamised – and the establishment appears paralysed like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
Four years ago in my book, I delivered a warning. A country that can’t even bring itself to name the nature of the enemy it faces will be defeated by that enemy.
The Stockholm bomber is but the latest export from Londonistan - and unless the Government gets up off its knees and changes its disastrous strategy, I very much fear he will not be the last.’Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1338397/Sweden-suicide-bomber-I-reviled-warning-Britain-hotbed-Islamic-terrorism.html#ixzz18DF04F1c
‘Europe is vulnerable. It abuts directly against ancient Muslim homelands at several points, has a substantial and unintegrated Muslim population, has offered active Jihadis sanctuary within its borders, has pursued reckless immigration and security policies, and has supped with the Devil through its open support of Saddam Hussein (paid for with Iraqi oil funds) and Muslim terror organizations such as Al Fatah and Hamas.
Many observers believe it’s already too late, that Europe is one with Sumeria and Byzantium, that all that remains is the funeral procession. They point to the numbers of native births – below replacement level of 2.1 children per couple in almost every country—compared to those of Muslim immigrants, which are two to three times higher, and echo Bernard Lewis’s now-famous prediction, “Europe will be Muslim by the end of the century.”
Europe in also unfortunate in that its overall government, the European Union, has established itself, in defiance of the experience of the past century, as the kind of managerial superstate proven unfeasible just about everywhere else on earth.’Ironic, isn’t it? Napoleon had to be certain that Jews did not pursue polygamy or other practices at odds with modernity – yet in Europe today, such practices by Muslims are allowed.
