An Italian Politician Regarding How The Obama Administration Unleashed "Israelophobia"

Wow! What a sizzler of an article here by Italian politician Fiamma  Nirenstein (pictured) regarding hatred of Israel.

In the course of a long but most readable analysis she observes:

'The problem of the Jews today, the world over, is not anti-Semitism but a new branch of it: "Israelophobia." The most productive fight for world Jewry and its allies at the moment would be not against anti-Semitism, even though Israelophobia is a part of it, but against Israelophobia itself.....

 No one, either on the left or right, believes Israelophobia to be a violation of human rights, or defends the Jewish people from this all-encompassing prejudice that covers the history and character of the Jewish people with lies. An attack on Israel is seen, rather, as a legitimate critique of a sovereign country; the revival of anti-Semitism (which is what it is) against the Jewish people is therefore considered not important.....There seem three main reasons why Israelophobia exists:

◾The worldwide spread of a Muslim presence never before seen, including its globalization on the Internet, its proliferation of anti-Israel propaganda, and its power in institutions.

◾The spread of the culture of "human rights," in which anyone who appears to be an underdog must be "good," and anyone who appears not to be an underdog or victim must therefore be "bad."

◾The current government of the United States of America.

....The current U.S. Administration has sincerely promoted a positive relationship between America and Islam that, in addition to being politically questionable, makes room in the world for the most brutal anti-Semitism. The decline of American influence has left a vacuum that has been filled by all kinds of alternatives to democracy - ideological and otherwise, from the al-Nusra Front to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as to Russia, China and Afghanistan.

The current Administration probably did not foresee this disastrous side effect, but it seems clear is that in designing the policy that prohibited the use of the word "jihad" in official U.S. documents, no one stopped to think about how many times that term has been used to explain terrorism against, for example, Israel. That point apparently does not strike anyone there as relevant to the president's international policies. Hatred toward the Jewish state, even in its most extreme forms, was apparently not regarded as having any political significance, and therefore has not, in recent years, been subjected to any ideological or moral sanction.

....These events are a subsection of Israelophobia in a world that legislates to have a smoke-free environment, but not against child-marriages or honor killings or female circumcision, and that has never felt the need to deal with terrorism against Israel, or with the human rights to which the Israelis might be entitled....

But Israelophobia has nothing to do with legitimate criticism of the State of Israel: it is not based on any observation of reality. It is an obsession, the clearest expressions of which are the UN's "Zionism is Racism" resolution of 1975; the fury with which nine motions were recently passed against Israel at the UN General Assembly, which were commented on even by a translator accidentally speaking into an open microphone; and when the UN General Assembly pushed through a total of 23 similar resolutions, in all of which legitimate defense becomes the cruelty of a "racist" and murderous country.

There needs to be a strategy which considers the consequences of Israelophobia. It would encompass the history of Israel, its values, its actions, its right to defend itself -- and the verbal and physical abuse to which it is constantly subjected. It is also necessary to continue fighting anti-Semitism. Any other option will allow terrorism -- against both Jews and non-Jews -- to grow.'

Be sure to read it all!

"If You Want To Be Heard, Say It In Belgium..." (includes video)

Yes We Can": Jihadists in Belgium

So said President Obama's man in Brussels, Washington DC lawyer Howard Gutman, on a Belgian late-night talk show some time after his appointment as American ambassador to Belgium as a reward for raising big big bucks for Obama's presidential campaign in 2009.

It seems, as he told his late-night audience, that the affable Mr Gutman and the President have quite a bit in common. But judging from his speech in Brussels Cathedral to mark the anniversary of 9/11, and this one regarding the Palestinian admission to UNESCO, for which Belgium voted, Mr Gutman isn't blessed Mr Obama's gift of oratory.

However, what he said in Belgium on 30 November to a conference of the European Jewish Union, entitled "Fighting Anti-Semitism in Europe: What Is Next?" has certainly been heard loud and clear, and has unleashed a storm of criticism.

In his speech (full text here), which was undoubtedly approved by his political masters back home, Mr Gutman, the son of a Holocaust survivor from Poland and himself a professing Jew, said, inter alia (update: video here):

 'I follow closely and think often about issues of anti-Semitism in Europe. In the past few months, Jacques Brotchi, a Federal Senator and leading neurosurgeon, quit his affiliation with a Brussels university over issues of anti-Semitism and we are in the process of following up on those developments. We have been following up since last week when a Jewish female student was beaten up at a Belgian school by other students spewing racial epithets.

....There is and has long been some amount of anti-Semitism, of hatred and violence against Jews, from a small sector of the population who hate others who may be different or perceived to be different, largely for the sake of hating. Those anti-Semites are people who hate not only Jews, but Muslims, gays, gypsies, and likely any who can be described as minorities or different. That hatred is of course pernicious and it must be combated. We can never take our eye off it or just dismiss it as fringe elements or the work of crazy people, because we have seen in the past how it can foment and grow....

So in some sense, that is the easy part of the analysis.

 Let’s turn to the harder and more complex part.

 What I do see as growing, as gaining much more attention in the newspapers and among politicians and communities, is a different phenomena.... It is the problem within Europe of tension, hatred and sometimes even violence between some members of Muslim communities or Arab immigrant groups and Jews. It is a tension and perhaps hatred largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian Territories and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem.

.... It is more complex and requiring much more thought and analysis. This second form of what is labeled “growing anti-Semitism” produces strange phenomena and results.

Thus for example, I have been received well by Belgians everywhere in this country. I always get polite applause and sometimes more.

But the longest and loudest ovation I have ever received in Belgium came from the high school with one of the largest percentages of students of Arab heritage. It was in Molenbeek. It consisted of an audience dominated by girls with head scarves and boys named Mohammed, standing and cheering boisterously for a Jewish American....

 These kids were not anti-Semitic as I have ever thought of the term. And I get a similar reaction as I engage with imans, at Iftars, and with Muslims communities throughout Belgium.

 And yet, I know and I hear at the same time that the cheering occurs for this Jew, that within that same school and audience at Molenbeek, among those at the same Iftars, and throughout the Muslim communities that I visit, and indeed throughout Europe, there is significant anger and resentment and, yes, perhaps sometimes hatred and indeed sometimes and all too growing intimidation and violence directed at Jews generally as a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbors in the Middle East.

 This is a complex problem indeed. It requires its own analysis and solutions. And the analysis I submit is not served simply by lumping the problem with past instances of anti-Jewish beliefs and actions or those that exist today among minority haters under a uniform banner of “anti-Semitism.”....

 But it is the area too – both fortunately and unfortunately -- where the largest part of the solution remains in the hands of government leaders in Israel and the Palestinian territories and Arab countries in the Middle East. It is the area where every new settlement announced in Israel, every rocket shot over a border or suicide bomber on a bus, and every retaliatory military strike exacerbates the problem and provides a setback here in Europe for those fighting hatred and bigotry here in Europe.

Islamist Antisemitism Across The Herring Pond

I said that it is both fortunate and unfortunate that the largest part of the solution for this second type of problem – too often lumped under a general banner of anti-Semitism – is in the hands of Israel, the Palestinians and Arab neighbors in the Middle East. It is fortunate because it means that, unlike traditional hatred of minorities, a path towards improving and resolving it does at least exist. It is crucial for the Middle East – but it is crucial for the Jewish and Arab communities in Europe and for countries around the globe – that Mid-East peace negotiations continue, that settlements abate, and that progress towards a lasting peace be made and then such a peace reached in the Middle East. 

 Were a lasting peace in the Middle East to be reached, were joint and cooperative Israeli-Arab attentions turned to focus instead on such serious, common threats such as Iran, this second type of ethnic tension and bigotry here in Europe – which is clearly growing today – would clearly abate. I can envision the day when it disappears. Peace in the Middle East would indeed equate with a huge reduction of this form of labeled “anti-Semitism” here in Europe.'

At first glance, some of this might appear plausible.  However, it ignores the historical and theocratic legacy of Jew-hatred in the Islamic world, as several commentators (here's one) have been quick to point out.  In what is among the best of the many sound critiques of the Ambassador's position, Elder of Ziyon, observes, inter alia:

'If his theory was correct, that Israeli actions cause Arab Jew-hatred and that diplomacy would reduce it, then the least amount of Jew-hatred in the Arab world must be seen in Egypt and Jordan, who have peace treaties with Israel.

But the exact opposite is the case - those are the states with the most hatred of Jews!'

Read also this excellent take on the subject by Ted Belman,

As for the nexus between antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Belgium, see this video, uploaded earlier this year by the estimable, Belgium-based philosemitismeblog.blogspot.com/ but which has not had the amount of hits it merits:

And with regard to the attack on the young female Belgian Jewish student (a girl of thirteen viciously set upon and racially abused by five girls of Moroccan parentage) mentioned briefly in Howard Gutman's speech, Italian legislator Fiamma Nirenstein (pictured) pulls no punches:

'As chairperson of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians (ICJP), I would like to express the great concern of our organization for the recent violent attack on a 13-year-old Jewish girl by five Muslim teenagers of Moroccan descent.

 The assault took place on November 18th at an athletics center in Brussels. The Muslim girls beat their Jewish classmate, calling her a "dirty Jew” and telling her "return to your country.” The victim was badly injured and continued to receive threats for days following the attack.

The aggression was publicized by our colleague, Belgian MP Viviane Teitelbaum, member of the ICJP Steering Committee, who denounced the indifference of political leaders and the majority of the media toward the heinous act.

 Over the last few years, we have witnessed the worsening of anti-Semitism towards the Jewish community in Belgium, which has been suffering from the vertical growth of anti-Semitic episodes, including verbal attacks, physical violence, synagogues set on fire, etc. Sadly, this is a well-known worldwide trend that is particularly sharp in Europe, as indicated in various reports on the subject, including a recently released report by the Inquiry Committee on anti-Semitism held by the Italian Parliament.

The attack against the Jewish girl in Belgium is a violent and shocking episode that takes us back to Europe’s darkest days. The local Jewish community, counting 40,000, is angry and exasperated. As the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, we express our solidarity and support for the Belgian Jewish community. It is time for Belgium to come to terms with the alarming rise in anti-semitic incidents, a fact that can no longer be taken too lightly. We invite our colleagues from all political parties, Jewish and non-Jewish, to raise their voices and undertake relevant parliamentary action to urge the government of Belgium to counter this inconceivable form of hatred.'

Fiamma Nirenstein on Why the West Should Not be Fooled by Syria

Below is a translation into English of an article by Fiamma Nirenstein, Vice-President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Chair of the Committee for the Inquiry into Antisemitism, Italian Chamber of Deputies.
In the original Italian, this article appeared in Il Giornale, 28 April 2011.

Pro-Assad Syrian Demonstrators

'Today, as the Syrian unrest continues, we are forced to acknowledge our weakness and to measure the lies of Realpolitik. Indeed it's worth quoting President George Bush: “... the horrors of dictatorships remind us that at the end of the day, no dialogue is possible with bullies.” After Rafiq Hariri's assassination in 2005, the Bush administration broke up all ties with Syria; following that decision, the State Department launched a wide finance campaign aimed at helping secular Syrian dissidents and their projects, including an anti-Assad satellite TV. But later on Bashar Assad started his big game, playing simultaneously ‘at once the arsonist and the fireman’, just as Fouad Ajami writes.

But it's time to be honest and to admit that we - the West, the US who sent back its ambassador to Syria, the EU that called Assad to start peaceful talks with Israel, the UN that might let him have a seat in the Human Rights Council – it's time to tell ourselves honestly that we wanted to see only "Assad the fireman". After so many killings, America now starts talking of personal sanctions on the Assad family (not a big deal). Meantime the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told publicly something really worth mentioning: the United States can prove that among Syrian security forces, the same that are perpetrating a mass killing of civilians, there are many Iranian emissaries.

The governments of Italy, France, United Kingdom, Germany and Spain have summoned the Syrian ambassadors and the EU is expected to gather an high ranking meeting in the following days to discuss potential sanctions against Assad's regime. Meanwhile, another of the very few initiatives of the EU nations, i.e. a resolution in the Security Council, has been defeated by Russian, Chinese and Lebanese opposition.

But one the most interesting of all the useless reactions to the Syria slaughter is the call by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to the Human Rights Council to take a position. Yet Syria is still a candidate for the vacant Libyan seat in the HRC. Ban Ki Moon, requested to express his opinion on this contradiction, answered that this is not his business. Since Syria is one the four Asian countries entitled to one seat in this UN body, without a veto on the nomination, Syria could get its aim, while Syrians are slaughtered in the streets.

The UN should do whatever is necessary to save Syrians, reaffirming 2the responsibility "to protect", the same principle that has led the UN Security Council to approve the 1973 resolution, and allowed Nato to wage war against Muammar Ghaddafi. But Robert Gates, while still US Secretary of Defence, in a joint statement with his British counterpart, Liam Fox, has stated that the situation in Syria is far different from that of Libya. And even though the international community has responded to Ghaddafi's brutality with military means, it certainly won't do the same in confronting Assad.

This is the kind of weakness revealed by this UN indifference for democracy and human rights; the same unfortunate deviation we witnessed on massacres like Darfur and Tibet. And this tells the truth about the real reasons inspiring most of the approved Security Council resolutions: political interests. Ghaddafi is a bizarre dictator, his ferocity is unquestionable but his strategic value is poor, it is not critical for our and Middle East future. And after all, when he started to shoot his own people, we certainly had to stop him.

Pro-Assad Druze in the Golan Heights

Syria is a completely different story. This country is the core of Iranian power in the Middle East, a hub for deadly terrorist groups. Syria is the mother of Hezbollah, the father of Hamas. It borders with Israel and dreams to destroy it. It borders with Iraq and has sent there its anti-American terrorists. As a matter of fact, Syria still occupies Lebanon even though Assad withdrew his troops few years ago, and it shares a very long border and a complicated relations with Turkey, that refuses to condemn the Syrian regime.

Bashar Assad knows that the Sunni majority of his country - where the Alawites are a tiny Shiite minority - keeps a vivid memory of 1982 Hama massacre, where 20,000 Muslim Brothers were wiped out by Bashar's father, Hafez. The Syrian president knows that unless he would succeed in choking the protests at the very beginning, only tanks could crush a large opposition waiting for revenge. Now we can expect from Assad an awful enormous carnage that we have the duty to stop. But the world concern about a possible collapse of Syria, the best friend of Iran, is much greater than the worry about the future of Libya. For that reason we wait and see, while Syrians keep being killed.

Because of our fear of Iran, looking at Bashar Assad in recent years, we have rather chosen to see a beanpole guy wearing well-tailored British suits, a middle class faced boy with a charming wife, instead of the professional butcher who has already decreed the killings of more of 500 among his citizens, awfully using for this aim his brother Maher who commands the Presidential Guard.

Many self-made videos show us ferocious aggressions even against women and children. Assad has employed tanks and warplanes against his own towns. This is what we witness, but we don’t want to face it. In the meanwhile the death toll rises.

It's time to define with moral clarity how worth is the Western religion of human rights. But we must do it now, before the next dictator shoots his people. We gave credit to a dictator, Assad, who didn't deserve such a chance as no dictator have ever deserved. Instead he used the chance we gave him to arm terrorist groups, to build up chemical weapons and a powerful army. And today, to crash his own people.'

Death of an Activist

The Italian legislator Fiamma Nirenstein has written in the newspaper Il Giornale (16 April) an incisive commentary on the tragic, macabre end of her countryman, 36-year-old anti-Israel activist Vittorio Arrigoni (pictured), recently abducted and hanged by Islamic maniacs - Salafist Jihadists - in Gaza.

Here, in translation, is part of her article:

'To understand the death of this Italian activist, one important fact must be grasped: his death was triggered by the spurious way he mixed his humanitarian ideals with the cause of fundamentalist Gaza, by the fact that he mixed his life with that of his potential enemies, that he thought about as his best friends. But fundamentalists do not have stable affinities. Only their interpretation of Quran counts. Hamas Gaza, where Arrigoni has been killed, is for us a land ruled by awful and distant laws. Arrigoni loved the Palestinians, but he remained a total foreigner for them. It is for us unconceivable, even if you are a militant like Arrigoni, to live alongside those who fire missiles on civilians, wear belts packed with explosives and hand out sweets when an Israeli family is killed in Itamar, including a three months baby, a four year old child and another of nine.

This is a crucial issue: when you go to Gaza, or Afghanistan, you have to realise that our conception of life, is completely different from any Islamic political conception of life. You can die because you are Jewish, because you are Italian, or Christian, because you are an apostate, or a corrupt Westerner... the extremist mentality, make no bones about it, cancels out friends and allies. No matter how much you have worked against the "Zionist power" or that you have called Zionists "rats" (and Arrigoni did this), nothing is of any worth if you break their rule, a rule which will remain unclear until the knife blade comes. Arrigoni was fan of political Islamism because he was an enemy of the Jews, but this did not save him from a cruel execution in front of the camera, just as the one of many others friends or enemies of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad, never mind.

So it is intellectually sad and even dangerous that a demonstration in front of the Italian Parliament blamed Israel and Italy for Arrigoni’s death; or that the ISM, the pro-Palestinian NGO Arrigoni belonged to, attributed «moral responsibility to the State of Israel». These reactions seem to be triggered only by ideological hatred. But what is more striking still, with sincerest respect for the figure of the President of Republic, was the statement of condolences which Giorgio Napolitano rightly delivered; instead of laying the blame on Islamic fundamentalism, he asked that "a negotiated solution be found to the conflict which sees bloodshed in the region". With the same coherence, he could have invoked any good cause: the fight against world hunger, or child prostitution. Yet instead, Israel is being summoned to face some mysterious responsibility. But the fault is only of Islamic fundamentalism; what is the point of dragging the pained witness and victim of Hamas terrorism into the question?'

Read all of her article here: http://fiammanirenstein.com/articoli.asp?Categoria=5&Id=2578

A Brave pro-Israel Jewish Voice is Raised on Behalf of Christians Persecuted in Islamic Lands, of Israel’s Treatment of Christians, and of European Civilisation

Florentine-born Italian journalist and parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein, Vice-President of Italy’s Foreign Affairs Committee, is one of the public figures who earlier this year joined former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in launching the admirable and long overdue Friends of Israel Initiative. Ms Nirenstein, who is Jewish, takes more than a passing interest in the Middle East and antisemitism. She has participated in several conferences on antisemitism, contributed articles to a number of English-language magazines including Commentary, and written such books as Terror, the new anti-Semitism and the war against the West (2005) and Israel is us - a personal odyssey to a journalist's understanding of the Middle East (2009).

Just this month she organised a mass rally in Rome on the theme “For the truth, for Israel”, during which over sixty pro-Israel speeches were made by renowned individuals from across Europe drawn from a range of fields. This great and noble rally, which attracted some 3000 people, was billed as "the first European, bipartisan event aimed at restoring the truth regarding Israel, putting an end to the barrage of lies that are hurled at Israel every day and to the double standard used by the media and international organizations."

But Ms Nirenstein is not only concerned for the well-being of her co-religionists and of Israel. She has now spoken up on a topic which, shamefully, is apparently regarded as taboo in left-liberal Western circles – the appalling treatment of Christians by some Islamic regimes. “Islam does not like Eastern Christians: it has forced them to flee and now they account for only 6 percent of the population in the Mideast”, she said this week. She pointed out that, in contrast, the Christian population of Israel has increased – at present, Israel is home to 163,000 Christians, and it’s predicted that in fifteen years’ time this number will have risen to 187,000. “In Muslim countries, on the other hand, Christians are on the wane, but the 50 churches present in the Holy Land seem not to notice. They prefer to dump on Israel, where they enjoy full freedom of worship and expression”, she observed, in an obvious reference to Sabeel.

Ms Nirenstein also turned her attention to the Vatican Synod on the Middle East. She characterised a document – which speaks in the name of "us Christian Palestinians" and avers that “the military occupation is a sin against God and against man” - as “written in a tone of theological excommunication towards the State of Israel”. The document excommunicates Christians who support Israel, compares to South African apartheid the defensive barrier that has virtually halted terrorist attacks on Israel, appears to justify terrorism in speaking of the “thousands of prisoners who languish in Israeli jails” who are “part of the society around us”, describes “resistance to the evil of occupation as a Christian’s right and duty”, excoriates the West Bank Jewish communities, and in essence repudiates Israel’s right to exist. She pertinently asks, regarding Synod policy: “But if there are no sanctions against what Christians suffer in Islamic countries and if they continue to blame the Jews who have nothing to do with it all, how do they think they will be able—morally and practically—to sustain this?”

Nor is Ms Nirenstein reluctant to address the issue of Islam in Europe, a topic from which so many politicians and commentators resile. Referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s observation that Germany's “multikulti” approach to immigration “has failed, utterly failed,” Ms Nirenstein has said: “The point is that certain cultures very often have no intention of mixing in with ours, despite our actions and best intentions. Paris has become a city in which more than 200,000 people live in families where polygamy is common practice. In Italy 30,000 women have been subjected to genital mutilation and Islamic courts – ninety-odd in London alone – inflict sentences that are inconceivable.” Citing a number of worrying trends – including the fad T-shirt worn by young Muslims in Stockholm that bears the provocative legend "In 2030 we will take over" – Ms Nirenstein warned:

“When we are faced by a culture like that of Islam, there are forms of irreducibility that run up against legal and moral issues with a whole range of subtleties. For us, ‘immigration’ is a sacred term, filled of a sense of guilt, of generosity, of religion and liberal or left-wing overtones. But democracy is also a sacred term, our most important conquest: the masses of immigrants that do not share our democratic values put it in danger. And while we think that allowing immigration is a duty of democracy, we don’t understand that we are putting it at stake. Perhaps Chancellor Merkel—democratic German, pro-Europe, middle-class, complex-ridden and shy as every cultured German is—has succeeded in posing the question.”