LETTER FROM EUROPE: Anti-Semitism Reinvigorated
Aikman, David
LETTER FROM EUROPE Anti-Semitism Reinvigorate d Don't wear a yarmulke on a European street. UROPE'S 2.5 MILLION JEWS were beginning to heave a sigh of relief. The anti-Semitic incidents that...
...Several ofhis colleagues who were rabbis, he said, had been attacked on the streets of Europe...
...At school these children shout: 'The Jews must all die, death to the Jews.'" The commentator claimed that scenes of 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 DAVID AIKMAN this nature had been shown on Dutch television...
...Not since 1945," he said, "has there been such a level of concern, anxiety, or depression among Europe's Jews as one witnesses today...
...Qaradawi, almost as an aside, has advocated the Islamic reconquest of Spain, southern Italy, Sicily, the Balkans, and "the Mediterranean islands" (presumably formerly Muslim-controlled Malta and Cyprus, among others...
...il i Jews...
...Another Dutch reader of the BBC website wrote, "For all those who believe anti-Semitism is not on the rise in Europe, go out and buy a kippah, put it on your head and walk around town...
...Wistrich asserts, "All researchers know that in several West European countries, young radicalized Muslims are the major perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts...
...i) !iilc ! i...
...I -ANY EUROPEAN JOURNALISTS are quick to point | out that, all too often, criticisms of the _J~ V _ l Israeli government are dismissed by Israeli officials with the shotgun riposte that they are antiSemitic...
...MD WISTRICH: "I AGREE WITH B a t Ye'or's arguments ~ . ' . . . ~%~ that Europe has been engaged in a self-mflmted i...
...Josef Joffe, editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, has argued, "America and Israel are outsiders-just as Jews have been all the way to the 21st century...
...The newly emerging Europe is turning out to be the worst of all possible worlds for its Jews...
...With Ilan Halimi expired the slim hope that anti-Semitism had crested in Europe and was now on the decline...
...David Aikman's books include Great Souls...
...The third is a disturbing realignment of the extremist poles of European politics, with the far left increasingly abandoning its traditional condemnation of anti-Semitism and the fascist r i g h t - a t least in France-apparently about to abandon its traditional hostility toward immigrants in favor of a common front with Muslim radicals against Israel, Jews, and the U.S...
...But just as Pontius Pilate is historically seen as the executioner of the Christian Messianic hope, so anti-Semitism in Europe should properly be viewed not just as an attack on Zionism, on Israel, or even on America, but on the core values of Western civilization itself...
...In a recent BBC symposium on antiSemitism in Europe, David Aaronovitch, himself Jewish and a columnist for Britain's Guardian and Observer newspapers, said, "It is certainly true that some people close to the Israeli Government and people on the right of the Zionist spectrum will sometimes use the charge of anti-Semitism against people who they think go too far in criticizing Israeli politics...
...And I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans, and I am ashamed of this shame that dishonors my country and Europe...
...On the question of European anti-Americanism and anti-Israel sentiment, Wistrich comments: "There is a growing gulfbetween Europe and America on major issues of international policy...
...To their credit, several European intellectuals have risen forthrightly to oppose the growing nexus of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism...
...American support for Israel, deplored by so many Americans, is often blamed on Zionist machinations...
...Even the reassertion ofits own cultural values has become problematic, as if Europeans had to renounce their core identity out of some misplaced idea of political correctness...
...He described this phenomenon as "the real, ultimately murderous thing...
...In Europe, a softer version of the Muslim-Arab conspiracytheory that the Jews control America-also an old Nazi slogan-is now wideEurope has been making...
...The first is a growing European antagonism toward both the U.S...
...In negotiations with his kidnappers, his family had been repeatedly tormented by slurs against the Jews and anti-Jewish statements from the Koran while, in the background, could be heard the screams of the young man being tortured...
...In France...
...Mark Gardner, of the UK-based Community Security Trust, a watch-dog of community relations, said that the number of anti-Semitic incidents it had recorded in Europe in the previous two years were the highest since it began keeping records in 1984...
...i I...
...Traditionally opposed to all immigrants to France, the National Front has become popular recently among second-generation Muslims, according to French analyst Michel Gurfinkiel, because it has steadfastly been supportive of radical Islamist and anti-Western movements such as Hamas, al Qaeda, and Arafat's PLO and opposed to the U.S., Israel, and Jews in general...
...In response, Aaronovitch revealingly admitted, "Over the course of the past year or so, there has been an increased level of what I call anti-Semitic discourse-intensified criticism of Jews and the Jewish community as being uniquely powerful, uniquely wealthy, uniquely manipulative on behalf of Israel...
...Finally, in an interview with German journalist Manfred Gerstenfeld, Robert S. Wistrich, the Neuberger professor of Modern Europe and Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, substantially reinforced this judgment...
...But because Muslim immigrants to Europe have in the past been targeted by skinheads and other adherents of the fascist right, there has been a reluctance to discuss the real phenomenon of Islamist Jew-hatred...
...He refused to apologize to the reporter, asserting vehemently that he had always opposed antiSemitism (which is true, but only of antiSemitism coming from the right of the political spectrum...
...Then the World Jewish Congress threw in its observation, with claims that anti-Semitism is worse now than at any time since World War II...
...Perhaps, some began to think, a return to normalcy was taking place...
...According to Gurfinkiel, strategic adviser to the National Front Jean-Claude Martinez recently argued that the National Front "must forget some of its founding myths, like 'Joan of Are fighting an alien invasion,' and welcome blacks and Arabs into the national fold...
...I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time...
...On the same program, however, French analyst of European attitudes Jean-Yves Camus noted that antiZionism is more serious and "means refusing the right of the Jews to have a state and as such, it is perceived with due justification by the Jews today as a far more preoccupying phenomenon than the traditional bigotry of the far-right lunatic fringe...
...The second is the ideological and religious hostility to the Jews voiced by many in Europe's rapidly growing Islamic community...
...MAY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 43...
...Six Who Changed a Century (Lexington Books) and Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Begnery Publishing...
...In the 1930s American Jewish activist Stephen Wise tried to warn the U.S...
...European age-old core values, argues Wistrich, "rooted in Biblical morality, are being drowned in a morass of relativism, nihilistic trendiness, and self-abasing masochism when faced by Islamic totalitarianism...
...In a comment e-mailed to the BBC website citing the panel discussion on European anti-Semitism, a reader of the website noted, "In Holland, Moroccan parents teach their children to hate Jews...
...The anti-Semitic incidents that had crescendoed to a peak in France in 2004 had fallen off by 50 percent in 2005...
...In fact, polls in Europe have found that the country believed most dangerous to the cause of world peace is indeed Israel, more dangerous than Iran or North Korea...
...Wistrich comments, "In most European countries, serious discussion of Islamic Judeophobia is rare and risks the instant countercharge of 'Islamophobia.'" He says that Europe "still believes that a forceful policy towards Islamic radicalism is mistaken...
...Yet in the middle of 2004 Livingstone invited to London as an honored guest the notorious Kuwait-based Egyptian Islamist Sheikh Yusuf alQaradawi...
...some 10 percent of the population is Islamic and, because of the high birthrate among Muslims, 25 percent of French citizens under the age of 20, and 4050 percent in the big cities, are ~ Muslim...
...Europe has been making a geopolitical strategic choice that its undeclared alliance with the Arab world continued on poge 42 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 LETTER FRO M EUROPE necessitates an anti-American, pro-Palestinian, antiIsraeli position...
...At best, it is not a community of states but a pit of Pontius Pilates...
...Halimi died of his tortures on the way to hospital...
...Qaradawi advocates the execution of homosexuals, the beating ofwives, suicide bombing, and the legitimate targeting of Israeli civilians in terrorist operations as people ofthe Dar al-Harb (the Islamic concept of "the domain of war," those territories that have not accepted Islam and against which a war of conquest may be waged...
...The tendency will need many more Oriana Fallacis to be reversed...
...Men heeded not that the Jews were assailed as a symbol of that civilization," he wrote, "the values of which Nazism was resolved to destroy...
...This is the case not only in France but also in Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and increasingly in Great Britain...
...In a larger sense, Wistrich believes that Europe is already succumbing to the adoption of the identity of "Eurabia," a concept defined in a book by that name by Bat Ye'or, the Egyptian-born Jewish student of minorities under Islam-the so-called "dhimmis...
...r|-~HE ISLAMIC COMPONENT of European anti| Semitism is surely the most serious...
...capitulation to Islamic demands in the name of a misconceived multi-culturalism...
...In fact, according to Britain's chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, a tsunami-like wave of anti-Semitism has recently been spreading around the world...
...In fact, from France to Sweden Jewish teachers and students in state schools have been harassed by young Muslims...
...In Europe, it seems, there has begun the attempt of Islamists and of extremists both of the far left and the far right to dismantle civilized life itself...
...A lifelong leftist and in recent years a harsh and persistent critic of Israel-he has advocated puttingAriel Sharon on trial for war crimes--Livingstone was recently ordered by a government review panel to vacate his mayor's position for one month for having insulted a Jewish reporter for the Evening Standard as "a former concentration camp guard...
...On that day the naked and savagely tortured body of 23year-old Ilan IIalimi, a French Jew who had been kidnapped several days earlier, was found near a railroad track outside Paris...
...spread...
...Israel is very much at its center as an important bone of contention between the two major constituents of the West...
...of the appalling danger it faced-but did not want to deal with-in the larger implications of the Nazi threat...
...There seem to be three main reasons for this development...
...This leads to anti-Semitic claims that the Zionist/Jewish lobby has a fatal grip over American foreign policy that precludes a common Western position...
...a geopolitical strategic choice that its undeclared a tliance with the Arab world necessitates an a nti-America n, pro--Pa testi n ia n, a nti-l.sraeli position...
...i i i, i!!i :ii i!i...
...But then came the events of February 13, 2006...
...Italy's perhaps most famous journalist, Oriana Fallaci, has declared, "But I stand with Israel, and I stand with the A,i:'i i i...
...In Britain the issue ofthe conflation of anti-Israel views with anti-Semitism has been muddied by the peculiar case of Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London...
...In fact, in a recent British poll some 37 percent of British Muslims said they believed that Jews in Britain were "legitimate targets as part of the struggle of justice in the Middle East...
...and Israel, and an antiZionism that has morphed into antagonism for all Jews as presumed supporters of Israel's mere right to exist as an independent state...
...The third reason for the rising climate of antiSemitism in France is an ideological somersault that seems in the process of being performed by JeanMarie Le Pen and his ultra-right party, the National Front...
...The French government seemed to be taking action against a pheno me non that for years it had bee n reluctant to admit even existed...
Vol. 39 • May 2006 • No. 4
