March 2002 -- Nisan 5762
"Sire, Judaism is an incurable disease"
-- Grand Inquisitor to the King of Spain
About 3,500 years ago, a Pharaoh of Egypt was afflicted with a phobia about
the Children of Israel. Driven by the dreads of his own imagination, he decreed
murder and oppression against them. In time, this phobia spread across the
world and proved to be incurable though in every generation that succumbed
to the disorder, there have also been strong souls immune to it.
From the beginning of the Diaspora, 2,000 years ago, the Children of Israel
or more latterly called the Jews, have lived under the rule of other societies
and nations infected with a strange fear and hatred of a small and defenseless
minority. With the restoration of the Children of Israel to their own ancestral
homeland, Judeophobia, rather than any territorial or political or economic
issue, spurs both the Arab war against Israel and those who cheer for the
warriors.
In modern times, Judeophobia was given a new name that, like the disorder
itself, derives from a fallacy. In the 18th Century, a scholar of linguistics
coined the term "Semitic" to define a family of related languages common
to peoples whose biblical genealogy derives from Shem. It had no racial application,
and no assignment of merits or demerits in the cultures that spoke the languages.
However, in 19th Century Europe, "Semitic" was appropriated to define a race
and an ancient phobia was given a new name: Anti-Semitism.
The French, German and English founders of anti-Semitism as a doctrine meant
their creed to shore up traditional fear and hatred of Jews. In earlier centuries
the rationale had ostensibly been the persistence of the Jews in clinging
to Judaism, rather than accepting the religion of societies among whom they
dwelt. This left an escape hatch: The Jew could convert to the dominant religion
and theoretically at least be cleansed of his taint. Furthermore, by the
19th Century some classes in Western society no longer demanded religious
conformity. So the evil of the Jews became a racial trait -- inherent evil
that could never be washed away.
Anti-Semitism was designed to apply to Jews only, and has always clung to
this exclusivity. Thus a pet argument of Arabs that they cannot be anti-Semitic
because they themselves are Semites is anti-semantic flimflam.
* * * * * * *
"It is the swollen envy of pygmy minds meanness, injustice"
-- Mark Twain, on bias against Jews
There are several salient characteristics of Judeophobia:
1] It derives from an inner compulsion of the Judeophobe, rather than from
anything Jews actually do or not do. Indeed, the Jews can neither evade it
nor cure it, for it adapts itself to any circumstance. If Jews cannot defend
themselves when attacked, they are cowards and weaklings. If they can and
do, they are militaristic and bullies. If a Jew is poor, he is shiftless.
If he earns affluence, he is avaricious.
2] The most assiduous collection of the flaws and shortcomings of the Jew
cannot suffice to support Judeophobia. The indictments must be bloated with
dark fantasies, charging the Jew with whatever diabolic malevolence society
most fears at the moment: The Jews desecrate the holy objects of other religions,
they kill children to drink their blood, they poison the wells, they deliberately
spread plague, they control the economy of the whole world, they control
the news organs of the whole world . . .
3] Some individual Jews, driven by whatever inner compulsions of their own,
affiliate with Judeophobes, and incite them against their own people or enlist
foreign support against their own people. This is a perversion of traditional
Jewish self-criticism, from the biblical prophets onward, that exhorted Israelites/Jews
to higher standards of conduct but did not make common cause with their enemies.
* * * * * * *
For 2,000 years, Judeophobia was vented on the Jew within the non-Jewish
society or nation. Now, Israel is being cast for the same role in international
society. It is a common plaint of those hostile to Israel that are defamed
as anti-semites just because they dare to "speak out". Honest disagreement
with Jews and/or Israel is not Judeophobic, nor is a personal distaste short
of malevolent deed. The demarcation is between criticism and slander, between
"speaking out" and speaking falsehood:
"You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely anti-Zionist.'
And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo
through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism,
they mean Jews--this is God's own truth . . . . Anti-Semitism, the hatred
of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind.
In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionism is inherently
Anti-Semitic, and ever will be so."
--Martin Luther
King, Jr.
1] Does the "speaking out" come with
the disclaimer, "I'm not anti-Jewish, only anti-Zionist"?
2] Are hard and full facts produced
in evidence for the charges against Israel?
3] Is Israel condemned for actions acceptable in others? Or, are Arab accusations
and tendentious terminology accepted and disseminated without question or
investigation?
4] Are sacrifices demanded of Israel never expected of any other nation,
including the nation that makes the demands?
5] If there is any other nation one dislikes, does it follow that said nation
should not exist?
6] Are the hearts wrung by the "oppression of the Palestinians" as tender
for the genuine oppression of Tibet? The Kurds? The people of the Southern
Sudan? Are the national aspirations of the Basques, the Corsicans, the Quebecois
as precious as those of the "Palestinians"? Is terrorism by the Shin Fein,
the Basque Etta, the Italian Red Brigades or any others win the indulgent
understanding of Arab terrorism against Jews?
7] Is a dedication to "human rights" extended to the Arabs living under PLO
or other Arab rule? If the complaints of the Arabs were against any other
country than Israel, would they evoke the same sympathy?
8] "We expect more from the Jews because we respect their higher morality"
Translation: "We side with the people out to kill you because we do not
expect anything better from them".
9] "Because the Jews have suffered so much from oppression and persecution,
they have a moral obligations to show magnanimity to their enemies" -- Translation:
"The magnanimity may kill you, but you should not object if it makes the
killers happy."
"Those confounded Jews. They just won't line up quietly for the march to
the gas chambers. This, alas, now as for eons past, is the sum and substance
of world opinion . . . Since last
September, Jews in Israel have been under a vicious assault which
should appall all who are civilized . . . . Israel is under attack
by monsters. And world opinion is siding with the monsters."
-- Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
For 2,000 years, Europe committed every known crime against the Jews and
invented new ones. They were calumniated, oppressed and robbed, expelled
and driven hither and yon, forced to wear distinguishing ugly garb or special
emblems (a practice copied from Muslim society), locked into ghettos, banned
from trades and professions, burnt at the stake, slaughtered in pogroms.
"Emancipation" when it came in a few places, was resting on quicksand.
The culminating frenzy of the Holocaust took the lives of six million out
of the less than nine million Jews neither satiated nor exhausted Europe's
ancient animus. Today, it is exercised not only against the Jews remaining
on the continent but even more against those who escaped it to re-establish
themselves in their own ancestral homeland.
Yasser Arafat is literally embraced with hugs and kisses, by functionaries
who shun the Dalai Lama. With the imposed conformity of the European Union,
this posture has been adopted by countries whose pasts are the least tainted
including the Netherlands and even the once valiant Denmark. The Prime
Minister of Czechoslovakia was recently warned that his aberrant understanding
of Israel's plight might bar his country from membership in the EU.
European governments and news media and academics seem unable to reconcile
themselves to the independence of the people that had so long repressed,
to the victories of those they viewed as pre-destined victims. Presidents,
prime ministers and foreign ministers, like the English peer quoted above,
have thrown off any short-lived inhibitions about expressing their feelings.
However, they speak not merely at dinner parties but in official and published
pronouncements that are blatant encouragement to those bent on killing the
Jews.
The outpouring of hatred of Israel not for its real shortcomings but for
its fictional crimes serves to curry favor with the oil sheiks and other
commercial customers, and to appease the growing Muslim populations in Europe.
It is even more valuable as vindication of its own millennia-long Judeophobia:
It is, in effect, saying:"See, the Jews deserved
everything we ever did to them".
Jews are cursed in the streets, children attacked, synagogues fired. Many
of the perpetrators may be Muslims living in European countries, but the
governments and the news media and society in general show little aversion
to such actions. This is not hating Jews because the PLO cause is just; it
is espousing the cause to justify an already established hostility to Jews.
Great Britain --
during the Holocaust
urged the United States not to facilitate the escape of Jews in Nazi Europe
because "nobody wants them". Its betrayal of the terms of its Mandate fostered
"the Palestine problem". With the creation of Israel in 1948, it instigated
the Arab war to destroy it, supplying weapons and even its own military officers
for the cause. At the saqme time, it kept Jewish survivors of the Holocaust
imprisoned in Cyprus, even after they had Israeli citizenship.
British journalism resorts to distortion and outright fabrication to turn
the public against Israel. The "intellectual" papers advocate the non-existence
of Israel. There is a growing movement to boycott Israeli products is British
stores. Judeophobic chic prevails at society dinner parties. A member of
the House of Lords is quoted as remarking: "The Jews have been asking for
it, and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last." That is: He always
thought it, and now he has an excuse to say it.
The effects are not limited to the editorial office or the salon: Dr. Jonathan
Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, reports that "Jews are suffering the
worst anti-Semitism they have faced in the country since the Holocaust". He
cited calls from Jewish students throughout the country who were being attacked
on campus, both with physical as well as verbal abuse, mocked and spat on.
France
home of The Dreyfus Affair. Its own police helpfully rounded up French
Jewish children for the Nazis to send to death camps
On a past occasion when Arab terrorists bombed a synagogue in Paris, several
people were killed including one who happened to be passing by on the street.
The French premier of the day expressed outrage at the death of "an innocent
Frenchman" the Parisian Jews being deemed neither innocent nor French.
The leading French newspapers such as
Le Monde
and
Nouveau Observateur
replace reporting with horror fiction on the demonic deeds of Israelis.
The mounting violent attacks on Jews, synagogues and Jewish schools are dismissed
by the Monsieur Le President as merely common vandalism. Some French hotels
now refuse to take reservations from any visitors from Israel.
Spain
land of the Inquisition and the
Auto-da-Fe,
where Jews and "heretics" were burned alive as public entertainment. Officeholders,
journalists and cartoonists enjoy malice without restraint characterized
by depictions of Jews with fangs dripping blood. Spanish official protocol
refers to the head of the PLO as "His Excellency President Arafat".
The Judeophobia of the public cannot be derived from much acquaintance with
Jews. In 1492, Spain expelled all its Jews, who had been there since Roman
times. In 1493, Spain expelled all its Arabs, who had been there for 800
years and once ruled much of the country. It is not known that the current
Spanish government is offering the Arabs any Right of Return.
Switzerland
whose border guards seized Jews in flight and turned them over to the
Nazis.
In pre-World War II Europe, Switzerland was supposed to be the ultra-safe
place to deposit money and valuables. Many European Jews entrusted their
assets to Swiss banks, and never lived to reclaim them. For decades, their
surviving heirs could not either, because the ultra-safe Swiss banks simply
appropriated all the money for themselves. When in recent years Jewish organizations
pressed for restitution, Swiss government spokesmen threatened that if the
Jews persisted in demanding the return of their property they would stir
up anti-Semitism in Switzerland.
Belgium
announced issuance of a postage stamp with the picture from Gaza showing
the death of 12-year-old Arab boy Muhammad al-Dur. According to the photographer,
he was killed when Israeli soldiers returned fire on the Gaza Arab police
who were attacking them. The news media spread this picture all over the
world, automatically blaming the death on the Jews. Among all the child victims
of violence in the world, it is obvious why Belgium chose just this one.
Now, rigid examination of the evidence has shown that the boy was killed
by the Arab police perhaps deliberately. However, the Judeophobic value
of the stamp will not be diminished, for the media is not likely to give
much coverage to a correction.
See how numerous my enemies are, and how unjustly they hate me.
-- Psalm 25:19
Must I restore what I have not stolen?
-- Psalm
69:5
1] The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) -- which refuses associate
membership to Israel or recognition for its Red Shield of David emblem --
lambastes Israel for inspecting PLO ambulances. It expresses no disapproval
of the PLO's use of ambulances to transport terrorists and their weapons.
Arabs do enjoy associate membership in the ICRC and recognition for their
Red Crescent emblem.
2] The United Nations -- going by the tally of its special meetings, hours
of debate and number of resolutions passed, it has for more than half a century
adjudged Israel to be the absolutely worst thing on the planet.
Secretary General Kofi Annan, on whose watch the United Nations cooperates with terrorists who kidnap Israelis, unleashes his gentlemanly wrath when Israel makes incursions into the terrorist bases inside UNWRA camps. He expresses no concern that UNWRA permits and even abets the use of the UN camps as terrorist bases.
3] The World Conference on Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was convened by UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and perpetrated in Durban, South Africa, in September 2002.
It is routine for an international conference on just about any subject to be commandeered as an arena for verbal and physical assaults on Israelis and Jews of all nationalities. The Durban Conference was custom-made for a vast rally of muderous Judeophobia.
Mrs. Robinson was miffed at the vulgarity that spoiled her party. Secretary Annan scarcely deigned to notice it. The United States as well as Israel went home. Western Europe emitted a few subdued tut-tuts but did not go home.
It's open season for Jew-bashing in the West at the moment. As the Middle
East's only democracy is subjected to wave after wave of vicious terrorist
attacks by Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers the pious West and the
sanctimoniously "liberal" Western media lay the blame firmly where it has
always lain with the Jews.
Yes, while every other democracy in the "free world" claims a sovereign God-given
right to extirpate terrorism and to protect their innocent citizens from
the evil deeds of men and women of violence, the Jewish state of Israel is
supposed to take the vicious, murderous attacks on its citizens lying down
and presumably apologising for its existence, for the Jewish people's history
and for "going on about" the Holocaust.
The Jews were, after all, made to be attacked, annihilated and scapegoated.
First the pogrom, then the expulsion, then the name-calling. How odd of God
to choose the Jews, indeed. But, of course, no-one even the rabidly pro-Palestinian
Western media really approves of these attacks on ordinary Jews. No-one,
that is, except the gore-glorying mobs who celebrate every blood-bedraggled
mission by dancing in the little streets of the Palestinian townships.
We in the West would rather the ordinary Israelis who travel on buses or
who attend bar-mitzvahs or eat as a family in pizza parlours weren't blown
to pieces by Palestinian suicide bombers because it doesn't square with our
cherished notion that the poor Palestinian freedom fighters are being savagely
bullied by the US-backed fascist colonial Semitic superpower that is Israel.
[. . . . ]
Of course, all Palestinian violence is mere retaliation. Sure, wouldn't you
blow yourself up right beside a mother and her small children if you had
to queue everyday at checkpoints? [. . . . ] Don't, of course, mention the
1997 suicide bomb which killed 13 Israelis in Jerusalem just after Israel
had given the PLO control of Hebron. It doesn't really fit in with this schema
whereby all Palestinian violence is just the understandable reaction of a
downtrodden people to the gratuitous incursions and the targeted killings
by Israel.
Don't mention, either, the fact that while Israel only targets terrorists
who endanger the lives of their families by using them as human shields .
. . while the lovely, generous Palestinians (as described on Liveline last
Tuesday) support terrorist organisations who kill Israelis at random. But
then they're only Israelis. Jews. And what are they doing in Zion, anyway.
Zionists! Fascists! Colonists!
And so the West lends immoral support to the Palestinians and delivers high-minded
lectures to Israel about 'how to handle terrorists without hurting anyone'.
Lesson one when, eh, we haven't worked out the details yet. The Swedes are
very good at giving this advice. They had a great record in the last war
facilitating Nazi steel transportations.
And, of course, the UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson, formerly President
of neutral Ireland, has been getting up on her high nelly lecturing Israel
and telling them to be respectful of minorities. Especially, one presumes,
suicide bombers at bus-stops. It wasn't that long ago since Ms Robinson was
emoting about how she herself was a Jew (back in August last year in South
Africa, to be precise). She might just show a little consideration for the
embattled and terrorised Jews of Israel now.
She might also bear in mind that someone else recently announced in public
that he was a Jew. The kidnapped Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was
forced by his captors to say on video in a sick parody of the Palestinian
Martyrs' final self-glorifying videos that he was a Jew and that his father
was a Jew and his mother a Jew. That said, his Muslim captors slit his throat
and cut off his head. Nice people.
In the ongoing Middle Eastern and potentially worldwide battle between Islam
and Judaism it is sincerely to be hoped that this time out some European
countries may learn the lesson of their obscene history and bring themselves
to say and mean that "in that case, I'm a Jew". They could start by giving
moral support to the only democratic state in the middle east as it tries
to quell a coldly calculated uprising inspired by little else except the
ideology and praxis of terrorism and the undiluted anti-Semitic hatred of
the toxic wing of Islam.
British Muslims went to a neighborhood in London where the residents are
almost all Jewish, and distributed leaflets calling for the murder of Jews.
The police arrested them, and recommended that they be prosecuted under the
law against incitement.
The government declined to prosecute, o the grounds that almost all the leaflets
were given out among Jews, who were not likely to follow the instructions.
END