A window shattered during an attack on the
Ohr Menahem Community Center in St. Denis,
France (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)
In Chicago, four synagogues and a Jewish school were vandalized, suffering broken windows and graffiti screaming anti-Israel/pro-Palestine sentiments. A Jewish pre-school was defaced twice in one week in Camarillo, California. Protesters in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, ordered Jews "back to the oven." A synagogue in London, England, was set afire, as was one in Brussels, Belgium. In St. Denis and Strasbourg, France, Jewish places of worship were attacked with fire bombs -- just days after a burning car was rammed into a synagogue in Toulouse. All of this, and more, to protest the actions of a government thousands of miles away, that shares nothing more than a common faith with most of the worshippers, students and regular folks targeted by these attacks.
It's not that the actions of the Israeli military are beyond reproach -- there isn't a government on the planet that should escape criticism. That's especially true when weapons are pulled from the racks and people are dying. To engage in war -- justified or otherwise -- is to invite scrutiny and criticism. That scrutiny and criticism may well serve to moderate the tendencies of all governments to threaten life, liberty and property.
But even Israelis are divided over their government's actions in Israel. Many support the military's actions in Gaza, others oppose them, and still others thought they were justified at first but the situation has gone too far. Members of Jewish congregations in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere don't, by and large, hold Israeli citizenship, most have probably never been to Israel, and they hold a range of political opinions more representative of the issues and ideologies in their actual home countries than those in a tiny land in the Middle East.
In fact, of all the religious adherents in the world, it's only Jews who are consistently asked to answer for the actions of a foreign government whose officials just happen to share their faith. Roman Catholics aren't called on the carpet over Irish or Italian government policies, Episcopalians aren't formally requested by local officials to denounce Britain's missteps (something that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez demanded of his nation's Jews with regard to Israeli policy). And Hindus aren't penalized when India's government does something bloody-minded.
Perhaps the closest parallel, ironically, is the plight of some Muslims who were victimized by bigots in the United States and elsewhere in the wake of the 9/11 attacks carried out by fundamentalist terrorists.
Judaism isn't even a centralized religion with ties of authority to Israel. There's no kosher pope in Jerusalem exhorting the faithful to hold to a non-existent party line.
What is it that makes so many people around the world insist that adherents of this one religion accept collective responsibility for the actions of co-religionists who live in a far-away country under very different circumstances?
Whatever the causes -- and better-equipped thinkers than myself have delved into the mysteries of anti-semitism -- much of the world's population, even in well-educated, liberal democracies supposedly beyond this sort of thing, needs little excuse to react violently to the sight of a star of David. Harsh policies by the government of the world's only mostly Jewish country are more than enough to strip away civilized restraints from at least a few thugs in France, the UK, Belgium, Germany, the United States and elsewhere around the world, raining violence on local people who just happen to be Jewish.
So far, the anti-semitism has only rarely strayed into official action; it's mostly involved freelance bigotry. Local officials responsible for responding to attacks in Europe and the U.S. have promised prosecution and penalties for the guilty. That's refreshing, given the history in some nations (Who knows? Maybe vilifying Scientologists acts like methadone to counteract an addiction to traditional hatreds.)
But enough incidents in enough places have jaded old-timers even in the U.S. heartland muttering to themselves, "here we go again."
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Comments
Please look up the meaning of the word "semite" and then "anti-semitism" before you use the later in a sentence.
The truth is that there has ALWAYS been a deep vein of anti-Semitism in many of the attacks against Israel. And there has ALWAYS been a vein of anti-Semitism in San Francisco.
When Sudan murdered 300,000 Black Sudanese civilians in Darfur, where were these people? They didn't care. When Iraq murdered 100,000 Kurd civilians in cold blood, where were these people? They didn't care. When Syria murdered 30,000 Muslim Arab civilians in cold blood at Hama, where were these people? They didn't care.
Hamas murdered dozens of Fatah people in Gaza last year. Where were these people? They didn't care. Hamas fired rockets at Israeli kindergartens over and over again. Where were these people? They didn't care.
Israel, hit by 88 rockets in a single day, launches a war to protect its civilians, and does everything it can to avoid hurting civilians in Gaza (including building expensive phone databases so that it could phone families living in targeted buildings and tell them to leave before the attack), and suddenly people are violently attacking Jews. It kills 600+ Hamas members and due to Hamas' practice of using human shields and firing rockets from civilian buildings, civilians also die (which is a tragedy).
Suddenly violent, vicious demonstrations spring up in San Francisco. Supposedly in support of Gazans, these demonstrations include anti-Semites screaming in Arabic, "slaughter the Jews." Supposedly in support of Arabs, these demonstrators never lifted a finger or spoke a word when Hamas' rockets murdered Israeli Bedouin Arabs. Supposedly in favor of democracy, these demonstrations support Hamas, which in a violent coup took sole power in Gaza.
Israel has a right to defend itself. Hamas has no right to put the Gazans in danger simply to advance its own genocidal ambitions.
Attacks on Jews are simple anti-Semitism, and the people attacking Israel and Jews today are the same anti-Semites who have hated Israel and Jews for years.
"But even Israelis are divided over their government's actions in Israel."
This is a fallacy, it seems that you haven't even read the article you quoted: "nine out 10 Israelis supported the attack on Gaza."
...Well if it isn't considered unanimity, what will?
I think that a non negligible vector in generating this pathetic and nauseous "Israel's gov = Israelis = Jews" amalgamate are some well-known while vocal "NGO" (sic), those who dare to claim that they represent Jewish communities while constantly supporting, propagandizing, any single policy -extreme and counterproductive if possible- that come out of any Israeli government, past and present.
See the ADL between tens of others...
www.adl.org/israelstrikesback
"But even Israelis are divided over their government's actions in Israel."
This is a fallacy, it seems that you haven't even read the article you quoted: "nine out 10 Israelis supported the attack on Gaza."
...Well if it isn't considered unanimity, what will?
I think that a non negligible vector in generating this pathetic and nauseous "Israel's gov = Israelis = Jews" amalgamate are some well-known while vocal "NGO" (sic), those who dare to claim that they represent Jewish communities while constantly supporting, propagandizing, any single policy -extreme and counterproductive if possible- that come out of any Israeli government, past and present.
See the ADL between tens of others...
www.adl.org/israelstrikesback
Are you trying to be funny? Have you not noticed that just about every significant organization, media outlet, etc. that is Jewish is also Zionist. For most Jews being Jewish and being Zionist go together, and Israel, whatever it does, must always be defended. T
To Zvi:
Americans – to the extent that they're even conscious – have been bamboozled by our government, which has been infiltrated by "zionists" since before the days of Andrew Jackson. The examples you cite are all ethnic cleansings against Christians and Muslims, and you haven't delved deeper into who armed the cleansers. You should add Serbia, where the US and Israel paid for the massacre of thousands of Serbs and Croats, blamed it on Serbs, and repopulated the balkans with Muslim Albanians to foment more conflict. Or the genocide of Christian Russians by Jewish Bolsheviks.
Zionism = Judaism = Atheism. To consider yourselves God's chosen people is a profoundly racist ideology, cloaked as a pious religion. There's a reason Christ called it the "Synagogue of Satan." We goyim (cattle), some of whom are still foolish enough to cling to morality, are pulled into a hedge strategy where we destroy each other for reasons we can't see or understand.
It takes a transparent mass murder like the one being perpetrated against Palestinians for some much-needed clarity of thought to emerge.
I do not understand this obsession with anti Semitism. Here in the US, films and the popular media have been demonizing Arabs ( read Semites ) for years, making film after film demonizing them as being violent, incompetent terrorists. After the terror attack in New York on 9/11, media vilification of Muslims became staple in the American media and press. Add to that the long history of racial intolerance towards blacks and Native Americans, to mention nothing of Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians, and it is easy to see why cries of anti Semitism by Israel's many apologists have to be taken with a pinch of salt......
I can certainly empathize with his concern about Jews being made answerable to the crimes of Israel. But the author needs to understand that the majority of Jewish Americans openly support Israel. The majority of Muslim Americans, on the other hand have NO AFFILIATION whatsoever with al Qaeda whatsoever. That is the difference....
Nobody should be surprised or even care about the few minor anti-semitic incidents resulting from Zionist Israel's ongoing horrific attempts commit Genocide against the Palestinian people. Israel proclaims itself to be a "Jewish State" the homeland for Jewish people everywhere with a right of "return" for Jews, giving them citizenship. It is a nation based solely on Religion affiliation and it's Stooges in the US Congress last week reaffirmed the US position is that Israel is a "Jewish State".
I say that after the Holocaust the next worst thing to happen to Jews is the creation of the State of Israel, a state based on a racist ideology of Jewish Supremacism.
Millions of people around the world see Israel as a fake nation of thieves and vampires founded on stolen land (like the United States), with fake names,(Ben Green became Ben Gurion, Goldy Myerson became Golda Meir and thousands of other Jews also changed their names to hide their Europeon roots), fake food (stolen Arab food), and a fake language.(most of Hebrew has been made up in the last 60 years). People also see that Israel has no Constitution,(as it does not want to give equal rights to non-jews) and no defined borders,(as it wants to keep stealing Arab land).
The Zionist Double Agents in our Nation have stolen U.S. military secrets and have taken over the most of the U.S. Media, Government and Financial Institutions, enabling Israel to continue as a leech on the United States looting over 100 Billion Dollars from the US taxpayer to subsidize the zionist project and it's ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian indigenous population.
I've never seen so many historical and religious ignoramuses willingly display their dim-wittedness under one editorial column. The opinions (and they are just that) are confused, out of context, and bigoted, and no amount of quotation marks or provocative adjectives can make them otherwise.
Study history. Learn from history. Each of us is entitled to speak our minds in America, but the health of a nation's democracy depends on an informed population. Most these comments prove Sir Winston Churchill's statement, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
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