On February 15, 38-year-old volunteer security guard Dan Uzan was
shot and killed outside a Copenhagen synagogue during a bat mitzvah
celebration. A month earlier, a gunman executed four customers at a kosher
grocery store in Paris.
In May 2014, a gunman killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
In 2012, a gunman murdered three students and a teacher at Toulouse Jewish
primary school in south-west France. Eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego was shot
point-blank in the head.
You might discern a common theme to these shocking crimes. Seventy years
after the Holocaust, Jews are again being murdered in Europe for being Jews.
These recent outrages are but the tip of
an anti-Semitic iceberg.
About 7000
French Jews made aliyah (migrated) to Israel last year. For good reason. Jews
make up 1 per cent of the French population, but half of all racially-motivated
crimes during 2014 targeted Jews. In recent weeks several hundred graves were
defaced at a Jewish cemetery in north-east France; in Germany a synagogue in
the city of Wuppertal was firebombed.
This is to
say nothing of Jew-hatred besides physical violence. During last year's Gaza
conflict European protesters chanted "Gas the Jews" and "Death
to the Jews". In several countries, Jews are being warned not to wear
religious clothing or enrol their children in schools with a high numbers of
immigrant (allegedly Muslim) students.
Far-right,
anti-Semitic political parties are gaining ground across Europe. In a Greek
government dominated by the far-left Syriza, right-wing ally and defence
minister Panos Kammenos says that his Jewish compatriots don't pay taxes. In
Britain, a recent all-party parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism showed an
alarming rise in such bigoted attitudes.
Australia
has not been immune. A video produced by the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir
shows the organisation's head, Ismail Al Wahwah, alleging that "where Jews
thrive corruption abounds" and that the world is afflicted by the Jewish
"hidden evil".
Yet, as
#jesuischarlie hashtags proliferate, violence carried out by supporters of a
far-right brand of totalitarianism, radical Islam, is met with thundering silence
in the West. Most disturbing is the response of progressives. Recent events
demonstrate that a section of what purports to be the left wing no longer
stands unequivocally against all forms of fascism and racism and is prepared to
ignore or, worse, excuse an ideology that rejects Enlightenment values and
promotes a racist, misogynistic and homophobic death cult.
Condemnation
has been non-existent or heavily qualified. What about Anders Breivik, they
say? The killers have nothing to do with Islam – despite most attacks being
launched with the cry of "Allahu Akbar" – but are alienated,
radicalised "lone wolves", the argument goes.
Some seek to
place the blame on Jews. A BBC anchor suggested that violence directed against
French Jews might be understandable given Israeli policies towards the
Palestinians. A left-wing Australian "anti-Zionist" tweeted that
should Israel's oppression of the Palestinians continue, more attacks on Jews
would follow. The normally voluminous twitter feeds of leading progressives are
mostly devoid of sympathy or solidarity.
At the root
of this silence is denial. A denial of the seriousness and source of the
new/old anti-Semitism, whereby a classical racial/religious hostility to Jews
has conjoined with a politically motivated denial of the rights of the
Jewish people to a state of their own. Yet it is clear that the recent
European attacks have occurred in cities that host relatively large
migrant Muslim communities, of which a small but significant minority are
willing to act upon the message of jihadist militancy fostered by the likes of
ISIS.
These
outrages have also drawn less opprobrium from progressive sources because, as
militant opponents of the policies (and often very existence) of the State of
Israel, they view anti-Semitism as a term deployed by Zionists to deflect
criticism.
Moreover,
confronting the resurgence of anti-Semitism would mean accepting that the
demonisation of Israelis and Jewish diaspora – such as the toxic Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions campaign that effectively calls for the destruction of
Israel – has in part contributed to the legitimation of violent attacks against
the Jews of Europe.
Instead, we
have seen a bizarre reversal of victimhood. The first instinct of many, rather
than sympathise with the victims of terror, has been to warn against a
potential Islamophobic backlash. According to this warped and infantilising
logic, Muslims, as the "new" Jews, are all innocent victims of
Western (and Israeli) imperialism and racism.
No one
wishes to see the peaceful majority of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims subject
to discrimination because of the actions of a minority. We are not, as Roger
Cohen has written in these pages, at "war with Islam". However, fear
of giving offence or singling out a minority for criticism is scarcely a reason
not to oppose anti-Semitism.
What then is
to be done? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wrong to call for
Europe's 1.4 million Jews to consider a mass aliyah to Israel. This suggestion
can only embolden the thugs seeking to hunt the Jewish people off the
continent.
Rather the
solution is easy and begins with us. We need to talk about the threat of modern
anti-Semitism not as some 1930s throwback but as a real and present danger. The
next time you are privy to anti-Semitic abuse, speak up. The next time a
protest calls for the destruction of Israel, or explains away terrorism with
"but Israel", speak up.
Do so as a
matter of principle. But we should also not forget the darkest chapter of
European history: fascists come for the Jews first and never stop there.
Nick Dyrenfurth is the co-author of Boycotting
Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and
Israelis (to be published in May by NewSouth).
No comments:
Post a Comment