In a recent poll, 62 percent of Germans said they were "sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews." Two thirds of Germans said they believe Israel is waging "a war of extermination" against the Palestinians.
Jews often focus their attention on Holocaust sentiment among non-Jews to gauge anti-Semitic feelings. But while feelings about the Holocaust serve as an indicator of general sentiment about Jews, there are other indicators no less important or revealing. Sensitivity about the Holocaust may tell us what a person feels about Jews, but it may also simply tell us what that person feels about dead Jews.
But let's say that most Germans did believe the Holocaust was a terrible crime. Would the German rejection of the Holocaust mean that the majority that believes Israel is today's Nazi Germany is less anti-Semitic? No, it would not.
Yesterday the UN General Assembly for the first time held a special session to commemorate the liberation of the Nazi death camps and the Holocaust. Does this mean that the UN, which devotes some one-third of its resolutions to condemning Israel, is no longer hostile to the Jewish people? No, it does not.
SINCE THE Holocaust, the rallying cry of Jews has been "Never Again!" But the enormity of the Holocaust must not blind us to its present-day mutation.
Today the vast majority of anti-Semites are not calling for Jews to be deported to death camps. They are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and, as was the case in previous generations, they are seeking out and finding Jews like Karl Marx who share their hatred for the Jewish people and willingly advance their evil agenda.
This agenda is to again reduce Jews to a state of powerlessness where we will be at the mercy of the same world that either participated in or did nothing in the face of the extermination of European Jewry.
Today this is done by striking out at the main safeguard against such powerlessness – the State of Israel – criminalizing it as the modern-day incarnation of Nazi Germany. The role of Jewish anti-Semites in this campaign is to decouple the dead Jews murdered by the Nazis from the live Jews who live in, or support, the Jewish state.
Such a Jew was found by the British conservative magazine The Spectator in one Anthony Lippman. Lippman is actually an Anglican, not a Jew, but as the child of Jewish Holocaust survivors, he will do.
In a recent article, Lippman writes hypnotically about his mother's sufferings in Auschwitz only to explain that the job of Holocaust survivors and their children is to speak out against… Israel.
In his words, survivors have "a terrible responsibility – to live well in the name of those who did not live and to discourage the building of walls and bulldozing of villages. Even more than this, they – and all Jews – need to be the voice of conscience that will prevent Israel from adopting the mantle of oppressor, and to reject the label 'anti-Semite' for those who speak out against Israel's policies in the occupied territories."
ANOTHER such Jew is Tony Judt. Since the start of the Palestinian terror war, Judt, a historian at New York University, has been outspoken in his rejection of Israel's right to exist.
In a series of articles in The New York Review of Books, The Nation and The New Republic, Judt has led the charge in claiming that "the depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews," and that for Jews to feel good about themselves again Israel must cease to be a Jewish state – that is, Israel must cease to exist.
This perverse line of reasoning, whereby the only way for Jews to be happy is for us to again be powerless, has brought Judt under attack by prominent Jews who have exposed the anti-Semitism inherent in his argumentation.
In a new article in The Nation magazine, Judt takes a stab at responding to his many critics. The article is a ponderous attempt to argue that there is no relation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
On the one hand, he says that it is anti-Semitic to say that Jews control the US. But on the other hand, Judt allows that "contemporary US foreign policy is in certain respects mortgaged to Israel," adding, "To say that Israel and its lobbyists have an excessive and disastrous influence on the policies of the world's superpower is a statement of fact."
Judt allows that there has been a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe in recent years, but he blames this on "the policies of Israeli government." Echoing Anglican Lippman, Judt writes that for anti-Semitism to be dealt with in Europe, "Jews and others must learn to shed inhibitions and criticize Israel's policies and actions."
In Judt's view, "once Germans, French and others can comfortably condemn Israel without an uneasy conscience, and can look their Muslim fellow citizens in the face, it will be possible to deal with the real problem [i.e., anti-Semitism]."
Since the September 11 attacks Muslims have been called upon to decry the preaching of hatred in their community. It is argued that until Muslims themselves delegitimize the voices of hatred in their communities the poisonous message of jihad will continue to attract thousands to its genocidal cause.
The 60th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation is a good time to call for a similar Jewish condemnation of hate-filled Jews and those that use them to advance their anti-Semitic agenda.
These are not legitimate voices. These are not legitimate views. They are the views of deranged Jew-haters which, if listened to, will do nothing other than pave the way to the next calamity.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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