Many recent articles have tried to tackle the
difficult subject of rising anti-Semitism throughout the world. But the
following account of anti-Semitic attacks and incidents in Europe--and
particularly France--says it all. It was written by Edward Weiner of
Huntington Beach, California, and was forwarded to me via e-mail by a
friend.
Rocks have been lifted all over Europe, and the
snakes of Jew-hatred are slithering free.
In Belgium, thugs beat up the chief rabbi, kicking
him in the face and calling him ''a dirty Jew.''
Two synagogues in Brussels were firebombed; a
third, in Charleroi, was sprayed with automatic weapon fire.
In Britain, the cover of the New
Statesman, a left-wing magazine, depicted a large Star of David stabbing
the Union Jack.
Oxford professor Tom Paulin, a noted poet, told an
Egyptian interviewer that American Jews who move to the West Bank and Gaza
''should be shot dead.''
A Jewish yeshiva student reading the Psalms was
stabbed 27 times on a London bus.
''Anti-Semitism,'' wrote a columnist in The
Spectator, ''has become respectable . . . at London dinner tables.''
She quoted one member of the House of Lords: ''The Jews have been asking
for it and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last.''
In Italy, the daily paper La Stampa
published a Page 1 cartoon: A tank emblazoned with a Jewish star points its
gun at the baby Jesus, who pleads, ''Surely they don't want to kill me
again?''
In Corriere Della Sera, another cartoon
showed Jesus trapped in his tomb, unable to rise, because Ariel Sharon, with
rifle in hand, is sitting on the sepulcher. The caption: ''Non
resurrexit.''
In Germany, a rabbinical student was beaten up in
downtown Berlin and a grenade was thrown into a Jewish cemetery.
Thousands of neo-Nazis held a rally, marching near a synagogue on the Jewish
Sabbath. Graffiti appeared on a synagogue in the western town of
Herford: ''Six million were not enough.''
In Ukraine, skinheads attacked Jewish worshippers
and smashed the windows of Kiev's main synagogue. Ukrainian police denied that
the attack was anti-Jewish.
In Greece, Jewish graves were desecrated in
Loannina and vandals hurled paint at the Holocaust memorial in Salonica.
In Holland, an anti-Israel demonstration featured
swastikas, photos of Hitler, and chants of ''Sieg Heil'' and ''Jews into the
sea.''
In Slovakia, the Jewish cemetery of Kosice was
invaded and 135 tombstones destroyed.
But nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism
burned more furiously than in France.
In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set
on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so
were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in
Creteil. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov
cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words ''Dirty
Jew'' were painted.
In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish
football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish
children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last
14 months.
According to the police, metropolitan Paris has
seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day since Easter. Walls in
Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming ''Jews to the
gas chambers'' and ''Death to the Jews.''
The weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur
published an appalling libel: It said Israeli soldiers rape Palestinian women,
so that their relatives will kill them to preserve ''family honor.''
The French ambassador to Great Britain was not
sacked -- and did not apologize -- when it was learned that he had told guests
at a London dinner that the world's troubles were the fault of ''...that
sh--ty little country, Israel.''
A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop
(and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France; a Jewish couple in their
20s were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France. The woman was
pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles,
France. This was in the past week.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, from
September 9, 2000, at the start of the Intifada, through November 20, 2001,
there were some 330 acts of anti-Semitism just in and around Paris. In
addition to literally scores of firebombing of synagogues, just before Rosh
Hashanah, 200 Arabs attacked Jews on the Champs Elysees. The pace has
only picked up since then.
In December, a French cinema in Paris refused to
allow a Hanukah showing of Harry Potter to 800 Jewish children because of
French-Palestinian threats (the threats were confirmed by French police who
then went on to do nothing, not even giving details). It was one
incident in an eventful month when synagogues continued to be firebombed and a
Jewish kindergarten was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti and set
ablaze.
''At the start of the 21st century,'' writes
Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a well-known social scientist, in a new book, ''we are
discovering that Jews are once again select targets of violence. . . Hatred of
the Jews has returned to France.'' But of course, it never left.
Not France; not Europe.
Anti-Semitism, the oldest bigotry known to man,
has been a part of European society since time immemorial. In the
aftermath of the Holocaust, open Jew-hatred became unfashionable; but fashions
change, and Europe is reverting to type.
To be sure, some Europeans are shocked by the
reemergence of Jew-hatred all over their continent. But the more common
reaction has been complacency.
''Stop saying that there is anti-Semitism in
France,'' President Jacques Chirac scolded a Jewish editor in January.
''There is no anti-Semitism in France.''
What…can explain the sometimes muted, sometimes
defensively outraged reaction of French officials?
Simple. There are approximately 5,000,000 to
6,000,000 Muslims presently living in France and many more arrive daily.
There are only about 600,000 Jews still living in France. Moreover,
France is the number one European exporter to Iraq, totaling over two billion
dollars per year in exports since 2000. To those who are at a loss to
explain why French elected officials seem ''helpless'' to stem the tide of
anti-Semitism, I say that something smells awfully Vichy around here.
The European media have been vicious in condemning
Israel's self-defense against Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank; they
have been far less agitated about anti-Jewish terror in their own backyard.
They are making a grievous mistake. For if
today the violence and vitriol are aimed at the Jews, tomorrow they will be
aimed at the Christians. A timeless lesson of history is that it rarely
ends with the Jews.
Militant Islamist extremists were attacking and
killing Jews long before they attacked and killed Americans on Sept. 11.
The Nazis first set out to incinerate the Jews; in
the end, all of Europe was ablaze. Jews, it is often said, are the
canary in the coal mine of civilization. When they become the objects of
savagery and hate, it means the air has been poisoned and an explosion is soon
to come. If Europeans don't rise up and turn against the Jew-haters, it
is only a matter of time until the Jew-haters rise up and turn against them.
So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a
friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency
from depravity, to do, at least, these three simple things:
First, care enough to stay informed. Don't
ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight.
Second, boycott France. Only the Arab
countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports
more than just oil and hatred. So boycott their wines and their
perfumes. Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott
their movies. Definitely boycott their shores.
If we are resolved we can exert amazing pressure
and, whatever else we may know about the French, we most certainly know that
they are as a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well-directed pressure.
Third… You must pass this on to as many people as
you know, so we can curb this hideous anti-Semitic wave and squelch
it.....before it grows and engulfs us all.
Edward Weiner, Huntington Beach, California
www.ctrl.org
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