And then there's
Europe:
Renowned Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo declares, "I'd like to shoot those bastard Zionists.: A German teen firebombs a synagogue. French anti-Israel protestors attack synagogues full of worshippers. An Irish Sinn Fein city councilman urges the shelling of Israel.
Benjamin Weinthal puts it in context:
A 2012 survey of Norwegians showed 38% of respondents deem Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to be the equivalent of Nazi policies toward Jews. Studies over the last decade of German attitudes toward Israel consistently reveal that nearly half (at times more than 50%) of Germans view Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to be comparable to the Nazis obliteration of Jews.
Put simply, the obscene parallel likening Israel to Nazi Germany has gained traction across Europe.
It's a comparison that allows many Europeans to cleanse their guilt about the Holocaust. The equation serves as an emotional catharsis for a guilt-ridden continental Europe.
There had always been a degree of Jew-hatred in Europe, for hundreds of years, mostly at a low-level simmer - denial of full property rights, etc. But it only turned genocidal in the Third Reich. Just to walk that back very calmly to the anniversary we mark this week, the Great War destroyed the German Empire, the most cultured society on the Continent and the one in which Jews were most assimilated, and with a high degree of inter-marriage. What followed the German Empire was the Weimar Republic - ie, going to the grocer's with a wheelbarrow full of worthless marks. By 1930, millions of Germans were in the market for a scapegoat. Who to blame for the ruination of a great nation? "International bankers"? We all know who that means...
Half the country's Jews wound up leaving for Britain, Mandatory Palestine and America before the Second World War began, and that suited Germans just fine: All they wanted was for Jews to be ...elsewhere, just as today Palestine's supporters in the west increasingly want Jews to be ...elsewhere. Not many people circa 1933 thought they were signing on for enforced population displacement, trains to the east, concentration camps, gas ovens... The idea of a "final solution" was in that sense unimaginable.
But our generation doesn't have that excuse. Today's Jew-hate is worse than 1930s Jew-hate precisely because, unlike 80 years ago, it's
déjà vu all over again. We can't plead ignorance. Hitler felt obliged to be somewhat coy about just how final the final solution was. As Eichmann testified at his trial, when typing up the minutes of the Wannsee conference, "How shall I put it? Certain over-plain talk and jargon expressions had to be rendered into office language by me." Even the Nazis were reluctant to spell it out.
But Hamas spells it out, in giant-size neon lettering: Its charter pledges that Islam will "obliterate" Israel, with Article 22 blaming the Jews for the French Revolution, both world wars, the League of Nations ...oh, and the Lions and the Rotary Club. Hamas specifies the end, but their patrons in Teheran are happy to specify the means. As I wrote
eight years ago:
What's the difference between a hothead and a moderate? Well, the extremist Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," while the moderate Rafsanjani has declared that Israel is "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" in one blast, because "a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world." Evidently wiping Israel off the map seems to be one of those rare points of bipartisan consensus in Tehran, the Iranian equivalent of a prescription drug plan for seniors: we're just arguing over the details.
Not a lot of Eichmannesque "office language" there.
Yet large numbers of western progressives are prepared to support a movement that makes no secret of its "final solution". As the song says, hate is hate-iier the second time around.
Just to consider this purely in psychological terms: Large numbers of German people genuinely believed "Jewish financiers" were behind the Great War. They wanted to live under Hitler because they thought the Nazis would govern better than the other parties; they offered the best possibility for a German rebirth. Many other Continentals felt the same, and started looking around for a Hitler of their own. Their Jew-hate arose from their calculation of their own self-interest, however deformed and contemptible that might be.
But no western progressive wants to live under Hamas. His Jew-hate arises only from a dismal reflexive multiculti empathy. So, in the most perverse testimony to the persistence of post-1918 counter-tribalism, he hates Jews not out of perceived self-interest in the ruins of a devastating war but merely as a function of his support for the exotic other. As I said, just to keep it in psychological terms, this strikes me as far weirder than old-school Jew-hate, and makes its virulence even more unsettling. You're at a protest with people shouting "Heil Hitler!" and "
Hitler was right!" and "
Death to the Jews!" and
waving placards of Ayatollah Khomeini merely as a form of socially attitudinal accessorizing. There's a decadence to that, and it will not end well.
Long Shadows :: SteynOnline
Steyn gets it right again.
except they aren't random citizens but influential politicians in Israel.
.
Oh Sorry....allow me to rephrase:
So, an influential politician in Israel voicing an offensive opinion is now a "war crime" Yeah right.
Better??
