23-06-2010
A Lesson in Antisemitism by Amnon Lord
In view of the explosion of anti Semitic energy all over the world as a result of the thwarting of the terror flotilla, Israel must take on board that antisemitism is not just an emotional outburst. It is an intentional, effective, strategy, which currently provides common ground for conflicting ideological and religious streams.
It is apparent that since the flotilla incident, the Israeli public and most of the open minded observers in the United States are in shock because of the outburst of antisemitism worldwide. The more we talk about failures should not obscure the impression given that something on the scale of Chernobyl has occurred in international history. What shattering nuclear explosion has been exposed as lying in ambush underground and has been seeking to break out. Therefore we have Helen Thomas the same correspondent that has turned the White House into her private office for some 50 years. And how does she look. Her hateful outburst in saying “tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Tell them to go home, to Poland, to Germany, to America” must be grasped as a genuine alarm bell. A kind of warning. There is no point in getting angry. Even though she is now finished in her position. What is important is that her utterance is a warning sign and certainly that conditions exist for the atmospheric pressure that enabled Thomas, who looks like the witch in “Disney’s Snow White” to feel free and able to express her hatred of Israel.
On Tuesday Prof. Robert Wistrich indirectly referred to this phenomenon in a lecture in the Jerusalem Center for Public and Political Affairs. He lectured on antisemitism and the Intellectuals. According to him, the obsessive occupation of many intellectuals in reversing the Holocaust by branding the Israelis as the new Nazis is blocking the ability of the West to cope with Islam and terrorism. “There is the case of Martin Valser, the German Author. “Several years ago”, Wistrich said, “he won enthusiastic acclaim when he received a literature prize and stated there and then that he condemns the German practice of continual apology for the Holocaust”. He condemned what he called the cult of self-blame. This was enthusiastically received by everyone. A feeling of release permeated over Germany. The then Chancellor, Schroeder, was very friendly towards Valser. The atmosphere engendered was that of: We have become normal again”.
However it is evident that Valser is not the only German patriot who is fed up with the Holocaust. “He has considerable hostility towards the Jews. His book “The Death of Criticism” was aimed against Marcel Reich-Renitzky. Valser was satirical about Renitzky in an anti Semitic way: The thirst for power, the lust and greed, the improper use of power. All anti-Semitic stereotypes and he was talking about a Holocaust survivor. This is in fact the way of reversing the Holocaust.
“Because of this trend, the intellectuals are unable to cope with Islam and terrorism. And so you get a phenomenon like giving the red carpet to Sheik Kardawi in London declaring him to be a progressive voice in Islam. And the antisemitism of the Moslems that is currently so open and destructive and violent – always passes unnoticed, or with an apologetic attitude towards it. And when Israel decides to confront this, to confront the phenomenon which those in the West prefer to ignore, all the anti Semitic and violent expressions are erased from the picture. And what remains is the grotesque caricature that we have seen in recent weeks”.
Prof. Wistrich speaks about some of the Jewish intellectuals and perhaps in the main those who are Israelis, in nurturing antisemitism disguised as anti Israeli sentiment, when looked at as written down. “I believe that in the future all this will be recorded as a shameful page in the history of the Jewish people”, he says.
The Unbearable Truth
These are truly the days of newspaper cuttings or preservation of digital archives. For example, David Grossman: “No explanation can justify or plaster over the crime that has been committed here, and no excuse can explain the stupidity with which the government and the army have acted…. A small, fanatical Turkish organization with a religious outlook and hostile to Israel, which has recruited to its side hundreds of peace and justice activists has succeeded in getting Israel to fall into a trap precisely because it knew exactly how it would respond and knew just how far it would be condemned, forced, like a puppet on a string, to act in a way that it acted”.
In addition to what Amos Oz and Eyal Megged have written one can claim that what is occurring before our eyes is the moral collapse of a substantial section of the elite literati in Israel. Let us for the moment put the flotilla incident into perspective: an Israeli Special Forces Unit apprehended a ship of persons posing as peace activists including scores of World Jihad and Al Qaida operatives. While taking control of the terrorists the soldiers killed nine of them. Where is the failure? Or is it the case that indignation of worldwide proportions has occurred because Israel exposed several uncomfortable truths regarding Turkey, President Obama, the peace organizations and the rest of the humanitarian organizations?
Never has an Orwellian process been more exposed than this flotilla and those behind it. Who would have believed that peace and humanitarian aid organizations would have a rescue corps pushing for war? I would go even further than this: two winners of the Nobel Peace prize are among those pushing for war. We have already mentioned President Obama. He received his prize and he can now make way in order to turn the world into a place that is a danger to the democracies, and mainly for the Jews in them; he can now make way for all the aggressive thugs – for Erduan, Putin, and Ahmedinajad. Those who are already hinting that Auschwitz is utopia. And along with the “Nobelist” in the White House we have the Irish woman Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who sailed on the Rachel Corrie.
The Official Mix
However neither Israel nor its Government has the luxury of wallowing in the worldwide celebration – all against us. After the re-exposure, and with increased intensity, of the explosion of anti-Semitic energy as a result of “a regrettable shooting incident”, a forgotten truth must be taken on board. Anti-Semitism is not just an emotional outbreak of hatred of Israel that enables us to condemn the messenger while ignoring his message.
Encouragement of revolutionary anti-Semitic movements is “an effort directed at attaining a double goal. It stimulates mutual hatreds and polarizes societies, and this is a fundamental key to the strategy of neutralizing the USA and preparing the ground for its defeat by subversive means”, wrote Steven Passuni 35 years ago. In other words, anti-Semitism is an extremely powerful strategic tool. It is not something that breaks out of its own volition. Whoever uses this tool does so judiciously.
“This situation illustrates what has always been one of the important social functions of anti-Semitism: to provide an intellectual platform common to groups that have a natural aversion to each other and for countries who view collaboration between them as being temporarily necessary.
And therefore, in as much as a certain alliance is less natural and in so far as it is more essential to establish such a given constellation, thus do we see a greater reliance on the basis of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism itself will be the stronger for it. (…) Thus we had the alliance between Fascism (the Italians) and the Nazis in the Second World War, and thus it was in the case of the courtship of Hitler by Stalin; and the alliance between the various groups that comprised the Nazi Party itself. Anti-Semitism is a strategic factor, because it is able for fulfill a function of an “artificial mix” and it is the glue that binds unnatural political combinations together”.
And in other words: a dictatorial Islamist leader gets a sympathetic hearing in the media, connects up with radical liberal peace movements, links up with Trotskyites like Lula Da-Silva who leads a successful capitalist country like Brazil. Internally he accumulates unstoppable public power, at the expense of his defense establishment which totally runs counter to his internal Islamist policy.
This is Erduan. But Ahmedinajad preceded him; anyone who has derided his violently anti-Semitic expressions against Israel has failed to understand that his was a strategic calculation. It appears to experts in Israel that Ahmedinajad is Israel’s good fortune, because with his help it is easy to have the world get the message. However it has become apparent that the anti-Semitic message is more absorbable if it is like poison hidden in an anti-Israel package. Ahmedinejad has found a ready ear for his despicable statements. He has prepared the ground. If you have examined his statements over the last five years you will see that the messages are not all that different to those of the radical left, including in Israel. He knew that in order to oppose him it would be necessary to strongly defend Israel. But who today is prepared to defend Israel with all his might.
So as Wistrich mentioned, a mechanism of obliteration and obfuscation has been created, which allows the continuation of the mantra of “criticism of the policy of the Israeli Government” while externally paying lip service to support of the right of Israel to exist. Such support has become so minimized that one can only say this about it: those who speak in this way are indeed objecting to Israelis being thrown into the ovens or to having an atomic bomb dropped on them; however as far as anything else is concerned they are opposed to Israel, starting with Nick Clegg and David Cameron and ending with Noam Chomsky.
A world free of anti-bodies
To speak about the confrontation of Israel with the International Community and with the Arabs without referring to antisemitism is like talking about nuclear weapons without mentioning the word uranium. It could be said that in the past – meaning since the Second World War, there were two relatively effective barriers to antisemitism or at least they were very much less than the effectiveness of antisemitism as a strategic tool. The first – the Taboo on anti-Semitism or openly extremist expressions since the Holocaust, since Nazism. The second – the partially extensive opposition in the West to Communism and in particular the opposition of the United States, which in actual fact conducted the Cold War.
This last barrier is the reason why the grave events of anti Semitic provocation that occurred in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern Block did not achieve the result of polarizing and weakening American Society. However they might well have caused the outbreak of World War Three. The intention of the series of trials in the Communist Block at the beginning of the 1950s was an example of an extreme anti-Semitic preparatory action. In those places that were identified with the Soviet Union, and including the Israeli Left at that period where the Stalinist provocation did its work and Leftist Intellectuals used the expression “the Murderers in White Cloaks” regarding the doctors plot. However antisemitism was a steel bridge forging the link between secular Soviet Communism and the religious Arab world.
However the ideology currently prevailing in the West, like the multi-cultural ideology, has created a friendly environment for a person even if he is an Islamic Terrorist carrying out suicide bombings. And therefore an insufficient number of persons exist who object to the anti Semitic and cancerous and violent messages transmitted by Muslims on the campuses and in the International Media. Antisemitism has again proved itself as the seasonal “artificial mix”. It currently unifies both Neo-Nazis and Neo-Communists, liberal radicals and Islamic fanatics, and even, so it would appear the various sects in Islam who are usually fighting each other – the Sunnis and the Shia.
The momentum for the campaign started by Ahmedinejad was provided by President Obama in his Cairo speech a year ago. For as long as he is saying things about the greatness of Islam and its contribution to humanity and culture, and in particular to American culture, people perhaps felt a little uneasy and there were even those who sharply criticized him. But the moment that he introduced the issue of an absolute freeze of settlements the reaction was in the form of: well this is something we can understand. Thus Israel was prominent as an important element in his speech reaching out to the Muslim world when he indicated to Islamists that there was common ground between them and the USA. “Peace” a word which everyone in the Arab world understood in its Obama context, as an indication of Israel’s exclusive responsibility for a situation of an absence of peace. Thus Israel became a regional, a world “problem”.
Repeatedly we are forced back to the Israeli world of intellectuals. To David Grossman, to Ha’aretz Newspaper, to experts of all kinds. To the presenters and visitors to the news studios. There is a complete denial of the strategic factor of antisemitism, there is conscious mental block. This block has an adverse effect on the decision makers. For many years now in Israel it has been usual to speak about Arab antisemitism. The initial reaction of the local sophisticate is “well we are ourselves to blame”. So it is that we have seen Mohamed Barakeh demonstrably jump up and leave a lecture at Yad Vashem making a big noise. At Yad Vashem itself, up until several years ago, it was in actual fact forbidden to engage in research on Arab antisemitism. In public discourse in Israel one talked about antisemitism as a curious feature of overturning tombstones and painting swastikas. Neo-Nazis in Petah Tikva! We don’t understand that Hanin Zuabi enjoying and keeping a low profile embodies the real danger.
And the inescapable conclusion: there is no extreme radical left that is not Anti Semitic. If it is not Anti-Semitic it is not radical and is thus also not effective. In order to transmit the message over long distances it must be broadcast on an electro-magnetic wave length. It is on this wavelength that information should be transmitted that is both spoken and in tune. Without such an electro-magnetic wavelength you can sing to yourself like a voice in the wilderness. Anti-Semitism is the electro-magnetic wavelength.
Published at source. Magazine, Makor Rishon.
