It’s Horrible, But
By Gary Krasner (06/16/04)
I credit Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, among others, with alerting us to the alarming rise in violent anti-Semitism sweeping across Europe. His April 28th, 2002 jolting essay, “The Canary In Europe’s Mine”—which described some of the incidents—had fortunately been posted and emailed far and wide. Since then, Congress passed a resolution condemning these acts of hate and a European commission studied it, although European nations misrepresented and minimized the factual findings.
I sent Jacoby’s article to several Jewish acquaintances of mine in January 2003, during a time when Europeans were lecturing Americans to stop being an international bully. One person’s reaction jolted me almost as much as the article did.
“Mike Goldberg” (a pseudonym)—a secular Jew and political activist of moderate renown in NYC—wrote back to me: “Anti-Semitism is indeed a growing horror in Europe and elsewhere, and should be fought (like all other racism and ethnic hatred). But, some of the examples given in the article you supplied pertain to Israel, and not necessarily to Jews per se. So long as Jews allow Israel’s crimes to be done in our name, a rising tide of hatred against Jews is all we’ll have to look forward to.”
Mike would do well to step back and look at the historical context. No other group in history has been subjected to as much collective blame and punishment as Jews. Europeans didn’t kill people of English descent because of the UK’s military occupation of Northern Ireland. Nor were Russian immigrants living in Paris or Brussels ever assaulted for the Soviet’s military occupations and political repression throughout the latter half if the Twentieth Century. Yet Jews everywhere are responsible for what Israel does? Were these victims of hate quizzed prior to their assaults to ensure that they were Zionists, as opposed to religious Jews? Isn’t that the ridiculous distinction that Israel haters proffer to demonstrate that they’re not anti-Semitic?
This double standard is active in the U.S. as well. Recall those editorials alleging that the drive to invade Iraq came from Jewish neoconservatives in the administration and foreign policy think-tanks. It was said that their loyalties were with Israel, which wanted Saddam toppled. Yet no one suggested that President Clinton and Senator George Mitchell couldn’t be impartial mediators between the IRA and the UK, because of their Irish roots. Apparently, Jews support Israel solely because they’re Jewish, but the vastly greater number of non-Jews that support Israel do so for other reasons?!
Liberals and leftists seem to think that Jews cannot fathom the reasons that non-Jews support Israel. That is a conceptual and moral deficit that the Left possess. As Marie Brenner argued in “France’s anti-Semitism Problem” (Vanity Fair, June 2003), assimilated Jews living in Europe have no political connections to Israel. Thus, Mike’s view furthers the perception that’s intended to shroud base anti-Semitism in the more noble guise of political opposition to Israel—which is popular today.
But beyond the fact that there’s no justification to hold individuals collectively responsible for the actions of other nations, Mike’s statement is also emblematic of the way people used to conjure up extraneous reasons why classes of people were attacked. Thus, gay couples were told that they were assaulted because they were seen holding hands. Black men were told it was because they stared at white women or entered the wrong neighborhood. Women were told that they dressed too enticingly.
Our society has since adopted a policy of zero-tolerance toward class-motivated violence, out of recognition that even hinting about extenuating circumstances lends to the perception that the violence is somehow justified. Just the discussion of mitigating circumstances fosters an atmosphere of tolerance for such violence. Thus, ‘motivation’ is the abhorrent feature that distinguishes hate-crimes from its analogs, and why society wishes to deny the perpetrators any minuscule trace of justification for their acts.
If zero-tolerance against hate-crimes exists in Europe, it didn’t seem to help hundreds of Jews who were shot, assaulted, or their synagogues fire-bombed. And while it may engender some degree of self-satisfaction to side with the Palestinians simply because they’re militarily weaker than Israel, liberal Jews should understand that they will never immunize themselves from anti-Semitism by doing so.
Nor should they have to.
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