Several years ago, after a series of terror attacks by Islamists on French Jewish institutions, Bibi Netanyahu got on his bully pulpit to lecture Europe about their dereliction of duty in protecting for local Jewish communities. He even rose to the pulpit of France’s grand synagogue to tell the nation’s prime minister, in a bout of grand chutzpah, that the latter essentially didn’t deserve his Jews. That they should all abandon him and return “home.” He urged them to make aliya where, he claimed, they would find the safety they lacked in Europe. Indeed, there was a temporary rise in aliyah from France that lasted a year. After the attacks subsided levels of aliyah receded to their former levels. I predicted this eventual outcome in the midst of the anti-Semitism attacks, while the Jewish Agency and other Zionist apparatchiks were crowing about the “end of Jewish history in Europe.” All of Bibi’s blandishments to “come home” amounted to nothing.
This outcome violates a central tenet of Zionism: that the Diaspora is destined to wither away and die. That the only certain and safe home for Jews is Zion. That those who resist the return to Zion will end up like those who died in the Holocaust. Because anti-Semites lurk around every corner and are waiting to realize the Final Solution as soon as they get their chance.
Diaspora Jews aren’t buying it. They like their homes quite well, thank you. They don’t anticipate the Apocalypse or an imminent Shoah. So they’ll stay right where they are.
Where’s Bibi?
There has been a recent outbreak of anti-Semitic (and Islamophobic) acts here in the U.S. Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis and Philadelphia were vandalized in hate crimes that saw the desecration of hundreds of graves. I’m proud to say that American Muslims have raised well over $100,000 to repair the Missouri cemetery (make your own donation). I’m certain they will do the same regarding the Pennsylvania resting place.
Jews have been astonished by Pres. Trump’s lack of concern or response to these attacks. They, in fact, suspect that the circle of anti-Semites who boosted his candidacy from David Duke to Richard Spencer, may be harboring those who are committing these anti-Semitic crimes.
I wonder when the proud patriotic Jewish government of Israel led by Netanyahu&Bennett will denounce the rise of antisemitism in Trumpland
— Yossi Melman (@yossi_melman) February 26, 2017
But there is another major figure who’s remained curiously silent: Bibi Netanyahu. Why would he shout to the rooftops about Europe’s betrayal of its Jews, while keeping mum about this American brand of anti-Semitism? Does he feel that America is such a strong country that it doesn’t need to hear his alarum about the dangers of anti-Semitism? Unlikely.
A much readier explanation may be found in his political alliance with the Trump administration. Donald Trump is Bibi’s gravy train. The president is like a candy store not just open for business, but offering free samples for Israel’s far right. So the Israeli prime minister is not about to rock that boat. As for the suffering of Jewish communities beset by such heinous acts of violence? Well, they’ll have to find another champion because Bibi’s going to take a pass on this one.
I’ve repeatedly written here that Bibi’s Zionism is based not on principle, but on pure political opportunism. He, like Ben Gurion before him, didn’t care about the Diaspora per se. The Diaspora was and is only useful as a foil to advance the interests of Israel. Jews in the Diaspora are tools or agents for advancing Israeli interests. They have no value in and of themselves.
Returning to the cemetery desecration: contrast the response by the Muslim community here to the response to settler arson attacks against Palestinian churches and mosques. Besides a single NGO and a handful of Israeli Jews…nothing. Radio silence. Yes, a denunciation by Pres. Rivlin and an expression of pro forma outrage from Bibi. After that, nothing. No arrests, no convictions, no jail time. And in the unlikely event some individual is charged and serves time, the settler lobby yammers away until the president pardons them for their sins. Finally, not a kopek or a grush contributed to restore the holy places.
Even more disturbing are the official state endorsed desecrations of Muslim cemeteries like in Jerusalem’s Mamilla neighborhood. There one of the oldest Palestinian cemeteries in the country was bulldozed to make way for the so-called Museum of Tolerance. No amount of protestations from the local community or appeals to the good Rabbi Hier or other Israeli authorities moved them to spare the graves of the dead. Israeli progress was deemed more important. And this to build an institution allegedly promoting tolerance!
America isn’t yet like Israel in this regard. But the Trump presidency promises to bring us farther down this dangerous path.
You can’t compare anti-Semitism in France with anti-Semitism in the United States.
The recent anti-Semitism in France is being committed by Muslims, and is violent. The recent anti-Semitism in the United States has been confined to cowardly acts like phoning in bomb threats and knocking down tombstones at night.
Very well, keep your eyes on the bad Muslims.
http://www.jta.org/2017/02/16/news-opinion/united-states/south-carolina-man-who-ranted-about-jews-arrested-for-planning-shooting-in-the-spirit-of-dylann-roof
In France a large component is anti-Israel resentment. As soon as the IDF becomes violent, the count of acts of antisemitism across European nations peaks. The antisemitism in the US is equally violent and originates with the right-wing extremists. In a violent nation like the US, disagreement in discourse or racial discrimination will be settled by guns.
@ Seamus Ignoramus: So your argument is that the attack on the U.S. Holocuast Museum in which a security guard was murdered, the attack on the L.A. Jewish community center in which several Jews were murdered, the recent planned attack on a S. Carolina synagogue were all simply “cowardly acts,” but don’t rise to the level of the French terror attacks? If so, why would that be? Because Islamist terror is a higher level of evil than acts by a few random (in your mind) anti-Semitic cowards in the U.S.?
I hope you can see the dead end you’ve come to in this specious claim.
No. I’m absolutely correct.
First, I said ‘recent events’, but if you want to go back to the Holocaust Museum or Kansas City, those acts were committed by angry loners. The attacks on French Jews are carried out by gangs of Arabs or by ISIS led cells. There have no attacks on Jews in the United States by any groups, and there isn’t even an organized or loosely coalesced American group calling for attacks on Jews, much less carrying them out.
@ Seamus Ignoramus: Anti-Semitism isn’t an ideology of “loners.” Thanks to Trump it is now waking the halls of the White House & quite mainstream. Breitbart & the alt-right is a powerful, organized anti Semitic movement.
The Islamist terror attacks on French Jews are varied. Some are organized & some are carried out by loners.
You are done in this thread.
“I wonder when the proud patriotic Jewish government of Israel led by Netanyahu&Bennett will denounce the rise of antisemitism in Trumpland?”
My reply: Never!
Same oligarchy, self-interest and billionaires. Undermining the EU: Brexit-Trump-Netanyahu.
I’m wondering something. What if Bibi would have condemned the antisemitic incidents? Would you would have called him a hypocrite (for focusing on hate crimes against Jews but not others) and an opportunist (for using antisemitism to score political gains)?
I suspect that no matter what he says or does he comes out bad in your book.
@ Yehuda: You misunderstand what I do here. I’m not criticizing Bibi based on my own political views. I’m criticizing him based on his own purported Zionist values. His hypocrisy isn’t in failing my standards, it’s in failing his own.
As for “what ifs,” what if Bibi had negotiated in good faith all those times he had a chance to come up with a negotiated solution to the conflict?? The plain fact of the matter is, he didn’t. We can do “what ifs” till the cows come home. They don’t do anyone much good.
These “attacks” are wag the dog attempts to get American Jews to rally around racial/religious identity. Dont be manipulated!
You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Simple as that.
said it before and will continue saying it, Zionists are the worst anti-Semites going, in addition to their genocidal pronouncements viz my Palestinian and Arab brothers, they have no problems hanging out with the neo nazi creeps in the world of the alt right Christian Zionist imperialist garbage manufacturers. we will remove the curse of zionism from the land of Palestine/Israel with political and civic equality for all who live there. nuttyahoo has enabled the destruction of Zionism within my lifetime. good thing too.
There was an “antisemitic” incident in Bondy, a suburb of Paris last week, I put quote marks because it seems unclear whether this was a fight between 4 young people who had a dispute linked to a traffic incident or an unprovoked agression on two young kippa-wearing brothers. Anyway … I looked for informations, and ended up on i24news (the owner is French-Moroccan-Israeli Patrick Drahi), and I was very surprised to see at the end of the article informations about the town hall of Bondy that recently has expressed its intention of boycotting products from Israeli settlements (Israeli settlement were in quote marks).
And then I found another article somewhere else about another antisemitic incident in another suburb a while back, and this article also mentionned that this suburb had a link to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
What I’m trying to say Jewish Zionist organizations in France clearly use antisemitism as a means to pressure French national and local politicians into not supporting Palestinian rights because it’ll give rise to antisemitism, that’s what they call “importing the conflict” …. (Netanyahu holding a election speech in the Grande Synagogue is NOT importing the conflict of course, or the IDF holding a meeting in the same synagogue to inform about how to integrate the Israeli army).