FULL ARTICLES

GOOD, BAD AND UGLY

Good, bad and ugly
By Julie Burchill
The Guardian
November 29, 2003

www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1094325,00.html

As you might have heard, I'm leaving the Guardian next year for the Times, having finally been convinced that my evil populist philistinism has no place in a publication read by so many all-round, top-drawer plaster saints. (Well, that and the massive wad they've waved at me.) Once there, I will compose as many love letters to the likes of Mr Murdoch and Pres Bush as my black little heart desires, leaving those who have always objected to my presence on such a fine liberal newspaper as this to read only writers they agree with, with no chance of spoiled digestion as the muesli goes down the wrong way if I so much as murmur about bringing back hanging. (Public.)

Not only do I admire the Guardian, I also find it fun to read, which in a way is more of a compliment. But if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.

I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don't swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad. Judeophobia – as the brilliant collection of essays A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia In 21st-Century Britain (axt.org.uk), published this year, points out – is a shape-shifting virus, as opposed to the straightforward stereotypical prejudice applied to other groups (Irish stupid, Japanese cruel, Germans humourless, etc). Jews historically have been blamed for everything we might disapprove of: they can be rabid revolutionaries, responsible for the might of the late Soviet empire, and the greediest of fat cats, enslaving the planet to the demands of international high finance. They are insular, cliquey and clannish, yet they worm their way into the highest positions of power in their adopted countries, changing their names and marrying Gentile women. They collectively possess a huge, slippery wealth that knows no boundaries – yet Israel is said to be an impoverished, lame-duck state, bleeding the west dry.

If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it's a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban.

The fact that many Gentiles and Arabs are rabidly Judeophobic, while many others are as horrified by Judeophobia as by any other type of racism, makes me believe that anti-semitism/Zionism is not a political position (otherwise the right and the left, the PLO and the KKK, would not be able to unite so uniquely in their hatred), but about how an individual feels about himself. I can't help noticing that, over the years, a disproportionate number of attractive, kind, clever people are drawn to Jews; those who express hostility to them, however, from Hitler to Hamza, are often as not repulsive freaks.

Think of famous anti-Zionist windbags – Redgrave, Highsmith, Galloway – and what dreary, dysfunctional, po-faced vanity confronts us. When we consider famous Jew-lovers, on the other hand – Marilyn, Ava, Liz, Felicity Kendal, me – what a sumptuous banquet of radiant humanity we look upon! How fitting that it was Richard Ingrams - Victor Meldrew without the animal magnetism – who this summer proclaimed in the Observer that he refuses to read letters from Jews about the Middle East, and that Jewish journalists should declare their racial origins when writing on this subject. Replying in another newspaper, Johann Hari suggested sarcastically that their bylines might be marked with a yellow star, and asked why Ingrams didn't want to know whether those writing on international conflicts were Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Hindu. The answer is obvious to me: poor Ingrams is a miserable, bitter, hypocritical cuckold, whose much younger girlfriend has written at length in the public arena of the boredom, misery and alcoholism to which living with him has led her, and whose trademark has long been a loathing for anyone who appears to get a kick out of life: the young, the prole, independent women. The Jews are in good company.

Judeophobia: where the political is personal, and the personal pretends to be political, and those swarthy/pallid/swotty/philistine/aggressive/ cowardly/comically bourgeois/filthy rich/delete-as-mood-takes-you bastards always get the girl. I'll return to this dirty little secret masquerading as a moral stance next week and, rest assured, it'll get much nastier. As the darling Jews them-selves would say (annoyingly, but then, nobody's perfect), enjoy!

 

ANTI-ZIONISM IS ANTI-SEMITISM

Anti-Zionism is anti-semitism
Behind much criticism of Israel is a thinly veiled hatred of Jews
Comment
By Emanuele Ottolenghi
The Guardian
November 29, 2003

Is there a link between the way Israel's case is presented and anti-semitism? Israel's advocates protest that behind criticisms of Israel there sometimes lurks a more sinister agenda, dangerously bordering on anti-semitism. Critics vehemently disagree. In their view, public attacks on Israel are neither misplaced nor the source of anti-Jewish sentiment: Israel's behaviour is reprehensible and so are those Jews who defend it.

Jewish defenders of Israel are then depicted by their critics as seeking an excuse to justify Israel, projecting Jewish paranoia and displaying a "typical" Jewish trait of "sticking together", even in defending the morally indefensible. Israel's advocates deserve the hostility they get, the argument goes; it is they who should engage in soul-searching.

There is no doubt that recent anti-semitism is linked to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And it is equally without doubt that Israeli policies sometimes deserve criticism. There is nothing wrong, or even remotely anti-semitic, in disapproving of Israeli policies. Nevertheless, this debate – with its insistence that there is a distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism – misses the crucial point of contention. Israel's advocates do not want to gag critics by brandishing the bogeyman of anti-semitism: rather, they are concerned about the form the criticism takes.

If Israel's critics are truly opposed to anti-semitism, they should not repeat traditional anti-semitic themes under the anti-Israel banner. When such themes – the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, linking Jews with money and media, the hooked-nose stingy Jew, the blood libel, disparaging use of Jewish symbols, or traditional Christian anti-Jewish imagery – are used to describe Israel's actions, concern should be voiced. Labour MP Tam Dalyell decried the influence of "a Jewish cabal" on British foreign policy-making; an Italian cartoonist last year depicted the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as an attempt to kill Jesus "again". Is it necessary to evoke the Jewish conspiracy or depict Israelis as Christ-killers to denounce Israeli policies?

The fact that accusations of anti-semitism are dismissed as paranoia, even when anti-semitic imagery is at work, is a subterfuge. Israel deserves to be judged by the same standards adopted for others, not by the standards of utopia. Singling out Israel for an impossibly high standard not applied to any other country begs the question: why such different treatment?

Despite piqued disclaimers, some of Israel's critics use anti-semitic stereotypes. In fact, their disclaimers frequently offer a mask of respectability to otherwise socially unacceptable anti-semitism. Many equate Israel to Nazism, claiming that "yesterday's victims are today's perpetrators": last year, Louis de Bernières wrote in the Independent that "Israel has been adopting tactics which are reminiscent of the Nazis". This equation between victims and murderers denies the Holocaust. Worse still, it provides its retroactive justification: if Jews turned out to be so evil, perhaps they deserved what they got. Others speak of Zionist conspiracies to dominate the media, manipulate American foreign policy, rule the world and oppress the Arabs. By describing Israel as the root of all evil, they provide the linguistic mandate and the moral justification to destroy it. And by using anti-semitic instruments to achieve this goal, they give away their true anti-semitic face.

There is of course the open question of whether this applies to anti-Zionism. It is one thing to object to the consequences of Zionism, to suggest that the historical cost of its realisation was too high, or to claim that Jews are better off as a scattered, stateless minority. This is a serious argument, based on interests, moral claims, and an interpretation of history. But this is not anti-Zionism. To oppose Zionism in its essence and to refuse to accept its political offspring, Israel, as a legitimate entity, entails more. Zionism comprises a belief that Jews are a nation, and as such are entitled to self-determination as all other nations are.

It could be suggested that nationalism is a pernicious force. In which case one should oppose Palestinian nationalism as well. It could even be argued that though both claims are true and noble, it would have been better to pursue Jewish national rights elsewhere. But negating Zionism, by claiming that Zionism equals racism, goes further and denies the Jews the right to identify, understand and imagine themselves - and consequently behave as – a nation. Anti-Zionists deny Jews a right that they all too readily bestow on others, first of all Palestinians.

Were you outraged when Golda Meir claimed there were no Palestinians? You should be equally outraged at the insinuation that Jews are not a nation. Those who denounce Zionism sometimes explain Israel's policies as a product of its Jewish essence. In their view, not only should Israel act differently, it should cease being a Jewish state. Anti-Zionists are prepared to treat Jews equally and fight anti-semitic prejudice only if Jews give up their distinctiveness as a nation: Jews as a nation deserve no sympathy and no rights, Jews as individuals are worthy of both. Supporters of this view love Jews, but not when Jews assert their national rights. Jews condemning Israel and rejecting Zionism earn their praise. Denouncing Israel becomes a passport to full integration. Noam Chomsky and his imitators are the new heroes, their Jewish pride and identity expressed solely through their shame for Israel's existence. Zionist Jews earn no respect, sympathy or protection. It is their expression of Jewish identity through identification with Israel that is under attack.

The argument that it is Israel's behaviour, and Jewish support for it, that invite prejudice sounds hollow at best and sinister at worst. That argument means that sympathy for Jews is conditional on the political views they espouse. This is hardly an expression of tolerance. It singles Jews out. It is anti-semitism.

Zionism reversed Jewish historical passivity to persecution and asserted the Jewish right to self-determination and independent survival. This is why anti-Zionists see it as a perversion of Jewish humanism. Zionism entails the difficulty of dealing with sometimes impossible moral dilemmas, which traditional Jewish passivity in the wake of historical persecution had never faced. By negating Zionism, the anti-semite is arguing that the Jew must always be the victim, for victims do no wrong and deserve our sympathy and support.

Israel errs like all other nations: it is normal. What anti-Zionists find so obscene is that Israel is neither martyr nor saint. Their outrage refuses legitimacy to a people's national liberation movement. Israel's stubborn refusal to comply with the invitation to commit national suicide and thereby regain a supposedly lost moral ground draws condemnation. Jews now have the right to self-determination, and that is what the anti-semite dislikes so much.

(Emanuele Ottolenghi is the Leone Ginzburg Fellow in Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford)

 

A NEW ANTI-SEMITISM?

A new anti-semitism?
Letters Page
The Guardian
November 27, 2003

www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1093956,00.html

• Europe may well be in the grip of the worst bout of hatred since the Holocaust (The 'new' anti-semitism, November 25). If this is the case, European governments must ensure such attitudes remain anathema to mainstream society.

However, I find it absurd that criticism of the Israeli government should be seen as anti-semitism. This is particularly ridiculous when that criticism relates to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, a semitic people.

Attacks against the Palestinians must be condemned, just as anti-semitic attacks in Europe must be condemned.

Matthew Collins
Erskineville, NSW, Australia

• If criticism of the policies of Israel amounts to anti-semitism, then there are a lot of anti-semitic Jews throughout the world and in Israel itself – Gush Shalom, The Other Israel, Rabbis For Human Rights, B-Tselem, Yesh Gvul, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and many others, including all those who refuse to serve in the occupied territories and are prepared to go to jail.

Something is changing in Israel, as the positive response of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion to the Geneva accords shows, and that is what is alarming Sharon and his supporters.

MM Austin
St Andrews, Fife

• To state, as do Ariel Sharon and others in Chris McGreal's article, that the presence and growth of Muslims in Europe are "endangering the life of Jewish people" is purely Islamophobic, as is the abhorrent claim that they exert some sort of dark influence on the continent.

These were exactly the excuses used to perpetrate and justify the Holocaust, regurgitated by those who, shamefully, claim to speak on behalf of its victims.

Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi
Director, Arab Media Watch

• The "new" anti-semitism of the liberal left in the west is rooted not in bigotry but in a fashionable but false perception, fuelled by ignorance and propaganda: that Israelis are guilty of the "original sin" of displacing the "native" Palestinian Arabs. In fact, the real victims have been the million Jews displaced and dispossessed by Arab nationalism.

Greater awareness of the injustice done to these native Jews of the Middle East – most of whom sought refuge in Israel – could pave the way to reconciliation between Israel and the Arabs.

Lyn Julius
London

• I oppose current US foreign policy in the Gulf but am not anti-American. Nor am I anti-British as a result of Tony Blair's support for the US. I believe human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia are appalling, but I am not anti-Saudi, anti-Arab or anti-Muslim. I deplore the current Israeli government's policies towards the Palestinians but am certainly not anti-semitic.

Being able to make distinctions between people and the policies of those that govern them is at the heart of being non-racist in one's thinking.

Ian Simpson
London

• Jewish people must be careful not to equate the legitimate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-semitism, but equally, there has to be more awareness about those who use the cover of anti- Israelism or anti-Zionism to peddle what genuinely is anti-semitism.

Europe should take notice of the singling out of Israel for special censure, when many countries are far more guilty of human rights abuses. Criticism of the Israeli occupation must not be allowed to provoke question marks over Israel's very right to exist.

Paul Gross
Harrow, Middx

 

THE “NEW” ANTI-SEMITISM

The 'new' anti-semitism: is Europe in grip of worst bout of hatred since the Holocaust?
Jewish leaders claim rising Muslim influence has altered mood of continent

By Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
The Guardian
November 25, 2003

Sixty years after the Holocaust, European Jews and Israelis are increasingly wondering if Europe is being sucked into the worst wave of anti-semitism since the second world war. In the past few weeks, a German MP was forced to resign after saying that Jews were responsible for Soviet atrocities, and the commander of the German army's special forces was sacked for agreeing with him.

Then came the observation by the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis that Jews are at the root of all evil, and the firebombing of a Jewish school in Paris.

But Israelis felt their fears were confirmed by an opinion poll of EU citizens that placed Israel as the greatest danger to world peace. Israelis were shocked, perplexed and outraged that they should be seen as a bigger threat than North Korea or Iran.

"Anti-semitism has become politically correct in Europe," said Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and minister in Ariel Sharon's government.

Yesterday Mr Sharon warned European governments that they need to do more to combat a revival of old hatreds responsible for rising anti-semitism. He described Europe's burgeoning Muslim population as a threat to Jews and dismissed accusations that rocket attacks on Gaza and tanks in Jenin have contributed to growing hostility.

"What we are facing in Europe is an anti-semitism that has always existed and it really is not a new phenomenon," the prime minister said in an interview with EUpolitix.com, an online newswire dedicated to EU affairs.

"This anti-semitism is fundamental, and today, in order to incite it and to undermine the Jews' rights for self-defence, it is re-aroused.

"These days to conduct an anti-semite policy is not a popular thing, so the anti-semites bundle their policies in with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Last week, Mr Sharon said growing anti-semitism in Europe contributed to the bombing of two synagogues in Istanbul, the destruction of part of a Jewish school in Paris and a series of smaller attacks on Jewish targets.

"It's 60 years since the Holocaust and we are again the target of attacks, fires," said Cobi Benatoff, president of the European Jewish Congress. "Anti-semitism should have been part of the history of old Europe by now, but unfortunately it is very present and alive in the Europe of today."

For the chairman of Israel's Holocaust memorial council, Avner Shalev, Mr Theodorakis's anti-Jewish statement is a "symptom of the systematic flooding of Europe with incitement against the Jewish people and the state of Israel".

The Israeli Forum to Coordinate the Struggle Against Anti-semitism – a group of Israeli intelligence and foreign ministry officials - defines anti-semitism in three forms: classic, new and Muslim.

The forum asserts that the most dangerous strand has its roots in Islam and that the rising number of Muslims in Europe is responsible for fuelling terror attacks, street violence and general harassment of Jews.

Muslims are also blamed for the spread of anti-semitism to countries such as Denmark, previously renowned for its efforts to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Mr Sharon described the growing Muslim population in Europe as "endangering the life of Jewish people."

"Of course the sheer fact that there are a huge amount of Muslims, approximately 70 million in the EU, this issue has also turned into a political matter. I would say, in my opinion, EU governments are not doing enough to tackle anti-semitism," he said.

That view was confirmed for many Israelis when it was revealed that the EU's racism watchdog has suppressed a report on anti-semitism because it concluded that Muslims were behind many incidents.

Israeli officials say the comments of Mr Theodorakis and the German MP, and a claim by the outgoing Malaysian leader, Mahathir Mohamad, that Jews rule the world by proxy and get others to fight and die for them, fall into the category of "classic" anti-semitism.

But it is the "new" anti-semitism that most disturbs some Jewish leaders because they say it emanates from influential groups such as academics, politicians and the media and is dressed up as criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.

Deborah Lipstadt, the academic who won a libel victory after describing the rightwing historian David Irving as a Holocaust denier, this month described the "new" anti-semitism as directed at the "Rambo Jew, the Jew who is the aggressor".

"What we have seen in these attacks is an obsession with the vilification of Israel; a use of Nazi and Holocaust images to describe Israel and its politics, and a focus on Israel's failures regarding human rights, while totally ignoring the Arab world's failures of human rights," she told a conference in Jerusalem.

Some Israeli critics say a country that claims to be at the forefront of defending western civilisation cannot then demand to be judged by the standards of the states it portrays as terrorist regimes.

But Robert Wistrich, director of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's international centre for the study of anti-semitism, says human rights is merely a cover.

"On the left we see a trend to believing there is a worldwide conspiracy in which Jews and Zionists are implicated," he said. "You have a link of money, Jews, America, world domination, globalisation.

"The notion that the Jews are a superpower that controls America is both a classic and revamped form of anti-semitism.

"The most interesting phenomenon is the singling out and demonisation of the state of Israel, that brands it as a Nazi-like state or accuses it of genocide.

"This kind of discourse is often put forward under the banner of human rights. This is new."

Many on the Israeli left are sceptical.

"We should bear in mind that during the time of the peace process, when Rabin and Peres were leading, Israel was the favourite of the west," said Yaron Ezrahi, an Israeli political scientist.

"There was so much support from Europe and its public. Why was anti-semitism so limited during the time Rabin and Peres led the peace process and gave the world the message that Israel was prepared to abandon the occupied territories?

"Sharon has a long record of calling Israeli critics of his policies traitors, and foreign critics anti-semites. The left is concerned that Sharon's policies are endangering Israel's future by fuelling virulent and violent anti-semitism."

Attacks in Europe

Britain: The Hillock Hebrew Congregation synagogue near Manchester, damaged in an arson attack this month.In August, vandals smashed headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Prestwich and In May, 386 Jewish graves at the Plashet Cemetery London were desecrated.

Germany: In Gundesberg last month vandals sprayed Nazi slogans on headstones and the cemetery gate. Wreaths laid at a memorial for Kristallnacht were defaced.

France: This month, the Mercaz Hatorah school in Paris was set on fire, while in July, a synagogue in Saint-Denis was ransacked, prayer books were torn and "Juif-mort" (Jew-death) written on a wall.

Italy: In March, in Milan, anti-Semitic graffiti appeared on the office of the state-owned radio and television network, after a journalist of Jewish origin was named director.

Austria: A rabbi was assaulted by two youths as he walked home from prayer in Vienna. The attackers kicked the victim and struck his head with a bottle.

Belgium: In June, a man of Moroccan descent attempted to explode a vehicle loaded with gas canisters in front of a synagogue in Charleroi, Belgium. In April 2002, the same synagogue was the target of gunfire.

 

RISING TENSION IN FRANCE BLAMED ON DISAFFECTED ARAB YOUTHS

Rising tension in France blamed on disaffected Arab youths
By Jon Henley in Paris
The Guardian
November 25, 2003

Hurrying down the steps outside the Merkaz Hatorah school in the Paris suburb of Gagny, they did not want to stop, let alone give their names. "We're to go straight home, we're not to travel alone, we're to cover our kippas with baseball caps," said one teenager. "We're not to draw any attention to ourselves and if we get any, we're to ignore it."

Each had tales to tell: spat on in the station, skullcap torn off in the street, cries of "dirty Jew" on the train. They put on a collective show of bravado, but the arson attack on their private school last weekend had plainly shaken them. "When you see all that twisted metal, the scorched bricks, it evokes... certain things, it's scary," another boy said. "You get a vision of where all this could end."

The speed with which Jacques Chirac responded to the firebombing, which destroyed a new wing of the school due to house a primary section, was an indication of Paris's anger at its portrayal as the acquiescent capital of a deeply and increasingly anti-semitic nation.

Describing "an attack on a Jew [as] an attack against France", the president called an emergency cabinet meeting and announced an interministerial committee on anti-semitism that will meet once a month to review incidents and recommend responses.

Police are to increase surveillance of synagogues and Jewish schools; prosecutors will demand maximum sentences for offenders; teachers must reverse a rising tide of anti-semitism in classrooms. France's Jewish leaders praised the president's determination.

In recent months, Jewish groups in the US and Israel have criticised France's "shameful acceptance" of a rash of anti-Jewish acts, claiming to see an "echo of the dark days of Vichy", the collaborationist wartime government that oversaw the deportation of 750,000 French Jews to Nazi death camps.

Is anti-semitism rampant in France? The evidence is inconclusive. Police figures show physical and verbal attacks on Jews have fallen sharply, to 96 in the first 10 months of 2003, against 184 in the same period last year. The number of insults and threats fell from 685 to 129, and the number of police investigations into alleged anti-semitic offences fell from 129 to 29.

The figures are not disputed by the Jewish community, although some point out that a hostile climate cannot necessarily be measured in numbers. They note that teachers, for example, are expressing increasing alarm at the way terms like "dirty Jew" have become routine playground insults.

But not even the most radical French rabbi would accuse Paris of standing by as anti-Jewish sentiment inexorably mounts: parliament unanimously passed legislation earlier this year that allows far more severe penalties for offences inspired by racial or religious hatred, which become classified as "hate crimes".

The head of the Crif umbrella group of Jewish organisations, Roger Cukierman, publicly slapped down the Israeli ambassador to France, Nissim Zvili, who said last week that French Jews were now "so afraid of anti-semitic attacks that many of them are thinking of emigrating".

After the Gagny attack, Joseph Sitruk, the chief rabbi of France, urged Jewish men not to wear their skullcaps in public, to "avoid becoming a target for potential assailants".

But Theo Klein, Mr Cukierman's predecessor as head of Crif, disagreed. "There's no need for fear," he said. "The Jewish community has been in France for 2,000 years, it is completely integrated. I see discomfort, yes; worry, certainly, but not danger."

What both Jews and non-Jews are all agreed on, however, is that the new wave of anti-semitism is different from the older, institutionalised variety promoted here by the Roman Catholic church until the early 1960s. It has clearly coincided with the flare-up of violence in the Middle East, the start of the second intifada.

At five million and 650,000 respectively, France has the largest Muslim and Jewish communities in Europe, and government officials and most Jewish leaders argue that the rising inter-community tensions are almost invariably the consequence of political, rather than religious or racial, differences.

Police and court records show that almost all the perpetrators of the latest anti-semitic attacks are young Muslims. Arab youths whose parents emigrated from France's former North African colonies and now live in grim high-rise suburbs feel they have become the victims of racism, and see the Jewish community as both more affluent and better integrated than they are.

According to Mr Klein, "what we are suffering from is the consequences of France's failure to educate and integrate a certain number of young people of immigrant origin. They feel they belong nowhere. They are involved in violent incidents regularly, against policemen, firemen, even ambulance crews. These anti-Jewish acts are a part of that."

Not that such comprehension was helpful to the boys and parents of the Merkaz Hatorah school. "Our fears and suspicions are raw," said one father picking up his son by car. "The Arabs hate us; the police let the culprits go after 48 hours; and for you journalists it's all Ariel Sharon's fault. We need protection."

FULL ARTICLES

ARAFAT AND THE “NEW ANTI-SEMITISM”

Arafat and the 'new anti-Semitism'
By Sean Gannon
Israel Insider
November 20, 2003

Scarcely a month now seems to go by without the resurrection or repackaging somewhere in the world of one classic anti-Semitic libel or another. First Mel Gibson dusted off of the ancient charge of deicide for presentation in his forthcoming film on the final hours of Christ. Then came Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Meridiaga, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, with his crackpot claims about the 'Jewish-controlled' mass media and its Israeli-inspired "persecution" of the Catholic Church. This was followed in October by Mohammed Mahathir's notorious revival of the idea of an international Jewish conspiracy to achieve world domination while, meanwhile in Germany, Martin Hohmann MP, gave a speech in which he dredged up that most overworked of twentieth century anti-Semitic canards – Jewish responsibility for Bolshevism and its crimes.

Then last week Chairman Arafat staked his claim for inclusion in this year's list of anti-Semites of international standing by giving another public outing to his favorite anti-Semitic libel, that of the 'poisoner-Jew.' Drawing on Black Death-era beliefs about Jews and disease, he told the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah on November 12th that the IDF was deliberately using depleted uranium and "gaseous bombs" in the territories, causing a precipitous rise in cancer and sterility rates amongst the Palestinian population. Just three days before his speech to the PLA, he had privately told a visiting French delegation that depleted uranium (DU) was responsible for a Palestinian cancer rate equivalent to that caused by the Hiroshima bomb.

This was not the first time that Arafat leveled this charge at Israel. In January 2001, he told the World Economic Forum at Davos that the IDF was poisoning the Palestinians with depleted uranium, noxious gases and weaponized toxic waste, an allegation he repeated at the Arab Summit in Beirut two months later. His mouthpiece, al-Hayat al-Jadidah, even suggested that DU was responsible for congenital deformities in dozens of babies at Shafaa hospital in Gaza. One year later and just two weeks after a British report on the substance warned of the possible ill-effects of contaminated water and soil on the health of local populations, Arafat told al-Jazeera that Israel's use of DU against the Palestinians had been confirmed by the United States.

Of course, Chairman Arafat is not alone in his use of the 'poisoner-Jew' libel to vilify Israel; indeed, it has been a mainstay of the Palestinian Authority's propaganda war against the Jewish state in recent years. In June 1997, for instance, the Palestinian Authority accused the IDF of "an organized plan and conspiracy ... to poison and harm the Palestinian population" by distributing poisoned food while, one month later, it alleged that Israel was flooding the West Bank with hundreds of tons of toxic chewing gum which "completely destroyed the genetic systems" of young boys and drove girls crazy with sexual desire, thus compromising their honor as Moslems.

Then, in December, the director of the PA Committee for Consumer Protection claimed that Israel was knowingly importing chocolate infected with Mad Cow Disease into Palestinian cities. Two years later, Arafat's wife, Suha, told an audience which included Hillary Clinton, of the "intensive daily use of poison gas by Israeli forces" and their poisoning of 80% of Arab water with carcinogenic "chemical materials." And, in May 2001, the official PA news agency, WAFA, reported that Israel had "started a new genocide against the Palestinian people by poisoning them, using poisoned candy bags dropped down from airplanes." Routinely reported also are the 'facts' that Israel deliberately infects Arab children with AIDS and sends HIV-positive prostitutes into Egypt to spread the disease there.

The sheer outlandishness of such accusations has not prevented their being taken seriously outside of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab and wider Islamic worlds. In the most notorious example, the Western world weighed in on the side of the Palestinians in March 1983 when they condemned what transpired to be an outbreak of mass hysteria amongst hundreds of schoolgirls on the West Bank as an Israeli attempt to sterilize them through mass poisoning. Not only was Israel denounced by the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, but the Western media, particularly in Europe, reported that there existed evidence to support the charge. Israel was actually criticized for its supposed actions in the United Nations with even the U.S. delegate, Jean Kirkpatrick, inveighing against it in the Security Council.

Twenty years later, it is clear that the myth of the 'poisoner-Jew' still resonates in some supposedly more enlightened Western societies. For despite Israel's dismissal of them as "false and contemptible," Arafat's continuing claims about the use of poisons against the Palestinians, particularly those about depleted uranium and gas, are being given creeping credence abroad. They have been often uncritically reported in the media, presented as proven facts in online forums and been investigated by anti-Israel organizations such as the U.S.-based International Action Center.

Chairman Arafat is doing his best to capitalize on the world's willingness to believe. All foreign visitors to his Mukata compound are treated to a lecture on Israel's poisoning of his people and are presented with a dossier of 'proof' that the IDF is using DU against "the sons of our people."

Today, with most of his 'guests' hailing from a Europe disposed to believe any calumny directed against the government in Jerusalem, Arafat's 'poison' propaganda must be exposed for what it is – a calculated repackaging of a centuries-old slander, a modern anti-Zionist adaptation of a mediaeval anti-Semitic myth which seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state by demonizing the Jewish people.

In short, a naked example of the 'new anti-Semitism.'

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

Sean Gannon graduated in history from University College Dublin. He works as a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Middle Eastern Affairs and is currently preparing books on Ireland's relationship with Israel since 1948 and Europe and UNSC Resolution 242.

 

WHAT’S NEW IN ANTI-SEMITISM?

What's new In anti-Semitism?
By Azmi Bishara
Dar Al-Hayat
November 20, 2003

Anti-Semitism was not born with Israel and its propaganda; it is much older. This origin of the concept of anti-Semitismus dates back to the 1870s in Germany, when it was first used to describe the ideological hostility toward Jews in Europe. Some historians even attribute it specifically to a writer who founded a league to limit the impact of Jews in 1871, as he considered that they infiltrated society to corrupt and undermine it by sowing the seeds of its deterioration. Basically, the concept of "anti-Semitism" occurred in a specific context hostile to Jews.

It is meaningless to ignore the idiom's context and say that racism against Arabs is a form of anti-Semitism because they are Semitic people. For racism against Arabs does not need to be a form of anti-Semitism for it to be refused. Anti-Semitism is not the only recognized kind of racism. Anti-Semitism was attributed to the European hostility for religious, racial, national and social reasons.

Anti-Semitism is a historical social phenomenon that cannot be denied. It was the most dangerous and horrible form of racism in Europe. The civilization Bush and his supporters like to claim they belong to, i.e. the Judeo-Christian tradition, considered to be the mother of liberal democracy, is also the origin of anti-Semitism and the holocaust place.

Certain Zionist historians try to attribute anti-Semitism to the Middle Ages in Greece and Rome; they consider that any reticence to a foreign culture or religion, including Judaism, is a form of anti-Semitism. Hostility toward Jews was not due to the fact that they are Jews but because they are strangers representing a strange culture. The Judaism religious culture itself includes alibis mentioned in the Torah to exterminate "infidel" peoples.

Anti-Semitism is a specific kind of hostility toward the other that is different proper to the relation between the Christian Europe and its Jewish citizens. Some historians claim that it goes back to the beginning of the Crusades, and the discrimination against them prevailed during the Middle Ages in the form of ostracism and exclusion.

A historian might insist that the religious hostility toward Jews was the introduction to anti-Semitism that became racial, national or social, all the more that the social anti-Semitism exploited the social demagogy that impoverish the middle classes in the interests of the value of the bourgeoisie.

Although anti-Semitism is a modern phenomenon different from eth religious hostility, yet, one cannot separate the non-religious aspects of the anti-Semitism from the religious theological tradition in the Middle Ages. In this culture, Jews are those who refuse the fact that the New Testament completes the Old one. Jewish religious trends considered Christianity a false messianic, a direct denial and an absolute opposition to Judaism for it came to end the historical Jewish mission.

It is necessary to note that France, which is currently accused of anti-Semitism, was the first country to grant Jews legal equality in 1791. However, the Jewish enlightenment itself created the modern anti-Semitism because it called for the deterioration of the prevailing values, traditions and social hierarchy. No doubt that the modern anti-Semitism brought the most horrible forms of racism, with the Jews' mass extermination and the Nazi holocaust.

Neither the Islamic culture nor the other Eastern cultures bore hatred toward the Jews as much as anti-Semitism did. Although Eastern cultures are not innocent of the many massacres their history witnessed, they did not create the anti-Semitism. Israel's attempt to encompass the Islamic culture as part of anti-Semitism is a political effort aimed at playing the role of the victim in the actual conflict with the Arabs.

But we should also mention that the modern Arab policies were affected with the European political thought and hence, with some anti-Semitism ideas albeit they did not adopt them. When Zionism used the holocaust to justify the Naqba, some people thought that the retaliation should be to ignore or minimize it. In the 1967 defeat, there was a need to justify it so they aid that the opponent was a real international devil.

Mixing the Jews with the Zionists is what Israel wants in order to justify why it is not differentiating between criticizing Zionism and anti-Semitism. Criticizing oneself is not contradictory to these truths: 1- anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon that led to the Nazi holocaust. 2- The widest spread form of racism in the Western countries is the hostility to Arabs and Muslims and not anti-Semitism. 3- Not all who are anti-Semitic are anti-Israel for some of them deal with it and consider it as a model of a militarily cultured nation. 4- The Western political and ideological traditions that opposed anti-Semitism and called for equality are today criticizing Israel and its occupation. The Israeli propaganda is hostile to many trends that refuse the anti-Semitism.

Hence, Israel chooses the people it wants to punish for anti-Semitism according to its interests, and it accuses others of anti-Semitism while it has no proof at all they are.

Many organizations in the world were established to account those who are anti-Semitic. Ever since the majority of the organized Jewish Diasporas in the world were united in solidarity with Israel, there is a trend to transform every criticism against Israel into a form of anti-Semitism.

This is one of the reasons why the Palestinian issue is complicated. Israel complains about the international concern with the Palestinian issue. The truth is that the international concern with the Palestinian issue should be seized by Palestinians through a liberation and democratic speech even though anti-Semitism. In fact, any solidarity step toward the Palestinians should be accompanied with compensation to Israel or else, it would be accused of anti-Semitism.

The Palestinian issue was born from the international concern ever since the Balfour promise. Without it, there wouldn't be a Palestinian cause or it would have been settled a long time ago just like any other colonial cause. However, the Palestinian cause was born specifically when other people took their independence and was even more aggravated when other issues wee settled. Hence, the Palestinian people are not to be envied for the international concern.

It is no longer possible to separate these two issues and set away the international concern. We only hope we can. The pivotal question is how to deal with it in a way that refuses anti-Semitism as a source to prove the justice of the Palestinian cause and refuses as well Israel's attempt to use anti-Semitism to silence any voice raised against Israel and its practices and refuses to liberate it from racism.

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ITALIANS JOIN JEWS IN SHABBAT SERVICES ACROSS COUNTRY

Italians join Jews in Sabbath services across country
The Associated Press
November 22, 2003

Italy's tiny Jewish community was joined at Saturday prayer services by politicians, priests, nuns and others in synagogues across the nation in a show of solidarity after the suicide terrorist attacks against two synagogues in Istanbul a week earlier.

Among those participating in the initiative dubbed "Open Synagogues" were the mayors of Milan and Florence, the president of Parliament's Chamber of Deputies and several leaders of the center-left political opposition.

"Today is a special day because in synagogue we have so many friends, visitors who wanted to bring us their solidarity and friendship in a particularly difficult and critical moment," Milan's chief rabbi, Giuseppe Laras, told the congregation.

Some 1,000 Milanese showed up at the synagogue to join the congregation in a united front against terrorism.

Said Florence Mayor Leonardo Domenici in that city's synagogue: "Today we're here in numbers to pay witness to our solidarity toward our fellow citizens so harshly hit in their identity as a people."

After leaving Turin's synagogue, former Rome Mayor Francesco Rutelli, currently leader of an umbrella group of center-left opposition parties, denounced anti-Semitism as "an unacceptable risk for our civilization that can return to blow across Europe."

 

GRANDDAUGHTER OF MUSSOLINI SAYS ENTIRE WORLD “SHOULD BEG FORGIVENESS OF ISRAEL”

Granddaughter of Italy's World War II dictator says entire world ''should beg forgiveness of Israel''
Al Bawaba
November 24 2003

"Not only Gianfranco Fini, but the entire world, including the Vatican and the pope, should beg forgiveness of Israel," Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy's World War II dictator and a member of parliament for the National Alliance party, told the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz daily in an interview.

The interview coincided with the arrival of Fini, her party's leader and Italy's deputy prime minister, for his first official visit to Israel, during which he plans to apologize to the Jewish people for Italy's Holocaust-era crimes.

When asked what she thought of Fini's plan to apologize to the Jewish people, she said that, in her mind, he had already done so, at the 1995 party conference in which Fini denounced anti-Semitism. "What is important to me is that Fini listen to the people, as I did during my visits to Israel," she conveyed.

"We need to develop mutual understanding, not disputes, since we are on the same side," she said.

Mussolini said the visit of Fini to Israel is important mainly because of "the [terrorist] assault on Italy and Europe." The deaths of 19 Italian soldiers in a suicide bombing in Iraq and the recent terror attacks in Istanbul "make Italy Israel's ally," she explained.

Mussolini, a niece of movie star Sophia Loren, burst onto the political scene in 1992, when she was elected to parliament as a member of the neo-fascist party in her home district of Naples. Over the ensuing years, she made it clear that she was proud to be descended from Italy's dictator.

 

ISRAEL BASKS IN WARMTH OF FRIENDSHIP WITH ITALY

Israel basks in warmth of friendship with Italy
By Tony Barber in Rome, Judy Dempsey in Brussels and Sharmila Devi in Jerusalem
Financial Times
November 18 2003

Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, basked in the warmth of his country's growing friendship with Italy on Tuesday as Silvan Shalom, his foreign minister, completed two days of frosty talks with his European Union counterparts in Brussels.

On the second day of an official visit to Rome, Mr Sharon held talks with Antonio Martino, Italy's defence minister, and was due in the evening to confer with Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister.

"Italy is today the best friend that we have in Europe," Mr Sharon told members of Italy's Jewish community at an informal meeting. "We have never had a country holding the EU presidency that has been as friendly as Italy today."

Mr Shalom said in Brussels that a date had been set for Mr Sharon to meet Ahmed Qurei, his Palestinian counterpart, next week - the first top level meeting between the two sides since July 20.

"The renewal of our contacts with the Israeli side is still at its initial stages," Mr Qurei said. "We're serious about achieving something from our contacts and we hope the Israelis are as serious as we are. I warn them against tactical [military] moves."

Mr Berlusconi's government, which will hold the EU's six-month rotating presidency until the end of December, has used its position to offer vigorous diplomatic support for Israel, departing from a traditional Italian tendency to speak up more for the Palestinian cause.

When he travelled to Israel last June, Mr Berlusconi pleased Mr Sharon's government by making no attempt to visit Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian Authority president. Gianfranco Fini, Italy's deputy prime minister, has expressed understanding for Israel's decision to build a controversial security barrier in the West Bank.

The Berlusconi government's line has, however, put Italy at odds with official EU policy, which is to maintain contacts with Mr Arafat and to be critical of the security barrier.

These differences were exposed during the EU-Israeli talks in Brussels. Chris Patten, the EU's external affairs commissioner, told Mr Shalom that the barrier's route was not only illegal but prejudiced the outcome of any final peace settlement by making it more difficult for two independent and viable states to live side-by-side.

Mr Shalom handed the EU a concession by agreeing to let Marc Otte, the EU's special envoy to the Middle East, visit Mr Arafat and be received by Israeli officials.

This will end a boycott imposed by Mr Sharon that has meant Mr Otte has been cold-shouldered by Israeli officials since he met Mr Arafat last month. However, the concession will not apply to other EU officials who visit Mr Arafat.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed near Bethlehem on Tuesday by a Palestinian with an assault rifle hidden in a prayer mat - the first deadly attack since three soldiers were killed at a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip three weeks ago.

 

ITALY IS “MAJOR TARGET” FOR EXTREMISTS, MINISTER WARNS

Italy is 'major target' for extremists, minister warns
ABC News Australia/ Agence France Presse (AFP)
November 23, 2003

A senior Italian Government minister has said that Italy had become a principal target of Islamic extremists, as the authorities increased security levels across the country.

"We cannot ignore that the Nasiriyah massacre places Italy among the major targets of Islamic terrorism," said Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu in an address to Interior Ministry staff.

A truck bomb tore through an Italian police base in the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah on November 12, leaving 28 people dead including 19 Italians in the worst attack on Italian forces since World War II.

"Individuals, small groups or sleeper cells could be activated and strike on our national territory," he warned.

"The problem of security is on the top of the Government's agenda today," he said, urging his fellow ministers to "involve everyone in the fight against terrorism, including the immense majority of immigrant Muslims."

Italian authorities asked police on Friday to tighten security around sensitive sites and announced they were planning to deport a number of Muslim militants.

Police said that security had been upgraded around the Rome offices of Britain's HSBC bank, whose Turkish headquarters in Istanbul was targeted in a car bomb attack on Thursday.

A total of 12,761 regular and carabinieri police officers have been assigned to guard 8,069 potential targets, with 4,000 troops deployed to protect 162 sites, including the seven US and five NATO bases in Italy, according to the Interior Ministry.

Surveillance has also been beefed up at train stations, ports, and airports, with special attention paid to US and British companies and flights to and from the Middle East.

Security has been tightened at embassies, headquarters of international organisations, the Vatican, churches, synagogues, mosques, monuments and key power and water plants.

On Friday, Italian junior Interior Minister Antonio d'Ali said more people "suspected of supporting Islamist terrorism" could be deported.

Italy expelled six Moroccans, an Algerian and a preacher from Senegal earlier this week.

The preacher, Abdel Kader Mamour Fall, was expelled on Tuesday as a potential threat to security after he boasted of knowing Osama bin Laden and warned that if Italian troops were not pulled out of Iraq there could be a bomb attack in Rome.

He has denied he had links to bin Laden, but has described him as a "great man".

Despite the announcement of the new security measures, the Italian Interior Ministry has been complaining about a lack of funds, with the ministry likely to lose 800 million euros out of its budget next year, according to the Italian media.

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EU BODY SHELVES REPORT ON ANTI-SEMITISM

EU body shelves report on anti-semitism
By Bertrand Benoit in Berlin
The Financial Times
November 22-23 2003

The European Union's racism watchdog has shelved a report on anti-semitism because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined.

The Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) decided in February not to publish the 112-page study, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial Times, after clashing with its authors over their conclusions.

The news comes amid growing fears that there is an upsurge of anti-semitism in European Union countries. Among many recent incidents, a Jewish school near Paris was firebombed last Saturday, the same day two Istanbul synagogues were devastated by suicide truck bombs that killed 25 and wounded 300.

Turkey, which hopes to join the EU, suffered again at the hands of what are believed to be al-Qaeda inspired terrorists on Thursday with truck bomb attacks on British targets.

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