Herland Report: The month of December, 2019 has been the worst in a long time regarding soaring anti-Semitism, by which we mean hostility to, prejudice or racism against Jews: The negative evaluation of individuals based on ethnic origin.
The disdain for Jews as a group and Israel as a nation, as if “all Jews” are evil and “everyone in Israel” always are wrong, demonstrates an ingrained, centuries old European anti-Semitism.
It disguises itself in various forms, but comes down to a remarkable will to criticize anything that “Jews do”, whether they are liberal, conservative, orthodox or happily gay.
Racism is such a dead end. Ethnic origin does not define good or evil. It simply never does. The color of someone’s skin does not determine whether the person is right or wrong.
These simple truths are about to be forgotten in an age of renewed socialist group think, the requirement for collective agreement, ever growing state control, atheist hatred of religion, the New Left’s hatred of traditional values, intolerance towards plurality, equality defined as sameness, difference of opinion defined as an enemy of state.
People ask: Are you “for or against Israel”, as if insinuating that “all inhabitants with Jewish decent” living in that particular country should collectively be “wanted or unwanted”.
Of course much is wrong in Israel just like any other nation, but is it impossible to get some sort of balanced view that is not based on socialist bias from the 1930’s?
Ignorance about Israel
If we ask the same question “for or against Israel” in the context of other nations, the utter stupidity becomes apparent: Are you for or against Norway? France? The question itself displays a person’s ignorance.
And, one may argue innate racist view of Israel. There is good and bad in every nation. And of course, there are idiots everywhere.
Yet, in a remarkable pluralistic region with complexities we hardly know anything about apart from what we read in the mainstream media and a few others, nations such as Iran, Syria, Israel, Turkey, why not communicate in a balanced way about all of them, shedding light to a variety of issues?
- Jeremy Corbyn, UK Labour Party leader, rated World Leading Anti-Semite 2019.
- The Love Story between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin is quite good at that. Some cool realism instead of all this hot headed ideology that aims to divide nations into “good” or “evil”. That is what we used to do in kindergarden as children. The real world is a massive zone of grey and only the wise and cunning survive.
Why the chronic categorization of nations into “good” or “bad” as if we live in Walt Disney narrative where only one perspective is deemed to be correct?
People have such closed minds. Many of those who rampantly criticize Israel have never even been there. If they went, they only spoke to the likeminded. Many are not even aware of the hundreds of thousands of Arab Israelis who live in Israel, many in high positions.
People are simply not aware of how multicultural Israel is and a defender of plurality, homosexuality and a 
variety of religious groups, for example the Bahai.
Many have not heard about all the Arabs in Israel who state they would never move to Gaza due to the rampant corruption and lack of political leadership.
Does the Western aid industry prevent Palestinians from freedom and keep them in a state of second-class victimhood that suits quite fine the Western billion dollar industry? Who, for example, examines this perspective?
Gaza is among the world’s top recipient of aid, where does the money go, exactly? Why no interest in Yasser Arafat’s billions?
Not to its people, that is evident by a quick glance. The same individuals always willing to generalized bash Israel, love to inhale all kinds of prejudice and biased information presented in the media as “facts”.
What anti-Semitism is – and is not
It is but natural to discuss Israeli politics with pros and cons just like any other nation. One is not an anti-Semite for simply questioning Netanyahu’s choices, as some say. We cannot have a situation where any form of criticism against Israeli politicians is deemed “anti-Semitic”.
That would be an abuse of the term, creating an environment where criticism of for example, Jewish Wall Street bankers would instantly be deemed anti-Semitic.
Of course, any Wall Street hedgefund manager – George Soros – or other members of an elite should be subjected to scrutiny, but not because of his ethnic origin, but rather his lack of character, morality, ethics or other relevant parameters – just like everyone else.
Legitimate criticism of corruption, theft, murder and so on is not anti-Semitism, if the perpetrator is Jewish. Whoever has done something wrong should receive his punishment, regardless of race and ethnic origin.
Still one may argue that too many tend to speak as though “all Jews” – those who belong to that particular ethnic origin – are “one and the same”.
The extreme-liberal Jewish individuals in the American film industry are suddenly in the same group as Conservative Jews in Israel, top Wall Street bankers, some member of the old, European Rotschild family whom people think “rule the world”, all are described in the same category as, for example, the large gay community in Tel Aviv. The generalizations are remarkably biased.
“All Jews” becomes the term, “Jews own the world”, “Jews control the world” as if the gay community in Tel Aviv controls the world or the Orthodox community in Jerusalem for that matter?
Why the chronic picking on Israel?
The nation of Israel came to being in 1948, at the same time period when the rest of the Middle Eastern countries got their border post the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Yet, Israel is the only nation chronically discussed. If you Google Israel, the bias is remarkably rampant. The same narrative over and over. Why are we that biased? Is it the old Arab racism against both Jews and Christians that suits the European atheist so well?
Or the socialist, Left Wing multicultural perspective that one should “feel sorry for foreigners” and Muslims since they come from another part of the world than Europe? Again, racism, the judging of individuals based on the color of their skin.
Are we so harsh with the Jews because they are more “white like us”, most come from Europe and Russia? Or why are the socialists in Europe so hard in love with the Arab hatred of Jews? #JeremyCorbyn.
Not to mention the rampant Muslim world racism against black people. Why does not anybody talk about that? It is a massive plague in the region.
There simply is so much we do not talk about, but only highlight endlessly the same fragments of the complexities in the Middle East over and over again.
Precisely this makes the Israeli-Palestinian topic dead boring. What you heard 30 years ago, is the same being discussed endlessly today, while billions of aid keep rolling into Gaza, generation after generation.
We have the past 30 years seen close to a genocide in the so-called Arab world against Arab Christians. Why not demand some tolerance of the collective Arab mind?
Or do we actually agree with Palestinian leaders when they say that they will never give up until every Jew is thrown in the Mediterranean Sea? That actually is the sentiment among very many Muslims, we all know it. How come nobody criticizes that attitude? The Jew does belong there, even Muammar Gaddafi stated so.
- New Cooperation between Israel and the Gulf States.
- Why do Central Europe nation state supporters love Israel?
We return to the European trends of old: Picking one ethnic or religious group, assuming their removal will solve the problems on the continent. It has been done so many times before, ingrained as a European cultural trait.
The Spectator recently addressed the issue, and the article is worth citing as Europe descends in a steadily less tolerant world, characterized by socialist group think, lack of respect for religious diversity, a totalitarian push for “sameness and one mind” and a remarkable lack of understanding for the pluralism in our world.
Some recent examples of attacks on Jews in Europe
“Two teenagers were charged after allegedly beating a rabbi in Stamford Hill while shouting ‘kill Jews’. A man was arrested on suspicion of racially or religiously aggravated assault after a United Synagogue official was attacked near his east London home, writes Steven Daisley in The Spectator blogs.
An Israeli student was assaulted on the Paris Metro for speaking Hebrew. A Berlin schoolboy was bound, throttled and subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by three classmates. More than 100 graves were vandalised with swastikas in Westhoffen Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg. In Slovakia, two Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, their headstones knocked down and set on fire.
Education authorities in Belgium referred a teacher to police after he shared an imam’s video urging jihad against ‘those who cooperate, work, conspire with the Jews’. A French court ruled that a Muslim man who killed a Jewish woman while shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ was too high on marijuana to be held criminally responsible. The Independent published an op-ed by Slavoj Žižek declaring ‘the trouble with Jews today is that they are now trying to get roots in a place which was for thousands of years inhabited by other people’.
Belgium’s Aalst Carnival forwent its world heritage listing in order to keep a float depicting Haredi Jews with hooked noses surrounded by rats and moneybags. A Belgian newspaper editor accused Jewish MP Michael Freilich of spying for Israel. A Kyiv court ordered reinstatement and compensation for a Ukrainian diplomat fired for blaming World War II on Jews, urging ‘death to the anti-fascists’ and posing with a Mein Kampf cake.” End quote.
Stop European anti-Semitism!
Also check out these topics at CNN or FOX News. Other sources may be New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post or from the British angle, BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph or Financial Times.
