"The
Modern Use of Ancient Lies"
"Still, something was remarkable in seeing, in this day and age, a fulmination against Judaism for its intrinsic hatefulness, written with the savage energy of a Nobel Prize winner, published in one of the world's major newspapers." (Paul Berman)
News and commentary on anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli bias.
Part 1: 2001/09/12 - 2001/12/28
Part 2: 2002/01/04 - 2002/04/29
Part 3: 2002/05/02 - 2002/06/29
Part 4: 2002/07/04 - 2002/08/29
Part 5: 2002/09/05 - 2002/11/25
Part 6: 2002/12/02 -
June 2002
"Palestinian schoolbooks fan the flames of hatred" (Amos Harel, Haaretz, 2002/06/29)
"Europe's Anti-Israel Excuse" (Abraham H. Foxman, The Washington Post, 2002/06/27)
"The killing mantra" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2002/06/21)
"The Real Nazis" (Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 2002/06/21)
"CNN chief accuses Israel of terror" (Oliver Burkeman and Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, 2002/06/18)
"The Rough Beast Returns" (Todd Gitlin, Mother Jones, 2002/06/17)
"An Impossible Position" (Ari Shavit, The Washington Post, 2002/06/16)
"The Baby Face of Hate" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, 2002/06/12)
"'Under War, Everything Happens'" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/06/07)
"The particularity of Palestinian terrorism" (Louis Rene Beres and Allesandra Delgado, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/04)
"Amnesty's lies" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/04)
"Paving the way for anti-Semitism" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/06/02)
"Israel and the Anti-Semites" (Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary, from the June 2002 issue)May 2002
"Palestinian Leader: Number of Jewish Victims in the Holocaust Might be "Even Less Than a Million..." Zionist Movement Collaborated with Nazis to "Expand the Mass Extermination" of the Jews" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 95, 2002/05/29)
"How Harvard and M.I.T. professors are planting a seed of malevolence" (Ruth Wisse, Jewish World Review, 2002/05/29)
"Why I won't talk to the BBC" (Douglas Davis, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/29)
"Europe and the Muslim war against the Jews" (Robert S. Wistrich, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/28)
"Bigotry in Print. Crowds Chant Murder. Something's Changed." (Paul Berman, Forward, from the 2002/05/24 issue)
"Anti-Semitic Pogrom at San Francisco State" (FrontPageMagazine, 2002/05/13)
"What about anti-Semitism?" (Anne Bayefsky, The Washington Times, 2002/05/10)
"The paper on sale in London that wants all Jews killed" (Alan Judd, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/08)
"The Modern Use of Ancient Lies" (David I. Kertzer, The New York Times, 2002/05/08)
"Special Report: Inciting and Educating Children Towards Hate, Anti-Semitism and Violence in the Palestinain Authority" (Dani Naveh, PM's Office, 2002/05/08 [?])
"Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger" (Robert S. Wistrich, The American Jewish Committe, April 2002)
"A campaign of hatred" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/05/05)
"Columnist for Egyptian Government Daily to Hitler: 'If Only You Had Done It, Brother'" (MEMRI, SD# 375, 2002/05/02)
"'Final Solution,' Phase 2" (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 2002/05/02)
"Palestinian schoolbooks fan the flames of hatred" (Amos Harel, Haaretz, 2002/06/29)
"The investigation, led by Noah Meridor, from the liaison office, examined 23 such books. It revealed "systematic education to delegitimize the existence of the State of Israel, fanning the flames of hatred and violent revenge to destroy the country." ... The Palestinians, the books claim, have first rights to the country. The "Arab Canaanites" were here before the Jews, therefore the Zionistic claim of rights to the land by virtue of forefathers are a lie. ... Israel is described as an evil country, which exploits and degrades, where soldiers shoot merciful nurses, and Jews build gallows. ... The solution to the Palestinians' situation is revealed through the exultation of two goals: the Right of Return for refugees, and Jihad (holy war). The Right of Return is the solution for Palestinian refugees, and this is endorsed through songs, drawings, stories and history lessons. ... Jihad is also considered a legitimate and esteemed course of action. Valorous fighting and dying in battle - as a "shaheed" (suicide bomber) - are considered worthy values. The words to the "Song of the Shaheed" are in a seventh grade book: "It is better to die without my stolen right and homeland, the flow of blood is music to my ears." The textbook goes on to explain: An honorable death is one in Allah's name, defending the homeland.""Europe's Anti-Israel Excuse" (Abraham H. Foxman, The Washington Post, 2002/06/27)
Foxman on a survey of European sentiments towards Israel and Jews made by the Anti-Defamation League: "Among the 2,500 people polled in late May and early June as part of our survey, 45 percent admitted to their perception that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, while 30 percent agreed with the statement that Jews have too much power in the business world. Perhaps most telling, 62 percent said they believe the outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in Europe is the result of anti-Israel sentiment, not anti-Jewish feeling. The contrariness of their own attitudes suggests that Europeans are loath to admit that hatred of Jews is making a comeback. This view may make Europeans more comfortable in the face of what is happening in their countries, by suggesting that this time around, Jews are not the innocent victims but are themselves the victimizers in the Middle East. But the incredibly biased reaction against Israel seen in the poll - despite the fact that Israel under former prime minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an independent state, and despite the fact that Palestinians have carried out a sustained campaign of terrorism against Israeli civilians - speaks to a repressed hostility to Jews that may not be socially acceptable in post-Holocaust Europe. Still, even with such constraints, some 30 percent of Europeans are not averse to expressing their anti-Semitic beliefs openly and directly.""The killing mantra" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2002/06/21)
West on MSNBC's Alan Keyes program showing subtitled clips from Palestinian-controlled television: "The Palestinian Authority may blindly blame Israel for creating a generation of suicidal maniacs, but it is the PA itself that has helped nurture - if such a word applies - such taboo-breaking evil through its relentless propaganda machine. ... It starts with state-sponsored sing-alongs for the romper-room set - ditties about blood-drenched soil and warriors of jihad. It continues with shows featuring girls in party dresses delivering bloodthirsty harangues: "When I wander into the entrance of Jerusalem, I'll turn into a suicide warrior! I'll turn into a suicide warrior! In battle-dress! In battle-dress! In battle-dress!" And it goes on through the seemingly continuous loop of government-broadcast sermons. From one tele-imam comes, "Bless those who wired themselves, putting the belt around his waist or his sons, and who enter deeply in the Jewish community and say, 'Allah is great.' " Or: "Wherever you are, kill these Jews and these Americans who are like them and support them." ... We hear of the need to reform the PA, from its terror-abetting "security" forces to its corrupt apparatchiks, but the subject of dismantling its poisonous propaganda machine isn't mentioned. As de-Nazification was once required, "de-martyrfication" is one of today's most urgent challenges." (See also: "Transcript for Monday, June 17, 2002" (MSNBC, 2002/06/17), a full transcript of the "Alan Keyes is making sense" show.)"The Real Nazis" (Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 2002/06/21)
"The Palestinians are the Arab world's Sudeten Germans. The "liberation" of their coreligionists and ethnic brothers is used as a utopian carrot guiding brainwashed donkey after brainwashed donkey to murder and suicide. I am not saying that Arabs or Muslims generally are Nazis or Nazi-like. That would be absurd. But I am saying that the Arab world is the only place left on this planet which bears a reasonable resemblance to Germany in the 1930s, with the open and accepted dissemination of Nazi-like ideas and ambitions. ... But there's something more to it. In the West, in America, in "civilized" circles, there's a deep desire to deny the obvious out of shame or some other form of moral laziness. Sometimes the motive is to preserve Third World peoples as victims of the West. To these people "power" - specifically "Western" or colonial power - defines Nazism. But this is absurd. Power does not make you Nazi-like; if it did, America would be a Fourth Reich already - and again, it's not. No, what makes you Nazi-like is the worship of power, particularly the power to murder, especially when you don't have it. You don't have to commit genocide to be a Nazi; you just have to want to commit genocide. Does anyone doubt that if given the chance, there would be countless Arab groups or governments who would leap at the opportunity to wipe out all of the Jews? One need only take their word for it.""CNN chief accuses Israel of terror" (Oliver Burkeman and Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, 2002/06/18)
Ted Turner, a self-acclaimed "very good thinker", in an interview which is an exercise in moral equivalency: "Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of CNN, accuses Israel today of engaging in "terrorism" against the Palestinians, in comments that threaten to lead to a further decline in the news network's already poor relations with the Jewish state. "Aren't the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other?" says Turner, who is vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner, which owns CNN, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism." ... Mr Turner also admits that he was wrong to call the September 11 hijackers "brave" in a speech in Rhode Island that sparked outrage. "I made an unfortunate choice of words," he says, adding that his ownership of the Atlanta Braves baseball team meant the word was never far from his mind. 'Look, I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word...'""The Rough Beast Returns" (Todd Gitlin, Mother Jones, 2002/06/17)
"Wicked anti-Semitism is back. The worst crackpot notions that circulate through the violent Middle East are also roaming around America, and if that wasn't bad enough, students are spreading the gibberish. ... It should therefore trouble progressives everywhere that the students at San Francisco State are neither curious nor revolted by the anti-Semitic drivel they are regurgitating. ... The German socialist August Bebel once said that anti-Semitism was "the socialism of fools." What we witness now is the progressivism of fools. It is a recrudescence of everything that costs the left its moral edge. And, appallingly, it is this contemptible message the anti-Semitic students at San Francisco State chose to parrot. ... A Left that cares for the rights of humanity cannot cavalierly tolerate the systematic abuse of any people - whatever you think of Israel's or any other country's foreign policy. Any student movement worthy of the name must face the ugly history that long made anti-Semitism the acceptable racism, face it and break from it. If fighting it unremittingly is not a "progressive" cause, then what kind of progress does progressivism have in mind?""An Impossible Position" (Ari Shavit, The Washington Post, 2002/06/16)
Shavit on the Israeli settlement in Adora: "He was coming back from the local synagogue when he saw two men in Israel Defense Forces uniforms standing in the small front yard, trying to get into his home, two doors down the pink cobbled road from the Greenbergs. "Hey, guys, what's up?" he asked them, but they didn't reply. Instead they started shooting at him. As he rolled down the hill to get away and find shelter at a neighbor's place, the two men, who turned out to be members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, broke into Sheffi's cottage. They passed by the TV set, the Disney videocassettes and goldfish aquarium, and went up the three stairs that led to the nursery. There they found his wife, Shiri, combing the hair of their daughter, Danielle, age 5. And while Shiri was trying to hide Danielle under the toddler's bed, along with 4-year-old Eliad and 18-month-old Uriel, one of the liberation fighters put the barrel of an AK-47 against Danielle's little head and pulled the trigger.""The Baby Face of Hate" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, 2002/06/12)
A report on a briefing held by MEMRI at the National Press Club in Washington on Arabic-language media coverage of "martyrdom and suicide bombers," where they screened a compilation of recent broadcasts on the Arab satellite channel Iqraa Television: "And, most harrowing of all, perhaps, especially if you have kids of your own, there is the May 7, 2002 edition of "Muslim Woman Magazine," hosted by Doaa 'Amer, a soft spoken, highly polished anchorlady who might just as well be Joan Lunden or Katie Couric - except that she's wearing a body-length robe. And also that she's a monster. Ms. 'Amer begins as follows: "Our report today will be a little different, because our guest is a girl, a Muslim girl, but a true Muslim. Allah willing, may our God give us the strength to educate our children the same way, so that the next generation will turn out to be true Muslims who understand that they are Muslims and know who their enemies are." ... The camera then begins a low pan downward and to the right as Ms. 'Amer offers a "peace be unto you" welcome to her guest. Who turns out to be . . . a toddler.
'Amer: Basmallah, how old are you?
Toddler: Three and a half.
'Amer: Are you a Muslim?
Toddler: Yes.
'Amer: Basmallah, are you familiar with the Jews?
Toddler: Yes.
'Amer: Do you like them?
Toddler: No.
'Amer: Why don't you like them?
Toddler: Because . . .
'Amer: Because they are what?
Toddler: They're apes and pigs.""'Under War, Everything Happens'" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/06/07)
Ignatius has met "the man some analysts identify as the inventor of the modern suicide bomb," Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, in Beirut: "It was Fadlallah who supposedly issued the fatwa, or religious ruling, that encouraged Shiite terrorists to detonate truck bombs outside the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in 1983 - killing hundreds of Americans and beginning the process that soon drove the United States from Lebanon. ... But Fadlallah expressed such a deep and unyielding opposition to Israel - a state he referred to at one point as "this bizarre situation called Israel" - that I left his headquarters more pessimistic than ever about the prospects for anything that deserves to be called "peace." ... In other words, as a moral matter, he does not accept Israel's right to exist. I asked Fadlallah whether he could imagine a peace settlement that would lead him to advise his followers that it was time to stop the killing. Yes, he said. If Israel agreed, say, to the Saudi peace proposal and recognized a Palestinian state, "war is no longer a realistic option and no longer something people should think about," he said. But in his heart, would Fadlallah accept that Israel had a moral right to exist? It seems clear that he - and millions of Arabs with him - would continue to view the Jewish state as immoral and unjust. That's the problem. There is no peace; only truce.""The particularity of Palestinian terrorism" (Louis Rene Beres and Allesandra Delgado, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/04)
"All terrorist groups, of course, emphasize violence and the use of force, but the Palestinian groups are altogether unique in several important ways. Most significant of all is that, for the Palestinians, violence is generally its own reward. Rejecting more instrumental views of force, Hamas, the PLO, and all other movement organizations have now come to regard terror violence as an end in itself. The root of this dark sentiment lies in their common and all-consuming hatred of "the Jews." ... Today, the PLO call for annihilation of Israel still remains codified at PA Web sites and publications, and the Hamas Covenant still calls insistently for the "realization of Allah's promise: 'The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, killing them.'" ... Palestinian terrorism, based upon fanatical religious hatreds and intentionally wanton killings, bears no close resemblance to other forms of contemporary terror violence. Starkly medieval, it seeks the death and dismemberment of individual Jews and the total annihilation of the Jewish State. It follows that there can be absolutely no civilized justification for its manifold crimes.""Amnesty's lies" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/04)
"When one compares Amnesty International's 2002 annual report to the previous year's, one disturbing fact immediately leaps out: The writers of the chapter on Israel have become much smarter - and considerably more dishonest. Consider, for instance, the section titled "political prisoners." The new report, released last week, states simply that "at the end of the year, 2,200 Palestinians were held on political charges." Since no elaboration is given, most readers would conclude that these people were jailed for expressing anti-government opinions or attending peaceful demonstrations, in the grand tradition of China and the former Soviet Union. ... But when one goes back to the 2001 report, one discovers a very different picture. That report also has a section titled "political prisoners" - but in it, Amnesty is kind enough to elucidate what it means by the term. The first sentence of the section explains it clearly: "Israel continued to detain 1,600 Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and 29 Palestinians from Israel sentenced in previous years by military courts for offenses such as attacks on Israelis" ... By neglecting to mention that this year's crop of "political prisoners" were also jailed for "offenses such as attacks on Israelis" - which in fact is what almost all Palestinians imprisoned last year were jailed for - Amnesty has turned an action that most civilized people would support into a damning indictment of Israel.""Paving the way for anti-Semitism" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/06/02)
"Israel and anti-Semitism have in recent weeks become major issues in the German political establishment as it prepares for general elections on September 22. ... The current controversy began around a month ago when Jamal Karsli, a Syrian-born member of parliament, was ejected from the Green party after he claimed that Israel was using "Nazi methods" against the Palestinians and attacked the influence of the "Zionist lobby" in Germany. Karsli was, in contrast, warmly welcomed into the FDP by its deputy chairman, Jurgen Mollemann - himself a harsh critic of Israel, who heads the German-Arabic friendship association. ... "Recent events are more than the breaking of a taboo on anti-Semitic expressions," [the editor of the prestigious weekly Die Zeit, Josef] Joffe says, 'they are uprooting the most basic ethos of postwar Germany: the consensus that determined that this is a liberal democracy, without racism or anti-Semitism. There is also an attempt here to break the principle of Germany's special responsibility to the Jews and to Israel. The ultimate test for German society regarding this attempt will be on September 22 - election day. ... If they increase their power dramatically, it will really be problematic proof of the processes taking place in German society.'""Israel and the Anti-Semites" (Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary, from the June 2002 issue)
"But one salient fact about the picture I have been painting is this: there is a clear fit between anti-Israel or anti-Jewish hatred and the general ideological predispositions of the contemporary European Left. As historical trends go, this is relatively new. ... There are, to be sure, neo-Nazis to be found among those burning the star of David and chanting obscene slogans against the Jewish state in the streets of Europe; but the ranks are more heavily composed of environmentalists, pacifists, anarchists, anti-globalists, and socialists. "I have difficulties with the swastika," said a member of Belgium's Flemish-Palestine Committee at an April demonstration, registering by his perturbance the anomaly of that Nazi symbol amid the placards of his ideological comrades. The pattern continues in the upper reaches of European politics. ... It was Germany's Social Democratic-Green coalition government that this past April, in the midst of Israel’s battle for survival, and despite its much vaunted "special relationship" with the Jewish state, opted to halt further exports of spare parts for the Merkava tank. It was France's socialist foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, who in April publicly castigated American Jews for being so "intransigent" as to fail to make "the switch toward peace." When the European Parliament passed a resolution on April 10 calling for trade sanctions against Israel, it was propelled forward by Europe's Liberal Democrat and Green parties, with the Socialists denouncing Israel in the most perfervid tones of all.""Palestinian Leader: Number of Jewish Victims in the Holocaust Might be "Even Less Than a Million..." Zionist Movement Collaborated with Nazis to "Expand the Mass Extermination" of the Jews" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 95, 2002/05/29)
"A 1982 doctoral dissertation by Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, who is considered second to Yasser Arafat, discussed "the secret ties between the Nazis and the Zionist movement leadership." Two years later, a study by Abu Mazen based on his dissertation for Moscow's Oriental College was published in Arabic by Dar Ibn Rushd publishers in Amman, Jordan. In the introduction to his 1984 study, Abu Mazen referred to well-known Holocaust deniers, raised doubts that gas chambers were used for extermination of Jews, and claimed that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust might be "even less than a million." ... The central claim Abu Mazen sought to prove is that the Zionist movement, with all its factions, conspired against the Jewish people and collaborated with the Nazis to annihilate it, because the movement considered "Palestine" the only appropriate destination for Jewish emigration. ... Abu Mazen added, 'the Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government's hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.'""How Harvard and M.I.T. professors are planting a seed of malevolence" (Ruth Wisse, Jewish World Review, 2002/05/29)
"Yet the divestment petition is corrupt and cowardly in ways that a mob assault is not. ... How very clever to call upon Israel to obey this or that resolution of the United Nations when Arabs states remain in perpetual defiance of the entire UN Charter! The Charter is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all members; members are to practice tolerance and live together in peace and settle their disputes by peaceful means. Yet when flouting the UN voted the partition of Palestine in 1947 by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly, laying the ground for the establishment of Israel, the Arabs attacked the new state, flouting the resolution - and therefore the very basis of participation in the UN. ... The failure of the UN to expel the Arab countries until they accepted its basic principles turned the potential Family of Nations into a Roman coliseum with Israel in the pit. Now comes a team of faculty from Harvard-MIT to join the circus, attempting to make Israel pay, literally, for the aggression against it.""Why I won't talk to the BBC" (Douglas Davis, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/29)
"Even as the Twin Towers came crashing down, the BBC was interviewing Arab studio analysts who solemnly intoned that it was racist to assume that Arabs or even Muslims were responsible. More likely, they said, it was the Mossad, because such an event "played into Israeli hands." But, even if Arabs and Muslims had flown those planes, they said, was it not obvious that the United States itself was the real culprit? After all, it was the US that was pursuing a pro-Israel foreign policy, dictated by the Jewish lobby; it was the US that was ignoring the occupation and turning a blind eye to the settlements; it was the US that was contemptuous of Arab sensibilities. Could anyone blame the Arabs for wanting to vent their humiliation, frustration, and rage at this one-sided American foreign policy? Apparently not. At least not at the BBC, which could not get enough of it. ... Since September 11, however, I have refused all invitations to appear on BBC radio or television. The reason is not that I wish to avoid a debate, but rather that I believe that the BBC has crossed a dangerous threshold. In my judgement, the volume and intensity of this unchallenged diatribe has now transcended mere criticism of Israel. Hatred is in the air. Wittingly or not, I am convinced that the BBC has become the principal agent for reinfecting British society with the virus of anti-Semitism.""Europe and the Muslim war against the Jews" (Robert S. Wistrich, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/28)
"Since October 2000, there has been an alarming rise in the number of anti-Semitic assaults on Jewish communities around the world for which young Muslims have been responsible and nowhere is this more apparent than in France. These new immigrants carry with them anti-Semitic baggage from their mother countries and Islamic culture. ... This highly explosive cocktail of fanatical religious passion, Jew-hatred, and warlike zeal sentiments perfectly encapsulated in the concept of Jihad (Holy War) has been still further inflamed by the violently anti-Israel coverage of the Palestinian intifada in most of the French and European media. ... But the impeccably "anti-racist" and humanist Europeans of today prefer not to recognize their handiwork in the perverted and genocidal ideology of Islamist anti Semitism, for which historically they bear considerable guilt. Instead they stand by almost silently when they are not actively denying the existence of Muslim Jew-baiting or trying to excuse it as a purely political act of "resisting the (Israeli) occupation." This trivializing response to the Muslim war against the Jews (which has its counterparts in Israel and the Diaspora) reminds me of the failure of the West to effectively counter Nazi anti-Semitism. It smacks of appeasement, cowardice, and a failure to confront Europe's inner demons which have instead been projected with almost hysterical fury against the alleged sins of the Jewish State.""Bigotry in Print. Crowds Chant Murder. Something's Changed." (Paul Berman, Forward, from the 2002/05/24 issue)
A must-read essay on the new anti-Semitism, in which Berman among other things analyses an article by José Saramago in El Pais: "Israel, in Saramago's view, has pursued immoral and hateful policies during its entire history. ... Saramago traced Israel's policies to biblical Judaism. He pointed to the story of David and Goliath, which, though commonly pictured as a tale of underdog triumph, is actually the story of a blond person (David's blond hair seemed to catch Saramago's attention) employing a superior technology to kill at a distance a helpless and presumably non-blond person, the unfortunate and oppressed Goliath. Today's events, in Saramago's fanciful interpretation, follow the biblical script precisely, as if in testimony to the Jews' fidelity to tradition. ... Saramago, shrewder and more sophisticated than the crowds in the Washington streets or the panelist at the Socialist Scholars Conference, did condemn the suicide bombers. He did so in two throwaway sentences at the end of his essay, sneeringly, with his own expressive ellipsis: "Ah, yes, the horrendous massacres of civilians caused by the so-called suicide terrorists.... Horrendous, yes, doubtless; condemnable, yes, doubtless, but Israel still has a lot to learn if it is not capable of understanding the reasons that can bring a human being to turn himself into a bomb." And so, the deliberate act of murdering random crowds turns out to be the fault of the murdered - or, rather, of the monstrous and racist doctrines of their religion, which is Judaism. ... Still, something was remarkable in seeing, in this day and age, a fulmination against Judaism for its intrinsic hatefulness, written with the savage energy of a Nobel Prize winner, published in one of the world's major newspapers." (See also: "De las piedras de David a los tanques de Goliat" (José Saramago, El Pais/saramago.iespana.es, 2002/04/21))"Anti-Semitic Pogrom at San Francisco State" (FrontPageMagazine, 2002/05/13)
A letter from Laurie Zoloth, Director, Jewish Studies Program at San Francisco State University: "I cannot fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled "canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license," past poster after poster calling out "Zionism=racism, and Jews=Nazis." ... Yesterday, the hatred coalesced in a hate mob. Yesterday's Peace In The Middle East Rally was completely organized by the Hillel students, mostly 18 and 19 years old. ... As soon as the community supporters left, the 50 students who remained praying in a minyan for the traditional afternoon prayers, or chatting, or cleaning up after the rally, talking -- were surrounded by a large, angry crowd of Palestinians and their supporters. But they were not calling for peace. They screamed at us to "go back to Russia" and they screamed that they would kill us all, and other terrible things." (Note: Scott Armel-Funkhouser, a scientist at UC Berkeley, has reproduced the poster depicting "soup cans" labeled "Palestinian Children Meat." on his website: "This is perhaps the most grotesque and explicit incarnation of the "blood libel" observed in the free world since the Nazi Holocaust. ... It suggests (1)that Jews ingest the flesh and/or blood of children, and (2)that there are rites associated with the Jewish religion which detail how to perform this cannibalism. Note that this vicious racism is not directed specifically at Israel but at Jews, for it reads, 'slaughtered according to Jewish rites'".)"What about anti-Semitism?" (Anne Bayefsky, The Washington Times, 2002/05/10)
"Yasser Arafat wasn't out on the streets courting the sympathy of the world's media for five minutes before he violated international law. "Israelis are Nazis and racists," he said. Incitement to racial hatred is a violation of the world's first major human rights treaty - the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the most basic standards of human dignity. For Mr. Arafat and his Middle East agenda, however, racism is a central weapon of war. ... Mr. Arafat, his agents and soul-mates, whether it be Fatah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, operate a two-part strategy. First, demonize the enemy as a racist. Second, advocate and justify eliminating that enemy by armed struggle, including suicide bombing. The United Nations has proved to be the ideal breeding ground for this one-two punch. At the U.N. World Conference "Against" Racism in Durban last August, Palestinian and Arab participants succeeded in including in the final declaration the conclusion that Palestinians were victims of Israeli racism. Jewish delegates to the Durban non-governmental forum, of which I was one, saw our voices silenced and replaced by the condemnation of Israel as an apartheid state. ... The United Nations is a propaganda machine for the Palestinian cause, as any reading of the voluminous material produced by the U.N. Division for Palestinian Rights will reveal. The EU readily sacrificed Israel in Durban after the United States walked out.""The paper on sale in London that wants all Jews killed" (Alan Judd, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/08)
"This is race-hate at its purest, the denial of the other's right to exist. It may be that, by stoking hysteria in their peoples, normally pragmatic Arab leaders are making it not only more difficult for any peace process to work but perhaps - at least for the lifetime of anyone now living - impossible. ... The danger is that those who encourage or permit it may have unleashed a force that is already beyond their future control, and spreads beyond their borders. The increase in anti-Semitic acts on the Continent (already running at 300 a year in Marseilles alone, where it is likely that some of Jean-Marie Le Pen's supporters have been encouraged to take action) shows how the expression of something can bring into being the thing itself. The anti-Semitic mania that flourished in Germany during the 1930s was latent in European cultural soil, but many who participated might never have permitted it to flower in themselves without a climate that encouraged expression. That is what is happening in the Middle East - and beyond.""The Modern Use of Ancient Lies" (David I. Kertzer, The New York Times, 2002/05/08)
"For Israeli Jews, who recall all too well the role that these images played in paving the road to the Holocaust, the reappearance of these same images in the Arab population around them is obviously frightening. But the tepid response of the Christian world has also been disturbing, because what is going on in the Muslim world today has its roots in the Christian past. Might this be the reason why Europeans, in particular, seem so reluctant to face the threat posed to Jews by this new wave of anti-Semitism? Are Europeans in a state of denial? ... Given the historical role of Christianity in promulgating such hatred, it is not unreasonable to hope that church leaders will face their own past with clear eyes. They should be among the first to call attention to these lies, and they should be among the loudest in their condemnation of them.""Special Report: Inciting and Educating Children Towards Hate, Anti-Semitism and Violence in the Palestinain Authority" (Dani Naveh, PM's Office, 2002/05/08 [?])
"The Palestinian Ministry of Education is providing clear direction to its high school history teachers to inculcate the view among the students that Zionism is a racist movement similar to Fascism and Nazism. ... In Chapter 14 called "Zionism" in the instruction book for high school teachers, the Palestinian Ministry of Education defines for its teaching staff the required objectives in teaching this chapter, among which are: "Objective 5 - The student will understand the reasons why the peoples of the world hate the Jews". ... In the introductory chapter to the textbook, the following goals are defined for Palestinian history teachers: "The student will compare the foundations of Fascism and Nazism to those of Zionism. The student will acquire the following (learning) directives: Zionism is an aggressive, racist movement; the sense of racial superiority is the essence of Zionism, Fascism, and Nazism.""Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger" (Robert S. Wistrich, The American Jewish Committe, April 2002)
A must-read report on Muslim anti-Semitism: "Moreover, the present tidal wave of anti-Semitism has for a number of years been crystallizing into a genuinely mass phenomenon. ... The Jews are portrayed in Arab cartoons as demons and murderers, as a hateful, loathsome people to be feared and avoided. They are invariably seen as the origin of all evil and corruption, authors of a dark, unrelenting conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy Muslim society in order eventually to take over the world. ... Anti-Semitism has indeed become an integral and organic part of this Arab-Muslim culture of hatred - a potent instrument of incitement, terror, and political manipulation. ... The Western media, as is its custom, has been extremely reluctant to relate the current terrorist war against Israel and the West to its ideological roots in Islam or to the sources and meaning of jihad. It is equally averse to connecting terrorism with the anti-Jewish obsessions that currently animate millions of Muslims. Amazingly little attention has been paid to the sheer abundance, energy, and viciousness of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism from Cairo and Gaza to Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Lahore. The seemingly endless parade of grotesque falsehoods exhibited in Arab and Muslim defamation of Jews and the Jewish state scarcely seems to impinge on Western consciousness. At most it is perceived as a footnote to the raging storm of anti-Americanism or as a form of "political opposition" to Israeli actions.""A campaign of hatred" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/05/05)
"Professor Dina Porat, who heads Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, says the new anti-Semitism is not only derived from the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but also from the socioeconomic conflict around the globalization issue. "One of the most striking aspects of the new anti-Semitism is its connection to the anti-globalization movement. Jews are prominent in the top tiers of world economic activity and since Jews have always been identified with financial control and cosmopolitan ideology, the enemies of globalization and the critics of privatization and unemployment created by globalization makes it easy to focus the blame on the Jews. " Porat points to the strange link between radical leftists, particularly in Europe, with representatives of Islamic fundamentalism, who found a common enemy that threatens to destroy their very different worlds: global capitalism invented by Jews.""Columnist for Egyptian Government Daily to Hitler: 'If Only You Had Done It, Brother'" (MEMRI, SD# 375, 2002/05/02)
Excerpts from a virulently anti-Semitic article by Fatma Abdallah Mahmoud titled "Accursed Forever and Ever," which recently appeared in the Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar: "These accursed ones are a catastrophe for the human race. They are the virus of the generation, doomed to a life of humiliation and wretchedness until Judgement Day. ... Finally, they are accursed, fundamentally, because they are the plague of the generation and the bacterium of all time. ... With regard to the fraud of the Holocaust... Many French studies have proven that this is no more than a fabrication, a lie, and a fraud!! ... Hitler himself, whom they accuse of Nazism, is in my eyes no more than a modest 'pupil' in the world of murder and bloodshed. ... But I, personally and in light of this imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, 'If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin.'""'Final Solution,' Phase 2" (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 2002/05/02)
"It is time to face a sickening fact that is much more obvious today than it was 11 years ago, when Ruth R. Wisse asserted it. In a dark and brilliant essay in Commentary magazine, she argued that anti-Semitism has proved to be "the most durable and successful" ideology of the ideology-besotted 20th century. ... Anti-Semitism's malignant strength derives from its simplicity -- its stupidity, actually. It is a primitivism which, Wisse wrote, makes up in vigor what it lacks in philosophic heft, and does so precisely because it "has no prescription for the improvement of society beyond the elimination of part of society." This howl of negation has no more affirmative content than did the scream of the airliner tearing down the Hudson, heading for the World Trade Center."
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Articles
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"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)
"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)
"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)
"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)
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Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.
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"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)
"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)
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