"On the road from Durban..."

"I have been waiting, in the days since Thursday's abominable attack, for just one word of sympathy, of pity, from the Muslim world. One note of commiseration to emanate from inside the thousands of mosques, one hint of regret and empathy from commentators ever ready to assail any Israeli misstep and aggression. But the silence has been deafening." (Rosie Dimanno)

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 -

December 2002
"On Ignoring Anti-Semitism" (Ruth Wisse, Harvard Israel Review, from the Fall 2002 issue)
"Profs Condemn Israel in Advance" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2002/12/20)
"Hamas: We will use Jewish skulls to build a bridge to Heaven" (IDF, 2002/12/16)
"An ugly infection" (The Gazette, 2002/12/15)
"Israel on Campus" (Ruth Wisse, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/12/15)
"PA Libel: Jewish Religion sees Arabs as Stage between Jew and Monkey" (Itamar Marcus, PMW/IMRA, 2002/12/15)
"Don't play the nutty professor with David Irving" (Giles Coren, The Times, 2002/12/13)
"British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace" (Andy Beckett and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 2002/12/12)
"Not Just Anti-Semitic Lies!" (Ehud Ya'ari, The Jerusalem Report, from the 2002/12/16 issue)
"Saudi Minister of Interior, Prince Nayef Ibn Abd Al-Aziz: 'Who Committed the Events of September 11… I Think They [the Zionists] are Behind these Events…'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 446, 2002/12/03)
"Latest attack on Jews brings a deafening silence" (Rosie Dimanno, The Star, 2002/12/02)

"On Ignoring Anti-Semitism" (Ruth Wisse, Harvard Israel Review, from the Fall 2002 issue)
A must-read critique of Leon Wieseltier's "Hitler Is Dead": "Unlike the Germans who unleashed their war against the Jews under cover of a wider European conflict, the Arab nations, through the PLO, placed the destruction of Israel explicitly at the heart of their mission. The PLO's charter, a public document, defines the Jews as "not a people with an independent identity," branding them as colonial occupiers of land that belongs eternally to the Palestinian people, and their state as an illegitimate "entity" that needs to be eliminated. On these grounds, the PLO not only claimed the moral right to kill Jews but turned their murder into a sacred cause. ...
To hold the Jews responsible for the aggression against them, as Judt does; to affirm the peaceful intentions of Arab terrorists, as Fein does; to transform American Jews who recently pimped for the PLO into paranoid hysterics of the Right, as Wieseltier does, is to disfigure political reality beyond recognition. Even if the Jews were the most rotten and misguided people on earth, they do not number 280 million in nationality (let alone one billion in religious affiliation); they have not organized their politics around the destruction of 21 Arab countries, or trained a generation of suicide bombers to achieve that goal; they have not used the United Nations as a medium for spreading a genocidal ideology around the globe, or their synagogues to preach "death to the Arabs!" Jews did not bomb America in the name of the Torah, or foment anti-Muslim sentiment throughout Europe." (See also: "Hitler Is Dead" (Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic, 2002/05/16))

"Profs Condemn Israel in Advance" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2002/12/20)
"The latest absurdity to emanate from Middle Eastern studies is an open letter suggesting that Israel might exploit a war against Saddam to engage in "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians. (The letter, released last Wednesday, is ostensibly in support of a small group of extreme-left Israelis who issued a letter with the same message back in September.) After quoting the shrill and partisan rant of "our courageous Israeli colleagues," the American profs go on to make a recommendation: "Americans cannot remain silent while crimes as abhorrent as ethnic cleansing are being openly advocated. We urge our government to communicate clearly to the government of Israel that the expulsion of people according to race, religion or nationality would constitute crimes against humanity and will not be tolerated."
Are these people serious? The claim that Israel is plotting the mass explusion of Palestinians is one more lunatic-fringe conspiracy theory, hatched by Palestinian propagandists who want "international protection" as the wage for their two disastrous years of insurrection. Unfortunately for them, Israel has done nothing that constitutes a "crime against humanity," and so Palestinians have had to fabricate one that never happened (Jenin) and cry wolf over another one that won't happen (forced "transfer"). Let me not put too fine a point on it: anyone signing this letter, effectively condemning Israel in advance for something it has no intention of doing, is either an ignoramus or a propagandist." (See also the letter and all signatories: "Letter Against Expulsion of the Palestinians" (professorsofconscience.org, December 2002))

"Hamas: We will use Jewish skulls to build a bridge to Heaven" (IDF, 2002/12/16)
"The Hamas website (http://www.palestine-info.info) published a banner Dec. 16, 2002, encouraging the murder of Jews as part of Jihad (Holy War). The banner depicts an eagle pecking at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's severed head with the slogan: "We will use the skulls of Zion's sons (Jews) to build a bridge to Heaven." The banner was signed in the name of the Iz A Din Al Kassam Brigades, which is the military wing of the Hamas terrorist organization." (Note: Found via Israpundit.)

"An ugly infection" (The Gazette, 2002/12/15)
Anti-Semitism on Campus II: "What happened at the Université du Québec à Montréal last weekend gives Canadian context to Summers's cautionary note. In the face of two anonymous threats, administrators cited security concerns as they prohibited Israeli journalist and professor Gideon Kouts from speaking to the Jewish student group Hillel. After Montreal's Jewish community and others raised proper hell, the university regained its nerve and stood up for freedom of speech. Kouts graciously - and puckishly - thanked UQÀM for generating publicity that increased his audience. ... UQÀM officials would doubtless protest - without question truthfully - that they haven't an anti-Semitic bone in their bodies. And yet they evidently failed to discern the larger pattern: Kouts, after all, is not the only prominent Israeli recently prevented from speaking at a Montreal (read: Canadian) university. In September, glass-smashing thugs silenced former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia. ... And so those who had silenced Mr. Netanyahu through violence needed no violence to stop - temporarily at least - a second Jew from speaking. Thus are habits of mind developed. Thus is the pattern of intolerance - notably anti-Semitism - bred. It is a pattern that finds repetition in the deplorable action of Concordia's Student Union in expelling Hillel, the Jewish student group, on the flimsiest of pretexts. The CSU-Hillel incident might be written off as a petty post-secondary shenanigan were it not for the chilling, ugly reality that it meant Jewish voices being silenced on a Canadian university campus. History is witness to the evils that can spring from such silencing. Lawrence Summers was correct that not every cross word between Jews and non-Jews is the start of a new Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass. But we have heard glass breaking on the streets of Montreal. Our response must not be the silence of blissful ignorance." (Note: Found via IMRA. See also: "Address at morning prayers" (Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University, 2002/09/17))

"Israel on Campus" (Ruth Wisse, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/12/15)
Anti-Semitism on Campus I: "All the while that students, in the spirit of diversity, are actively discouraged from making pejorative comments about other vulnerable minorities, some Arab and Muslim students have been actively fomenting hatred of Israel as an expression of their "identity." On campuses with a large Arab presence, such as Wayne State in Detroit, this has resulted in a palpable threat to Jewish students, and outbreaks of physical violence have actually occurred at San Francisco State and Concordia University in Montreal. Since Arab and Muslim students are currently the only ones who exuberantly defame another group, and who blame that group rather than Arab and Muslim governments for the failings of their own antidemocratic societies, it is hardly surprising that they should be joined by others looking for a villain or scapegoat. Anti-Semitism thrives because slandering Israel is the only aggression against a minority that is encouraged by the rules of political correctness."

"PA Libel: Jewish Religion sees Arabs as Stage between Jew and Monkey" (Itamar Marcus, PMW/IMRA, 2002/12/15)
Imagine being indoctrinated with this vile worldview unrelentingly every day of your life: "The following is a statement from Palestinian Authority Minister of Supplies Abd El-Aziz Shahin in a PA TV interview: 'Since the nineteenth century the Zionist mind has been built upon the killing of the Arab people. They do not want a single Arab on Palestinian soil. This is a matter that exists with every Zionist, whether he is right-wing, center, or left-wing because the Zionist education in their religious schools, where they learn that they are the chosen people of God and we are the others, we are considered the stage between the Jew and the monkey. This is a basis of the Jewish religion, and from this comes the killing of the Arab people in Palestine.'"

"Don't play the nutty professor with David Irving" (Giles Coren, The Times, 2002/12/13)
"Professor Mona Baker, the leader of the movement to boycott Israeli academics, is in cahoots with Britain's leading anti-semitic lunatic, David Irving. ... ...the other day, I came upon a letter of protest from Herr Irving to Amazon.co.uk about the nature of its advertising in Israel, which began as follows: "Dear Amazon, I have been shocked to get an e-mail from Prof. Mona Baker of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology which indicated that your company advertises itself in the Israeli press via a logo which reads: 'Buy Amazon.Com and Support Israel' and which displays an Israeli flag." ... Is the potty Holocaust denier the sort of chap she sees as a possible political collaborator? One is so often implored to remember that not all anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. But not all of them aren't. And Irving is one who is. His aversion to Israel is based not on political but racial revulsion. ... It is not impossible that Mona Baker is a rational woman who thinks that her boycott is the best way to liberate the disfranchised Palestinians. And it is also not impossible that she is a misguided nutter. It is not for a miserable clown like me to judge. But if she does not want her attempts to legislate against a group of people who just happen to be Jewish to come up smelling of Hitler, then she should avoid soliciting the support of his most prominent modern disciple." (See also: "British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace" (Andy Beckett and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 2002/12/12) and "Fury as academics are sacked for being Israeli" (Charlotte Edwardes, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/07))

"British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace" (Andy Beckett and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 2002/12/12)
So which other countries are you boycotting?: "Dr Oren Yiftachel, a left-wing Israeli academic at Ben Gurion University, complained that an article he had co-authored with a Palestinian was initially rejected by the respected British journal Political Geography. He said it was returned to him unopened with a note stating that Political Geography could not accept a submission from Israel. Mr Yiftachel said that, after months of negotiation, the article is to be published but only after he agreed to make substantial revisions, including making a comparison between his homeland and apartheid South Africa. The issue of a boycott was highlighted in the spring when two British academics, Steven and Hilary Rose, had a letter published in the Guardian supporting the idea. It was signed by 123 other academics."

"Not Just Anti-Semitic Lies!" (Ehud Ya'ari, The Jerusalem Report, from the 2002/12/16 issue)
"'Horseman without a horse,' the Egyptian TV hit series being broadcast by 14 Arab TV networks, is not the only anti-Semitic production to be galloping across the screens each evening this Ramadan. ... Al-Manar, the Hizballah TV station broadcast from Lebanon, features Dr. Ghazi Hussein, a veteran salaried PLO lackey and a former adviser to the late Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad. Hussein sits in the studio and knowledgeably defines the typical characteristics of the Jew, including "lying, treachery and greed" and goes on at length to describe Jewish baseness. ... Syrian TV is running the dramatic locally produced series, "The Collapse of Legends." Its central premise is that there is no archeological evidence to support the stories of the Old Testament; that the Torah we hold holy is nothing but one big forgery made up by rabbis; that it has no connection with the Ten Commandments, but is rather a fabrication of history designed to give the Jews a claim to the Land of Israel. ... The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews - not because of any political argument or clash over territory, but because that nation is a priori unfit to be counted among the human race. The Jewish religion is one big, ongoing lie, and Jewish history is the fruit of a consistent distortion of the past. Furthermore, the Jewish people present a future threat to the rest of the world." (See also: "Anti-Semitic 'Elders of Zion' Gets New Life on Egypt TV" (Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, 2002/10/26))

"Saudi Minister of Interior, Prince Nayef Ibn Abd Al-Aziz: 'Who Committed the Events of September 11… I Think They [the Zionists] are Behind these Events…'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 446, 2002/12/03)
From an interview with Saudi Minister of Interior Prince Nayef Ibn Abd Al-Aziz: "Prince Naif stressed that relations between the Saudi and U.S. governments are strong despite the Zionist-controlled media that manipulated the events of September 11 and turned the U.S. public opinion against Arabs and Islam. Prince Naif said, 'we put big question marks and ask who committed the events of September 11 and who benefited from them. Who benefited from events of 11/9? I think they [the Zionists] are behind these events.' ... The Interior Minister hinted that foreign powers might have provided support to terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. 'I cannot still believe that 19 youths, including 15 Saudis, carried out the September 11 attacks with the support of bin Laden and his Al-Qa'ida organization. It's impossible. I will not believe that these people have the power to do so horrendous an attack.' However, Prince Naif Ibn Abdul Aziz reiterated the Kingdom's condemnation of the attack that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon outside Washington. He said the September 11 attacks had turned the world against Islam, Muslims and Arabs."

"Latest attack on Jews brings a deafening silence" (Rosie Dimanno, The Star, 2002/12/02)
"The carnage in Kenya last Thursday is only the most recent atrocity but no doubt history will recall it as a defining moment in the modern-day Holocaust of Jews - a point where all buffers of presumed security were breached, when the war of attrition against Israelis went extra-territorial, crossing geographical borders and moral boundaries. ... I have been waiting, in the days since Thursday's abominable attack, for just one word of sympathy, of pity, from the Muslim world. One note of commiseration to emanate from inside the thousands of mosques, one hint of regret and empathy from commentators ever ready to assail any Israeli misstep and aggression. But the silence has been deafening. ... They kill Jews. They kill Americans. They kill Australians who had the temerity to push rampaging Indonesian paramilitaries out of East Timor, a predominantly Catholic fledgling state. They kill Kenyan dancers and civil employees. They kill French engineers. They blow up skyscrapers and bring down airplanes. They do all this with Allah's name on their lips. And some day, I fear they'll come for you." (Note: Found via Little Green Footballs.)

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"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

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