"And it makes people angry and vehement as nothing else does. The vitriol it inspires is downright weird."

Okay, if you read my blog, you know that:

1) I am Jewish.
2) I am a Zionist, but I believe that the Palestinians got screwed.
3) I believe in a two state solution on 67 border terms, or any damned plan that works.
4) I admire Abbas, and I like Livni.
5) I consider this war in Gaza a crime and stupid.
6) I consider Hamas an explicitly Jew Hating group that commits War Crimes.
7) I think that the world's focus on this conflict is largely to do with Jew Hating, and the relation to the oil producing states.
8) I believe that we should focus our efforts on where the most people are dying first, and make our way down the list. We shouldn't ignore any wars, but human beings are all equal in my book.

So, from the Guardian:

"Standing against a tide of hatred
It is not Israel's action, but the vitriolic reaction to it that has been disproportionate( THEY BOTH ARE. ). There's only one explanation: antisemitism ( I AGREE )

Comments (533)

• 
• • Elizabeth Wurtzel
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 January 2009 10.00 GMT
  • Article history

Is it good for the Jews?

If you were so inclined, you could ask that question about the Madoff mess, the Gaza offensive, the latest screed from Alan Dershowitz – or about a new recipe for angel-food cake. Which is to say, if you are looking for antisemitism, you can find it anywhere, even in a dessert cookbook. But if even paranoids have enemies, I think it's fair to say that these are tough times for Jews.

While I would prefer to equate the fate of the Palestinians with that of Israel – meaning, I'd like to believe we're all on the same side – I think that might be a difficult political fiction to maintain at the moment. And while I'd like to artificially separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism, like most American Jews, I'm not willing to make that false distinction: when there is more than one Jewish state, the world's hatred of Israel might become no different from its exasperation with any other country, but since Israel is the only homeland, and really it is nothing more than six million Jews living together in an area the size of New Jersey, I can't pretend that the problem with Israel is that it's a poorly located country that happens to be at odds with its neighbours and only coincidentally happens to be Jewish. The trouble with Israel is the trouble with Jews.( I AGREE )

This situation makes me profoundly uncomfortable. As the kind of left-leaning liberal who tends to agree with the positions taken by The Nation in most instances, I hate having to differ so completely on the Israel issue with many I otherwise would align with. As it is my good fortune to be American, I live in the only country that as a matter of policy is pro-Israel regardless of party allegiance; Democrats and Republicans equally unite behind the blue-and-white. But to communicate with anyone I think of as rightminded (and left-leaning) in any other part of the world is to experience the purest antisemitism since the Nazi era. In fact, in Europe right now, it is de rigueur to liken the current regime in Israel with the Nazi party, and to view the experience of the Palestinians as a form of ethnic cleansing. Hamas and Hezbollah are thought by the French and British to be social welfare organisations, and Israel is viewed as a terrorist state. Here, we honor the linguistic discoveries of Noam Chomsky and otherwise experience him as a quaintly brilliant crank, but in the bookstores in London there are entire sections devoted to his political thought – and he is read as if the distinctions between Leninist and Trotskyite philosophy had genuine consequence in today's world.

Excepting a business trip I took to England, Scotland and Ireland in early 2002, I have not been to Europe since 9/11. It's become an unbearable place to be, as the anti-American feelings in light of the Iraq war have mingled with antisemitism to a point where they are indistinguishable, the new phobias of the First World. Because I like taking the occasional trip abroad, especially now that even the Euro is sinking, I am doing my best to understand the European perspective, or somehow excuse it. After all, beyond being a Jewish homeland, Israel is also a geopolitical actor with nuclear weapons, and it might be construed as fair( I TAKE IT AS MY RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION ) to criticise the actions the country has taken as a very well-armed American client that is dropping bombs on Hamas targets, to the terrible detriment of the civilian population. It's impossible not to feel sorry for the plight of the Palestinians, and it's even more impossible to imagine how any Palestinian could feel anything for Israel but animosity. I can see the problem.( FAIR ENOUGH )

But I think it is this very fact – my attempt to understand both sides – that disturbs me the most. Because trying to see all sides, such an instinct is particularly Jewish. The most vehement critics of Israel and champions of the Palestinians – hello, Professor Chomsky; greetings, Norman Finkelstein – are always Jews( THEY ARE BOTH BONEHEADS IN MY BOOK ): we are always trying in our even, level, thoughtful way to see reason in the behaviour of those who are lobbing rocket grenades at us. As a people, we are hopeless Talmudists( I CERTAINLY AM. ), we examine all the arguments and try to sort out an answer. What is both strange and difficult for Jews to watch in the case of Israel is that, as a nation surrounded by enemies, it does not make such calculations; it does not have the luxury of rationality that is eventually irrational. Israel fights back, which is very much at odds with the Jewish instinct to discuss and deconstruct everything until action itself seems senseless. Israel, hell-bent on survival, has learned to shoot first – or, at least, second – and blow away the consequences. Whereas it actually hurts my feelings when someone says something nasty about Israel, or even the United States, for Israelis, this is just the way of the world: they probably manufacture their flags to be flammable.

So, it is quite difficult to be Jewish, on the sidelines of this international crisis. Or maybe it's just difficult to be Jewish. Before his death, the literary philosopher Jacques Derrida described the experience of living in the Jewish ghetto in Paris during the Nazi occupation: because Jews were not allowed to work or attend school, but had always been the most brilliant professors and teachers, this shtetl existence was gloriously intellectual and incandescent – the only problem was that they were stuck, imprisoned by their Jewishness. This, Derrida explained, is what it's like to be Jewish: to know everyone around you is gifted, and to wish you could find a way out. Jews pride themselves on the over two hundred Nobel Prizes the group has won; and Jews pride themselves on being told: "But you don't seem Jewish." Or better still: "You certainly don't look Jewish."

Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.

I watch the pro-Palestinian rallies that have been staged in capitals across the globe, and I try to tell myself that these people are not against me, or even Israel; that they just are dismayed with all the violence. I tell myself, as Jean Renoir pointed out with such pellucid irony in The Rules of the Game, that everybody has their reasons. But here is what I finally know: with all the troubles in the world, with the terrible things that the Chinese do in Tibet, and do to their own citizens; with the horrors of genocide committed in Darfur by Sudanese Muslims; with all the bad things that Arab governments in the Middle East visit upon their own people – no need for Israel to have a perfectly horrible time – still, the focus is on what the Jews may or may not be doing wrong in Gaza( I AGREE. IT'S WEIRD. AS I SAY, IT'S JEW HATING. ). And it makes people angry and vehement as nothing else does. The vitriol it inspires is downright weird. But that makes sense, because antisemitism itself – creepy, dark, ancient and insidious – is, more than anything else, just plain weird."

I have no idea how many people share my view on this. If you read my blog, you know how I feel about ignoring wars and letting scores of humans suffer. Every damned idiot or bigot in the world is a self-proclaimed expert in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, but how many have ever even heard of the Lord's Resistance Army? Something is wrong with this picture.

"assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain."

Jew Hatred doesn't really need an excuse, but this is a consequence of the Jew Hatred spread by Hamas and similar groups, and why I believe that it needs to stop, and that the world should condemn it and all Jew Hatred. I also believe that Jew Hatred is a reason that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generates world interest, while the Congo generates world indifference. People who hate Jews love to express their feelings through criticism of Israel. This is just a fact. It doesn't make all criticism of Israel Jew Hatred, but it is a factor in many people's motives, and this should be acknowledged:

"Gaza Conflict Spreads to Europe With Jews Attacked

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:51 a.m. ET

PARIS (AP) -- Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe's towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.

Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who ''broke a window and threw in something that was burning,'' said police spokesman Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.

Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including ''murderers ... You broke the cease-fire'' and ''don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing'' were daubed on Israel's embassy in Stockholm.

In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week, opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.

France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence flaring when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, some 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.

President Nicolas Sarkozy warned in a statement Tuesday that France would not tolerate violence linked to the Gaza crisis. A day earlier, his interior minister said she was concerned about the prospect of contagion and met with the heads of the two main Muslim and Jewish groups and police officials to stress the need to ''preserve national unity.''

Damage to the synagogue in Toulouse was limited to a blackened gate, and there were no injuries even though a rabbi was giving a course to adults inside, authorities said. They said unlighted gasoline bombs were also found in a car nearby and in the synagogue's yard. A local Jewish leader, Armand Partouche, said he believed the assailants had planned to torch the synagogue, but fled when the building's alarm went off.

''It could have been very, very serious,'' Partouche said in a telephone interview. ''There were people inside; there could have been deaths.''

He said Jewish leaders are asking Toulouse authorities for reinforced security for the city's synagogues.

''We really fear that anti-Semitism will spring up again( IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH ) and that the current conflict will be transposed to our beautiful French republic,'' he said.

In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense group, said it had seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of Israel's offensive against Gaza. The group said it had recorded 20-25 incidents across the country in the past week that it believed were connected with Gaza, including an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.

London police are investigating the attack, in which suspects splashed flammable liquid on the door and set it on fire.

Community Security Trust spokesman Mark Gardner said that in another incident last week a gang of 15-20 youths walked along the main street in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighborhood in north London, shouting ''Jew'' and ''Free Palestine'' at passers-by.

''It could get worse,'' Gardner said. ''We tend to see these things happen in waves.''

The government in Belgium on Tuesday ordered police in Antwerp and Brussels to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests. Police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend. Damage was limited and no arrests were made.

In the Danish shooting, one Israeli man was shot in the arm and another in the leg as they were selling hair care products in a shopping mall. Eli Ruvio, who owns the company that operated the stands, said his employees have been harassed by Muslim youths since they set up three kiosks in the shopping center in August.

''They kept cursing and shouting at us,'' Ruvio told The Associated Press. He added that the Muslim youths also threw mud and firecrackers at the employees and spat at them.

Ruvio recalled an episode Dec. 27 when some of the youths shouted ''slaughter all the Jews.''

''I told my employees not to speak in Hebrew and lie about where they come from, they should say there were from Spain or somewhere else. If people ask you where you are from, never say you're from Israel,'' he said."

Enough said.