(Hat tip to Doc's Talk and JBlog-Israel Forum)
Barry Rubin has an article in the JBlog Israel Forum blog about the true nature of today's anti-Semitism, which the politically crowd does not want to face.
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=3113298
You see, as long as the perpetrators of anti-Semitic hate are (white) Nazis and skin-heads, it's safe to talk about it. However, when the perpetrators are Muslims and their radical left allies, that's a horse of different color.
It is also troubling that the ADL has apparently fallen into the politically correct mind-set.
Referring to hostility by many Muslims toward Islam with the blanket label "anti-Semitism" is morally and intellectually about the same as referring to any number of political tendencies as "Nazi," including recent attempts to plaster that label on Israeli policy.
ReplyDeleteTraditional European anti-Semitism was directed against people long settled within European society, based on a long-standing Christian disdain for a distinct community which had never accepted Jesus as the Messiah. It was generally ratcheted up for the usual opportunistic reasons. Either the king needed a scapegoat, or plunder was needed to pay off national and royal debts. Sometimes, it was simple religious fanaticism.
20th and 21st century hostility toward Jews by large portions of the Arab and Muslim world is specifically motivated by Jewish emigration to, settlement in, and creation of a state in, land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Expanding from hostility toward Israel to hostility toward Jews in general is not unrelated to the fact that, by and large, the international Jewish community does back Israel, financially and politically.
That doesn't make targeting of Jews by Muslims a good thing, an admirable thing, or an acceptable practice, but it doesn't help to simply rail against it as "anti-Semitism."
There are, of course, verses in the Qu'ran that disparage Jews. There are also verses in the Gospel according to Ioannes that disparage Jews. These verses, in both religions, have been militantly waved or quietly ignored, over many centuries, depending on the political posture and brand of religious thought or fanaticism in vogue.