Guy Milliere is a French writer and commentator who has a blog linked on this site (DRZZ). In the below article, written for the Hudson Institute and posted on Aish.com, Milliere spells out in stark detail what European Jews are enduring today.
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/The_Full-Blown_Return_of_Anti-Semitism_in_Europe.html?utm_source=mimi_aish_com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Aish_com+New+Articles+-+May+29%2C+2011&utm_campaign=Aish_com+New+Articles+-+May+29%2C+2011&utm_term=The+Full-Blown+Return+of+Anti-Semitism+in+Europe&mobile=yes&c=y
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Findalis, if you are the last Jew left alive in the world, you can come stay at my house. I would like to think I would do something more effective before it comes to that, but I am unaware of any Jews in Milwaukee who have been threatened with anything of the kind. Besides, I'd have to get a bigger place.
Milliere gets down to some hard numbers late in his essay, and they are disturbing, but in some ways understandable. The first two thirds is filled with vague verbal paintings, some of which appear to be flights of fancy, or preconceived notions. Its is not even clear that the relatively remote Greek town he references has a significant Muslim population, or whether perhaps those nasty Greek Orthodox are after the Christ-killers.
ANY group that continues to incessantly beat the drum of its own past oppression will make people thoroughly sick of hearing it. Most contributors to this site have some degree of irritation over the rhetoric of the self-appointed leaders of those Americans of obvious African descent, for example. That doesn't mean it is OK to restore separate water fountains, or send people to the back of the bus, or resume pogroms, but it does produce a "boy who cried wolf" syndrome when a REAL hazard comes over the horizon.
You can't win three straight wars, and continue to present yourself to the world as an underdog. You can't say at one and the same time that "Israel is my country" and "Poland is my country," without a certain tension.
Milliere tried to blluuurrrrr whether he is talking about ethnically French, Polish, German, Greek, Italian, Swiss, Austrian, Spanish, etc. people indulging in overt anti-Semitism, OR whether (like Gary) he is talking exclusively about immigrant Muslims threatening the Jewish citizens of their host countries, while the long-established people of those countries stand by and do nothing about it.
He'd do better to talk about why this is, and what might effectively be done to change course. I've already thrown my two cents worth out on that subject, so I won't repeat it here. Milliere seems to be one more self-flagellating penitent, who gets some kind of hormonal reward out of bemoaning the course of events.
Gary, I haven't commented on anything for a long time because Siarlys is doing it soooo much better, and many times I am just bored by the SOS.
Now I do have to make this very clear that I think Findalis is downright dangerously insulting with her remarks about Europeans wanting every Jew dead, or is she really that stupid?
Ingrid,
I'll let you thrash that out with Findalis, but I am very concerned about the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe.
PS Der Berg Ruft, and I will answer the call this weekend. Maybe I'll see you there.
How else should I see it? All over Europe if a Jew shows outward signs of his or her faith, he or she is attacked in public with both the authorities AND the average person looks the other way. The authorities have even told Jewish Communities all over Europe that they can't provide protection and will not prosecute those who do harass, attack or vandalize Jewish property or Jews.
All over Europe Jews are leaving. To tell the truth they are running for their lives. In the 1930's they were told that they were overreacting. 6 million of us were Murdered. Now we run.
Fool me once shame on you.
Fool me twice shame on me!
Findalis, I doubt the veracity of the very broad generalization you have tossed out. There is no doubt that there have been a number of incidents, mostly by the children of Muslim immigrants who think Jews are fair game, and some paralyzing bewilderment on the part of European authorities. To suggest that all Jews everywhere in Europe are running for their lives sounds mendaciously hysterical to me. I have seen no evidence of it here, or elsewhere, and you are not reporting from a tour of Europe, much less living there.
Gary, I am sorry I am not making it to Erlangen this year for the Berchkerwa, I'll be going to Scandinavia and California instead.
Now Findalis
I am really sorry that you are so paranoid. I don't know where you get your ideas from.
I deal with a lot of Germans, and I have not heard one say that they want to get rid of the Jews. Most people don't even know any Jews, and not because the Jews are hiding, they are very present in the media here, and there are plenty of articles in papers and magazines about Jews, and for my taste too much ass kissing. Every week there is something on TV about the holocaust. Maybe that's why people are turning the other way.
I think you really need a shrink.
Ah Ingrid, did your German friends ever ask "Why are there no Jews living here?" An easy question to answer.
It is not paranoia to worry about what is happening to your people when you watch what is happening to them. I see the same hatreds, the same events happening in Europe that occured in the 1930's. It should scare every one, not only the Jewish Community. It should scare you.
I am noticing (and Gary is documenting) the renewal of anti-Semitism here in the US. From the overt anti-Semitism on campuses, to the proposed circumcision ban in San Francisco (Check out the comic book the originator of the law wrote.) I am seeing a return to the days of college quotas and discrimitory practices. And I am not the only member of my shul to feel this way, it has become a topic of discussion amongst ourselves. Are we all paranoid?
The old hatred is rising. Helped along by good people ignoring the symptoms and hiding their heads in the ground!
SENT BY ANDROID.
Ingrid,
Presently, I am trying to arrange a meeting with the chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Erlangen in order to gain his perspective on anti-Semitism in Europe.
Findalis, let's talk about circumcision. That is something we can agree on, although I do not believe that the movement to ban male circumcision is motivated by anti-Jewish bias. Don't forget, Muslims are also supposed to be circumcised, although that has no doubt been finessed in deference to various cultures during the course of expansion of the Dar-al-Islam (e.g., to win over the Berbers).
The standard pop culture pseudo-humanistic argument is that if its bad for girls, then its bad for boys. This is ludicrous. Female genital mutilation digs into extremely sensitive tissues, leaving a woman scarred for life. Circumcision of males removes a useless appendage, reduces the transmission of STD's, including AIDS, and in my view is a courtesy to the young man's future wife.
I have no memory of living with a foreskin, and no desire to try it. My first thought is, it is hard enough to get a growing boy to wash behind their ears, without adding this other difficulty. It is arguably a cruelty to leave it attached. I really wouldn't have wanted my parents to wait until I was twelve, then offer me a much more painful option.
Perhaps gentile doctors should learn from Jewish rituals how to do circumcisions with less pain, more care, and less hazard of taking too much. It's the cold, clinical approach that causes occasional problems.
Sooner or later we have to face the fact that there are real differences between men and women. No individual should be barred from any profession they wish to pursue on account of sex, but maybe not many women WANT to be engineers. There are, in any case, good reasons why we got rid of separate bathrooms for "white" and "colored" but retained separate bathrooms for men and women. The latter is a real distinction. Circumcision is not "male genital mutiliation." I wouldn't make it mandatory, but I maintain that it is a modest improvement.
At worst, there is no well established proof of harm which would justify setting a government policy one way or the other.
While I agree with your most of what you wrote Siarlys, this sentence is false.
Findalis, let's talk about circumcision. That is something we can agree on, although I do not believe that the movement to ban male circumcision is motivated by anti-Jewish bias.
Lloyd Schofield, the man who is pushing for a ban on Juvenile circumcisions also publishes Foreskin Man.
This is a blatantly anti-Semitic. extremely similar to the infamous Nazi rag Der Stürmer. One has to look behind the man in this case for his true motives.
While many in this misbegotten movement have good intentions, the above has driven them from joining in for a ban in other cities.
Mayor says proposed circumcision ban dropped
I do support a ban on Female Genital Mutilation. It has no health benefits and does lead to sterility, problems with urinary and reproductive tract infections, caused by obstructed flow of urine and menstrual blood. There may even be a higher risk for HIV with FGM, yet with circumcision it seems to be opposite.
Hell has frozen over! Siarlys and I can agree on something!
You've talked about hell freezing over before, Findalis, so its not the first time.
Findalis, I can't ask my friends in Germany why there are no Jews living here because, first I don't have any friends here only acquaintances, second I just read that there are 200 0000 Jews living here, and third most Germans don't care one way or the other. I know quite a few people here and whenever I ask the question about what their families did during and before the war, I always get some runaround, and they claim that they were against Hitler from the beginning.
I certainly hear no anti semitic remarks, so I don't agree with your paranoia.
Now Siarlys, about male circumcision, in Germany they don't circumsize boys, I had never heard of it until I married an American in 1966 who was. My first (German) husband wasn't, my brothers aren't, my German partner isn't, my American son is and he and my American daughter chose not to have their boys circumsized. If a man is not clean, it doesn't matter whether he is or is not.
It's really much ado about nothing.
And Findalis, can you seriously tell me why you think Jews are so hated? I really need to understand, because all the ones I ever knew I really liked, and they never made me feel uncomfortable about being German born.
Ingrid, I would agree that there are both circumcised and uncircumcised males in the world, and that both can be decent social company. I have even heard from a woman who assured me that uncircumcised males can be quite exciting, not at all repulsive -- and she was born Jewish.
I could argue that it is unfair to let parents condemn their son to the pitfalls of uncircumcised existence, but you could make the opposite argument. There are some things parents just have to decide for their son, because by the time he is old enough to make a decision, it will be an entirely different decision.
The only reason I comment on the matter is that there are some fanatics who wish to make the decision FOR both the parents, AND the children, en masse, by legally banning the procedure.
I can't argue that Jews should be allowed to circumcise on religious grounds, when Muslims and animists are NOT allowed to circumcise their daughters, even if they think it is a matter of religion, even though the Qu'ran does not mention the subject.
I can, however, argue that there is no sound basis either to mandate or to forbid, and therefore, it should be left up to individual family discretion. What is removed from a male is quite different, compared to what is removed from a female. Personally, I'm happy to have been circumcised, but as I said, that is partly because I have never known any other condition.
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