Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Elder of Ziyon
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We're Not Antisemitic - We Haven't Had A Holocaust In Like 70 Years
The recent spate of antisemitic violence in France is deplorable, as were the various attacks on Jews in Belgium and elsewhere over the last several months. But it would be irresponsible and malicious to say that Europe as a whole remains antisemitic - we haven't had a Holocaust here in almost seventy years.
The Holocaust was easily humanity's - and Europe's - darkest hour. Entire ethnic groups ganged up on a defenseless minority and tried to wipe them out. But to claim that the continent and culture that gave ruse to such a horror and the continent and culture of today have similar characteristics is to engage in petty demagoguery. It's been nearly seven decades since we last engaged in the systematic vilification, persecution, torture, internment, starvation, and slaughter of Jews. That's a whopping 2,207,520,000 seconds between us and the worst crime in the history of mankind.
And it's not as if we've even come close since. We learned some important lessons, such as how to put perpetrators of genocide on trial after they've already slaughtered untold numbers. Not just in far-flung places such as Rwanda and Cambodia, but right here on European soil - we stood firmly on the side of human rights and the sanctity of human life when we put Slobodan Milosevic and his ilk on trial. It was a bold move, sitting in our courtroom in The Hague and shaking our fists at the murderous policies of Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic in the former Yugoslavia years earlier.
Not that vigilance is unimportant. We Europeans know well the vigilance necessary to prevent our sense of ethnocentrism from causing others to feel discrimination. That it why we refrain from real action against the rhetoric and violence of Muslim immigrants. Europe knows it must never perpetrate violence against Jews. And far be it from us to impose our sensibilities in that regard on our immigrants, who might have very different ideas about Jews and how to treat them.
There will always be a vocal minority in our midst that refuses to internalize the lessons of the Holocaust. But to define us by them would be unjust. We haven't placed Jews in concentration camps in 3,600 weeks. Keep them from reaching the shores of Palestine, yes, and support the equation of their aspirations for a homeland with racism, sure, but kill them? No - that is no longer our ethos. It hasn't been for, like, seventy years, as far as anybody can prove.
We can leave that part to the Arabs.
