Tuesday, September 14, 2021
From Ian:
Time for both parties to repent for Nazi analogies
Time for both parties to repent for Nazi analogies
Yet even worse was to come. The Jewish Democratic Council of America released an Internet video ad in which the Trump-Nazi analogy was directly made. It's hard to imagine a more inflammatory and deeply wrong-headed example of a group trying to exploit the Holocaust for political purposes. That's especially true because, whatever his other failings, Trump deserved credit both for changing policies to take action against anti-Semitism on college campuses as well as his historic support of Israel.Dexter Van Zile: Pointing Out the Roots of Muslim Antisemitism Does Not Make You a Bigot
This monstrous accusation was given a pass by leading liberal Jewish figures, including those who ought to have known better and who had in the past denounced those who did the same thing. Former ADL director Abe Foxman and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who were likely thinking ahead to the competition to be the State Department Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism in a Biden administration, both betrayed their principles and gave this outrageous slur their approval. In the end, Lipstadt was the one who was rewarded for doing so when she was nominated for the job by Biden.
In a political culture where demonization of political foes is now universal, calling opponents horrible names is how both parties react to every controversy. The brazen hypocrisy of those who are all over Mandel but saw no problem when Democrats did the same thing is a function of partisanship and nothing else.
Still, that doesn't excuse Mandel, Taylor Greene or anyone else who is guilty of dragging the Holocaust into discussions where it doesn't belong.
Is there any way to reverse this trend in which both liberals and conservatives now regard comparisons to the Nazis and the Holocaust as merely a way to say something is really bad, rather than a reference to the greatest crime in human history?
Right now, the answer is "no."
In a world where Democrats would have been furious with Biden for crossing this line rather than applauding or winking at his offense and Republicans were prepared to do the same for similarly outrageous things said by Trump, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
But we don't live in such a world. Instead, Americans in both parties find themselves not merely deeply divided by political differences but actually believing that their opponents are thinly disguised authoritarians who, if given the opportunity, would re-enact Nazi tyranny against them. The way back from this dangerous precipice is unclear, though it will have to start with Jews – those with most at stake in the effort not to degrade the memory of the Holocaust – and their leading groups taking a consistent stand against these outrages. Until that happens, expect even more of these controversies. Sadly, the consequences of that failure in the battle against anti-Semitism are incalculable.
In his book, “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History” (2020), researcher Andrew Bostom reveals that in 2011, Gunther Jikeli reported the results of his interviews with 117 young Muslim men in Berlin, Paris, and London — and found that “the majority [of them] voice some or strong antisemitic feelings. They openly express their negative viewpoints toward Jews. This is often done with aggression and sometimes includes intentions to carry out antisemitic attacks.”How did Iraq’s Jewish community disappear?
Jikeli also reports that his interviewees looked “for justification of antisemitic views within what they perceive as Islam or part of their religious or ethnic identity and they often find confirmation in Islamic sources and social circles, which serve as strong, authoritative references.”
In his assessment of Jikeli’s findings, Bostom takes the scholar to task for his “excruciating reluctance to come to terms with his own findings, harping on supposed ‘perceptions of Islam’ by the interviewees, as opposed to voluminous Jew-hatred within Islam’s canon.” “Nevertheless,” Bostom reports, “Jikeli provided these critical, if understated observations, which, despite his obvious reticence, affirm the centrality of Islam in shaping the Antisemitic views of young Muslim adults in Western Europe.”
Fortunately, numerous Muslim scholars have addressed the problem of antisemitism on the part of their fellow Muslims. For example, Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist himself, has regularly condemned antisemitism expressed by jihadists. So has Tarek Fatah and many other Muslim scholars. But just like their counterparts in Christianity dealing with the issue of antisemitism, they have a lot of work to do.
Addressing the horror of attacks like those perpetrated in London on August 18 — and their roots in the Islamic tradition — is not an act of bigotry. Quite the opposite. These attacks are anathema to any religion of peace, and give bigots license to falsely stereotype all Arabs and Muslims as anti-Jewish thugs.
But as a growing number of Muslim-majority countries are starting to come to terms with Israel’s existence in the Middle East under the rubric of the Abraham Accords, it is time for people of good faith to come to grips with the roots of Muslim hostility towards Jews, so that in the future, we will have fewer days like August 18, 2021.
The children and grandchildren of Jews from Arab countries are taking a keen interest in their roots: Take Sandy Rashty, whose parents and grandparents fled Iraq, where only three Jews remain. She traces her family’s story as part of gal-dem‘s Forgotten Diasporas series:
The flowers in Iraq were special. I remember their smell. Each one was brighter than the next, each with a different scent. The roses were so big. I remember swimming in the Tigris River in Baghdad. It was cold, but clean and fresh. The water almost tasted sweet. We lived in a house overlooking the river. I grew up there with my parents, siblings and a dog named Lassie. I used to call down to the sellers from the balcony, asking what fresh fish had been caught that day.
“It was a different life. It was a time when we could all play, laugh and sing together.”
These are the memories of my grandma, who was born in Baghdad to an Iraqi Jewish family in 1927. She shares her story with me over a pot of Arabic tea at her home in north-west London.
She has a proud identity, having grown up in a small but established community in Iraq that dated back more than 2,500 years. Prominent members of the community included Sir Sassoon Eskell, Iraq’s first Finance Minister who served under King Faisal I in the early 20th century; Reneé Dangoor, crowned Miss Iraq in 1947; and multiple poets and musicians including Saleh and Daud Al-Kuwaity.
Many Iraqi Jews were named after Hollywood stars like Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth, wore Western clothes and were taught both English and French in Baghdad’s Jewish schools, including its main secondary school, Frank Iny, where my parents first met as students.
My grandma remembers the country before the modern wars, rise of extremism and the purge of its once vibrant Jewish community after the establishment of Israel in 1948.
