Hatred is the Devil’s Folly

The EU recently codified anti-Semitism into law in an attempt to undermine the sovereignty of the nation of Israel. 

Their ruling demands that labels on Israeli goods produced in East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Judea and the West Bank use the word “settlement” so that discerning consumers can make “informed choices” about what products from Israel they wish to purchase.  The term “settlement” here is deeply insidious.   It isn’t about religion – it’s about race and religion.

Coming at a time when anti-Semitism is rising across Europe, this decision should be a clanging wake-up call.  To anyone familiar with Europe’s past, this Court of Justice ruling invokes memories of some of its darkest moments.  For example:  On April 1, 1933, Hitler promoted his slogan – “Germans defend yourselves – do not buy from Jews!  While the EU’s ruling is more sophisticated, it essentially carries the same message.  

While some member states are calling the EU ruling discriminatory, The Social Democratic Party run foreign ministry and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party are devoted supporters which is not surprising.  In some regions of Germany, the Alternative fur Deutschland party has strongly criticized the government for building Holocaust memorials, claiming the country should be proud of its soldiers in WWII. 

In Hungary, Jobbik, the country’s second most popular party has routinely engaged in anti-Semitism, even calling upon parliament to make a list of all Jews in the country because they were a “national security risk.”  Across Hungary 24% say they want the Jews to leave the country while 30% want restrictions on the number of Jews who can work certain jobs.  In France 44% of the members of the yellow vest movement believe that there is a “global Zionist plot” for Jews to rule the world.

Is it any wonder that wherever Jews gather, whether it be in schools, cultural centers or in their synagogues, they are doing it behind walls, fences, gates and guards?  Synagogues in Europe’s biggest cities spend up to 50% of their budgets on security.   For every murder or act of violence against Jews, there are thousands of acts of intimidation.  Jewish parent receive phone calls threatening to murder their children.  Jewish drivers find notes on their cars saying they are being watched.  Jewish pedestrians walk by graffiti saying that Hitler had the right idea.

Forty percent of all violent hate crimes in France are anti-Semitic despite the Jewish population being less than 1%.  France has seen anti-Semitic attacks increase 74% in one year.  In Germany they rose 20%, with violent attacks up 60%.  Britain has set new records for the largest number of anti-Semitic incidents in each of the last three years.   In the U.S. alone anti-Semitic violence had doubled.  In Germany Jews have been warned not to wear the kippahs in some areas to avoid attacks and in the Netherlands, nearly half of Jews say they are afraid to identify as Jewish in public.

Over 89% of the citizens of Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan have a “very unfavorable” opinion of Jews—only a tiny percentage chose “somewhat unfavorable,” and even fewer “favorable.”  According to European public opinion, Israel poses the greatest danger to world peace, presumably because it stirs up Muslim enmity.

Shockingly,  most Americans said much the same thing about Jews in a series of surveys taken by the Opinion Research Corporation during WWII, before the State of Israel was founded: Jews posed a greater threat to the United States than Germany or Japan, with whom America was at war.

Throughout history, rising anti-Semitism has been a symptom of a society in crisis.  British journalist Melanie Phillips warns that “when societies and individuals find their identity fragmenting, they turn on the Jewish people as the scapegoat onto which they project their own murderous feelings.”   

So, if it is as Jonathan  Freedland warned that “Jews have often functioned as a canary in the coal mine” exposing the violent side of society, we face a deadly poison of global proportions, a deadly poison that has been embraced by civil society, if indeed there is such a thing these days.

Let me remind you that the Holocaust didn’t begin with the adoption of the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in 1942.  Hitler and the German High Command did not wake up one morning with a developed hatred for the Jews.  The Holocaust was the culmination of a long-running institutional policy of anti-Semitism.

How long before the far-left replaces the word Jew with the word Christian?

Source:  EU’s Labeling of Israeli Products Originated with Neo-Nazi, Green parties; The One Minority Society Loves to Hate,  the Trumpet

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