- Aug 10, 2001
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I thought I would balance that with an editorial that was in the New York Post this morning:
THE VICHY TRADITION
Anti-Semitic violence is surging across Europe - home in living memory to the slaughter of 6 million Jews.
Militants among the continent's millions of North African and Arab immigrants look to be the main perpetrators.
But not the sole ones. The skinhead attack on a synagogue in Kiev may reflect resilient traditions of anti-Semitism
And far too many officials are following in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents by looking the other way. Europe's media, meanwhile, is helping stir up the attacks with shrill reports of (nonexistent) Israeli atrocities.
Not that the rage is not anti-Israeli. Pro-Palestinian marchers are shouting "Death to the Jews" in Paris.
In this they resemble many of their brethren in the Middle East - where most of the violent rhetoric from Palestinian and other Arab leaders calls for spilling the blood of "Jews" or "Jewry" rather than "Israelis."
The worst of the attacks has been in France - site of nearly 360 crimes against Jews just this month and a nation where a man who once described the Holocaust as a "detail" of history, Jean-Marie Le Pen, finished second yesterday in presidential eletions.
Arsonists have attacked synagogues in Lyons, Marseilles and Strasbourg. School buses, a soccer team and individuals walking down the street have also been assaulted. Gunmen fired on a kosher butcher shop in Toulouse.
What have the French authorities been doing to prevent this? Precious little.
Indeed, French officials have tended either to turn a blind eye to this ugliness, or to characterize it as an inevitable by-product of the fighting in Israel.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine illustrated just how anti-Zionism easily slips into anti-Semitism: He actually characterized the attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools as "expressions of sympathy" with the Palestinians.
And Prime Minister Lionel Jospin responded to one synagogue arson by saying that the French police could hardly be expected to protect Jews wherever they went. Obscene.
Although the French government may be starting to take a firmer stand, it seems to have made a cynical calculation in the worst tradition of French politics (and that's saying something!) based on the fact that the country now holds nearly 5 million Arabs - many of them unassimilated, angry and potentially dangerous - and only 600,000 Jews.
It's been only 60 years since French officials decided that the safest (or most agreeable) option was to hand over the country's Jews to the Nazis for extermination. The failure to clamp down on resurgent anti-Jewish bigotry now suggests that little has really changed.
THE VICHY TRADITION
Anti-Semitic violence is surging across Europe - home in living memory to the slaughter of 6 million Jews.
Militants among the continent's millions of North African and Arab immigrants look to be the main perpetrators.
But not the sole ones. The skinhead attack on a synagogue in Kiev may reflect resilient traditions of anti-Semitism
And far too many officials are following in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents by looking the other way. Europe's media, meanwhile, is helping stir up the attacks with shrill reports of (nonexistent) Israeli atrocities.
Not that the rage is not anti-Israeli. Pro-Palestinian marchers are shouting "Death to the Jews" in Paris.
In this they resemble many of their brethren in the Middle East - where most of the violent rhetoric from Palestinian and other Arab leaders calls for spilling the blood of "Jews" or "Jewry" rather than "Israelis."
The worst of the attacks has been in France - site of nearly 360 crimes against Jews just this month and a nation where a man who once described the Holocaust as a "detail" of history, Jean-Marie Le Pen, finished second yesterday in presidential eletions.
Arsonists have attacked synagogues in Lyons, Marseilles and Strasbourg. School buses, a soccer team and individuals walking down the street have also been assaulted. Gunmen fired on a kosher butcher shop in Toulouse.
What have the French authorities been doing to prevent this? Precious little.
Indeed, French officials have tended either to turn a blind eye to this ugliness, or to characterize it as an inevitable by-product of the fighting in Israel.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine illustrated just how anti-Zionism easily slips into anti-Semitism: He actually characterized the attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools as "expressions of sympathy" with the Palestinians.
And Prime Minister Lionel Jospin responded to one synagogue arson by saying that the French police could hardly be expected to protect Jews wherever they went. Obscene.
Although the French government may be starting to take a firmer stand, it seems to have made a cynical calculation in the worst tradition of French politics (and that's saying something!) based on the fact that the country now holds nearly 5 million Arabs - many of them unassimilated, angry and potentially dangerous - and only 600,000 Jews.
It's been only 60 years since French officials decided that the safest (or most agreeable) option was to hand over the country's Jews to the Nazis for extermination. The failure to clamp down on resurgent anti-Jewish bigotry now suggests that little has really changed.
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