A hero was celebrated in France last month. Michel Bacos was the pilot of the jet hijacked at Entebbe, the man who stayed – by choice – with the Jewish hostages, though he was not Jewish. What he was, was a veteran of World War II who had obviously learned the lessons of that nightmare. Hatikva, the Israeli anthem, was played before his burial.
Tag Archives: anti-Semitism
The Suicide of the West
This week marks the 71st anniversary of Israeli independence and so, predictably, Hamas has to try to ruin the party. What was also predictable, sadly, was the reaction of so many in the West. Melanie Phillips has written a long blog post about it. Choice quote:
The Jews are often referred to as “the canaries in the mine.” With Western civilization in existential free-fall, the symbiotically linked contagions of Israel-bashing and antisemitism are both the cause and effect of this crisis.
Subscribing to the Arabs’ murderous falsehoods about Israel has destroyed the West’s moral compass – leaving it open to the murderous falsehoods about the people who gave it that moral compass in the first place and further blinding it to the forces threatening its own continued survival.
Read the whole thing here.
Passover
Elections
Israelis went to the polls earlier this week – a propos, this wonderful commentary from David Hirsh (I stole it from his Facebook page).
Israelis are voting today and determining their own future. This fact makes the hearts of all democratic people soar. This signifies the defeat, so far anyway, of the antisemitisms, Nazism, Arab Nationalisms, Islamisms and the Communisms which tried to prevent the endurance and the self determination of Jews.
Some Israelis are people whose families never left Jerusalem, the Middle East or North Africa; people ethnically cleansed from the great cosmopolitan civilizations by Arab nationalism and Islamism, from Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Yemen, Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia…
Some were driven out of Europe at the time of the pogroms in Kishniev and elsewhere.
Some are descended from the undead of Europe, survivors of the largely successful campaign across Europe to define, seek out and kill them.
Some limped away from the ideological and physical attempt to wipe them out which was called Russian Communism.
Some trace their ancestry to the expulsions from England in 1290 or from Spain in 1492.
Some Israelis come from Africa, ancient communities of Jews, endangered by famine and by isolation.
The continued existence of Israel is a victory for democratic life, democratic thinking and democratic practice.
Young Israeli men and women fought and died to defend their freedom against annihilationist aggression, notably in 1948, 1967, 1973. Israel still has to fight for its right to exist and Israelis still have to fight for their right to be part of the global community of human kind.
If you cannot celebrate Israel’s existence, if you do not feel that its survival is also your survival, there is something wrong with the way you think and the way you feel.
True, Israel and its neighbours might have done better in getting on with each other. But that thought does not constitute a *but* to this post. It is another, separate, thought.
(Emphasis mine.) That second to last paragraph represents precisely my views on what Israel means – and it represents why I have distanced myself from certain relationships. I refer not just to my anti-Semitic relatives (of whom I have written from time to time on this site) but also to some old and new friendships of mine that have gone to the wayside. (I have had an experience similar, though not identical, to this.)
More on Ilhan Omar
It’s really not hard to get to the bottom of this: When you say that Jews have magical hypnotic powers to control other people, you’re an anti-Semite. When you say Jews control other people through money, you’re an anti-Semite. When you say Jews have conspired to force you to apologize for saying anti-Semitic things, you’re an anti-Semite. Ilhan Omar is an anti-Semite.
Yeah, she is. As I have written before on this site, I am related to anti-Semites and watching the Democrats twist and turn to avoid calling a bigot a bigot reminds me so much of all of the apologists in my family. Very sad. Yet another area where I miss my oldest brother, who was always clear and true on these matters.
Disgrace
Ilhan Omar’s behaviour in this clip (as with her many anti-Semitic tweets) is a disgrace. She is nasty, bullying and stupid, and displays an extraordinary lack of knowledge about history and American foreign affairs. And she is happily oblivious to her ignorance! In fact, she seems rather confident. (What is really sad about her sophomoric world view is how many relatives of mine share it, along with the same confidence – one reason I avoid numerous family events.) I think it is fair to ask of people who hate the West and Western values — like Omar and like said relatives of mine — “why on earth do you live here?”
Elliott Abrams here shows far more grace than Omar deserves.
The Anti-Semitism of the Left
And these days, so much of it is from the left. Bret Stephens, as usual, completely correct.
A few facts ought at least to stir the thinking of those who subscribe to the progressive narrative. Israel’s enemies were committed to its destruction long before it occupied a single inch of Gaza or the West Bank. In proportion to its size, Israel has voluntarily relinquished more territory taken in war than any state in the world. Israeli prime ministers offered a Palestinian state in 2000 and 2008; they were refused both times. The government of Ariel Sharon removed every Israeli settlement and soldier from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The result of Israel’s withdrawal allowed Hamas to seize power two years later and spark three wars, causing ordinary Israelis to think twice about the wisdom of duplicating the experience in the West Bank. Nearly 1,300 Israeli civilians have been killed in Palestinian terrorist attacks in this century: That’s the proportional equivalent of about 16 Sept. 11’s in the United States.
Also: If the Jewish state is really so villainous, why doesn’t it behave more like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad or Russia’s Vladimir Putin — both of whom, curiously, continue to have prominent sympathizers and apologists on the anti-Israel left?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
For this day, please read my post from last year.
The New, New Anti-Semitism…
…but it’s really just the same old sad stupidity.
Beryl O’Links
Or, barrel o’ links. (Beryl O’Links is an Irish lass, she is!)
As we wind down 2018, a few links of interest: the death of Georges Loinger, may his memory be a blessing; trove of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems found; kitties domesticated themselves; and, Hijab in the House, by the brilliant Bruce Bawer. In regards this last story, I mentioned to one of my sisters this summer that I was concerned about the anti-Semitism of some of the rising young “stars” of the Democratic Party, and she insisted that anyone openly espousing contempt for Jews would never be elected. I was like, yeah, we’ll see. Cough.