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Friday, December 30, 2011

Anti-Semitism Once Again in Europe

Nadene Goldfoot
Europe never changes, as Victor Davis Hanson put it today in his article, Face it, Europe never changes.  He points out some interesting facts about Jews, who have always been discriminated against there.  People thought we were too clannish in our creed.  We didn't have any ancestral land-holding lineages or any aristocratic status.  Europeans seem to have forgotten that it was they who kept us from being able to own land in the first place.  Clannish?  Well, we didn't attend their churches, if that's what they meant.  We attended our synagogues.  As for our creed, it is shared with everyone in what Gentiles call "The Old Testament."  Russia kept us in the  area known as "The Pale of Settlement."  We weren't allowed in Russia proper unless we had a special pass, but our children were old enough at about 12 to serve in their army for life.  Europe kept us clannish, as they did in the USA till about the 1960's by not allowing us into their fraternal organizations or country clubs.  So it's been an uphill battle for us wherever we have lived.

Hanson points out that Jews are beginning to feel as unwelcome in Europe as they did in the 1930's.  That's when Hitler rose in power and started his campaign against Jews.  My uncle was the only one in his family that was able to get out of Boppard, Germany in May 1939.  The Germans then closed the door and the rest of his family was trapped and eventually sentenced to the gas chambers. 

The writer also mentioned what happened to Jews in 1543 when Martin Luther wrote his "On the Jews and Their Lies."  That was a time when Luther was courting Jews, thinking he could easily convert us to Christianity, and we did not comply to his wishes.  That made him so angry that he turned on us all,  condemming us to the trash heap, so to speak.  Suddenly we were liars among other things to him.  Actually, the same thing happened to us with Muhammed around 622 CE.  He thought he could convert us as well, and turned on us violently when we didn't.  That's where the part in their Koran comes up with kill Jews when you find them.  However, in Muhammed's case, he did manage to convert whole Jewish tribes by using his sword.  It was die or convert and the Jews living there  chose life. 

Today Jewish academics  in Europe are sometimes shunned at international conferences.  Some suburbs in Paris or Rotterdam are no longer safe for Jews to walk about.  Europe is largely anti-Israel and probably always will be.  I know that there is a city in Sweden that had been populated by some Jewish refugees from WWII, but have been driven out by recent Muslims who settled there today. 

This may soon be 2012, but we still have to be wary of Europe's value system.  Jews are not a high priority of worth there.  Beware.  It's the 1930's once again throughout much of Europe.

Resource: Oregonian Newspaper, 12/30/11  page B9 Victor Davis Hanson's European Union Essay

1 comment:

Nadene Goldfoot said...

Israeli–Arab Conflict In his article Israel did it Hanson asks why Israel was being blamed for responding to attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas that shelled Israel for a few months with deadly rockets while the world was watching indifferently. He explains that if there were not so many civilian casualties inside Israel it was not from the lack of trying. Hanson writes: "Israel was to be blamed because its hundreds of air strikes against combatants were lethal, while Hezbollah was to be excused for shooting off thousands of rockets aimed at civilians because of its relative incompetence."[16]

From wikipedia on Hanson. I like this fellow.