The misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History

Yuli Edelstein, an Israeli Cabinet Minister, is reported to have said that:“The Goldstone Report…and similar reports, are simply a type of anti-Semitism.” Peter Münch from the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", another dire, mediocre mainstream "non-journalist" journalist, picks up on Yuli and using the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and the Anti-semitism Research Institute in Tel-Aviv as his sources tells us that: "Seit dem Gaza-Krieg häufen sich weltweit antisemitische Vorfälle" and even those readers who cannot read German will be able to deduce that Peter is telling us that anti-semitism is on the increase since the Gaza war although some of you might be thinking;"war", what war?

Still, Peter is like the majority of his guild, he parrots, and what do we have for anti-semitic incidents? Well, there are verbal insults and physical attacks that are not defined, there is a watchman being murdered in Washington and a student in Connecticut but wait, that is not all, we have Jews being attacked in the Moscow underground along with graffiti and destruction of Jewish property worldwide. Now this might have been that a house was burgled in London that happened to have belonged to a Jew and a couple of days previously graves were desecreated in a cemetary in the Ukraine, while at the same time a Jewish lady had her purse stolen in Las Vegas. We really don't know! Still we do get some specifics from Peter and we learn that there was a pig's head above a Jewish cemetary in Germany and sticks and stones will break my bones ! Oh, ok there are a couple more undefined "incidents" but let us be clear about this, they are going over the planet with a comb here to find these "incidents" and if they cannot be found, well I am sure they can be pulled out of the hat, abracadabra style.

The real point, the point of this nonsense, however, comes in the second last paragraph of Peter's article when he quotes the Jewish Agency's, Natan Scharansky, who speaks of, "...neuen Antisemitismus der zügellos die Idee eines jüdischen Staates attackiert" (a new uncontrolled anti-semitism, which attacks the idea of a Jewish state). Yes, we are being told that the madness which sent six million to the concentration camps is still among us and its main target is the Jewish state and Benjiman Netanyahu tells us that this anti-semitism would like to deprive Israel of the right to defend itself.

Are people actually falling for this drivel? it has about as much credibility as Adolf Hitler's explaining away the invasion of Poland by saying, "… seit 5 Uhr 45 wird jetzt zu­rück ge­schos­sen!" (we have been fighting back since 5.45 this morning). Did you not know that the Poles actually attacked the Germans? Of course, they didn't but that is what Hitler would have liked us to believe and there they were the Polish calvary attacking the German panzers and pictures of the Hamas hoardes throwing themselves at the moral, brave, "defending ourselves", IDF comes to mind. However, if you think think that that little analogy is a trifle absurd, maybe you should try some more serious reading than the drivel that Peter Münch and others like him churn out and the recommended reading has to be Norman Finklestein's "Beyond Chutzpah".