There is a new study out concerning bigotry in Europe entitled “Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination.” Some of its findings are extremely distressing.
Nearly three quarters of Polish citizens believe that the Jews seek to exploit the Holocaust. About 70 percent of Hungarians think Jews have too much influence in their country. And close to 40 percent of people in numerous European countries believe that Israel is waging “a war of extermination” against the Palestinians....More than 30 percent of Poles strongly agree and 42 somewhat agree with the statement that “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era,” the survey showed. In Hungary, 39% of responders agreed strongly and 29% somewhat agreed with that assertion....In Poland, the number of respondents who agree with the claim of an Israeli “war of extermination” is even higher, at 63%. Nearly half of the German respondents — 48% — agreed with the statement. The number was 49% in Portugal, 42% in Britain, 41% in Hungary, 39% in Holland and 38% in Italy....That these attitudes exist in countries where some of the worst Holocaust activities happened is bizarre. Proof, IMO, that the old attitudes prevail and little has been learned by many in Europe. What a sad state of affairs and just one more proof that a Jewish State (Israel) is necessary.
Asked if Jews have too much influence in their country, about 70% of Hungarians, 50% of Poles and 20% of Germans agreed. In the Netherlands – whose current foreign minister, Uri Rosenthal, is Jewish – 3.4% strongly agreed and 18 percent somewhat agreed.Thirty percent of German and 22% of British respondents agreed with the statement that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.” In Portugal, that number is even higher, at about 55%, according to the report.
The authors note that "the data ... shows antisemitism often appearing in the guise of criticism of Israel" and that
"Antisemitic criticism of Israel comes close to majority support in all European countries.In that context we also need to discuss whether secondary antisemitism – refusal to acknowledge the crimes of the Holocaust – has taken the place of traditional antisemitism."
Read about this a few days ago, and glanced through the report, but its orientation is to look at it from the right wing.
ReplyDeleteI was unable to see, so far, if they attribute the sources of the antisemitism, but the findings are no surprise.
One of the very first pieces that I wrote for this blog was entitled "Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic: The Correlation."
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/6rxskbu
It highlighted a sociological study by Edward H. Kaplan, of Yale’s School of Management, and Professor Charles A. Small, of Yale’s Institute for Social and Policy Studies.
They concluded that:
"the prevalence of those harboring (selfreported) anti-Semitic views consistently increases with respondents’ degree of anti-Israel sentiment."
Gee, what a shock.
In other words, if you really, really hate Israel you're probably an anti-Semite.
Or the greater the degree to which one dislikes the Jewish state, the greater the likely degree of anti-Semitism.
I would say that the different variations of Jew hatred are cumulatively staggering, but not so much in the United States.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I took issue with mets102. He gives the impression that our real problem is with neo-Nazi types, or classical non-Jihadi anti-Semites.
But that battle is long over and we won. There are vestiges of that kind of Jew hatred in the US, but if that is all we had to worry about I wouldn't worry at all.
Again, as you know, the real problem is with a widespread and virulent form of religious based anti-Semitism prevalent in the Arab and Muslim Middle East.
That's the real threat, yet if we highlight that threat we get lambasted as "racist" by progressives... and, yet, we still support that political movement.
Jews have to be the only people on the planet who seem to think that we have a moral imperative to support a politic movement that is not supportive of us.
It's very odd.
I think you too often neglect the scene in Europe when it comes to Jew hatred, much of it from Muslims.
ReplyDeleteHere in the USA, the universities are the breeding grounds, which is partly why I addressed that environment. It is not just with respect to Israel, but extends to the imperialist forces and values of Western capitalism that, ironically, permits the dissenters to feel relatively safe from danger.
School,
ReplyDeletewhen you say "extends to the imperialist forces and values of Western capitalism," I assume that you are referring to neo-colonial theory and the various interrelated branches of post-structuralism.
I don't disagree.
It seems to me that what we're talking about is the sort-of nexus between the political movement and the academe.
This is the kind of thing that Horowitz jumps up and down about. The idea of leftist indoctrination in the universities undermining the US, Israel, and the west, in general.
I'm not entirely sure what to say about this, beyond a few obvious observations, such as the Nazis were hugely popular at the universities and for much the same reason, youthful idealism... a moral crusade... a revolution.
These kids aren't Nazis, obviously, nor are their professors, but when I walk past a student group holding forth a US flag in which the field of stars is filled with Stars of David, I begin to seriously wonder.