What I've been reading in links: Anti-Semitism and veiled Jew Hatred

As I listened to the Pope's speech in Jerusalem, hearing him come out strongly against antisemitism, I wonder why the pretty Latinate phrase rolls so much more smoothly than what it actually means: Jew hatred. Hating Jews. Really, antisemites don't very much care about other Semites and in fact, many of them are of Semitic peoples. And antisemites don't turn around and have flat or positive feelings towards African Jews, European Jews, Latin Jews. They hate us all. But it sounds so much prettier in the Latin, doesn't it? The Pope sounded so sincere, so decent: How can he not understand how his actions work so strongly against what his stated beliefs are?

Here's a periodic purge of some of the reasons why my children need to be under police guard in Europe, and why I sometimes just feel overwhelmed. I leave these links open in my browser until I feel that I can handle them.

This is the way that I feel all the time. And I feel the bubble shrinking.

Philip Pullman: We are living in a little bubble of time. It might not last much longer, but it is a bubble of time that is still warmed by background radiation from the Enlightenment. We are very fortunate to live in a time and place where you don't get dismembered for having the wrong political convictions, and we should be thoroughly grateful for it every day of our lives.

A fellow expat blogger asked some time ago why people who speak against Israel are considered antisemitic. She closed her comments and she did not respond to my e-mail, so I won't link her here. But here is a thorough understanding of how truly a lie it is to pretend that in most cases the two do not go together and how to tell when being against the actions of a country are not simply code for being a Jew hater. I have no respect for those who pretend, falsely, not to see the real connections. I am afraid, in this real world, that pretending does not make things true.

"...so long as it's anti-Zionist, who cares whether it's anti-Semitic?..."

Antisemitism in the News 2/13-21/09

These are from Norm Geras' blog- always well worth reading:

2/13/09 Increase in antisemitism in Britain, and 1/3 Europeans say that Jews are responsible for world financial crisis. Back to the vile lies of The Protocols of Zion and the common rants of the Arab world.

2/16/09 Antisemitism conference in London

Yes, it is time. It is also time for the organized left, such as it still is, to take action against anti-Semitism. It has recently been most vocal in its condemnation of Israel's actions in Gaza. Relative to anti-Semitism in Britain and Europe, that is far away; relative to Gaza, anti-Semitism in Britain and Europe is right on the doorstep of the British and European left. These are not good reasons not to care, or to speak or demonstrate, about Gaza, if that is what you believe needs to be done. But they are good reasons for caring, speaking, demonstrating, about the upsurge in anti-Semitism in your own country. They are particularly so in light of the anti-racist traditions and avowals of the left. And they do rather bring the discourse of 'far and near' into focus.

2/18/09 You don't have to be an antisemite (op ed by Howard Jacobson in The Independent)
Wow. How well written. And how many of the comments allowed to follow this piece (which should be read in full, not in excerpt) go to fully prove his very points.

....I was once in Melbourne when bush fires were raging 20 or 30 miles north of the city. Even from that distance you could smell the burning. Fine fragments of ash, like slivers of charcoal confetti, covered the pavements. The very air was charred. It has been the same here these past couple of months with the fighting in Gaza. Only the air has been charred not with devastation but with hatred. And I don’t mean the hatred of the warring parties for each other. I mean the hatred of Israel expressed in our streets, on our campuses, in our newspapers, on our radios and televisions, and now in our theatres.

A discriminatory, over-and-above hatred, inexplicable in its hysteria and virulence whatever justification is adduced for it; an unreasoning, deranged and as far as I can see irreversible revulsion that is poisoning everything we are supposed to believe in here – the free exchange of opinions, the clear-headedness of thinkers and teachers, the fine tracery of social interdependence we call community relations, modernity of outlook, tolerance, truth. You can taste the toxins on your tongue.

But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. It is, I am assured, “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. In the matter of Israel and the Palestinians this country has been heading towards a dictatorship of the one-minded for a long time; we seem now to have attained it. Deviate a fraction of a moral millimetre from the prevailing othodoxy and you are either not listened to or you are jeered at and abused, your reading of history trashed, your humanity itself called into question.....

2/21/09 Statement combatting antisemitism

[S]hould... guard against equivocation, hesitation and justification in the face of expressions of hatred.

3/1/09 America examines Durban, discovers irredeemably flawed with antisemitism.

What I've been reading in Links: the Pope debacle.

I need to post these so that I can purge them from my system. Articles in German can be, somewhat, translated using Google translator or another- enough of the meaning should be decipherable even if you don't know German.

The German's far Right (we would call them neo-Nazi's) embrace of Holocaust denial and the Catholic church.

A discussion of the pope's background on inclusiveness that culminates in his welcoming a Holocaust denier back to the bosom of mother church.(Reuters)

The breaking of relations between Jews and the Vatican.

Thank you, Angela Merkel, for standing against the Pope's oblivious and negligent welcome to antisemitism within the Roman Catholic Church. (German). I sent an e-mail to her office thanking her, and Germany, for renewing my belief that Germany has changed. The belief that I had when I married a German and allowed us to be moved to Germany so that my children could be part of their German extended family.

"Good and Bad Antisemitism"- (German) A very interesting article discussing how antisemitism is allowed to flourish at the imam and mosque level in a type of racism that discounts race hatred when it comes from ethnic groups not "respected" by the intellectual elites.
This is a very important article and should be read as widely as possible.

A German Pope Disgraces the Catholic Church- a very good explanation of the controversy, including a discussion of the disingenuousness of some responses. In 5 parts.
Specific to general and very well worth reading.
Here is the basis of the discredited faction that the Pope has clasped to his bosom like a viper:

During the course of the 19th century, anti-Judaism was replaced and displaced by anti-Semitism, which was rooted in racism. According to theologian Hans Küng, "National Socialism would have been impossible without the centuries-old anti-Semitism of the churches." During Nazi rule, conflicts quickly arose between Catholic doctrine and the all-encompassing claim to power of party members. Although some bishops were headed for a clear course of confrontation with the Nazis, the annihilation of the Jews was by no means the German episcopate's greatest concern.

It was only in 1965 that Pope Paul VI, in the "Nostra aetate" declaration of the Second Vatican Council, rejected anti-Judaism once and for all. The church, the groundbreaking document read, "decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."

It is precisely this document that Lefebvre's followers have not recognized to this day. The SSPX saw the Council essentially as a "fissure in the church," through which the "smoke of Satan had entered the Church."

An overview (in English) of all the major Geman papers' responses to Merkel's declaration that the Pope must make clear his position against antisemitism and Holocaust Denial.

Here the Vatican attempts to hide from the consequences of its action by saying that criticism of its behaviour is "anticatholicism". This from a Pope who reinstituted a prayer that Jews convert, against the actions of Vatican II.

The pope finally states that Williamson must recant his denial of the mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis.

Norm Geras' view on forced recantation of vile beliefs and the efficacy thereof.

One last reminder of what the Pope has brought back to the Catholic faith:

But shortly before Christmas, Schmidberger and his fellow SSPX members wrote to German bishops to remind them of the supposed Jewish original sin: "With the crucifixion of Christ, the curtain of the temple was torn and the old alliance destroyed. But this does not just mean that the Jews of today are not our older brothers in faith. Rather, they are complicit in deicide, as long as they do not distance themselves from the culpability of their forefathers by acknowledging the divinity of Christ and the baptism."

This age-old atavistic way of thinking, which defines Jews as being spattered with guilt, has been part of the church once again since Benedict's decree. This, in fact, is what happened on Jan. 24, 2009, and it cannot be reversed with any declarations or visits to synagogues.

I will probably put a post up later this week discussing all the other vile Jew hating commentary and attacks that I have seen in the news and the incident that I experienced last month later this week, but I just need to not think about this for a while.
UPDATE:
The intractability of SSPX and further grounds on excommunicating, once again, the SSPX leaders: the refusal to acknowledge Papal primacy and Vatican II (which they specifically agreed to in order to have the original excommunication removed).
UPDATE:
The Pope does the right thing.
he reflected on the 2,000 year history of the relationship between Judaism and the Church, acknowledging that it "has passed through many different phases, some of them painful to recall."

He affirmed that the Second Vatican Council declaration "Nostra Aetate" has guided the relationship since its redaction.

"The Church is profoundly and irrevocably committed to reject all anti-Semitism and to continue to build good and lasting relations between our two communities," the Bishop of Rome declared.

He added: "The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity. This should be clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the tradition of the holy Scriptures, according to which every human being is created in the image and likeness of God.

"It is beyond question that any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable and altogether unacceptable."

Benedict XVI concluded by urging that the memory of the Holocaust remain as a "warning to us for the future, and a summons to strive for reconciliation."

November 28, 1956: 50 years later and it's still the same.

Zurich

Lest We Forget: Holocaust Victim Remembrance Day

AP / USHMM

Taking a break: Camp commandant Richard Baer, notorious concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, and the commandant of the Birkenau camp, Josef Kramer (obscured) and former commandant Rudolf Höss.A pleasant and relaxing break between torturing and murdering over 1,500,000 people.Spiegel through US Holocaust Museum

I had planned to write an interesting post here. This is the 64th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Russians.

Some reports say the German guards were given orders several days ago to destroy the crematoria and gas chambers. Tens of thousands of prisoners - those who were able to walk - have been moved out of the prison and forced to march to other camps in Germany.BBC 1/27/45. 

They entered to find a near empty camp, because the Nazis had loaded all the moveable victims that they could into trains to nowhere, which were then bombed and the victims were forced on a march to nowhere.

They also found seven tons of women's hair, human teeth, from which gold fillings had been extracted and tens of thousands of children's outfits. BBC

 My father was one of 25,000+ on the march to nowhere. He was one of 38 survivors.

I don't have the energy to discuss this. Instead I want to link to other stories and other blog posts. Take a look. To those who wish to say that the destruction of the Jews is comparable to any other mass murder I say, "You are wrong".

The Wiki entry for Auschwitz-Birkenau
Yad Vashem
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Should Auschwitz be left to decay?(BBC). In a world where the Pope (a former Nazi, if an unenthusiastic one) finds it good to remove the excommunication of a Holocaust denying "Bishop"(Reuters) two days before Holocaust Remembrance day,

"Especially from a German pope, I would have expected more understanding and sensitivity," Graumann said. "The fact that this comes from a German pope leaves a certain taste and provokes certain feelings."
In comments to Swedish television broadcast and widely available on the Internet, Williamson has said: "I believe there were no gas chambers." He said up to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi camps, rather than the 6 million widely accepted.

it seems falsely naive to pretend that allowing the concrete evidence of this evil to disappear is not a step onto the path of forgetfulness. There's a reason that the Nazis attempted to burn all records and destroy the crematoria before the Red Army arrived.

A beautiful post from Ian, at Letters Home.

A post from Normblog dicussing the two cities that cancelled the commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust through an anti-Semitic equation of the murder of more than 6,000,000 with the sad deaths of some 300+ innocent people in a war started by their own terroristic government lobbing bombs at innocent people. Barcelona is one of them.

Norm also discussed the debate referenced above about keeping Auschwitz as a memorial.


I'm going to close with a link to an interview with Norm (Nrman Geras) and a long quote- here is a disussion of the "uniqueness" of the Shoah that I feel does not derive from a desire to minimize the destruction of my people and my way of life, and which thought processes I understand and respect:

Is there something special about the Holocaust that, in your view, marks it out as uniquely significant? Or does it stand alongside other acts of genocide such as the Turkish massacre of the Armenians or the recent slaughter in Rwanda?

The first thing to say is that the disjunctive implication in this pair of questions is one I would want to discourage. The Holocaust can stand alongside the Armenian, Rwandan and other genocides, even if it also stands apart in some significant way. I would go further. The universal significance of the Holocaust as an act of human barbarity and an experience of colossal suffering – and in these respects just like a very large number of other historical experiences – is of greater moment than is any special significance the event might possess. As terrible as was their fate, the destruction of the Jews of Europe belongs to a wider pattern of human violence and resulting pain and torment, and one should oppose all attempts to single it out as having been somehow uniquely terrible for its victims. It was another ghastly chapter in the long book of mass human suffering – and that is terrible enough. Accordingly, I did not see it as in any way inappropriate to formulate a universalizing theoretical argument on the basis (mainly) of the Jewish tragedy.

On the other hand, I think that from the side of the perpetrators – that is, if one considers the Nazi genocide not as an experience of suffering but as a crime – there may well be something significantly singular about it. I reject the notion, of increasing currency these days though it would not have been acceptably utterable in any left or liberal milieu for several decades after the Second World War, that the claim that the Holocaust was unique is merely some sort of epiphenomenon of Zionism. The Holocaust-uniqueness thesis can be, and sometimes is, misused in apologetics for unjust and oppressive policies of the Israeli state, but it is not reducible to this; no more than is the denial that the Holocaust was unique necessarily a form of German historical apologia, though it can be that, and was during the German historians' debate of the 1980s, in the writings of Ernst Nolte and others. There have been both non-Jewish and Jewish proponents of the uniqueness thesis whose internationalist, or ethically universalist, credentials were beyond doubt; as there have been opponents of the same thesis without any interest in apologetics on behalf of the Third Reich. There is a legitimate and difficult question here and it should be tackled on assumptions of good faith rather than malign motivation. To summarize a complex argument in a few sentences – for this is the topic of a paper I completed recently – my own view is that the claimed uniqueness of the Holocaust, if it can be sustained, is not persuasively attributable to any one distinguishing feature of the disaster. It is the product of a combination of features. I draw on the Wittgensteinian argument about family-resemblance concepts. The features in question – comprehensiveness of genocidal intent; 'modernity'; the effort at a kind of moral, as well as physical, annihilation of the Jews; and the fact that the undertaking had no ulterior instrumental purpose but was, in a sense, for its own sake – combined to produce an ongoing, tendentially permanent, social sub-system specifically for the mass production of death outside warfare. This was an ominous precedent for humankind.

I love NY

The NY take on Holocaust Denying "Bishop" un-excommunicated by Pope.

Poll Results

Thank you for voting.

Was Pope Benedict XVI right to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop?

Yes. He's the Pope -- it's his call!	19%
No. This bishop is a loon.	75%
Not sure.	7%

What I've been reading in Links: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Gaza

New York Times:
A One State Solution
What a wonderful world it would be if we could all live in peace. Otherwise, since Hamas is obdurate, it feels like this commentary is just another exercise of pretty bullcrap pretending that an answer lies in Israel's hands, while not mentioning that the answer given here would amount to suicide. In addition, while Qaddafi discusses the "right of return" for Palestinians, I note that he makes no mention of a similar right for the thousands of Jews forced from their homes in the Arab countries, their property stolen, as they were actually being threatened and murdered. And I note that even if he had mentioned such it could have included no concept of personal or religious freedom for such returnees, because those concepts do not exist in the Arab states (as Christians living in them can now attest).

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.” Yet only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel. There are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel; they possess Israeli nationality and take part in political life with the Jews, forming political parties. On the other side, there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israeli factories depend on Palestinian labor, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.

It all sounds so pretty when he says it.

Spiegel:
Hamas' Internal Divisions (and links on he right to other translated Middle East Reporting)
Tunnel diggers are already back in operation

Wind Rose Hotel (blog):
Hamas Infiltration into UK State Agencies
Who is to blame for Gaza
Why should Hamas want a Truce?

a specular purpose can be traced back to Hamas charter itself:

Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”

Crotchety Old Fan:
The War on Gaza, with some statistics

the scope of what they’ve been dealing with begins to become apparent:

Tunnels: by my count 302+ smuggling tunnels were destroyed - many of them serving as weapons caches as well

Rocket and Mortar Launchers: 159 destroyed. That’s LAUNCHERS not rockets. Most launchers (depending on design) can be used to fire multiple rockets

Facilities: 104. These include everything from outposts to weapons manufacturing facilities, storage facilities and schools, mosques and homes used for the same

Gunmen: Unclear, as the IDF usually refers to ’squads’, ‘cells’ or ‘groups’. If you add those up - 201 ‘groups’ of indeterminate size, plus a few “commanders” here and there.

Israel claims that many of the civilian casualties claimed by Hamas are, in fact, Hamas fighters. Hamas itself claims only 35 fighters killed. If we make a swag that a group/cell/squad is, on average 5 fighters, we end up with 1005. Take out the 35 dead claimed by Hamas, you end up with 965 Hamas fighters. If you subtract that from the civilian casualty count of more than 1300, you end up with about 350 - far too many to be sure, but not anywhere’s near as horrifying as 1300.

NormBlog:
Two Stage Solution

Does Israel have any moral obligation to negotiate with Hamas, with an organization that envisages, whether sooner or later, the destruction of the country? The answer to that seems to me entirely straightforward. Israel has no such obligation. No nation is obliged to deal, as between dialogic equals, with an organization that denies its fundamental right to national existence and announces the intention of terminating it. It would be good if more of Israel's critics recognized this, but that may be expecting too much in the present toxic climate.

Pointing out revisionist falsehoods parroted by the British

What I'm interested in is 'no "charter" for the destruction of Israel in its political programme'. So how to deal with the fact that the Hamas Charter, with its reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, not only talks about killing Jews 'until [they] hide behind rocks and trees', but goes so far as to say:

Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.

In addition, 'pointless' wouldn't be the word I'd choose for the rockets from Gaza 'aimed at Israeli towns', but that's by the way.

Subject to later addition

What I've been reading in Links: Anti-Semitism,

and hatred of Jews, as well as an associated look at Israel and how their war to survive is looked at in a world which both holds Jews to a higher standard and ignores the threats to our existence.

With a quick look back at how the German intransigence to accepting responsibility lingers in strange corners that still impact human (and Jewish in particular)life.


Spiegel: For those who told me that I should feel no fear in displaying a Jewish religious icon in Germany, note what happens when one does. The police break one's door down and commit vandalism, then continue to harass the innocent victims. Only when there is a public outcry does an apology follow and still there is no actual remedy.

A non-violent rally of Jews and supporters of Israel in the UK against Hamas, in part to protest the violent anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rally of the weekend.

Some of us are here not because of Israel, but because we are concerned for our Jewish kids on the street, because there are Muslim kids who think if they beat up a Jewish kid or smash up a Jewish shop they are striking a blow for Kashmir or Palestine. People are shouting deaths to Jews and running amok in Golders Green. We are saying " Jews cannot get pushed around in this country". I have got kids at university and I am really concerned for them."

Pro-Hamas Gaza protests in London turn violent. Set to music because some people find violence arousing. I find this more frightening than the actual violence. Note the masks. This is why it should be illegal to cover your face in public.

WindRoseHotel(blog): Who is to blame for Gaza. I discovered this blog (based in Italy) while looking at the nominees for the weblog awards. It's a great read and I particularly found this post well written. It sent me to this Post article: The Demons of Gaza and to this book, which I will be reading as an extremely interesting and topic travel memoir: Looking for Trouble:Adventures in a Broken World.

An older article: Neo-Nazis torch an apartment house, murder 9.

What I've been reading in Links: Anti-Semitism, Economics, Book titles

Anti-Semitism:

Jews attacked in attempted murder because of their Judaism: in Denmark, scene of riots over a cartoon which is nothing compared to unnoticed Arabic anti-Semitic cartoons.

Another (American) Jew murdered because he was Jewish: Everyone has forgotten Daniel Pearl. I am so glad to read that some people haven't and that through a lawsuit they are still attempting to uncover the details of his death and how the US and others would prefer to sweep it under the rug.

More anti-Jewish acts on the part of the UN: Let's send a man who calls Israels actions the same as the Nazis to be an impartial observer to Israel. The act of this comparison is itself an act of anti-Semitism by court decree, used even by Shoah deniers as an attempt to trivialize and derogate the Holocaust.

Economics:
The End of the Financial World as We Know it (NYT): A very well written op-ed by Michael Lewis. I have read his work for years now and he just keeps getting better. From Madoff to an understanding of how he was allowed to continue. It echoes my disgust with business morality, which is clearly exhibited through this anecdote: when I entered Columbia's MBA program, we were given an ethic test, as we were when we left. Our collective ethical values dived during the two years we were there. You see the result in the financial world.
How to repair a broken financial world (NYT): I won't be holding my breath as the foxes guard the henhouse.

Book titles:
Cooking with all things Trader Joe's : interesting concept. Since I don't have TJs here (and Aldi is no substitute), I'm not sure I will get this.
Lifting for Women : I've had this recommended. I'd have to start lifting in the first place but I think I'll keep the title for the future.

Can Hit**r be humorous?

You may note the asterisks in the title. I have learned from the posters on my previous post (in re A*n R*nd and Alan Gree**pan) that there are individuals whose goal is to keep constant track of specific names and swamp the web sites that mention them. My innocuous and domestic little blog is not used to these sorts of attentions.

This post is in reference to another blog, one which I have been reading after having read his wife's blog. This blogger (who I will reference if he oks it) recently posted a video which, specifically, used a clip of a movie about the fall of Berlin, starring Hit**r, to mock Clinton. When I commented that I found that offensive and misogynistic, it was explained to me by other posters that this is a meme which has been used in reference to other topics, such as the real estate market or football. My response was that when used in reference to an individual, this was horrifying. I went on to discuss my general feelings about the trivialization of Hit**r's crimes by using him as a figure of fun. The general response was that 1: 1st Amendment rights so allow, 2. that laughing at horror allows one to be in control and 3. that other Jewish people find this funny and therefore that I have no sense of humor.

Looking further back, the blogger notes that this arose once before and that a similar discussion arose. True, and I was part of it. I had 1. forgotten that it was this individual's blog- that was early enough in my blogging that I did not feel comfortable discussing personal things openly and 2. forgotten how uncomfortable I had grown at the tone and lack of understanding that I saw in that discussion. The same discomfort that I feel now and the reason that I have unsubscribed from comments on that post, the first time that I have ever felt that necessary to do so.

Let's start with my lack of sense of humor.

I guess that's the same lack of sense of humor I have when I don't find other misogynistic "jokes" and comments amusing. I am offended to be told that I need to have a sense of "humor" about trivializing the man who murdered the majority of my family and destroyed our way of life. I am also offended to be told that putting a woman in that space, and one who has spent over a year being viciously attacked, not for her actions or beliefs, but because of her gender, is funny and that I "just don't get it" when I feel the deep nastiness that really resides behind that action.

I saw that "meme" used with the destruction of the real estate market and I was not terribly offended by it. I thought it tasteless (and actually knew what the German meant), I knew that it was illegal here and was fine with that, but was not heartily offended. There is a real difference when such a heinous figure is used to mock an individual rather than a state of affairs. The latter is tasteless, the former is sick/misogynistic/disgusting. But looking back and thinking about it for more than the three minutes I spent on it last time, I can say that I disapprove of both. But I was not offended enough to post a remark to the individual who used this clip in re real estate.

Let me add that I am also offended, as a woman and a Jew, when someone uses the word JAP around me. As I mentioned before, the fact that another woman and a Jew, uses that derogatory term simply means that she has been so indoctrinated that she is comfortable using self-hating terms.

Looking at position 2, that mocking and belittling a monster renders it amusing and no longer "aweful": I just flat out disagree with that. I believe, with every study that I have ever read, that using awful things in a trivial manner normalizes them. This is why violence, profanity and obscenity as well as sexualization of children, have all become "acceptable", unremarked and normalized in American culture. This is extremely clear here, in Europe, where violence is generally unacceptable to display to children, whereas naked bodies are fine. (By the way, I think this is a better way of protecting children than exposing them to violence and hiding breastfeeding!). I don't think making mock of Hit**r does anything other than mock those who suffered at his hands. And if one could argue to use such mockery, in limited ways, I would argue that it could work only as parts of works of art, infused with an actual meaning, rather than in the hands of the ignorant (as when Prince William and his brother found it amusing to dress as N*zi party members).

And lastly, 1st Amendment rights. I actually think that the 1st Amendment should not cover certain things (as it does not). I would be fine with making it illegal to disseminate and use pictures and images of the Th*rd Re**h and Hit**r , as it is here and in Austria. Allowing their use leads to terrible results such as the poor little child in Union Township named A***ph Hit**r (with his sister Ar**n N**ion and other sibling, Hinnler) being irretrievably scarred by the idiotic and racist actions of their parents. I think it is harder for fools to be "seduced" by the dark side when one can only read about it in dry tomes rather than look at the sexy jackboots and tight jodhpurs.

So there you have it. I may add more later.

A Strange Place

is where my head has been recently.

Ever since my husband requested that, for security's sake, we not place our hanukiah where it could be viewed from outside, I've had my head floating a bit in this dimension that is reality. A reality that I have been safe from as an American.

As he pointed out, I should have noticed by now that all Jewish establishments have police guards and fences, that we had a security meeting at our kindergarten that discussed checking for bombs under vehicles, that I take my German class after entering through metal detectors.

How clear can it be that we are targeted as Jews when a tiny house, without a sign, in Bombay, a city with what- a 100 Jews amidst millions of non-Jews?- can be sought out so that Islamist terrorists can murder a pregnant Jewish woman and other innocent bystanders?

He is, of course, correct. It would not be safe, here in a city where Nazi signs are scrawled as grafitti and where a rabbi is chased and harassed for being noticeably Jewish, to display my religion in a publicly identifiable (and traceable) manner. Because I think that the people I meet every day are normal human beings has led me to the fallacy that resulted in so many not fleeing in time.

Last week, at a holiday party, I had a quiet political discussion with another American ex-pat, a woman who is black, a minority status not as easily concealed as my own. She said that after a recent visit to her home in Washington, DC she felt less overt racism here in Berlin than she did there.

I looked at her in disbelief. In my short time here, I have found that my friends and aquaintances of color are quite overtly discriminated against. But perhaps the fact that the minority here which it is fashionable to be openly hateful toward is the Turkish has made her feel differently?

What I do know is that Berliners in the workplace, in front of my husband who appears to be "one of them", feel quite comfortable being openly sexist and racist in a way that leaves him- a German who has spent his work life in the US- openly amazed and dismayed.

And this past week, in the comfort of the German's family home, a family friend (I was asleep upstairs with the girls and not a witness or fomentor) called him- "You American... (and then went off on an amazing diatribe about American intolerance and America's past injustices- this from a German!)..." when my husband suggested that the diversity training the friend was stating was useless (and which the German had just finished the equivalent of for his own CPEs) actually was useful. Particularly in the context of the large study just released showing that Germany has a significant gender gap! And this to a German and the son of the house which he was a guest in!

It makes me sad.

Hatred in Action

I have had a couple of recent posts about racism and anti-semitism (and how easy it is to forget). The blowback has been that the disagreement some feel with Israel's policies doesn't indicate anti-semitism. I disagree in so many ways, because I have never seen a discussion of Israel's policies outside of the US (where people do disagree and yet manage not to be Jew haters while doing so) which did not have one side veer into vitriolic anti-semitism.

But this hideous murder of a young Rabbi and his wife, who have absolutely nothing to do with Israel's policies, who simply held a community center whose only purpose is openness and outreach, who worked for nothing but good within the Mumbai community!

The choice to take, violently, the Jewish Community Center of Mumbai and there to commit murder: what purpose did that serve except Jew hatred?

The same purpose served when my children's kindergarten here has swastikas painted on it, or rocks thrown though the window, or threats made agains it and the community center. This is not disagreement with  Israel's policies. This is an outspringing of the disease known as Jew hatred, taught in the madrassas as cartoon Jews murder bootlegged Mickey Mouses to help infants learn to hate Jews, and taught in Europe through comments, made openly at political dinners by French ambassadors, such as "Dirty little Jews- they are always starting wars" or cartoons such as these pieces of filth:--- Strange how Jews and Israelis have not issued fatwahs or murdered people over these, isn't it? And my heart goes out to the poor people, of all races and religions, who have been terrorized and murdered because of the horrible and disgusting practices of religious psychotics. May they one day come to realize that their own religion condemns them and their actions.



Al-Wifaq, February 6, 2006 (Iran)

Translation: The Jewish\Israeli devil is saying: "I don't admit the limits of freedom of speech except the Holocaust."

Web Site of the Arab European League (February 2, 2006)

Al-Watan, February 3, 2004 (Oman)
Translation:
On left - Feast of the Immolation
On right - The Islamic World's Attitude?


Tishrin, Apirl 21, 2002 (Syria)
The book in the left hand of the Jewish stereotype is the Torah