Anti-Semitic Motifs in Anti-Israelism
When earlier this year Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago compared the situation in Ramallah to Auschwitz, he unwittingly staked his claim to become the archetype of the new anti-Semite. These defamers target the Jewish State rather than the religious or ethnic character of the Jews. In a single statement he utilized three classic anti-Semitic techniques: the dehumanization and demonization of Jews, the hijacking of Jewish symbols, and the use of such symbols against the Jews.
Europe’s Bias: From the Holocaust’s Aftermath to Today’s Anti-Semitism II
A further way to enlarge one’s perspective on post-war attitudes toward the Jews is by analyzing events in individual countries. Since it will take a long time for overviews to become available, the best one can do in the interim is to consider some important issues as well as telling episodes in specific countries. These may then give a stimulus for further research by scholars who study other countries. Hereinafter, a series of such vignettes are presented. They provide, by necessity, an impressionistic picture and can be extended to further cases as well as to other countries not mentioned below. Each country must be assessed individually. As none is typical for the broader picture, no single country can be used as a paradigm. Yet the following brief observations indicate potential directions for further research.
Europe’s Bias: From the Holocaust’s Aftermath to Today’s Anti-Semitism
An intensified defamation campaign against Israel and world Jewry has been taking place during the last two years. Various European governments and media play an important role in it. The moral aspects of post-war European attitudes toward the Jews have as yet been poorly analyzed. Their study within an integrated framework is becoming an urgent Jewish public affairs issue. As so little field research has been done much can be learned by looking at a mosaic of vignettes of individual countries such as France, Austria, Poland, the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and the Vatican. The paradigm of The Netherlands is discussed in more detail. This essay illustrates how part of the infrastructure for Europe’s current discriminatory attitudes toward Israel and the Jews started to be laid immediately after the war.
A New Palestinian Agenda After Iraq?
Arafat is determined that, within any peace agreement, Israel must absorb approximately 300,000 Palestinians from Lebanon, and that the independent Palestinian state must be free to absorb more than half a million more Palestinians.
Emotional Wounds that Never Heal
This essay discusses the discriminatory content of the Compensation Laws (Wiedergutmachung) for Holocaust Survivors in West Germany. It explains how this was based partly on the lack of knowledge of the long-term after effects of psychic trauma, but even more so because of the unwillingness of German physicians to understand and accept the harm the Holocaust inflicted upon the survivors.
The Jews in Plans for Postwar Germany
Many of the Anti-Nazi political exiles who prepared plans for postwar Germany believed that it would not be easy to remove the Nazi anti-Semitic laws. While the postwar projects of socialists included the full restoration of citizenship to all German Jews, the planning of other exiles was based on prevalent stereotypes of Jewish "otherness" and rejected the return of Jews to Germany.
Israel, Iraq, and the Palestinians – As the U.S. Moves Toward War
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon realized in 1991 that if Jordan were Palestine, Iraqi forces could be deployed very close to Israel’s border. A number of Israeli leaders felt that Israeli deterrence was damaged by the policy of restraint in 1991. If Israel did not react to the use of gas or chemical weapons against it, then the lessons of the Holocaust would be meaningless.
Sweden’s Refusal to Prosecute Nazi War Criminals: 1986-2002
Toward the end of World War II, an unspecified number of Latvian and Estonian Nazi war criminals escaped to Sweden among a wave of Baltic refugees fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. Although the Swedish government established a special commission to investigate their wartime activities, no legal action was ever taken against any of these escaped Holocaust perpetrators.
Penitence and Prejudice: The Roman Catholic Church and Jedwabne
The recent revelations about the slaughter of the Jews of Jedwabne in July 1941 precipitated an unprecedented collective soul-searching in Polish society. The Roman Catholic Church in Poland has been deeply involved in this discussion. The author contends that it is impossible to view the reaction of the Catholic clergy, intelligentsia and grassroots in monolithic fashion. Catholic elements can be found behind various barricades in this debate. Not surprisingly those elements within the Church t
Why are Israel’s Public Relations So Poor?
The Israel State Comptroller’s report released on October 7, 2002, leveled unprecedented criticism on Israel’s public relations efforts. The State Comptroller revealed that "since its establishment in 1948, Israel’s intelligence organs have not succeeded to respond to the broad-based propaganda and incitement by the Arab world."
Nature and the Environment in Hasidic Sources
Hasidism has had a significant, continuing impact on Jewish attitudes over the last 250 years.
Historians Receiving Gifts and the Historiography of the Holocaust
As a considerable number of non-German historians of the Holocaust have received funding from German sources, the ques-tion arises as to whether such funding should be considered akin to gifts to judges from those they judge. A survey of Holocaust historians in Israel was conducted. None of the historians who received German funding expressed the belief that such aid had affected his or her work. Yet the clear differences in the discus-sion of the subject by those historians who had received Ger
Ernst Nolte and the Memory of the Shoah
Nolte’s path is haphazard and contradictory in an effort to en-joy both worlds: to avoid being seen as a negationist of the Shoah while allowing himself to make a series of outrageous and prepos-terous points regarding the Shoah. His trajectory and tactics are revealed extensively as is the array of claims he makes. Nolte equates Zionism to Nazism and envisages a future recognition of Hitler as the originator of the State of Israel.
The Recruitment of Children in Current Palestinian Strategy
From the outset of the current Palestinian intifada two years ago, children and teenagers have assumed an integral role. Regrettably, this role is not adequately addressed in the recent Amnesty International report entitled “Killing the Future Children in the Line of Fire.”
The Israeli Government, Holocaust Issues, and Anti-Semitism
Rabbi Michael Melchior was the Minister for Israeli Society and the World Jewish Community in Ehud Barak’s cabinet from 1999 to 2001. Today, as Israel’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, he is responsible inter alia for Israel’s relationship with the world Jewish community.
