‘Europe’s Jews Seek Solace on the Right’

NY Times: “Europe’s Jews Seek Solace on the Right,” by Craig R. Smith, February 20, 2005.

Same guy who did the “Fear of Islamists Drives Growth of Far Right in Belgium” article last Saturday …

Obviously his story last week impressed people other than me … this week he’s got a big piece in the Week in Review on a Europe-wide examination of the same phenomenon …

A sad example of what Nietzsche called “the transvaluation of values” …

Sad, because mainstream European values are SO much saner than what we’re experiencing now in the US …

Yet because political Islam among marginalized and understandably disaffected Muslim populations in Western Europe has confused anti-Israeli sentiment with the most disgusting anti-Semitism,

the descendants of the victims of the Holocaust – and in some cases even victims themselves – have now joined the descendants of the perpetrators of the Holocuast – and in some cases even the perpetrators themselves …

And the conflict between political Islam – which REJECTS the mainstream Western European values of TOLERANCE that paved the way for large numbers of Muslims to come to Western Europe –

and the right/center-right – which ALSO rejects the mainstream Western European value of TOLERANCE –

seems likely to become the most dynamic political confrontation in Europe – something which is in NO ONE’s interest …

and towards which the US is SOMEHOW going to have to come up with a policy response that DOESN’T – unlike most (foreign AND domestic) initiatives of the Bush administration so far – make everything WORSE …

This is a VERY sad development … herewith some selected quotes [with my emphasis in bold]:

The Belgian example is extreme, but it represents the sharpest edge of a much broader political shift by European Jews - away from the left, particularly the far left, and toward the center and right, in the face of rising displays of anti-Semitism and the European left's embrace of the Palestinian cause. …

In the vast majority of cases it represents a move toward tolerant parties of the center or center-right rather than a leap to the far end of the spectrum – where many xenophobic parties remain unfriendly to Jews as well as to Arabs. So the number of Jews on the far right remains a very slim minority.

But the fact that there are any at all is a measure of the degree to which many of Europe’s 2.4 million Jews feel abandoned by the left and are still searching for a comfortable place in European politics.

Meanwhile, they are becoming increasingly active in the mainstream right. …

Much of European Jewry considered the left its natural home in the 19th century and the early 20th century. The left supported Jewish emancipation and more liberal immigration policies in Western Europe, and Social Democrats and Communists opposed Russia’s czars, who sponsored anti-Semitic pogroms, and Hitler.

But after World War II, Stalin, too, attacked Jews, and in the 1950's the Soviet Union identified itself with Arab nationalism.

From the 1960’s onward, the left in Europe increasingly portrayed Israel not as a land of collective farmers making the desert bloom but as an occupying power. So the disenchantment accelerated, especially in the last few years. “Arafat became the leftist pinup boy following Che Guevara,” said Barry Kosmin, head of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London.

Jews say the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has often become difficult to see. Swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans have marked pro-Palestinian marches in some Communist-run municipalities in France. In Britain, many Jews who opposed the war in Iraq stayed away from antiwar rallies because of the strong anti-Israeli element.

“Because of the negative stuff coming from the left, many Jews felt that their fates were tied to Israel, so they have to go along with those who support Israel regardless of the past,” Mr. Lerman said.

There is particular anxiety among the many European Jews who fled their North African homes after the creation of Israel in 1948 and again after the 1967 Middle East war. “They fear that their destiny is threatened by Islam on both sides of the Mediterranean,” said Dominique Moisi, a senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations.

Those fears shape some of the most extreme voices on the new Jewish right. Giselle Littman, who was expelled from Egypt in 1957 and now publishes under the pseudonym Bat Yeor, argues in her latest book, “Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis,” that Europe has consciously allied itself with the Arab world at the expense of Jews and the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Not all of what Jews see as a resurgence of European anti-Semitism is coming from Muslims. There is also a virulent neo-Nazi strain.

But an essential difference between the anti-Semitism of today and that of the 1930’s is that center-right parties tolerated – or encouraged – it then and denounce it today.

Even some elements of Europe’s far right have reached out to Jews: Gianfranco Fini, Italy’s foreign minister and a former admirer of Mussolini, has become a champion of Israel since apologizing to Jews three years ago for Italy’s wartime race laws and deportations. Filip Dewinter, head of Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, meets regularly with Jewish leaders and has been photographed with prominent rabbis. Denmark’s far-right People’s Party had an Israeli theme at a recent convention and served wine from the Golan Heights.

“We have a common enemy, a common struggle,” said Mr. Dewinter. He called Israel “the forward post of the free West fighting radical Islam” and said Jewish culture is “one of the main cultures of European civilization, but we can’t say the same of Islam.”

The “IRONY” here, of course, is that all the psychotic projections the Nazis and their pals during the 1920s and ’30s made onto the Jews –

who, especially in Germany, ONLY wanted to assimilate to the broader society – in the way that they have generally been able to in America –

that is, maintaining their own religious identity, but fully participating as Americans in the US’s political / economic / cultural realms –

are, given the militant IN-tolerance of political Islam – and not necessarily the sentiments of the large majority of European Muslims, altho, to be sure, no one really has any idea, as there has been relatively little polling on these matters –

much more “real” … and, in reaction, there are actually a small number of Jews that have aligned themselves with the descendants of the Holocaust perpetrators …

which links up, again sadly, with the explosion of far-right sentiments among Jews in Israel … for which, see the NEXT story …