By Stan Goodenough
Jan 27, 2008
As a number of different nations Sunday observed International Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel's cabinet heard a grim warning from Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog:
"Let us not make the mistake of assuming that antisemitism is waning," the minister, who is also responsible for liaising with Jews still living outside Israel, told his colleagues during their weekly meeting.
"This vile phenomenon lurks just around the corner, waiting for the right time to rear its ugly head."
International Holocaust Memorial Day has only been held since 2005, when the United Nations - an overwhelmingly antisemitic organization - passed the resolution instituting it on the annual anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
This year the Muslim Council of Britain will also, reluctantly but for strategic purposes, participate in the commemoration.
Instead of working successfully to educate nations about the perversity and unacceptability of antisemitism, this global day of remembrance serves effectively to draw a distinction between the so-called "classic antisemitism" of the kind that prepared the ground for, and fed, the Holocaust, and the widely-embraced modern antisemitism that is purposefully disguised with other names: anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism.
That there is a direct tie-in between the two manifestations of this age-old prejudice has been tracked and documented by concerned groups, some of whom recently noted how Israel's Second Lebanon War of 2006 triggered an upsurge in "classic" antisemitic incidents worldwide.
The international media's overwhelmingly anti-Israel coverage of that war, and both before and since of Israel's ongoing battle against "Palestinian" terrorism, has compounded the age-old negative stereotyping of the Jewish people, fueling worldwide hatred of the Jews.
This weekend, Arun Gandhi, grandson of the renowned Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi, was forced to resign from the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence he founded at the University of Rochester, New York, in the wake of antisemitic and anti-Israel comments made by him earlier this year.
Writing on the Washington Post's web site, Gandhi said the Jewish people were guilty of "overplay[ing]" the Holocaust.
"Israel and the Jews" were also "the biggest players" in a "culture of violence [that] is eventually going to destroy humanity," he said.
In an effort to extricate himself from his self-dug hole, Gandhi reiterated his "criticisms of the use of violence by recent Israeli governments."
In doing so he only further exposed his prejudice, which is clearly based on the perception polished by the biased press.
No other nation has been willing or able to emulate Israel's consistent practice of restraint in the face of an avalanche of hatred and terrorism like that relentlessly poured out upon the Jewish state.
Israel is unprecedented and incomparable in its readiness to carry out pinpoint operations that risk the lives of its own citizens rather than endangering Arab civilians, and in its quest for non-violent responses (like building the security fence and cutting off fuel supplies) instead of massively retaliating militarily against the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, Samaria and Judea.
To the world, however, fed daily by anti-Israel "journalism," Israel is a heinous war criminal, abuser of human rights, robber of "Arab lands" and, in Gandhi’s words again, "the biggest players" in a "culture of violence [that] is eventually going to destroy humanity."
While the world hides behind the fig-leaf of International Holocaust Memorial Day, history will one day indict today's "objective" western media for the major role it is playing in laying the groundwork for another holocaust of the Jews.