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Sunday 14 September 2014

The Enemies Within

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive!” 

(‘Marmion’, Walter Scott)

ADLSo it’s official. The Anti Defamation League has confirmed a  marked spike in global antisemitism during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge.

But as the tangled knots draw yet tighter, I’m increasingly concerned about the number of  young British Jews who have joined our enemies’ ranks and are fund-raising for Palestinian Gazans rather than beleaguered Israelis on the other side of the border.

Their attitude is reflected even by some IDF Intelligence officers who have decided they no longer wish to spy on Palestinians for ‘moral’ reasons. Go, figure!

Perhaps the high-minded preachers have forgotten or don’t care that it was Hamas’s constant rocket bombardment and the following kidnap and murder of three Israeli boys that triggered the 50 day campaign. Or are they  unaware that some southern Israeli traders have  fallen on hard times and have travelled north to earn much-needed cash before the High Holy Days begin?

So let me get down to business and state that the war saw a strange marriage of  Jewry’s greatest foes; that it was used quite openly as a peg on which to invert the anti-Jewish canard of attempted world domination with a concerted, international  multi-interest campaign against us.

While Britain experienced a 400 per cent rise in anti-Jewish incidents during July,  with almost half of them showing a direct link with events in the Gaza Strip, there were also shocking hate incidents throughout mainland Europe, South America, northern Africa, South Africa, Australia, the United States and Canada.

The ADL published its report on Thursday 11 September and the coincidental link with the 13th anniversary of the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. will not be lost on anyone.

I’ll be blunt. ‘Antisemitism’ is a relatively modern political term for old-fashioned Jew-hatred; a phenomenon that may become weaker and stronger by turn but somehow topped a 60-year peak during Israel’s most recent war in Gaza at a level I never expected to witness in my lifetime.

What appeared to make it worse – and markedly different – was the slick, savvy way that Jewry’s enemies performed on social networking sites as well as on the streets. Much worse was seeing fellow Jews spewing anti-Israel hatred. I hesitate to shout ‘Quisling’, but ...

Moreover, I was shocked and also puzzled to note how community police officers sent to control demonstrations in Manchester, U.K. were video-recorded standing, smiling with their arms folded while a surly crowd swirled around them.  Why did they allow themselves to appear to collude with the brazenly professional protestors present? That’s another question yet to be answered in full.

Everything appeared to have been carefully pre-planned. It seemed that those responsible for the online hate fest, the physical demonstrations and verbal bullying acted according to an agenda devised by people unknown, anxious to activate attacks on both Israel as the Jewish state and the entire world Jewish population. But still Jews joined in!

While I expect to be derided for this view, I maintain that Operation Protective Edge in Gaza was the excuse, not the reason for what then happened.  Too many incidents reminded me, less of historic anti-Jewish pogroms than of the peculiarly skilful way the U.K. riots of 2010 and 2011 were coordinated. The first was a student tuition fee protest while the second, which spread like wildfire throughout England, was supposedly sparked by the death of a 29-year-old man in a police shooting.

As there has never been one major cause cited, I’m left unconvinced. These sort of incidents often pass without comment, let alone massive disturbance. Why was this one different? None of my preliminary research gives a firm answer. I suggest that this year, like 2010 and 2011, the professional rent-a-mobsters were brought in to make a terrible situation quite unbearable.

But now everyone in the free world faces the consequences of allowing chaos to take hold, if only briefly and of bowing to a vociferous religious minority for fear of being labelled ‘racist’. Might has become right and now we see Muslim – yes, Muslim – paedophile gangs in western Europe and  Islamist ISIS terrorists wallowing in their barbaric blood lust throughout the Middle East. 

It is well-documented that an Al Qaeda cell based in Hamburg, Germany helped to  plot the 2001 9/11 attacks.  Less reported is that Jew haters across the political spectrum have worked together for at least 40 years and may have planted the seeds of this year’s global anti-Jewish mayhem.

Events began at the Munich Olympics in 1972 when a German police officer and eleven Israeli Olympic athletes were taken hostage and killed by the Palestinian Black September terrorist group.

In a feature published by Fox News for the opening of the 2012 London Olympics and reposted for this year’s 42nd anniversary of the attack, Guri Weinberg, the actor son of murdered athlete, Moshe Weinberg, recalled how Black September was helped by German Neo-Nazis to obtain fake identities, weapons and access to the Olympic village.

Far worse was the confirmation of institutionalised neo-Nazism and antisemitism at the very pinnacle of the international Olympic movement. Avery Brundage, head of the IOC at the time of the massacre and his protégé Juan Samaranch were both Nazi sympathisers.

Indeed Samaranch, Brundage’s protégé and the second longest-serving IOC president, also supported the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. But his views were kept “a dirty secret”, alleged Weinberg Junior. “Most IOC members knew the truth but stayed silent because he organised a regal lifestyle for them -- with money diverted from sport”.

So if anyone wants to know why the International Olympic Committee will never memorialise the victims of the 1972 terrorist attack at Munich, they should first examine the history of the modern Olympics.

Yet as I’ve remarked elsewhere, the backstory really began in 1909 after the Austrian government passed the “Aryan Paragraph" law forbidding sports clubs from accepting Jewish members. So it’s nothing short of miraculous that Israelis were ever allowed to compete at the Olympics let alone have homage paid to their countrymen slain in  Munich.

Angela.MerkelAs I write, The Times of Israel reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel today, Sunday 14 September, led a rally against antisemitism  at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

The event, which marked the 75th anniversary of the start of World War II and reflected on the outburst of anti-Jewish hatred during the recent Israel-Hamas war,  coincided with a meeting in Berlin of the World Jewish Congress.

I like Mrs Merkel very much. She appears to be a thoroughly decent, practical person who aims not for image but integrity. The world deserves more low-key politicians with high principles.  But there are too few in evidence. My hope is that someone like Merkel will help explain what really happened this summer. But I fear that we’re in for a long wait.

I sign off with video clips of interviews with two more righteous non-Jews.

First I present Chloé Simone Valdary, a Zionist and pro-Israel activist who  is a senior and an International Studies major at the University of New Orleans.

Second, a speedy look at the Gaza War by the U.K.’s  Colonel Richard Kemp, who spent a long time in Israel this summer, actively helping the IDF,  addressing civilian groups and being interviewed by the Israeli media. I salute both of them for their wisdom and courage.

© Natalie Wood (14 September 2014)

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