Thursday, February 28, 2008

Dichotomy on anti-Semitism

There are two extreme views of Israel and the Jews vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Either one can view the rest of the world as hostile to the Jews and Israel, as unalterably opposed to our existence, and always trying to find ways to destroy us. This was undoubtedly the view of the Jews of Eastern Europe, living as they were, powerless but surrounded by a host of hostile and aggressive tribes (Germans, Poles, Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians, etc.). Then there is the view that only a small minority of other peoples are anti-Semites, that they constitute a small and powerless extreme, and that the majority of people either don't know or don't care about the Jews and Israel. Maybe the truth lies somewhere betweeen.
It is true that there are countries and regimes, currently Iran and its subordinate terrorist organizations, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, that actively strive to destroy us. But, it is also true that there are countries and peoples that are very friendly and supportive of Israel, beyond what one could expect, and this means not only the powerful, such as the USA, but also the small and weak, such as the Polynesian States that often support Israel, for example Vanuatu and Fiji.
It might be considered that the pessimistic view that there is no let-up in anti-Semitism is a right-wing view, and the idea that there are many people who are philo-Semitic is a left-wing view. But, on the other hand, right wingers are characterized by the belief that a strong and powerful IDF can save Israel, so therefore there is no need to worry, while a typical left-wing view is that salvation lies through mutual friendship with other peoples that often leads to intermarriage and a loss of Jewish particularity, for example, many leftists would support a shared secular democratic state with the Palestinians (although it wouldn't remain democratic for long).
To support the latter view, a poll in the USA reported on IBA News gave the number of convinced and strong anti-Semites as only 15%, but wait a minute in the US that amounts to 35 million people! And that's not including the less strongly anti-Semitic, so that would seem to support the former view. So obviously the conclusion depends on how you interpret the same data.
There is no clear-cut answer to this question, there are enough interpretations to support any opinion. However, it seems that whatever the slant, anti-Semitism is not going away as we once had hoped. This was the conclusion of the World Conference on anti-Semitism that was recently held in Jerusalem, and they decided that their organization needs to remain permanent and tackle this problem on a continuous world-wide basis.

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