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Where’s the outrage?

By Lisa Hostein · September 25, 2008

It’s easy to be incensed by Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s loathsome remarks at the United Nations and in media appearances, but several commentators are wondering why there hasn’t been more public outrage by the world community? I’m wondering why all the outcry over the lack of outcry is only coming from the right?

Eve Epstein, who as a U.N. insider serves as an important Jewish voice at the world body, writes in National Review Online:

To their shame, U.N. member states’ pledges of “Never Again” were betrayed by a singular lack of moral outcry. Have they learned nothing from the multitude of Holocaust education and genocide prevention programs they sponsored?

She also sees through his use of the word “Zionist” instead of Jew when he seeks blame for the world’s ills.

If he had used the word “Jew” instead of “Zionist,” such sentiments would likely be barred from the Internet in many countries, as a form of hateful invective.

But Ahmadinejad is clever, and summons the spirit of European and Muslim antisemitism by casting this as an issue of the Jewish state.

Elsewhere, a British commentator, in The New York Sun, takes the Europeans in particular to task for their silence.

And, in The Spectator, Melanie Phillips notes the irony that on the same day that Ahmadinejad took the stage in New York, Paul McCartney was talking peace in Israel.

Salon, on the other hand, buys Ahmadinejad’s distinction between Jews and Zionists, and criticizes Obama for conflating the two.

6 Comments | Share This | anti-Semitism, U.N.

Anti-Semitism—still

By Lisa Hostein · September 18, 2008

The latest Pew Research Center survey of global attitudes on religion is out and the news is not good for Jews – or Muslims.

Anti-Jewish attitudes are up in most major European countries, with the highest numbers in Spain, Poland and Russia. Only British attitudes have remained constant in recent years. But the same is true about attitudes toward Muslims. And according to Pew, “there is a clear relationship between anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attitudes: publics that view Jews unfavorably also tend to see Muslims in a negative light.”

But none of this comes as a big surprise. Similar studies in recent years have come up with similar numbers, give or take a few percentage points. A major report last year by Human Rights First went beyond the numbers to chide European countries for not doing more to halt the trend. See JTA’s analysis of that report.

But while anti-Jewish sentiments appear a constant (so what else is new in Jewish history?), some other troubling – though not necessarily surprising – findings have garnered less attention:

• The deepest anti-Jewish sentiments exist outside of Europe, especially in predominantly Muslim nations. The percentage of Turks, Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Pakistanis with favorable (my emphasis) opinions of Jews is in the single digits.
  
• A majority in people in Jordan express a positive view of Hamas. But views of Hamas tend to be negative in Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt.
• Views of the militant Lebanese Shi’ite organization Hezbollah are overwhelmingly negative in Turkey, while slim majorities in Egypt and Jordan express positive views of Hezbollah. In Lebanon itself, Hezbollah is almost unanimously popular among the country’s Shia community, but is overwhelmingly unpopular among Sunnis and Christians.
• Most Muslims continue to worry about the rise of Islamic extremism, both at home and abroad. Majorities in Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria say they are concerned about extremism in their own country and in other countries around the world.
  



Perhaps, in these troubled times, we should take comfort in this, though it’s hard to believe given the daily headlines:

* Since 2002, the percentage saying that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians are justified to defend Islam from its enemies has declined in most predominantly Muslim countries surveyed.

1 Comment | Share This | anti-Semitism, Arab world, International

The latest ‘Dreyfus affair?’

By Lisa Hostein · August 4, 2008

First the al-Dura affair, now a to-do about the firing of a French columnist for his purported anti-Semitic rantings. The French media has been filled with self-examination this summer, much of it related to Jewish affairs.

In the al-Dura affair, the French press questioned its role after a court ruled in favor of a media watchdog who had challenged the authenticity of a French TV broadcast of an alleged Israeli shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy.

Now, a French columnist has become the new cause celebre after he was fired for a series of writings that started with an offensive piece about Nicolas Sarkozy’s son’s engagement to a Jewish heiress.

NYTimes columnist Roger Cohen says the issue could be shaping up to be another Dreyfus Affair, which has become the code word to describe a Jew being unjustly accused of something.

Here’s how Cohen describes it:

It’s not quite the Dreyfus Affair, at least not yet. But France is divided again over power and the Jews.

While the United States has been debating The New Yorker’s caricature of Barack Obama as a Muslim, France has gone off the deep end over a brief item in the country’s leading satirical magazine portraying the relationship between President Nicolas Sarkozy’s fast-rising son, Jean, and his Jewish fiancée.

The offending piece in Charlie Hebdo, a pillar of the left-libertarian media establishment, was penned last month by a 79-year-old columnist-cartoonist who goes by the name of Bob Siné. He described the plans — since denied — of Jean Sarkozy, 21, to convert to Judaism before marrying Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, an heiress to the fortune of the Darty electrical goods retailing chain.

“He’ll go far in life, this little fellow!” Siné wrote of Sarkozy Jr.

He added, in a separate item on whether Muslims should abandon their traditions, that: “Honestly, between a Muslim in a chador and a shaved Jewess, my choice is made!”

Elie Wiesel and Bernard-Henri Lévy have weighed in on the case, which appears to be reverberating across Europe.

Cohen comes out staunchly against Sine’s firing, opting for free speech over martyrdom. Read his whole column.

5 Comments | Share This | anti-Semitism, France, Media

The beating of Rudy Haddad

By Uriel Heilman · July 31, 2008

An Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal picks up on a story JTA has been following in France on the brutal beating attack against a young Parisian Jew, Rudy Haddad, in June:

Confused accounts of the June 21 fights that ended with the attack against Rudy – portrayed as a tough guy with a police record – curiously recall the “cycle of violence” treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict, where Palestinian terror attacks and Israeli efforts to prevent them are judged as morally equivalent.

0 Comments | Share This | anti-Semitism, France

Meanwhile, at the U.N. anti-racism prep conference in Geneva

By Michael J. Jordan · April 25, 2008

Another day, another tongue lashing from Anne Bayefsky. Bayefsky, the director of the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at Touro College, has become a Jewish gadfly here in Geneva, as speechifying diplomats wrapped the first week of a two-week “preparatory” session for the 2009 World Conference Against Racism. A common theme here is for Arab, Islamic and African nations to they’re racist, then point their fingers at Israel for racism. So for a fourth straight day, Bayfesky weighed in. “I wasn’t planning to say anything,” she said, after singling out Iran, Syria, Senegal and Algeria for hypocrisy. “But their words strained credulity, so I couldn’t let it go unanswered.” She’s become such an irritant for Arab anti-Israel sentiment that the Egyptian ambassador couldn’t help but express his frustration with her on Thursday. “This has become a daily show,” he said, “and we are sick and tired of it.”

While Israel boycotts the forum because of its distinctly anti-Israel vibe, one quasi-Israeli mills about – “kind of undercover,” as he puts it. Khazriel Ben Yehuda isn’t actually a citizen, but a permanent resident of Israel for 30 years. You wouldn’t guess it from his dapper African-looking garb. Ben Yehuda hails from Israel’s small Black Israelite community. “I don’t really announce I’m from Israel, like a Malian wouldn’t announce ‘I’m from Mali!,’” says Ben Yehuda, who spoke on behalf of the African Hebrew Israelite Development Agency, based in Ghana and in his Israeli hometown of Dimona. Still, he sees the forum like an Israeli would: “When you get down to it, the Arab and Islamic countries tend to dominate.”

0 Comments | Share This | anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Israel, U.N.

Prepping in Geneva for U.N. “anti-racism” conference

By Michael J. Jordan · April 24, 2008

Noel Hidalgo/Creative Commons

JTA correspondent Michael J. Jordan visits with the diplomats in Geneva preparing for the 2009 World Conference Against Racism as they seek to widen the definition of anti-Semitism to include Islamophobia – Arabs are Semites, after all – and talk of the importance of focusing on “state racism.” Guess which state?

Parsing U.N. diplo-speak

Parsing United Nations diplo-speak requires an attuned ear and a capacity to read between the lines. On Thursday in Geneva, at a preparatory conference for the 2009 World Conference Against Racism, the Syrian ambassador drew a line between “individual racism” and “state racism.” State racism? Do you mean – maybe – Israel? Crusaders against racism must study where those with a “cultural superiority complex” deny the “right of millions to self-determination,” he said. “Thank you to the distinguished delegate,” the Libyan chairwoman said.

Depends on how you define “anti-Semitism”

Just when you thought you knew all about anti-Semitism – turns out it means Arabs too, at least according to Algeria’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

When the Algerian diplomat, Idriss Jazairy, argues that anti-Semitism’s definition should be expanded to include Arabs, who are a Semitic people, the director of the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at Touro College, Anne Bayefsky, shot back. The greatest source of anti-Semitism today operates “under the guise of anti-Zionism and anti-racism activities,” epitomized by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s disproportionate focus on criticizing Israel, she said.

When Bayefsky spoke, Jazairy immediately raised his hands to form a T – as in “time-out” – and the forum’s chairwoman, Libyan Najat Al-Hajjaji, began tapping her gavel, cutting off Bayefsky to permit Jazairy to respond. Bayefsky was allowed to resume, but was interrupted twice more by Al-Hajjaji’s gavel and Jazairy’s interjections.

The 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic States are “feigning an interest in anti-Semitism only to pervert and emasculate the meaning, which is why they have no problem condemning it,” Bayefsky said after the session.

Some observers were confused by the entire exchange. A watchdog for India’s “untouchables” caste, the Dalits, shyly conceded his ignorance of the matter to JTA: “It’s somebody against something, yes?”

Arafat on Display

Lining the tungsten-lit hallway in the basement of the U.N. complex in Geneva, a 10-panel exhibit on the Palestinians gets plenty of foot traffic because it’s next to the main cafeteria here. The exhibit contains four photos of Yasser Arafat, including a wide-angle shot of the standing ovation Arafat famously received from the U.N. General Assembly in November 1974. This week, a U.N. staffer and U.N. security guard – both Africans – were reading the French-language exhibit. Asked why he thought it was the only permanent exhibit in the building, the staffer replied, “Because it’s the oldest conflict.” As for Arafat, I ventured, some might view him as a terrorist. “You Europeans,” the security guard snapped at me, an American journalist. “You’re responsible for all that’s happened there.”

Click here to tune into the Durban Review Conference Preparatory Committee’s live webcast, Friday, April 25, 2008, 10:00-18:00 CEST.

2 Comments | Share This | anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Israel, U.N.

What did they expect? A Star of David?

By Ami Eden · March 11, 2008

My favorite headline from the ADL’s recent press release touting its annual audit of anti-Semitic acts: “Swastika Symbol of Choice for Anti-Semites.”

0 Comments | Share This | anti-Semitism