Points to Ponder 46 3rd May, 2016
As I have written, the purpose of Points to Ponder is to bring to my readers attention articles and video clips which may have been overlooked by the more popular media outlets. It is not meant to convey my personal opinions. That I have done in letters to the editor which were published in the Jerusalem Post (latest one today) and even in an occasional op-ed. Not so this time. This ptp is very much an op-ed.
The former mayor of London, member of the Labor Party in the UK, Ken Livingstone, has unwittingly done a favor to those fighting anti-Semitism. The poison which has permeated virtually every university, every college, every political party, every academic circle, every trade union and many Christian denominations in the UK and worldwide, but which has, until now been hidden from view has suddenly hit the headlines.
By linking Hitler, Nazism and Zionism, Livingstone has shown how historical “facts” are manipulated to fit any obnoxious ideology when they are taken out of context or/and only partially referenced. In the mid 1930’s, shortly after coming to power, it was Hitler’s intention to make Germany Judenrein, empty of Jews. And what better way to do it than to expel them. And what better destination than Palestine, which everyone knew was the place where the Jewish people had originated and from which they had been exiled for over two thousand years. The only problem was that Britain Mandate, which decided who could come to Palestine, had limited the number to 750 Jews per month while Arab immigration was unlimited.
In an attempt to solve the problem of Jewish refugees trying to leave Germany, which had enacted draconian laws against Jews and where Jews were physically attacked and were being sent to concentration camps such as Dachau, the Évian Conference was held in July, 1938.
Convened at the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt the conference was attended by representatives from 32 countries, among them Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA.
When asked how many refugees Canada could receive the answer was, “One is too many.” Australia’s response was “Australia has no racial problem and we are not desirous of importing one”. Only two countries, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, increased the number of Jewish refugees they were prepared to accept.
The conference proved to Hitler that, as no one was interested in the persecuted Jews of Germany, they would be even less interested in the fate of the Jews of the rest of Europe, both western and eastern. Thus was he given a free hand to rid Europe of its Jews, over six million by his own counting. And he succeeded, whether in the gas chambers and crematoria, in slave camps, by starvation or at the hands of Croatians, Lithuanians, Rumanians, Hungarians et al, assisted by the treachery of those who betrayed their Jewish neighbors in Holland, France et al.
That was then. The nations in the 1930’s, if not actively participating in the wholesale massacre of the Jews of Europe were willing to turn a blind eye to their fate. And now? The nations in the 21st century are either actively seeking the demise of Israel, the Jewish State, whether by force or by resolutions, or by denying its historical right to exist among the nations.
Like the frog in the saucepan which is lulled into complacency as the water is slowly brought to a boil, the world has grown accustomed to the claim that the Temple Mount is Islam’s third most holy site and that there never was a Jewish Temple there, although this means that the references in the four Gospels of Jesus at the Temple cannot be accurate, to say the least.
This claim disregards written evidence which includes the words of Roman chroniclers and historians, including Dio Cassius and Josephus Flavius as well as archaeological finds. As the water gets hotter, the world is now in the process of accepting the latest claim that the Kotel, the Western Wall, a.k.a the Wailing Wall was never a Jewish site despite hundreds of photographs, some almost two hundred years old, showing Jews praying there.
Instead it will believe that this was where Mohammed tethered his horse when he made his legendary night flight from to “the furthest mosque”. Jerusalem isn’t even mentioned as the destination of that flight. (Qur’an, sura 17) It’s a later addition in the Haddith.
The water was still cold when the world accepted the claim that the Jewish people and the State of Israel have no right to Judah and Samaria, the West Bank, despite legal experts who contend otherwise, but now the water has reached the correct temperature to claim that the Jewish people never existed. No Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), no matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel), no Moses, no Kings (Saul, David, Solomon).
As the water reaches boiling point, if the Jewish people don’t exist, one wonders how they can possibly lay claim to a land in which they never lived. How can they claim Statehood?
Unsurprisingly while adding spices to the slowly cooking frogs, no one has the intellectual honesty to admit that the Palestinians have absolutely no historical, archaeological or any other proof of existence as a people prior to their present 20th century desire to wipe Israel off the map.
At this point the Jews still have a religion, Judaism, which we received in the form of the Torah given to the non-existent Moses. Perhaps, as the water boils over, that too will be denied us by the complacent world which will not even notice that the validity of Christianity is in another saucepan slowly being brought to a boil.
The hypocrisy of the world is mind boggling. The academic world and its intellectuals who don’t want to be bothered with facts which disprove their ideologies are beyond belief. The silence of good men in the face of evil is deafening.
How to define anti-Semitism in a world where BDS has become a new religion and boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel are its holy cows? As Nathan Sharansky explained, where double standards, demonization and deligitimisation are used solely against the Jewish people and its state, Israel, that is anti-Semitism. So simple.
