There have been incidents of anti-Jewish vandalism in Rome, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Vandals painted the word “Hizbollah” in large letters outside the gate of Glasgow’s Garnethill Synagogue. The Holocaust memorial in Brussels has been defaced with condoms and excrement. See Norm for more; watch the Engage weblog for updates.
Andrew O’Hagan’s Daily Telegraph editorial on the Mel Gibson scandal makes for timely reading. Note that O’Hagan doesn’t mention Gibson’s “Passion” film at all. His goal is transparent, and it is not, as he states, “to peel back the layers” of the Gibson story. It is to air his own beef with the Jews. “Jews, and by extension Israelis, are un-insultable in ethnic terms, though everybody else is,” O’Hagan complains, as the vandals shake their spray-paint. “I know it’s hard to tell a people who saw six million of their number murdered to turn the other cheek,” O’Hagan continues, working up to veiled threats: “[B]ut turn the other cheek they must, unless they want to present themselves as the great unimpeachable race apart.”
The usual hard-left eminences — Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, others — have returned with a statement to the Guardian condemning Israel’s attack on Lebanon. They are not wrong to condemn it. But after citing Israeli violations of “existing international laws,” they make no reference at all to Hezbollah’s violations of the same laws. They do, however, refer to “Hizbullah’s resistance,” concluding: “We offer our solidarity and support to the victims of this brutality and to those who mount a resistance against it.” This is what passes for a moral stance on the radical left: artfully worded support for an organization whose leader has made antisemitic statements worthy of Hitler. Chomsky and friends need to condemn the vandals who scrawled “Hizbollah” outside the Glasgow synagogue.
Meanwhile, the comedian and political provocateur Bill Maher has come out in support of Israel, claiming it is “forced to kill civilians in its own defense.” Specious arguments like these are taking hold and they must be challenged. Adam Shatz did so in a very useful piece in the LA Times (hat tip: Marc Cooper).
[Update: More on Jew-hatred at WW4 Report.]
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