RUTHFULLY YOURS

Corroded by leftist dogma, European intellectuals, the Trojan horse of Europe’s erudite antisemitism, also display a shocking disregard for the crimes of the dictators and “freedom fighters” with whom they are captivated. Thus José Saramago and other like him are able to embrace and extol, Pol Pot, Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Castro and even Stalin, while inveighing against the “genocidal policies” of Israel and its leaders. Every day the European media trumpets lies and falsehoods about Israel and “American imperialism.” Age-old European stereotypes of the Jews as a sinister force have been revived. Naturally, terror in the service of the Arab cause, whether against Israelis or Americans, can be ignored. No sympathy for its victims is warranted, because, after all, it is the Israelis and the Americans who are the real terrorists, and even Nazis. Today, Europe faces an epic struggle between the very best and the very worst of its traditions.

Confronted with this struggle, Pilar Rahola declares: “I feel Jewish because I am a European, and that is the only moral condition that can redeem a European from his or her own shameful past.” The Author In 1997, Pilar Rahola, member of the Spanish Parliament with the Catalan Republican Left Party (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya – ERC), quit both the Parliament and politics in general, stating that the Left had lost its way. One of the main reasons for her decision was the increasingly obvious antisemitic flavor of leftist doctrine hiding under the guise of anti-Zionism and of severe criticism of Israel’s policies. Born and raised in Barcelona in a traditional Catholic and staunchly Republican family, Rahola had no reason to feel Spain’s Judeophobia breathing down her neck. However, as an activist against injustice – especially in the areas of women’s equality, animal rights and media bias – she became outraged by the manner in which blatant antisemitism had made its way into leftist ideology and polite society unchecked.

Rahola holds a doctorate in Spanish and Catalan literature from the University of Barcelona and has served as the director both of Pòrtic Publishing and the Acta Foundation, as well as vice-mayor of Barcelona from 1994-2000. She has written several best-selling books and currently hosts a television talk show. She writes regularly for El País, El Periódico and Avui. WJC INSTITUTE Introduction Europe has never confronted its responsibility with regards to antisemitism – neither in the past, nor present. Nowhere, however, is this omission more glaring than in Spain. In a report of March 2004, Pat Cox, former president of the European Parliament, declared that Spain is currently a main source of incitement against Jews in Europe. The report of the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, referring to media coverage of the Middle East conflict, reveals that: “the stereotypes found in that coverage are the same as those waived against the Jews during the 1930s (killing children, controlling the world). It would be impossible to prove that the tremendous wave of anti-Israel sentiment in Spain is in no way connected to antisemitic content in the news.” These findings are supported by the results of a recent survey by the Gallup Organization: 72% of Spanish people would deport the Jews from Israel; only 12% would accept having Jewish neighbors; 69% believe Jews are too powerful and 55% attribute “dark intentions” to them that cannot be summarized. To my sadness, the survey demonstrates that my native Catalonia and the Basque Country both show the highest levels of Judeophobia. Alas, this situation is true to a greater or lesser extent across the length and breadth of Europe. This distressing conclusion and the findings behind them have been published by wellrespected institutions. Yet, have they worried anyone in Europe? More to the point, have they been been read, believed? No, they have become yesterday’s back page. Convinced of the truth of this data, the accusation I make is the following:

Today, Europe, and especially Spain, is “antisemitic” once again. But we are mainly nations that are antisemitic in the style of Communist Poland in 1968, or in Paul Lendvai’s words, we are “antisemites without Jews.” Because these days in much of Europe, including the Iberian Peninsular, there is only a negligible number of Jews. And I say “antisemite” knowing that most of my colleagues (especially in the Left) not only do not accept the term, but find it offensive, as if antisemitism was the exclusive patrimony of the extreme Right and fundamental Catholicism. Many are the camouflages of antisemitism. Anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiment are much more bearable for thin skins. But they are fed by the same source of intolerance. It is essentially alright to be a critic of Israel and of course it is true that not every critic can be accused of antisemitism. However, with so many signs of warning, we must analyze them if we do not want to risk the destruction of our society.

Europe’s Good Bad Memory Let us discuss the complex web of lies upon which the present-day blindness of many European intellectuals is based – lies that have become a canon upon which to base a new form of intolerance which is merely a modern restatement of the old specter There is something in the European DNA that devours our Jewish organs like a voracious, pitiless cancer – even though these organs are vital to our survival of antisemitism. Israel is the focus of accusation and the United States the cause of all ills, while the Arabs are the consummate victims. Europe’s culpability is camouflaged and wonderfully embellished in Chanel apparel (“drawing-room antisemitism,” as pointed out by the European Commission against Racism). It is so politically correct in its enormous moral incorrectness that it is, day by day, becoming a European mind-set. The first treason and lie is memory. The future of recollection dwells within me, according to old Temple wisdom. Certainly Europe has adopted the evil that assures us that forgetting is having a good memory. Convenient amnesia has become a European option – perfectly chosen to disgrace justice, in fact, perfectly coherent with its suicidal tendency to nourish both the greatest and worst of thoughts.

If we were the inventors, propagators and executors of secular antisemitism, why should things be any different today? There is something in the European DNA that devours our Jewish organs like a voracious, pitiless cancer – even though these organs are vital to our survival. The charred remains of a synagogue in Lugano, Switzerland, March 13-14, 2005 Kristallnacht in Siegen, Germany, November 9-10, 1938 A synagogue in Lyons, France gutted in an arson attack, 2002 Thus, submerged in a militant forgetfulness, we have reinvented antisemitism even though the Jewish percentage of Europe’s population is negligible in comparison with pre-war times. The rediscovery of such intellectual poverty is a daily occurrence in many European cities. Not much different, in my opinion, is the fact that in these last three years of Intifada, the Kristallnacht-whiff of burning synagogues has made a grand comeback, to say the least.

Even the Jewish dead are not allowed to repose in peace. This atmosphere has caused thousands of Jews to emigrate (to date, they are not recognized as refugees by the UN High Commission) and the press has initiated a process of demonizing both Israel and Jews that is unprecedented since the black hole of Nazism. None of this would have been possible if Europe had not actively sought to forget its own moral impoverishment. Defaced tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in Strassburg, France 2002 Europe’s first treachery, therefore, is vis-à-vis the Jews, that is to say, vis-à-vis itself. It is a betrayal of the collective memory of tragedy and the blame derived from the same.

Except for Germany, which has undertaken a serious process of expiation and collective catharsis, the rest of the continent has not wanted to remember and has no intention of learning. Spain, for example, the author of the Tisha B’Av edict of expulsion and birthplace of inquisitional totalitarianism, not only does not practice historical selfcriticism but also contains a group of people lobbying to beatify Queen Isabella, executor of the Inquisition and author of the Spanish expulsion edict. The Holocaust? Not one Spanish child has studied the profound moral lesson of the greatest tragedy to befall humanity. Therefore, the Shoah is perceived as a distant fact, more tied to the virtual reality of the cinema than to his/her own history, and, as such, an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. Lack of memory leads to ignorance, ignorance produces prejudice, and prejudice breeds intolerance.

Who said there is nothing more dangerous in the world than sincere ignorance? For Europe has a woefully sincere surfeit of imbecility, ignorance and an absolute memory void. It is this obstinate forgetfulness, trivializing the paths which have led us to hatred (from the very heart of Christianity to Stalin’s frenzy to eliminate Jewish physicians and from the infamous white gowns of the Inquisitors to the gas chambers of Birkenau); it is this relativization of antisemitism, implanted in the very vortex of Europe that spawns the likes of Nobel writer José Saramago and renowned composer Mikis Theodorakis. To think that we have become so enamored of the author of Baltasar and Blimunda!

And to think we did this same with the musician while watching the movie “Zorba the Greek!” Who could have warned us that underneath the José Saramago in Porto Alegre, January 2005 German civilians forced to confront the grisly evidence of Nazi crimes, 1945 intellectual skin of these both beat a despicable heart? These two are not illiterate antisemites. They have read, they have thought, they have analyzed, but the question must be asked: what organ did they use to accomplish these actions? But intelligence can only navigate through bile. Saramago is a product of the same school of freedom, democracy and tolerance as was his good friend Yasser Arafat.

Anyone who loved Pol Pot and Stalin and even loves Castro can hardly have any surprises in store for us. When all is said and done, as Thierry Saint-Jacques quite rightly says, the Left sent Hitler to hell, but was very careful to make an exception for Stalin. One hundred million deaths have no one to write about them. So why shouldn’t Saramago consider six million dead Jews to be an easily forgotten childish prank if he never recognized the hundred million deaths caused by Communism?

The Jewish people no longer deserves sympathy for the suffering it has endured, he said gleefully. And I wonder, when did José Saramago ever feel any sympathy for Jews? He is the old uncritical Communist, corroded by dogmas and countersigns, and so blind that he has loved dictators and assassins who murdered in the name of liberty. A demonstration in Antwerp, Belgium, 2002 Mikis Theodorakis is, in my opinion, a contemptible soul.

He has said, and I quote: “This little nation is the root of evil. It is full of vanity and an accursed obstinacy.” And he has added this example of illustrious imbecility: that the Jews and the Greeks are not comparable, because the Greeks have in their past such superb figures as Pericles, whereas the Jews have had only patriarchs. Is he referring to the Pericles who condemned Socrates to death? Is he referring to the despicable person whom Sophocles described in Oedipus Rex? And, above all, in which sack full of disdain does he place the 164 Nobel prizes that the Jewish people have contributed to humanity?

What do we do with Elie Wiesel, Elias Canetti, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nelly Sachs, Saul Bellow, Joseph Brodsky, Yitzhak Rabin, and almost 50 Nobels for medicine, not to mention recent Israeli chemistry laureates Hershko and Ciechanover? What do we do with wickedness when it is disguised as mythical music and, in the name of solidarity, engages in rank intolerance? During the heat of the Spanish Civil War, Indalecio Prieto, a Spaniard, said: “nothing can be done when faced with a battalion of recently converted fascists.” And here we have Theodorakis, a recent convert to his progressive faith. There is little we can do but strip him of his disguise, unmask his pretense of heroism.

Today, the Saramagos and Theodorakises are the Trojan horses of Europe’s erudite antisemitism. We are no longer talking about the extreme Right, but rather the epic Left. For as Marcos Aguinis has written, there is a Left that is heading toward anti-modernity. And here we have two excellent examples of this. Saramago and Theodorakis bellow and are believed because Europe has not done its homework. However, the systematic and heartless banalization of the tragedy of the Holocaust is reserved neither for Saramago, nor for neo-Nazi pamphlets of late, nor for public Holocaust deniers alone. Shimon Peres displaying a Spanish caricature of Prime Minister Sharon as a Nazi pig, 2002 Avram Hershko receives the 2004 Nobel prize in chemistry Examples of this banalization include graphic humor with Israeli leaders depicted as Nazis, accusations of genocide and Israeli soldiers with SS behavior when reporting any Israeli action.

Simple comparisons between the Holocaust and any present violent contingency abound. For an example of this, I need not stray far from home. Lopez Agudín, in the national Spanish newspaper El Mundo, raised an aberrant parallelism between Auschwitz and the prisons in Iraq. That is to say, his rightful criticism of the torturing of Iraqi prisoners became an excuse to reduce one incomparable monstrosity to the level of a deplorable, yet immeasurably smaller chapter on torture. The logic of this phenomenon is painfully simple: if the Holocaust is made comparable to other violent action, Europe rids itself of guilt. From there it is a small step to accusing the prime minister of Israel of “genocide” or “Nazism” and each day the accusations become more far-fetched. In other words, nowadays the allegation of Nazism is nearly always anchored to the shipwreck of genocide.

This immorality comfortably pervades the fine halls of politically correct Leftist thought. I ask Spain’s intellectuals, Leftist leaders and opinion makers: do we have a moral responsibility that we are ignoring? Do we not have the responsibility to teach tolerance rather than nourish old demons? Let us remember that antisemitism is the original school of intolerance. Do we not have the responsibility to halt the betrayal of Europe’s memory of tragedy? We must not forget the extreme evil of the Holocaust and its unique horror in which the industrialized and bureaucratic murder of millions took place within a complacent society. Whenever an intellectual plays frivolously with the memory of the Shoah, no matter how good his/her intentions are, s/he is killing the victims again. It is a subtle double death: a physical death and the forgetting of death. The trivialization of the Holocaust not only deprives the victims of their place in history but sends an aberrant message to society that it is not necessary to act to prevent the long journey of hatred that made the Holocaust possible. And, finally, we abuse the responsibility of analyzing reality in truthful and non-emotional terms, giving elements that serve to objectify the problem and not turning them into doctrinarian excuses.

To banalize the Holocaust is a double moral shame: shameful to the European memory of tragedy and to our historic responsibility. But nothing arises from nothing. We can banalize the Holocaust today only because educating our society about the Holocaust’s tragic meaning never worried us, to the point that we reduced it to a simple German question. Auschwitz was the final stop of many centuries of persecution against European Jews, and Spain (Queen Isabella in hand) was the motor of the antisemitic hatred that has always existed in Europe. All the good – in the fields of law, literature, science, medicine – all the good that has happened to us has to do with Jewish Europe. Auschwitz-Birkenau All the bad that has happened to us has to do with anti-Jewish Europe. Nevertheless, we neither learn, nor do we assume the moral responsibility that the memory of tragedy demands. Forgetfulness and minimizing the Shoah have given rise to a veritable edifice of antisemitism, old in its inner beat, but new in its formulations and languages. A prestigious antisemitism, welcomed at universities and symposia, politically correct, progressive and, of course, anti-Zionist.

Its power of persuasion is so extraordinary that it has incorporated on one single axis three equally pathological currents of thought: national-Catholic populism, ex-Communism and anti-Americanism, the favorite sport of Europeans. Antisemitism, therefore, is commonplace among the various versions of totalitarian intelligence. And it is fashionable. Perhaps because, as American theologian Sherwin Wine assures us, to be rational is out of fashion. The Protocols of the Elders of Information Truth is the second betrayal. The present antisemitic edifice is built on two equally powerful pillars. One is the culture of the hatred and prejudice that marks us as Europeans. However, the other pillar, absolutely necessary for those prejudices to take wing and fly, is the informative lie. And ‘lie’, nowadays, is a verb conjugated with equal enthusiasm by journalists and intellectuals, to such a degree that the truth about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict is being usurped by a parallel truth based on the distortion and falsification of history. Europe – erudite, intellectual, media-minded, the Europe that reports daily on the Middle East and which is responsible for the voraciously anti-Israel cast of opinion – is writing a new version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The secret agents of czarism have been replaced by modern-day journalists; the ancient peril of a Jewish conspiracy is now being couched as a Yankee-Israeli plot; the evil Jew of yesteryear is the same evil Jew he always was, except that now his base is on Wall Street and he has an army.

I shall never cease to be amazed and horrified by the force of old iniquities. It is alarming to find that in this post-Holocaust and post-September-11th world, one out of five persons believes the old slanders. In Spain, for instance, the Gallup poll showed that some 70% believe in the concept of a Jewish financial lobby – a lobby that, naturally, pulls the world’s strings. This lie began many centuries ago when Christian texts converted the Jewish people into God-killers In 1903, the Protocols were adopted by the Russian extreme Right, who contributed to instigating the pogroms that devastated the Jews of that country until 1914. The ancient peril of a Jewish conspiracy is now being couched as a Yankee-Israeli plot This was followed by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews in the civil war between the Whites and the Reds. In 1920, Henry Ford published his four-volume antisemitic manifesto The International Jew. And some years later, in vanquished and convulsed Germany, well nourished by the Protocols, Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf, and Rosenberg and Goebbels saw to the propagation of hatred and the legitimization of persecution. The outcome is well known. Today, the same Europe which gave rise to everything – hatred, persecution and extermination – is now giving birth to a new narrative whose consequences, in any event, will never be good. This is my explicit accusation: the journalistic and intellectual world, primarily composed of Leftists, has written new and highly influential Protocols, with a devastating outcome. Day by day, with every news item and every declaration, there is no longer the odd ferocious book; today, we hve a library full of them. Like their forebears, the “Protocols of the Elders of Information” are criminal and false. Israel is the target. The reason – there are many, most of which are reprehensible.

The justification – Sharon. The excuse – anti-Zionism. The weapon – prestige. The propagator – thousands of media outlets. The ally – Arafat. The result– antisemitism. Every day the papers are full of lies. All you have to do, for example, is r e a d t h e d o c u m e n t a t i o n accompanying the suit which “Take a Pen” has filed in various European The Jew as the all-powerful financier as depicted in Nazi German propaganda has been ressurected in modern-day Europe courts against the Spanish press: 5 boxes of newspaper clippings, slides, maps, CDs and televised recordings. This brutal documentation shows the systematic damage being caused to the moral code of journalism and the contempt for truth. Even now, the media has not admitted, for instance, that Mohammed al-Durrah died from a Palestinian bullet or that there are ambulances carrying explosives. Today’s journalism, especially that of the Left, has substituted propaganda for information and watchwords for ideas. The result recalls the school of Soviet journalism. For these journalists, Israeli victims do not exist, while Palestinian victims are wrapped in an epic aureole. For this reason little Lea Schijverschunder, nine, who got seriously injured in a terrorist attack and lost five members of her family, simply does not exist. Galila Bugal, eleven, does not exist, nor does Shani Avi-Tzedek, fifteen, two of the victims on one of the crowded buses blown to pieces by suicide bombers. Neither do the 23 people killed during at a Passover seder, nor does the woman, eight months pregnant, killed in the same terrorist act where among others, a baby was killed. Israeli victims do not exist because they are Jewish and therefore are responsible for their own deaths. Within the official European media grammar, the victims can only be Palestinian and the murderers can only be Jews.

Any information that might twist this perfectly drawn duality is simply ignored. A tank with stars and stripes or with the Star of David is all that is needed for the conscience of the European Left to become indignant, mobilize, and demand explanations. Against the so-called American imperialism, that same Left defends notorious dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, in a dogmatic derivative that seems a lot like a self-tailored fascism. Commonsense requires thinking that some things are good, even if they are defended by George W. Bush or Ariel Sharon, but the Manichaeaism of the Left that dominates European thought does not allow that little bit of common sense. In the end, how can we be surprised by a Left which has fallen in love with enlightened tyrants – Stalin, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro and Arafat? What a beautiful ability to cry only with the left eye! How can we be surprised by a Left which has fallen in love with enlightened tyrants – Stalin, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro and Arafat? The funeral of Yitzhak Buzaglo, a victim of a Palestinian suicide bomber in Mishmar Hayarden, Israel, February 2005. In my country, for example, the United Left (a Spanish parliamentary left-wing party) once refused to attend a Holocaust commemoration ceremony because of “solidarity with the Palestinian cause and with the millions of Soviet dead during World War II.”

They demonstrate that they have understood nothing from European history (that victims of war will never be comparable to the unequaled horror of the creation of an industry to exterminate a people) and that there are victims that do not move them. That same party considers Arafat a martyr. “I Don’t Hate Jews, Only Israel” I do not accept the use of defense of the Palestinian cause as a pretext for a new epidemic of antisemitism. If Europe had launched a critical discussion that did not hesitate to condemn the grave and permanent mistakes of the Palestinian side, if Europe had been more critical of the Palestinians, we would be closer to a solution today. However, Arafat enjoyed a level of support and legitimacy in Europe which never allowed him to miss an opportunity of missing an opportunity for peace. I believe that if Europe had been more critical in its approach toward Arafat, and toward Palestinian violence, if Europe had been tougher in its statements, the Palestinians would have been been compelled to step back from violence and suicide attacks. It is the European enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause and the view of Arafat as a martyr that compel us to face the truth of European antisemitism.

With deep pain, I declare that Europeans and Palestinians love each other so much because they are neighbors in the common territory of judeophobia. It is Judeophobia, unrecognized as such, excused under the umbrella of anti-Zionism, which accounts for the European demonizing of Israel’s legitimate rights Anti-Israel demonstators in Madrid, 2002 Parisians protesting the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, and calling for “justice in Palestine,”

March 2004 Embracing Islamic Fundamentalism From my point of view, the worst thing done by the contemporary European Left is its betrayal of democracy by forgiving terrorist nihilism. This leads to two shameful results: betraying the principles of justice, according to which all victims are equal, and giving terrorism its own wings. The examples are outrageous: never have I seen even a single demonstration in Spain against the international terrorist network following September 11th, nor have I ever heard of an NGO wanting to send human shields to cafes in Tel Aviv. There is a selective solidarity deriving from an equally selective pacifism that, at the time, considered the attack on the Twin Towers as purely a consequence of American politics. The Jewish victims in Israel also end up being portrayed by these Chamberlains as their own executioners. and the total subscription to the Palestinian cause, drenched or not in blood. European neutrality regarding the Middle East is a pro-Palestinian neutrality.

If antisemitism is the new rhetorical formulation, the permanent and relentless criminalization of Israel is its practical formulation. Israel is the only country in the world that is expected to apologize for its existence every day, that is censored, distorted, and by all counts rejected. This is not about defending what is Palestinian; it is, above all, about rejecting what is Israeli. We may state that Israel has lost the battle for public opinion and nowadays does not project itself as the peaceful country that it is. Has it lost this battle due to its sins? I dare say that not even its fines virtues could redeem it from European hatred. None of this should surprise us. Despite the brutal Christian tradition that turned the Jewish people into a God-killing people (“a plague, a pestilence, a sheer misfortune for our country,” according to Martin Luther), no decent European would now speak in those terms. But between the evil medieval Jew who was accused of killing Jesus and the soldier of the Jewish state who is accused of killing children in Bethlehem, there is a perverse symbolic relationship, nourished unconsciously by many Europeans. Never have I seen a single demonstration in Spain following September 11th… nor have I ever heard of an NGO wanting to send human shields to cafes in Tel Aviv One need only to venture into the seeming remains of the revolutionary sixties, that iis, to the Porto Alegre and Durban forums, to see this phenomenon first-hand. The prescient intellectual Andre Glucksman warns us of the danger of fundamentalist nihilism, but European intellectuals only preoccupy themselves with the “danger” of American democracy. Muslim women demonstrating against Israel on the streets of Amsterdam, 2002 I do not question the need for a critical look at American policies, but it has to be on par with serious European self-criticism, and above all, with a sharp rejection of Islamic fundamentalism. Today, this is not the case; thus the American criticism becomes a form of Manichaeaism. Islamic fundamentalism is the natural heir of the two great totalitarianisms of mankind, Nazism and Stalinism.

Just like them, it is fundamentally antisemitic, and like them, it presents a doctrinal body based on terror, total annulment of liberty’s principles and bloody expansionism. Also like them, it acts upon European impotence and indifference. Remember the words of Herman Bloch, the Austrian Jewish novelist and anti-fascist, who said: “Indifference is a form of violence.” The European motives for their embrace of this fundamentalism are multiple. They include the felt absence of their own epics and the collapse of the great utopias that marked modernity until recently. Orphaned from such dreams, a great majority of citizens look toward the Arab world, searching for a resonance of Lawrence of Arabia. They fall in love with all-out wars, with the tribal chants of the revolution, perhaps convinced that there is not much difference between the “revolution or death” cry of Che Guevara and the “hail death” of Hamas.

Thus they search for Lawrence of Arabia but have not yet realized that they have not found him in Osama bin Laden or Arafat. Europe is also itself Islamic. Many of the outlying neighborhoods in French, English, German cities are Islamic, with Spain well on the way as well. British terrorists perpetrated the horrendous attack on Tel Aviv’s promenade. In Barcelona’s mosques, Spanish citizens signed up to fight, first for bin Laden and then for Saddam. We know that in the Muslim world, the Shoah is minimized and even denied. Abu Mazen himself, the “Great White Hope” for peace, wrote a doctoral thesis supporting Holocaust denial. We can still read his assertion that only 890,000 Jews died and the rest was a Zionist invention. And he is considered a moderate! This is the same fight waged constantly by the United States, despite its many enemies and its grave mistakes— the same fight that Europe has lost so many times. A Spanish writer recently noted that “an independent thought is a distraught and solitary place.”

Today such a distressing place belongs to those of us in Europe who are not pointing the gun at Israel, not hating America, and not blindly forgetting our own failings. Yet it is we ho are right, without a doubt, because history speaks to us clearly. At the appearance of each new totalitarianism, most of Europe went to take a nap. Some, captivated by the Stalinist past, are still asleep. Islamic fundamentalism is the world’s new totalitarianism. As such, it is the enemy of the Free World, and of the Islamic world itself, which it enslaves in a spiral of hatred, fanaticism, and ignorance. Raising our voice against it is not only a moral but an intellectual obligation; it is also an act of self-defense.

Antisemitism is not a Jewish issue, nor are bombs against synagogues. Nor was the AMIA bombing in Argentina, nor are terrorist attaks in Israel. Antisemitism and terrorism are a matter of liberty and Jews are only our canaries. Is the metaphor familiar? Canaries are brought into coal mines to measure contamination. When they die, the level of contamination is very high. When Jews die because they are Jews, the contamination of democracy has reached a dangerous level. Jews are democracy’s canaries: they live and die to the extent that liberty lives or dies. Thus, whenever the enemies of democracy have increased in number, Jews have died.

Jews first, then everyone else. Because the world is better off without Saddam and bin Laden, and because, above all, democracy is safer, I maintain that Europe betrays itself when it does not fight Islamic fundamentalism. It becomes ahistorical if not anti-historical. Europe betrays itself once again, repeating its own mistakes. What needs to be done starts with the fight for democracy—the same fight that Israel has been waging for 55 years, surrounded by anti-democratic enemies. No doubt this is its reward for being the anomaly, a rational state in the midst of irrationality. When Jews die because they are Jews, the contamination of democracy has reached a dangerous level Conclusion I come from Europe.

I apologize. It is my parliament, the European Parliament that finances the Palestinian educational system, in which hatred of Jews is inculcated every day, in an apology for a fatalism that ends up being the premeditated elegy of a murderous culture. This fatalism also makes access to democratic culture impossible for generations to come. It is my parliament that refuses to find out what happens with its funds, to open its eyes to the corruption of the Arafat-built Palestinian Authority, to consider the consequences of the hyper-militarization of Palestinian society. It is my parliament that remains indifferent toward the only real threat in the area: Israel’s disappearance. The UN, having had Waldheim among its secretariesgeneral and having turned Zionism into a form of racism, counts among its 220 member states 150 dictatorships. Neither the UN nor Europe will ever send a soldier to save Israel. I will go a step further: within the heart of the European Parliament lies the notion that the State of Israel should not exist at all. The European responsibility for the creation of that state, after its attempted extermination of an entire people, has vanished into a memorable forgetfulness. Let me say with rage: forgetfulness is always an option. Europe has, to the disgrace of rationalism, a very good bad memory. And it knows well that blaming the Jews always sells well in a demagogue’s market. Europe has given the world the pillars of democracy.

It has also given birth to the termites that have tried to destroy those pillars. Good and evil both reside in that old, sad, and, despite it all, beautiful continent. More anti-American than ever, Europe is again antisemitic, covered with a pan-Arabic patina. We are part of the problem, yet we must be part of the solution. Americans must not succumb, out of isolation, into dominance. And Jews, what can I tell you? I feel Jewish because I am European, and that is the only moral condition that can redeem a European from his or her own shameful past.

The European Parliament “DEMOCRACY’S CANARIES” Institute of the World Jewish Congress Dedicated to the study and analysis of current Jewish affairs World Jewish Congress President Chairman of the Governing Board Secretary-General Chairman of the Executive Director of International Affairs and Israel Office Academic Advisory Board Prof. Sergio Della Pergola (Israel) Prof. Jonathan Sarna (USA) Prof. Shmuel Trigano (France) Institute Chairman Research and Editorial Director Editor of Gesher (Hebrew Journal of Jewish Affairs) Managing Editor Associate Editors Copy Editor (English) Copy Editor (Hebrew) Edgar M. Bronfman Rabbi Dr. Israel Singer Stephen Herbits Mendel Kaplan Bobby Brown Ambassador Mordechai Arbell Dr. Laurence Weinbaum Dr. Shlomo Shafir Hana Kimchi Dena Scher Ma’ayan Tzuk Hella Moritz Elisheva May