JACK ENGELHARD: SICKENING ANTI-SEMITISM ON “THE VIEW”
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/oct/15/sickening-anti-semitism-view/
Yes, The View is at it again. For the details, please go to Debbie Schlussel’s article here. As for me, as someone who escaped all that when it came to Toulouse, France, I cannot stomach too much of this, thinking as I did, that history will not repeat itself. Our kids will be safe. Our grandchildren will never have to endure. Never again, right? Wrong! For here we go again.
Those of us who weathered the likes of Auschwitz, we complacently believed that once was enough, that one Holocaust was enough to satisfy the bloodlust that is inherent upon those who are stricken with that particular sickness of the spirit known as anti-Semitism.
Been there, done that, so we wrote off Europe, as from day one that is the place where the cry has been great against the Jewish people. Over there even the grass that feeds the cows is anti-Semitic. Gone viral is a video of a British couple that had their wedding ruined by a bigoted film-maker. That is Europe and so what else is new?
But Coming to America, this golden land, we felt safe, or no more at risk from bigotry than any other group…and here we prospered along with our neighbors. We gave America and the rest of the world the cure for polio, providing our Einsteins and our Salks in many fields besides science, so it is no wonder that a Jewish refugee from Russia, Irving Berlin, wrote “God bless America.”
He was right. America is a land to be blessed.
But anti-Semitism is a devil that will not rest. It cannot be contained; stop it at one place and it spreads to another place. Our universities have turned against Jewish students. This happened before, in Germany.
On The View, the talk got around to “the Jews” being too much in control, and this too we have heard before.
Centuries ago Pharaoh said, “Let us deal wisely with this people, for they grow too numerous.” Next came slavery. When Hitler uttered those same words, next came the Holocaust…and even Jewish researchers who won Nobel Prizes for medicines against diabetes, smallpox, tuberculosis, syphilis and a hundred other disorders, they too were sent to the ovens.
The cure for cancer went up in smoke from the chimneys of those death camps that served to prove that hatred is mightier than love. Hatred uber alles.
But this is America and it can’t happen here. Probably not, except that the cry, even here, grows louder.
See how bigots have found a home in almost all newspaper commentary sections, especially when an article like this appears, only to illustrate that it is still out there, all that venom crawling from between the cracks. So it is tempting and perhaps the greater wisdom to let it slide, when it is only nonsense and chatter on TV, but if we do not respond now, when? When it is too late?
Plus, of all the outrages out there, why choose this for a stand, except when we remember Hanna Arendt’s “banality of evil.”
By silence will it just go away? That never worked in the past. Silence contributes to any genocide.
True, that was only talk on The View – so what is the big deal? Plenty. We know (from King Solomon) that death and life are in the power of the tongue. In Germany it began with speeches and it spread to newspapers like Der Sturmer, which found every pretext to put the blame on the Jews – like today’s New York Times.
The viewership may be down, but The View still commands an audience of several million. How many are influenced by such open and vile hatred?
We do not know the number but we do know that this repulsive sickness of the spirit is contagious.
It breeds by repetition and it spreads by conditioning so that soon enough it becomes normal and acceptable and even respectable. Some time ago, when another blood libel was cast against Israel on the completely false accusation of a massacre in Jenin, a British parliamentarian expressed himself by saying, “Now we can say what we really feel.”
Now we know how Miley Cyrus really feels. She would not let a “70-year-old Jewish man” tell her how to run her career (based entirely on a public lap-dance).
The ladies approved, most of whom piled on with racist mockery, along with guest host Gavin DeGraw.
For those of us who thought we were done with all that – imagine how we feel?
New from Jack Engelhard, re-issue of the award-winning memoir, Escape From Mount Moriah.
Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/oct/15/sickening-anti-semitism-view/#ixzz2i4LVqM9i
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