RUTHFULLY YOURS

MARK STEYN

Judenhass in the Med

It was one of those stories people followed at airports and railway stations — not exactly 9/11 or the death of the Princess of Wales, but not a routine story of faraway disaster, either. Small knots stood around looking up at the screens and shaking their heads as new facts — actually, make that new “facts” — emerged. “Massacre in the Med” screamed the headline on London’s Daily Mirror, as if Mossad hit men had stormed a topless beach at St. Tropez. Only two weeks ago, I wrote about the near-total delegitimization of Israel in Europe. And, even as National Review hit the stands, along comes a Turkish “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla to make the point for me. I was in Britain, France, and Italy as the story developed, and it was fascinating just to study the vocal tone of the news anchors — the inflections of both outrage and contempt: You won’t believe what those Jews have done now! The rage was as “disproportionate” as Israel’s actions are always said to be: Nobody gives a hoot what North Korea does to South Korean ships. Muslim gunmen open fire on two mosques in Lahore after Friday prayers, killing 93, and it barely makes the papers.

There are no good options for Israel. These days, Europeans pay even less lip service to the “two-state solution” than Hamas does. The default position is that the creation of the Zionist Entity was an error and an historical injustice, and thus it has to be corrected one way or the other. If — when — the mullahs drop the big one on Tel Aviv, the BBC wallahs will momentarily drop the sneers for a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger shtick about how, tragic as it is, it brings to a close an unfortunate chapter in Middle Eastern history.

Once upon a time, Israel had allies. But Turkey, formerly its best friend in the Muslim world, now pledges to send the next “aid” convoy under naval escort. Is post-Kemalist Ankara’s antipathy to the Jewish state merely a reflection of demographic re-Islamization? Or is it a canny bid to shore up its application for European Union membership? No matter. I get a lot of mail these days arguing that Europeans are finally waking up to the dangers posed by their ever-more-assertive Muslim populations. Yet, whatever their differences on, say, alcohol consumption, gay rights, or female circumcision, ethnic Europeans and their Muslim immigrants are in more or less total harmony when it comes to the iniquity of the Zionist Entity. A famous poll a few years back found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace — in Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. A similar poll reported that in Egypt and Saudi Arabia it was 79 percent. It would be interesting to re-test the question in the light of the “massacre in the Med” and see whether Israel now scores as a greater threat in Belgium than in Yemen.

David Buimovitch/Topshots/AFP
There is a kind of logic about this. As paradoxical as it sounds, Muslims have been far greater beneficiaries of Holocaust guilt than the Jews. In a nutshell, the Holocaust enabled the Islamization of Europe. Without post-war guilt, and the revulsion against nationalism, and the embrace of multiculturalism and mass immigration, the Continent would never have entertained for a moment the construction of mosques from Dublin to Dusseldorf and the accommodation of Muslim sensitivities on everything from British nursing uniforms to Brussels police doughnut consumption during Ramadan. Holocaust guilt is a cornerstone of the Muslim Europe arising before our eyes. The only minority that can’t leverage the Shoah these days is the actual target. It is disheartening to see Elie Wiesel, in Toronto the other day, calling for Holocaust denial to be made a crime throughout the world (as it already is in many European countries). He so doesn’t get it. The greater risk to Jews is not that the world will “forget” the murder of 6 million people but that it has appropriated the crime for its own purposes. In Europe, the ever more extravagant Holocaust Memorial Day observances have taken on the character of America’s gay-pride parades with their endlessly proliferating subcategories of celebrants. As Anthony Lipmann, the son of an Auschwitz survivor, wrote in The Spectator five years ago: “When on 27 January I take my mother’s arm — tattoo number A-25466 — I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah.”

Jenin? Ah, well, that was the “massacre” before the “massacre in the Med.” According to the official Israeli figures, the death toll of Palestinians at Jenin in 2002 was 52. According to the official Palestinian figures, the death toll was 56. According to the British newspaper the Independent, it was “as many as 500” slaughtered in Israeli “atrocities” throughout the “killing fields” of Jenin. According to the Guardian, the mass murder was “every bit as repellent” as 9/11. According to the Evening Standard, it was “genocide.”

Eight years later, when the flotilla hit the fan, a couple of readers wrote to me to ask why the British and European media were always so eager to be led up the garden path. Because, when it comes to Israeli “atrocities,” they want to believe. Because, even in an age of sentimental one-worldism, the Jews remain “the other.” If old-school Euro-Judenhass derived from racism and nationalism, the new Judenhass has advanced under the cover of anti-racism and multiculturalism. The oldest hatred didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt.