MY SAY: THE BITTER HERBS OF PASSOVER
Conor Cruise O’Brien, the late Irish politician, writer, historian and academic who wrote “The Siege”….arguably the best history of Israel, lamented “Antisemitism is a light sleeper.” Indeed! It has awakened with gale force. Once, in order to be respectable due to post Holocaust guilt, it posed as “tough love” criticism of Israel.
The hypocrisy was staggering even then. After World War Two, millions of people were forcibly deported and rendered refugees, but only the Arabs made it a heritable status, as Palestinian Arabs were herded into squalid camps for four generations. Who got the blame? Israel.
History and facts were discarded as “the occupation” obsessed those too lazy and ignorant to read history. The so called “West Bank” was part and parcel of the White Paper of 1922 which deeded 80 percent of promised Palestine to the Arabs ….all the land East of the Jordan River…which became Jordan…and all the land west of the river ….20% to the Jews.
But history be damned! Never mind the harsh realities of Communist oppression and the genocides in Africa. Israel dared to defend itself! How dare they? The floodgates opened and antisemitism blossomed in the academies, in the media, and among large segments of the populations in Europe.
Yes, one may argue that it is largely driven by Islamic anti-Semitism, but who gives it a free ride by obfuscation and deliberate concealment of its source?
Those are the bitter reflections of Passover for me as we recount past suffering while “respectable” Jew hatred grows exponentially….rsk
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