Wednesday, June 17, 2009
90% right on: Where Anti-Semitism Is Mainstream
To far more people than we would like to admit, the mystery of James W. von Brunn, the alleged shooter at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is not that he held such weird and depraved views about Jews and the Holocaust, but that those views are considered weird and depraved. In vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible.
In his remarkable speech at Cairo University, President Obama only inferentially mentioned this aspect of what has become an ugly part of the Middle East: a tolerance for and advocacy of old-style anti-Semitism. There is, in fact, nothing that von Brunn professed that is not commonly heard or published in the Middle East. Do Jews control world finance, media, international organizations and the United States itself? Of course. Are they capable of the most foul deeds, including the infamous "blood libel," which means using the blood of non-Jewish children in the preparation of traditional foods? Again, of course.
This is troubling stuff. But one only has to read the reports of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) to see that such views are often expressed and popularly held...
But in the end, oh, you choke, Richard, you choke!
...Obama was right to demand that Israel cease expanding or thickening its West Bank settlements. He is right, too, in acknowledging Palestinian aspirations and the wound that was opened in the Arab world by the creation of Israel -- the nakba, or catastrophe. But the toleration of the vilest kind of anti-Semitism is not a precondition for peace, only a warning to Israelis that the past can be prologue. If Arab leaders do not attempt to rebut and eliminate the hatred of Jews that is poisoning their societies, they will find that the peace that most of them undoubtedly want will not be possible...
Alright, half a paragraph out of the entire thing to make it palatable for the Washington Post mindset ain't bad. The positive aspect is that Obama's speech has opened the world of MEMRI to a larger audience.
"... but that those views are considered weird and depraved. In vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible."
A superb contrast by Richard Cohen. That is precisely the context it is best framed in, for purposes of illuminative effect.
It also helps to reflect upon why it is not merely distracting to, kneejerk and Pavlovian-like, associate a von Brunn with a political grouping within a simplistic, binary frame (in this case, "right-wingers"). Doing so serves to blunt conscience and probative depth rather than sharpen it, and likewise serves to detract from associations and perspectives that more truly illuminate.
Cohen - Richard, not Roger - is to be commended.