A REPLY TO THOMAS SOWELL’S “ON THE RISE OF ANTI-SEMITISM“.
Above: A Palestinian baby, victim of Israeli airstrikes. Israel has announced it will NOT avoid killing children and civilians in Gaza.
Mr. Sowell, your brief presentation on the rise of anti-semitism in the world appears to be a bit simplistic. Yes, it addresses historical reasons for anti-semitism. But your narrative here appears to be dated, nor does it discuss the current Hamas-Israeli War and the surprising, international show of support for the people of Gaza, from whom Hamas draws its recruits. That college students could express support for the Palestinians in this conflict, is easily explained: Israel is no longer seen as the oppressed, but rather as the oppressor.
College students have traditionally had a heart for the underdog. Gaza is a city of abject poverty, because the Israelis have made it so with their blockade. And Israel has always intended to keep it that way, to force the Gazans out. But the Gazans would not leave, even in the face of such bitter economic oppression. So the Israeli government needed to resort to military force to evict them, yet could not, without a casus belli. And so, it appears that the Israeli government stood down its military along the border with Gaza, practically inviting Hamas to come in and massacre Jews. With that, Netanyahu believes the October 7th slaughter, gives him carte blanche to exterminate millions.
The outrage at Israeli oppression of Gazans and Palestinians, which you claim is out of all proportion, really is not, if you think about it: without fail, Israel claims to be a victim – but how is a nation with a nuclear arsenal and a state of the art military, equipped with high-performance aircraft and the latest in tank and infantry weapons, the victim? How is Gaza, a territory of 2.7 million people that is almost defenseless against Israel, the ogre? Are we expected to believe that David was the Phillistine giant, who wore armor and bore a mighty sword, and that is was Goliath, who showed up for battle as a naked shepherd, armed only with a sling and a few stones? No. But today, we are expected to be blind to what we do see: the all-powerful Israeli Defense Force plays the Phillistine, while the impoverished Arab is the poor shepherd.
Israel often invokes the Holocaust narrative, as sufficient justification for its perceived acts of self-defense, for example, destroying Iraqi nuclear reactors in 1981, with an air strike. I suspect that most people in the West had little or no difficulty in accepting that act. However, using the slogan “Never Again” to justify an air strike against a military target, is far different from invoking the Holocaust, to justify the genocide of 2.7 million people. All the more so, when Israelis claim celebrity victimhood, for World War 2’s holocaust and moreover, hold themselves up to the world as a Chosen People, who exemplify morality and virtue. So international outrage is only in proportion to Israel’s claim of being God’s Chosen, while choosing the most ungodly means to arrogate power and territory to itself.
The Holocaust is not a license for murder.
Blog Editor Patrick Cloutier is the author of Mussolini’s War in the East 1941-1943
Anti-Comintern Blog 