PURELY COMMENTARY

Warning Against Complacency In Rising Anti-Semitism

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor Emeritus

R

ussian Jews who are
arriving in this coun-
try and in Israel in in-
creasing numbers report their
experiences of an increasing
anti-Semitism in the USSR.
They affirm that the Pamyat
movement reviving the vilest
prejudices against Jews is
regaining power and is
threatening violence.
Anti-Semitic manifesta-
tions are now in evidence in
many areas in this country, in
Great Britain, France and
Canada. Under the heading
"Old-New Anti-Semitism,"
Per Ahlmark, a former depu-
ty prime minister of Sweden,
condemned Arab hate pro-
paganda in a New York Times .
Op-Ed article beginning as
follows:
Anti-Semitism is on the
rise in Europe again. Since
Israel's invasion of
southern Lebanon in 1982,
anti-Jewish headlines and
articles have appeared in
mainstream newspapers
and magazines. Before
1982, anti-Semitic letters
would have been thrown in
the waste basket. Now they
are published.
Before 1982, denying the
Holocaust or trivilizing it
by cheap comparisons
would have been unaccep-
table in the media. Now

such comparisons are
commonplace.
Nevertheless, there is a self-
deluding overconfidence in
the belief that there is a
lessening of danger from an
emerging anti-Semitism. It
has therefore compelled the
American Jewish Committee
to develop a new program for
combatting the menace. The
continuing hatreds and the
urgency for the new program
are outlined in an important
announcement by the
AJCommittee's executive vice
president, Ira Silverman. His
admonition of an awareness
of the developing threats is
accompanied by a realization
of the threats in which he
declares:

"In many instances, even
the educated public
believes that anti-Semitism
presents no current threat.
They need to be appraised
of remaining dangers:'

The need for "innovative
thinking and sophisticated
strategy" is emphasized as an
approach to action in the new-
ly introduced program which
becomes compelling in
America, Silverman an-
nounced in the statement in
which he projects the goals, as
follows:
• To identify short- and
long-term dangers to the
Jewish community;
• To monitor and analyze

anti-Semitic groups and
acts;
• To increase public
awareness of anti-Semitism
and its dangers;
• To develop strategies to
combat anti-Semitism on
campus, in the media, and
in the political arena, and
to provide the leaders of
those institutions with
tools to combat bigotry
without endangering First
Amendment rights;
• To develop a long-term
analysis of anti-Semitism;
• To build alliances with
other groups who suffer as
victims of bigotry.
The AJCommittee state-
ment exposes the menacing
hate groups in this country
whose bigotries demand
serious counteractions. An ex-
pose of these groups in the
statement analyzing prepara-
tions for action includes this
definitive statement:
One of the disturbing
trends of recent years has
been the rise of anti-
Semitism and other forms
of bigotry on campuses, in-
cluding those of some of
the nation's leading institu-
tions of higher learning.
Dealing with bigoted
speech or acts on campus
requires creative re-
sponses that denounce
hatred while not interfer-
ing with long-standing
forms of academic freedom
or free inquiry.

It is encouraging to know
that complacency will not
predominate, that there will
be a new activism for the
awareness necessary to com-
bat re-emerging bigotries.
Emphasis on responsibility
for action is in the NYTimes
article in which Per Ahlmark
drew attention to the promo-
tion of anti-Semitism by
Radio Islam. He called atten-
tion to the resort by the
Islamic hatemongers to the
vilest canards such as the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Ahlmark, who is presently
a columnist for Expressen, a
daily Swedish newspaper, ap-

pended to his article the
following admonition:
Are we back to the "nor-
mal" European political
climate, in which anti-
Jewish statements were in-
jected as acceptable con-
tributions to a public
debate? I do not know. But
I do know that if we accept
this old-new anti-Semitism
as part of our culture and
lives, we are taking a
tremendous risk, because
while Jews as a minority
are often the first group to
be denigrated, they are
never the last.
Continued on Page 44

Anti-Semitism Defined

Abba Hillel Silver in
1941: "Dictators are anti-
Semitic because they know
or sense that liberty is
Semitic in origin and
character."
Mark Twain in 1900: "It is
the swollen envy of pigmy
minds — meanness, in-
justice!'
Israel Zangwill in 1921:
"If there were no Jews they
would have to be invented,
for the use of politicians —
they are indispensable, the
anithesis of a panacea;
guaranteed to cause all
evils:'

Leo Iblstoy in 1908: "Anti-
Semitism is . . . a patholog-
ical condition, a peculiar
form of sexual perversion
. . . Among all disgraceful
phenomena, it is the most
disgusting and abominable"
Lloyd George in 1923: "Of
all the bigotries that ravage
the human temper there is
none so stupid as the anti-
Semitic. It has no basis in
reason, it is not rooted in
faith, it aspires to no ideal."
William Howard Taft in
1920: "Anti-Semitism is a
noxious weed that should be
cut out. It has no place in
free America."

Confronting The Media On The Dilemma Of Morality

M

edia prejudices re-
main a matter of
serious concern to
our people everywhere. They
affect the thinking of all
readers of the press and
listeners to radio and televi-
sion commentators. They
arouse anger. At a full day of
analysis described as "the
media war against Israel,"
responsible Jewish spokespeo-
ple expose the reprisals to

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Vol. XCVI No. 16 December 16, 1989

2

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1989

Arab attacks, while the
violence by Israel's enemies
are treated insignificantly.
The Jewish guilt is always
front-page headlines.
It is no wonder that there
were expressions of anger at
the sessions in Boston con-
ducted by CAMERA — Com-
mittee for Accuracy Over Mid-
dle East Reporting in America
— over the omissions and
distortions in the treatment of
news about the Arab war aim-
ed at the destruction of Israel.
The prejudiced "inconsisten-
cy" in creating an "im-
balance" in such media
motivations as the charges by
CAMERA indicated, are often
linked with charges that
Israel has abandoned its
Jewish morality in its
legacies; that Israeli armed
forces are terrorising the
Arabs with an inhumanity
that dominates a state that
claims a high idealism.
The actual compassionate
rules formulated by officials in
the government and the army

are either ignored or treated
with disrespectful accusations.
Of the many acts of decency
that demonstrate the at-
tempts by Israel's soldiers to
avoid cruelty, is an incident
described by a prominent
former Detroiter, who now
divides his academic career
between Bar Ilan University
in Israel and Temple Univer-
sity in Philadelphia. It serves
to repudiate the basic anti-
Israeli distortions by the
media. Professor Daniel
Elazer, president of the
Jerusalem center for Public
Affairs, quoted in his move-
ment's Jerusalem letter, also
appearing in the American
Zionist Magazine under the ti-
tle "Learning From our
Failures," related the follow-
ing about his son, a medic ser-
ving in Israel's defense forces:

Anybody who closely
observes our soldiers in the
territories sees them strug-
gling with the moral pro-
blems that are inherent in

such an indeterminate
situation. They know that
they must do their duty, but
they also have the moral
scruples we would expect
of Jews and they must
somehow reconcile these.
One young soldier, a medic
in the tank corps, was ser-
ving in northern Samaria
where he and his comrades
were the daily target of
stones, bottles, metal bars,
and molotov cocktails.
Their basic orders were not
to respond unless their
lives were actually in dan-
ger. The Arab response to
their self-restraint was not
to show similar restraint
but to consider it a sign of
weakness and to redouble
their efforts.

This is not to be treated here
as an exception to the rule but
as the dominant factor in
moral Jewish obligations. Un-
fortunately tragically — those
who have been distorting
reports about experiences of

the past two years resulting
from the Intifada have made
it the rule to locate Arabs
describing injuries or exag-
gerating about them.
Indeed, there are incidents
of Israeli guilt. They result
from the defensive, from the
necessity of young Israeli
soldiers to protect their lives
from attacks by children in-
stigated by their mothers.
The urgency to assure a less
antagonistic treatment toward
Israel and the nation's defense
forces continues to increase
and the request, in the form of
a plea, is that there be a
speedy abandonment of the
prejudices. Every aspect of a
growing anti-Semitism points
to the involvement in it by
Arab enemies who do not even
deny the aim to destroy Israel.
Therefore the added respon-
sibility in the media not to
contribute to that menace.
This is a continuing request
for fairness as a human duty
in the media. ❑

