World
War Of Ideas
British author sees Europe as vulnerable to Islamist ideology.
Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News
L
ondonistan, the title of
British journalist Melanie
Phillips' new book, isn't as
much about the city where she lives
as it is about the mindset that makes
Britain and Europe vulnerable to
Islamists.
It is "a state of mind where people
not only seek to appease, but also
accept the ideology of the groups that
intend to destroy them:' said Phillips,
who addressed an audience of 200 at
the Jewish Community Center in West
Bloomfield on Jan. 16.
A warrior in today's culture wars,
Phillips regularly courts controversy in
her Daily Mail column about political
and social issues. Her online biography
states: "styled a conservative by her
opponents, she prefers to think of herself
as defending authentic liberal values
against the attempt to destroy Western
culture from within?'
Her pro-America, pro-Israel stance
doesn't win her many friends, either.
"It's impossible to exaggerate the hos-
tility to America and the hatred of Israel
in Britain: Philips said, calling her coun-
try "a nation of Jimmy Carters:' already
well along the road to isolating Israel as a
pariah nation.
While Americans fear the next 9-11,
the British fear the next 7-7, the day in
2005 when homegrown Islamists bombed
commuters killing 52 Londoners. But she
says her fellow citizens prefer to focus on
their own faults rather than recognize the
evil threat they face.
"Multiculturalism is considered the
only way to be Phillips says. "It's a
doctrine that says the values of every
Battle Of Ideas
minority must be given equal status, not
While Phillips confirms that Islamists are just to each other, but to the majority as
seeking dirty bombs and nuclear devices, well?' She is concerned that concepts like
she says it is the ideologi-
democracy, freedom of
cal battle the West needs to
speech and religion and
in4tittite tot
recognize, engage and win.
women's rights will disap-
curite
"The real battleground
pear along with British
is the world of ideas, what
national values.
is in people's minds:'
"The idea of integrating
Phillips insists. "Paranoia,
new immigrants just dis-
resentment, hysteria and
appears [because] there is
curia
the demoralizing of their
no majority culture she
JINSA.o:
victims are [the Islamists]
says. "There is nothing to
greatest weapon?'
integrate into?'
She says 7-7 has become
Phillips cited polls that
a terrorist recruiting tool
showed three-quarters of
because of the confusion
Muslims living in Britain
and fear it has sown across
consider Jews to be fair
Melanie Phillips warns
the country.
targets for violence, but
"The single greatest driv- against appeasement.
she says the Jewish com-
er of terrorism is terror-
munity is "pretty para-
ism and the demoralized reaction to it,"
lyzed when it comes to these issues?'
she says. "[The terrorism] is not [from]
"The Jews are hopeless, divided and
poverty, oppression or dispossession, but wringing their hands:' she says. "They
because it works?'
hide their heads under the pillow."
It works in Britain because it has "lost
As a Jew she is particularly bothered
belief in itself as a nation, and the idea of that some of those leading the charge
a nation itself:' Phillips said.
against Israel are themselves Jews. She
Europeans are increasingly putting
calls them "Jew-hating Jews" rather
their faith in universalism and institu-
than self-hating Jews. "I've never met
tions like the United Nations, European
people who loved themselves more she
Union and the International Court of
quipped.
Justice, hoping that eliminating nation-
Phillips says there has been move-
alism will eliminate conflict and war.
ment over the past six months, as Prime
Similarly, the idea of a central national
Minister Tony Blair has told immigrants
identity is losing out to multiculturalism. that if they don't want to be part of the
Answering Israel's Critics
The Charge
The French foreign ministry has criticized Israel's plans to build 30 houses in
the Jordan Valley, saying the action "sends a particularly negative signal with
respect to the will to dialogue and the re-establishment of trust."
The Answer
Israel is willing to make painful compromises and take risks for peace. Without
any return gesture from the Palestinians, Israel withdrew thousands of settlers
and tens of thousands of soldiers from the Gaza Strip, and disengaged from an
area in the northern West Bank that is twice the size of Gaza. But Israel will
continue to strengthen the Jewish claim to parts of the West Bank until a final
settlement is reached with the Palestinians.
- Allan Gale, Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit
HMC Hosts Professor's Talk
On European Anti-Semitism
Andrei Markovits, the Karl W. Deutsch
Collegiate Professor of Comparative
Politics and German Studies at the
University of Michigan, will present a view
of "European Anti-Americanism and Anti-
Semitism: Similarities and Differences"
based on his new book Uncouth
Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America
(Princeton University Press), at 7 p.m.
Monday, Feb. 5, at the Zekelman Family
Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington
Hills.
Markovits emigrated from Romania;
first to Vienna, Austria, and then to New
British society they shouldn't come. Her
confidence and faith in ideas gives her
hope that bloodshed can be avoided.
"We need to fight ideas first:' Phillips
said. "It is really about ideologies and
fighting their attempt to colonize a soci-
ety's culture. Truth can defeat lies, but
only if you put the truth into the cultural
domain?'
We have to realize we are in war and
have been for all these years:' observed
Harry Onickel of Ferndale, who called
her talk "brilliant?'
Onickel agrees with Phillips' admo-
nition to publicly make the case for
Western values and Israel.
"We have to fight back for real:' he said.
"We have to stop pandering to Islamists
and all of their demands?'
Susan Craft of Farmington Hills noted
Phillips was very candid: "She told the
Jewish community what they needed to
hear — that we need to pick up the ball
and be less afraid [of making our case]."
Craft hopes community groups and
synagogues will make affiances, and that
youth will become involved because they'll
likely face many of the same issues.
"It is one thing to show up and listen,
but we need to follow it with action to
make it real?'
The program was sponsored by the
Washington-based think-tank the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA), the Committee for Accuracy
in Middle East Reporting in America
(CAMERA), the JCC and the Michigan
Region of the Zionist Organization of
America (ZOA). Li
York City— two cities that would play
the most important roles in his upbring-
ing.
After receiving his doctorate in political
science in 1976, he went to the Center for
European Studies at Harvard University
in Massachusetts where he would remain
an active member and research associate
until 1999.
At the Harvard Center, Markovits
chaired for many years the study group on
German politics.
There is no charge for the lecture. For
further information, call Selma Silverman,
at the Holocaust Memorial Center, (248)
553-2400.
:IN
January 25 • 2007
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