"Beautiful Austria is our homeland"
In the Guardian, Naomi Klein is demanding a boycott of the Jews Israelis, and her call has been taken up by the Italian trade union, Flaica Cub. All very predictable, and depressing. The left's support for the murderous, misogynistic Hamas suggests some kind of transmissible irrationality that affects only those who have had the privilege of an education and a job. More disturbingly, it hints at an old impulse come to the surface once more in Europe.
In Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers ("The World of Yesterday: Reminiscences of a European"), Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) ridiculed the author of "The Jewish State", a pamphlet that declared pointless all hopes of tolerance and assimilation for the Jews of Europe. Instead, they should create their own homeland in their old home, Palestine. "I can still remember the general astonishment and annoyance of the bourgeois Jewish circles of Vienna," wrote Zweig. "What has happened, they said angrily, to this otherwise intelligent, witty and cultivated writer? What foolishness is this that he has thought up and writes about? Why should we go to Palestine? Our language is German and not Hebrew, and beautiful Austria is our homeland."
Well, we know what slouched out of there back then. And we shouldn't lull ourselves into thinking that the malignancy was removed completely in 1945. As Oliver Kamm points out, "Bruno Kreisky, Chancellor of Austria from 1970 to 1983, was the most anti-Israel politician ever to lead a Western democracy. His invective was not confined to the Jewish state, but extended to the Jews themselves, whom he described as "a wretched people" (ein mieses Volk) to an Israeli interviewer, Zeev Barth, as reported in Der Spiegel on 17 November 1975. Again, this is not an obscure incident in postwar European politics..."
Far from being obscure, the new phase of the old contagion is very public and its respected proponents now have the most respectable platforms from which to voice their hatreds.
Comments
Eamonn, your implication that Naomi Klein, herself a Jew and proud of it, is calling for a boycott similar to the shamefully anti-semitic one espoused by Flaica Cub is both libellous and despicable and represents a new low for your blog. Support Israel's terrorist agression if you must but to smear reasonable opponents of it (and many of them exist in Israel too) renders all your claims to support 'liberty' spurious. And you needn't point out to me the dastardliness of Hamas or Islamic Jihad either; I'm fully aware of it...
Posted by: seanachie | January 13, 2009 3:51 PM
I'll take your word for it, of course, but I would appreciate links to articles/posts where you have expressed your complete abhorrence at the genocidal Hamas. Fair is fair, after all, as I don't hide the fact that I am very pro-Israel. Much of the current, virulent anti-Israeli sentiment here in Europe is motivated by ancient, poisonous racism, but I accept that there are many who do not agree with Israeli policy, which does not make them racist. Not all anti-Israeli activists are anti-Semites, in other words. But all anti-Semites are anti-Israel.
Posted by: Eamonn | January 13, 2009 6:20 PM
The time has come for the Israelies to leave the Levant.
The USA needs to step up to the plate and give Brewster and Presidio counties in Texas to the Jews. We (US taxpayers) would only have pay 15K people to leave and the land area is approximately 4K sq km larger than the current state of Israel.
This would give the Jews a homeland and they would not have to worry about being surrounded by people who want to kill them.
Posted by: Dave Barnes | January 13, 2009 8:22 PM
I haven't blogged much on Hamas but if you click on the links for tags 'Israel' and 'Iran' on my blog, you'll see very clearly where I stand on Israel and Islamic fundamentalism. While I agree with you that there is an unfortunate anti-semitic strain to some anti-Israeli sentiment, this is far from the dominant one. Neither does this explain the large number of Jews involved in the movement (and even prominent British Jews who initially supported the Gaza offensive called for it to be stopped in a letter to Sunday's Observer).
As for Dave? Are you joking? Texans are far more anti-semitic than Arabs!
Posted by: seanachie | January 14, 2009 3:20 PM
Someone once remarked that Austria's two claims to fame rested on convincing people that Hitler was German and that Beethoven was Viennese.
How true!
Posted by: Henry Barth | January 16, 2009 8:57 AM