French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote today in The Wall Street Journal about The Ugly Tide Washing Across Europe. (via Google) Lévy describes the selective outrage expressed by anti-Israel protesters across Europe.
Will they say that it is Israel’s disproportion in force that is shocking, the imbalance between an all-powerful army and defenseless civilians? That argument has some merit, but in the end it also doesn’t hold up. For if that were the reason for protests—if one were primarily concerned about the Palestinian children whose deaths are indeed an abomination—one would demand that Hamas operatives leave the hospital basements where they have buried their command centers, move the rocket launchers that they have installed in the doorways of United Nations schools, and stop threatening parents who wish to evacuate their homes when an Israeli leaflet informs them that a strike is imminent.
Moreover, if alarm about disproportion and asymmetry were the true wellspring of the protesters’ rage, would they not have had at least a passing thought for another disproportion that, not so far from Gaza, now afflicts the most wretched of the wretched, the most defenseless of all, the Christians of Mosul? Hamas’s “brothers” are offering these Iraqis the following ultimatum: Embrace Islam or die by the sword.
Lévy describes the double standard in blaming Israel, coupled with explicit cries of hatred, as “odious.”
[The double standard] has become increasingly evident across Europe in the past month. Bluntly anti-Semitic slogans have marred most European demonstrations “in support of the people of Gaza.” Residents of Frankfurt and Dortmund were horrified in mid-July to see neo-Nazi groups join hands with left-wing Islamists in a grim chant: “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.” The center of London was blocked on July 19 by thousands who gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Kensington to shout their hatred for Jews.
Writing as someone who “advocated … for nearly half a century the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a fully recognized Israel,” Lévy concludes with a warning towards those who share his views but attach themselves to the extreme anti-Israel protesters: “I would urge them to think twice before letting themselves be manipulated by those whose motive is not solidarity but hate, and whose true agenda is not peace in Palestine but death to Israel—and, as often as not, alas, death to Jews.”
A French rabbi yesterday explained to The New York Times that “Anti-semitism today is hiding behind anti-Zionism.”
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