Take a look at this statement in an AP report about Netanyahu’s remarks on Yom Hashoah (the commemoration of the Holocaust):
In its annual report on anti-Semitism, The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University found that anti-Jewish incidents dropped 11 percent in 2008, including 560 cases of violence, compared to 632 in 2007.
But Israel’s military offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip reversed the trend. The researchers estimated that there were 1,000 incidents during January, more than 10 times the number in January 2008.
Got it? Anti-Semitism was dropping, but then Israel invaded Gaza and caused anti-Semites to attack Jews. The AP buys into the same kind of pathetic logic you see on Stormfront: It’s all the Jews’ fault that there is anti-Semitism.
This is why anti-Semitism is going mainstream. Because bit by bit, drip by drip,the delegitimization of Israel’s actions, and the legitimization of Jew-hatred that occurs whenever Israel is dominating the news, become ubiquitous. Funny thing about that 24-hour anti-Israel coverage—it coincides with the uptick in Jew hatred, yet the AP doesn’t correlate anti-Israel reporting with anti-Jewish attacks.
On Yom Hashoah no less. Way to go, AP.
If Israel cannot defend itself in a manner that causes not a whit of harm or inconvenience to the Palestinians, then by golly it’s going to have to expect the world to roundly criticize it and how can you expect people to do anything other than assault Jews and otherwise participate in anti-Semitic acts?
Israel could forestall this sort of righteous response if it made more of an effort to conform itself to what the world wants. And what that is Golda Meir discerned years ago, “a fine, liberal, anti-militaristic, anti-colonialist dead Jewish people.”
Somehow “blaming the victim” is a defense against almost anything unless it involves Jews. I wonder why that is. OK, I don’t wonder.
They seem to have left out at least 3278 anti-Semitic attacks from 2008. In fact, in my skimming of the report, there were, amazingly, no anti-Semitic incidents occurring in Gaza, the West Bank or Israel.