Ew, Jew cooties! Jordanians staged protests and burned their graduation gowns after discovering a “Made in Israel” sticker. Jordan, you may recall, is at peace with Israel.
Yeah, I knew the first story was bogus: I saw a news article saying that Mahmoud Abbas was willing to cede control of the Temple Mount and Jewish Quarter to Israel in a deal about Jerusalem, but did not post about it because I knew it would be followed immediately by a denial. I was right.
What? Are we surprised by this? Where there are people, there are Jew-haters. So to open a “Kill a Jew Day” page on Facebook is, quite frankly, unsurprising. It was deleted. The people who created it were not punished. I’m not surprised by that, either.
OMG, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism? Shmuley Boteach’s rose-colored glasses lie shattered on the floor as he realizes that most people who hate Israel actually hate Jews. Welcome to the club, Shmuley. Glad to have you on board. Sad that there has to be a club.
Here is a key sentence from R. Boteach’s column.
“It represents a fundamental defeat for my Jewish universalist worldview. I believe with every fiber of my being that we are all G-d’s children, part of an indivisible human family. That Arabs and Jews are equal before G-d and that we are all brothers.”
He was obviously mirror imaging and making himself a picture that bore no correspondence to reality, imagining that the enemies of the Jews really had the same universalist opinions he does. They just hid them somewhere deep inside themselves, but with goodwill we can bring out these hidden treasures. This is one of the most common mistakes and delusions of ostensibly intelligent people who turn out not to understand the world they live in. It is rampant among liberals. A rabbi should have remembered that Cain and Abel were children of G-d too.
I fully accept the theory that it is possible to be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic or without the Jewish dimension having much to do with it. I just don’t see that happening too often in practice.
1. Too bad the Jordanians took off their gowns before lighting them.
2. Abbas has made his entire life around denial of Jewish legitimacy, not only about denying the legitimacy of Israel but also denying that Jews have a right to live. The repudiation of the Temple Mount story,was, as you wrote, predictable.
3. When I listen to Rabbi Boteach, I often wonder why I am listening to him, and switch radio stations.
If you really want to get depressed, read the comments on Boteach’s post. More of the same old Jew-hatred, alas.