Roger Cohen: With Jews like him, who needs enemies?

Roger Cohen has written many idiotic things, but not until now have his true colors been exposed. He is in Britain, discovering the rising tide of Jew-hatred in the U.K. He has finally noticed that it is his fellow leftists who have joined the tide of ugly anti-Semitism

Traditionally, England’s genteel anti-Semitism has been more of the British establishment than the British working class, whereas anti-Muslim sentiment has been more working-class than establishment.

Now a ferocious anti-Zionism of the left — the kind that has called for academic boycotts of Israel — has joined the mix, as has some Muslim anti-Semitism. Meanwhile Islamophobia has been fanned by the rightist fabrication of the “Eurabia” specter — the fantasy of a Muslim takeover that sent Anders Breivik on his Norwegian killing spree and feeds far-right European and American bigotry.

Heavens! The lefties have joined the Muslim immigrants, and traditional English anti-Semitism is stood on its head. Where, oh, where, can a good Jew go to fight?
To Melanie Phillips, who has been writing and lecturing for years about England’s descent?

No.

Where then should a Jew in Britain who wants to speak up stand? Not with the Knesset members who have met in Israel with European rightists like Filip Dewinter of Belgium in the grotesque belief that they are Israel’s allies because they hate Muslims. Not with the likes of the Jewish writer Melanie Phillips, whose book “Londonistan” is a reference for the Islamophobes. Nor with those who, ignoring sinister historical echoes, propose ostracizing Israeli academics and embrace an anti-Zionism that flirts with anti-Semitism.

Where, then? Wait, let’s check the tides of history for help.

Perhaps a good starting point is a parallel pointed out to me by Maleiha Malik, a professor of law at King’s College London. A century ago, during the Sidney Street siege of 1911, it was the Jews of London’s East End who, cast as Bolsheviks, were said to be “alien extremists.” Winston Churchill, no less, argued in 1920 that Jews were part of a “worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development.”

Let’s take a quick break here. The event to which Cohen is referring was a failed robbery and subsequent shootout (and murder of several British police) by a group of Latvian Jews, who actually were Bolsheviks. They were robbing Britons to support their cause. So Cohen is using a few criminal revolutionaries (who also happen to be Jews) to tar all Jews with the brush of world domination. You know, I’ve seen that very same logic on the neo-Nazi talk boards and blogs.

So even Winston Churchill hated us. So what? Jew-hatred was all the rage in the twenties; it carried over into the thirties and helped Hitler murder the six million—because so many nations closed their doors to us. I get that Cohen is trying to say “See, even someone who is as lionized as Winston Churchill believed the anti-Semitic stereotypes of his day.” So, basically, because Churchill was a moron in that respect, we’re supposed to change our behavior? Charles Dickens and Mark Twain preceded Churchill. Both of them were quite fond of the Jews, and didn’t fall for that anti-Semitic bullshit.

Of course, Roger has some idea as to what a good Jew should do to make sure that the world finally, utterly, and decently stops with the unreasonable bigotry and hatred that has been our lot. Well? Roger? What do you say? Who is really behind the Jew-hatred, and how do we stop it?

The lesson is clear: Jews, with their history, cannot become the systematic oppressors of another people. They must be vociferous in their insistence that continued colonization of Palestinians in the West Bank will increase Israel’s isolation and ultimately its vulnerability.

Awesome! Okay, fellow Jews, let’s all think about our history and not be—wait, what? Um, what? WTF? WT effing F?

That — not fanning Islamophobia — is the task before diaspora Jews. To speak up in Britain also means confronting the lingering, voice-lowering anti-Semitism.

Are you effing kidding me? Roger Cohen is blaming Jews for historical anti-Semitism? Roger effing Cohen, the ex-Brit, is telling Jews that because Winston Churchill was a total asshole in 1920 that we should make sure that no one in the present thinks that Jews are controlling the world? You know, the fact that Jews are not secretly (or openly) controlling the world really ought to factor into Cohen’s thought processes, but apparently, it does not. And so Roger Cohen joins the long list of morons who think that Jews bring down the wrath of the world by being the victims of anti-Semitism. Oh, if only we could figure out a way to act so as not to make anyone hate us, then nobody would hate us!

This guy gets six figures from the New York Times to publish drek like that? They haven’t changed in 70 years. They covered up the Holocaust, they covered up the Crown Heights pogroms, and they’re still covering for the world’s Jew-haters.

Hey, Roger. Too bad your parents didn’t teach you the way my father taught me. He worked for Pabst Blue Ribbon in Newark, and he worked with some people who hated him because he was Jewish. So he took a wooden board, drew a swastika on it, and in his downtime on the loading dock, he threw a jackknife at it. He told me that it pissed off some of his coworkers no end, but they couldn’t really say anything about it without openly admitting they were, indeed, anti-Semitic bigots.

Yeah, that’s where I get it from. Roger Cohen? He probably would have been the Jew in the corner begging my father not to make trouble. And my father would have said to him: Eff you, Roger.

And so do I.