The looming perfect storm of antisemitismA.F. Branco
HOWARD EPSTEIN: THE CANARY SINGS BUT WHO LISTENS?
Le Président de La Belle France has spoken. The Times of London reported last week: “Macron urges Israel to stop bombing babies. … in Gaza and killing civilians.” It is feared in Israel that this is a turning point, as he is the first Western leader to press for a ceasefire. However, a question: what stimulated the presidential outburst? Was it a desire to pander to the six or seven million Moslem/French citizens, whose votes are cherished, and violence feared, or the remarkable history of French respect for human rights? My hunch is it was the former, given that the “number of victims of [French] colonial crimes was more than five and a half million, in other words, half of the population of Algeria in the 1960’s”, according to the 21 April 2021 report of the Islamic News Agency.
Then there was Rwanda. A report by the Commission of Inquiry, set up by Macron himself, into France’s role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide reads: “… known as the darkest humanitarian catastrophe of the last half century, in addition to killing 800,000 men, women and children, 200,000 to 500,000 women were raped. The then French government was blamed for those crimes.”
La Gloire de la France!
Now to Biden, military benefactor of Israel and effectively chair of its war cabinet. But whenever the Israeli government moved towards building new West Bank settlements, Biden was quick with his criticism. I am not condoning Israeli policy, but it hardly falls from the lips of the 46th president of the world’s oldest democracy to deplore the confiscation of land from indigenous people (though that’s not exactly the case of Israel and the Palestinians), when it was the 16th president – no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln – who signed into law the 1862 Morrill Act.
“Morrill” sounds innocent enough; but it shamefully turned land expropriated from tribal nations (Red Indians, as we affectionately knew them as kids) into seed money for higher education. In all, the Act redistributed nearly 11 million acres, greater than Massachusetts and Connecticut together.
As for the indigenous Americans, those that survived the genocidal policies of the British and their American successors, they were pushed into “reservations”, where the American dream – the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination and initiative (the Oxford English Dictionary) – was not obviously available to them.
In the meantime, the beneficiaries of this massive land heist – Harvard University, for example – host academics and students expressing malicious hatred of the victims (that’s right, not the Chamas-Nazi perpetrators) of the Simchat Torah pogroms. Until major Jewish donors expressed their revulsion at the lack of empathy of the university grandees, their silence was deafening. And, even then, they failed forcefully to condemn the attacks by, and antisemitism of, the faculties and students.
Macron and Biden should consider Sweden. Ah, Sweden: the Scandinavian nation revered for its socialist policies for the past 120 years, for its neutrality in WWII (only questionably admirable) and, in the Swinging Sixties, for its “Free Love”. (Woody Allen quipped that the New York police demanded: “Open up, Sweden! We know what’s going on in there”). And it boosted its reputation for doing all things desirable in 2015. Swedes took immense pride in the country’s decision to accept 163,000 refugees, most from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong? Beneficence begets gratitude, right?
Well, it turns out that not all those Syrians were dentists after all. Some had a greater inclination to the rape of local girls, drug dealing and gang warfare. The backlash has begun. Richard Jomshof is a Swedish MP, and chair of the Swedish parliament’s justice committee, whose ‘Sweden Democrats’ party is fast becoming the most influential in Swedish politics. He does not mince his words: a “cancer” is his description of Islamism. “I don’t like Islam,” he says. “I’m quite honest about it,” calling the Prophet Mohammed a “warlord, mass murderer, slave trader and bandit”. He has described Islam itself as an “anti-democratic, violent and misogynistic religion-cum-ideology”.
Whilst his critics denounce him as hateful, Jomshof’s views are increasingly prevalent in Swedish society, such that other political parties are being pulled to the right. Macron and Biden should read the same press reports as you and I. An injection of realism would do no harm.
Last week, I wrote about how the war of civilisations, which started on 9/11 and now terrorizes Israel, will soon be here, Braverman’s demotion notwithstanding.
Suella knows it. Jomshof knows it. I know it. You know it. Perhaps Dishy Rishi, as was, knows it -but daren’t say it. At the moment, Israel, fighting to defeat abject, sadistic evil, is the canary in the mine, warbling its warning – if anyone will listen.
Where is Winston Churchill when you most need him? Reincarnated as Richard Jomshof, perhaps?
© Howard Epstein, November 2023 – www. howard-epstein.com
