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May 3, 2002/Iyar 21, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 33
Wake up callEditorialIt's clear that Europe is sleeping with the enemy.That enemy, the slumbering giant who ostensibly was put to bed like a petulant child in the aftermath of the Holocaust but lately has thrown off the covers and reared its tousled, albeit odious, head. That enemy, anti-Semitism, hiding under the blankets of Palestinian sympathies and Zionist antipathies, but reawakening again and again as nothing more than what it is - hatred of the Jew. In past weeks and months, rampant anti-Semitic rhetoric has been translated into a slew of violent incidents across the European continent. Cutting a wide swath through the countries where Hitler more than 50 years ago roused the virulent hatred that decimated the European Jewish community, it stretches from Belgium to Holland, from Italy to France. It knows neither national bounds, nor limits of decency. Synagogues have been firebombed, cemeteries desecrated, schools defaced. A soccer team in the south of France was attacked, a rabbinical student in Berlin beaten on the streets. Israeli military efforts in the West Bank - to destroy a terrorist infrastructure and allay the suicide bombings - coupled with increased incitement of Muslims across Europe, led to escalated violence against Jews during the past month. Adding to the volatile mix was the surprise victory last week of extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of France's presidential elections. Le Pen's anti-immigration, anti-globalization, law and order platform appealed to the alienated, the disenfranchised, raising the unsettling specter of Nazi Germany. In his victory message, he spoke to "you little people, the foot soldiers, the excluded." Yet, in an interesting turn of events, Le Pen, no friend to the Jews, may have forged an unusual alliance between French Jews and French Muslims who fear tightening of immigration from North Africa. On Sunday, Muslims and Jews gathered in front of the Pantheon in Paris to decry Le Pen. One of the high points was the speech by Soheib Bencheikh, mufti of Marseilles, who called the French Jew "the barometer for the Muslim." "If the Jew of France is worried, Muslims should panic," he declared. Strange bedfellows xenophobia makes, but all the more reason for Jews worldwide to open their eyes to the worrisome rise in anti-Semitism and issue a wake up call on behalf of world Jewry. |
