(Forward) Petra Marquardt-Bigman - It's become quite the thing to deny one is an anti-Semite by insisting one is merely an anti-Zionist. The truth is, there is no difference between the two. For anti-Semitism did not stop evolving with the Nazis. Jew-haters everywhere consider Israel to be the Jew of nations, representing all that is evil and must therefore be shunned and eradicated. With the establishment of Israel, Jew-haters were only too happy to find a new target that confirmed their bigotry. Anti-Semitism has morphed, evident in the way Israel is treated with the same hatred and bigotry that Jews once were. It's not surprising that anti-Semitism had to morph with the establishment of the Jewish state. After being defenseless victims of persecution for almost two millennia, the Jews returned to their ancient homeland, and just three years after the last Jew was murdered in Auschwitz, there was a Jewish army able to withstand the onslaught of the military forces from all the Arab countries surrounding the fledgling Jewish state. Suddenly the Jews had some real power to defend themselves. The obvious echoes of age-old Jew-hatred in today's demonization of Israel as a Nazi-like state that is too evil to be allowed to exist should answer the question whether there is a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Pro-Palestinian anti-Zionists seem unable to recognize the hypocrisy of demanding "equal rights" and "justice" while denying the Middle East's most ancient nation its right to self-determination in the thriving state that the Jews re-established in part of their ancestral homeland. It may well be "pro-Palestinian" to demand that Jews give up their hard-won sovereignty and agree to live once again as a vulnerable minority under Arab-Muslim rule, but it is most definitely anti-Semitic to ignore the fact that Jews in the Muslim Middle East endured centuries of discrimination and persecution, and that anti-Jewish bigotry remains prevalent throughout the Muslim world. I have yet to come across a single pro-Palestinian anti-Zionist willing to denounce the ancient and enduring anti-Jewish bigotry in the Muslim Middle East.
2018-08-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive