I sat in on my wife's Holocaust Class last evening, courtesy of the Professor. This is my wife's second pass through this class, this time for credit. I was there for the last hour and the issue was how prejudice against the Jews was not new with Adolph Hitler, but stretched back to the late 1800s and back to the Reformation and back to the Middle Ages and back even further. Someone in the class brought up that the German anti-Semitism didn't seem so bad in 1900, compared to France, with the shameful Dreyfus Affair. For me, one of the most interesting things was that noted
History Professor Heinrich von Treitschke, in a 1890 book, made anti-Semitism "socially acceptable" in Germany.
So, now comes Professor Glenn Reynolds, the
Inspaundit,
with this comment“A poll commissioned by the ADL shows that 33% of Europeans blame the Jews for the financial meltdown. A mind-boggling 74% Spaniards think so.” Pathetic. No wonder they caved so easily to al Qaeda.
While this may be a little unfair to the Spanish, it makes one wonder, especially when a DNA analysis shows that "
about 20 percent of the current population of the Iberian Peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry." Go figure.
Various European nations are cracking down on anti-Muslin talk, but anti-Semitism seems to endure in Europe.
Just to be clear, anti-Semitism is bad.
Regards -- Cliff
Just to be clear--Semites are both Arabs AND Jews. (Genetic testing has confirmed the common ancestry, which is fantastically ironic given the troubles in the Middle East).
ReplyDelete"Anti-Semitism" covers all of what we're experiencing in the world today, though, as you've pointed out, folks aren't reluctant to get as specific as they prefer to be whenever losing their sanity and objectivity. My favorite local examples are the people convinced that Bernie Madoff is/was the head of a vast Israeli/Jewish conspiracy, observing that his victims list (available at http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_madoff_victims_20081215.html) sports names like Clal insurance, Chais Family Foundation, Yeshiva University, Elie Wiesel, Hadassah, etc. etc. etc. etc.