Mideast fight awakens our anti-Semitism

Jacques Schuster

Whenever violence erupts in the Middle East, the forces of anti-Semitism roar forth in Germany, said Jacques Schuster. The terrorist group Hamas began raining thousands of missiles onto Israel last week, and when Israel fought back, many protesters in Germany denounced not Hamas but “the Zionists.” Their anger went far beyond politics—it was not directed at Israel, but at Jews. In Gelsenkirchen, Bonn, and Münster, “howling mobs marched in front of synagogues and Jewish community centers to thunder out their hatred of Jews, to burn Stars of David, and to terrorize Germany’s Jewish citizens.” It boggles the mind that this country, which because of its Nazi past has always rejected the notion of collective guilt, should see its Jews held responsible for the actions of Jews abroad. Many of these demonstrators are Muslim immigrants, from Turkey, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories, and elsewhere. “Raised on a diet of Jew hatred,” they exploit the freedom they enjoy here by “turning against our open society.” But many other protesters are leftist Germans, who defend Palestinian terrorism as justified and who pretend that taking up the Palestinian cause is not just a way to indulge their own latent antiSemitism. They call it “anti-Zionism,” but if the goal is the elimination of the state of Israel, it is a dangerous and hateful ideology.