I've got a new friend named Yakov. He gave me a donation and said he wanted to rant about something. What Yakov says about antisemitism is smart and interesting:
in the shtetl every Jew knew who the anti-Semites were, they were the people
that wanted to do the Jews bodily harm.
As a generalization, I would say that, basically, Jews wanted to be left
alone. The Jewish âinterestâ at
that point was to not be killed.
We have come a long way baby. All one needs to realize how Orwellian the definition
of anti-Semitism has become is William Safireâs remark, âif Hitler is a 10 on
the anti-Semitism scale than Buchanan is a 5â. If one thinks about that
statement it seems inexplicable. If
a 10 on the anti-Semitism scale is attempting to kill all the Jews in Europe, a 5
would be what? Certainly the â5â anti-Semite would want to expel the Jews or put
them in ghettos or maybe just take away their citizenship. Does anyone really
believe Buchanan wants any harm to come to a single Jew? Personally Iâm quite
sure if Buchanan were to witness an anti-Semitic attack on a Jew in the street
he would experience moral outrage and revulsion. Buchananâs âcrimeâ is that he is often
opposed to the very new âJewish interestâ. The new Jewish interest is no longer
about not having pogroms in Jewish neighborhoods, but rather it is stopping the
president from going to Bitburg. It is no longer being forced to live in the
pale of settlements, it is about stopping the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia
and ensuring Israel gets 10 billion in loan guarantees.
Indeed Buchanan is
guilty, on numerous occasions, in his indelicate way of pointing out that the
new Jewish interests sometimes donât coincide with his perception of the
interests of the rest of the country.
We have come to the point where anti-Semitism no longer means wanting to
harm Jews rather itâs come to mean no more than that youâre not a philo-Semite.
If you're not pro- Jews youâre Hitler or at least halfway to Hitler. It is
unacceptable to them that the ethnic catholic paleo-conservative refuses to think
like a Jew, or refuses to have a Jewish consciousness, refuses to have Jewish
interests at heart. I suspect
Safire would have a hard time convincing the Jew in the Warsaw ghetto that
Buchanan is a 5 to Hitlerâs 10 on the anti-Semitism scale.
