Bret Stephens, the Wall Street Journal columnist, says he was “almost grateful” for the attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris in January in which four Jews were killed because it demonstrated that Europe has a problem with anti-Semitism.
Now with the attack on the kosher supermarket, I think [the anti-Semitism is] at last out in the open, and in that sense I’m almost grateful that this happened, that at last I think Europe is coming to recognize that it has a real problem with anti-Semitism that can’t be denied or can’t be passed off as a function of a reaction to Israeli policy.
Stephens, a neoconservative who is also deputy editorial page editor of the Journal, said the attacks on the supermarket and the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo proved that the rightwing understanding of terrorism is right: it comes out of a “clash of civilizations,” because Arab and Muslim societies have fundamental differences with the west on such core values as freedom of speech. The attacks disproved the leftwing view of radical Islamism: that these attacks grow out of western policies in the Middle East, from support for Israel to the invasion of Iraq.
Stephens makes his comments at minute 36 of this video broadcast on C-Span last weekend from a panel on the French terrorist attacks on February 18 at the French-American Foundation in New York (which cost $50 a head to attend). Here is the entirety of his analysis of the January 9 attack on the kosher supermarket, in which Muslim extremist Amedy Coulibaly killed four Jewish hostages before he was killed by police:
The attack on the kosher supermarket or the kosher grocery I think also ought to be an occasion for a certain amount of clarity. I started covering the Middle East when I was based in Brussels for the Wall Street Journal in the late 1990’s and early part of the last decade. And even then and especially after the outbreak of the so-called second intifada in the fall of 2000, I sensed that there was a great deal of anti-Semitism on European streets and it was anti-Semitism coming in both a kind of vulgar and high-tone variety, the vulgar variety which is the sort you would encounter if you walk through my largely Muslim neighborhood in downtown Brussels towards the canal but also a high-toned variety which typically went by the anti-Zionist catchphrases, but anti-Zionist catchphrases that had a weird reflection in traditional anti-Semitic tropes. Just to give you an example of what I mean, I’ll never forget shortly after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, The Economist had an editorial — one of their leaders, and the Economist is a serious magazine, maybe the best magazine in the world — there was a line that said Israelis are a superior people — I’m not sure if I’m quoting this exactly but I’m getting the spirit of it largely right– the Israelis are a superior people, their talents are above the ordinary, but they must curb their greed for other people’s land. And I thought, Boy, if that’s not an antisemitic trope: those clever Jews, superior, but greedy.
There was a great deal of that. It was very hard to sit in Brussels and have dinner time conversations with the class of commissioners and foreign policy people in Brussels and not get a great deal of this. So now with the attack on the kosher supermarket, I think it’s at last out in the open. and in that sense I’m almost grateful that this happened, that at last I think Europe is coming to recognize that it has a real problem with anti-Semitism that can’t be denied or can’t be passed off as a function of a reaction to Israeli policy.
Stephens’s comments are reminiscent of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying in 2008 that the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. had been good for Israel. “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” he said, because these events “swung American public opinion.”
I recommend the entire conversation at the French-American Foundation. Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde and an opinion writer for The International New York Times, is fascinating. She says that French Jews were shocked by Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for them to move to Israel and that it was a “positive” sign that Jewish organizations at last broke with Israeli policy and rebuked Netanyahu.
Watching this panel on C-SPAN, I found support for my belief that Israeli actions are driving the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe. If classical anti-Semitism has an implacable Christian religious character, if 19th and 20th century anti-Semitism had a sociological-reactionary character that was also implacable and bigoted, this anti-Semitism is focused on Israeli actions. No prejudice is justifiable, and anti-Zionists must be sure to distinguish between criticizing the Jewish state and criticizing Jews. But as Kauffmann makes clear, the identification by Jewish organizations of all Jews with support for Israeli actions is dangerous.
Thanks to Adam Horowitz for Netanyahu point.
Today, there is no question that most of the anti-Semitism in Europe comes from muslim – especially Arab muslim – immigrants. That’s just a reality.
But I would say two things in response:
1. Historically, anti-Semitism in the Arab muslim world has been much more muted than in Christian Europe. It really began to flourish after WWII. This is something Zionists don’t want to think about, instead they want to blame Islam, like Bret.
2. And two, what, exactly, happened in the postwar period in Jewish life? Oh yeah, a Jewish state built on the Nakba and endless occupation.
You could make a seperate point that the Islamic world has been falling behind generally, and that’s correct. So I wouldn’t blame Israel entirely. The anti-Semitism we see from that part of the region is partly bound up in the reactionary and degraded state it currently it is in, and that has typically targeted religious minorities generally.
You see that in the attacks on Christians, on muslim minorities like the Yazidis and more moderate streams of Islam. In this sense, it mirrors the backwardsness of Christian Europe during its religious wars. A lot of anti-Semitism during that epoch was a by-product of the attacks on various Christian minority sects by larger streams. If you’re going to attack these religious offshoots, why not go after the Jews, too?
In both cases, the root causes are religious and social stagnation. Neither, however, is essentialist in nature. Islam itself has and can again be the flower of civilization. To say otherwise is to be blind by basic historical reality, both of the Arab muslim world and of the Christian-dominated West.
“I started covering the Middle East when I was based in Brussels for the Wall Street Journal in the late 1990’s”
He covered the Middle East…from Brussels. I guess the cabbies are more knowledgeable there.
“I sensed that there was a great deal of anti-Semitism on European streets and it was anti-Semitism coming in both a kind of vulgar and high-tone variety, … a high-toned variety which typically went by the anti-Zionist catchphrases,”
Got that, anti-Zionism is just high- toned anti-semitism.
“the Economist is a serious magazine.. there was a line that said Israelis are a superior people …their talents are above the ordinary, but they must curb their greed for other people’s land. And I thought, Boy, if that’s not an antisemitic trope: those clever Jews, superior, but greedy.”
Haven’t we had Zionists touting all the Nobels Jews have won? As for them being land greedy Stephens must have slept through much of the “so-called” occupation.
He’s the poor man’s Goldberg.
At the Golden state Warrior game last night the conversation around me was all about sip ac. While I couldn’t hear everything what caught mey attention was one comment that aipac is targeting right wing religious Christians in their campaign against Obama. Interesting conversation at a basketball game
Taking the lead from the group of Frenchmen/women – who happened to be Jewish, who attended Bibi’s talk there, if I were a guest at his address to Congress, here, at the conclusion, I swear to god, I would have jumped up and started singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the top of my lungs.
Dems would have jumped in and, as the chorus would begin to rise to a crescendo, the Republican’s would be forced to join in – or not.
What a moment THAT would have been!!
It wasn’t widely reported here, but the supermarket gunman (Amedy Coulibaly) conducted a telephone interview with a French radio station during the stand-off. His message: “Leave the Muslims alone and we will leave you alone.”
“Each time, they try to make you believe that the Muslims are terrorists. But I was born in France. If they hadn’t attacked elsewhere, I would not be here.”
Nothing about “being Jewish.”
http://rt.com/news/221503-paris-gunman-argues-hostages/
BTW, back when Bret Stephens was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post in 2003, he named Paul Wolfowitz the paper’s “Man of the Year” for his role in starting the Iraq war.