| |
 |
|
|
We hope that
you'll feel our website is worthy enough to contribute a few pounds to
the bandwidth bills.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Last
uploaded : Wednesday 18th Sep 2002 at 11:12 |
| Contributed
by : Avi Harari |
|
It’s fascism again.
Recently, I have been reflecting on anti-Semitism in the Muslim world – because there’s a lot of it about. As Jews, we are of course no strangers to maltreatment wherever it crops up, but what has struck me is that, despite all public utterances to the contrary, anti-Semitism in Muslim countries is mainstream, rather than just peripheral. Since the time of the Koran, Muslims have been taught that Jews are ‘unclean’. Now it seems to be worse than ever. What we have is a kind of Muslim fascism and all that goes with it., i.e. autocratic government, racial oppression, institutionalized violence, violence against women, dogmatic ideologies, military aggression, poor education, poverty, ignorance, ignorance and more ignorance. I would like to say that we are dealing with a resurgence of fascism, but unfortunately it seems to have been there a long time, and certainly without a break since the days of Hitler.
Labeling it as such would be very helpful and the first step to combating it, but there is a 'structural' problem here: the confluence of fascism and religion. Because anti-Semitism has so permeated the basic fabric of Islam, to state this fact is also to insult someone's religion. This is totally un-PC these days, of course, with the result that even most educated Westerners don't or are not permitted (e.g. if they are in the media) to say as much in public. Further, even though the ayatollahs didn't succeed in murdering Salman Rushdie, there would seem little doubt that many have been intimidated by the fatwa on him.
We should view the hijacking of the trendy left by an adroit Palestinian propaganda campaign and the evergreen anti-Semitism of a section of the general public as two further factors assisting in the creation of a kind of super-fascism in the West. It is a bacterium, which has mutated in response to the antibiotics of liberal democracy and, as such, is highly resistant to all currently known treatments. Only those with an extremely strong personality have any chance at all of surviving the disease…
In fact, when I think of most of what I now read in the media around the world, it’s all beginning to remind me of my mother’s account of Berlin in the late 1930’s, where even Jews were required by law to greet each other in the street with a Nazi salute. If other people were looking, you had to do it - it was a matter of personal safety. However, the artful turned the tables to some extent by wryly proclaiming, “So hoch liegt der Scheiss!” (“The s^*" is piled this high…”)
Kind regards,
Avi Harari
 
|
|
|
|
|
