I spend my days in longing, wondering why it's me you're wronging. I can't believe you have such a hatred.
The disease of antisemitism, a historic hatred, seems to have no end, as recent events in London, and in numerous countries including France, Italy, Belgium, and Norway, demonstrate.
It is saddening to recount once again the animosity, bigotry, and prejudice toward Jews as individuals and as members of a collective people, expressed not only by pygmy minds, but also by the social media and universities.
There may be confusion and controversy over the distinction between genuine criticism of the State of Israel and its leaders and antisemitism. On December 3, 2019, the National Assembly in France approved a draft resolution that calls hatred of Israel a form of antisemitism. A working definition of the issue was proposed by Natan Sharansky, who suggested that the use of the three Ds — demonization, delegitimization, and subjection of Israel to double standards — indicates that the line to antisemitism had been crossed.
All antisemitic actions and utterances illustrate the toxic hatred of Jews. On the Friday evening, during Sabbath, when Orthodox Jews do not use telephones, on November 29, 2019 at Clapton Common, Stamford Hill, in north London, an unnamed foreign rabbi, visiting London for a family wedding, was assaulted, leaving him bleeding and dazed, by two young black men wearing hoods, shouting, "Kill the Jews." Only five days earlier, on November 24, three Jewish children had been attacked on a bus in the same area of Stamford Hill. These were new instances of the exponential increase in antisemitic attacks in Britain.
A new report by Antisemitism Barometer Research, a study by Campaign Against Antisemitism aided by academics in King's College, London, revealed the features of the present nature of antisemitism in Britain. Antisemitism on the far left is now greater than on the far right. About 60% of the far left believe at least one antisemitic stereotype. Some 84% of British Jews feel that Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labor Party, is a threat to the Jewish community. Corbyn is now the candidate of choice for antisemites. Because of this, two fifths of British Jews have considered emigrating in the past two years.
Disputes over displays of antisemitism have arisen over the well-known carnival parade in the Belgian town of Aalst, near Brussels. The parade, which usually draws an audience of 100,000 people a year, has always featured mockery, unbridled humor, and satire, of politicians, religious leaders, and the rich and famous. It has also featured an antisemitic float. In previous years, some participants were dressed in Nazi SS uniforms, holding canisters labeled Zyklon B, the poison used by the Nazis to gas Jews. In May 2019, the parade featured caricatures of Orthodox Jews, hook-nosed Jews, sitting on piles of money. The float was criticized by UNESCO, which had put Aalst on its intangible cultural heritage list and was critical of the antisemitic imagery.
However, Mayor Christian D'Haese, a Flemish nationalist, said he was tired of attacks on the carnival and said he would no longer seek UNESCO recognition for the carnival.
Other peoples have been persecuted or suffered discrimination, but the fate of the Jewish people, through time and space, is unique. Even if there is no exact current replica of Adolf Hitler or Julius Streicher, it is appalling that a publication such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian secret service forgery, should be read and quoted in many countries. Antisemitism is an inexplicable disease, perhaps the consequence of racism, xenophobia, and the search for a scapegoat to account for the existence of problems. But it is an evil, and one that should be eliminated.
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