Never again? The question mark is Abraham Foxmans, the Anti-Defamation League leader known the world over for his commitment to Israel and the hope it embodies, as well as for his courageous and tireless fight against anti-Semitism, which, in its poisonous hatred, still transcends national frontiers and social structures.
Thus it is a challenge that Foxman delivers to a century that has hardly begun; how, he seems to ask, is it possible for anti-Semitism to resurface undiminished? Have people forgotten its nefarious consequences? Was Hannah Arendt right when she predicted that of the twentieth centurys social diseases, anti-Semitism alone would survive, reaching beyond time and geography, religious beliefs, and political affiliations?
Question: What is it about anti-Semitism that keeps it alive? Fascism has been defeated, nazism beaten, communism discredited: Why then is the oldest collective hate-obsession in recorded history immune to change? What makes it so popular, so attractive, so seductive?
The reasons invoked by those who hate Jews, disregarding all truth and logic, combine all possible contradictions. For some, Jews were or are too wealthy; for others, they are or were too poor. Too religious or not enough. Too Jewish or too assimilated. Too learned or too ignorant. Too smart or too nave. Too nationalistic or too universalist. Certain intellectuals allowed their talent to be tainted by anti-Semitism. Wrtiers such as Ezra Pound, Louis Ferdinand Celine and Knut Hamson Kant and Voltaire, Fichter and Schopenhauer all made derogatory remarks about Jews. Hitler believed that all Jews were communists; Stalin was convinced that all Jews were capitalists. Hitler and Stalin were mortal enemies; yet they were united in their hatred of Jews. Thus anti-Semitism has a wide range of components: religious and social, ethnic and professional, racist and political. No wonder that a French thinker called it the socialism of the imbeciles.
To my beloved wife, Golda, my dear children, Michelle and Ariel, and son-in-law, Dan, and my extraordinary grandchildren, Leila and Gideon Small.
To the memory of my dear parents, Helen and Joseph, who survived the Holocaust while members of their families perished along with the six million Jewsvictims of anti-Semitism.
In this book, written with understandable urgency, Foxman concentrates on the peril of anti-Semitism today. Having devoted most of his adult life to the defense of Jews and other minorities, often against the same slanderers and practitioners of violence, Foxman has impeccable credentials. The facts he quotes are undisputed, Jewish cemeteries are being desecrated in Europe, synagogues are being destroyed, incitement against Jews does exist, anti-Zionism is often so intense that it borders on hatred, and Holocaust denial is widespread and vicious, as is the official policy in several Arab lands denying the Jewish states right to exist.
Hence the importance of Foxmans timely book. It is not only a political essay; it is also a personal memoir that will find its place in the literature of memory. His meetings with church leaders, his support of ecumenism, his thoughts on Jewish-Black relations and on various Holocaust-related issues are important if, at times, debatable, in particular his view of fictionalized movies in Holocaust education. The pages describing his survival as a hidden child during the Holocaust are superb. Sheltered by a Christian woman who eventually baptized him, he considered her his true mother for a while, even after liberation. But then
Well, read the book. You will not regret it.
Read it and you will learn what it is possible to do with ones memories of a painful past.
Elie Wiesel
The challenge with writing a book on anti-Semitism in the world today is that the landscape is constantly changing. In the past year alone, since the hardcover came out, there have been both bad news and good news that warrant notice.
The bad news is that anti-Semitism does not lie dormant for long nor does it take refuge in dark, quiet places. On October 16, 2003, at the Tenth Islamic Summit Conference, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, proclaimed that Jews have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. This was the first anti-Semitic speech made by a head of state since Hitler.
He told the assembled Islamic counties, The Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. The Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. We are actually very strong. Some 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. They get others to fight and die for them. Over a billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. Like Hitler, Mahathir received a standing ovation and thunderous applause for what amounted to a call for a holy war against Jews.
Shocking as this was, even more distressing was the deafening silence from the international community in reaction to the speech, except for the United States. Where was the outcry from world leaders? Where were the voices of responsible leaders of the civilized world saying that you can no longer excuse or rationalize this kind of incendiary rhetoric, this kind of hatred and scapegoating, this blaming of Jews for the ills of the Muslim world? In time and after too much deliberation good people spoke out. The European Union, Italy, Spain and Germany made important comments and efforts to rightly denounce and condemn the speech as anti-Semitic, dangerous, and morally repugnant.
The drumbeat of Jew-hatred emanating from the Arab/Muslim world has not let up. Anti-Semitism continues to permeate its media and culture. Television programs widely available to viewers across the Muslim and Arab world and around the globe portray Jews in ugly and incendiary stereotypes. Here is one example: Ash-Shatat (The Diaspora) was a vicious anti-Semitic television series depicting stereotypical Jews hatching a plot for Jewish world control and domination. A Syrian production company aired this in October and November 2003 on the Lebanon-based satellite television network Al-Manar, which is owned by the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Its release was timed to coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The thirty-part series purports to dramatize the true history of the rise of modern Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel, and depicts historical figures, such as Theodor Herzl, Alfred Dreyfus, and others.
The extremely hostile depiction of Jews and the propagation of age-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in media, books, film, television, and song is a frightening demonstration of the entrenched anti-Semitism in much of the Arab/Muslim world. Equally as frightening is how far-reaching it is, in this age of the Internet and satellite technology.
In the United States, the number of anti-Semitic incidents remains at a constant and disturbing level. Individuals continue to express their hatred of Jews through acts of violence, vandalism, harassment, and intimidation. For each act against a single person or property, a community suffers. The most violent act in 2003 was the burning down of a Holocaust museum in Terre Haute, Indiana. A synagogue in Wildwood, New Jersey, had a bullet fired through its front door; in Allentown, Pennsylvania, it was a Molotov cocktail. Heil Hitler, Death to Jews and swastika graffiti appear profusely on public property, as well as on Jewish-owned property.