Sixty-five years after the end of World War II in which the Nazis took the lives of six million Jews, the Jews around the world are still as much in danger as they were in the 1930’s, if not more so.
In Europe anti-Semitism comes out mostly disguised as anti-Zionism. Almost all of the European Left is anti-Israeli, especially in Spain, where the anti-Israel policy of the socialist government of PM Zapatero and FM Moratinos is now notorious. It took more than a year, for instance, to close the channel connection to the Hispasat satellite of the Hizbullah TV, al-Menar, which was thereby able to continue broadcasting more than a year of hate and Islamist propaganda into Latin America. In a country with the most anti-Catholic government in its history, but with a multicultural obsession for Islam, Al-Manar TV was part of “freedom of press.”
During years in Pakistan, it was surprising to note how many metropolitan legends circulated within the country having, at their center, a Jewish plot. When Pakistan exploded its first nuclear device, for example, people said they had been compelled to do so to deter India, which was about to bomb them, and that shortly before the blast, Indian bombers, with Israeli pilots [sic], were already warming up the engines on some runaway. The logical question is: Why in Heaven would the Indians need Israeli pilots?
The staunchest enemies are in the Muslim world, and in particular, those who deny the Holocaust. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, who has called Israel a "cancerous tumor that must be wiped from the map,” last week reiterated his intention to get rid of the Jewish State: "Definitely, the day will come when nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime," Khamenei was quoted as saying. "How soon or late [Israel's demise] will happen depends on how Islamic countries and Muslim nations approach the issue." The Iranians, and movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, are certainly the most vocal in boasting of their hatred for the Jews, but in the whole Muslim, world anti-Semitism is widespread, even where they have never seen a Jew.
Iran in its alliances with pro-Marxist regimes in Latin America, also exported the anti-Semitic virus -- particularly in Venezuela, where, in February 2009, a Caracas synagogue was damaged by a bomb. Seven policemen where indicted as perpetrators of the bombing, which occurred at the peak of a campaign of police harassment against Jewish Venezuelans that Hugo Chavez’s regime had unleashed. ''The situation we have now in Venezuela, said the prominent journalist Sammy Epppel, “is that for the first time in recent times, we have government-sponsored anti-Semitism in a Western country.''
Chavez’s rhetoric is reminiscent of old Nazi lines: "The descendants of those who crucified Christ own the riches of the world," said Venezuela's president in his Christmas speech. One wonders why so many Hollywood celebrities such as Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Oliver Stone or Kevin Spacey iconise this dictator.
Chavez’s friend, Bolivian President Evo Morales, launched a pogrom on his own by raiding a Chabad House in Rurrenabaque in the northeastern part of his country. Rabbi Aharon Fraiman, a Chabad emissary in the town, said that local police had not presented any official closure order, nor had they provided a reason for the raids. The rabbi further claimed that several Israelis had been arrested by police and that one of them had already been thrown out of the country.
Although the situation in the US is certainly better, according to the FBI, Jews are more likely to be the victims of religious hate crimes there than any other group. In 2008 alone, of 1,606 hate crimes motivated by religious bias, a breakdown of these offences shows that 65.7% of them were anti-Jewish.
To these closet anti-Semitics, I would like to dedicate the words by a man often cited by the Left: Martin Luther King:
"…You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.' And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews - this is God's own truth. Anti-Semitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so.”
