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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 8, 2003 / 13 Kislev, 5764

An ancient contagion thrives

By Suzanne Fields


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Stereotypes and the appeal to hate


http://www.jewishworldreview.com | Stereotypes have their grim uses. Stereotypes galvanize hostility by dehumanizing a person or group, with no appeal to thinking. At best, in the hands of political cartoonists and satirists, stereotypes illuminate political and cultural observation with wit and insight. At worst, stereotypes appeal to man's capacity to hate, to direct terror against the innocent.


The Nazis used stereotypes of Jews to rally the storm troopers and led in a direct line to the concentration camps as whole nations (with a few honorable exceptions) turned their backs on the Jews. Although the Jewish stereotypes through history have see-sawed between Jewish helplessness and Jewish wealth and power, the Nazis successfully drew on both images, marking as targets both the unwashed orthodox of the ghetto and the "greedy bankers and businessmen" who — so they thought — had been successfully assimilated.


Stereotypes of other races and tribes have come and gone, borne on the tides of history, but Jews have never eliminated irrational resentment toward the sons and daughters of the diaspora. Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher, speculated that of all the 20th century social diseases, anti-Semitism would continue beyond the national, political and religious connections of geography. Current events suggest that she may be right.


JWR columnist Barbara Amiel, writing in the London Daily Telegraph, demonstrates how anti-Semitism has been revived among her countrymen. She quotes a European aristocrat during World War II: "I can't wait for this war to end, so a gentleman can be an anti-Semite again." The war ended, and the gentleman once again settled into his anti-Semitism.


"Modern anti-Semitism sits well with this anecdote," she writes. No honorable Brits would parade their anti-Semitism when the country was at war with the Third Reich, but with Hitler safely out of the way they could retreat to their salons to sneer, joined by the intellectual elites and their friends in the media. The editors of the left-leaning London Independent felt no compunction publishing a cartoon of Ariel Sharon, naked, eating a Palestinian infant, an insidious update of the blood libel dating from the Middle Ages, that Jews kill Christian babies for the blood to use in Satanic rituals. The blood libel, rendered an absurd curiosity of history in the West, is a staple of print and conversation in the Middle East, where Jews are frequently said to murder children for their blood as an ingredient in bread.

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Egypt's newspapers typically print cartoons depicting Jews, with exaggerated hooked noses, devouring Palestinians. The BBC defends the depictions as "political" but not anti-Semitic because the authors are without "any historical hatred of Jews as a race." It's merely coincidence, of course, that the Israelis of our time bear a strong resemblance to the Jews depicted in the Nazi newspapers of the 1930s.


A cartoon in an Egyptian newspaper depicts an ugly Jew with the requisite enormous nose, in a yarmulke, throwing daggers at a child with angel wings, tied to a stake. Blood drips from the child's wounds and puddles at her feet. A Jordanian cartoon depicts a ravenous Jew at a table with knife and fork at the ready, eager to devour a tasty human dish on a silver platter about to be set before him by Uncle Sam.


In the history of anti-Semitism, stereotypes extend to protectors of Jews, as the Uncle Sam cartoon suggests. The anti-Semitism of the British and European elites quickly leads to hatred of America because democratic America supports democratic Israel. France and England should logically cherish Israel, too, as the lonely democracy in the Middle East, the only redoubt of free speech, free religion and the freedom to have no religion in that miserable corner of the world. But logic dies in resentment and hatred.


Anti-Semitism is nurtured by the left on our own campuses, sometimes disguised as merely anti-Israel sentiment. Sometimes Jews themselves lend cover. Marches against the war in Iraq in support of Palestine are fueled with anti-Semitic smears. At San Francisco State University, Jews marching in support of Israel were greeted with cries and posters warning that "Hitler did not finish the job."


Criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East and criticism of Israel, even harsh criticism, is fair enough. It's not fair enough to draw on racist stereotypes. It's one of the sadder ironies of our time that the Jews established a home of their own in Israel as an inoculation against anti-Semitism only to discover that the ancient disease is alive, well, thriving — and threatening.

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