Akiva Eldar writes: The murderer who shot students in a Jewish school in Toulouse yesterday, like the one who shot black-skinned French paratroopers a few days earlier, required no motive other than hatred of foreigners and those who are different. Chronic sufferers from anti-Semitism and xenophobia need no special pretexts for their racism.
Nevertheless, an Israeli attack on Iran that sent gas prices soaring would be seized by by right-wing extremists like those who support Marine Le Pen. Thanks to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s babble in Washington, even if the United States is the one that ultimately attacks Iran’s nuclear reactors, the bill will (also) be submitted to Jewish communities abroad. The State of Israel, which was established as a haven for Jews from those who hate it, may instead wind up becoming a threat to Jews.
What do you do when the polls show that a solid majority of Israelis refuse to risk being among the 500 casualties of retaliatory Iranian missile strikes on which Defense Minister Ehud Barak is prepared to gamble? The Prime Minister’s Office takes comfort in polls showing increasing American support for military action against Iran. Netanyahu’s spokesmen managed to sell this dramatic headline to several important media outlets as a personal accomplishment by their boss.
Indeed, a Wall Street Journal/CNN poll published the day after Netanyahu’s address to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC showed that 52 percent of Americans favored a military strike on Iran if the only other option were standing idly by. But when the respondents were presented with a larger range of options, a completely different picture emerged.
What most conerns me is that the power of the warmongering Zionist establishment is so great in the West, that nothing short of a mass revivial of anti-semitism can ever bring it in check.
Eldar’s tone is like that of a man who recommends to another frustrated by how the latter’s dog constantly pulls so hard on a walk to get himself a longer leach. America is slowly turning racist again and may become “know nothing” fascist to “escape” the incomprehensible and unassailable “babble” of the educated (Stalin thought calculus to be a conspiratorial code). And once an American Herr Hitler takes over the Jews will be the first target; and then, where it accelerates, is anyone’s guess. But you can be sure they won’t have that same ambiguity as many Germans had about German Jews as their compatriots so they went more after East European Jews. It’s time for Israelis to cut loose the American Jews so they can prioritize their rile as fellow Americans first and assure their standing as a basic pillar of this society.