Gaza Conflict Ignites Anti-Semitic Sentiments

By Camilo Echeverri Bernal on August 4, 2014

I have stayed a bit on the sidelines concerning the conflict in Gaza. I was even one to side with Palestine as it is the one receiving the most damage from Israel.

I just wasn’t aware of the consequences that it is having on Jews everywhere. It’s no wonder they are calling it a second exodus. Antisemitism is again on the rise.

A particularly horrifying trend is rising up in Europe once again with feelings of anti-Semitism arising due to the recent conflict in the Gaza strip.

Germany seems to bear the brunt of said attacks against Jews. A Synagogue was even reportedly bombed. Jews have allegedly started departing countries such as France due to rising attacks, as well as threats. The numbers in which they are doing so are simply astounding. Chants such as “Kill the Jews” and “Gas the Jews” were heard.

image via http://www.nytimes.com

I guess my main focus is this issue: how can countries call themselves civilized when they alienate their own citizens who have lived there for generations? Particularly in countries where religious and ethnic intolerance caused such pain and suffering to this group we now see departing once more?

They honestly have no shame whatsoever to be allowing this kind of nonsense. France is third in the world when it comes to Jewish population. The United States is second. Could a similar event take place here in the Land of The Free?

Yes, apparently, because blaming Jews and Israelis is the way to solve that overseas conflict. Cars were egged and Synagogues were spray-painted with the words “Hamas” and Jewish summer camp entrances with the words “Jews=Killers.”

image via http://www.haaretz.com

Social media has also been turned into a terrible weapon. On Twitter, the popular microblogging site, tags such as #HitlerWasRight and #HitlerDidNothingWrong are popping up.

Are we going to backtrack almost a century to say that what a despicable man did is justifiable because of what Israel is doing to Palestinians in the Gaza strip?

Demonizing Jews isn’t a thing of the past. In a recent ADL poll according to haaretz.com, 26 percent of people in 102 countries were found to hold extreme anti-Semitic views, particularly in Arab countries. It seems that the rising of Islam in Europe and elsewhere also encourages anti-Semitic sentiment.

image via http://www.haaretz.com

There is a distinction to be made between mainstream Judaism and Zionism, and this is perhaps where most of anti-Semites seem to have both confused.

Zionism, by definition, is a nationalistic Jewish movement that lays claim to the land of Palestine as being the land of the Jewish People, and in Hebrew it is known as Eretz Yisrael or “The Land of Israel.”

This sentiment is not representative of all Israeli Jews, and particularly not of all Jews. Zionism, by definition, seeks to take over the land of Palestine and is what drives the Zionists to lay waste to Palestine and Muslims in Palestine.

That is one of the faces of Zionism. This is the face of Zionism we see now in this war, but some such as Roger Cohen, preach a different type of Zionism, one that has not been corrupted. Cohen argues that Hamas is “the product of a situation that Israel has reinforced rather than sought to resolve.” Wise words.

image via http://mashable.com

Is what the nation of Israel is doing to the people of Gaza reprehensible? Yes.

But, should Jews everywhere have to pay for the actions of those in power? No.

Hamas is the product of feelings of animosity, as well as deeply-held religious and cultural convictions, but severing the arm to battle the infection in a single digit is certainly not the way to go. History is being repeated once more.

The world’s reaction to the Jewish population and to Israelis around the world is simply shameful. They have no part in what their government is doing or has done.

It’d be the same as saying that all Germans nowadays should still be held accountable for the actions of the Nazis or Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.

It might be a bit like comparing apples to oranges, but ostracizing all Jews is not the way to go.

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