Jewish Group
Related: About this forumRinsing Israel Out of Europe: The Zionistfrei Movement
In Nazi Germany, it was all the rage to make ones town Judenfrei. Now a new fashion is sweeping Europe: to make ones town or city what we might call Zionistfreifree of the products and culture of the Jewish state. Across the Continent, cities and towns are declaring themselves Israel-free zones, insulating their citizens from Israeli produce and culture. It has ugly echoes of what happened 70 years ago.
Leicester City Council in England last month voted to boycott goods made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. All services run by the council will be free of any product or technology made in any of the settlements. The motion condemns the Government of Israel for its continuing illegal occupation of Palestines East Jerusalem and the West Bank and resolves to boycott any produce originating from illegal Israeli settlements.
Leicester Mayor Peter Soulsby insists that theres nothing anti-Semitic about this erection of an Israel-deflecting force field around the city, telling the local Leicester Mercury newspaper that its simply about expressing dismay with the behavior of the Israeli state. But Jeffrey Kaufman, former president of Leicesters Progressive Jewish Congregation, isnt convinced. He wants to know why, of all the horrible things going on in the world, the council singled out Israel for punitive treatment. Its blatant anti-Semitism, he said.
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The Zionistfrei movement isnt really about effecting any change in the Middle East. As Leicester Councillor Mohammed Dawood admits, Israel is hardly going to be trembling in its shoes over the citys boycott. Rather, the movement is about making the chattering classes in Europe feel pure and righteous, unsullied by the poisonousness of the state its now so fashionable to hate. Where yesteryears creators of Judenfrei zones saw the Jewish people as a corrupting presence, todays lobbyists for Zionistfrei territories see the Jewish state as corrupting, as a toxic entity whose fruit and technology and books must be shunned.
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BDS is one of the ugliest political movements of our time. It is shot through with double standards, treating Israel as more wicked than any other state. It is shrill and censorious, too. Its members boo and jeer and seek to expel from apparently civilized Europe not only Israeli military leaders and politicians but even Israeli violinists and actors. Now, the demand for Zionistfrei zones is taking BDS to its terrifying conclusion, that Israel and everyone associated with it (you know who) should be shunned by respectable communities everywhere.
Mr. ONeill is editor of the online journal Spiked.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-goes-zionistfrei-1418070622
Behind the Aegis
(53,833 posts)Anti-Semitism is a joke to many. There are even examples in this very group. funny how a minority group is treated as if it is actually a majority group.
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)Happens every generation.
Oddly enough, the recurring illogical antisemitism is, to me, some of the best evidence of G-d of AI&J being G-d.
After all, He promised exactly this.