Calling Jews, Nazis -- We were discussing this earlier and I thought the following may be of some interest...
By MANFRED GERSTENFELD
One easy way to capture the essence of anti-Semitism succinctly is to examine European political cartoons.
The demonization of Jews has historically included accusations of deicide, religious infanticide, blood lust, and – post World War II – Nazi-like behavior. Some present-day cartoons reflect classic 21st-century caricatures of key anti-Semitic motifs.
The cartoons, appearing in mainstream papers in different European countries, also demonstrate how acceptable anti-Semitism has again become in European society.
In April 2002, the Italian quality daily La Stampa published a cartoon about the IDF's siege on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. It showed an Israeli tank turning on the infant Jesus, who asks: "Surely they don't want to kill me again?"
In the same month the Greek daily Ethnos, close to the Socialist Party, depicted two IDF soldiers (with stars of David on their helmets) dressed as Nazis stabbing helpless Arabs. The caption: "Do not feel guilty, my brother. We were not in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer, but to learn."
In 2003 the British Independent daily printed a Dave Brown cartoon showing Ariel Sharon as a child-eater. This fits neatly into the anti-Semitic libel that Jewish ritual required the use of the blood of Gentile children. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this accusation originated in England during the Middle Ages.
An examination of what happened after Brown's caricature was published shows how mainstream anti-Semitism has become.
In response to protests, the UK press complaints commission officially cleared cartoonist Brown. In fact, he later won the UK political cartoon of the year award for 2003 from the Political Cartoon Society. The competition, held on November 25, 2003, was hosted by The Economist. Labor MP Claire Short, a former minister, presented the award.
Cartoons can be an effective gauge with which to analyze a society's culture. And their iconography must appeal to ideas already familiar to the public.
The anti-Semitic concepts presented in cartoons such as those above also manifest themselves in statements by European politicians and intellectuals.
THIS CAN be demonstrated by looking at "Holocaust inversion," which turns Jews into Nazi-like persecutors Palestinian Arabs. It is an important element of the new anti-Semitism targeting the State of Israel.
Since the 1980s several high level European politicians have made radical Holocaust-manipulating and anti-Semitic declarations.
For instance, in 1982 Greek socialist prime minister Andreas Papandreou compared Israelis to Nazis. Nowadays senior members of the Greek Socialist Party often use Holocaust rhetoric to describe IDF actions. In March 2002, parliamentary speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis referred to the "genocide" of the Palestinians.
In April 2002, Franco Cavalli, the Swiss parliamentary leader and a member of the Social Democratic Party (part of the government coalition), claimed that Israel "very purposefully massacres an entire people" and undertakes "the systematic extermination of the Palestinians."
Norbert Bl m, a former German Christian Democrat minister of labor, wrote to Israeli ambassador Shimon Stein referring to Israel's Vernichtungskrieg against the Palestinians. This is the Nazi expression for "war of extermination." Bl m repeated this in an interview with the weekly Stern.
European intellectuals such as British poet Tom Paulin have made various classic anti-Semitic statements. For example, Paulin told an Egyptian newspaper that Jewish settlers in the West Bank are Nazis who should be shot dead; Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, a communist, compared the blockaded Palestinian city of Ramallah to Auschwitz.
Few people realize that the origin of Holocaust inversion, and its systematic promotion for anti-Semitic purposes, originates in Soviet propaganda.
Simcha Epstein of the Hebrew University relates how, in 1953, French communist intellectuals organized a solidarity rally in Paris in support of the official Soviet position that Jewish doctors had assassinated communist leaders.
Epstein writes that at the meeting many speakers, including Jews, "explained that it was normal to suspect doctors of poisoning people: One only had to look at Mengele's role in Auschwitz.
"If he was capable of what he did, why should other physicians not use poison?"
French linguist Georges-Elia Sarfati, who has analyzed the semantics of Soviet-era anti-Israel propaganda, concludes:
"A number of key equations dominate the anti-Zionist discourse. The master one is 'Zionism equals Nazism.' It could only permeate society because of the latter's anti-Semitic infrastructure. It then further developed into a series of related falsifications such as 'Israel uses in the Middle East toward the Palestinians the Final Solution, which was applied against the Jews in Europe,' or 'Israel has invented Auschwitz to receive its dividends.'"
The aforementioned offer only a few insights in the methods of contemporary European anti-Semites. In order to mitigate anti-Semitism more effectively – including its Holocaust manipulation variants – its methodology has to be analyzed.
It is past time the Israeli government and major Diaspora organizations started doing this systematically, rather than leaving it to the limited resources of a few scholars.
The author is chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). His latest book is Europe's Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today's Anti-Semitism.
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