Prejudice and Abuse
Have the French and English learned nothing from the 20th century?
By Tom Gross, a British journalist
January 10, 2002 8:30 a.m.
A week before Christmas, the Israeli ambassador to Berlin wrote a letter to Der Spiegel, Germany's leading newsmagazine, protesting an editorial they had published comparing the policies of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to those pursued by Adolf Hitler.
The comparison, wrote the ambassador, was "an insult to all Holocaust survivors and to the entire Jewish people."
In the ensuing days, the editorial was widely condemned in Germany. Though neo-Nazi elements do still exist in German society, the postwar majority has taken large, and largely successful, strides to purge itself of the legacy of anti-Semitism.
The writer of Der Spiegel's editorial, however — Rudolf Augstein, one of Germany's best-known journalists — also let slip that the same cannot be said of France. Rather than properly apologize for his obscene comparison, Augstein said in response to the ambassador's letter: "In France one can say that, but apparently not in Germany."
Augstein may have had in mind comments of the kind recently made by Marc Gentilli, the president of the French Red Cross, who described as "disgusting" a request by the American Red Cross that Israel be admitted to the International Red Cross, and that the Star of David be accepted alongside its existing emblems, the cross and the crescent.
Gentilli, head of one of France's leading humanitarian organizations, left little doubt about the disdain he holds for the Star of David, but lest he be thought hostile to all "foreigners," he did at the same time call on the Palestine Red Crescent Society to immediately apply for membership too — even though Palestine is not yet a state.
But any doubts anyone had that Augstein's reading of French attitudes was correct would have been dispelled the very next day, by a column by Barbara Amiel in the London Daily Telegraph. Amiel revealed that at a reception at her house, the ambassador of "a major EU country" told guests that the current troubles were all because of "that sh***y little country Israel."
"Why," he asked, "should the world be in danger of World War Three because of those people?"
Within 24 hours, the Guardian newspaper had identified the ambassador in question as Daniel Bernard, France's man in London and one of President Chirac's closest confidants. (While Bernard has not admitted using those exact words, he hasn't clearly denied doing so either.)
Several conservative columnists in the United States (where are those who profess to be liberal?) have condemned the ambassador for his "crude anti-Semitic remarks."
What has not been properly noted in the United States is that in the British and French media, it is not the French ambassador or the anti-Semites who are being condemned, as one would expect — but Barbara Amiel and "those people." And as for Israel, it seems to be open season.
A piece in the Independent, for example, by one of the paper's regular columnists ("I'm fed up being called an anti-Semite," by Deborah Orr, December 21, 2001), described Israel as "sh***y" and "little" no fewer than four times.
"Anti-Semitism is disliking all Jews, anywhere, and anti-Zionism is just disliking the existence of Israel and opposing those who support it," explains Orr. "This may be an academic rather than a practical distinction, and one which has no connection with holding the honest view that in my experience Israel is sh***y and little."
In the Guardian — another British daily that claims to represent enlightened liberal views — columnist Matt Wells ("Every salon tells a story — that's why the lady is a hack," December 20, 2001) denounced Amiel as "an arch-Zionist" but had nothing but sympathy for poor Mr. Bernard, who, he claimed, "was struggling against a tide of anger from Israel." (In fact, the Israeli government hasn't made a single official comment on the whole affair.)
Indeed, rather than blighting the distinguished diplomatic career of M. Bernard, who previously served as France's ambassador to the Netherlands and at the United Nations, events in fact show it was Amiel who made the "diplomatic gaffe," according to the British and French commentators. (Le Monde ran a front-page attack on Amiel, dismissing the Daily Telegraph as "reactionary," "paranoid," and "preachy.")
If the French are now almost as open about their anti-Semitism as the Egyptians are (in 2001, the best-selling song in Cairo was one titled "I hate Israel"), evidently in England the crime today is not actually being anti-Semitic, but rather condemning someone for their anti-Semitism.
Writing in the (London) Observer, columnist Richard Ingrams (in a piece titled "Black's hole," December 23, 2001 — Black is Amiel's married name) says the "gaffe" wasn't made by the ambassador, but by Amiel — for "betraying the confidences of the dinner table" and writing such an "intemperate article."
Ingrams predicted that it would not be Bernard who would no longer be welcome in polite London society, but the Blacks, who he guessed would have to "shortly decamp" to Manhattan.
And — as if one column of this stripe in a single issue wasn't enough — another of the Observer's columnists, Euan Ferguson, ("Gossip: 'tis the reason to be jolly," December 23, 2001), that same day writes: "Ms Amiel is apparently as welcome now in the chic salons of north London as a fatwa in a sauna." Ferguson has no criticism to make of Bernard, or of the French government that has given him its full backing — though he remark, with regard to "l'affaire Bernard," that Israel has "the stubborn belief that the lifelong wish of our current pin-up boy, little baby Jesus, was to have his birthday celebrated by the shooting of innocent children in the street."
The denial of British racism goes so deep that many in England seem not even to realize what anti-Semitism is.
Columnist Joan Smith ("Dinner at Amiel's leaves a bad taste," December 23, 2001) writes that Amiel's "assumption that Bernard's remark was anti-Semitic, is pretty dubious. …If there is a lesson to be learned from this episode, it is not the French ambassador's politics that have been called into question on this occasion, but his taste in friends."
Richard Woods, in the London Sunday Times (December 23, 2001, "When silence speaks volumes"), says the ambassador's remark was only "apparently anti-Semitic."
There have been one or two admirable exceptions to this pattern, notably Andrew Sullivan (a British commentator who has been based in the U.S. for over two decades) and the Anglo-Jewish writer Melanie Phillips — but they are very much in the minority. Phillips has been left to make her strongest remarks on the subject outside the U.K. ("British Polite Society Has Found a Not-So-New Target", December 24, 2001, Wall Street Journal Europe).
For every Sullivan or Phillips, there seem to be many among London's "chattering classes" that actually find attacks on Jews rather amusing. Here, for example, is columnist Alexei Sayle in the Independent, writing shortly after the latest batch of Israeli teenagers had been blown to pieces by suicide bombers: "If a vivisectionist has their car burnt or a right-wing Israeli is shot or Ben Elton's musical closes early because of poor ticket sales, I can't say I can find it within myself to care very much." (Ben Elton is a British playwright and stand-up comedian.)
Since Bernard's remarks were reported, there have over a dozen fresh anti-Semitic incidents in France. Only last weekend, attackers firebombed a synagogue in the northern Paris suburb of Goussainville. A few days before that, gasoline bombs were hurled into a Jewish school in the southeastern Paris suburb of Créteil, setting a classroom on fire. On the same day, another synagogue was torched.
Fortunately, no one was injured in these particular incidents. But it can only be a matter of time before someone is. Have the French and English learned nothing from the 20th century?
(For more writing by Tom Gross on the European media and Israel, see nationalreview.com
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