Well, At Least Ahmadinejad Can't Use That Excuse!

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"At Paris trial, designer John Galliano blames drugs, booze for anti-Jewish rant."

The Mysterious Haters: Who Could the Antisemites Possibly Be?

By Barry Rubin

When I spoke at Canadian campuses last year I had some good experiences. But in certain universities the meetings were conducted like secret conclaves of the French Resistance during the German occupation. My hosts were clearly fearful, invitations were only issued to those they knew, and there were no signs or publicity. Indeed, at two of Canada's leading universities previously, pro-Israel Jewish students had been assaulted by mobs.

Yet Canada is among the world leaders in Political Correctness. In no country is there more concern that someone's feelings will be hurt due to some kind of slur. There are even special courts where those who say or write the wrong thing--presumably against non-whites or Muslims--can be tried without too much emphasis on legal procedure.

Now the figures for "hate crimes" in Canada have been issued and guess what? Like the FBI's statistics for the United States, the number one victims of hate crimes are...Jews. Indeed, 71 percent of the hate crimes in the religion category are against Jews. The Jewish proportion of Canada's population? Around 1 percent. That's 71 percent of the hate crimes on a religious basis against 1 percent of the population.

For Canada, 54 per cent of the crimes were motivated by race or ethnicity, 29 per cent by religion and 13 per cent by sexual orientation

Makes you think, right?

Apparently not. Because the report is vague about just who might be attacking Jews and why these numbers have tended to rise. Skin-heads? Neo-Nazis? Russian peasant pogroms? Crusaders? The Klu Klux Klan? Peronists? Anti-Dreyfusards? Know-Nothings? Knights of the Camellia? Republicans? Tea-Partiers?

Because if we don't know who did it, then how can the situation be improved? Was it Anglicans? Bahai? Catholics? Dunkers? Episcopalians (oh, wait, they're the same thing as Anglicans), Franciscan monks or Fire-worshippers? Greek Orthodox? Hawaiian traditionalists? Idolotors or Illerati or Inuit? Jacobites? Kansans? Lutherans?

Ok, I give up. No sense going any further in the alphabet, is there?

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Jews are stopped from prayer at the Western Wall by rock-throwing, um, non-skinheads. And Yale University has shut down the Yale Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, despite the program's holding a large number of events and a major conference. Seems they didn't focus enough on all antisemitism coming from neo-Nazi skinheads?

So just keep repeating to yourself: The main problem of the Western world is Islam-o-phobia.

Antisemitism: It's Back Big Time and Nobody in Power (Really) Cares

By Barry Rubin

A reliable source in Finland reports that the speaker of parliament, Ben Zyskowicz, was attacked by a man shouting antisemitic slogans in Helsinki, June 1. He is a popular politician and the only Jewish member of parliament.  Zyskowicz refused to press charges saying that going to court in such matters is futile.

This event in a relatively small, far-away country about which people know little will not make international news. But it isn't an isolated incident.

Reports from Holland say that Jewish funeral processions--and in some cases Christian ones--are being heckled by Muslim bystanders yelling, "Jews!" Is this a mistake on their part or is "Jew" becoming a wider designated curse to be uttered more generally? Western "peaceniks" and "humanitarians" are joining a Gaza flotilla whose organizers chant approvingly about the seventh-century genocide of Jews in the Arabian penninsula and pledge to repeat it, and for the benefit of a terrorist group (Hamas) that is actively and openly working on implementing a new genocide against Jews.


Politicians fly to expensive hotels to hold conferences on "tolerance" and "anti-hatred." Big public relations' campaigns are held on these topics. But all this has nothing to do with reality. Extremist groups and ideologies--including Islamism--along with endless incitement against Jews and Israel, including in the most "respectable" media, are creating an atmosphere where antisemitism is permissible, even fashionable.

True, the U.S. government is boycotting the ten-year- celebration of the UN's antiracism conference in Durban that turned into an antisemitism conference. Even the Obama Administration characterized this as including "ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism." But when the UN sponsors antisemitism might that suggest this is a rather big problem

Absolutely zero is being done about this at a time when, otherwise, the smallest accusations of religious or racial bigotry provoke hysteria. And those building this hatred, often by lies and hatred directed at Israel, claim they are innocent by manipulating definitions of antisemitism.

In Belgium, a sociologist conducted a poll that showed that half of Muslim students are antisemitic. The response? He has been taken to court by Muslims accused of a "hate crime."

Even in the United States, according to FBI statistics, attacks on Jews far exceed those on Muslims. Many of the attacks are staged by Muslims. Yet even Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League ignores the systematic inculcation of antisemitism in many mosques and Muslim schools. And here's the latest from Ireland. And the United Kingdom.

It would be excessively alarmist to say that this is a return to the 1933 and 1945. Rather, it is a return in a new form to the period between around 1000 and 1933. And that's bad enough.

Note: the reference in paragraph 2 about a small, far-away country of which people know little is to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's remark when sacrificing Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Two Helen Thomas Farces: What She Says and How She's Ridiculed

By Barry Rubin

It's amazing how bad the public discussion of issues is nowadays. Here's a tiny example. Helen Thomas was fired for her anti-Jewish statements and was recently interviewed in Playboy where she made more such remarks that are--correctly--being interpreted as antisemitic.

But why does Thomas hate Israel so much, a hatred that spills over into antisemitism? I haven't seen a single person who's gotten it right. She's no neo-Nazi or nut case. Thomas is of Lebanese descent, albeit Christian, and basically views herself on this issue at least as an Arab.  The important factor is not her eccentricity but her typicality.

What Thomas is doing, then, and has done for many years, is to express ideas common in the Arabic-speaking world which are becoming increasingly common in the West. That's why she's significant and that's where she's coming from. Her blend of anti-Zionism and antisemitism--using traditional anti-Jewish themes, sometimes applied to Israel and at times to all Jews--is just like what exists in a high percentage of households in the Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority worlds.

We're not talking about a funny old lady but about a worldview held by millions of people in a lot of countries, by revolutionary Islamists and terrorists, and by a growing number of people on Western college campuses and in elite circles. This is not some joke but rather a "craziness" that kills and shapes the fate of whole nations and continents.