America revives anti-semitism

[Other News - Roberto Savio / IPS <soros@topica.email-publisher.com>]

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The Anti-Semitism Spectre
Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb (IPS) - Some 30 years ago when the U.S. military was bogged
down in Vietnam, a number of prominent Jewish
intellectuals worried that the visibility of U.S. Jews as leaders in the
anti-war movement would spark a resurgence of anti-Semitism
once the conflict ended.

''I think anyone who looks to the future in America'', wrote Nathan Glazer in
the neo-conservative 'Commentary' magazine in 1971,
''must consider this possibility -- almost a probability -- of the rise of a
stab-in-the-back myth, in which it will not only be
students and professors and intellectuals who are attacked, and not only
Jews in
their role as members of this general community,
but conceivably Jews AS JEWS''. (emphasis in original)

Glazer, a Harvard sociologist who warned that people should not lightly dismiss
the parallels with Weimar Germany after World War I,
was not alone in his concerns.

Walter Laqueur, a prominent Holocaust historian at the time and now a terrorism
analyst at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) here, wrote in the same issue: ''The fact that
Jews
have been prominently associated with declarations
and actions abhorred by the majority of Americans provides fuel for a reaction
which will be not just anti-Left or
anti-intellectual, but potentially anti-Semitic as well".

"No great demagogic skill would be needed to single out the Jews as the main
culprits for the evils which have befallen America in
recent times,'' he added.

Glazer's and Laqueur's fears proved unfounded, confirming to many U.S. Jews
that
the United States was an ''exceptional'' nation
where anti-Semitism, a deep-rooted phenomenon in most of Christendom, has never
found particularly fertile ground.

But now, 30 years later, that exceptionalism might again be tested because of
the convergence of two separate events -- the war in
Iraq and the release later this month of Hollywood superstar Mel Gibson's 'The
Passion' -- both of which could feed anti-Semitism in
this country, according to some observers.

Just as Jewish leftists played a prominent role in the anti-war movement then,
so 33 years later Jewish neo-conservatives both
inside and outside the administration of President George W. Bush played a
major
role in rallying the country to war against Iraq.

They included Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of
Defence
for Policy Douglas Feith, and much of his staff,
who are charged by war critics with systematically exaggerating the threat
posed
by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein; Eric
Edelman, Vice President Dick Cheney's senior foreign policy adviser; and the
White House's senior Middle East adviser, Elliott
Abrams.

Several members of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board (DPB), including its
former chairman, Richard Perle; Kenneth Adelman, and
Eliot Cohen, could also be added to the list.

Those outside the administration included key journalists and think tank
analysts like nationally syndicated columnist Charles
Krauthammer; William Kristol, the editor of 'The Weekly Standard'; Max Boot of
the Council on Foreign Relations; and several fellows
at Perle's American Enterprise Institute (AEI), including Michael Ledeen and
Danielle Pletka.

Their prominence and ubiquity in the mass media in the run-up to the war, and
later in defending the decision to attack and to
expand the action to Syria and Iran, have given the impression that U.S. Jews
overwhelmingly favoured the war, presumably on behalf
of Israel.

In fact, that impression is incorrect. According to surveys conducted by a
number of polling organisations, U.S. Jews were as deeply
split on going to war as was the general public. Moreover, Jews have played a
leading role in the new anti-war movement, just as
they did more than 30 years ago during the Vietnam War.

And, as neo-conservatives themselves never tire of pointing out, the actual
policy-makers, like Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon
chief Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, not to
mention Bush himself, are all non-Jews.

Still, these facts might be of little concern to those searching for a
scapegoat
if the situation in Iraq continues to worsen.
''Since no weapons of mass destruction have been found, there's a lot more
attention to who was eager to go to war, and who can be
blamed'', Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and director of the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre
in Los Angeles, told IPS.

''It's an election year, Iraq will be the dominant issue and (there are) no
weapons of mass destruction'', he went on. ''Some people
will say, 'Aha, why did we do this'? and some will say 'Israel', and then you
get typical stereotyping that has crept up all too
often in history''.

Ken Jacobson of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) echoed that
fear. ''People all around the world and even in this
country seem to be raising questions about why we went to war, which
creates the
perfect environment for anti-Semitic conspiracy
thinking'', he told IPS.

''Anti-Semitism at its core is about blaming the Jews for problems that don't
seem to make sense.''

The release of Gibson's 'Passion' later this month is adding to that
concern. By
all accounts, a masterly produced movie, it
dramatises the last hours of the life of Jesus Christ and particularly his
excruciating physical suffering at the hands of his
persecutors during his crucifixion.

Fundamentalist Christian clergy have praised the film as an opportunity to
evangelise millions of people both in the United States
and abroad.

The movie has also received very strong reviews from neo-conservatives,
including Jewish film critic Michael Medved and Catholic
theologian Michael Novak, both of whom praised Gibson in Kristol's 'Weekly
Standard'.

But according to most of the relatively few Jews, Catholics and Protestants
involved in Christian-Jewish reconciliation efforts who
have seen it, the movie depicts Jews as unrelentingly vicious and cruel, much
worse than Jesus' Roman captors.

''It is the good guys and the bad guys, and the Jews are the bad guys'', said
Hier, who has seen two screenings.

Paula Fredriksen, a Bible scholar at Boston University who reviewed a script as
part of an inter-religious group of scholars
convened by the U.S. Catholic Bishops, found the movie ''stands in the echo
chamber of traditional Christian anti-Judaism''.

''Even before the Gibson movie, we found (in a survey to be released later this
month) that 25 percent of Americans believe that
Jews are responsible for the death of Christ'', Jacobson said.

''It's not that we're suggesting there will be pogroms or violence against Jews
as a result of the movie, but we are very concerned
that the tremendous progress that has been made in Jewish-Christian relations
could be set back by this'', he said, adding his group
is particularly concerned about the impact of Gibson's movie on audiences
abroad, where he said anti-Semitism has surged to its
highest levels since World War II.

Hier agreed, insisting the movie could be ''incendiary'' in many parts of the
world. He said he was also worried it could have a
major, if delayed, impact on impressionable teenagers and youngsters in the
United States itself.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, publisher of the liberal 'Tikkun' monthly, also expressed
concern about the impact of the ''Passion'' -- less
in relation to the Iraq invasion than concerning the depiction of Israel's
occupation of the Palestinian territories.

''I don't think there will be a backlash against Jews because of the Iraq
War'',
he told IPS from his California office. ''The real
problem is the convergence of the 'Passion' with the Israelis acting in a
morally insensitive way in the Palestinian conflict".

"It too neatly corresponds to the negative image of Jews one gets from Gibson's
movie'', added Lerner, who blamed the media in part
for screening out Jewish voices, like his, which oppose Israel's policies.

Still, Lerner, like Jacobson and Hier, agreed the convergence of the 'Passion'
with the questioning of U.S. policy would have a
greater impact abroad than at home.

''We strongly believe that America is different'', said ADL's Jacobson,
''but at
the same time America is not immune, so one can't
be complacent about it''. (END/IPS/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Other News" is a personal initiative seeking to provide information that
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"Other News" motto is a phrase which appeared on the wall of
Barcelona’s old Customs Office, at the beginning of 2003:”What
walls utter, media keeps silent”. Roberto Savio

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