Jews with Six Arms

by Pilar Rahola
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/jews-with-six-arms-pilar-rahola.html
February 24, 2010

Editors note:  This is from a speech Dr. Rahola gave at a conference
of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism held in Jerusalem 
on Dec. 16-17, 2009. Rahola is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer 
and former politician and member of Parliament.  In recent years 
she has attracted controversy for her outspoken support for Israel 
and Zionism - this in Spain, a country which a 2009 Pew Research 
poll found to be the most anti-Semitic country in the EU.

I spoke at a meeting in Barcelona of a hundred lawyers and judges 
a month ago.

They came together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern 
conflict. They know that I am a heterodox vessel in the shipwreck 
of “uniform thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. 
They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, 
if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility 
by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively: 
you all believe that you are experts in international politics when 
you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing.

They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel 
they dare, as does everybody else. Why? Because Israel is 
permanently under the media magnifying glass and the distorted 
image pollutes the world’s brains. And because it is part of what 
is politically correct, it seems part of solidarity, because talking 
against Israel is free. And so, cultured people when they read 
about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the 
same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all sorts 
of outrageous things.

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when 
talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots. The problem that 
those of us who do not demonize Israel have, is that there 
exists no debate on the conflict. Intellectuals and international 
journalists have given up on Israel. It doesn’t exist. That is why, 
when someone goes beyond the “uniform thought” of criticizing 
Israel, he becomes suspect and is immediately segregated. Why?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for years: Why?

Why, of all the conflicts in the world only this one interests them?

Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized?

Why does manipulated information triumph so easily?

Why are all the people of Israel reduced to a simple mass of 
murderous imperialists?

Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster?

Finally, why, when Israel is the only country in the world which is 
threatened with extinction, is it also the only one that nobody 
considers a victim?

I don’t believe that there is a single answer to these questions. 
Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of 
anti-Semitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the 
present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the 
fountain of intolerance and lies. Also, if we accept that 
anti-Israelism is the new form of anti-Semitism, we conclude 
that circumstances may have changed, but the deepest myths, 
both of the Medieval Christian anti-Semitism and of the modern 
political anti-Semitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of 
the chronicle of Israel.

For example, the Medieval Jew accused of killing Christian 
children to drink their blood connects directly with the Israeli 
Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always 
they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the 
Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through 
the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, 
connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want 
to dominate the world through the White House. Control of 
the press, control of finances, the Universal Conspiracy, 
all that which has created the historical hatred against the Jews, 
is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, 
then, beats the DNA of the Western anti-Semite. But what beats 
in the conscious? Why does a renewed intolerance surge with 
such virulence, centered now, not against the Jewish people, 
but against the Jewish state? From my point of view, this has 
historical and geopolitical roots - among others, the decades 
long bloody Soviet role, European Anti-American-ism, the 
West’s energy dependency and the growing Islamist 
phenomenon.

But it also emerges from a set of defeats which we suffer as 
free societies.

The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag 
of freedom wherever there was injustice. It was the depositary 
of the utopian hopes of society. Despite the murderous evil of 
Stalinism’s sinking these utopias, the left still pretends to point 
out good and evil in the world. Even those who would never vote 
for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and 
allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. 
Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, 
but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, 
and converted into undercover fascists.

Today, as yesterday, the left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, 
falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, 
ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, 
but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Israeli Defense 
Forces but applauds Hamas’s terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian 
victims, but scorns the Jewish victims.

 A year ago, at the AIPAC conference in Washington I asked 
the following questions:

Why don’t we see demonstrations in Europe against the 
Islamic dictatorships?

Why are there no demonstrations against the enslavement of 
millions of Muslim women?

Why are there no declarations against the use of bomb-carrying 
children in the conflicts in which Islam is involved?

Why is the left only obsessed with fighting against two of the 
most solid democracies of the planet, those which have suffered 
the bloodiest terrorist attacks, the United States and Israel?

Because the left no longer has any ideas, only slogans. 
It no longer defends rights, but prejudices. And the greatest 
prejudice of all is the one aimed against Israel. The main 
responsibility for the new anti-Semitic hatred disguised as 
anti-Zionism lies with those who should have been there to 
defend freedom, solidarity and progress. Far from it, they 
defend despots, forget their victims, and remain silent before 
medieval ideologies which aim at the destruction of free societies. 
The treason of the left is an authentic treason against modernity.

Defeat of Journalism. We have more information in the world 
than ever before, but we do not have a better informed world.  
Today’s journalists do not need maps, since they have Google 
Earth; they do not need to know history, since they have 
Wikipedia. The historical journalists, who knew the roots of a 
conflict, still exist, but they are an endangered species, 
devoured by that “fast food” journalism which offers hamburger 
news to readers who want fast-food information. Israel is the 
world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s 
least understood place. Of course one must keep in mind the 
pressure of the great petrodollar lobbies, whose influence upon 
journalism is subtle but deep. Mass media knows that if it speaks 
against Israel, it will have no problems. But what would happen 
if it criticized an Islamic country? Without doubt, it would 
complicate its existence. Certainly part of the press that writes 
against Israel would see themselves mirrored in Mark Twain’s 
ironical sentence: “Get your facts first, then you can distort 
them as you please”.

Defeat of critical thinking. To all this one must add the ethical 
relativism which defines the present times.

I explain it with this little tale: If I were lost on an uncharted 
island, and wanted to found a democratic society, I would 
need only three written documents: The Ten Commandments 
(“Thou shalt not murder“ founded modern civilization); 
the Roman Penal Code; and the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights. And with these three texts we would start again. 
These principles are relativized daily, even by those who 
claim to be defending them.

“Thou shalt not murder” - depending on who is the target, 
think those who, like the demonstrators in Europe, shout in 
support of Hamas.

“Hurray for Freedom of Speech!”- or not. For example, 
several Spanish left-wing organizations tried to take me to 
court, accusing me of being a negationist, like the Nazis, 
because I deny the “Palestinian Holocaust”. They were 
attempting to prohibit me from writing articles and to 
send me to prison. And so on.

Defeat of the United Nations. The organizations which should 
protect human rights have become broken puppets in the 
hands of despots. The United Nations is only useful to 
Islamofascists like Ahmadinejad or dangerous demagogues 
like Hugo Chavez, offering them a planetary loudspeaker 
where they can spit their hatred. And, of course, a platform 
to systematically attack Israel. The UN, too, exists to fight Israel.

Finally, defeat of Islam. Tolerant and cultural Islam suffers today 
the violent attack of a totalitarian virus which tries to stop its 
ethical development. This virus uses the name of God to 
perpetrate the most terrible horrors: lapidate women, enslave them, 
use youths as human bombs.  If Stalinism destroyed the left, 
and Nazism destroyed Europe, Islamic fundamentalism is 
destroying Islam. And it also has an anti-Semitic DNA. 
Perhaps Islamic anti-Semitism is the most serious intolerant 
phenomenon of our times; indeed, it contaminates more than 
1,400 million people, who are educated, massively, in hatred 
towards the Jew.

In the crossroads of these defeats is Israel. Orphan and 
forgotten by a reasonable left, orphan and abandoned by 
serious journalism, orphan and rejected by a decent UN, 
Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack 
of a solid commitment to the values of liberty.  Jewish 
culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of 
a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on 
all flanks. The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. 
Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have 
suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, 
in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic 
fundamentalism. And, in these times of energy dependency 
and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, 
the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among 
peoples. That is why the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century 
has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, 
or its synonym, anti-Zionism. Is all criticism of Israel 
anti-Semitism? No. But all present-day anti-Semitism has 
turned into the demonization of the Jewish State. New clothes 
for an old hatred.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty is, there is my country.” 
And Albert Einstein added: “The world is a dangerous place. 
Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the 
people who don’t do anything about it.” This is the double 
commitment, here and now; never remain inactive in front of 
evil in action and defend the countries of liberty.