To Europe, Jews are Usurpers
To Europe, Jews are Usurpers

Only 12 British MPs had the courage to stand up to Arab lies and to vote NO to the creation of a “Palestinian State”.

An air of discrimination and exclusion of the Jewish people is unwinding in Europe these days.

The British House of Commons made the Jews not the legitimate owners of the land of Israel, but usurpers of a history, a land and a name.

The same week, at the famous Film Festival of Carpentras, near Marseille, the Israeli consul Barnea Hassid and the Israeli director Hilla Medalia were attacked by pro Palestinian activists chanting “war criminals”, disrupting the screening of the film “Dancing in Jaffa”. The same thing that happened during the Nazi occupation of France.

But most egregious of all , at the Book Fair of Frankfurt, the world’s most important literary festival, the worst anti-Semitic literature is now being displayed.

Qatar’s stand has “The Battles of Mohammed”, funded by the Emir and telling how the Jews of Khaybar tried to poison the Prophet of Islam. There are “The veins of Jerusalem” by Munir Akash and Fouad Moaghrabi, where the Jewish presence in Jerusalem is described as an anti-Islamic conspiracy.

The Egyptian stand has “The Buraq Wall” of Jehad to Ayesh and Bait Almaqdes, where even the Western Wall is described as the property of Islam.

There are also the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, the anti-Semitic forgery produced by the Tsarist police and used by the Nazis. To overcome the scrutiny of Frankfurt, the pamphlet is listed under the title “Dictionary of Zionist Deception”.

The Iranians, through the Revayat Fath editions, have a book praising Samir Kunar, the terrorist who killed an entire Israeli family.

“Books can be good or bad, those exposed ar Frankfurt are instruments of hate”, tell us Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “They present the murderers of Jewish children as heroes”.  

I had a conversation with David Cassuto, a professor of architecture, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem under Ehud Olmert, his father killed in Auschwitz, his mother assassinated by Arab terrorists in the 1947’s Mount Scopus attack. “If you kill a Jew in Paris that is anti-Semitism; if Israel as a state and nation is questioned that it is no longer anti-Semitism”, says Cassuto. “I have never expected anything good from Europe and what I see today gives me good reason. The repentance for the Holocaust did not last long, and now anti-Semitism again raises its head as if nothing had happened”.

Cassuto is worried by another aspect of what is going on, “that this European trend is supported in Israel by the Left. For us Jews surviving does not mean achieving ‘peace’, but being prepared to make war. Europe needs Israel, but she does not want to admit it. Despite everything I am optimistic, because what happened in 1942-'43 will never happen again. Israel has the strength to resist”.

I also hope it does.