Norway: Rampant anti-Semitism in Europe-anti which Semites?

A few days ago, before the terrifying bloodshed in Norway, I received an email from the U.S. denouncing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in France: “Will the world say nothing—again—as it did in Hitler’s time?” The author catalogued a list of attacks against Jewish targets in France over the past few months. He called for a boycott of France and French products: “Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred.”

I’ve been getting such emails now for years since I’ve been living in France. In my view the major reason for the attacks on Jewish targets is political rather than racial. Provoked by the fact that the leadership of the Jewish community in France (which does not represent the majority of French Jews) has been outspoken in supporting the right-wing policies of the current Israeli government.  

What has long bothered me about such emails, however, is not just a misreading of the cause, but a tunnel vision on the part of many Jews--a total disregard for those other Semites: the rampant growth of anti-Islamic and anti-Arab sentiment in France and across Europe over the past few years. The number of attacks on Arab targets and new legislation relating to the practice of Islam in several European countries which would have had the world’s Jewish community in full cry if they’d been directed against Jewish targets.

Along with that has been the rapid growth of right-wing parties across much of the continent. Those parties in the past had a strong explicitly anti-Jewish content.  The principle targets now are immigrants, mainly Arabs and Muslims. Those parties are no longer confined to kooks and misfits. Anti-Arab/Muslim sentiments are everywhere, from polite dinner time conversation to exchanges in the street markets to supposedly harmless jokes relayed on the Internet, like the one we received the day after I received the alert on anti-Semitism in France:

Three men, a Frenchman, a Tunisian and an Algerian who find themselves together in a raunchy Parisian bar. They down one beer after another. At one point the Tunisian tosses his empty beer bottle into the air, yells “we’ve got so many empty bottles in Tunis”, pulls out a gun and blasts the bottle apart in mid air.

The Algerian also throws his bottle into the air, “says we’ve got so much sand in Algeria, there’s no shortage of glass,” pulls out a gun and shatters the bottle.

The French guy takes a disgusted look at the other two, pulls out a pistol and yells, “We’ve got so god damn many Arabs in France, I never have to drink with you two creeps again, and he guns both of them down.

I was still thinking about that the next day, when news came of the horrific slaughter in Norway and the gradual disclosures that the author was not an bearded Arab terrorist, but a blond, clean-cut White convinced that he was a soldier in the War of Civilizations, defending the Christian west against the threat of Islam. 

On his site he cited such ideological soul-mates as Pamela Geller, a notorious right-wing, pro-Israel, Islamophobic blogger, whose principal mouthpiece (when she’s not on Fox TV) is Atlas Shrugs. A poster shows a recent event which she backed, along with Robert Spencer who operates Jihad Watch.

People like Geller and Spencer and right-wing leaders across Europe are already attempting to distance themselves from any responsibility for the outrage in Norway. Their excuses ring hollow, in view of their rabid language and incendiary rhetoric.  

But a more basic question is: to what degree are the growing anti-Islamic views, held by tens (if not hundreds) of millions of ‘decent” Europeans—folks who would never consider themselves right-wing or racist—like the ones who chuckle at the bar room joke above—to what degree are they—or their silence --also a part of the context for what could be even more horrifying acts to come?

For with growing economic turmoil in Europe and huge numbers attempting to flee the bloody uprisings across much of North Africa, this problem is only going to get worse.