Pots call kettles black

What must we never forget? That Jews were victims of racism? or that racism strikes anyone anytime, and we must detect it no matter the victims?

by Kim Petersen

Berlin played host recently to an anti-Semitism conference whose delegates unanimously denounced hatred against Jews regardless of what is happening in the Middle East.

Anti-Judaism is anathema, and all should regard it with disgust, as they should any form of ethnic intolerance.

The term "anti-Semitism" is a misnomer appropriated for other ends. Opposition to occupation can truthfully be termed "anti-occupation," but it cannot be extended to be "anti" a government or a people. Neither did opposition to the Nazis make one anti-German.

Given Nazi Germany's repugnant persecution of Jews, today's Germany, hosting a conference dealing solely with "anti-Semitism," is somewhat understandable. Germany resolutely honors its "special responsibility."

But why should Germany's guilt generate a selective responsibility? Why should it focus solely on only one of its victims of genocide? Why are the Communists. who died in much greater numbers. not memorialized? And what of the Romany or gays? Germany was guilty of genocide and has paid a price and the next generation of Germans will still be paying for those crimes (approximately 55 billion Euros up to 2000, according to Auswärtiges Amt).

But can a nation cleanse its soul of such perfidy through money and conferences? Of course not. and everyone knows that. A nation must learn from the horrors of such a crime and always be on guard-not only for itself, but also for others. Jews embody this philosophy in the phrase "Never forget."

Herein lies the cruelest irony: that a people who suffered the ethnic cleansing and genocidal pogroms of Nazi Germany and vowed never to forget could so quickly carve out their own Lebensraum and inflict suffering on others.

It is a moral hypocrisy of an incalculable magnitude that a group of Jews could push a movement called Zionism to expropriate the land of Palestinians that have lived there for millennia and slowly strangle off the remainder.

The Halifax Chronicle Herald described the Berlin conference as addressing the need to "educate young people about the Holocaust and punish the perpetrators of hate crimes." In reality. it is about the perpetuation of Jewish victimhood in rejection of Zionist victimization and hate crimes against Arabs.

Indeed, at the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001, all kinds of pressures were exerted to push Zionism off the table for consideration.

Canada acquiesced to these pressures. Canada's then Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Hedy Fry opposed attempts to include Palestinian suffering under Israel's racist occupation on the agenda. Fry even declared that Canada's presence at the conference was "because we wanted to have our voice decry the attempts at this conference to de-legitimize the State of Israel, and to dishonor the history and suffering of the Jewish people. We believe, and we have said in the clearest possible terms, that it was inappropriate-wrong-to address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in this forum." The twisted logic of stating that a conference on racism was not the appropriate venue to discuss racism against Palestinians is mind-boggling.

Yet there was Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham voicing, quite rightfully, the need for an "absolute refusal to tolerate expressions of hate against our Jewish communities." What is objectionable is that Graham doesn't speak the words that need to be spoken in disgust of the horrors that Palestinians must endure in the longstanding occupation of their homeland.

Some Jewish non-governmental organizations sought a conference declaration that criticism of the Israeli government is anti-Semitism. The conference didn't bend so far.

Webster's Dictionary did. Webster's has debased itself as an orthographical reference by caving into Zionists on the English language. To its standard definition of Zionism, Webster's has added "2: opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel." The bending of its lexicographical standards brings shame upon Webster's. An error has been made in equating racism of an ethnic group with criticism of government policy, and worse yet, opposition to another form of racism, namely Zionism.

What Israel is practicing now is apartheid, a term that entered Webster's lexicon from South Africa. It denotes "a policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination," according to Webster's.

One wonders how the world would have responded if the apartheid government in South Africa had condemned criticism of its policies as prejudiced. If Pretoria had denounced the anti-apartheid movement as an anti-Afro-European movement, would the world have ignored the evil of apartheid and rushed to defend the South African Europeans from any prejudice without considering why the prejudice existed? Unfortunately, history shows that both the US and Britain had for years backed the white-only democracy in South Africa.

Jewish holocaust activist Elie Wiesel said, "The Jew I am belongs to a traumatized generation. We have antennas. If we tell you that the signals that we receive are disturbing, that we are alarmed-people had better listen."

Obviously many of these antennas are tuned-in only on one frequency because there are a host of traumatized Palestinians ghettoized by the Zionists in their midst.

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