The Holocaust + 60 (The European Part)
Europe is tired of Jews. Not all Europeans, of course, and we hope for a new trend with the ascension to power of Merkel, Szarkozy and Berlusconi (and an old friend, Fiamma Nierenstein, to the Italian Parliament) and the dumping of Red Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. But in general, Europeans are tired of their own history and unwilling to fight for their own principles. They now reject additional troops for Afghanistan; even as they agree the fighting there is essential. And as they appear to want only to be left alone, Jews make it hard and Israel makes it harder.
Europe is tired of Jews. Not all Europeans, of course, and we hope for a new trend with the ascension to power of Merkel, Szarkozy and Berlusconi (and an old friend, Fiamma Nierenstein, to the Italian Parliament) and the dumping of Red Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. But in general, Europeans are tired of their own history and unwilling to fight for their own principles. They now reject additional troops for Afghanistan; even as they agree the fighting there is essential. And as they appear to want only to be left alone, Jews make it hard and Israel makes it harder.
The Holocaust remains a singular crime against humanity, planned and organized by Nazis, but willingly advanced by others all across Europe. Many 21st Century Europeans are very ready to shed whatever guilt they had over the Holocaust, or whatever concomitant responsibility they continue to have for the security of Israel. So, the theory goes, if Jews are as bad to Arabs as Europeans were to Jews, a) the Holocaust is no longer unique and Europeans are no longer unique in their (former) evil, and b) because their (former) victims have become evil, there is no special responsibility for Israel.
This is coupled in many cases with a belief that “Western civilization” is nothing special, and there is very little over which one should go to war – particularly Western civilization. Writing the Holocaust out of British textbooks is part and parcel of writing out Winston Churchill. Churchill was nothing if not certain that Britain, as the surviving outpost of democratic European civilization in 1940, had a duty to survive as that, not just as a spit of land on which someone else would write future history from a different perspective.
The intensity of his British-ism, of DeGaulle’s French-ism (and President Bush’s American-ism and Israel’s Jewish-ism) bothers people who don’t want to be bothered with what it would mean to Western-ism if radical Islam-ism exercises influence over large stretches of land where Europeans, or Jews, live.
Israel is Churchill – understanding that if a small place with a long, productive and important history, is wiped out, there is no more. Israelis say, “ein brierah,” “there is no choice” for them to be where they are and fight the fight. There is nowhere else to go and nothing else to be. Israel’s existence is a reproach to those Europeans who don’t much care who they are, didn’t much like Jews before, and now find Jews and Americans twinned as the military standard bearers of Western democratic interests.
The scorching of President Bush in Western Europe (partly because he ended the cozy oil-for-food deal that profited French and German government officials even as Iraqi children paid the price of sanctions) affected European attitudes not only toward America, but also toward Israel. Oh yes, there are also oil prices, terrorism and fear of Islamic radicalism at home; they blame the Jews for those, too.
The good news – no, the excellent news – is that across “Old Europe,” there is an emerging view that radical, fascist Islamic ideologies have something in common with the radical, fascist ideologies that inflamed and nearly consumed Europe itself not so long ago. And that Western civilization is NOT the problem; it is the antidote. And so, perhaps, is Israel.