18 July 2004

"Unacceptable Comments"

      As if the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe (and, in fact, North America, but the North American media is pretending it's a strictly Euro-thang) wasn't worrying enough, suddenly we have Ariel Sharon, always a voice of wisdom, telling French Jews to flee to Israel.   Oh, yes, Mr Sharon, because Israel is so much safer.   And, perhaps more importantly, because running away from the problem is better than addressing it.   The implication to Mr. Sharon's warning is pretty insidious, too: that only in Israel can Jews be safe, an assertion that indirectly fortifies the notion that there is only one place for Jews, that everywhere is inevitably going to be hostile to Jews.   This is dangerously defeatist, to say nothing of isolationist, logic.   No one should be subjected to the sort of sickening, racist attacks that have been proping everywhere lately, but the more leaders of Mr. Sharon's stature issue such statements, the more they work against the very ideas of pluralism and cultural respect.   It also gives these terrorizing bastards a kind of victory-- the driving of people from where they live, a terrorist principle against which Israel has fought for so long, and to which Mr. Sharon's comments are so surprisingly accepting.

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