By Charles Krauthammer, April 26, 2002
France can hardly contain its contempt for that muscle-bound naif, the
American hyperpower, stomping around the world in search of “evildoers.” The
French roll their eyes at such primitive moralism, so devoid of Gallic nuance.
How inconvenient, then, that the same French have just put on the presidential
ballot Jean-Marie Le Pen, the modern incarnation of European fascism. Le Pen
defeated the Socialist prime minister for second place, making him a runoff
candidate for president of the Fifth Republic.
No matter. This will not restrain French intellectuals and foreign ministers from
lecturing Americans on their simplisme – their preference for morality over
realpolitik, their reliance on military power, their fantasies about an “axis of
evil” and, perhaps most unbearable, their principled support for Israel.
Israel – that “sh—- little country,” as the French ambassador to Britain recently
said at a London dinner party. “Why should we be in danger of World War III
because of those people?” This contemptuous sneer at “those people”
occasioned a minor scandal.
No, the scandal was not the ambassador’s statement but the hostess’s
indiscretion in revealing it – and then adding how utterly commonplace the
ambassador’s sentiment had become in London’s better circles.
And not just among the cocktail set. The European “street” has lately been
expressing itself on the subject of Jews as well. In France, synagogues have
been burned to the ground and Jewish youths savagely attacked. In Belgium,
two synagogues were firebombed, a third sprayed with bullets. A Berlin police
official advised Jews, for reasons of safety, not to wear outward symbols of
their religion.
In Europe, it is not very safe to be a Jew. How could this be?
The explanation is not that difficult to find. What we are seeing is
pent-up anti-Semitism, the release – with Israel as the trigger – of a
millennium-old urge that powerfully infected and shaped European history.
What is odd is not the anti-Semitism of today but its relative absence
during the past half-century. That was the historical anomaly. Holocaust shame
kept the demon corked for that half-century. But now the atonement is passed.
The genie is out again.
This time, however, it is more sophisticated. It is not a blanket hatred of Jews.
Jews can be tolerated, even accepted, but they must know their place. Jews
are fine so long as they are powerless, passive and picturesque. What is
intolerable is Jewish assertiveness, the Jewish refusal to accept victimhood.
And nothing so embodies that as the Jewish state.
What so offends Europeans is the armed Jew, the Jew who refuses to sustain
seven suicide bombings in the seven days of Passover and strikes back.
That Jew has been demonized in the European press as never before
since, well . . . since the ’30s. The liberal Italian daily La Stampa ran a cartoon
of the baby Jesus, besieged by Israeli tanks, saying, “Don’t tell me they want
to kill me again.”
Again. And this time the Christ-killers come in tanks. Just when Europe had
reconciled itself to tolerance for the passive Jew – the Holocaust survivor who
could be pitied, lionized, perhaps awarded the occasional literary prize – along
comes the Jewish state, crude and vital and above all unwilling to apologize for
its own existence.
The French were the vanguard of this modern anti-Semitism that can tolerate
the Jew as victim but not as historical actor. It was 35 years ago at the
outbreak of the Six Day War that Charles de Gaulle cut off French support for
Israel, denouncing its audacity in fighting for its life over his objections. But he
did not stop there. He later went on to famously denounce the Jews as “an
elite people, sure of itself and domineering.”
The rejection of docility – “sure of itself” – was Israel’s real crime 35 years ago.
It remains Israel’s crime today. Israel’s recent three-week Operation Defensive
Shield, the boldest and most justified Israeli military offensive since the Six Day
War, provokes precisely the same reaction, though not always expressed with
de Gaulle’s candor.
Three people have been chosen by the United Nations to judge Israel’s actions
in Jenin. Two are sons of Europe, and one of those is Cornelio Sommaruga. As
former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Sommaruga spent
12 years ensuring that the only nation on earth to be refused admission to the
International Red Cross is Israel. The problem, he said, was its symbol: “If
we’re going to have the Shield of David, why would we not have to accept the
swastika?”
This man will sit in judgment of the Jews. Marx was wrong when he said that
history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The second
time is tragedy too.
