Down the Wrong Path

The recent wave of anti-Semitic violence across Europe has sparked international condemnation, and became an unexpected burden for German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s recent trip to the United States.

Fischer’s four-day visit wrapped up on Friday. As he was preparing to leave, Fischer told reporters that the United States and Europe still stood far apart on solutions to the Middle East crisis. The problem, he said, was in the vastly different ways the two sides looked at the problem.

"This is true for the media, the public discussion and also for the American Congress," Fischer said.

Europe, lead by France and Great Britain, have traditionally been perceived as more pro-Arab, with their bevy of trade agreements and economic relations with countries the United States has boycotted. The United States has always been Israel’s staunchest ally.

At no time have the differences been more visible then in recent weeks, when the Israeli army’s recent occupation of the West Bank unleashed a wave of anti-Israeli protest in Europe not visible for decades.

Anti-Israel soon turned to anti-Semitism in some cases, when unidentified attackers set fire to synagogues in France, Belgium and Germany and police reported a rising number of anti-Semitic incidents.

In Berlin, two American Jews were attacked by "southern-looking" men as they walked on one of the city’s busiest shopping streets. Another Jewish woman was hit in a Berlin subway by attackers with similar description.

The reports, coupled with mass anti-Israeli protests in European capitals like Paris, Berlin and London, did not sit well abroad. Attempted boycotts of Israeli products by Belgian, Danish and Norwegian companies and unions did not help. Neither did the opinion of Oxford Professor and British Poet Tom Pauling, who told an Egyptian weekly that American Jews, particularly those from Brooklyn, found in the West Bank should be "shot dead."

US columnists: full-blown anti-Semitism

In the United States, Israel’s strongest ally, some newspaper columnists launched heavy criticism of what they described as the awakening of Europe’s hibernating anti-Semitism.

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post called it "the release of a millenium-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 ... But now the atonement is passed. The genie is out again."

Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil, came out particularly strong against Palestinian sympathizers in Europe. The accomplished author and journalist describes himself as a former "negotiation-will-bring-peace" advocate before the recent Intifada.

What is happening now, he writes, is nothing short of a "Second Holocaust." Europe’s reaction has been to morph from anti-Israeli sentiment to full blown anti-Semitism.

"I’d suggested the deep source of this phenomenon was European complicity in the original Holocaust, a few short decades ago," he wrote in his column for the New York Observer. "The way demonizing the Israelis now served to ‘salve their collective conscience’ for their sickening collaboration with Hitler: The Jews probably deserved it then, and we can wash our hands of what happens to them now."

German politicians condemn attacks

The vast majority of German politicians, including Fischer and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, have roundly condemned the anti-Semitic attacks in Germany and the rest of Europe, while continuing to come out against the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

They endorse the European position that anti-Israel can’t be twinned with anti-Semitism. The coupling is especially traumatic for Germany, which has labored to free itself from the dark shadow cast by Hitler and the Holocaust.

Sometimes that desire oversteps its boundaries. Juergen Moellemann, the head of the German-Arab Congress and a member of the moderate-right Free Democratic Party gave indirect approval of Palestinian action against Israelis, saying that if Germany were occupied, he would also respond with violence.

"I would also protect myself," the opposition politician said in a recent interview.

Moellemann was roundly criticized in Germany, both by the media and leading politicians. But the damage was done. Now, Europeans are left to fix their image.

It is important that the wave of anti-Semitic violence in Europe be discussed by Europe and America, Fischer said before leaving Washington. "We need to work on it, in order to prevent a major divide from opening."