Reliving the Thirties
The struggle over suppressing discrimination in Western societies is an ongoing problem that will grow with the ever-increasing influx of third-world minorities into more affluent nations. Additionally, judicial decisions that grant sweeping concessions to radical subculture elements demanding unequal rights to express and impose their often-perverted lifestyles on the “silent majority” are fragmenting many communities.
However, two minorities open to unrelenting ridicule without redress are evangelical Christians and Jews. For example, any politician running for office or any prospective judicial appointee who openly declares a commitment to protect the lives of the unborn is almost certain to be immediately shouted out of the process. The suspicion that one’s sympathies lean toward evangelical, biblical values ensures pariah status in the intolerant world of the political, social, and religious liberal left.
Individuals who bridle over any suggestion that Jewish people are victims of a rash of anti-Semitic outbursts in the United States and other Western countries are simply not in touch with the facts. Attacks against Jewish students, which occur with increasing viciousness and regularity on many college campuses, should be cause for alarm. In most cases, however, they are simply brushed off by college administrators as the “right of free speech” for militants.
To people with their heads in the sand, these trends are merely the inevitable evolution of enlightened, contemporary culture. In truth, however, they are dangerous throwbacks to eras of oppression that singled out the “undesirable” as scapegoats and placed entire societies in jeopardy.
But at this stage, should we be alarmed? We had better be.
In June an Oxford University professor in England rejected an application from a Jewish Israeli Ph.D. student purely on the grounds of his nationality. Professor Andrew Wilkie told Amit Duvshani, a student from Tel Aviv University, that he and many other British academics were not prepared to take on Israelis because of the “gross human rights abuses” they “inflict” on the Palestinians.
On June 23 Professor Wilkie wrote, “Thank you for contacting me, but I don’t think this would work. I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from the appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they (the Palestinians) wish to live in their own country. . . . [I in] no way would take on somebody who had served in the Israeli Army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views.”
Indeed, Professor Wilkie is not alone in his distaste for Israelis. A series of attempts have been made to isolate Israeli scholars in protest of their country’s operations in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. Last year Mona Baker, a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in England, fired two Israeli academics from the editorial boards of two journals she owns because of their nationalities.
Wilkie, under pressure, apologized, and Oxford repudiated him for his remarks. Nevertheless, the fact remains that he acted on what he believes and spoke for many others he knows feel the same way.
Reading this extremely disturbing story and considering its origins is not only deeply distressing, it is hauntingly familiar. When we hear of the vicious anti-Semitism rampant in Arab countries and the Muslim world, we are not surprised. This hatred of “infidel” Jewish people and the State of Israel is a staple of the Muslim religion and academic brainwashing systematically afflicting successive generations of Muslim offspring. But we are not speaking about the world of Islam. These exercises in vilification are occurring in England, France, Germany, America, and Scandinavia—countries supposedly “Christian” by tradition.
But need we be reminded that Germany, which became Hitler’s killing field, and Europe, which became his slaughterhouse, were also regarded as Christian? And those who made concessions to the maniac they thought could bring about “peace in our time” also came from ostensibly “Christian” nations.
We must decide whether or not we will stand by silently and let these small but never trivial atrocities continue to gain momentum. Will we allow the shadows of the ’30s to fall upon us once again? In the ’30s the anti-Semitic instruments of annihilation were aimed at Europe’s Jews. Now the same “weapons of mass destruction” are pointing at Israel and its Jewish citizens. Only the location has changed. The desire to destroy remains the same. The clouds are on the horizon. What will you do?
