Le quotidien Le Soir a consacré plusieurs articles à la diffusion par l'ancien bourgmestre de la communune bruxelloise d'Ixelles Yves de Jonghe d’Ardoye (MR), actuellement député régional et échevin de la culture, d'un courriel intitulé "Les Juifs et l’Islam".Le Soir qualifie le courriel de "nauséabond", dénonce le recours "aux plus infects clichés" et rappelle (curieusement) qu'Yves de Jonghe d’Ardoye est vicomte ("le ci-devant vicomte" !) :
"Il y est question du nombre de prix Nobel décrochés par 1,2 milliard de musulmans par rapport aux 14 millions de Juifs qui peuplent la planète. On devine le déséquilibre qui se dégage du décompte malsain..." (...)
Pire : en guise de commentaire, le texte s’abreuve aux plus infects clichés qui circulent sur l’Islam. Morceaux choisis : "Les Juifs ne pratiquent pas le lavage de cerveau de leurs enfants dans des camps militaires, leur enseignant à se faire exploser en causant le maximum de morts parmi les non-croyants." Ou bien : "Les Juifs ne prennent pas les avions en otage, ni ne tuent les athlètes des Jeux olympiques." Une rawette ? "Les Juifs ne font pas la traite des esclaves et n’ont pas de leaders appelant au Jihad et à la mort de tous les infidèles.""
Or comme l'a justement souligné lundi dernier au Parlement européen Jacques Barrot, vice-président de la Commission européenne: "J'ai été stupéfié, par exemple, d'apprendre que, selon un sondage de la "Anti-Defamation League" mené dans 7 Etats membres, 31% des personnes ayant répondu estiment que les juifs dans le secteur financier ont une responsabilité dans la crise économique mondiale actuelle". Ces chiffres sont navrants et il n'est donc ni inopportun ni répréhensible de rappeler certaines réalités au sujet des Juifs.
Dans une démarche analogue, le Daily Telegraph publia en 2006 un article célébrant le 350ème anniversaire de la décision de Cromwell d'autoriser le retour des Juifs en Angleterre. Un éditorial de Charles Moore évoquait leur remarquable contribution à la société britannique et invitait les Musulmans à s'en inspirer:
"Quiconque a fait des études universitaires, a eu besoin de bons médecins, a fait ses courses chez Marks & Spencer ou chez Tesco, a profité d'inventions scientifiques, a écouté de la musique classique, a fait appel à un comptable ou à un avocat, a regardé un film, a acheté un livre ou a consulté un psy, a bénéficié de la décision de Cromwell. La contribution des Juifs est tellement importante qu'elle atteint pratiquement tous les aspects de la société britannique."
"Pendant les cinquante dernières années, les Musulmans, tout comme les Juifs avant eux, sont arrivés et en beaucoup plus grand nombre. Comme les Juifs, ils ont éprouvé la douleur de ceux dont la religion est incomprise ou raillée. Mais contrairement aux Juifs, beaucoup trop de leurs dirigeants ont tendance à enseigner que de telles humiliations doivent être vengées, que leur existence en tant que minorité est un malheur temporaire, et non une situation qu'il convient d'accepter, et que la loi de l'Angleterre n'est virtuellement pas une loi du tout."
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"Exactly 350 years ago, we began to be a multi-racial society. 1656 marked the return of Jews to England. They had been driven out by an edict of Edward I in 1290.
In the intervening centuries - known as the Middle Period - Jews quite often came to this country on business, but they were not permitted to reside here or practise their religion. Their status, in fact, was that of Christians (and Jews) in Saudi Arabia today. In 1656, Cromwell let 300 of them return, and Jews have been here ever since.
Among the eventual consequences of this re-admission have been Benjamin Disraeli, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Peter Sellers, Joan Collins, Arthur Koestler, Alan Sugar, Nigella Lawson, Lucien Freud, Tom Stoppard and Sid James.
And why not add Max Perutz, Ali G, Ernst Chain, Jimmy Goldsmith, Miriam Rothschild, Melanie Klein, Alfred Brendel, Bernard Lewis, Emeric Pressburger, Harold Pinter, Sigmund Warburg, Keith Joseph, George Weidenfeld, Karl Popper, Ronald Harwood, Ernst Gombrich, Simon Schama, Jonathan Miller, Philip Green, Rachel Weisz and Robert Winston?
Or Isaiah Berlin, Jacob Bronowski, Rosalind Franklin, Harold Abrahams, Alexander Korda, George Solti, Denis Norden, Muriel Spark, Siegfried Sassoon, Jacob Epstein, Daniel Day-Lewis, Nigel Lawson, Janet Reger, Marjorie Proops, Sam Mendes, Stirling Moss and Bernard Levin? It is even claimed that David Beckham, if not technically a Jew, is, as the old joke has it, Jew-ish.
(And since into each life a little rain must fall, one might also note Michael Winner, Esther Rantzen, Eric Hobsbawm, Jerry Springer, Edwina Currie and Robert Maxwell on the debit side of the ledger.)
Anyone who has ever studied at a university, needed good doctors, shopped at Marks & Spencer or Tesco, benefited from scientific invention, listened to classical music, sought accountants or lawyers, watched a film, bought a book or needed his head examined, has gained from Cromwell's decision. The Jewish contribution is so great that it pervades almost all aspects of British society.
I have named individual Jews deliberately because, though it is always dangerous to generalise, even favourably, about race, it does seem to my gentile eyes that there is more prodigious ability and energy per Jew than per the rest of us. The community here has never been enormous - at present, it is somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 - but it has achievements out of proportion to its size. I like Herbert Samuel's claim that "The Jews are the same as everybody else, only more so".
But the interesting thing for British society today is to ask why such a people have been able to overcome prejudices that at first excluded them absolutely and later accepted them only on qualified terms (Jews could not sit in Parliament until the mid-19th century, for example). The answer could be useful for everyone.
The key, perhaps, is to be found in one of the earliest reports of Jews in England after their return. On October 14, 1663, Samuel Pepys found a way of visiting a synagogue in London (something very unusual for a Gentile at that time). In his diary, he described the service which he witnessed. He did not like it ("I never… could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this"), but he also noted that the Jews said a special prayer for the King. In other words, they accepted the civil power.
The Jews did not do this just to save their skins by sucking up to Charles II: they did it because it was part of their religious duty. It still is. No believing Jew will obey a civil law that forces him to disobey his religious law - eat pork, for example. But if there is no conflict, his religion teaches him that he must obey the law of the land. In the Talmud, the question arises of whether you should pay taxes to a secular king. Yes, comes the answer, because "The law of the kingdom is the law". In the standard collection, called Ethics of the Fathers, which brings together rabbinical wisdom over the centuries, Jews are told: "Pray for the welfare of the government, for, without the fear of it, people will swallow one another alive." (...)
But because of this basic agreement among Jews about the status of the secular law, the effect of these quarrels on the wider society is minimal. It is significant that virtually no one reading this article will have heard of Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu. He is the chief justice of the Beth Din, the Chief Rabbi's court which adjudicates on the endless delicate points of Jewish law, often relating to diet or Sabbath observance, which come up within the community.
If Judaism were an aggressive religion, seeking to lay down its law for all mankind, then this supremely learned old gentleman could acquire menacing power. Like the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran after 1979, Dayan Ehrentreu could tell people to kill in the name of God. Instead, his effect is the opposite. By policing so meticulously the difference between the precise duties of Jews and the duty to society at large, this scholar helps define the space necessary for people with beliefs quite at variance with those of the majority to live harmoniously among them. In this sense, people can be "fundamentalist" and yet perfectly at home in a society which is not. For 2,000 years, Jews have developed a subtle understanding of the difference between the ideal society that would exist if God's laws prevailed everywhere and the world as it is.
Without this understanding, people do indeed "swallow one another alive" and - one might add in the era of suicide bombings - swallow themselves in the process.
With this understanding, a minority community can develop enough confidence and win enough acceptance to do good beyond the confines of itself. The Jewish concept of mitzvah, on which David Cameron dwelt when he made a speech celebrating the 350 years last week, means a good deed done for its own sake. Such deeds are visible in the importance that Jews attach to charity and to education. British society needs a lot more mitzvahs. There is also the idea of "chesed", man's kindness to all men, as first shown by Abraham when he entertained angels unawares. Thus does a potentially very closed community open itself out. The difference between majority and minority is very real - but not antagonistic.
In the past half-century, Muslims have come where the Jews came earlier, and in much larger numbers. Like such Jews, they have sometimes experienced the unhappiness that comes when one's religion is misunderstood or derided. Unlike the Jews, too many of their leaders tend to teach them that such slights must be avenged, that existence as a minority is just a temporary misfortune, not a state to be lived with, and that the law of England is virtually no law at all. If that attitude continues, society is reduced to a conflict about who will swallow whom alive. To avoid that is a huge and urgent task."
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