Historiquement, le problème c'est que les Britanniques (et les Européens en général) n'ont jamais payé un prix trop élevé pour avoir tourmenté les Juifs (Jew-baiting). Mais les choses ont changé. Tourmenter les Juifs est devenu une sorte de sport en Angleterre - et les Britanniques alimentent le monstre - l'islam radical - qui les dévore. Mais ça a un prix.
The Hidden Costs of Jew-Baiting in England, par
Richard Landes (texte repris de Augean Stables, le blog de l'auteur) Jew-baiting has become something of a sport in England, as Brits feed the monster — radical Islam — that devours them.
London is an amazing place, full of vitality, intensity, foreign tourists and residents, a patchwork of pluralism. Talk to the average person, and nothing seems amiss: this cab driver, having driven in London for 40 years, sees no significant change in the neighborhoods he travels through; this financier sees no signs of intimidation; this shopper, this tavern-hopper, this man on the bus, lives in an interesting and relatively normal world. A superficial walk through the [Regent’s] park gives the distinct sense of normality.
But talk to the Jews, and you get a different story. The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists held a conference here this week. The topic:
Democratic and Legal Norms in an Age of Terror. Panels discussed everything from the
Goldstone Report, to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, to “universal jurisdiction” (lawfare against Israelis brought in foreign courts). Here, in the Khalili Lecture Theatre of the SOAS (School for Oriental and African Studies), Jewish lawyers discussed a grim reality whose only public appearance on an everyday basis is the drumbeat of calumny that a boisterous elite — NGOs, journalists, academics — rain down on Israel.
Perhaps the most startling of the sessions concerned the BDS movement.
Jonathan Rynhold, from the BESA Center at Bar Ilan, and
Anthony Julius, author of
Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, both presented a picture of British anti-Zionist activity whose intellectual and moral foundations were profoundly irrational, a dogmatic will to stigmatize and destroy Israel that responded to no argument about proportion (what about other places?) or reason (you make no moral demands of the Palestinians). And behind that lies a much weightier volume of negative feeling, a kind of unthinking animosity that expressed itself in its most banal form when a woman explained to Julius:
“We all know why the Jews are hated: you marry among yourselves and live in ghettos like Golders Green and Vienna [sic].” In so doing, she put her finger on the most widespread subtext for hostility to Jews
– “they think they’re the chosen people.”
