The song remains the same: it’s all the fault of Israel

Michael Backman, in the business pages of The Age, blames Islamist terrorism on arrogant, penny-pinching Israelis

Of course, today Israel must defend itself. If the residents of Bendigo started firing rockets into Melbourne, you would expect Melbourne to retaliate. But what must Melbourne have done to Bendigo to make it do such a thing?

Trekking in Nepal is fashionable among young Israelis. So much so that many shops in Kathmandu and Pokhara have signs in Hebrew. But many guesthouses in this poor country will even tell Israeli trekking groups that they are full rather than accept them. They say that the young Israelis are rude, arrogant, and argue over trifling amounts of money even though they clearly have means.

Israel needs to change. The Parsees of India might provide a model. They are not flashy or arrogant. They have established hospitals, libraries, schools, museums for everyone. So the Parsees have peace and the Israelis do not. THE Backman piece (17/01) is disturbing because suddenly one is reminded of Der Sturmer, 1939. The feeling I get from Backman's opinion is that the world is worse off because Israel exists. However, my world is better because Israel exists. As a Jew, I have shelter from persecution because of Israel. I have shelter (in Israel) from anti-Semitic slander. I have shelter from people like Backman who are too cowardly to say that they hate Jews, so they vilify Israel. I have shelter from newspapers that are too cowardly to publish this in the opinion section so instead they publish it in the Business section.

When Backman tries to persuade the public that Israel is responsible for global terrorist attacks, we are reminded of Hitler telling the German people that the Jews were responsible for, among everything else, the losses they suffered in World War I. Here's a novel idea. Why don't we blame the perpetrators of these evil events rather than the Jews?>Tim Blair in his Daily Telegraph blog: "IF the residents of Bendigo started firing rockets into Melbourne you would expect Melbourne to retaliate. But what must Melbourne have done to Bendigo to make them do such a thing?" >Could be any number of root causes, really. Maybe someone in Melbourne drew cartoons that were disrespectful of Bendigo prophet Colleen Hewett. Or perhaps Bendigo's charter simply demands Melbourne's obliteration.

The Australian Jewish News reports

THE Age's coverage has been the most problematic. Even worse was The Age's opinion balance. By contrast, The Sydney Morning Herald generally avoided the worst of (The Age's) anti-Israel sensationalism in the headlines and photos. However the SMH suffered from repeated conspiratorial "analysis" from chief correspondent Paul McGeough. The Australian outclassed all other papers with excellent sensationalist-free coverage, opinion pieces from both sides, and two excellent editorials.

Mark Steyn in the National Review Online on the act of Jew-baiting, then and now:

A COUPLE of months back, I found myself on Cable Street in East London for the first time in years. It was the scene of a famous battle in 1936, when Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, in a crude act of political intimidation, was determined to march through the heart of the Jewish East End. They were turned back by a mob of local Jews, Irish Catholic dockers, commie agitators et al all standing under the Spanish Civil War slogan, "No pasaran": They shall not pass.

They didn't. And, although many self-aggrandising myths attached to the old Left's "Battle of Cable Street" in subsequent decades, that day marked the beginning of the decline of Mosley and the BUF.

Things are different now, as Ezra Levant's dispatch on the intimidation of Calgary Jews in the heart of their own neighbourhood makes clear: there's no resistance, no old leftist solidarity, no nothing, just a fatalistic shrug as supporters of banned (and explicitly eliminationist) terrorist organisations commandeer private property to compare Jews to Nazis. What can you do? They shall pass, week after week. It's as if Sir Oswald had marched through Cable Street in triumph, and then decided to make it a twice-weekly event.