[To keep you busy while the US government is shut down… this free range interview:]
Today, we continue our examination of this most important subject by speaking with a renowned Jewish author and journalist, Nidra Poller. Born in America to an observant Jewish family, Ms. Poller left the confines of the United States for France, and since 1972, she has lived and worked in Paris. Thus, she is in the unique position to not only discuss the future of Israel, but she can give voice to the unfortunate rebirth of open Jew hate that is now plaguing the nations of Europe.
Jew hate is not a new story. It has pursued the children of Israel since they first became a “chosen people” and were given their purpose. Not to be superior to others, but to be a light unto the world and a shining example to humankind. To do good works for the betterment of all and to uphold the laws that permit humanity to peacefully co-exist in a civilized society.
Sadly, despite the noble intentions of the Jewish people, this was not to be. For 1800 years, Jews have been called Christ killers and faced unrelenting persecution. For 1400 years, Jews have been crushed by the surging armies of Islam and made into dhimmis and ‘Court Jews’, serving the whims of an unpredictable master. Bereft of their beloved Israel by Roman and Muslim invaders, they wandered the planet as exiles, never welcome and barely tolerated in the nations of the world; living in ghettos and denied all rights and privileges. Long before Hitler killed the six million, Jews were demonized and annihilated with impunity.
For all of those many centuries of persecution, death, and exile, the Jewish people never abandoned the hope that some day they would return to Israel and rebuild their nation. They prayed constantly, century after century, “next year in Jerusalem” and waited and suffered and never gave up. Somehow, they even managed to defy their many masters and maintain a continuous presence in Israel for 3300 years, clustered in impoverished villages, keeping their traditions, refusing to abandon their god and convert to the faith of their conquerors.
But this is not is story of defeat. It is a story of perseverance in the face of terrible odds and triumph over unbelievable adversity. It is about taking a desert and making it into a garden. The transformation of an ancient nation into a vital, vibrant modern society, populated by a people who remember their history and yearn for peace with every particle of their being. In a better world, the Israelites would be the heroes.
Yet, some things never change. Jew hate still permeates the human psyche and a supremacist religion refuses to relinquish its claim on the land it took by force so many centuries ago. So much hate, unrelenting, never ending, and still, the Jewish people say: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they prosper who love you. May peace be within your walls, And prosperity within your palaces.” A prayer for all of humanity.
Perhaps, if we listen with an open mind to what Nidra Poller has to say, we may begin to cast aside all the propaganda and utter nonsense that is now masquerading as reality and learn something of the truth. As Nidra wrote so simply and so eloquently, “Jews are an asset to civilization and a Jewish state is a precious asset to the world. Persecuting Jews, periodically trying to annihilate Jews is a recurrent bout of a terrible life-threatening illness of human societies…Turning Jews into pariahs, turning the Jewish state into an evil entity is a terrible perversion that cannot be cured. But it can be controlled. This is the task of Judaism. Not to feed into the destructive madness, not to drink the poison, but to stand up proudly and push back the tide.”
[Introduction written by Wolff Bachner for The Inquisitr.]
Now, let us begin our interview with Nidra Poller:
Wolff Bachner: Nidra, welcome to The Inquisitr. As an American Jew who has lived in Paris since 1972, you have witnessed first hand the rebirth of Jew hate and the incredible hostility to the state of Israel that is common today in Europe and Great Britain.
Nidra Poller: Yes, Wolf, and it happened suddenly between the 28th and 30th September 2000, with the outbreak of the misnamed “Intifada,” attributed to the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount (identified in France as “l’esplanade des mosquées” [Mosque Square]) and the fabricated report of the alleged killing of Mohamed al Dura. In the space of two days, the situation of Jews in France was radically transformed. You could hear the sound of a tear in the fabric of French society!
Of course this rupture, this outbreak of irrational hatred and violence, did not come out of a clear blue sky. Hostility to Jews is an ongoing phenomenon, an undercurrent that flows insidiously throughout history. But acute outbursts such as we saw in the year 2000 are still shocking and, somehow, unexpected.
At the time, while earning my living as a translator as I had been doing for some 30 years, I was thinking about the next novel I would write. I set aside that project. It was not a time for fiction. Events playing out before my eyes were of the scope and depth that makes great novels. I opened a writer’s notebook and started to chronicle what was happening. I wrote in French because I was speaking to my adopted country, and because I had been writing in French rather than English for close to twenty years.
Today’s blogs are a pale version of the writer’s notebook, a distinguished literary tradition, an art in itself and one of my favorite literary forms because I have always used fiction the better to write about reality. And, as a novelist, I work with time as a precious metal. I love to capture reality with precision in its fleeting moments. My Cahier d’une honnête citoyenne tells the story of what was happening as it happened in France, Europe, the United States, and the world in the crucial period that began in September 2000. This literary exercise, shaped by my abiding interest in history and politics, led gradually to my current activity as a latecomer journalist. While I was composing and subsequently publishing in French, my colleagues were asking me to translate their texts into English because their voices could not be heard in France. After a few years I decided it was foolish of me to continue writing in French when English, my mother tongue, reached the international audience we were all grasping for. I will be publishing an English version of the chronicle—Notes from a Simple Citizen– in January or February.
There was the shock in September 2000, but we had advance warning in 1991 during the First Gulf War. Then, too, I set aside fiction and opened a writer’s notebook where I chronicled the “arabesque” discourse built around Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait… to liberate Palestine. I realized then that anti-Semitism could come back in a new form with new arguments and the same sting. French intellectuals, some of Muslim origin others not, spun a tale that, while remaining theoretical and abstract, would later justify atrocities against Jews.
“Betrayed by Europe: an Expatriate’s Lament” Commentary 2003
Wolff Bachner: How dangerous is Europe circa 2013 for Jews?
Nidra Poller: It is difficult to measure danger. First, no matter how many Jews are attacked or, in the worst cases, maimed or murdered for being Jewish, most Jews are not attacked. That leaves a lot of normal life. Second, the specific insecurity aimed at Jews has spread to the general population (and this is not accidental); one can be attacked as a woman, as a Frenchie, as an infidel, as a fatcat or at random. Nonetheless, some random criminal attacks become brutally violent when the assailants realize their victim is Jewish. It would be wrong to imagine that French Jews live in trembling and terror. Or that they are not afraid, wary, cautious, and concerned. A vibrant Jewish life is visible anywhere and everywhere. However, the possibility of acute outbreaks of violent Jew hatred in reaction to international or domestic incidents is ever present. The possibility that the situation will worsen is always kept in mind.
Wolff Bachner: Is there really a rebirth of Jew hate or was it just better hidden in the years immediately following World War Two?
Nidra Poller: I believe that the irrational hostility toward Jews and Judaism is a constant and will never disappear. It ebbs and flows, rises and falls, takes myriad forms according to the circumstances, but cannot be eliminated. Faced with concrete evidence of the consequences of this hostility—the Shoah—our societies saw it as evil and swore to never again indulge in such despicable practices. But the safeguards built to prevent the repetition of those horrors were gradually twisted into mechanisms for the contemporary version of the age-old murderous rage. The rejection of nationalism and military might—presumed causes of war and persecution– became an instrument for rejection and persecution of the Jewish state that is our rampart against genocide. Civil rights, human rights, and the United Nations became weapons in the new war against the Jews.
It is up to us to develop better strategies to deal with this pathological attitude to Jews. I keep looking for a new term, the right term to describe it. We are stuck with “anti-Semitism” or “antisemitism” but should be able to get beyond it, since it was only invented in the 19th century to name a phenomenon that had already existed for more than a thousand years. I want to find a term that correctly designates the connection between the two elements—Jews and the attitude. Ant-Semitism is not a “something” directed at Jews it is a pathology of individuals and societies that hides behind the Jew or passes through the Jew. It acts against us but it is not really about us. We are forced to be the vector of a rage against life, against ethics, hope, intelligence, clarity, pleasure… all that is good. But it does not end there: it is a refusal to accept reality, mortality, free will. At any given time, the Jew will stand for one or more of these qualities that society cannot deal with. It is not Judeophobia or Jew hatred, it is a frustrated yearning to be human, a profound despair, a dismal lack of courage that turns on the Jew, perceived as the one who has it all. Of course Jews individually fall short of Judaism, but that doesn’t change the image or ease the pain of those who feel cheated and deprived… of not being Jewish.
Pathological jealousy of Judaism will never disappear. We don’t expect evil to disappear, we know we will have to deal with it forever. Hostile powers, armed robbers, savage beasts, insane killers, destructive forces of nature… they can’t be eliminated. We have to deal with them effectively, make the pathology boomerang, return it to the sender instead of letting it lodge in our midst.
Wolff Bachner: What is life like for a European Jew who is proud of their Jewish identity and makes no effort to conceal their Jewishness?
Nidra Poller: I cannot pretend to know the extent of harassment endured by Jews coming and going to work, to the synagogue, to Jewish schools in certain neighborhoods of certain cities in France. As for other European countries, I do not have information beyond what you can read in the media.
There are so many situations in which it is impossible to hide one’s Jewish identity. Wearing a baseball cap instead of a kippa [skullcap], keeping a magen david [Jewish star] out of sight, hiding a plastic bag from a kosher delicatessen or the cover of a book related to Israel or Judaism … what else? If one doesn’t “obviously” look Jewish, it might make things easier, but not necessarily. Some Jews with no telltale indications have been assaulted in the métro. Observant Jews, haredi, rabbis do not attempt to hide their identity. Girls in modest dress, boys with tsitsis [similar to prayer shawl fringe, hanging out under the shirt] can be seen almost anywhere. Students in universities and elite schools are subject to a different kind of pressure—intellectual, cultural, religious, clannish. Many resist valiantly, others give in.
Some Americans get the idea that no one can wear a kippa in the streets of France. False. At the same time, many Jews are harassed verbally and physically. It can happen anywhere at any time. There are many proud Jews in France who do not hide their identity and who assert their right to live fully and freely in their own country. And there are many proud French Jews who leave because they feel that things can only get worse for them as Jews but also as French citizens.
Wolff Bachner: What are typical examples of modern European Jew hate and who is responsible?
Nidra Poller: We have all the varieties. There is the snide dinner party gossipy contempt for Jews. It’s a musty outworn bag of dried up ideas about Jews, Judaism, Israel, and Zionism, collected over the ages from all sources and centuries. Ancient Greek anti-Semitism mixes with modern French hostility to religion in general, without neglecting Christian anti-Judaism and Nazi anti-Semitism, and an added heavy dose picked up from Islamic Jew hatred. This kind of attitude, which can be found in the workplace as in cultural and intellectual circles and in the media, always existed but it was kept quiet until recently. Today, the spread of violent forms of Jew hatred by Muslims is taken by highbrows as permission to express the milder versions.
Animosity toward Israel is more virulent and more dangerous than the dinner party strain of anti-Semitism. French media, cultural and intellectual circles, government, and the general population are steeped in this form of anti-Semitism that is not repressed because it is purportedly different. These people don’t hate Jews like the Nazis did. They don’t call for the extermination of Jews or the elimination of the Jewish state. They simply develop arguments that would lead to the above, arguments based on “international law,” human rights, national liberation and, of course, the hallowed demands of Palestinians. These people espouse attitudes that justify genocidal hatred of Jews, but deny such intentions. They defend Islamic claims against the Jews, but always for the most noble reasons. They know everything about the Mideast conflict, but only if it leads to the conclusion that Israel is in the wrong, must be punished, amputated of territory, forced to submit to international dictates and the aggressive demands of its Muslim neighbors. This form of friendly hostility to Jews / Israel includes the entire peace process ideology. It is held by some of our best friends, and is almost universal in French political classes.
The most virulent form of Jew hatred is Islamic. Muslims are responsible for 99.9% of attacks against Jews. The genocidal hatred of Jews that motivates this behavior is inscribed in sacred texts and has been practiced down through the ages. Despite frantic attempts to deny the evidence, nothing can change the facts of this specifically Islamic form of animosity toward Jews. The slightest detail that could diminish the religious factor is grasped and exploited. Sébastien Selam’s killer Adel Boumedienne, Youssouf Fofana who exterminated Ilan Halimi, and Mohamed Merah who executed three Jewish children and a teacher in Toulouse,all dressed in sweat suits, drank, and hung out with women. Commentators who know worse than nothing about Islam frantically denied the religious factor in those murders. In fact, intensified religious affiliation and practices is documented in all three cases. Further, almost all the members of the heterogeneous Gang of Barbarians led by Fofana were Muslim-born or converts to Islam.
Without this specifically Islamic strain of virulent anti-Semitism the other forms would remain low key and essentially inoperative. Today, this murderous rage functions like blood to sharks, attracting other forms of Jew hatred in a two-pronged movement: as a dhimmitude concession to tyrannical Islam—we hate the Jews as much as you do so leave us alone—and as permission to indulge in otherwise taboo behavior.
Wolff Bachner: How much of the increase in European Jew hate can be tied to the massive influx of African and Middle Eastern Muslims to Europe and Great Britain?
[to read the whole interview…]
Nidra Poller
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