Today\’s paragraph comes to us from Mark Steyn\’s latest online commentary. It is dark, unsettling, and – as we have come to expect from Mr. Steyn – all too accurate:
Hadthey not died as part of the CharlieHebdokillers\’ final act, I wonder how much publicity the murders ofPhilippe Braham, Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, and François-Michel Saadaat a kosher grocery store would have attracted. An Islamic fanatickilled another quartet of Jews at the Jewish Museum in Brussels lastspring, and it was a big story for a couple of days, and then fadedaway. Over the last decade, the Continent seems to have developed acertain psychological ease with the routine murder of Jews. Whatremains of Jewish communal life in Europe now takes place behindreinforced doors and barbed wire, and the actual extinction of anentire identity group\’s presence is discussed as calmly as thelong-range weather. Forty-five per cent of British Jews say Jews haveno future in Britain, and 58 per cent says Jewshave no future in Europe.
History repeating itself?
Yes, exactly.
George Santayana has often been quoted as saying “Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”. But those are not his exact words. Santayana actually said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
Unfortunately, Santayana didn\’t have anything in that quote about those who do remember the past and, instead of being appalled by it are perfectly happy to repeat it – which, sadly, seems always to include a great many Europeans.
With it all, Jews have managed to survive and contribute for almost 6 millennia. I wonder how much longer that will last.
