Ken Berwitz
Today\’s paragraphs come to us from Brendan O\’Neill, writing for the UK\’s Jewish News. Mr. O\’Neill, whose name suggests he is not Jewish*, is justifiably appalled by the left\’s reaction to the wave of stabbings and other violence against Israeli Jews in Jerusalem.
Here is part of what he has to say about it:
Leftists are far more alarmed by Israel\’sresponse to the stabbings than they are by the stabbings themselves. They\’vecastigated Israel for putting more soldiers on the streets and for making iteasier for citizens to buy guns (nothing freaks out the left more than a Jewwith a gun). They seem to expect Israel to leave its citizens open to attack.
Echoing Haaretz writer RogelAlpher, who wrote a demented column expressing his surprise that a Palestinianhas never grabbed “a saw or a hammer and murdered me”, some Western radicalsare not only glorifying the stabbings but are condemning those who have thetemerity to protect themselves from being stabbed. Why won\’t Jews letthemselves be killed?
It’s so depraved. Whatever youthought of the PLO\’s guerrilla activity in the 1970s, these stabbings areclearly very different. It\’s anti-Semitism. That some Westerners are trying topresent it as something else – a natural outburst of despair – says more abouttheir busted moral compasses than it does about what\’s happening in the MiddleEast.
Strip away the euphemisms, pickapart the talk of a “knife intifada”, and there\’s no escaping the fact – thehorrific fact – that some Westerners are defending the stabbing to death ofpeople for being Jewish.
This is such a sad day for theleft. What happened to that left which was the heir to the warriors ofEnlightenment who helped liberate Europe\’s Jews from their ghettos? That leftwhich railed against the anti-Semitic “socialism of fools”? That left which,even in the darkest moment in human history – the Holocaust – risked life andlimb to help Jews? It is dead. And that is a tragedy of epic proportions.
Interesting take. I don\’t know that Mr. O\’Neill is 100% correct, but I am certain he is reasonably close.
For years, I have noted that there is no shortage of closed-mindedness, and racism, and intolerance, on the left – even as its adherents accuse everyone else of these “attributes”. Mr. O\’Neill apparently sees this too…which is why he wins Paragraphs Of The Day honors.
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*Many years ago, my wife was student-teaching elementary school in upper Manhattan. One of the children was named O\’Hara. And he was Jewish……on his father\’s side, not his mother\’s. If I remember correctly, his father emigrated to Ireland before coming to the USA. While there, he decided to anglicize his name. So he became a Jewish O\’Hara. Just goes to show that you never know.
Which reminds me of a joke (what doesn\’t?) – one which reminds us that we are who we are, no matter how we try not to be.
There was a law firm of Lipschitz and Garfinkle – both funny-sounding Jewish names. Finally Lipschitz couldn\’t take the smirks and jokes anymore, so he told Garfinkle he was changing his name to O\’Brien. Garfinkle, now realizing that this would mean he was the only one who would have to put up with it, decided to also change his name to O\’Brien, On their first day with the new names, the phone rings, and their secretary answers “O\’Brien and O\’Brien”. The caller says “I\’d like to speak to Mr. O\’Brien”. And the secretary says “Which O\’Brien do you want? Lipschitz or Garfinkle”?
