Anti-Semitism in Europe: ‘The devil that never dies’

[CopyBoy]

WASHINGTON (RNS) The paragraph, read out loud by one of the world’s foremost scholars of the Holocaust, chilled the audience.

“Contaminated by the monstrous and rooted ‘certitude’ that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God … the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner,” read Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, at a Georgetown University conference Monday (Feb. 29) on anti-Semitism in Europe.

“Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid,’” he continued. “Israel in short is a racist state by virtue of Judaism’s monstrous doctrines, racist not just against the Palestinians but against the entire world.”

Goldhagen stopped reading.

“Now, if I told you that these were the words of a Hamas leader, or any number of Middle Eastern political officials, or movement leaders, you wouldn’t be very surprised,” he said. “But these were the words of Jose Saramago, the Nobel Prize-winning author, as published in 2002 in El Pais, the paper of record of Spain.”

religionnews.com/2016/03/01/anti-semitism-conference-examines-the-devil-that-never-dies-x-anti-semitism-georgetown-conference-daniel-jonah-goldhagen-david-saperstein-jacques-berlinerblau/

 

[Tablefor9]

Atrocious, but hardly surprising. The seeds of this are bearing fruit in the Americas, as well.

 

[Padres1969]

Atrocious, but hardly surprising. The seeds of this are bearing fruit in the Americas, as well.

I don’t know about that. I find it very surprising. Maybe I’m not in touch with the anti-Semitic attitudes of Europe, but to find out 70 years after the Holocaust that this kind of blatant bigotry against Jews is still present is absolutely disgusting and surprising.

 

[Micosil]

I think I remember something about this back when I was still in high school here. Caused a substantial stink, rightly so.

 

[Peter_J]

I don’t know about that. I find it very surprising. Maybe I’m not in touch with the anti-Semitic attitudes of Europe, but to find out 70 years after the Holocaust that this kind of blatant bigotry against Jews is still present is absolutely disgusting and surprising.

Yeah – no matter how many times I hear about Europe’s antisemitism, it’s always sad.

 

[exnihilo]

There is no doubt anti-Semitism in Europe but the quotes from the author hardly are. Criticism is not anti-Semitism.