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week before Christmas, the Israeli ambassador to Berlin wrote a
letter to Der Spiegel, Germany's leading newsmagazine, protesting
an editorial they had published comparing the policies of the Israeli
prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to those pursued by Adolf Hitler.
The comparison,
wrote the ambassador, was "an insult to all Holocaust survivors
and to the entire Jewish people."
In the ensuing
days, the editorial was widely condemned in Germany. Though neo-Nazi
elements do still exist in German society, the postwar majority
has taken large, and largely successful, strides to purge itself
of the legacy of anti-Semitism.
The writer
of Der Spiegel's editorial, however — Rudolf Augstein,
one of Germany's best-known journalists — also let slip that
the same cannot be said of France. Rather than properly apologize
for his obscene comparison, Augstein said in response to the ambassador's
letter: "In France one can say that, but apparently not in
Germany."
Augstein may
have had in mind comments of the kind recently made by Marc Gentilli,
the president of the French Red Cross, who described as "disgusting"
a request by the American Red Cross that Israel be admitted to the
International Red Cross, and that the Star of David be accepted
alongside its existing emblems, the cross and the crescent.
Gentilli, head
of one of France's leading humanitarian organizations, left little
doubt about the disdain he holds for the Star of David, but lest
he be thought hostile to all "foreigners," he did at the
same time call on the Palestine Red Crescent Society to immediately
apply for membership too — even though Palestine is not yet
a state.
But any doubts
anyone had that Augstein's reading of French attitudes was correct
would have been dispelled the very next day, by a column by Barbara
Amiel in the London Daily Telegraph. Amiel revealed that
at a reception at her house, the ambassador of "a major EU
country" told guests that the current troubles were all because
of "that sh***y little country Israel."
"Why,"
he asked, "should the world be in danger of World War Three
because of those people?"
Within 24 hours,
the Guardian newspaper had identified the ambassador in question
as Daniel Bernard, France's man in London and one of President Chirac's
closest confidants. (While Bernard has not admitted using those
exact words, he hasn't clearly denied doing so either.)
Several conservative
columnists in the United States (where are those who profess to
be liberal?) have condemned the ambassador for his "crude anti-Semitic
remarks."
What has not
been properly noted in the United States is that in the British
and French media, it is not the French ambassador or the anti-Semites
who are being condemned, as one would expect — but Barbara
Amiel and "those people." And as for Israel, it seems
to be open season.
A piece in
the Independent, for example, by one of the paper's regular
columnists ("I'm fed up being called an anti-Semite,"
by Deborah Orr, December 21, 2001), described Israel as "sh***y"
and "little" no fewer than four times.
"Anti-Semitism
is disliking all Jews, anywhere, and anti-Zionism is just disliking
the existence of Israel and opposing those who support it,"
explains Orr. "This may be an academic rather than a practical
distinction, and one which has no connection with holding the honest
view that in my experience Israel is sh***y and little."
In the Guardian
— another British daily that claims to represent enlightened
liberal views — columnist Matt Wells ("Every salon tells
a story — that's why the lady is a hack," December 20,
2001) denounced Amiel as "an arch-Zionist" but had nothing
but sympathy for poor Mr. Bernard, who, he claimed, "was struggling
against a tide of anger from Israel." (In fact, the Israeli
government hasn't made a single official comment on the whole affair.)
Indeed, rather
than blighting the distinguished diplomatic career of M. Bernard,
who previously served as France's ambassador to the Netherlands
and at the United Nations, events in fact show it was Amiel who
made the "diplomatic gaffe," according to the British
and French commentators. (Le Monde ran a front-page attack
on Amiel, dismissing the Daily Telegraph as "reactionary,"
"paranoid," and "preachy.")
If the French
are now almost as open about their anti-Semitism as the Egyptians
are (in 2001, the best-selling song in Cairo was one titled "I
hate Israel"), evidently in England the crime today is not
actually being anti-Semitic, but rather condemning someone for their
anti-Semitism.
Writing in
the (London) Observer, columnist Richard Ingrams (in a piece
titled "Black's hole," December 23, 2001 — Black
is Amiel's married name) says the "gaffe" wasn't made
by the ambassador, but by Amiel — for "betraying the confidences
of the dinner table" and writing such an "intemperate
article."
Ingrams predicted
that it would not be Bernard who would no longer be welcome in polite
London society, but the Blacks, who he guessed would have to "shortly
decamp" to Manhattan.
And —
as if one column of this stripe in a single issue wasn't enough
— another of the Observer's columnists, Euan Ferguson,
("Gossip: 'tis the reason to be jolly," December 23, 2001),
that same day writes: "Ms Amiel is apparently as welcome now
in the chic salons of north London as a fatwa in a sauna."
Ferguson has no criticism to make of Bernard, or of the French government
that has given him its full backing — though he remark, with
regard to "l'affaire Bernard," that Israel has "the
stubborn belief that the lifelong wish of our current pin-up boy,
little baby Jesus, was to have his birthday celebrated by the shooting
of innocent children in the street."
The denial
of British racism goes so deep that many in England seem not even
to realize what anti-Semitism is.
Columnist Joan
Smith ("Dinner at Amiel's leaves a bad taste," December
23, 2001) writes that Amiel's "assumption that Bernard's remark
was anti-Semitic, is pretty dubious. …If there is a lesson
to be learned from this episode, it is not the French ambassador's
politics that have been called into question on this occasion, but
his taste in friends."
Richard Woods,
in the London Sunday Times (December 23, 2001, "When
silence speaks volumes"), says the ambassador's remark was
only "apparently anti-Semitic."
There have
been one or two admirable exceptions to this pattern, notably Andrew
Sullivan (a British commentator who has been based in the U.S. for
over two decades) and the Anglo-Jewish writer Melanie Phillips —
but they are very much in the minority. Phillips has been left to
make her strongest remarks on the subject outside the U.K. ("British
Polite Society Has Found a Not-So-New Target", December 24,
2001, Wall Street Journal Europe).
For every Sullivan
or Phillips, there seem to be many among London's "chattering
classes" that actually find attacks on Jews rather amusing.
Here, for example, is columnist Alexei Sayle in the Independent,
writing shortly after the latest batch of Israeli teenagers had
been blown to pieces by suicide bombers: "If a vivisectionist
has their car burnt or a right-wing Israeli is shot or Ben Elton's
musical closes early because of poor ticket sales, I can't say I
can find it within myself to care very much." (Ben Elton is
a British playwright and stand-up comedian.)
Since Bernard's
remarks were reported, there have over a dozen fresh anti-Semitic
incidents in France. Only last weekend, attackers firebombed a synagogue
in the northern Paris suburb of Goussainville. A few days before
that, gasoline bombs were hurled into a Jewish school in the southeastern
Paris suburb of Créteil, setting a classroom on fire. On
the same day, another synagogue was torched.
Fortunately,
no one was injured in these particular incidents. But it can only
be a matter of time before someone is. Have the French and English
learned nothing from the 20th century?
(For more writing
by Tom Gross on the European media and Israel, see http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross110101.shtml.)
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