Post-Holocaust taboos against anti-Semitism are breaking down, and it is seeping into the mainstream of social and political discourse in the West — even America. So says Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who will speak on “The Threat of Global Anti-Semitism” at 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 14, at the Jewish Community Campus. Weitzman’s remarks are being presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee.
Mark Weitzm
So says Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who will speak on “The Threat of Global Anti-Semitism” at 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 14, at the Jewish Community Campus. Weitzman’s remarks are being presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee.
“One of the things I am going to talk about is the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism, and Helen Thomas is an excellent example of that,” Weitzman said. He was referring to the longtime White House correspondent who resigned in disgrace in June after her critical remarks about Israel devolved into a rant about how its Jews should “go home … to Germany.”
Weitzman pointed to other signs of this creeping trend toward defamation — and the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism — including the publication of the 2007 book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by otherwise respected academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
“The Mearsheimer and Walt book basically revives the myth that Jews can’t be patriotic citizens,” Weitzman said. “Then there is some of the campaign stuff today. In New York, a candidate was nominated and then dropped by the GOP — to its credit — who had written for hard-core, extremist publications in the past. I don’t mean politically conservative, but violently extremist.”
Weitzman noted that the Academy Awards has announced plans to give a special Oscar next year to French director Jean-Luc Godard, who has a history of anti-Semitic statements.
“What was shocking to me was not that they are honoring him,” Weitzman said, “but a quote at the end of the story from a defender of Godard, saying D.W. Griffith got an Academy Award, and he was horribly racist. Well, the Academy was new at that time, and that was before the Final Solution. Hasn’t this guy learned from history? It’s as if the Holocaust did not happen; holding up something that people did in 1936, as if it’s fine to do now.”
Photo by Nicholas Hannan-Stavroulakis: HANIA, Crete — The walls of the historic Etz Hayyim synaogue were covered with soot following an arson attack on Jan. 5, 2010.
Weitzman is director of government affairs and director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force against Hate and Terrorism, as well as the center’s chief representative to the United Nations. His speech here was scheduled to take advantage of the fact that he was coming to town for a meeting of the board of directors of the Association of Holocaust Organizations, on which he sits alongside MCHE’s Executive Director Jean Zeldin.
“I heard him talk last summer, and I wanted to have the community learn what the threats are, in terms of anti-Semitism, and what’s being done about it on the international level,” Zeldin said. “Mark is in a position to speak to both sides of the issue.”
Catholic concerns
In a phone interview from New York, Weitzman also expressed concern about anti-Semitism within another solidly mainstream group — the Catholic church. He wondered aloud where negotiations between the Vatican and the schismatic Society of Saint Pius X were going.(For background on this issue, see Chronicle story, “Alumnus says anti-Semitism ruled SSPX Seminary,” April 2, 2010)
“Hopefully, an acceptance of Nostra Aetate — the church’s revolutionary 1960s document filled with positive stuff about Jews and Judaism — will be the price of readmission to the church,”
Weitzman said. “The fact that they are still negotiating, I am not sure if that is good or bad; we need to keep an eye on it.”
Then there was a meeting of Middle Eastern bishops last month at the Vatican, at the conclusion of which Lebanese-born, U.S.-based Archbishop Cyrille Bustros said “We Christians cannot speak of the promised land as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ. There is no longer a chosen people …” See related story below.
Weitzman was appalled.
“This is the respectable, mainstream part of the church, and they are basically saying that Jews have no specific rights to Israel and using traditional Christian theological anti-Semitism as a basis,” he said. “The statement produced out of that meeting supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I’m glad to say. But the fact that somebody could come up and say that is an example of the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism and its conflation with anti-Zionism, and we are seeing it around the world.”
Targeting Jewish institutions
WASHINGTON — Neo-Nazi James von Brunn left bullet holes in the doors of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in June 2009 when he opened fire, killing a security guard.
Then there are the cases in which anti-Semitism moves from insulting rhetoric to violent action, and Weitzman and the Wiesenthal Center keep close track of them, too. Although the packages were intercepted before they could explode, reports that two bombs shipped from Yemen to the United States last month were addressed to Chicago-area synagogues is a reminder of the threat to Jewish institutions, Weitzman said.
“I think the threat is very real,” he said. “We have to walk a fine line between being very careful about security and yet … we can’t let it inhibit us from doing the things that mark us as Jews and as Americans. It’s not a local issue, but it is local, because the bombs were addressed to synagogues in Chicago. I am not sure that the intent was to blow these things up in the air only. The fact that Jewish institutions were targeted is significant.”
The incident also shows that as much as we love and rely on modern technology, it complicates security, Weitzman said.
“People are buying equipment in North Korea and shipping it to Yemen,” Weitzman said. “The operatives are trained in Iran, and Afghanistan, and their targets are in the West. … The technology of the iPhone and Google make it easier to target and manipulate the system, so we have to figure out how to deal with it. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle and wipe Google Earth off the Internet, so how can we deal with the fact that anyone can get a fix on any person or organization? It will require governmental bodies and security organizations getting together, making sure this technology is not being twisted to become a tool for the support of tyranny.”
U.S. bishop’s words spur Vatican-Jewish spat
Bishop Cyrille Bustros
ROME (JTA) — The Vatican and the Jewish world are at odds over a U.S. bishop’s rejection of a biblical rationale for Israel as a Jewish state.
Greek-Melkite Bishop Cyrille Salim Bustros of Newton, Mass., said at an Oct. 23 news conference that for Christians, “the concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians.”
Bustros was presenting the final document, or “Message,” of a monthlong Vatican synod of Middle Eastern bishops.
The advent of Jesus, he said, meant that Jews “are no longer the preferred people, the chosen people; all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.” Bustros added that “sacred Scripture should not be used to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestine.”
His remarks sparked condemnation from Israel and Jewish organizations. The Anti-Defamation League protested what it called “shocking and outrageous” comments.
“By stating that God’s Covenantal promise of land to the Jewish people ‘was nullified by Christ’ and that ‘there is no longer a chosen people,’ Archbishop Bustros is effectively stating that Judaism should no longer exist,” ADL National Director Abe Foxman wrote in a letter to the new Vatican official in charge of Catholic-Jewish relations, Cardinal-elect Kurt Koch. “This represents the worst kind of anti-Judaism, bordering on anti-Semitism.”
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon expressed “disappointment,” saying the synod had been “hijacked by an anti-Israel majority.”
The Vatican’s chief spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, responded to the criticism by distancing the synod from Bustros’ remarks. He said that personal comments by individual synod participants “should not be considered as the voice of the synod in its entirety.”
The final “Message” was the only text that expressed the approval of the full synod, he said. The Message mainly dealt with the plight of Christians in the Middle East, but it devoted a section to Israel and Jews.
Calling for a furthering of Jewish-Catholic dialogue, it also condemned anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, noted “the suffering and insecurity in which Israelis live,” and affirmed Israel’s right to live at peace within its “internationally recognized borders.” But it also noted “the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the whole region, especially on the Palestinians who are suffering the consequences of the Israeli occupation: the lack of freedom of movement, the wall of separation and the military checkpoints, the political prisoners, the demolition of homes, the disturbance of socio-economic life and the thousands of refugees.”
The Message also said “recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable.” It said, “With all this in mind, we see that a just and lasting peace is the only salvation for everyone and for the good of the region and its peoples.”