Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: antisemitismo ed islamofobia - pericolose [ed inutili] confusioni

http://www.thejc.com/print/43637
Dangers of ignoring the contrasts in Euro hatreds
By Benjamin Weinthal
Created 13 Jan 2011 - 10:56am
It is now a commonplace in Europe to regard antisemitism and the more
recent phenomenon, "Islamophobia", as much of a muchness. Yet there
are important historical distinctions between the hatred of Jews and
anti-Muslim prejudice. While European Muslims are without question
subject to discrimination and violence, no reasonable observer could
claim that they face the prospect of a Final Solution-style
extermination plan.
Ironically, the Berlin Centre for Research on Antisemitism cemented
the marriage between Islamophobia and antisemitism at a conference
just over two years ago. Despite its name, this is a body that has
largely ignored both Islamic antisemitism and expressions of anti-
Jewish sentiment in post-Holocaust Germany.
A week from now, the Moses Mendelssohn Centre, based in Potsdam, is
sponsoring a second academic conference devoted to the "Concept of the
Enemy Islam and Antisemitism" in the Bavarian city of Tutzing. In the
past, the Mendelssohn Centre's director, Dr Julius Schoeps, has
rejected such comparisons as unhelpful but it seems there is now a new
political climate.
Last month, Richard Herzinger, of the German daily Die Welt, neatly
captured the wrongheadedness of Europe's new political conviction when
he stated that "it is not 'Islamophobia' that is the antisemitism of
the 21st century, but antisemitism."
Writing in Libération last November, the French philosopher Pascal
Bruckner noted that the idea of Islamophobia originated in
revolutionary Iran. In Bruckner's view, allegations of Islamophobia
allow Islamic radicals to blunt criticism of extremist Islam and
rationalise the rejection of secular Western values. In short,
"Islamophobia" is a gagging order. But Herzinger, Bruckner and the few
journalists and academics who question the rhetoric of Islamophobia
are a minority.
The fact is, European societies have gone to great lengths to stifle
any expression of anti-Islamic sentiment - even, some might say, at
the expense of freedom of speech.
In 2008, for instance, the right-wing extremist Pro Cologne political
party organised an anti-Islam conference. Thousands of demonstrators
from all walks life took to the streets in protest against this "Stop
Islam" event, prompting the city of Cologne to pull the plug on it.
By contrast, when four years earlier Walter Hermann set up his so-
called "Cologne Wailing Wall" exhibit - which includes a cartoon of a
man wearing a Star-of-David bib and an American flag while devouring a
Palestinian boy and holding a knife that bears the word "Gaza",
alongside him a glass filled with blood - on Cathedral Square, the
bustling pedestrian zone in the middle of the city, it was allowed to
stand without protest.
In the wake of the Shoah, Germany is of course a special case. The
motivation of its intellectuals in regarding hatred of Jews and of
Muslims as indistinguishable is complex. Writing in the weekly
Freitag, journalist Sabine Pamperrien recently described critics of
the equating of Islamophobia with antisemitism as Winkeladvokaten -
loosely translatable as "shyster lawyers", a term that the Nazis used
to degrade Jewish lawyers during the Third Reich.
The same description was applied to the German left-wing politician,
Gregor Gysi, by an Austrian neo-fascist and convert to Islam, Robert
Schwarzbauer, who specifically branded Gysi a "shyster lawyer of
Zionism" for his efforts to combat his party's anti-Israeli platform.
A significant contrast between antisemitism and Islamophobia - which
the merging of them dangerously ignores - is that the former manages
to bring together such uneasy bedfellows as radical leftists,
fanatical Muslims and right-wing extremists.
Above all, the darkest blot on German history that is the Holocaust
speaks against the blending of the two hatreds that the Moses
Mendelssohn conference in Tutzing is about to endorse. The Shoah seems
to weigh so heavily on German society as to promote a psychological
need to cast it off, to diminish it.
German-Jewish philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued
that the crimes of the Holocaust created such profound guilt among
some Germans that they tend to ignore antisemitism, blame the Jews for
the Holocaust, and hold Israel to moral standards they apply to no
other country.
A University of Bielefeld survey last year found that 57 per cent of
Germans questioned agreed with the statement that "Israel is
conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians".
Conflating antisemitism with anti-Muslim thinking may serve as a
release for German guilt. But it has dangerous consequences for
European Jews and undermines the legitimate fight against radical
Islamic terrorists who threaten Europeans of all faiths and
backgrounds.

 anti-Muslim prejudice
certo...gli ebrei erano innocenti, mentre il complotto rossoverde
esiste davvero, quindi non è islamofobia impedire ai musulmani di
pregare, è cosa buona e giusta.
57 per cent of Germans questioned agreed with the statement that
"Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the
Palestinians".
e riecco Goldhagen, già strasputtanato per quello che scrive dei
tedeschi di 70 anni fa, attualizzato. Meritereste che la Merkel vi
lasciasse col culo per aria riprendendosi i suoi sottomarini nucleari,
così vedete la differenza tra i vostri deliri e la realtà

 esiste davvero,
no. Non ti intendi di razzismo.