Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Hatred is turning me into a Jew

Nick Cohen (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Cohen
) è un giornalista
inglese, autore di un bel libro intitolato What's Left, sulla crisi
della sinistra europea. Come spiega in questo articolo, non è ebreo,
ma ....
From The Jewish Chronicle
Nick Cohen
February 12, 2009
The more the British Left indulges antisemitism, the more kosher I
feel
My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew. Despite
being called “Cohen”, I’ve never been Jewish before. It’s not simply
that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to
find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no
connection with Jewish culture.
The Jewish side of my family is my father’s (which is not a help, I
gather). My great grandparents fled from the Tsarist Empire at the
time of the pogroms, but their son, my grandfather, revolted. He
became a Communist and married outside the faith. My father was
brought up with no connection to Judaism and, inevitably, so was I.
My sole interest in Jewish concerns came from being a left-wing
opponent of the far Right, and the blood-soaked antisemitic
superstitions which turned Europe into a graveyard. When I was young,
such attitudes seemed unproblematic. You did not have to be a Jew to
oppose fascism; everyone I knew did that regardless of colour or
creed.
Today the old certainties have gone because there are two far-right
movements: the white neo-Nazi parties that the Left still opposes; and
the clerical fascists of radical Islam which, extraordinarily, the
modern Left succours and indulges. I am not only talking about Ken
Livingstone, George Galloway and their gruesome accomplices in the
intelligentsia. Wider liberal society is almost as complicit. It does
not applaud the Islamist far Right, but it will not condemn it either.
From the broadcasters, through the liberal press, the Civil Service,
the Metropolitan Police, the bench of bishops and the judiciary,
antisemitism is no longer an unthinkable mental deformation. As long
as the conspiracy theories of the counter-enlightenment come from
ideologues with dark rather than white skins, nominally liberal men
and women will not speak out.
Fight back and you become a Jew, whether you are or not. Mark Lawson
recently described an argument at the BBC over the corporation’s
decision not to screen the charity appeal for Gaza. His furious
colleague declared that the only reason Lawson supported the ban was
because he was Jewish. Lawson had to tell him that he was, in fact,
raised a Catholic.
A furious Labour MP was no different when he told a colleague of mine
that I had gone off the rails when I married a “hard-right” Jewish
woman from North London. My friend replied that this would be news to
my wife, a liberal Catholic from Stoke-on-Trent.
It was kind of him to point that out, but I would no longer protest
that I wasn’t Jewish, and I don’t think Lawson should either. It is
cowardly to stammer that you are not a Jew because you concede the
racist’s main point — that there is something suspect about being
Jewish — as you do it.
In any case, my experience of left-wing antisemitism has changed the
way I think and made me, if you like, more Jewish.
Although I want to see every Israeli settlement on the West Bank
dismantled, it was clear to me that when Hamas fired thousands of
rockets into Israel it had declared war and had to accept the
consequences. I would not have thought that five years ago.
You do not need me to add that mine is a minority point of view among
liberals, and that British Jews are living through a very dangerous
period. They are the only ethnic minority whose slaughter official
society will excuse. If a mass murderer bombed a mosque or black
Pentecostal church, no respectable person would say that the “root
cause” of the crime was an understandable repulsion at the deeds of al-
Qaeda or a legitimate opposition to mass immigration. Rightly, they
would blame the criminal for the crime.
If a synagogue is attacked, I guarantee that within minutes the
airwaves will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the
“root cause” of the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of
Israel or the Jewish diaspora.
Put like this, the position of British Jewry sounds grim. Remember,
however, that the first aim of radical Islam is to subjugate Muslims.
When brave feminists, gays, democrats and liberals in the Muslim world
and in Britain’s Muslim communities make a stand, they, too, are
accused of being the tools of Zionists.
As the struggle between theocracy and liberalism intensifies, I can
see some being pushed into taking the same journey I have taken and
finding their views towards Judaism and Israel softening as they
realise that antisemitism helps drive the fascistic ideologies of the
21st century just as it drove the Nazism of the 20th.
I will tell them that the opponents of totalitarianism must never be
frightened. If their enemies say they are Jews, they should shrug and
say: “All right, I am.” As long as readers of the Jewish Chronicle
don’t object, of course.
http://www.thejc.com/articles/hatred-turning-me-a-jew

 My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew.
Interessante, l'ho commentato sul blog.
http://rosalucsemblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/o-sei-fuori-o-sei-dentro.html
rosalucsemburg


Quando scrivi a proposito di queste faccende riveli sempre l'influenza
di un grande personaggio della cultura ebraica italiana: Franca Valeri
("pronto, obitorio? Sono la signora Cecioni, che c'avete quarcosa per
me?")