Nothing brings out the crazies like arguments about Israel

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 3:28 pm by Mark Shea

Nothing brings out the crazies like arguments about Israel 2014-12-31T15:28:10-07:00 Mark Shea

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Over at the Register blog, arguments, both sane and insane, continue between various flame warriors on the thread Jimmy Akin started concerning the supposed anti-semitism of Helen Thomas’ remarks. I’ve already pretty much said what I had to say: namely, that when you use a term like “anti-semite” you better mean what you say and not just use it as a cudgel to beat down people in arguments, or you will sooner or later wind up like these people, calling dorky greeting cards “anti-semitic” and calling outraged press conferences to astound normal people with your need for Insensitivity Training. My concern, like Jimmy’s, is that when everybody is an anti-semite, then nobody is. The Boy Who Cried Wolf has a sad ending for the Boy.

Of course, people being people, the thread at the Register quickly fractals out of control and all sorts of people turn up holding forth on all sorts of things, much of it sheer quackery. Did you know that Jesus was not a Jew? Me neither. But one expert in the Jewish Menace was explaining to everybody that the Son of David and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah was not a Jew. Also, we discovered that the Judeo-Masonic cabal has hated Helen Thomas for hundreds of years. I mean, she’s old and all but…

Not all the conversations were insane. Some rehearsed real arguments for both the Israeli and Palestinian grievances, etc. One thing that’s been hovering around in the back of my mind was finally crystalized this morning by this brief exchange:

And in this case she specifically named two countries- Germany and
Poland- countries where Jews and she means Jews should go. Countries where they were hunted down and exterminated because they were not deemed fit not only to live in their homes but anywhere else in the world.

Because, as we all know, pogroms are still carried out on a regular basis in Germany and Poland, while Jews enjoy complete safety in Israel.

I must confess I have been puzzled by the sotto voce belief that if a Jew did choose to emigrate to Germany or Poland, he stands a very good chance of being murdered by Nazis there. Similarly, it’s hard to square the proposition “Israel is locked in such a desperate struggle for existence that they had to keep Gazans from having soda, juice, jam, spices, shaving cream, chips, cookies and sweets lest those fiendish starving peasants fashion them into diabolical weapons that will kill thousands of defenseless Jews!!!” with the proposition “Jews are far safer in Israel than they would be in say, Manhattan or Berlin or Krakow.” The notion that it will always be 1945 doesn’t really seem to be engaged with reality.

Not that I think Thomas’ crazy “Go back where you came from” was engaged with reality. The notion of uprooting the Israeli population and sending them off someplace else is as crazy as the notion of, say, uprooting 12 million illegal aliens from the US and sending them back to Mexico. Not engaged with reality. But equally disengaged are the people who seem to think that Germany and Poland are still under Nazi rule and that a Jew who dared to move there is in imminent danger of death. The epicenter of Jew hatred in the world is now the Islamosphere… which is, you know, where Israel is located.

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