Anti-Semitism on the rise - Sine Qua Non

Not since the Holocaust has there been a more obvious and compelling validation of why there must be a Jewish State of Israel. The staggeringly frequent and grotesque demonstrations of anti-Semitism now proliferating through the European continent reinforce the need for a sovereign nation that Jews safely can call their home.

Unfortunately, however, the upswing in anti-Semitism seen in Europe is only a part of the rising trend appearing elsewhere in the world. From Paris to Tunis to Damascus, Jews are being reintroduced to an old theme.

Most alarmingly, although certainly not surprisingly, these flames of hatred are being fanned not just in casbahs of the Middle East but also in the "enlightened democracies" of Western Europe. Having funded Yassar Arafat's "educational" system for years, the European Union now feels more at ease stating the inciting and horrifying lies they have heretofore only published. Medieval blood libels of Jews grinding the bones of Christian children for ritual unleavened cakes have resurfaced in the context of a "cleaner" European continent.

But we have heard this all before. And no one has ever had to twist Europe's arm to bear their baser side. Upset over diversifying nationalities, many in the conservative right of European politics, like Russian Vladimir Zhirinovsky, claim, "People are tired of loose democracy, which gives birth to crime and large-scale migration." Seemingly, Zhirinovsky is right; if France's endorsement of Jean-Marie Le Pen proves anything, it's that ultranationlist candidates like Le Pen and Austria's Joerg Haider are no longer extremists on the fringe but real players on the European political scene.

Unlike 70 years ago, though, as Adolf Hitler was ascending Germany's political ladder, Jews for the first time in 2000 years have a sovereign nation in which to live. There was no escape from the grip of Nazi death that smothered Europe then, but now there is. While then, even those with the foresight to see their fates, like the passengers of the S.S. St. Louis, were turned away at America's shores, today they will be welcomed to their homeland, one that must be free from European hate as well as Arafat's terror army.

So with today's attacks at synagogues in resort islands of Tunisia, or the dozens of anti-Semitic incidents in France, Belgium and the former Soviet Union, Jews of the Diaspora should beware. Indeed, in the face of what Avi Beker, secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, calls "an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitism on this continent," Israel's most powerful religious party urged French Jews to emigrate to Israel to escape anti-Semitism.

Israel, like the United States, is a victim of terror and counters with restraint in self-defense. And yet, Sweden, maker of Volvos, ball bearings and hardened steel for the Nazis, vilifies the victim. Sweden, among the world's leaders in hypocrisy, in the name of the father of dynamite, decries Shimon Peres while silently endorsing the murderous and treacherous Arafat. Even high-ranking Democratic politicians in the United States attempt to straddle this issue, waiting to see which way the Jihad wind blows. Ironically, the ranking leader of the party of eight of 10 American Jews, Democrat Senate majority leader Tom Daschle blocked a bipartisan resolution by Senators Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein to designate the PLO as a terrorist group. Should Israel be thankful that at an AIPAC gathering Daschle "courageously" played the pro-Israel card? Talk is cheap. Just ask Colin Powell.

Clearly, in addition to the reaffirming what we already know (the French and Flemish hate the Jews), the old coalitions may be changing. Spain, the motherland of the Inquisition, Portugal, land of the Expulsion, and Italy, tacitly upholding its honor as a land of bravery, decry imagined"massacres" by Israel, while endorsing the use of terror as a legitimate tool of "political independence." Strikingly, and knowing that terror cannot serve any legitimate function, Germany, Britain, Canada and the Czech Republic voted to strike down the U.N. Resolution that would legitimize terror as a justifiable weapon for gaining political independence.

Yet since the outbreak of the most recent Palestinian uprising, Jews around the world have come under increased attack. Despite many attempts to untie the hate of anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism, the events of the past 18 months prove otherwise.

Even as we hoped to believe that we purged the world of the last bit of madness with the fall of communism, we realize this is not so. As we struggle to shake free of the malaise of the 1990s, we are reminded of the old Asian prophecy and curse, "May you live in interesting times."

The world has turned its back to the Jews before. Whether left alone during the sneak attack of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the gas chambers of the 1940s or the pogroms and jihads of the past, Jews know what it is to face isolation and extermination. The question that remains, then, is not one of unfounded paranoia. The world is once more approaching the brink of the abyss, pushing the Jews ahead into the darkness. As the German pastor Neimoeller sagely observed about the rise of Nazism: "First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out.