Anti-Semitism's increasingly thin and hard-to-see line

[JDPriestly]

8. K&R.

"I should also point out that denying the right to Israel to exist in a world of perhaps 50 or so Muslim nations is -to say the least- problematic."

Excellent.

The Holocaust was worse than any similar event in history that I have heard of. Young Americans just do not seem to grasp the horror of it.

That is why they are so susceptible to the anti-Jewish sentiment that hides as anti-Israel conceit. You do not have to agree with every policy or every action of Netanyahu or of Israel. But the necessity for all of humanity of the existence of a Jewish state, the affirmation of the right to freedom of religion and culture for all people that is Israel has to be recognized.

The answer in Israel and Palestine is co-existence and living in peace with each other, not as we saw with the Holocaust, the obliteration of the home and haven for the Jewish people that was created in Israel.

I lived in Europe for years. Anti-Jewish sentiment hovers beneath the surface in the countries I lived in. Most people there are not anti-Jewish. But the many, many centuries of persecution and exclusion of Jewish people has not been erased and probably will not be erased for generations yet to come. Even in England, I met people including one of my bosses who were virulently anti-Jewish. My boss who was anti-Jewish was strangely emotional, kind of crazy, about it. Scary stuff. I sat on a train from Vienna to a small town in which I lived in Austria across from the most extremely anti-Jewish person I have ever met an ex-NAZI and proud of it. I was shaking from fear when I got off the train.

I am not Jewish. But as an American, there were situations in which I could feel the terror that Jewish people would feel if the anti-semitic sentiment that still abounds in the world were not carefully controlled. I believe in freedom of expression and of religion. I recognize that sometimes one person's freedom of expression can destroy another person's freedom altogether. It iis not necessary to suppress expression. It is necessary to speak out in favor of freedom for all including Jewish people.