Bosomy Vipers
It's the expression of a world gone completely dotty, nothing less. Within a small country situated in a gravely destabilized geographic enclave, whose very presence there is a distinct danger, but which location was selected on the basis of historical, cultural and social antecedents, there has been revealed the presence of a compelling inner threat - of a nature responsible for the country's very existence.The vile threat to world Jewry that anti-Semitism, that perniciously brittle, hateful and demeaning discriminatory mistrust, distaste and compelling condition marking the singling out of an ethnic/religious/social group for special treatment resulting in rejection and persecution has raised its ugly head in Israel. The very country which owes its existence to the perceived and practical need to provide for a protected enclave for its people.
On closer examination, however, perhaps not that far fetched to draw forward an explanation, unpalatable as it is, even so. The fact that this very select ethno-religious people, having successfully won world approval in founding and establishing a legal geographic entity of their own, offering refuge from an often-hostile world, faces its own inner enemies is explicable, beyond its severely troubling existence.
Fact of the matter is simply that a population of six million Jews (plus another million non-Jews) within a country surrounded by restively hostile neighbours seems a puny number with which to counter hundreds of millions of ill-wishers. Which made it imperative to the country to draw unto itself a greater number of Jews, people sharing a quasi-similar heritage, alongside a current desire for survival.
Impelling the Jewish state to encourage, cajole and plead with the diaspora to see it in their hearts and self-interest to return to their beginnings, and by so doing, shore up the population of the State of Israel and its chances for survival. So desperately were Jewish immigrants sought that citizenship was automatically extended to any who could prove their Jewish heritage.
And there lies the heart of the problem. In that insufficient diligence took place in authenticating the truth of individuals' avowals of Jewish descent. There are, among the population of Israel, some million Russian-Jewish immigrants now established in Israel as citizens. Trouble is that from among that million, some migratory-aspirants were unable to furnish, or weren't even required to provide, proof of descent.
They were simply attempting to take advantage of an opportunity to take themselves out of poverty in the back country areas of the large Soviet state where their fortunes gave no promise of economic advancement. No matter, they were embraced as emigrants and future citizens of the country eager to augment its meagre Jewish presence. Economic migrants, they had no real stake in the country other than furthering their own interests.
These relatively few Russian immigrants with a distantly removed Jewish descent - or, as some records now appear to attest, none at all - are not remotely Jewish. Not in their values, their experiences and tradition, their mode of thinking or behaviour. They in fact betray the traditional festering distrust and dislike of Jews so common in their geography - that traditionally fostered pogroms.
And their original, tainted, Jew-hating attitudes remained intact, regardless of the fact that the country gave them a presence and opportunities perhaps denied them in Russia. Resentment of Jews remained and their attitudes and opinions and latent anti-Semitism informed their offspring.
Those very same young men who proudly accepted the symbols of Naziism, and gave vent to their anti-Semitic urges by carrying out attacks on the helpless, the vulnerable in society, and upon religious Jews. It's a miserably scurrilous thing to have happened, utterly unanticipated, and difficult to digest. On the other hand, it gives vent to an old truth:
Act in haste, repent at leisure.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Middle East, Realities
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, September 15, 2007
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