Bad News From Newburg, NY

Police charged 4 Muslim men for plotting to destroy Synagogues in River Side, NY. This news served as a sort of confirmation to my long time held belief that the US policies in the world and particularly in the middle east, play a significant role in the recent anti-Semitism expressed by Muslims. Surely, hateful mullahs, with the help of Arab kings and dictators, have successfully turned a territorial dispute between the Palestinians and Israel into a religious one.

History provides no evidence planned massacres of Jews in Muslim lands except for two events and even one of the two, the earlier one, is a questionable. The other occurred in Hebron in 1930’s. If I am not mistaken, that resulted in the death of 80 or so innocent Jews.. Christian communities of Europe, however, showed a long history of discrimination against Jews, events of out rights massacres and genocides are in hundreds if not in thousands. And more recently the Holocaust during which they killed about 6 million innocent Jews including 1.2 million children.

Muslims, when in power, showed very little prejudice towards Jews. Indeed, Rambam, a great iconic figure of the middle ages, lived and died a blessed life among Muslims. It was this life of ease and comfort that enabled him to write Misshna Torah, a great scholarly work, a great commentary on Torah. He was a man of a very prominent stature in the Muslim society of his time.

But current situation of our societies is different. While not even close to what the European society showed for last 1950 years or so, all thanks to the Palestinians impossible demands for peace settlement, a mad man in Teheran expresses his willingness to let million or two Muslims die to destroy Israel. Mullahs from Sawat to Strasbourg preach hateful sermon against the West, against US and against Jews. Why? Because they “feel pain” for their Palestinian brothers and sisters for their plight without mentioning / acknowledging that most Israelis want to live in peace with their neighbors and it is the Palestinian who are putting forward impossible demands such as Right to Return. Right to Return, may have some moral ground but it is impossible for any Israeli government to accept. It is truly a death warrant for the state of Israel, a democracy where Arabs, unlike in any Arab land, vote freely.

And so hate train continue its journey to hell.

“It is OK to kill Jews”

Today is May 19, 2009. As I was driving to work this morning listening to the news. Some guy named Morgan was arrested for killing Yohan Justin- Jinich, a Wesleyan University student in a bookstore. The killer wrote in his journal ” I think it is OK to kill Jews”. Yohan’s grandmother, as the newsman informs, is a holocaust survivor.

Has anything changed from the dark “Years of Extermination”? Years when ordinary neighbors in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Stonia and many many other places, taunted, cursed and even laughed as their neighbors were being rounded up, humiliated, paraded through the town and deported to the gas chambers. Years when the ordinary citizens of Europe, educated and cultured, came home from a hard day at work, kissed and hugged their kids, drank and ate good food while listening to Bach and Wagner, and made love their wives and husbands and did not think for a moment about thousands of men, women and children they just sent to the gas chambers?

Has anything changed from the years of extermination when the best of the politicians and academic thought “it was OK to Kill Jews” and the top man of God was more worried about the advancing Communist Russian Army than 1.2 million children were being killed by the Germans and their European allies?

Has anything changed from the years of extermination when the same man of God, while meeting to the newly appointed Ambassador, found time to thank Germany for the time he spent in Germany and went on to praise Germans but could not find time to express outrage (if he had any, I doubt it) on the murder of millions of innocent through Nazi killing machine?

This not to brag as I don’t consider it a big deal that I am a fast reader but lately, well,  not. For last few days I am trying to read Saul Freidlander’s book “Years of Extermination: The Nazi Germany and Jews 1939-1945” I got from my local library. This book has become the most difficult book for me to read. I can not read more than few pages and not feel depressed, shocked and deeply sad. And when this happened, I am unable to continue and I close the book.

And the sons and daughters of these killers, these mass murderers, lecture us, on Human Rights and Democracy?