Another brilliant article by Tony Judt on anti-semitism, anti-Zionism, silencing criticism of Israel and true Judeo-phobia:
“The Shoah is frequently exploited in America and Israel to deflect and forbid any criticism of Israel. Indeed, the Holocaust of Europe’s Jews is nowadays exploited thrice over: It gives American Jews in particular a unique, retrospective ‘victim identity’; it allows Israel to trump any other nation’s sufferings (and justify its own excesses) with the claim that the Jewish catastrophe was unique and incomparable; and (in contradiction to the first two) it is adduced as an all-purpose metaphor for evil–anywhere, everywhere and always–and taught to schoolchildren all over America and Europe without any reference to context or cause.”
“This modern instrumentalization of the Holocaust for political advantage is ethically disreputable and politically imprudent. To deplore this abuse of other people’s sufferings seems to me an important civic duty. But to conclude that ‘the Jews’ have made too much of what happened in Europe between 1933 and 1945, or that it is now time to move on–that edges us much closer to anti-Semitism.”
I have written my own pieces on these subjects, froma more personal perspective here and here.