Over on Twitter, The Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg and COMMENTARY contributor Jamie Kirchick have been debating whether the threat to the Jews from neo-Nazis is worse than that of Muslim Jihadists. This argument was brought up by the allegation, which may now turn out to have been a false lead, that the Toulouse massacre was perpetrated by neo-Nazis rather than Islamists. Goldberg’s point is a good one. The Nazis stand alone in history and ought not to be compared to any other genus of Jew-hater or tyrant. Goldberg is also right that Nazi analogies are almost always wrong since there really is nothing in history that compares to the Holocaust. As bad as Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah might be, and they are deadly threats, they are not the same thing as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
However, if we are discussing what Jews and other civilized persons should be worrying most about today, the idea that there is any comparison between the danger posed by the scattered bands of neo-Nazi extremists and that of Islamism is not a serious proposition. The neo-Nazis are a nasty bunch and capable of violence. But Islamist terror has at its command, terrorist armies, control of sovereign territories (Gaza, Lebanon and a major state such as Iran) as well as the resources to finance a nuclear weapons project. While the persistence of Nazism, even in its current truncated form is upsetting and makes us wonder whether Western civilization really is in trouble, Islamism is a real threat, not a symbolic one.
While we may dismiss this argument as the sort of thing that is, as Goldberg joked, for people with nothing better to do, the fact is, a lot of liberal Jews really are more scared of the dangers that existed in the past than they are of their people’s current foes.
For many liberal Jews (a group that I should stipulate does not include Goldberg), raising the question of Islamist hate for Jews — something that is the source of the rising tide of anti-Semitic agitation around the globe — is somehow in bad taste if not evidence of the dread charge of Islamophobia. They are so conditioned to believe that Muslim distaste for Israel’s actions is the reason for enmity that they ignore the vicious stream of Jew-hatred coming out of the Middle East and prefer to worry about an altogether mythical post 9/11 backlash against Muslims.
Instead, they prefer to dwell on the far less potent danger posed by the tiny groups of Hitler-lovers who are generally too weak and isolated to do anything more than disturb the peace. While such groups are despicable and deserve the attention of law enforcement, to focus on them is to re-fight the last war.
We don’t know yet who committed the Toulouse massacre but we do know that it was the work of a Jew-hater who sought out and murdered Jewish children in cold blood solely because they were Jewish. It would have been reassuring in some ways to think that this crime was only the work of outliers like the neo-Nazis. The thought that it is part of a rising trend of Islamist hate — which has been aided and abetted by the anti-Zionist attitudes of European elites — is far more troubling.
Worrying about Nazis is an exercise that is far less distressing than forcing ourselves to deal with the real dilemmas of our age. Chasing ghosts may be of little utility for contemporary Jewish security, but it is easier to think about than coping with real live Muslim terror.
"As bad as Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah might be, and they are deadly threats, they are not the same thing as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany." n nOnly because at this point in time, the Arabs are less competent than the Nazis were, and Jews/Israel are better armed. n nIn terms of hatred for the Jews, I would say the arab world is perhaps more generously supplied than the nazis were.
Why do NeoNazis DESERVE the attention of law enforcement? We shouldn't criminalize hatred.
Interesting issue, they think the killers are neo-Nazis because the other victims were of Arab descent. But they had served in Afghanistan as members of the French NATO contingent which would make them traitors in the eyes of the Islamist. A possible message to other French citizens of Arab descent not to join the army. n nWhether it was Nazis or Islamist the threat remains the same Jew-hatred supported and egged on my European elites. Is it a question of how to fight the danger? These groups happen to work in tandem at times as the terrorists of the 70s and 80s used to work together. While their patron was the Soviet Union, oil money fuels both islamists and neo-Nazis today. n nNothing happens in a vacuum. France may be shocked to find that there is more than one group involved in these murders.
This article seems to forget that many Muslim nations sided with the Nazis in WWII – especially the Arabs. And do I really have to mention Hitlers Mufti, Haj Amin Al Husseini? Arafats proxy Nazi uncle? According to the captured documents I saw, he encouraged the pro Nazi govt.s in East Europe to murder all their Jews rather than allow them to escape anywhere…much less to pre-reborn State of Israel. He visited the death camps for fun. And after he escaped trial at Nuremberg, he fled to Egypt, where he bred a new generation of Islamic Fascist proxy Nazis…with his nephew, Yasser Arafat. Is it any wonder Mein Kampf is a best seller all across the muslim world?
Rudolph Hess who grew up in Alexandria Egypt assisted Hilter in writing Mein Kamp. The meaning of 'Kamp' is eerily close to the meaning of 'Jihad.' So, in some sense, the connection may be lot closer than it first appears.
All this says is that France is so craven to Islamic threats that the institutions reflexively look for anyone else to blame as soon as possible. "We" didn't create the neo Nazi lead, the French police did.
Trudy, I wouldn't say that the French police were to blame for promoting the Nazi soldiers version. Interior Minister Gueant was saying –before the French police decided that they were not guilty– that there was no clear lead in the case. However, various press organs were promoting that version. Our own Israeli TV channel 2 reported this morning that the Nazi soldiers were guilty in their usual effort to protect the image of Arabs & Muslims from anything that might sully that image. Channel 2 is usually simplistic and amateurish, although there are a few good reporters there. n nNow two French soldiers of Arab origin were murdered last week, along with a Black West Indian soldier, by the same killer as murdered the Jewish children and the Jewish father. But if the killer were an Islamist, he might have considered the two Arab soldiers as traitors, especially since their paratroop unit had come back from Afghanistan.
Well if the best we can expect of French law enforcement is the kneejerk assumption that all murders in a given town in the same week are the work of the same lunatic then perhaps we have far deeper problems. I live close enough to a military base to read reports of shootings and killings every once in a while and I have never once thought that any of them were ever connected in any way. The point is that French society is so incredibly hyper paranoid about being tarred with an anti Muslim racist brush that we may safely toss all logic and common sense in the trash. What if it turns out that a Muslim killed those soldiers? What are we to draw from that or will we simply plunge our heads in the sand?
@Trudy: Gosh, same Weapon, same Modus Operandi, same motorbike… so maybe you should read same articles from European Magazines before making silly and dumb assumptions about the abilities of the French Law enforcement agencies….
Suspect now holed up with French police in siege mode. n nDoor number 2: "self-styled Al Qaeda jihadist". n nOne of Ms. Ashton's dreaming aspirants.
From news reports: n n"The suspect told police he belonged to al-Qaida and wanted to take revenge for Palestinian children killed in the Middle East, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said, adding the man also said he was angry about French military intervention abroad…" n nMrs. Ashton might have no problem stumbling into a moral equivalence hole–but even for her a little warning bell in the night might deter another comparison to, well, "Palestinian children killed in the MIddle East," but then again, maybe not. n nThis does confirm LibertySpirit's insight as to an act of revenge and deterrence against Islamic traitors serving in the French armed forces.
Yawn…enough about the Nazis already. The Germans haven't tried to kill us for almost 70 years. They have a whole city block in Berlin devoted to feeling sorry about it. Almost everybody involved is dead. The Muslims are trying to kill us NOW.
Their work lives on precisely in the Muslims who are trying to kill us and neo-Nazis are invited to their parties. Neo- Nazis are not necessarily Germans. But Islamic terrorists draw upon Nazi ideology–not just a semantic issue. But sure, take a nap.
Latest reports: the guy was not a wannabee but a known Afghani terrorist bomb-maker who wsa captured, but escaped, and while under supposed surveillance by French authorities amassed an arms and bombs arsenal and killed who he killed. He's a soul brother to the Islamic Jihad that Ms. Ashton feels have no connection to people trying to kill Jewish kids (or use Palestinian kids as shields).
This is strange. Hitler needed the resources of almost all Europe and four years to destroy 6 million Jews. Iran with a few nuclear-tipped missiles can accomplish the same in an hour. Why exactly can't we compare Nazis with ayatollahs?
Well, the author is saying that the actual neo-Nazis alive today (with the Hitler paraphenalia, and their copies of the Horst Wessel song etc.) are, as a subculture not as dangerous as the newer-Nazi Islamic threat. And that left-wingers concentrate on the neo-Nazi goons as a way to distract attention from the far more murderous and numerous mullahs and jihadists and Islamic anti-Semites etc.