Is dinner anti-semitism becoming the norm???

Here's a first-hand report from someone is getting afraid of dinner parties...

The moment the icy splinter of fear entered my heart, four years ago, occurred, as it has for so many of us, at a dinner table. “Don’t you think that Israel is becoming very unpleasant?” said one deep thinker. “We used to be on their side because they were the underdog, but now they’re so aggressive.” That was not the moment. It was the next comment, made as I was taking a deep breath, by another guest. “Well,” he said, “I never thought about that before, but, yes, you’re right.”

That person was someone who had for several years been a good friend, good not only to me but in general. He is a kind, compassionate man, quick to offer practical help and moral support to his friends. He does a great deal of unpaid work for charity. His words took me back to a time when the same sort of mindless verbal ping-pong was played over other tables, when Gentiles in England dismissed reports from central Europe as hysteria or propaganda. I later said to my friend, who never reads a newspaper, that he shouldn’t comment on topics he didn’t understand. He protested that he wasn’t commenting: he was “just agreeing”.

In New York, where I grew up, I never heard remarks of this type, not simply because of the number of Jews living there, but because my accent and appearance identified me immediately as one of them. Since moving to Britain 20 years ago, I have learned that others see me only as an American or a New Yorker. I therefore came late to the sort of disconcerting encounter that European Jews probably take for granted – the person of respectable and benevolent appearance who, chatting to us in a railway carriage or a coffee shop, hopes we do realise that the Jews are plotting to steal our gold and rule the world.

That type of person – as well as those, of course, who won’t hire Jews and those who vandalise synagogues and cemeteries – is what most people think of as an anti-Semite. But I would suggest that the definition be made broader to include those who let unpleasant remarks about Jews go unchallenged, who don’t consider the subject to be worth a fuss. Those, in other words, who feel that we are not worth defending from the mindless vilification that has been increasing over the past several years, and zooming up since the air strikes on Gaza.

It was not the first time my friend had startled me with a remark of this kind. We had met not long before 11 September 2001. About a week after the World Trade Center was destroyed, he said to me, “I don’t mean to offend you by saying this: I just wonder if you think this could be true. Someone told me there was a rumour that the Israelis were responsible.”

That remark, however, passed me by in an I-didn’t-hear-that moment because I was already reeling from the reactions of the “America deserved it” crowd, and couldn’t take in anything more. But later I reflected that there was a point at which innocence and ignorance are not the same. As recently as 50 years ago, it was normal to think that homosexuals sought to corrupt pure young boys, and that children who said an uncle or priest had touched their private parts were dirty little liars. Nowadays, anyone who

espoused such beliefs would be ridiculed and might be up on a charge – as would someone who believed, as people did 700 years ago, when the Jews were expelled from England, that we kill Christian children and use their blood to make matzos.

My friend and I remained on good terms until last year, when he asked if I would join him on a trip he was very eager to take – to Syria. As my heart sank deeper and deeper, he enthusiastically described the archaeological treasures, the history, the romance.

“I know all about those,” I said sadly, “but do you know that Syria is a hotbed of anti-Semitic terrorism? Their newspapers and radio and TV are full of attacks on Jews, and some of them actually say it is part of our religion to kill babies.”

He was silent for a moment, and then sighed. “Oh, can’t you forget about that? Just for two weeks?” I said I couldn’t.

My friend departed alone for Syria – where, he told me, he had a marvellous time and didn’t hear a single anti-Semitic remark – and I was forced to conclude that, sadly, as we say in my native land, three strikes and you’re out.

Read the whole thing...there's more....