Before All Else Blame the Jews

The current bestseller book in Turkey is "The Children of Moses," which claims that Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan and his Islamist party are really Jews and a front for a Zionist agenda meant to transform Turkey from a secular state into an Islamic one. How turning a secular ally state into an enemy Muslim state would help Zionism is unclear but that hasn't stopped the book from selling 520,000 copies.

Meanwhile of course Islamists in Turkey had been claiming for some time that Kemal Aturk and the Young Turks were actually Donmeh, Jewish converts to Islam, and that a secular Turkey was actually a Zionist plot. (A point the Washington Post neglects in its article which is a love letter to Turkey's Islamists).

Turkey's frustrated nationalists are accusing their Islamist enemies of being Jewish and Turkey's Islamists are accusing the secular nationalists of being Jewish. This is just a microscopic example of a global trend.

In Russia Jews are accused of being Communists by the Anti-Communists and of overthrowing Communism by the Communists. During WW1 the Jews were accused of starting the war to create profit. Meanwhile in England and France, Jews were accusing of harboring German sympathies. In Germany Jews were accused of causing Germany's defeat. That particular platform helped bring the Nazis to power. Today Jews are routinely accused of being behind the Bush Administration's War on Terror as neo-cons by Liberals while being accused of undermining the country through the left by the Right.

Strip away the rhetoric behind commonplace statements issued by pundits and foreign policy wonks like, "Israel is the key obstacle to peace in the Middle East", "The road to stability in the Middle East runs through Israel" and you hear what it really means, which is "All the problems in the Middle East are caused by the Jews." But where Arab figures are more likely to say it openly, Western figures rely on euphemisms.

Meanwhile on both the right and the left, Jews are routinely blamed for Muslim hostility to America. No doubt if only there were no Jews or Israel, Muslims would happily overlook America's backing for unpopular Arab and Muslim leaders overthrown by revolutions like King Farouk, the Shah of Iran and the House of Saud. They would also overlook that their Imams repeatedly teach them that America's cultural exports are an abomination and that America is a house of vice and sin. They would overlook the American troops sitting in bases on Muslim land and the humiliation of being nationally, socially and technologically inferior to the American infidels... if only it wasn't for the Jews.

The only reasonable response to being irrationally blamed for everything is to reject the responsibility for other people's problems and the moral authority of those people to heap their problems at your doorstep. Either that or to remain constantly on the defensive.

Israel's greatest moment came when it went on the offensive in the Six Day War. Its weakest moment came when it went on the defensive, giving away more and more land in the delusional belief that at some point the world would recognize that it was making a sincere effort to set things right. But only fools presume on the fairness of the world. The world is not fair. The world is ruled by a mixture of cowardice, brutality and greed.

The irony is that the most common anti-semitic stereotype leveled at Jews is that we are greedy and cheap and yet Israel has given away more and received less than any victor in history. Oslo has been the worst bargain of all time since the Indians sold Manhattan and they at least received 24 dollars in exchange for it.