Society That Accepts Assaults/Boycotts On Jews Re Israel, Suddenly Worried About Mistreatment Of Russians Re Ukraine

A bigotry that Europeans thought they had vanquished in their society long ago.

Frankfurt, March 23 – Europeans who view attacks targeting synagogues and related community institutions as a legitimate form of protest against Jerusalem’s policies vis-à-vis Palestinians now find themselves anxious about tolerating harassment or violence upon immigrants, descendants of immigrants, or visitors from, the Russian Federation, and have so far failed to register the cognitive dissonance, observers report.

Residents of Germany, France, Britain, and various Scandinavian countries, in addition to several other Continental locales, pivoted over the last several weeks from accepting violence and threats against Jews under the pretext of alleged Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights – with even at least one court judgment resulting in a lighter sentence because the accused offered that excuse – to agonizing over ill treatment of those of Russian heritage, because demonizing and abusing them for the actions of a country over whose decisions they exercise little or no control constitutes a bigotry that Europeans thought they had vanquished in their society long ago.

“BDS!” yelled demonstrators last week near a Jewish community center in the southern French city of Marseilles, as if French Jews have anything to with a government a thousand miles away that implements the will of its voters, none of whom reside in France as citizens. “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” they shouted, taking out their ire over the persistence of Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland on a group of Jews who now require armed security at their community institutions because of BDS-related thuggery and terrorism. BDS advocates and allies in progressive movements across Europe voiced their worries that incidents of harassment of Russian-speakers, or of people with Russian-sounding names, not to mention companies making a show of dropping Russian products from their marketing, represents a dark stain on the morality of a continent that defeated Nazism in 1945 and was supposed to better than that.

“It’s really important not to let our legitimate anger at Putin and his regime color our treatment of Russians in general,” cautioned Stockholm resident Jens Anderssen, who defends arson attempts on synagogues by citing Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in response to rockets at Israeli communities. “Russians here are just trying to live their lives and shouldn’t have to be made to answer for Putin’s crimes.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he concluded, I’m off to stand on the corner with a petition demanding that banks divest their holdings in corporations with Israeli owners, because they benefit from illegal occupation.”

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