Israel Matzav

Feeding them anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk... in Spain?

Through a strange combination of circumstances, just about this time nine years ago, Mrs. Carl and I spent a week in Spain with our then youngest child (son # 3, child # 6) tagging along. In fact, to this day, we often refer to him by the name the Spaniards called him because they found his Hebrew name unpronounceable. We spent time in Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba and Granada - the picture at the top of this post is from Granada's Alhambra Castle.

At the time, I didn't have the sense that Spain was hostile to Jews. Of course, there was very little Jewish life there, given that Jews had just started to return to Spain after the 1492 expulsion some 20 years or so earlier. The rabbi with whom we spent the Sabbath home schooled his children until they were 12 or 13, and then sent them to school in Paris, which is about 16 hours away by car. But I didn't have the sense that the lack of Jewish education in Spain was because of anti-Semitic hostility. Similarly, the local synagogue in Madrid was protected by a closed circuit camera, but that's not really any different than any place else in Europe. (I've written in the past about visiting London and Vienna - I've also been to Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Rome and Florence, so I guess I've been around Europe a bit).

Something changed in Spain. In March 2004, Atocha, the main train station in Madrid (which we had wandered around but had not used - because of the baby and the lack of Kosher food, we had brought too much luggage and rented a car), was the target of a major terror attack. 191 people were killed and 1800 were wounded. The attack occurred three days before a major national election, and unfortunately, the Spaniards reacted like dhimmis. The incumbent Jose Maria Aznar, who held a narrow lead to that point, was tossed out of office, and Leftist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero took his place. Zapatero pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq, and has generally been hostile to the West. Zapatero was re-elected in 2008.

All of that background perhaps explains the rise of anti-Semitism in Spain.

Israel's ambassador to Spain, Rafael Shotz, has been receiving hate mail from Spanish schoolchildren. Dozens of letters sent from pupils include statements such as “Mr. Ambassador, how many Palestinians did you murder today?” but Israeli officials suspect a hate campaign is behind the letters.

Another letter writer asks if Israel will “leave Palestine,” adding, “The Palestinians will celebrate if the Israelis decide to go somewhere else.” Another writers, supposedly a child, told the ambassador to “think about not murdering Palestinian children and old people.”

Foreign Ministry officials expressed doubt that the letters contained the children's own original thoughts. “Ten-year-old children don't write things like this. It's horrifying that they're being taught to do this,” one official told IDF radio.

The letters are coming from pupils at a school in Valencia, raising suspicions that staff at that school are inciting the children to hate, the official explained.

Read the whole thing. While this sounds like an isolated incident, it's not, and given the background I have given you, it's likely that anti-Semitism is widespread in Spain, as it is in many other countries in Europe.

I wonder how the Spaniards will treat the new American ambassador, who also happens to be Jewish. If he's treated similarly, will anyone outside Israel admit that Spain has an anti-Semitism problem?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:15 AM