Is it anti-Semitic or 'just' anti-Israel?
The disgusting cartoon at the top of this post comes from Cologne, Germany. A crude anti-Israel exhibit in Cologne’s Cathedral Square in the heart of the bustling pedestrian zone does not meet the criteria of inciting hate, Rainer Wolf, a spokesman for the public prosecutor in Cologne, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.Read the whole thing. Hitler and his friends would have fit right in to Cologne 2010. Hope and
Wolf said the public prosecutor plans to dismiss the complaint of Gerd Buurmann, a non-Jewish theater director, who filed a grievance in February, asserting a violation of Germany’s hate-crime law.
Buurmann told the Post that he was “horrified” by the decision and plans to now participate in a civil legal action against Walter Herrmann, the exhibitor of the anti-Israel exhibit.
Herrmann’s long-standing exhibit, “Cologne Wailing Wall,” has been deemed anti-Semitic by critics in the Cologne City Council and a commentator from the large daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
Buurmann initiated legal action because the exhibit shows a cartoon of a man sporting a Star of David on his bib as he devours a young Palestinian boy with a fork draped in an American flag and a knife with the word “Gaza.” A blood-filled glass next to the plate appears to symbolize the blood of the child.
Wolf, the prosecutor’s spokesman, told the Post that six or seven complaints have since been filed, ranging from private individuals to the Society for Christian-Jewish relations.
Asked whether the cartoon is an expression of modern anti-Semitism, Wolf said, it is “not a tendency of hostility toward Jews, but an actual criticism of the situation in Gaza.”
He added that the exhibitor, Walter Herrmann, seeks to “criticize” and the “cartoon is a sarcastic expression of the Israeli army in Gaza.”
Although in all fairness, I have to say that I have been to Frankfurt a couple of times (once on business and once I got stuck there on my way back to Israel), and it was a lot less creepy than Vienna, for example. Apparently, there are some parts of Germany where there is shame over their role in the Holocaust, while there are other parts where they would like to pick up where Hitler left off.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:43 AM
3 Comments:
Many years ago, like in the 70s (not to gratiously bash Germans), there was a film about WWII being filmed in Munich (as I recall). The actor who played Hitler was Swiss and only chosen because of facial resemblance. Anyway, in one scene, he walks out of a bunker (really, a subway station). As he recounted (in horror), old people, upon seeing him, rushed up to welcome him back. Just goes to show....well, something.
Anti-Israel-Anti-Zionist
is
Antisemitism.
Why would anyone deny Jews their homeland and most importantly why would anyone deny Jews the right to fight against terrorists...unless of course they were Antisemitic?
We can not deny inherent Antisemitism. The epicenter of antisemitism is like thought bacteria. Some use it at will and some use it denying what it really is and how it works. Either way it is deadly and inexcusable.
Criticism of any country or people is not wrong. Having said that walking over the line of reality as to why and how one is critical is quite another thing.
When a person watches a news cast of the aftermath of a suicide attack and feels pity for the family of the bomber, we have lift off!
Even something as simple as world leaders (who know better) who lecture Israel as to abandoning what is rightly theirs, what would you call that?
If a president can not lift his hand to pen to sign the embassy act, what is that? If he can call Israel the holy land more than he calls it Israel, what is that? If he can not say Jerusalem is the undivided indisputable capital of Israel, what is that?
Antisemitism to many is repulsive. Many people not in a million years would admit they have it even if in an unknowing manner they have felt it. Remember Antisemitism comes in many forms not only the overt kind.
Thank you, Gerd Buurmann, for standing up to nazis.
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