HE'S CORRECT, BUT . . .
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Europe's reaction to last week's Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris, downplayed the anti-Semitic nature of them.
"In the world and in Europe, most of the discussion was about freedom of expression, extremism and Islamophobia," Lieberman said. "But the Jewish and anti-Semitic aspects were hardly mentioned and this is particularly grave."
HIS VIEWPOINT HAS BLINDERS
It's not just us
We made the same mistake after World War Two by claiming the Shoah was strictly a Jewish issue.
Almost no one argues that some 6 million Jews were slaughtered simply because they were Jews or had at least one Jewish grandparent.
But the nazis (the name does not deserve capitalization) almost completely wiped out the Roma - gypsies. The regime also murdered those who were physically or mentally deficient. Communists and Socialists, other than their own brand of socialist - were murdered.
Then there were the civilians who died when their towns and cities were attacked by German troops or rockets.
We don't "own:" the Shoah and it is our mistake to even suggest that we were the nazi's only victims.
Islamists against everyone
It's not just Jews the Islamists was to eliminate, although except for right-wing Israeli Jews we generally make a compliant target.
It is anyone who might object to sharia law or a caliphate controlling their lives.
When the nazis came for the Jews, I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew.
When the nazis came for the gypsies, I didn't speak up because I was not a gypsy.
When the nazis came for the Communists, I didn't speak up because I was not a Communist.
Then the nazis came for me and there was no one to speak up for me.
The Islamists are today's nazis.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás in Reason in Common Sense, p. 284, volume 1 of The Life of Reason
Just as we - Jews - claimed ownership of the Shoah, casting aside the 6 million "others" as not worth counting, Lieberman is casting aside all the non-Jews slaughtered by the Islamists in France and the non-Jewish girls captured, raped, and sold into slavery by Boko Haram, or even Muslim girls and men who fail to adopt extremism.
By claiming every Islamist attack is anti-Semitic or anti-Israel we give "the world" a warm fuzzy feeling that only we - Jews - are Islamists' targets and as long as we - Jews - are considered the Islamists' ONLY targets, all others are safe.
That's a lie.
No one was safe from the nazis.
No one is safe from the Islamists.
James Foley, an American journalist, was beheaded simply because he was an American. He was not Jewish.
Screen capture from ISIS video
We need to stop trying to own everything as "anti-Semitic" or "anti-Israel." It doesn't help our cause and, in many cases, it hinders it.
