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Horrifying Obsession

by Stephen J. Kohn

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer. (Norman Mailer)

The International Court of Justice has simply repeated the one-sided, blind, anti-Israeli thinking that has become the substitute for critical examination of issues regarding Jews and Israelis. Saudis behead. China has its Tiananmen Square. The Belgians had the Congo and a million black Sudanese Moslems have been killed lighter skinned Sudanese Moslems.

Obsession it is—this focus on things Jewish, and in turn, Israeli, that so dominates the thinking of Moslem terrorists, independent international jurists, sophisticated leftists, progressive churchmen, the impartial UN and 539,000 Web sites that match the description "hate Jews". They join Nazis, Communists, and until recently, the Catholic Church and Europeans (perhaps except for a brief period following World War II), and the ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and Crusaders.

Obsessive thinking is not something to be proud of. There is an obsession with "Jewish Power", Israeli intransigence, ritualistic blood killings, Jews as Communists and Jews as Capitalists, Israelis as occupiers and racist bigots and Jews as cosmopolitans without loyalty. It is an unending rehashing of falsified history and current news. As with pornography, anti-Semites need the endless stimulation that their hate brings.

They will never get the answer. Why? Because their theories of Jewish power, duplicity, secretiveness, commonality of purpose and deviousness all come back to the same question: How can the Jews (and Israelis) be as horrible, atrocious, frightful, alarming and even ugly as they are?

These anti-Semites still do not know, even after three thousand years of asking, that there is no answer because we, as all people, are not a homogeneous mass but have a thirst for survival. Jews were expelled from most European countries and thrived. We were subject to crusade, Holocaust and pogrom and survived. We were excluded from universities and businesses yet ultimately excelled in each.

But, today nearly 60 Moslem countries and their camp followers in dozens of other countries threaten us in one way or another. We are increasingly viewed, as we have always been, as the cause of evil in the world because it is so easy to promote lies, posit conspiracy hypotheses and practice hypocrisy. Moreover, because the obsessive personality can never be satisfied, hate grows.

Brave world leaders need now declare that after three thousand years of targeting Jews that there is not a scientific claim, legal argument, philosophical structure or historical fact that Jew haters have accumulated to prove their bigoted arguments. There are lies that never lead to an answer. It is a sick obsession that continues and needs to be marked as mendacious, perverse and intellectually vapid by true world leaders.

The obsession with hating Jews must stop and be stopped. One tiny nation (one tenth of one percent of humanity), Israel, is a lively self-correcting democracy, as contrasted with most of the United Nations. Yet it has become a world focus of scorn. Reporters flock here to damn us. The UN focuses more energy here than on any other nation and condemns us. Students demonize us and want to spend the summer aiding terrorists kill us.

Every generation of Jewish parents has had to answer the questions of "Why?" from their puzzled children. Why are we hated because we are accussed of killing Jesus or because he was Jewish? Are we condemned because we are on the left or the right, impoverished or champions of wealth, scavengers or Nobel Prize winners?

The answer is that the obsessed Jew haters (and self-hating Jews) have a sickness that must be cured and the solutions that anti-Semites seek: the death of Jews, the end of the Jewish people, the assimilation of Jews, the separation of Jews or now the destruction of the Jewish state must be once and for all considered outside of the pale of civilized discussion. From a French Ambassador who calls Israel a 'shitty little country' to Bashar Assad who lectured the Pope on Jewish deicide to splinter party American presidential candidates (Nader and Buchanan) who blatantly lie about Israel's power. All must be subject to ridicule, ostracized and considered outside of acceptable society.

And the time is now to put the world to the test. No other people, besides Jews, no nation besides Israel needs the remedy provided by these five simple nai"ve declarations. Why? Because not one of them is accepted as a given by other nations for Israel and Jews and they are given for every other group or nation.

* One-sided resolutions at the United Nations must not be passed (Why is Moslem terrorism, against Israel and other Moslem and non-Moslem nations never condemned?)

* Obvious lies, about Israel and Jews, must be stopped by journalists and publishers. (Why are the media filled with lies of omission and commission such as 36,000 Web stories on the fabricated Jenin massacre?)

* Claims by Moslem nations and others about Israel and Jews that are blatantly false must be branded as such as they are made. (How can the civilized world tacitly accept the Saudi monarchy's claim during June that Islamic terror is a Jewish weapon?)

* Violence against Jews, in the form of terror in Israel and intimidation in Europe must be halted. (How can post-Holocaust Europe tolerate synagogue and cemetery destruction and carving a swastika in the face of a twelve year old girl and the world allow intentional murder in cold blood to be rationalized because Jews in Israel are the victims?)

* Israel must be made a member of the International Red Cross and a full participant in other international organizations. (How can it be that Israel is unique in not being a member of the IRC or a regional bloc in the UN?)

What would be so hard about the leaders of civilized nations, signing quickly without debate, an agreement on these points? No equivocating, deliberating or pontificating, but simply signing and actively demonstrating their support of these five simple declarations. Unfortunately this is as likely as snow falling in Tel Aviv in July. Mourning the Holocaust's slain Jews and damning their progeny with patently false accusations is as bizarre as describing steps taken by Israel for self defense as prohibited as more than 1,000 Jews have been slaughtered in terrorist acts in four years. The International Court of Justice and the UN make it clear: Self-defense for Jews is illegal and terrorism against us is not worth commenting on.

We are seeking nothing more than to receive the same civil, rational and equal treatment afforded all states and peoples in the family of nations. The anti-Semites' obsession is a waste because the claims against Jews are specious, fraudulent and self-serving. Stopping them now is essential.

Stephen J. Kohn moved to Israel 13 years ago from the United States, where he was a management consultant..