Antisemitism - then and now

George Jonas, the Canadian journalist and author, of "Vengeance" fame (the book on which Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" was based), writes about the new generation of anti-Semites, recalling his father's conversation with his Zionist uncle:.

Some anti-Zionists, though, are no more anti-Semitic than my father was who used to debate endlessly the merits of a future Israel with my Zionist uncle in Nazi-occupied Budapest. My father wasn’t worried that a Jewish state in Palestine might be bad for Arabs; he never thought it would be. His concern was that it might be bad for the Jews.

“A lifeboat,” my uncle would say. “Think of me as Noah. Israel is the Ark.”

“What do I need a lifeboat for? It’s 1944. The waters are receding. I’m on dry land.”

“Until the next Flood.”

“Miraculously, the Gestapo misses shooting me by the Danube,” my father said. “Am I to rush to Palestine now, so some camel drivers can stone me by the Jordan?”

“Camel drivers,” my Zionist uncle replied, “don’t stone people who bring them irrigation and electricity. But the Gestapo will be back.”

“You don’t know camel drivers,” my father replied.

“And you don’t know Gestapos,” was my uncle’s comeback.

Now, 64 years later, the bad news is they were both right. What’s the good news? I can’t think of any.