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Foreword

Against the Last Wave of Anti-Semitism

Roger Scruton

For nearly two thousand years, following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman imperial army, the Jews lived in exile from their holy places, keeping their religion, language, and customs alive in an unparalleled act of collective memory. Less a race or a tribe than what Giulio Meotti calls a “metaphysical family,” the Jews have remained faithful to their culture and their calling through continuous suffering, targeted wherever they settled by the resentment and xenophobia of their hosts, yet never forgetting Jerusalem—the holy city of their dreams. No other people in history has experienced so much undeserved suffering, or devoted so much energy to remembering and mourning its dead.

And when, in the mid twentieth century, the greatest of all disasters wiped out the Jews of Central Europe—and with them a vital part of our European identity—the world seemed to undergo a brief fit of remorse. The United Nations voted overwhelmingly to recognize the State of Israel as an independent member and as a homeland in which the Jews could at last protect themselves. Israel was, for the Jews, a bid for freedom, a way of achieving the self-government that they had kept alive through two thousand years of memory. As we know, the hatred began again, now directed at Israel and its Jewish residents.

In this book, Giulio Meotti tells the story in detail, reminding us of the terrorist crimes of which the Israeli people have been the victims, of the rising anti-Semitism in the Middle East, and of the unwillingness of so many Western politicians and thinkers to recognize the malice of the Muslim states toward their neighbor. Meotti has given us a moving work of mourning, a new “Shoah” in memory of the many victims of the new wave of anti-Semitism. He invites us to put our duplicity behind us, and to recognize the right of Israel to exist and of its people to defend themselves.

The “blame Israel” approach to Middle Eastern politics is now the semi-official attitude of the European Union. It is an example of the same feeble-minded appeasement that allowed the last wave of anti-Semitism to triumph in Europe. But, as Meotti eloquently reminds us, Israel is not the cause but the target of the current belligerence, and there can be no solution in the Middle East that does not place the blame on those who live by hatred, and who have nothing to offer save destruction. Let us hope that this book will awaken Europeans to their duty toward the Jews, whose vigil down the centuries has been an example to us all.