Letters to the editor
Readers respond
Blaming the Jews for the world’s woes
Blaming the Jews for Palestinian terror (“Israel’s critics continue to hold the Jewish state responsible for Palestinian terror,” Feb. 3) is part of a long tradition of blaming Jews for world events and natural phenomena, and as long as we aren’t rounded up and turned into smoke to pay amends, we can handle this blatant antisemitism.
Here is a list of things for which the Jews were blamed, not in chronological order: The Black death, in which half of Europe was wiped out; slavery; the Russian Revolution and communism; WW I and WW II; the Great Depression; 9/11; blamed by whites for replacing the white race with Black people; blamed by Black people for being white oppressors. We can’t win this one.
And as crazy as these are, here are some really off-the-wall accusations: Russians accused Jews of hiding a magic vegetable that keeps you from getting drunk; Hitler thought modern art was a Jewish plot to crush the German spirit; 13th-century, medieval Catholics accused Jews of torturing bread; Henry Ford accused Jews of making candy taste bad; when a shark attacked tourists in Egypt, an Egyptian governor accused Jews of attacking them with remote-controlled sharks; Wahhabis accused Jews of conspiring with Jew trees; a Palestinian newspaper accused Jews of breeding killer super rats; and Iraqi security thought Pokémon was part of a Zionist plot.
It doesn’t matter how we behave or what we say; we will be blamed. The Palestinians are particularly adept at this blame the Jew game and, regrettably, there are lots of people hard-wired to hate us who go along with their crazy fabrications.
Larry Shapiro
Calgary, Alberta
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