Is anti-semitism starting to creep into the picture there?
It certainly seems so if you click on the link above to Fausta’s Blog. The demonstrator in question in the featured post provokes some names that are hurled at him that are far more revealing than his placard. And check out the photo of Spain’s Prime Minister making a fashion statement and the link to that particular story.
The question is whether this is the resurgence of anti-semitism in Spain — which would be an irony because when this writer was there from the end of the Franco era (May 1975) to the beginning of the Democratic era (December 1978) writing for The Christian Science Monitor the Francoists and their political descendents were the ones who were generally believed to be stuck in the bad-old-days when Spain was uneasily allied with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
But that was a perception in terms of political alliances: Franco was not considered to be on the warpath or indulging in gestures against his country’s Jews. In fact, there were rumors in Spain that perhaps one of Franco’s relatives was Jewish.
It was the left, in particularly the socialists, led in the immediate post-Franco era by Felipe Gonzales (who later became Prime Minister) who were considered friendlier to the Jewish population. This latest apparent wave may be more of a manifestation of the fact that some in Europe’s left, when given a choice, will condemn Israel during terrorist attacks and Israel’s responses to them, rather than condemn the actual acts (or condemn the act in a perfunctory way).
The danger in Spain is that there is a long history and tons of hubris. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain and Secretary General of the Socialist Party, may be unleashing a genie if he’s not careful. But perhaps for political (and/or personal) reasons he doesn’t care.
MORE READINGS
—The Stephen Roth Institute looks at anti-semitism in Spain. The lead in paragraph: “Little antisemitic activity was recorded in Spain in 2000 prior to the upsurge in violence between Palestinians and Israelis in late September. Several attacks on Jewish institutions were recorded in October, shortly after some Muslim communities called for demonstrations in support of the Palestinians. An armed attack on Moroccan workers in the town of El Ejido in February was one of the most serious racist incidents ever to occur in Spain.”
—The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Antisemitism and the Extreme Right in Spain (1962–1997)
—Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the European Union
—Spain denies anti-Semitism in criticizing Israel
–Wikipedia History of Jews in Spain
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.