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Enough Political Correctness
by Adi Schwartz
- The feeling that the large and established parties in Europe were not doing enough to deal with the problem also contributed to the strengthening of the far right.
- The clear lesson is that ignoring the problem - the rising feeling of discomfort among many Europeans over the amount of Muslims on the continent - is liable to lead to the growth of weeds whose strengthening is dangerous to the Europeans themselves, to European democracy and to Muslim citizens.
- After all, what does the average European think when he sees the pictures of the Danish and Norwegian embassies being set on fire in Beirut and Damascus?
- The question of whether it was appropriate to publish the cartoons is secondary. In Europe, Israel, and the Muslim world, much harsher cartoons have been displayed in the last few years.
- The primary question is whether Europe is capable of recognizing the problem that has been placed on its doorstep.
- Mainstream politics and media must set aside political correctness and say in a clear manner what kind of continent they want and why they have been fighting for it for so long. (Ha'aretz)
Governments Playing with Fire
by Anders Jerichow
- In European countries, minorities - Muslim as well as Jewish - have been subject to demonization and immigrants have been targets of discriminatory practices and exclusivist policies.
- In the great cartoon affair, governments have been playing with fire. In Denmark, the government tried to reduce the affair to a question of freedom of speech. In the Middle East, governments insisted on seeing the affair as a question of religious respect and made the most of the issue.
- In Europe traditions do call for sensitivity to religious feeling, just as hate speech generally - and wisely - is banned.
- In Europe, marginalized immigrant societies have found a cultural symbol in the cartoon affair of their sense that they are being denied opportunities, equality and respect.
- In the Middle East, populations who would otherwise find plenty of reason for local frustration - the continued political oppression in their own countries, the Iraq war, the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the Darfour genocide, lack of freedom of speech - were allowed to let off plenty of steam.
- But when the dust has settled, European exclusion of immigrant minorities will continue to nurture growing frustration. (Bitterlemons)
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The Relevance for Jews and Israelis
by Dina Porat
- Many commentators now consider the Danish caricatures as a mere excuse seized upon by Muslim radicals to start a wave of violent reaction against the West and one of its most sacred values, freedom of speech.
- The most logical reaction to this proposal among Jews is, first, how come we never launched a loud campaign to protest against thousands of far more abusive caricatures, published worldwide for hundreds of years, which have defamed everything dear to us?
- Why did Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinezhad announce a "scholars" conference and a caricatures contest on the Holocaust, and not, say, on Theodor Herzl?
- Let me suggest a less well-known reason for the Iranian anti-Holocaust crusade: that same legislation against Holocaust denial, especially in western and central European countries, has put in jail a number of its central figures.
- I would suggest, though I naturally cannot prove it, that the Swiss Jurgen Graf, the Austrian Wolfgang Froelich and the German Horst Mahler, who are either residing in Tehran or visit there frequently, are the moving spirits behind the Iranian campaign.
- My pessimism notwithstanding, let us call upon the UN Third Committee on Discrimination to ask the representatives of each religion to define precisely what are its most sacred values, and then to reach an agreement signed by all nations not to abuse freedom of speech in order to defame them. (Bitterlemons)
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