06/17/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09950

EVIL OF ANTI-SEMITISM

There have been many incidents of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Middle East. Last month on a road near Moscow, as the New York Times reported, someone put up a sign calling for death to Jews. A young Russian woman, Tatyana Sapunova, stopped to pull it down. But when she grabbed the hateful sign, it exploded in her face, causing severe burns and eye injuries.

In France, hundreds of anti-Jewish incidents have been reported, including the destruction of a synagogue in Marseilles in April. Anti-Semitic vandalism has also occurred in Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Slovakia, and Ukraine, among other countries.

This month, the Independent, a British newspaper, reported on a so-called "educational" computer game that enables children to pretend to kill Israelis. By giving hateful "answers" to questions about Israel and Jews, children are rewarded with the chance to shoot at tanks marked with Israeli insignia on the computer screen.

Incitements to hatred of Jews occur all too often in newspapers and on radio and television in such Arab countries as Saudi Arabia and Egypt and in Palestinian areas. Palestinian terrorists who make themselves into human bombs to kill Israelis are glorified as so-called "martyrs."

But there are signs of hope. Unlike during the Soviet period, Russian Jews now have the right to travel freely and emigrate if they choose. President Vladimir Putin and other European leaders have spoken eloquently against anti-Semitism. And last month, the Jerusalem Post interviewed a young woman who had trained to be a suicide bomber but decided not to go through with it. Thauriya Hamamreh [thuh-RYE-ah hah-MAHM-ray] said she "began to imagine the people I would be killing, whether they would be women and children, families sitting down at a café." Ms. Hamamreh said she realized that "the real jihad for men and women is to believe wholeheartedly and follow the path of Islam." And as some Islamic scholars have emphasized, that path has no room for terrorism in any form. Thauriya Hamamreh is a model not just for Palestinian or Arab youth, but for young people everywhere.

As President George W. Bush said, "terrorists are defined by their hatreds: they hate democracy and tolerance and free expression and women and Jews and Christians and all Muslims who disagree with them. Others killed in the name of racial purity, or the class struggle. These enemies kill in the name of a false religious purity, perverting the faith they claim to hold." In the war against terrorism, said President Bush, "we. . .are defending civilization itself."

Civilized society, whether in Europe or the Middle East, requires a sense of tolerance and recognition of our common humanity. Thauriya Hamamreh showed the way when she turned from terror.