Post - Yom Kippur blues

That morning after the Yom Kippur is different for me from all the others for some intangible reason. It is difficult to rev up the engine after the silent day and a half. Or whatever.

Anyway, slowly and lazily paging through the links:

Pond-dwellers can’t take the moral high ground

CiF Watch folks blasting another piece by Seth. Their engines are certainly tuned and revved up to the max. I don't really know, there is a sentence to admire in that piece:

Shouting racist obscenities in a public place such as a football stadium requires tough action on the part of club officials and the police in order to send the message that modern Britain will not tolerate the kind of bigotry that so hampered attempts at communal cohesion in the 20th century.

Hats off, people. Faulkner should take notice, methinks. On the other hand, being dead, he couldn't, most probably.

Yet there are some other valuable utterances in this post: like the much abused:

There are those, myself included, who refuse to ascribe to the theory that all anti-Israel sentiment is rooted in antisemitism: to take such a view, as many do, is both disingenuous and dishonest, and is more often than not employed as a means of stifling any honest criticism of Israeli government actions.

You can't help being awed by:

In less enlightened countries such as Iran, Israel and Italy, politicians and civil servants think nothing about using vile and inflammatory language to whip up hate against minority groups, and the effect such rhetoric has on their societies is palpably corrosive. Britain must not allow the spectre of bigotry to overshadow efforts to stamp out racism wherever it rears its head.

And you cannot help being surprised by:

The fear and paranoia that engulfs much of the Jewish community in England is only fed by actions such as Laxton's.

Do they (fear and paranoia) really engulf? Is it time to send in the cavalry? After all, what community wouldn't be devastated by this broadside:

This was not a shaven-headed English Defence League protester venting his fury, or an Islamist extremist preaching fire and brimstone from the steps of a mosque – had it been, the crime would have been no less severe, but at least the outburst would have been viewed as less surprising than when emanating from the mouth of a senior civil servant in the employ of the country's rulers.

If you are still breathing after a feeble attempt to understand the thrust of that piece of prose, I shall try to summarize all the above in a concise way:

The primordial fear and creeping paranoia that squeeze the last molecules of oxygen out of the strained lungs of the Jewish community in England, so used to and enamored by the fury vented by low-brow beer-gut skinheads of EDL and sonorous ululations of an Islamist extremist preaching about Sodom's chemical by-products from the steps of the mosque, the fear and paranoia exacerbated by the repeated rumors of the awful words emanating from a certain civil servant in a temple of health, which walls are now stained forever by the toxic residue of hate speech against the community that is quaking in its collective shoes in wait for the next letter Seth will choose for the countries he is unhappy with because their civil servants are hardly civil enough to be brought to the table of the wise and enlightened international community of a chosen few who understand that using vile and inflammatory language is not a good way to whip up (and keep thoroughly whipped) hate against minority groups and who are united with Seth in understanding that not all anti-Israel sentiment is rooted in antisemitism and that some of it comes naturally or from a prolonged illness, and that to use this artificial strawman is the best way to get out of any argument, especially with Abe Foxman, who, while not mentioned, is a permanent specter that futilely attempts to overshadow Seth's vision in which that communal cohesion in the 20th century will be dwarfed by the communal cohesion we shall all reach when we finally understand that the best way to reach it is to stop thinking for ourselves and, instead, listen attentively for long enough to that mantra Seth repeats about the anti-Israeli sentiment, which is rooted (or not, I am getting all mixed up here, so please help me out) in the deeper knowledge and understanding of the universal truth that could, in turn, be reached by embracing a specific branch of Judaism that only Seth could define and identify for us chickens.

How does Faulkner feel now, I wonder?

Well, I shall go an take a short breather before I study in details that opus by another learned correspondent of CiF, one Antony Lerman, on the question whether people should use the term "Nazis" re these unspeakable cads, these inhuman bignosed blood sucking thieving Zionists oppressors. I missed it at the time, more is the pity. It will surely get my engine going...