Liberal Jews' Perverse Yearning for Resurgent Nazis a Way to Avoid the Distressing Reality of Islamist Jew-Hate

Early on, there was talk that the drive-by shooter responsible for yesterday's mass-murder of Jews in Toulouse, France was one of those scary Nazis we keep hearing so much about in certain quarters. Certain leftist quarters (not mentioning any names), that is, the rest of us being fairly certain that the Nazis, horrible as they were, are yesterday's news, and that the far greater threat to Jewry in our time is posed by Muslim Jew-haters. Contentions' Jonathan Tobin concurs. He writes:

For many liberal Jews...raising the question of Islamist hate for Jews — something that is the source of the rising tide of anti-Semitic agitation around the globe — is somehow in bad taste if not evidence of the dread charge of Islamophobia. They are so conditioned to believe that Muslim distaste for Israel’s actions is the reason for enmity that they ignore the vicious stream of Jew-hatred coming out of the Middle East and prefer to worry about an altogether mythical post 9/11 backlash against Muslims.

Instead, they prefer to dwell on the far less potent danger posed by the tiny groups of Hitler-lovers who are generally too weak and isolated to do anything more than disturb the peace. While such groups are despicable and deserve the attention of law enforcement, to focus on them is to re-fight the last war.

We don’t know yet who committed the Toulouse massacre but we do know that it was the work of a Jew-hater who sought out and murdered Jewish children in cold blood solely because they were Jewish. It would have been reassuring in some ways to think that this crime was only the work of outliers like the neo-Nazis. The thought that it is part of a rising trend of Islamist hate — which has been aided and abetted by the anti-Zionist attitudes of European elites — is far more troubling.

Worrying about Nazis is an exercise that is far less distressing than forcing ourselves to deal with the real dilemmas of our age. Chasing ghosts may be of little utility for contemporary Jewish security, but it is easier to think about than coping with real live Muslim terror.  

FYI lefties: this is not the correct stance to assume if you hope to cope with real live Muslim terror (even if you think you see some Nazis hiding down there):


Update: The Toulouse murderer is Muslim.