Michael Galchinsky’s plea in support of multiculturalism following the recent blood bath in Norway is indeed noble but patently naïve (“Multiculturalism And The Lessons From Norway,” Aug. 5).
He questions how religious and racial extremism still exist 70 years after the Holocaust and downplays the presence of anti-Semitism except for isolated events in France and “pockets in Eastern Europe.” Anti-Semitism has, in fact, not disappeared from the European continent but has simply crept beneath the surface appearing quite often in the guise of anti-Zionism or attacks on the legitimacy of the state of Israel. The hated Jews have now been replaced by the hated Zionists.
Perhaps one lesson that Galchinsky has not learned or perhaps overlooked is that the one issue that does bind the native and immigrant groups throughout Europe is their shared anti-Jewish/anti-Israel bias — a dangerous trend that we should never whitewash when attempting to make “common cause” with neighbors.
Lawrence, L.I.
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