Reverse culpability spin

Sometimes, the little articles in the back of the newspaper tell you more about global trends than do the big pieces on the front pages. A few days ago, a small Associated Press item was headlined: “Norway: Swastika art removed.”

The item read: “A painting that featured the words Israel and the United States and replaced each ‘s’ with a Nazi swastika was removed from an Oslo art exhibition.”

How is it possible to confuse the tiny Jewish state with the vast Nazi empire that attempted to exterminate the Jews? And how is it possible to confuse the United States, which liberated Europe from Nazi shackles, with the Nazis themselves?

This would appear to be a phenomenon that French author Jean-Francois Revel has called “reversal of culpability.” It is particularly disturbing when it is propagated not at secret meetings of Osama-worshipping jihadis but at an “art exhibition” in Oslo, the cosmopolitan capital of Norway, an exceedingly civilized country.

Nor was this an isolated incident. Just last month in neighboring Sweden, there was another “art exhibition,” this one honoring a woman who murdered 22 people in a Haifa restaurant last fall.

Meanwhile, a shelf of new books has been published in Europe arguing that the United States is the real “evil empire.” A book blaming the CIA and Israel’s Mossad for September 11 became a best seller in France and Germany. And the International Herald Tribune’s Serge Schmemann has written of “a tsunami of anti-Americanism” on the Continent.

Where does this extravagant hatred for, and slander of, the United States and Israel come from? Possibly from the Middle East, where the level of anti-American and anti-Semitic calumny has reached dizzying heights, while terrorism is routinely condoned and not infrequently celebrated.

On the West Bank, dolls of Osama bin Laden and the World Trade Center are sold openly and are quite popular.

Throughout the Middle East, Al Manar — Hezbollah TV — broadcasts videos that purport to show Jews ritually slaughtering gentile children to use their blood for holiday pastries.

Some will argue that these are predictable, if excessive, responses to the “oppressive policies” of the United States and Israel. But are they? Start with the United States. In recent years, when Americans have sacrificed blood and treasure, it has generally been to defend Muslim communities. Think of Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Somalia, Afghanistan — and, of course, Iraq, where we removed a tyrant who had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

Each year, billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars go to such Arab nations as Egypt — as well as to the Palestinian Authority. Much of those funds are misspent, but whose fault is that? It’s true that the United States supports Israel — or, rather, Israel’s right to exist. But President Bush is the first U.S. president also to publicly back an independent Palestinian state — so long as it’s not a terrorist state.

President Clinton went to enormous lengths to try to bring peace to the Middle East. Under his influence, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state. But Yasser Arafat rebuffed the offer and countered with a terrorist offensive that has been responsible for the murder of more than 900 Israelis.

Despite that — or because of it — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is now talking seriously about pulling out of Gaza entirely, and asking nothing in return. His primary strategy for dealing with terrorists from the West Bank is to build fences to prevent terrorists from entering Israeli communities — a nonviolent response that has aroused a fury in both the Middle East and Europe, including hearings at the United Nations’ court in The Hague.

Disagree with these policies if you like. But such disagreement cannot rationally justify labeling Israelis or Americans as Nazis, or blaming them for September 11. So what is the source of the venom?

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