Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Unhelpful Journalism

Global Post has yet another example of an uninformative article on anti-Semitism in Europe. Such articles almost never address the following question: how much of the observed anti-Semitism is the anger of Muslim immigrants (and their European-born children) directed at Jews and how much is actually the bias of non-Muslim ethnic Europeans?

If the answer is 90% Muslim and 10% European, that is one story. If it is 50% Muslim and 50% European that is a very different issue. Articles which fail to answer this question are unhelpful as they obfuscate the underlying problem, perhaps intentionally.

Christian Europe has a history of anti-Semitism from the Dreyfus affair and Nazism, going back to the Inquisition. On the other hand, the hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants to Europe arrive with anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic attitudes. Helpful journalism would help the reader understand to what extent each is currently making trouble.