Welcome to the latest in our series of audio adventures, Tales for Our Time, and Part Three of our serialisation of The City without Jews by Hugo Bettauer.
The title was unusual in 1922, although cities without Jews have become far more common in the century since, from Afghanistan to Ireland - to the point where the book's name will be utterly meaningless in the Europe of, say, 2050. Longtime readers will recall my contempt over these last twenty years for what Ezra Levant calls "the Official Jews" - ever since Bernie Farber's Canadian Jewish Congress decided to make common cause with the Canadian Islamic Congress against Ezra and me. Presumably, since they already had two-thirds of each moniker in common, how difficult could the sole remaining word be?
But what does Farber care? Courtesy of Stephen Harper's ministry, he was garlanded with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal, whose purpose was to "honour significant contributions and achievements by Canadians" - for which assisting the total extinction of Jewish life in Canada surely qualifies. I thought Farber was a shoo-in for Most Stupid Jew on the Planet, but this last week Davos brought us a chap called Pinchas Goldschmidt, who is president of something called the Conference of European Rabbis. Sitting alongside some bigshot imam, Rabbi Goldschmidt was concerned about countering "the rise of the extreme right" and to that end proposed a Judeo-Islamic alliance:
He went on to argue that combating antisemitism and Islamophobia together was in the shared interest of Jewish and Muslim communities, pointing to past interfaith initiatives he said had helped promote social cohesion.
Oh, really? Is this the new Abie's Irish Rose? Abie's Belgian Aisha? It's only January, but I think we have our F**kwit of the Year award winner. Was it Tommy Robinson who blew away the ten-year-old girl and the other Jews on Bondi Beach? Er, no: it was Sajid and Naveed Akram. Did the AfD shoot up that synagogue in Manchester? Um, it was actually a fellow called Jihad al-Shamie ...but then "Jihad" is presumably a very traditional name among what Rabbi Goldschmidt designates as "old Europeans". Especially in Lancashire.
We have had a quarter-century of this dishonesty from the west's Official Jews. How's that working out for Jews, rabbi? If you held a competition to come up with a single statement to metastasize anti-Semitism in Europe, Jews proposing to work with Muslims against "old Europeans" would be hard to beat. The Euro-left have already cast you as the new Nazis and cosying up to them will avail you naught (see Farber), while on the Euro-right a growing percentage regard Jews as at least partially responsible for the remorseless Islamisation of their native lands, which you've more or less just confirmed, genius. The Trump Administration was not amused and was quick to slap down the rabbi:
Blaming 'old Europe' for the present surge in antisemitism is disgraceful.
Which brings us to tonight's episode of The City without Jews, in which the Chancellor of Austria quizzes his departmental chief about how the new policy is being received:
"And now one more question: How do people in general view the execution of the law?"
"With tremendous enthusiasm, of course. The police are having a hundred clever plain-clothes men mingle in the crowds and make observations. And they are unanimous in reporting that the Christian population is actually delirious with joy, and is expecting an early change for the better in general conditions, a decrease in the price of food, and a more equalized distribution of wealth. Even among the working-men who are still organized as Social-Democrats there is great satisfaction with the exodus of the Jews. On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that the populace is excited... There is amazing extravagance among the lower classes, and intoxication is increasing from day to day."
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Three of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Parts One and Two can be found here.
Thank you for your kind comments about this serialisation. Steyn Clubber Israel Pickholtz asks:
Who did the translation that you are reading?
It's the only English translation I know of, Israel - by Salomea Neumark Brainin, published in 1927, the year after Hugo Bettauer's murder. Mrs Brainin was the sister of Martha Neumark, whom some American listeners may know as the first woman to be accepted for rabbinical school. I confess I do not think it an especially great translation, particularly with respect to the dialogue. I would have done it myself, but my German isn't good enough to go the distance on a full-length novel, although it proved sufficiently serviceable for one of our video poems.
~If you've only joined the Steyn Club in recent days and missed our earlier serials (Conan Doyle's The Tragedy of the Korosko, Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, Kipling, Kafka, Dickens, Gogol, Jane Austen, Jack London, Scott Fitzgerald, P G Wodehouse and more), you can find them all on our easy-to-access Netflix-style Tales for Our Time home page.
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