Byron Roth

I have long considered Kevin MacDonald’s work on anti-Semitism to be an important contribution to the social science literature, and I have so stated in my latest book, The Perils of Diversity.  His work on the subject bore the marks of serious scholarship when dealing with social issues, among which are a reliance on evidence, full coverage of differing views on that evidence, and a keen eye for the context in which social events play out.

I was therefore dismayed by his intemperate and gratuitous slur in his recent piece at The Occidental Observer (which was re-posted at Alternate Right), “Attack of the "Jew-Hating Stormtroopers"” claiming that “Israel is an apartheid state bent on ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinians.” The vicious attack by David Horowitz on Ron Paul was completely out of line and should be answered; however, MacDonald’s skewed depiction of the Israel-Palestinian conflict didn’t help his cause.

In trying to determine the basis of MacDonald’s view, I examined a 2003 article (PDF) in The Occidental Quarterly in which he makes similar charges against Israel. As regard to evidence for these serious charges, he relies exclusively on anti-Zionist authors, with no reference at all to those who have challenged their views. For instance, he quotes at length Ran Hacohen, an Israeli leftist whose website is unabashedly and vehemently pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. For example, Hacohen wrote, during the height of the suicide bombings in Israel, that those bombings were justified by the occupation of the West Bank and that they could easily be stopped by building a fence, but such a move was resisted by Israeli leaders as it might be seen as a permanent border.  After the fence was built and proved successful, Hacohen then charged that it represented an effort to establish an “apartheid” state.  Even a cursory perusal of Hacohen’s website will reveal that it is wildly lopsided in its analysis. Had he wished, MacDonald could easily have found sources challenging Hacohen’s interpretations. But this Macdonald failed to do and thereby failed a fundamental test of honest scholarship.

German Chancellor Andrea Merkel’s acknowledgement that multiculturalism had “utterly failed” in her country merely affirms what most Germans have long known. During the 1950s and 1960s large numbers of guest workers, mainly men, were recruited by Germany and other Northern European countries as laborers in rebuilding their economies following World War II. They were expected to return home after the work shortages ended, but in a monumental absence of mind, were not asked to leave or deported. In Germany, the bulk of these workers came from Turkey as part of a Turkish-German agreement. By the 1970s these men began bringing families and as a consequence Germany now has a Muslim population of over three million people, or 3.7 percent of the population and the Muslim community continues to grow.

The Turkish Muslims, even those who have the means, tend to remain in ethnic enclaves, many of which are coming to resemble underclass communities in the United States. The German political scientist Volker Eichener expressed the fear of “an Americanization of German cities” and a “danger of social disintegration.” In the Muslin Neukolln district in Berlin, for instance, a subculture has developed “with its own value systems and ways of behavior… formed by youth gangs.” The segregation of this community does not appear to be diminishing, and may, in fact, be growing. The district has Berlin’s highest percentage of welfare recipients and the highest use of housing benefits. In March of 2006, the district received wide media coverage when the head of a secondary school wrote an open letter desperately seeking help from education officials “because violence in the school had made the lessons unbearable.”

Crime in Germany grew by an astounding 372 percent between 1965 and 1995, and much of that rise is attributable to immigration. It has declined marginally since then, but this may be the result more of under-reporting than of any actual decrease. According to Stephen Brown, police on routine checks in immigrant neighborhoods in major German cities “are met with angry crowds and often risk assault.” Sometimes the police are swarmed by residents when they try to make an arrest. “Overall, Germany’s police union recorded an average of 26,000 such occurrences in recent years.”