Where’s the Coverage? Czech President Celebrates Israel

In Paris this week, a Jewish teenager was attacked with an electric Tazer by a group of teens, two teens were chased by a man with an axe, and two other teens were sprayed with tear gas. Tablet Magazine reports on these and other attacks in Paris so far this year:

• In May, a Jewish woman with a baby was attacked at a Paris bus station by a man who shouted “Dirty Jewess” at her.

• In March, a Jewish teacher leaving a kosher restaurant in Paris had his nose broken by a group of assailants who also drew a swastika on his chest.

• One week earlier in March, an Israeli man was attacked with a stun gun outside a Paris synagogue,

• A week before that in March, a 28-year-old Jewish man was beaten on the Paris metro to chants of “Jew, we are going to lay into you, you have no country.”

In January, anti-government demonstrators shouted “Jew, France is Not Yours” as they marched through the streets of Paris.

Other attacks have occurred elsewhere in France, and no one should forget the Toulouse massacre of a rabbi and three Jewish children only two years ago. Days ago, the fourth victim of the vicious attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels passed away.

Far right wing political parties appear to be on the rise across Europe, with some leaders openly expressing anti-Semitic attitudes. In Ukraine, pamphlets were passed out demanding that Jews register. Calls for boycott are heard across the continent. It’s no wonder that many are reminded of the Europe of the 1930s.

It is fitting then that the President of the Czech Republic has spoken out. Czechoslovakia was famously sacrificed on the altar of appeasement by the cowardly leaders of Europe to avoid the unavoidable war with Hitler and the Axis powers. Given this history and recent events, Czech President Milos Zeman’s statement in honor of Israel’s Independence Day is powerful. An excerpt:

The only holiday of independence which I can never leave out is the celebration of the independence of the Jewish State of Israel. There are other nations with whom we share the same values, whether it’s free elections or a free market economy, but no one is threatening to delete those states from the map. No one shoots at their border towns and no one wants to see the citizens of those nations driven out of their country. There is a term called political correctness and I consider it to be a euphemism for political cowardice. So I refuse to be cowardly.

[…]

Let’s throw out political correctness and call a spade, a spade. Yes we have friends in the world to whom we express our solidarity, but this solidarity costs us nothing because these folks are never threatened.

A true sense of solidarity is solidarity with a friend who is in distress and in danger, and so here I am.

But no major American media outlets reported on this speech. Wouldn’t it be something if mainstream media outlets threw out political correctness and reported news that didn’t fit with their pre-determined narratives? Until then, readers will continue to ask… Where’s the coverage?

Milos Zeman, left, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel
(photo credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/Flash90)