These teachings are sorely needed in a country where a neo-Nazi (Nikolaos Michaloliakos)was elected to the Athens city council last fall, where a prominent composer (Mikis Theodorakis) exclaimed “We’re in danger! Zionism and its leaders are here, meeting in our country!” in a television interview while a delegation of Jewish leaders was visiting the country, where the Supreme Court acquitted a Holocaust denier (Kostas Plevris) of inciting racial hatred last year because his book only detailed the Jews’ “conspiratorial pursuit of global domination,” and where an Orthodox Metropolitan (Seraphim) declared on national television last month that “world Zionism” was conspiring to destroy Greece and the Orthodox Church. [In a “statement of clarification,” the Metropolitan added, “My public vehement opposition against International Zionism refers to the organ that is the successor of the ‘Sanhedrin’ which altered the faith of the Patriarchs, the Prophets and the Righteous of the Jewish nation through the Talmud, the Rabbinical writings and the Kabbalah into Satanism, and always strives vigorously towards an economic empire set up throughout the world with headquarters in the great land beyond the Atlantic for the prevalence of world government and pan-religion.”]
I am certainly not claiming that there is an anti-Semite behind every Athenian corner or that anti-Semitism is widespread in Greece. Rather, I tend to agree with writer Andrew Apostolou that the Greeks’ sins are indifference and apathy. In the Wall Street Journal, Apostolou wrote: “The fundamental problem with Greek anti-Semitism is not that it is rampant. It is that in a country of 11 million with just 5,000 Jews, few Greeks care to resist it. Greece suffers from a lack of moral, religious and social leadership denouncing the embarrassment of anti-Semitism.” Anti-Semitism is not just a character defect, it is evil. History has shown that societies that tolerate virulent anti-Semitism have serious underlying problems. Greece’s recent financial meltdown, corruption scandals and civil unrest show that it is no exception.