MORE OF US PLAYING THE VICTIM. Another cheery poll.

A poll of nine European nations that was released Monday found that 46 percent of respondents said Jews in their nations were "different," and 35 percent said Jews should stop "playing the victim" for the Holocaust.

Some 9 percent of the respondents said they "don't like or trust Jews," and 15 percent said "it would be better if Israel didn't exist."

The poll by the Ipso research institute for Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera was conducted in Italy, France, Belgium, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, and Britain.

Asked if Jews in their countries had a "mentality and lifestyle" different than other citizens, 46 percent said yes. About 40.5 percent said Jews in their country had "a particular relationship with money" and 35.7 percent said Jews "should stop playing the victim for the Holocaust and the persecutions of 50 years ago."

The poll also differentiated between the countries surveyed, finding that German, Austrian, Spanish and Italian hostility toward Jews was higher than that in the rest of the countries. In all the countries, anti-Semitic sentiment was positively correlated with anti-Israel sentiment.

One thing I understood decades ago is that many, though not all, Jews are steeped in the long-term history of anti-semitism, and the awareness of how much death and suffering it has led to in the past two thousand years, with only a few patches of exceptions here and there. That many Jews currently live more or less safely and more or less well-off is therefore viewed as a trivial blip in time and space that is, viewed historically, perfectly apt to disappear in a blink of an eye.

Many, though certainly not all, non-Jews are relatively ignorant of this long, blood-soaked, history, and certainly don't feel it in their bones (what were the last ten book-length studies of the subject you've read?).

That's why we obsessively study these polls and discuss them, and obsessively look for signs of flare-ups and talk about them. It took only a handful of years for Germany to turn from the eminently civilized place in Europe where Jews were most accepted, integrated, making the largest contribution, and safe, to you know what.

Give us a couple of hundred years, at least, of living in general safety in most of the world, and maybe we'll start to relax a bit. Not likely sooner.

I'm completely serious.

One of the defining points of Jewish culture is its long-term memory.

Therefore I wish I could get across to all those 35% above the difference between, however rationally or reasonably, "living in fear" and "playing the victim."

But since they don't read me, I won't be able to.

Read The Rest Scale: 1.5 out of 5.