New antisemitism

New antisemitism is the concept of an international resurgence of attacks on Jewish symbols, as well as the acceptance of antisemitic beliefs and their expression in public discourse, coming from three political directions: the political left, far-right, and Islamism.

The term has entered common usage to refer to what some writers describe as a wave of antisemitism that escalated, particularly in Western Europe, after the Second Intifada in 2000, the failure of the Oslo accords, and the September 11, 2001 attacks. The concept is used to distinguish this wave from classical antisemitism, which was largely associated with the political right.

Photographed at an anti-war rally in San Francisco on February 16, 2003, this placard mixes anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist and anti-globalization imagery with some classic antisemitic motifs. Photograph taken by zombie of zombietime.com.

Proponents of the concept argue that anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, anti-globalization, third worldism, and opposition to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland are coupled with antisemitism, or constitute disguised antisemitism. Critics of the concept argue that it serves to equate legitimate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and that it is used to silence debate.

History

An early use of the concept in close to its modern form was in the late 1940s, when the Soviet Union was accused of pursuing a "new anti-Semitism" against Jews, of the sort manifested in the so-called Doctors' plot, a supposed conspiracy by Jewish doctors to poison the Soviet leadership. Stalinist opposition to "rootless cosmopolitans" – a euphemism for Jews – was rooted in the belief, as expressed by Klement Gottwald, that "treason and espionage infiltrate the ranks of the Communist Party. This channel is Zionism."

A Nazi German cartoon circa 1938 depicts the Jews as an octopus encircling the globe; see article Anti-globalization and anti-Semitism

File:2001 ed The International Jew by Henry Ford.jpg

The same imagery revived on the cover of the 2001 Egyptian edition of The International Jew by Henry Ford.

French philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff writes that the first wave of the new antisemitism emerged in the Arab-Muslim world and the Soviet sphere following the 1967 Six Day War, citing papers by Jacques Givet (1968) and historian Léon Poliakov (1969) in which the idea of a new anti-Semitism rooted in anti-Zionism was discussed. He argues that anti-Jewish themes centered on the demonical figures of Israel and what he calls "fantasy-world Zionism": that Jews plot together, seek to conquer the world, and are imperialistic and bloodthirsty, which gave rise to the reactivation of stories about ritual murder and the poisoning of food and water supplies. The Israeli victory of 1967, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the Palestinian deaths during the first Intifada all served to reinforce the caricature.

In 1974, Forster and Epstein, officials of the Anti-Defamation League, published The New anti-Semitism, which appears to be the first book-length treatment of the subject. They expressed concern about manifestations of antisemitism and opposition to Israel, drawing attention to what they called "Arab propaganda" and "the oil weapon" in international affairs. Part of their criticism is directed towards left-wing American organizations of the period, such as the Young Socialist Alliance, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Spartacist League.

Allan Brownfeld, writing in the Journal of Palestine Studies, argues that the term "new antisemitism" emerged as a result of efforts by some to re-define the term "anti-semitism" to include anything that opposes the policies and interests of the state of Israel. He cites the Forster and Epstein book as one of the first manifestations of this trend. Brownfeld argues that this altered definition trivializes the concept of anti-semitism, by turning it into "a form of political blackmail" and "a weapon with which to silence any criticism of either Israel or U.S. policy in the Middle East". He adds that the "false imputation of anti-Semitism" is a "violation of Jewish ethics and values", and that the shift in the term's meaning "will be welcomed by genuine anti-Semites who will, as a result, be able to escape responsibility for their own bigotry".

In the 1980s, radical left-wing movements voiced increasing opposition to Israel, controversially claiming that Zionism was a racist and colonialist movement. In 1984, historian Robert Wistrich delivered a lecture in the home of Chaim Herzog, the President of Israel, in which he spoke of a "new anti-Semitic anti-Zionism," the characteristic mode of which was the equation of Zionism with Nazism. He stated that "in recent years these grotesque Soviet blood-libels have been taken up by a part of the radical Left — especially the Trotskyists — in Western Europe and America".

In the mid-1980s, the Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban argued that "the New Left is the author and progenitor of the new anti-Semitism." Other commentators stated that the tendency to criticize Israel actions more vehemently than those of other nations was a form of antisemitic prejudice. Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher said in 1983: "Nobody says anything against the Egyptian authorities for oppressing the Coptic Christians. No one protested vehemently against the forced closing of St. Joseph's College years ago in Iraq, nor against the laws in Jordan prior to 1967 which prohibited Christians from acquiring new property. If Israel did any of these things, everyone would cry bloody murder... This is prejudice."

In The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, Father Edward H. Flannery writes that, because most of the spectacular displays of antisemitism have come from the right — for example, Czarist pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair, and Adolf Hitler — it has blinded onlookers to what he calls an "uninterrupted strain of antisemitism on the Left," quoting Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin who write: "The further Left one goes, the greater the antisemitism." Flannery writes that it came as no surprise to historians of the left that, as William D. Rubinstein wrote in 1978: "Today, the main enemies of the Jews and Israel are almost exclusively on the left, most obviously the Communist states, the radical Third World anti-Zionist nations and their sympathizers in the West." Flannery argues that "all the progenitors of socialist theory, with the exception of St Simon, were bitter antisemites," arguing that Marx and Engels took much of what Flannery calls their antisemitism from Proudhon, Bauer, Fourier, Toussenel, and Fichte. Flannery writes that in 1891, the Second International Socialist Congress refused to condemn antisemitism without also condemning philosemitism. He cites historian Zosa Szajkowski, who writes that he could not find a "single word on behalf of Jews" in the entirety of French socialist literature from 1820 to 1920. The link between antisemitism and the ideology of the left is "not accidental," Flannery argues, because Judaism stresses nationality, peoplehood, or religious commitment; extreme leftist ideologies and traditional Judaism are "almost by definition incompatible."

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, an American research group that tracks the far right, writes that, during the early 1980s, isolationists on the far right made overtures to anti-war activists on the left to join forces against government policies in areas where they shared concerns, mainly civil liberties, opposition to U.S. military intervention overseas, and opposition to U.S. support for Israel.

As they interacted, some of the classic right-wing anti-Semitic scapegoating conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles, including stories about how a "New World Order", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus," was manipulating world governments. Berlet writes that antisemitic conspiracism was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups, and that the left adopted the rhetoric, which Berlet argues was made possible by the left's lack of knowledge of the history of fascism and its use of "scapegoating, reductionist and simplistic solutions, demagoguery, and a conspiracy theory of history."

Toward the end of 1990, as the movement against the Gulf War began to build, Berlet writes that a number of far-right and antisemitic groups sought out alliances with left-wing anti-war coalitions, who began to speak openly about a "Jewish lobby" that was encouraging the United States to invade the Middle East. This idea morphed into conspiracy theories about a "Zionist-occupied government" (ZOG), which Berlet writes is the modern incarnation of the antisemitic hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Berlet adds: "It is important to recognize that as a whole the antiwar movement overwhelmingly rejected these overtures by the political right, while recognizing that the attempt reflected a larger ongoing problem." He cites the example of Wisconsin anti-war activist Alan Ruff, who appeared on a panel in Verona to discuss the Gulf War. Also on the panel on the anti-war side was another local activist, Emmanuel Branch. "Suddenly I heard Branch saying the war was the result of a Zionist banking conspiracy," said Ruff. "I found myself squeezed between pro-war hawks and this anti-Jewish nut, it destroyed the ability of those of us who opposed the war to make our point."

Arguments for and against the concept

A new phenomenon

Jack Fischel, chair of history at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, writes that the new anti-Semitism is a new phenomenon stemming from what he calls an "unprecedented coalition" of enemies: "leftists, vociferously opposed to the policies of Israel, and right-wing antisemites, committed to the destruction of Israel, [who] were joined by millions of Muslims, including Arabs, who immigrated to Europe ... and who brought with them their hatred of Israel in particular and of Jews in general." It is this new political alignment, he argues, that makes new antisemitism unique. Mark Strauss of Foreign Policy links it to anti-globalism, describing it as "the medieval image of the 'Christ-killing' Jew resurrected on the editorial pages of cosmopolitan European newspapers. It is the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement refusing to put the Star of David on their ambulances ... It is neo-Nazis donning checkered Palestinian kaffiyehs and Palestinians lining up to buy copies of Mein Kampf."

It is the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement refusing to put the Star of David on their ambulances ... It is neo-Nazis donning checkered Palestinian kaffiyehs and Palestinians lining up to buy copies of Mein Kampf. — Mark Strauss

The French philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff argues that Judenhass based on racism and nationalism has been replaced by a new form based on anti-racism and anti-nationalism. He identifies some of its main features as the use of anti-racism for anti-Jewish purposes, identifying Zionism as racism; the use of material related to Holocaust denial becomes an ordinary feature of discourse e.g. doubts about the number of victims, allegations of a Holocaust industry; discourse is borrowed from third worldism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-Americanism, and anti-globalization; there is widespread dissemination of what he calls the "myth" of the "intrinsically good Palestinian — the innocent victim par excellence.

In part because the concept of new antisemitism is a recent one, and because of the nature of it, there are no indices of measurement, according to Irwin Cotler, Professor of Law at McGill University, and Canada's former Justice Minister. Cotler defines classical antisemitism as "the discrimination against, or denial of, the right of Jews to live as equal members of a free society," the focus of which is discrimination against Jews as individuals. He argues that the new antisemitism, by contrast, "involves the discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations"; that is, discrimination against Jews as a people. He argues that antisemitism has expanded from hatred of Jews (classical antisemitism) to hatred of Jewish national aspirations (new antisemitism). The latter is hard to measure because the usual indices used by governments to detect discrimination — standard of living, housing, health, and employment — are useful only in measuring discrimination against individuals. Because it is difficult to measure, it is difficult to show convincingly that the concept is a valid one.

A new phenomenon, but not antisemitism

Dr. Brian Klug argues that the new prejudice is not antisemitism, new or old; not a mutation of an existing virus, but "a brand new 'bug'."

That there has been a resurgence of antisemitic attacks and attitudes is accepted by most opponents of the concept of new antisemitism. What is not accepted is that this constitutes a different kind of antisemitism.

Brian Klug, senior research fellow in philosophy at St Benet's Hall, Oxford — who gave expert testimony in February 2006 to a British parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism in the UK, and in November 2004 to the Hearing on Anti-Semitism at the German Bundestag — argues against the idea that there is a "single, unified phenomenon" that could be called "new" antisemitism. He accepts that there is reason for the Jewish community to be concerned, citing the truck-bombing of two synagogues in Istanbul, an arson attack on an Orthodox Jewish school in Paris, the reappearance of anti-Semitic slogans during demonstrations opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the increase in conspiracy theories involving Jews. He writes that some researchers report a 60 percent increase worldwide of assaults on Jews in 2002 compared to the previous year.

Klug argues that the antisemitism involved in such incidents is not a new phenomenon but "classical" antisemitism, and that "it is closer to the truth to say that anti-Zionism today takes the form of anti-Semitism rather than the other way round." Proponents of the new antisemitism concept, he writes, see an "organizing principle" that allows them to formulate a new concept, but it is only in terms of this concept that many of the examples cited in evidence of it count as examples in the first place. That is, the creation of the concept may be based on a circular argument or tautology. He argues that it is an unhelpful concept, because it devalues the term "anti-Semitism," leading to widespread cynicism about the use of it, which undermines the credibility of those who fight it. People of goodwill who support the Palestinians resent being falsely accused of being anti-Semites.

Klug defines classical antisemitism as "an ingrained European fantasy about Jews as Jews," arguing that whether Jews are seen as a race, religion, or ethnicity, and whether antisemitism comes from the right or the left, the antisemite's image of the Jew is always as "a people set apart, not merely by their customs but by their collective character. They are arrogant, secretive, cunning, always looking to turn a profit. Loyal only to their own, wherever they go they form a state within a state, preying upon the societies in whose midst they dwell. Mysteriously powerful, their hidden hand controls the banks and the media. They will even drag governments into war if this suits their purposes. Such is the figure of 'the Jew,' transmitted from generation to generation."

He argues that, although it is true that the new antisemitism incorporates the idea that anti-Semitism is hostility to Jews as Jews, the source of the hostility has changed; therefore, to continue using the same expression for it — antisemitism — causes confusion. Today's hostility to Jews as Jews is based on the Arab-Israeli conflict, not on ancient European fantasies. Israel proclaims itself as the state of the Jewish people, and many Jews align themselves with Israel for that very reason. It is out of this alignment that the hostility to Jews as Jews arises, rather than hostility to Israelis or to Zionists. Klug agrees that it is a prejudice, because it is a generalization about individuals; nevertheless, he argues, it is "not rooted in the ideology of 'the Jew'," and is therefore a different phenomenon from antisemitism.

The problem with calling this new prejudice "new antisemitism" is that it gives the impression of an ideological continuum from religious to racial to "new" antisemitism. Klug writes that religious antisemitism mutated into racial antisemitism, and that the latter was clearly a variation on a pre-existing theme. Not so with the new phenomenon, he argues, which has entirely different origins and content. It is not a mutation of an existing virus, but "a brand new 'bug'."

That is, Klug argues that there are three distinct components of what some scholars are calling "new antisemitism":

• Antisemitism, a prejudice that is based on the stereotypical construction of 'the Jew';
• Anti-Zionism and antagonism to Israel, based on a political cause or moral code, and not anti-Jewish per se;
• Prejudice against all Jews that is derived from the latter.

People of goodwill who support the Palestinians resent being falsely accused of being anti-Semites. — Brian Klug

The discourse of the new antisemitism conflates these, he argues, leading not only to the branding as anti-Semitic of legitimate political views about Israel, but to inflated estimates of the scale of antisemitic incidents. The line between "fair and foul" criticism of Israel tends to be drawn in such a way that it rules out criticism "that goes much beyond a gentle rap across the [Israeli] government's knuckles or finger-wagging at the laws of the land." If most anti-Zionist arguments do cross the line, and if crossing the line is antisemitic, it follows that most attacks on Israel are antisemitic, as is any attack on a Jewish target that is inspired by the line that has been crossed. This is compelling logic, writes Klug, but the effect of it is "to produce, at a stroke, a quantum leap in the amount of antisemitism worldwide, if not a veritable 'war against the Jews'," given how much controversy Israel currently inspires. He argues that crossing the line from fair to foul is a normal part of political debate. Pro-Israelis aren't necessarily racists when they do it; pro-Palestinians are not necessarily anti-Semites when they do. Jumping to conclusions about people's prejudices is itself a form of prejudice.

Klug writes that contemporary antisemitism can be identified by looking for the use of the antisemitic figure of 'the Jew'. Whenever a text or image projects this figure (a) onto Israel because Israel is a Jewish state; (b) onto Zionism because Zionism is a Jewish movement; or (c) onto Jews as individuals or a group in association with Israel or Zionism, then it is antisemitic.

The Klug/Wistrich correspondence

In correspondence with Klug, Robert Wistrich, Neuburger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of its International Center for the Study of Antisemitism — who also testified in February 2006 to the British parliamentary inquiry — responds that his own litmus test of when criticism of Israel becomes antisemitism is when the critic wishes to dismantle the Jewish state without calling for the dismantling of other states; demonizes Israel; brands it "Nazi" or "racist"; or relies on classic antisemitic stereotypes: for example, the "Jewish Lobby." He notes that Britain's Association of University Teachers voted to boycott Israeli universities, but not Russian academics for the Chechen atrocities, China for its occupation of Tibet, Saudi Arabian universities for "gender apartheid," or Palestinian universities for "glorifying jihadi terrorism." These decisions are "inexplicable without taking anti-Semitism into account," he writes. Wistrich also takes issue with the notion that Israelis are European interlopers in the Middle East; they are an "aboriginal people returning to their historic homeland and source of national identity." He argues that half the Israeli population is not European anyway, but was "uprooted from the Arab Middle East by exclusivist pan-Arabism, Islamic fanaticism, and the pressures of decolonization." He writes:

[S]ixty years ago, there were more than a million Jews in Arab lands. Their exodus says it all. Israel integrated them, providing a haven, pride, dignity and freedom as it did for the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Palestinian refugees, on the other hand, were left to rot in UN refugee camps by their Arab brethren, fed with revanchist delusions about their inalienable "right of return" to Israel. If the Middle East tragedy is to be resolved, it is these camps – the seedbed of terrorism and an entire culture of hatred – which have to be dismantled and not the thriving Jewish state.

Klug agrees that it is "simplistic" to regard Israel as an interloper in the Middle East, but that nevertheless it is how the Jewish state has "looked through Arab eyes." The view that Jews are "an aboriginal people returning to their historic homeland" is equally one-sided, he argues, and is just one version of the Zionist point of view. Both sides must grasp what he calls this "clash of perspectives" and stop relying on one-sided accounts. Klug sums up his own view of when criticism of Israel becomes antisemitism:

Seen through the eyes of an anti-semite, Jews are essentially alien, powerful, cohesive, cunning, parasitic, and so on. Opposition to Israel or its government is anti-Semitic when it employs some variation or other of this fantasy – just as criticism of Arabs is racist when it is based on the stock figure of the Arab as cunning, lying and degenerate, or as a hateful terrorist who attaches no value to human life.

Wistrich argues there is a "continuum of prejudice" against Jews that can lead from social discrimination to ghettoization and worse, and that Klug "radically underestimates" the effects of the liberal-left delegitimization of Zionism. "What we have seen in recent years is indeed a new form of anti-Semitism operating under a humanist façade which (falsely) pillories Israel and Jews as being inherently 'racist'." Wistrich writes that anti-Semitism is now driven by "Islamists who set the tone" by demonizing America, Israel, and the Jews, while "the media, the academic, artistic, religious and political elites in the European Union meekly follow suit."

Klug agrees that the "continuum of prejudice" exists, but argues that it is part of European history, not Middle Eastern; and that Zionism was the response to it, the empowerment of the powerless. He writes that the Zionist movement succeeded, and Israel is now a major power. For that very reason, he argues, when people object to the way it exercises its power, it should not be regarded as antisemitism.

Criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitism

Earl Raab, founding director of the Nathan Perlmutter Institute for Jewish Advocacy at Brandeis University writes that "[t]here is a new surge of antisemitism in the world, and much prejudice against Israel is driven by such antisemitism," but argues that "charges of antisemitism based on anti-Israel remarks alone have proven to lack credibility in most circles". He adds that "a grave educational misdirection is imbedded in formulations suggesting that if we somehow get rid of antisemitism, we will get rid of anti-Israelism. This reduces the problems of prejudice against Israel to cartoon proportions." Raab describes prejudice against Israel as a "serious breach of morality and good sense," and argues that it is often a bridge to antisemitism, but distinguishes it from antisemitism as such.

Steven Zipperstein, professor of Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University, argues that a belief in the State of Israel's responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict is considered "part of what a reasonably informed, progressive, decent person thinks," and a disproportionate criticism of Israel is not the result of new anti-Semitism, or even classical anti-Semitism, but is simply a "by-product of the wildly disproportionate responses that mark the post-September 11 world." Zipperstein writes that "anti-Israelism" is shaped by "a much distorted, simplistic, but this-worldly political analysis devoid of anti-Jewish bias."

[Jews] are prone to see a Jewish state as ... more vulnerable, less powerful, less culpable, as victim and not as an actor, at least partly because — so very recently in our own history — we were the quintessential victims. — Steven Zipperstein

He argues that Jews have a tendency to see the State of Israel as "more vulnerable, less powerful, and less culpable, as victim and not as an actor" because they were very recently themselves "the quintessential victims." He writes that: "We were mostly undefended and overwhelmingly friendless, and this trauma continues to haunt and perhaps at times to distort our sense of the world around us now. When we encounter antagonism — especially outsized, disproportionate antagonism — the memories of horrible times, whether personally experienced or imbibed secondhand, elicit reactions that are often sincere, acute, and disorienting."

The third wave

File:Lewis-pre.jpg

Professor Bernard Lewis argues that the new anti-Semitism — what he calls "ideological anti-Semitism" — has mutated out of religious and racial anti-Semitism.

Bernard Lewis, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, argues that the new antisemitism represents the third or "ideological" wave of antisemitism, the first two waves being religious antisemitism and racial antisemitism, respectively.

Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil." Thus, "it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the two features specific to antisemitism.

He writes that what he calls the first wave of antisemitism arose with the advent of Christianity because of the Jews' rejection of Jesus as Messiah. The second wave, racial anti-Semitism, emerged in Spain when large numbers of Jews were forcibly converted, and doubts about the sincerity of the converts led to ideas about the importance of "la limpieza de sangre", purity of blood.

Lewis associates the third wave with the Arabs, and writes that it arose only in part because of the establishment of the State of Israel. Until the 19th century, Muslims had regarded Jews with what Lewis calls "amused, tolerant superiority" — they were seen as physically weak, cowardly, and unmilitary — and although Jews living in Muslim countries were not treated as equals, they were shown a certain amount of respect. The Western form of anti-Semitism — what Lewis calls "the cosmic, satanic version of Jew hatred" — arrived in the Middle East in several stages, beginning with Christian missionaries in the 19th century, and continued to grow slowly into the 20th century, up to the establishment of the Third Reich. He writes that it increased because of the humiliation of the Israeli military victories of 1948 and 1967. (See 1948 Arab-Israeli War and Six Day War.)

Into this mix entered the United Nations. Lewis argues that the United Nations' handling of the 1948 refugee situation convinced the Arab world that discrimination against Jews was acceptable. When the ancient Jewish community in East Jerusalem was evicted and its monuments desecrated or destroyed, they were offered no help. Similarly, when Jewish refugees fled or were driven out of Arab countries, no help was offered, but elaborate arrangements were made for Arabs who fled or were driven out of the area that became Israel. All the Arab governments involved in the conflict announced that they would not admit Israelis of any religion into their territories, but the United Nations did not protest; and furthermore announced that they would not give visas to Jews, no matter which country they were citizens of. Again, the United Nations did not protest. All of this has sent what Lewis calls a "clear message" to the Arab world. Lewis writes that this third wave of antisemitism has in common with the first wave that Jews are able to be part of it. With religious antisemitism, Jews were able to distance themselves from Judaism and convert, and Lewis writes that some even reached high rank within the church and the Inquisition. With racial antisemitism, this was not possible, but with the new, ideological antisemitism, Jews are once again able to join the critics. The new antisemitism also allows non-Jews, he argues, to criticize or attack Jews without feeling overshadowed by the crimes of the Nazis.

The fourth wave since 1945

File:Yehuda Bauer.jpg

Professor Yehuda Bauer writes that the new anti-Semitism is the fourth wave of anti-Semitism to spread across the West since 1945.

Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes that there have been three waves of anti-Semitism since 1945 — 1958-60; 1968-1972; and 1987-1992 — and that we are now experiencing the fourth, which he estimates started in 1999 or 2000. Each wave has had different causes, some of them to do with economic downturns. The common ground, however, has been "an underlying latency of anti-Semitism that waits to explode when aroused by some outside crisis." He describes the fourth wave as an upper-middle class, intellectual phenomenon, "widespread in the media, in universities, and in well-manicured circles.

Bauer notes that the two crises that led to the post-1945 waves of antisemitism are the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. The Holocaust created an unease about Jews, he writes, especially in Europe, where people "have to live with six million ghosts, created by a deadly mutation of European culture." Although a feeling of relief accompanied the creation of Israel, because Europeans no longer had to deal with the Jews, at the same time, he argues, it turned the Jews from victims into perpetrators. He argues that the Arab-Israeli conflict "provide[s] ample material for an antisemitism that sees itself as anti-Zionist." Anti-Zionism need not be antisemitic, "but only if one says that all national movements are evil, and all national states should be abolished. But if one says that the Fijians have the right to independence, and so do the Malays or the Bolivians, but the Jews have no such right, then one is anti-Jewish, and as one singles out the Jews for nationalistic reasons, one is anti-Semitic, with an attendant strong suspicion of being racist." Citing Irwin Cotler, Bauer writes that "the status of the collective Jew, that is Israel, is akin to the status of the individual Jew in the Middle Ages."

Although the Arab-Israeli conflict has produced real tragedy for Palestinians, Bauer suggests that Western latent antisemitism has fastened onto that tragedy in order to brand the Jews as mass murderers and Nazis as a way of solving the West's own psychological problems caused by the Holocaust. "Facts do not matter there," he writes, arguing that the number of Palestinians killed between the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000 and 2003 (when he was writing) was around 2,000, which is one sixth of the daily number of Jews shipped to Auschwitz from Hungary in the spring of 1944. Bearing these figures in mind, "[a]ny kind of simplistic comparison becomes totally ridiculous," he argues.

A charming TV personality [on Egyptian television] asked little Basmallah, a 3½ year old girl, 'Do you know who the Jews are?' "Yes." 'Do you like them?' "No." 'Why?' "Because they are monkeys and swine ..."
— Yehuda Bauer

Bauer regards this wave of antisemitism as dangerous because of Islamism. He identifies Islamism as one of three major ideologies to have emerged during the 20th century, alongside Soviet Communism and National Socialism, and argues that all three saw or see the Jews as a main enemy. The language used about Jews by the Muslim media is, he says, "clearly and unmistakably genocidal," the ideology of Nazism "in a different dress." He cites a television program broadcast on May 2, 2002 on the Egyptian television station IQRAA, during which a three-year-old girl was asked whether she knew who the Jews were and whether she liked them. She replied that she did not like them, because "they are monkeys and swine ... and also because they tried to poison the wife of our prophet." Bauer writes that 1.2 billion Muslims are being exposed to these teachings, making this fourth wave of antisemitism a "genocidal threat to the Jewish people."

A contradictory political ploy

Norman Finkelstein, a political scientist at DePaul University, has criticized the concept of new antisemitism. He argues that organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League have brought forward charges of "new antisemitism" at varied intervals since the 1970s, "not to fight antisemitism but rather to exploit the historical suffering of Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism". He has criticized much of the recent literature on the subject, including works by Phyllis Chesler, Gabriel Schoenfeld and Ron Rosenbaum.

Finkelstein writes that what is currently called the new antisemitism consists of three components: (i) "exaggeration and fabrication", (ii) "mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy," and (iii) "the unjustified yet predictable spillover from criticism of Israel to Jews generally". Finkelstein argues that most evidence purporting to show a new anti-Semitism has been taken from "organizations directly or indirectly linked to Israel or having a material stake in inflating the findings of anti-Semitism" and that some anti-Semitic incidents reported in recent years either did not occur or were misidentified. He draws attention to the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia's 2003 report on antisemitism, which included displays of the Palestinian flag, support for the PLO, and allegations of Israeli apartheid in its list of antisemitic activities and beliefs.

Finkelstein argues that much recent hostility toward Israel and its "vocal Jewish supporters abroad" has been misinterpreted as resulting from "an irrational, inexplicable, and ineluctable" hatred of Jews, rather than from opposition to Israel's actions against the Palestinians. He writes that "Israel's apologists" have denied a causal relationship between Israeli policies and hostility toward Jews, since "if Israeli policies, and widespread Jewish support for them, evoke hostility toward Jews, it means that Israel and its Jewish supporters might themselves be causing anti-Semitism; and it might be doing so because Israel and its Jewish supporters are in the wrong". Finkelstein notes that Jewish figures such as George Soros and Avraham Burg, who have argued that such a causal relationship exists, have been criticized by groups such as the ADL and the World Jewish Congress.

What's currently called the new anti-Semitism actually incorporates three main components: (1) exaggeration and fabrication, (2) mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, and (3) the unjustified yet predictable spillover from criticism of Israel to Jews generally. — Norman Finkelstein.

Finkelstein acknowledges that "[i]n some quarters anger at Israel's brutal occupation has undoubtedly slipped over to an animus against Jews generally", a phenomenon that he describes as "lamentable" but "hardly cause for wonder." The wars in Vietnam and Iraq contributed to anti-Americanism, and the aggression of Nazi Germany gave rise to anti-Teutonic sentiment. Why does it surprise us, he asks, that an occupation by a self-declared Jewish state should cause antipathy towards Jews? The only surprise, he argues, is that the antipathy does not run deeper, given that mainstream Jewish organizations offer uncritical support to Israel, that Israel defines itself juridically as the sovereign state of the Jewish people, and that Jews themselves sometimes argue that to distinguish between Israel and world Jewry is itself an example of antisemitism.

Finkelstein identifies several proponents of the concept of new antisemitism who appear to contradict themselves or each other on the issue of whether to identify Jews with Israel. Phyllis Chesler argues, on the one hand, that "anyone who does not distinguish between Jews and the Jewish state is an anti-Semite," but on the other that "Israel is our heart and soul ... we are family." Gabriel Schoenfeld, the editor of Commentary magazine, writes that "Iranian anti-Semitic propagandists make a point of erasing all distinctions among Israel, Zionism and the Jews," while Hillel Halkin argues that "Israel is the state of the Jews ... To defame Israel is to defame the Jews," and Italian journalist Fiamma Nirenstein that "Jews everywhere should consider their being identified with Israel a virtue and honor." It would seem to be anti-Semitic, Finkelstein concludes, "both to identify and not to identify Israel with Jews."

Political directions

The far right and Islamism

File:Protocols of the Elders of Zion 2005 Syria al-Awael.jpg

This 2005 Syrian edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion repeats the blood libel that Jews use the blood of gentile children to bake matzos on Passover."

The September 2006 British "All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism" heard evidence from Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine, that: "the far right have started to use 'Zionists' as a euphemism for 'Jews,' to disguise their anti-Semitism, a phenomenon that also occurs on the left and among Islamist extremists." The British National Party's Voice of Freedom wrote of the war in Iraq that "Tony Blair swapped British blood for donations from a clique of filthy-rich Zionist businessmen." The Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPACUK) has cited the Talmud as a "Zionist holy book," and describes Zionism as an "octopus that now penetrates every western nation and pushes it to start world war three against Muslims," an anti-Semitic motif used by the Nazis.

The report describes a "symbiotic relationship" between Islamists and the far right, united in their hatred of Jews, Zionism, and Israel. The inquiry saw evidence of the shared use of materials, such as the same newspaper articles appearing on the MPACUK and white nationalist websites. MPACUK published a photograph of George Bush standing next to the Israeli flag, adding the caption: "Some say Lobbying the Government doesn't make a difference. We humbly disagree," while the National Front used the same photograph, with the caption: "There is no Zionist conspiracy." Islamist and far right groups also share Holocaust denial literature, and the organizations' websites publish each other's authors.

Edward Said, the late Palestinian-American literary theorist, warned of a "nasty, creeping wave of anti-Semitism" insinuating itself into Palestinian politics, writing that the "notion that the Jews never suffered and that the Holocaust is an obfuscatory confection ... is one that is acquiring too much, far too much, currency". Hamas, the majority party of the Palestinian Legislative Council, has called the Holocaust "an alleged and invented story with no basis." Political scientist George Michael writes that the statements by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust is a "myth" and that Israel should be "wiped off the map" were met with public approval from Hamas, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, American white supremacist David Duke, and the Institute for Historical Review, a leading Holocaust-denial group.

Michael cites as an example of the new Islamist/far right alliance the March 2001 conference in Beirut, Lebanon on "Revisionism and Zionism," organized by the Institute for Historical Review, where there was a plan to present lectures in English, French, and Arabic. The Lebanese government cancelled the conference after protests from Jewish groups and the American government, but a smaller meeting was held in May 2001 in Amman, Jordan.

File:DavidDukeonSyrianTV.jpg

David Duke, former leader of a Ku Klux Klan faction, on Syrian television in November 2005. He told viewers that "Israel makes the Nazi state look very, very moderate." View clip.

Michael writes that Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, has been at the forefront of efforts to foster cooperation between the far right and the Islamic world, in what Michael calls a "cross-fertilization of rhetoric" against Zionism, Jews, and Israel. Duke presented two lectures in Bahrain in 2002 entitled "The Global Struggle against Zionism," and "Israeli Involvement in September 11," after being invited by the Discover Islam Center, an Islamist group who admired the anti-Semitic rhetoric on Duke's website. Duke told Michael: "The ADL issued a protest to Bahrain [saying] 'How can they have a white supremacist in Bahrain?' But the people in Bahrain understand very well that I am not a white supremacist and that I am a European American who wants to preserve my heritage ... but the real danger to all heritages is Jewish supremacism ..."

In November 2005, Duke addressed a rally in Syria, saying "It saddens my heart to tell you that part of my country is occupied by Zionists, just as part of your country, the Golan Heights, is occupied by Zionists. [They] occupy most of the American media and now control much of the American government ... It is not just the West Bank of Palestine, it is not just the Golan Heights that are occupied by the Zionists, but Washington D.C. and New York and London and many other capitals of the world. Your fight for freedom is the same as our fight for freedom." In an interview with Syrian television, Duke said that "Jewish supremacists" are in control of the U.S. government and that "Israel makes the Nazi state look very, very moderate."

The left and anti-Zionism

Alan Johnson, Eve Garrard, Nick Cohen, Shalom Lappin, and Norman Geras at the launch of the Euston Manifesto in 2006. They wrote that anti-Zionism has "developed to a point where supposed organizations of the Left are willing to entertain openly anti-Semitic speakers and to form alliances with anti-Semitic groups."

Those who argue in favor of the centrality of the left to the new anti-Semitism say that anti-Zionism may function as a proxy for anti-Semitism, allowing a socially acceptable opposition to the Israeli state to be espoused, rather than a socially unacceptable religious or ethnic hatred. At the same time, genuine grievances against Israel stemming from the Arab-Israeli conflict may become anti-Semitic in character and may manifest themselves as hostility toward Jews in general.

Historian Robert Wistrich argues that "left-leaning Judeophobes ... never call themselves 'anti-Semitic.' Indeed, they are usually indignant at the very suggestion that they have anything against Jews. Such denials notwithstanding, they are usually obsessed with stigmatizing Israel ..." Wistrich adds that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic — his checklist to identify the "anti-Semitic wolf in anti-Israeli sheep's clothing" includes the singling-out by writers of the "Jewish lobby" or the "Jewish vote"; complaining about Jewish solidarity with Israel; gratuitous emphasis on Jewish wealth or alleged Jewish control of the media; calls for economic boycotts directed exclusively against Israeli products and academic institutions; and the assertion that Jews reject all criticism as anti-Semitic.

The 2006 British All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism (see below) heard evidence that "contemporary antisemitism in Britain is now more commonly found on the left of the political spectrum than on the right." The chairman, former Europe Minister Denis McShane, referred in a radio interview to what he called "a 'witch's brew' of anti-semitism including the far left and 'ultra-Islamist' extremists", who use criticism of Israel as a "pretext" for "spreading hatred against British Jews." The report notes that "[a]lliances between extremist and fundamentalist groups have created links between groups on the far left and radical Islamists." Professor David Cesarani of Royal Holloway, University of London gave evidence that anti-Semitism "no longer has any resemblance to classical Nazi-style Jew hatred, because it is masked by or blended inadvertently into anti-Zionism, and because it is often articulated in the language of human rights. The report states that ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism means that some may not even realize that the language and imagery they use are part of the tradition of anti-Semitic discourse.

File:NewStatesmancover.jpg

Emanuele Ottolenghi of St Antony's College, Oxford, told the British all-parliamentary inquiry that the New Statesman's January 14, 2002 cover, illustrating a story about the "Zionist lobby," evoked "classical anti-Jewish stereotypes" implying "conspiracy" and "dishonesty" on the part of British Jews. The editor apologized for the image, but said the magazine remained opposed to Israeli government policies.

Gerry Gable, publisher of the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine, agrees that "a lot of anti-semitism is driven by the left. There are elements who take up a position on Israel and Palestine which in reality puts them in league with anti-Semites." The Sunday Times reported in August 2006 that "[w]omen pushing their children in buggies bearing the familiar symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marched last weekend alongside banners proclaiming 'We are all Hezbollah now' and Muslim extremists chanting 'Oh Jew, the army of Muhammad will return'."

Radu Ioanid, director of the Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, writes in his foreword to Rising from the Muck, Pierre-André Taguieff's book about the new anti-Semitism in Europe, that during the student uprising in France in 1968, protesters could be heard shouting: "Nous sommes tous des Juifs Allemands" ("We are all German Jews") in support of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, one of their expelled leaders. In 2002, in contrast, the slogans heard at rallies in Paris were "Death to the Jews" and "Jews to the ovens."

Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report wrote in 2003 that Americans would be "amazed by what now appears in the sophisticated European press," citing the British New Statesman's January 14, 2002 cover story alleging a "kosher conspiracy" in the UK, a cover widely cited as an example of the crossroads between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Zuckerman also cites the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, which he says alleged that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinian women so that their relatives would kill them to preserve family honor; the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano reference to Israeli "aggression that's turning into extermination"; and La Stampa's page one cartoon of a tank bearing the Star of David pointing its gun at the baby Jesus, who cries: "Surely they don't want to kill me again."

Tariq Ali argues that the "supposed new 'anti-Semitism'" is a "cynical ploy."

A group of left-wing British academics, journalists, and activists founded the Euston Manifesto in April 2006, a new declaration of principles for the democratic left. It declares that: "'Anti-Zionism' has now developed to a point where supposed organizations of the Left are willing to entertain openly anti-Semitic speakers and to form alliances with anti-Semitic groups. Amongst educated and affluent people are to be found individuals unembarrassed to claim that the Iraq war was fought on behalf of Jewish interests, or to make other 'polite' and subtle allusions to the harmful effect of Jewish influence in international or national politics — remarks of a kind that for more than fifty years after the Holocaust no one would have been able to make without publicly disgracing themselves."

The association of anti-Zionism with new anti-Semitism has been controversial. British writer Tariq Ali has argued that the campaign against "the supposed new 'anti-semitism'" in modern Europe is in effect a "cynical ploy on the part of the Israeli Government to seal off the Zionist state from any criticism of its regular and consistent brutality against the Palestinians." Ali argues that the new anti-Semitism is, in fact, "Zionist blackmail," and that Israel, far from being a victim, is "the strongest state in the region. It possesses real, not imaginary, weapons of mass destruction. It possesses more tanks and bomber jets and pilots than the rest of the Arab world put together. To say that the Zionist state is threatened by any Arab country is pure demagogy."

Professor Noam Chomsky argues that traditional anti-Semitism is ignored while criticism of Israel is vilified.

Peter Beaumont, writing in The Observer, argues that some proponents of the concept of "new antisemitism" have attempted to co-opt "the phenomenon of anti-Jewish sentiment and attacks in some quarters of the Islamic community in Europe" as a means of silencing opposition to the policies of the Israeli government. He argues that "Israel's brutal response to the often equally reprehensible anti-Israeli Palestinian violence of the intifada has produced one of the most vigorous media critiques of Israel's policies in the European media in a generation. The reply to this criticism, say those most vocal in reporting the existence of the new anti-Semitism, particularly in the Israeli press, is devastating in its simplicity: criticise Israel, and you are an anti-Semite just as surely as if you were throwing paint at a synagogue in Paris." Israel cannot be declared out of bounds, writes Beaumont, for fear of invoking Europe's "last great taboo — the fear of being declared an anti-Semite."

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, maintains that Jewish groups see criticism of Israeli policies as examples of new anti-Semitism while turning a blind eye to traditional anti-Semitism. He cites the allegations in 1988 that several known anti-Semites occupied senior positions in the Republican Party. The New Republic argued that the discovery of "seven aging Eastern European fascists in the Republican apparatus" wasn't the threat it was made out to be; the greater threat lay in the anti-Semitism of the left, which had a salient agenda: "the delegitimization of the Jewish national movement".

Responses

European Union

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) has noted an upswing in antisemitic incidents in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and The Netherlands.

The EU Racism and Xenophobia Network (RAXEN), an arm of the EUMC, has since 2002 adopted a special focus on antisemitism. It reported to the European Parliament in March 2004 with statistics on antisemitic incidents across the EU. Its report of December 2006 found an increase in antisemitic activity between 2001 and 2002 and again between 2003 and 2004. There was insufficient data to calculate the overall trend in the number of incidents between 2001 and 2005 but there had been increases in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and decreases only in the Netherlands and Sweden. Since 2004, there had been decreases in the Netherlands and the UK. The report drew the “speculative conclusion” that developments in the Middle East may have affected the Arab and Muslim communities in Europe, the far right and far left. Referring to the view that antisemitism since 2000 constituted new antisemitism, defined as "the vilification of Israel as 'the Jewish collective' and perpetrated primarily by members of Europe’s Muslim population," it found little evidence of a change in anti-Semitic stereotypes, although it said that public manifestations of antisemitism had indeed changed since 2000.

In September 2004, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, a part of the Council of Europe, called on its member nations to ensure that anti-racist criminal law covers antisemitism. In 2005, the EUMC offered a definition of new or contemporary antisemitism, one that the British government was urged to adopt by a 2006 all-party parliamentary inquiry:

• Denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor;
• Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis;
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis;
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.

In 2006, the European Jewish Congress released a report detailing a new wave of antisemitic incidents in most of Western Europe in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, in contrast to neutral or pro-Israel sentiment in the former Eastern bloc as well as Denmark.

The report cited:

• the first instances of antisemitism in Turkey since the change of regime in 2002;
• 83 instances of antisemitism in Austria from April through August 2006, compared to 50 in the same period of 2005;
• 61 instances of antisemitism in France from April through August 2006, compared to 34 in the same period of 2005;
• normalization of antisemitic political and media rhetoric in Greece after the conflict.

France

In France, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin commissioned a report on racism and anti-Semitism from Jean-Christophe Rufin, president of Action Against Hunger and former vice-president of Médecins Sans Frontières, in which Rufin challenges the perception that the new anti-Semitism in France comes exclusively from North African immigrant communities and the far right. Reporting in October 2004, Rufin writes that "[t]he new anti-Semitism appears more heterogeneous," and identifies what he calls a new and "subtle" form of anti-Semitism in "radical anti-Zionism" as expressed by far-left and anti-globalization groups, in which criticism of Jews and Israel is used as a pretext to "legitimize the armed Palestinian conflict." Rufin recommended that French law be changed to "make it possible to punish those who would make unfounded charges of racism against groups, institutions or States, or would make unjustified comparisons with apartheid or Nazism about them." Norman Finkelstein described Rufin's recommendation as "truly terrifying", the "stigmatizing of dissent as a disease that must be wiped out by the state."

United Kingdom

File:ReportAllPartyParliamentaryInquiry.jpg

A 2006 British parliamentary inquiry states that "anti-Jewish themes and remarks are gaining acceptability in some quarters in public and private discourse in Britain ..."

The British All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism in the UK published its report in September 2006. Those who gave evidence included then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke; the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith; chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips; the former head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie; Prof Robert Wistrich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Brian Klug of St Benet's Hall, Oxford; and Prof Gert Weisskirchen of the German Bundestag.

The inquiry adopted the view of racism expressed by the MacPherson report after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, namely that a racist act is defined by its victim, and that it is the Jewish community that is in the best position to determine what is anti-Semitic. The report states that left-wing activists and Muslim extremists are using criticism of Israel as a "pretext" for anti-Semitism, and that the "most worrying discovery" is that anti-Semitism appears to be entering the mainstream. The inquiry calls for the adoption of a clearer definition of anti-Semitism that reflects its "complex and multi-faceted" nature. It argues that anti-Zionism may become anti-Semitic when it adopts a view of Zionism as a "global force of unlimited power and malevolence throughout history," a definition that "bears no relation to the understanding that most Jews have of the concept: that is, a movement of Jewish national liberation ..." Having re-defined Zionism, traditional anti-Semitic motifs of Jewish "conspiratorial power, manipulation and subversion" are transferred from Jews onto Zionism. This is "at the core of the 'New Anti-Semitism'," the report concludes, adding that many of those who gave evidence called anti-Zionism "the lingua franca of antisemitic movements."

Lord Janner of Braunstone gave evidence regarding anti-Semitic remarks made to him in Parliament. After the arrest of Saddam Hussein, for example, another peer approached him and said: "We've got rid of Saddam Hussein now. Your lot are next." When asked what she meant by "your lot," she replied: "Yes, you cannot go on killing Palestinians forever, you know." Oona King, former MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, gave evidence that many of her former constituents told her they could not vote for her because she was funded by the Israeli Secret Service.

Labour MP Denis MacShane, who chaired the commission said: "The most worrying discovery of this inquiry is that anti-Jewish sentiment is entering the mainstream, appearing in the everyday conversations of people who consider themselves neither racist nor prejudiced" [2].

Israel

In November 2001, in response to an Abu-Dhabi television broadcast showing Ariel Sharon drinking blood of Palestinian children, the Israeli government set up the "Coordinating Forum for Countering Antisemitism," headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior. According to Melchior, "in each and every generation antisemitism tries to hide its ugly face behind various disguises - and hatred of the State of Israel is its current disguise." He also noted that "... hate against Israel has crossed the red line, having gone from criticism to unbridled antisemitic venom, which is a precise translation of classical antisemitism whose past results are all too familiar to the entire world." The multilingual forum regularly issues reports, articles and press releases.

United Nations

General-Secretary Kofi Annan told a June 2004 seminar on anti-Semitism that "[i]t is hard to believe that 60 years after the tragedy of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is once again rearing its head. But it is clear that we are witnessing an alarming resurgence of these phenomena in new forms and manifestations." He has called the 1975 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism, repealed in 1991, "lamentable," saying that "its negative resonance even today is difficult to overestimate,"

A number of commentators argue that the United Nations has condoned anti-Semitism. Lawrence Summers, then-president of Harvard University, wrote that the UN's World Conference on Racism failed to condemn human rights abuses in China, Rwanda, or anywhere in the Arab world, while raising Israel's alleged "ethnic cleansing" and "crimes against humanity."

David Matas, senior counsel to B'nai Brith Canada, has written that the UN is a forum for anti-Semitism. He argues that statements are made within the UN that would not be tolerated within any democratic parliament, citing the example of the Palestinian representative to the UN Human Rights Commission who, in an echo of the traditional blood libel, claimed in 1997 that Israeli doctors had injected Palestinian children with the AIDS virus. Congressman Steve Chabot told the U.S. House of Representatives in 2005 that the commission took "several months to correct in its record a statement by the Syrian ambassador that Jews allegedly had killed non-Jewish children to make unleavened bread for Passover.

Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian legal scholar who addressed the UN about its treatment of Israel, argues that the UN hijacks the language of human rights to discriminate and demonize Jews. She writes that over one quarter of the resolutions condemning a state's human rights violations have been directed at Israel. "But there has never been a single resolution about the decades-long repression of the civil and political rights of 1.3 billion people in China, or the million female migrant workers in Saudi Arabia kept as virtual slaves, or the virulent racism which has brought 600,000 people to the brink of starvation in Zimbabwe." In the early years of its existence, she writes, the Human Rights Commission focused only on themes. When it shifted its focus to countries, it targeted only South Africa and Israel, and for six years, from 1969 until 1975, those two countries were the only two the Commission would consider. For the last 40 years, almost 30 percent of country-specific resolutions and 15 percent of the Commission's time has been directed against Israel. During its annual six-week session in 2002, the Commission spent half its time on Israel, more than it spent on all the other countries in the world combined.

United States

The U.S. State Department's 2004 Report on Global Anti-Semitism identified four sources of rising anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe:

• "Traditional anti-Jewish prejudice ... This includes ultra-nationalists and others who assert that the Jewish community controls governments, the media, international business, and the financial world."
• "Strong anti-Israel sentiment that crosses the line between objective criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitism."
• "Anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by some in Europe's growing Muslim population, based on longstanding antipathy toward both Israel and Jews, as well as Muslim opposition to developments in Israel and the occupied territories, and more recently in Iraq."
• "Criticism of both the United States and globalization that spills over to Israel, and to Jews in general who are identified with both."

Yale University

Edward Kaplan and Charles Small of Yale University conducted a study based on a survey of 5,000 people: 500 citizens in each of 10 European countries. Their report, published in August 2006, concluded that anti-Israel sentiment reliably predicted the probability that an individual was an anti-Semite, with the likelihood of measured anti-Semitism increasing with the extent of anti-Israel sentiment observed. The authors write that, based on their analysis, "when an individual's criticism of Israel becomes sufficiently severe, it does become reasonable to ask whether such criticism is a mask for underlying anti-Semitism."

The study found that 56 percent of those who voiced strong anti-Israel opinions held anti-Semitic views. Those who believed the IDF "intentionally targets Palestinian civilians" and that Palestinian suicide bombers who target Israeli civilians are "justified" also believed that "Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind," "Jews have a lot of irritating faults" and "Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want." Of those who were the most negative about Israel, "some 60% also believed that Jews engaged in shady financial practices, and more than 70% thought that Jews had too much business power."

The percentage of those expressing anti-Semitic views increased with age and decreased with income level; men were more likely to be anti-Semitic than women; the degree of social interaction with Jews had no significant impact; individuals who were less tolerant of illegal immigrants were more likely to express anti-Semitic views; and Muslims were disproportionately more likely to hold anti-Semitic views than Christians, Jews, or those with no religious beliefs.

In September 2006, Yale announced that it had established the Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, the first university-based institute in North America dedicated to the study of anti-Semitism. Charles Small, who will head the institute, said in a press release that anti-Semitism has "reemerged internationally in a manner that many leading scholars and policy makers take seriously ... Increasingly, Jewish communities around the world feel under threat. It's almost like going back into the lab. I think we need to understand the current manifestation of this disease."

References

• Ali, Tariq. "Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and Palestine", Counterpunch, March 4, 2004.
• Asserson, Trevor & Williams, Cassie. "The BBC and the Middle East", BBC Watch, retrieved August 20, 2006.
• Barkun, Michael. A Culture of Conspiracy, University of California Press, 2003; this edition 2006
• Bauer, Yehuda. Template:PDFlink, 2003, retrieved April 22, 2006.
• Baxter, Sarah. "Wimmin at War", The Sunday Times, August 13, 2006.
• Bayefsky, Anne. "One Small Step," Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2004.
• Bayefsky, Anne. "The UN and the Jews", Commentary Magazine, February 2004.
• Beaumont, Peter. "The new anti-semitism?", '"The Observer, February 17, 2002.
• Berger, Luciana. "Why I had to resign", The Guardian , April 15, 2005
• Berlet, Chip. "ZOG Ate My Brains", New Internationalist, October 2004.
• Berlet, Chip. "Right woos Left", Publiceye.org, December 20, 1990; revised February 22, 1994, revised again 1999.
• Berlin, Howard. "Jews, Muslims on same side of several battles", NewsJournal, March 8, 2004.
• Booth, Jenny. "Oona King reveals 'yid' taunts during election", The Times, May 11, 2005.
• Bryant, Elizabeth. "France stung by new report on anti-Semitism," United Press International, October 20, 2004.
• Chesler, Phyllis The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It, Jossey-Bass, 2003. ISBN 0-7879-7803-5
• Chomsky, Noam. Necessary Illusions, accessed January 9, 2006.
• Cooper, Abraham. SWC: "The Independent's Sharon Cartoon in Tradition of 'Der Stürmer' and Conjures Up 'Blood Libel' Canard", January 30, 2003.
• Conger, George. "UK MPs find leap in anti-Semitism", The Jerusalem Post, September 5, 2006.
• Cotler, Irwin. "Human Rights and the New Anti-Jewishness", FrontPageMagazine.com, February 16, 2004.
• Curtis, Polly. "Jewish NUS officials resign over anti-semitism row", The Guardian, April 12, 2005.
• Dershowitz, Alan. The Case For Israel, John Wiley & Sons, 2003, paperback 2004. ISBN 0-471-67952-6
• Doward, Jamie. Jews predict record level of hate attacks", The Guardian, August 8, 2004.
• Dickter, Adam. Fear over European kosher bans, World Jewish Review, July 2002.
• Endelman, Todd M. "Antisemitism in Western Europe Today" in Contemporary Antisemitism: Canada and the World. University of Toronto Press, 2005.
• Evans, Harold. "The View from Ground Zero," in Rosenbaum, Ron (ed). Those who forget the past: The Question of Anti-Semitism, Random House 2004.
• Finkelstein, Norman. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
• Fischel, Jack. "The New Anti-Semitism", The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2005, pp. 225-234.
• Fischel, Jack. Antisemitism resurfaces, Midstream, February 1, 2004.
• Fischel, Jack. "Conspiracy Theories as Comfort Food", The Forward, March 29, 2002.
• Forster, Arnold & Epstein, Benjamin, The New Anti-Semitism. McGraw-Hill 1974. ISBN 0-07-021615-0
• Foxman, Abraham H. Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism. New York: HarperSanFrancisco (an imprint of Harper Collins), 2003. ISBN 0-060-54246-2 (10). ISBN 978-006-054246-7 (13).
• Gerstenfeld, Manfred. "The Academic Boycott Against Israel", Jewish Political Studies Review 15:3-4 (Fall 2003).
• Gerstenfeld, Manfred. "Anti-Semitic Motifs in Anti-Israelism," Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, no. 2, 1 November 2002.
• Gitlin, Todd. "The Rough Beast Returns" in Rosenbaum, Ron. Those who forget the past. Random House, 2004.
• Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Israeli boycott divides academics", The Guardian, July 8, 2002.
• Gross, Tom. "Jeningrad: What the British Media Said," in Rosenbaum, Ron (ed). Those who forget the past: The Question of Anti-Semitism, Random House 2004.
• HaLevi, Ezra. "David Duke in Syria: Zionists Occupy Washington, NY and London", Arutz Sheva, November 29, 2005.
• Kaplan, Edward H. & Small, Charles A. "Anti-Israel sentiment predicts anti-Semitism in Europe," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol 50, No. 4, 548-561, August 2006.
• Kinsella, Warren. The New anti-Semitism, accessed March 5, 2006.
• Klug, Brian. The Myth of the New Anti-Semitism. The Nation, posted January 15, 2004; February 2, 2004 issue.
• Klug, Brian. Israeli, Antisemitism and the left, Red Pepper, November 24, 2005.
• Klug, Brian & Wistrich, Robert S. "Correspondence between Prof. Robert Wistrich and Brian Klug: When Is Opposition to Israel and Its Policies Anti-Semitic?", International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, retrieved September 8, 2006.
• Klug, Brian. "In search of clarity", Catalyst, March 17, 2006.
• Kimmerling, Baruch. "A boycott all the way", Ha'aretz, May 17, 2005.
• Lazare, Daniel. "The Chosen People", The Nation, December 19, 2005.
• Lewis, Bernard. "The New Anti-Semitism", The American Scholar, Volume 75 No. 1, Winter 2006, pp. 25-36. The paper is based on a lecture delivered at Brandeis University on March 24, 2004.
• Liddle, Rod. "Just how many islands does Spain want?", The Guardian, July 17, 2002.
• Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. Penguin 1994.
• Matas, David. Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism. Dundurn Press, Toronto, 2005, pp. 129-144. ISBN 1-55002-553-8
• Prager, Dennis & Telushkin, Joseph. Why the Jews? The Reasons for Antisemitism. Simon & Schuster, 2003.
• Michael, George. The Enemy of my Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, 2006. ISBN 0-7006-1444-3
• Morse, Jane A. "World Trade Center Tragedy Hits All Nationalities", September 14, 2001.
• Paz, Reuven. "Palestinian Holocaust Denial", Washington Institute Peace Watch, No. 255, April 21, 2000.
• Reeves, Phil. "Amid the ruins, the grisly evidence of a war crime," The Independent, April 16, 2002.
• Reinach, Salomon & Simmonds, Florence. Orpheus: A General History of Religions, G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1909, p. 210.
• Rosenbaum, Ron. (ed) Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism. Random House, 2004. ISBN 0-8129-7203-1
• Rubin, Daniel. (ed.) Anti-Semitism and Zionism: Selected Marxist Writings. International Publishers, 1987, p. 35.
• Rufin, Jean-Christophe. Chantier sur la lutte contre le racisms et l'antisemitisme, Ministry of the Interior, France. October 19, 2004.
• Sacks, Jonathan. "The New Antisemitism", Ha'aretz, September 6, 2002.
• Said, Edward. "A Desolation and They Called It Peace," in Rosenbaum, Ron. Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism. Random House, 2004.
• Schoenfeld, Gabriel. The Return of Anti-Semitism. Encounter Books, 2004.
• Sharansky, Natan. Anti-Semitism in 3D, Jerusalem Post, February 23, 2004.
• Schwarz, Solomon M. "The New Anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union," Commentary, June 1949.*Strauss, Mark. "Antiglobalism's Jewish Problem" in Rosenbaum, Ron (ed). Those who forget the past: The Question of Anti-Semitism, Random House 2004.
• Summers, Lawrence H. Address at morning prayers, Harvard University, September 17, 2002.
• Taguieff, Pierre-André. Rising From the Muck : The New Anti-Semitism in Europe. Ivan R. Dee, 2002. ISBN 1-56663-571-3 (published in France as La nouvelle judéophobie. Editions mille et une nuits. ISBN 2-84205-650-7).
• Temko, Ned. "Critics of Israel 'fuelling hatred of British Jews'", The Observer, February 3, 2006.
• Wiener, Jon. "Giving Chutzpah New Meaning", The Nation, July 11, 2005.
• Wistrich, Robert. "Anti-zionism as an Expression of Anti-Semitism in Recent Years", lecture delivered to the Study Circle on World Jewry in the home of the President of Israel, December 10, 1984.
• Wistrich, Robert S. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. Pantheon Books, 1992.
• Wistrich, Robert S. Template:PDFlink, The National Interest, Number 72, Summer 2003.
• Wistrich, Robert S. Template:PDFlink, American Jewish Committee, 2005.
• Wurmbrand, Max & Roth, Cecil. The Jewish People: 4000 Years of Survival, p.403 and passim. Massadah-P. E. C. Press, 1966.
• Zipperstein, Steven J. "Historical Reflections on Contemporary Antisemitism", in Derek J. Penslar et al, ed., Contemporary Antisemitism: Canada and the World, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
• Zoloth, Laurie. "Fear and Loathing at San Francisco State" in Rosenbaum, Ron. Those who forget the past. Random House, 2004.
• Zwartz, Barney & Morton, Adam. "An unholy alliance", The Age, September 4, 2006.
• Template:PDFlink, European Union, 2004.
• 2004 Community Security Trust Antisemitic Incidents Report.
• "France pulls plug on Arab network", BBC News, December 14, 2004.
• "'Anti-Semitism Shall Have No Place Among Us,' Powell Says", posted April 29, 2004. U.S. Department of State.
• "The Euston Manifesto", London, March 29, 2006.
• "American White Supremacist David Duke: Israel Makes the Nazi State Look Very Moderate", interview with David Duke on Syrian television, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), November 25, 2005. Clip of the interview and of Duke's speech to a Syrian rally can be viewed here.
• "The Architecture of Bigotry," Policy Dispatch, no. 80, Institute of the World Jewish Congress, June 2002.
• CAMERA, "Can the BBC Change?", CAMERA, July 26, 2004.
• "Europe's new face of anti-Semitism", World Net Daily, December 3, 2002.
• Website of The All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism in the UK, retrieved September 6, 2006.
• Template:PDFlink, September 7, 2006.

Further reading

• Aaronovitch, David. "The New Anti-Semitism", The Observer, June 22, 2003.
• Abram, Morris B. Anti-Semitism in the United Nations
• Arenson, David & Grynberg, Simon. Anti-Globalization and the New Anti-Semitism.
• Avneri, Uri. Anti-Semitism: A Practical Manual, Gush Shalom.
• Bergmann, Werner & Wetzel, Julie. Template:PDFlink, Berlin Research Centre on Anti-Semitism, Berlin Technical University.
• Bourne, Jenny. "Anti-Semitism or Anti-Criticism?", Race and Class, Vol. 46, 2004.
• Burchill, Julie. "The hate that shames us", The Guardian, December 6, 2003.
• Chittenden, Maurice. "Dons' boycott raises Jewish student fear", The Sunday Times, April 17, 2005
• Cohen, Nick. "One woman's war: anti-Semitism," New Statesman, October 10, 2005.
• Cohen, Nick. "Following Mosley's East End footsteps", The Observer, April 17, 2005
• Cook, Jonathan. "The 'New Anti-Semitism' and Nuclear War", antiwar.com, September 25, 2006.
• Cotler, Irwin. "Identifying the New Anti-Semitism", Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, November 2002.
• Curthoys, Ned. "A new anti-Semitism: American discourse since September 11 has seen a reinvention of the eternal anti-semitism thesis applied to critics of Israel," Arena Magazine, April 1, 2004.
• Dinnerstein, Leonard. "Is There a New Anti-Semitism in the United States?" Society, 41 (January/February 2004), 53-58.
• Foxman, Abraham H. Blurring the Line, Ha'aretz, April 4, 2004.
• Gerstenfeld, Manfred. "Something is rotten in the State of Europe: Anti-Semitism as a Civilizational Pathology", an interview with Robert S. Wistrich, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 1, 2004.
• Gerstenfeld, Manfred. "Major Anti-Semitic Motifs in Arab Cartoons: An Interview with Joël Kotek", Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 21, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, June 1, 2004.
• Gerstenfeld, Manfred. Europe’s Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today’s Anti-Semitism, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Yad Vashem/World Jewish Congress, 2003. ISBN 965-218-045-9.
• Glazov, Jamie. "Symposium: Leftist Anti-Semitism", FrontPageMagazine.com, September 19, 2003.
• Gordon, Neve. "Seeing through the 'new anti-Semitism': Norman Finkelstein critiques Israel's human rights record and Alan Dershowitz's defense of it," National Catholic Reporter, October 14, 2005.
• Grant, Linda. "The hate that will not die", The Guardian, December 18, 2001.
• Greenspan, Miriam. (Nov-Dec 2003). "The New Anti-Semitism". Tikkun 18:6. p. 33.
• Harris, Ben. "'Progressive' anti-Semitism? S.F. meet considers phenomenon", JTA, January 23, 2006.
• Horowitz, Craig. "The Return of Anti-Semitism", New York Magazine.
• Iganski, Paul & Kosmin, Barry. (eds) New European Extremism: Hating America, Israel and the Jews. Profile Books Limited, 2006. ISBN 1-86197-792-1
• Iganski, Paul & Kosmin, Barry. (eds) A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st Century Britain, Profile Books Limited, 2003. ISBN 1-86197-651-8
• Jonas, George. "Pragmatic anti-Semites", National Post, October 27, 2003.
• Joffe, Josef. "Nations we love to hate: Israel, America and the New Anti-Semitism", Posen Papers in Contemporary Antisemitism, No.1, Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 2004.
• Kite, Melissa. "Labour should have fought back on immigration, says Euan Blair's girlfriend", The Telegraph, April 17, 2005.
• Klein, Naomi. "Sharon's Best Weapon", May 2, 2002.
• Klug, Brian. "The collective Jew: Israel and the new antisemitism," used as a resource by the EUMC in their report Manifestations of Antisemitism in the EU 2002-2003, Vienna, March 2004. See especially pp. 12-13, 225-241.
• Lewis, Bernard. "Muslim Anti-Semitism" in Rosenbaum, Ron. Those who forget the past, Random House, 2003. pp. 549-62.
• Kuruvila, Matthai Chakko. "Bay Area debate flares over 'new anti-Semitism'", San Fransisco Chronicle, January 27, 2007.
• Lopez, Kathryn Jean. "Liberal & Pro-Israel, Feminist Phyllis Chesler on 'The New Anti-Semitism'", National Review Online, November 25, 2003.
• MacShane, Denis. "Anti-semitism is back", The Guardian, September 7, 2006.
• McGeal, Chris. "The 'new' anti-semitism: is Europe in grip of worst bout of hatred since the Holocaust?", The Guardian, November 25, 2003
• Minerbi, Sergio I. "Neo Anti-Semitism in Today's Italy", Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Fall 2003.
• Nirenstein, Fiamma. Terror: The New Anti-Semitism And The War Against The West, 2005. ISBN 1-57525-377-1
• Pfeifer, Karl. "Antisemitism unites left and right extremists", Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
• Pipes, Daniel. The New Anti-Semitism.
• Rosenblum, April. "If Not Together, How?".
• Rosenthal, John. "Leftist myths and leftist responsibility", Policy Review Online, retrieved August 29, 2006.
• Sacks, Jonathan. A New Antisemitism?, June 2002.
• Samuels, Shimon. Applying the Lessons of the Holocaust: from Particularism to Universalism and Back.
• Sharansky, Natan. On Hating the Jews, Commentary, November 2003.
• Sharansky, Natan. The New Antisemitism, January 1, 2002.
• Smith, Lewis. "Jews criticise lecturer boycott", The Times, April 18, 2005
• Yemini, Ben Dror. Collection of articles about left-wing antisemitism.
• Zuckerman, Mortimer B. "Graffiti On History's Walls", US News and World Report, March 11, 2003.
• " Drawing the line: the 'new anti-Semitism' versus legitimate criticism of Israel", "Make your point", Haaretz, July 18, 2004.
• "The New Anti-Semitism in Western Europe", American Jewish Committee.
• "The New Anti-Semitism", Christian Action for Israel.
• "Audit finds anti-Semitism rising across Canada", CTV News, March 6, 2003.
• "Anti-Semitism in the Church?", BeitShalom.org
• "Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism", Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, retrieved September 7, 2006.
• Large collection of quotes by Hindu philosophers and writers against Anti-Semitism
• "The New Face of Antisemitism", Department for Jewish Zionist Education, The Jewish Agency for Israel.

Reports

• From government and inter-governmental sources
  • (U.S.) State Department report on Anti-Semitism: Europe and Eurasia, excerpted from a longer piece, and covering the period of July 1, 2003 – December 15, 2004].
  • "Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the European Union" (pdf) Unpublished EU report from 2003
  • Annual Report on Racism and Antisemitism published by French National Consultative Commission of Human Rights 2004
• From the Anti-Defamation League
  • "Antisemitic and anti-Israeli slogans in anti-war protests in the USA", Anti-Defamation League
  • "Deceptive Web Site Attempts to Lure Anti-Globalization Activists to Neo-Nazi Movement", Anti-Defamation League, July 11, 2002
  • Map of Attitudes Toward Jews in 12 European Countries based on a 2005 ADL Survey.
  • The New Anti-Semitism in Europe and The Middle East: Threat is "Potent and Very Real" ADL Leader Says in Major Address.
  • "ANSWER, Antiwar Rallies and Support for Terror Organizations", Anti-Defamation League, August 22, 2006.
  • "Anti-Semitism on Display", Anti-Defamation League, January 28, 2003.
• From American Jewish Committee
  • Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Antisemitism American Jewish Committee, December 2006
  • Antisemitism Made in Iran: Against Al Quds Day American Jewish Committee, June 2006
• From Zionism on the Web
  • The New antisemitism forum at [3]
  • Anglicans have betrayed the Jews
  • Background to Islamic antisemitism

Organizations that fight anti-Semitism

• The American Jewish Committee
• The American Jewish Congress
• The Anti-Defamation League
• The Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism
• Ilka Schroder
• International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center
• Tribuna Israelita, Mexican Jewish Centre