New antisemitism

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A placard at a February 16, 2003, anti-war rally in San Francisco. Demonstrative of Anti-Semitism according to Zombie of "zombietime.com" [3]. Photograph by zombie of zombietime.com. [4]

New anti-Semitism is the concept of an international resurgence of anti-Jewish incidents and attacks on Jewish symbols, as well as the acceptance of anti-Semitic beliefs and their expression in public discourse, which is held to be associated with certain left-wing political views.

The adjective "new" is used to distinguish this form of anti-Semitism from the older, usually right-wing form. The term was used as early as 1974, but entered common usage to refer to a wave of anti-Semitism that escalated, particularly in Western Europe, after the Second Intifada in 2000, the failure of the Oslo accords, and the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, DC.

Proponents of the concept argue that anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and opposition to the policies of the government of Israel are often either coupled with anti-Semitism or constitute disguised anti-Semitism. Critics of the concept argue that it serves to equate legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, and that it is sometimes used to silence legitimate political debate.

What is the new anti-Semitism?

A new phenomenon

The new anti-Semitism is regarded by proponents as a phenomenon that began to form, particularly in Europe, around the time of the Second Intifada in 2000 and the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Professor Yehuda Bauer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has called it the "fourth wave" of anti-Semitism to spread across the West since 1945.

Mark Strauss of Foreign Policy has described it as "a kaleidoscope of old hatreds shattered and rearranged into random patterns at once familiar and strange," 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 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 comes simultaneously from three directions, according to Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth: "first, a radicalized Islamist youth inflamed by extremist rhetoric; second, a left-wing anti-American cognitive élite with strong representation in the European media; third, a resurgent far right, as anti-Muslim as it is anti-Jewish."

Jack Fischel, chair of the history department at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, describes the new anti-Semitism as stemming from an "unprecedented coalition" of enemies, "an unlikely alliance of leftists, vociferously opposed to the policies of Israel, and right-wing anti-Semites, committed to the destruction of Israel, [who] were joined by millions of Muslims, including Arabs, who immigrated to Europe from North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and who brought with them their hatred of Israel in particular and of Jews in general." It is this new political alignment that "makes the 'new' anti-Semitism unique, an unprecedented configuration of forces whose militant, uncompromising support for the Palestinians makes little distinction between Israelis and Jews."

Fischel cites the French philosopher and political scientist Pierre-André Taguieff who argues, in his Rising From the Muck: The New Anti-Semitism in Europe (2002), that over the last 30 years, Judenhass based on racism and nationalism has been replaced by a new form of it based on anti-racism and anti-nationalism, wherein "among the left, Israel has come to personify the pre-eminent apartheid state."

Taguieff argues that traditional anti-Jewish rhetoric and slogans have been merged into anti-Zionist rhetoric to create a syllogism:

• Jews are all more or less crypto-Zionists.
• Zionism is a form of colonialism, imperialism and racism.
• Therefore Jews are colonialists, imperialists and racists, whether overt or covert.

Fischel argues that the widespread dissemination of these anti-Zionist arguments has resonated with intellectuals in France and Germany, both countries with large Muslim populations. By representing Zionism as evil, "an anti-Jewish vision of the world reconstituted itself in the second half of the 20th century that replicates the vicious stereotypes about Jews which laid the propagandistic groundwork for the Holocaust."

Since the concept is new, there are no indices of measurement, according to Irwin Cotler, Canada's former Minister of Justice. Cotler defines classical anti-Semitism 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 anti-Semitism, 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. Anti-Semitism has expanded, in his view, from hatred of Jews (classical anti-Semitism) to hatred of Jewish national aspirations (new anti-Semitism). The latter is harder to measure because the usual indices of measurement used by governments to detect discrimination — standard of living, housing, health, and employment — are useful only in measuring discrimination against individuals. Due to the fact that it is hard to measure, it is harder to show convincingly that the concept is a valid one.

An old phenomenon

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Anti-Semitic graffiti in a cemetery in France, 2004. Critics of the concept of new anti-Semitism argue that, insofar as there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism, it is an outbreak of classical anti-Semitism, rather than a new form.

That there was been a resurgence of anti-Semitic attacks and attitudes is accepted by opponents of the concept of new anti-Semitism. What is not accepted is that this constitutes a different kind of anti-Semitism. Brian Klug, writing in The Nation, argues against the idea that there is a "single, unified phenomenon." 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; for example, that Jews were warned to stay away from the World Trade Center ahead of September 11. Klug writes that some researchers report a 60 percent increase worldwide of assaults on Jews in 2002 compared to the previous year.

However, Klug argues that this is a new outbreak of old anti-Semitism, not the emergence of a new phenomenon. He writes that proponents of the concept see an "organizing principle" that allows them to formulate a new concept, but Klug argues that 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.

What puts the "new" into "new anti-Semitism," writes Klug, is anti-Zionism. The proponents of new anti-Semitism vary in what they regard as legitimate criticism of Zionism or Israel, but the line between "fair and foul" tends to be drawn in such a way, argues Klug, 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 anti-Semitic, it follows that most attacks on Israel are anti-Semitic, 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 anti-Semitism worldwide, if not a veritable 'war against the Jews'," given how much controversy Israel currently inspires. As compelling as the argument is, he argues that it is invalid, because it conflates the Jewish state with the Jewish people. "In fact," he writes, "Israel is one thing, Jewry another. Accordingly, anti-Zionism is one thing, anti-Semitism another."

New, but not anti-Semitism

Steven Zipperstein, professor of Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University, argues that Jews have a tendency to see the Jewish state 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 Jews were "all but wiped out" in much of Europe and yet "within the blink of an eye ... became masters of their own state ..." He writes: "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."

Zipperstein writes that, increasingly, a belief in the State of Israel's responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict is considered to be "part of what a reasonably informed, progressive, decent person thinks." He argues that a disproportionate criticism of Israel is not the result of new anti-Semitism, or even classical anti-Semitism, but is rather a "by-product of the wildly disproportionate responses that mark the post-September 11 world." Referencing Earl Raab, Zipperstein distinguishes between the phenomena of "anti-Semitism" and "anti-Israelism", arguing that the latter is shaped by "a much distorted, simplistic, but this-worldly political analysis devoid of anti-Jewish bias". He adds that "[s]uch prejudice against Israel is not the same as antisemitism, although undoubtedly the two can and at times do coexist".

Old and new: the fourth wave

Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, contends that anti-Semitism has always been a "mixture of Christian and Moslem theological opposition to Jews, traditional economic jealousy and competitiveness, and racial, biological, and nationalistic ideological motives." The term does not allow us to differentiate between these motives, between mild and moderate periods, or between incidents that demonstrate a general dislike of strangers, rather than Jews in particular, and as such is "essentially erroneous."

Notwithstanding that the term is a blunt instrument, Bauer 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."

Bauer notes that the two crises that led to the post-1945 waves of anti-Semitism 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." He quotes the saying that the Europeans cannot forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. "Periods of self accusation and beating of breasts alternate with periods in which everything is done to turn the Jews into perpetrators, nowadays even Nazis, in order to liberate the heirs of European culture from the burden of genocide." 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.

Bauer argues that the current Arab-Israeli conflict "provide[s] ample material for an antisemitism that sees itself as anti-Zionist." Anti-Zionism need not be anti-Semitic, "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," a view echoed by Robert Wistrich, Neuberger Professor of Modern History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the head of its International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism:

Whether the assault comes from the far Left or Right, from liberals or fundamentalists, its focus now is above all the collective Jew embodied in the State of Israel. Despite the incessant hairsplitting over the need to separate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, this has in recent decades become a distinction without a meaningful difference. Whatever theoretical contortions one may indulge in, the State of Israel is a Jewish state. Whoever wants to defame or destroy it, openly or through policies that entail nothing else but such destruction, is in effect practicing the Jew-hatred of yesteryear, whatever their self-proclaimed intentions."

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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." [5]

Although the Arab-Israeli conflict has produced real tragedy for the Palestinian people, Bauer suggests that Western latent anti-Semitism 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.

Bauer describes the fourth wave of anti-Semitism in the West as an upper-middle class, intellectual phenomenon, "widespread in the media, in universities, and in well-manicured circles." He also refers to French ambassador to Britain Daniel Bernard's comment in December 2001 that Israel is a "shitty little country," arguing that it was not the comment itself that was shocking, but the ease with which the ambassador felt able to say it during a well-heeled cocktail party.

Bauer regards this wave of anti-Semitism as dangerous, not because of Western attitudes, but because of the addition 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," representing the ideology of Nazism "in a different dress." He cites a television program broadcast on May 2, 2002 on the Egyptian television station IQRAA, financed by Saudi Arabia, 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, and as such, this fourth wave of anti-Semitism is a "genocidal threat to the Jewish people," concluding: "[W]e have been in that scenario before. We must not repeat past mistakes."

Influences

Conspiracism

A cartoon circa 1938 depicts the Jews as an octopus encircling the globe. [6]

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The same imagery, revived on the cover of 2001 Egyptian edition of The International Jew by Henry Ford. [7]

Proponents of the concept of new anti-Semitism say that one of its main manifestations is the cooperation between the left and right in the West, and the Muslim world, in the proliferation of conspiracy theories, or other false or absurd allegations, about Israel and what they see as a wider "Jewish lobby."

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates writes in his article "Zog Ate My Brains" that, during the early 1980s, isolationists on the far right, in the United States and in Europe, began to make overtures to anti-war activists on the left to join forces against government policies in areas where they shared concerns, which mainly centered around opposition to U.S. military intervention overseas, privacy rights and civil liberties, and support for Israel. Berlet writes that, 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 anti-Semitic conspiracism was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups, and that the left adopted and adapted the rhetoric, which Berlet argues was made possible by the left's lack of knowledge of the "complex history, different forms, and multiple tactics of fascism ... [including] the use of scapegoating, reductionist and simplistic solutions, demagoguery, and a conspiracy theory of history."

Toward the end of 1990 and in early 1991, as the movement against the Gulf War began to build, a number of far-right and anti-Semitic groups sought out alliances with liberal, progressive, and 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, an idea that morphed into conspiracy theories about a "Zionist-occupied government" (ZOG) which Berlet writes is the modern incarnation of the anti-Semitic hoax, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, widely regarded as the most influential piece of anti-Semitic literature of modern times.

The far right and Islamism

In recent years, and particularly since September 11, there has been an increasing symbiosis between militant Islam and the far right in their promotion of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and opposition to the State of Israel, a "kaleidoscope of old hatreds" that commentators such as Jack Fischel, Yehuda Bauer, and Mark Strauss identify as one of the defining features of the new anti-Semitism.

Political scientist George Michael of the University of Virginia cites as an example of the new alliance the March 2001 conference in Beirut, Lebanon on "Revisionism and Zionism," organized by the Institute for Historical Review, a leading Holocaust-denial group, and a Swiss group, Verité et Justice, 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. The Islamist group, Hamas, the majority party of the Palestinian Legislative Council, has also engaged in Holocaust denial, calling the Holocaust "an alleged and invented story with no basis," which "reveals the racist Zionist face," and Edward Said 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. 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.

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David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, being interviewed 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 leader of the Ku Klux Klan and according to Michael "arguably the most prominent figure in the American extreme right," has been at the forefront of efforts to foster cooperation between the extreme 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 that admired the anti-Semitic rhetoric on Duke's website. Duke's article, "The World's Most Dangerous Terrorist," referring to Ariel Sharon, was published in Arab News, a Saudi newspaper, and he has appeared on al-Jazeera's Without Borders. 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

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Graffiti in Manchester, England, March 2005. Courtesy of the Community Security Trust.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor of Commentary magazine, writes that: "Among those burning the Star of David and chanting obscene slogans against the Jewish state in the streets of Europe, there are surely some neo-Nazis; but a greater host of environmentalists, pacifists, anarchists, anti-globalists, and socialists." Schoenfeld calls it a "Red-Brown alliance," and includes in it commentators such as Pat Buchanan and Noam Chomsky, both strong critics of the State of Israel. Gerry Gable, publisher of the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine has said 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. It's becoming more pervasive. A lot of hatred is being built up by people who really should know better."

Schoenfeld writes that "enemies of the Jewish state have made little distinction between Judaism and Zionism," and that "much of the new antisemitism is spearheaded and endorsed by some Jews," in that the "antisemitic Left in the United States is largely a Jewish contingent." He describes radical activists such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, and Jewish progressives such as Rabbi Michael Lerner, Susannah Heschel, and Marc Ellis, as "preening left-wing Jews," who he says tacitly promote anti-Semitism with their one-sided support of the Palestinians. Jack Fischel writes that the same criticism was made of Tony Judt, when in an article published in The New York Review of Books, he called for an end to Israel as a Jewish homeland. Schoenfeld identifies these ideas as "Jewish self-hatred," writing that it can be explained in "the murky waters of the psychosocial, as individual Jews try to deflect the poisonous arrows coming at their fellow Jews from larger hostile forces." Schoenfeld is particularly critical of the British left, citing the British media's response to the 2002 Battle of Jenin, where Israel was falsely accused of having caused a "massacre" — see below — and the refusal to give grants to Israeli academics attending a British university, even though the academics were associated with the Israeli peace movement.

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. Robert Wistrich, Neuburger Professor Modern European and Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that "left-leaning Judeophobes, unlike their predecessors of a century ago, 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 ... Not only that, but they attribute to the Jews and Israel qualities of cruelty, brutality, bloodthirstiness, duplicity, greed, and immorality drawn straight from the arsenals of classic anti-Semitism." Wistrich adds that not all criticism of Israel or Zionism can be regarded as 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 communal solidarity with Israel; gratuitous emphasis on Jewish wealth or alleged Jewish control of the media; the growing calls for economic boycotts and sanctions directed exclusively against Israeli products and academic institutions; and the assertion that Jews reject all criticism as anti-Semitic.

A group of left-wing British academics, journalists, and activists founded what they call the Euston Manifesto in April 2006, a declaration of principles intended as a new rallying point 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."

French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin commissioned a report on racism and anti-Semitism in France, published in October 2004, 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. 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 criminalizing what he described as unfounded criticism of Israel by calling it racist or labeling it as an apartheid state. Norman G. Finkelstein, a vocal critic of the concept of new anti-Semitism, described Rufin's recommendation as "truly terrifying", reflecting "a totalitarian cast of mind" with an "attendant stigmatizing of dissent as a disease that must be wiped out by the state."

Criticism

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

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."

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 anti-Semitism, but also distinguishes it from anti-Semitism as such.

Peter Beaumont, writing in The Observer, argues that, although proponents of the concept of the new anti-Semitism agree that it appeared to start, or gain momentum, around the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, they refuse to accept that anti-Israel or anti-Zionist feeling may be a justifiably critical response to Israel's handling of the uprising. He writes 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."

Soviet Marxism

Even though many Old Bolsheviks were ethnically Jewish, they sought to uproot Judaism and Zionism and established the Yevsektsiya to achieve this goal. By the end of the 1940s, the Communist leadership of the former USSR had liquidated almost all Jewish organizations, including Yevsektsiya.

The anti-Semitic campaign of 1948-1953 against so-called "rootless cosmopolitans," destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the fabrication of the "Doctors' plot," the rise of "Zionology," and subsequent activities of official organizations such as the Anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public, were officially carried out under the banner of "anti-Zionism," but the use of this term could not obscure the anti-Semitic content of these campaigns, and by the mid-1950s the state persecution of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West and domestically. See also: Jackson-Vanik amendment, Refusenik, Pamyat.

Allegations involving Jews and Israel

Jenin

Tom Gross, former Middle East reporter for the Sunday Telegraph, cites the British media response to the 2002 Battle of Jenin as an example of the contemporary rush by the left, particularly in Europe, to demonize Israel. The Guardian reported that Israel's actions in Jenin were "every bit as repellant" as Osama bin Laden's attack on New York. A Times correspondent wrote that: "Rarely ... have I seen ... such disrespect for human life." The Evening Standard described it as a "massacre" and "genocide." (Gross reports the death toll as 52 Palestinians, most of whom were combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers.) Gross writes that, even as the American media was accurately reporting that there was no evidence to support the allegations of a massacre, Phil Reeves in The Independent reported that a "monstrous war crime" had been covered up, that the "sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb," and compared it to the "killing fields," invoking Pol Pot's massacres in Cambodia. British Labour member of parliament Gerald Kaufman denounced Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal" and accused the Israeli Defense Forces of "staining the Star of David with blood," while Oxford University professor and poet Tom Paulin announced that U.S.-born Jews living in the West Bank should be "shot dead" as "Nazis, racists."

9/11

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An image in the Jordanian newspaper Ad-Dustour on November 13, 2000 merged the Star of David with the flag of Nazi Germany.

The moderate Jordanian newspaper Ad-Dustour blamed the September 11 attacks on Jews, writing that it was "the act of the great Jewish Zionist mastermind that controls the world's economy, media and politics." Sheikh Muhammad Gemeaha of the Cairo Center of Islamic Learning at al-Azhar University said that "only the Jews" were capable of toppling the World Trade Center. If the conspiracy became known to the American people, they "would have done to the Jews what Hitler did." According to Harold Evans, former editor of The Sunday Times, the same ideas are spread by the Associated Students of San Francisco State University, which has allied itself with the General Union of Palestinian Students and the Muslim Student Association. The Jewish 9/11 conspiracy theories are usually accompanied by the claim that 4,000 Jews or Israelis who worked at the World Trade Center did not show up for work on the day of the attacks, supposedly a sign that they were warned by a complicit Israeli intelligence agency. White supremacist David Duke said in March 2003: "[T]here's no question in my mind that there was Israeli foreknowledge ..."

Jeffrey Goldberg, Middle East correspondent of The New Yorker, writes that those who repudiate the conspiracy theories may nevertheless blame Israel for "creating an atmosphere of despair which leads to terrorism."

Anti-globalization protests

The meme of a Zionist mastermind controlling the world's economy has been apparent during anti-globalization protests. Mark Strauss of Foreign Policy writes that "just one snapshot of ... the 'new anti-Semitism'" saw protesters at the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which attracted 20,000 activists from 20 countries, brandishing the swastika and signs reading: "Nazis, Yankees, and Jews: No more chosen peoples!" Some wore T-shirts displaying the Star of David twisted around swastikas, an increasingly common symbol in the Middle East. Palestinian activists carried a sign saying that Jews were the "true fundamentalists who control United States capitalism." Jewish activists carrying banners saying "Two peoples, two states: peace in the Middle East" were assaulted.

Academia

On campuses

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Graffiti in Leeds University, England, January 2005. Courtesy of the Community Security Trust.

Proponents argue that one of the political arenas in which these new political alliances produce new anti-Semitism is on university campuses, particularly in Europe, but also in North America, where Jewish student organizations clash with left-wing pro-Palestinian groups and Muslim groups.

Luciana Berger, a Jewish student in the United Kingdom, who was National Executive Committee member of the British National Union of Students (NUS) and co-convener of the NUS Anti-Racism/Anti-Fascism Campaign, resigned after anti-Semitic leaflets were distributed at an NUS conference. She told The Guardian that "serious complaints were lodged about anti-Semitic comments made by an NUS member in a public meeting. These complaints were ignored, with no official response or action. A few months ago, when it was (incorrectly) rumoured that I, a Jewish student, was standing for the NUS presidency, anti-Semitic whispers rocked the NUS. And NEC members failed to condemn a comment made recently at the SOAS Students' Union in London that burning down a synagogue is a rational act." An independent report commissioned in the wake of the resignations concluded "Having looked at the background to the incidents there were clearly occasions when matters could have been dealt with more quickly, or more efficiently, but do not demonstrate apathy to anti-semitism."

Violent incidents have been recorded by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on college campuses across the U.S. An April 9, 2002 pro-Palestinian rally by the Muslim Student Association at San Francisco State University resurrected the 900-year old blood libel — that Jews slaughter gentile children and use their blood to bake matzos for Passover — when the students displayed posters bearing a picture of soup cans reading "Made in Israel" on the label, and listing the contents as "Palestinian Children Meat," and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as the manufacturer. The can carried an image of a baby with its stomach sliced open, and the words "slaughtered according to Jewish Rites under American license."

File:Msa sfsu poster.jpg

Poster at SFSU resurrects the blood libel: "Palestinian Children Meat", "Made in Israel" and "slaughtered according to Jewish Rites under American license."

A month later, according to the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania, a pro-Israel rally held by 30 Jewish students saw pro-Palestinian students, armed with whistles and bull horns, corner the Jewish students, spit on them, and shout: "Too bad Hitler didn't finish the job," "Fuck the Jews," "Get out or we will kill you," "Die racist pigs," and "Go back to Russia, Jews." A cinder block was thrown through the glass doors of UC Berkeley's Hillel building on Passover; two Orthodox Jews were beaten one block from the UC Berkeley campus; anti-Zionist graffiti appeared on the sidewalks, garbage cans and buildings nearby; students emerging from the university's synagogue were egged; and death threats were received. Supporters of David Duke have allegedly distributed flyers protesting "Israeli genocide" on the University of California at San Diego campus, and Holocaust denier Bradley R. Smith ran an opinion piece in the Berkeley student newspaper condemning Israel's "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians.

Laurie Zoloth, former director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Francisco State University, has written of her distress at having to walk across campus every day past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters equating Zionism with racism and Jews with Nazis, turning the campus into a "Weimar Republic with brownshirts you cannot control." Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism at New York University, has written how two students of his wondered whether it was true that 4,000 Jews had failed to show up for work at the World Trade Center on September 11. "The worst crackpot notions that circulate around the Middle East are also roaming around America," he writes, "and if that wasn't bad enough, students are spreading the gibberish. Students!"

In Canada, a September 2002 speech by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University in Montreal had to be cancelled after protestors smashed furniture and windows before it began. Manfred Gerstenfeld writes that the situation at Concordia was so tense that the university had to impose a three-month moratorium on all Middle East related events in 2002, and a Montreal judge issued an injunction against a lecture by left-wing parliamentarian Svend Robinson. An advertisement in the Globe and Mail on December 17, 2002, signed by 100 people, said that Canadian Jewish students are so traumatized by on-campus anti-Semitism that they dare not speak out in support of Israel or Judaism.

In France, Patrick Klugman, President of the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), wrote in Le Figaro:

On some university campuses like Nanterre, Villetaneuse and Jussieu, the climate has become very difficult for Jews. In the name of the Palestinian cause, they are castigated as if they were Israeli soldiers! We hear "death to the Jews" during demonstrations which are supposed to defend the Palestinian cause. Last April, our office was the target of a Molotov cocktail. As a condition for condemning this attack, the lecturers demanded that the UEJF declare a principled position against Israel!

Proposed academic boycott

• see also Economic and political boycotts of Israel

Manfred Gerstenfeld argues, in the Jewish Political Studies Review, that two features of contemporary anti-Semitism is that it incorporates classic anti-Semitic motifs — recurring features or symbols — and that people are increasingly unashamed of associating themselves with it, arguing that it is not anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism, or anti-Israelism.

Gerstenfeld offers as an example the case of Mona Baker, an Egyptian professor of translation studies at the University of Manchester in England, who in July 2002 removed two Israeli academics — Dr. Miriam Shlesinger of Bar-Ilan University, a former chair of Amnesty International, Israel; and Professor Gideon Toury of Tel Aviv University — from the editorial boards of the journals The Translator and Translation Study Abstract that Baker and her husband edit and publish.

Gerstenfeld writes that Baker offered to allow the academics to remain on the board only on condition that they leave and severe all ties with Israel. He argues that this is a well-known anti-Semitic motif, whereby a Jew could remain a university professor only if he converted, or in this case, severed ties with his own state.

The general idea of an academic boycott against Israelis first emerged on April 06, 2002 in an open letter to The Guardian initiated by Stephen and Hilary Rose, lecturers in biology at the Open University and social policy at Bradford University, respectively, who called for a moratorium on all cultural and research links with Israel. The open letter had gained 700 signatories until the Mona Baker case — who was herself a signatory — caused several leading academics to distance themselves from it, including Richard Dawkins and Sir Colin Blakemore of Oxford University.

In 2005, the main British university lecturers' union, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted in favor of a boycott at the behest of nearly 60 Palestinian groups. The proposal stated that Israeli academics who "opposed ... their state's colonial and racist policies" would be exempt. The motions called for a boycott of the University of Haifa, over the alleged mistreatment of Ilan Pappé, and of Bar-Ilan University, for awarding degrees to students from the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel. The proposal was overturned at an AUT emergency conference on May 26, 2005. In May 2006, members of NATFHE drafted a similar proposal, voting to boycott Israeli academic institutions and even Israeli lecturers who did not publicly dissociate themselves from their government's policies. The resolution was dismissed by AUT, as "fraught with difficulties and dangers", and was not binding on the newly formed University and College Union, a merger of the two separate instructors' unions. A May 30, 2006, press release declared that, "AUT does not endorse this policy and is strongly advising its members not to implement it."

European bans on shechitah

In the past decade, Belgium, France, Germany and Holland have banned shechitah, the ritual slaughter of animals required by Jewish dietary laws, bringing the total number of European countries banning the practice to eight. The Swiss banned kosher slaughter in 1902 and saw an anti-Semitic backlash against a proposal to refuse to lift it a century later. Both Holland and Switzerland have considered extending the ban in order to prohibit importing kosher products.

The bans are seen by some commentators as part of a "new wave of ugly, and sometimes violent, anti-Semitism sweep[ing] through the European continent." The former chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior, argues that anti-Semitism is a motive for the bans. "They simply don't want foreigners and they don't want Jews. I won't say this is the only motivation, but it's certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter. I also know that during the original debate on this issue in Norway, where shechitah has been banned since 1930, one of the parliamentarians said straight out, 'If they don't like it, let them go live somewhere else.'"

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said bans on kosher slaughter are the result of activism by animal-rights extremists "aided and abetted" by anti-Semitic politicians. "Sometimes anti-Semites will use this as a vehicle to try to isolate the Jewish community by reaching out to those who are so preoccupied with animal rights," he told Jewish Week. "The key is whether or not there is a history in that country. ... What other issues of animal rights have they engaged in to prohibit cruelty? When they begin and end with kosher slaughter, that's when I become suspect." Rabbi Menachem Genack, the kashrut administrator for the Orthodox Union said of the bans, "It's ominous ... This kind of legislation in Europe has to be understood in the context of European history. A person would have to be extremely naive not to think that this is linked to anti-Semitism."

In Switzerland, Christopher Blocker, a cabinet minister for the right-wing Swiss People's Party who was found guilty of anti-Semitism by a Zurich court in 1999, has supported calls to ban the import of kosher and halal meat.

Media

Arab media

Conspiracy theories involving Jews are commonplace in the Arab media. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is regularly quoted as a factual source, with two television series dramatizing it in 2002 and 2003. One was a Syrian production, sponsored in part by the government of Syria and airing on Hezbollah's satellite channel, Al-Manar, in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East; the other was a 41-part series produced and aired in Egypt. Both films emphasized stories invoking blood libel and the alleged control by Jews of international finance. On December 14, 2004, Al-Manar broadcast a story about "Zionist attempts to transmit AIDS to Arab countries."

In the book, Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, Abraham Foxman writes, "Virulent anti-Semitism is widespread throughout the Arab Middle East...Anti-Semitism is tolerated or openly endorsed by Arab governments, disseminated by the Arab media, taught in [Muslim] schools and universities, and preached in mosques. No segment of [Islamic] society is free of its taint." According to Foxman, Holocaust denial in the Arab media has also increased in popularity since the 1990's.

British media

Allegations of biased reporting were made against certain segments of British media, describing them as examples of the new anti-Semitism. Intellectual Conservative and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) have argued that the BBC and The Guardian exhibit anti-Israel bias. According to CAMERA, the BBC is in persistent breach of its duties of fairness, accuracy, and impartiality when it covers the Middle East. Trevor Asserson, formerly head of Bird & Bird's global litigation department, and at the time an international litigator with Morgan Lewis & Bockius, has argued that "The BBC's coverage of the Middle East is infected by an apparent, widespread antipathy toward Israel".

Norwegian media

Following an op-ed in the daily national newspaper Aftenposten, Jostein Gaarder's convictions and rhetoric were subject to fierce controversy both within and outside Norway about the distinction between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. This followed a milder controversy about a caricature in another Norwegian daily, Dagbladet, in which Ehud Olmert was depicted as the SS officer in a scene from Schindler's List.

Cartoons

File:Latuff cartoon Israeli soldier voting.jpg

Graphic artwork created by Carlos Latuff.

The U.S. State Department's Report on Global Anti-Semitism has described the rise of anti-Semitic cartoons in the Arab and European media as a symptom of growing antisemitism. The report states that "critics of Israel frequently use anti-Semitic cartoons depicting anti-Jewish images and caricatures to attack the State of Israel and its policies ... [and to] focus on the demonization of Israel." The United States is also invoked as a target, because of alleged Jewish or Zionist control of the U.S. government, media, or economy.

A cartoon in The Independent depicted Ariel Sharon, who was prime minister of Israel at the time, sitting among bombed houses eating a baby, while helicopters and tanks buzzed 'Vote Sharon'. The cartoon, drawn by Dave Brown and based on the painting Saturn Devouring one of his children by Francisco Goya, sparked a wave of protests from Jewish human rights groups, with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, writing that it conjured up "the horrific medieval anti-Semitic Blood Libel and is more in keeping with the tradition of the Nazi paper Der Stürmer". The Independent's editor and the cartoonist responded that the cartoon was not anti-Semitic but anti-Sharon and their view was upheld by the British Press Complaints Commission.

In August 2006, Iran's biggest-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, announced the results of an international competition seeking cartoons satirizing the Holocaust. Entries included Ariel Sharon in an SS uniform; a man with side locks drinking from a container marked "Palestinian blood"; an Arab figure impaled to the ground by the long nose of a man in a black hat of the kind worn by some Orthodox Jews, marked "Holocaust." Organizers say they received more than 750 entries from around the world. Some of the images have gone on public display in Tehran's Palestine Contemporary Art Museum; the exhibition's opening was attended by the de facto Palestinian ambassador to Iran, Salah al-Zawawi. The competition's organizers say they launched it in response to the publication in European newspapers of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Reactions and responses

European Union

Groups monitoring hate speech and violence in the European Union have noted an upswing in attacks on Jewish people and Jewish institutions in many European countries. The Interior Minister of France has announced that the number of anti-Semitic attacks in France in 2004 is more than double that of the same period in 2003.

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 criminal law in the field of combating racism covers anti-Semitism" and to penalize intentional acts of public incitement to violence, hatred or discrimination, public insults and defamation, threats against a person or group, and the expression of anti-Semitic ideologies. It urged member nations to "prosecute people who deny, trivialize or justify the Holocaust". The report said it was Europe's "duty to remember the past by remaining vigilant and actively opposing any manifestations of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance... Anti-Semitism is not a phenomenon of the past and... the slogan 'never again' is as relevant today as it was 60 years ago."

In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), part of the Council of Europe, tried to define more clearly the relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as part of a general effort to track anti-Semitism. The EUMC developed a working definition of anti-Semitism that defined ways in which attacking Israel or Zionism could be anti-Semitic, while stating that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country could not be regarded as anti-Semitic. According to the EUMC, examples of the ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself include:

• 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.

Israel

In November, 2001, the Government of Israel set up "The Coordinating Forum for Countering Antisemitism" headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior. This was done in response to Abu-Dhabi television broadcast in which Ariel Sharon was shown drinking blood of Palestinian children. According to Melchior, "in each and every generation antisemitism tries to hide its ugly face behind various disguises - and hatred to 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

A number of groups and writers argue that the United Nations has condoned and encouraged anti-Semitism. David Matas, senior counsel to B'nai Brith Canada, has written that the UN is a forum for anti-Semitism and that, for many of its organs, denouncing Israel has become their principal business. Lawrence Summers, then-president of Harvard University, has noted 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." UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has acknowledged that "[to] the Jewish community at large, it has sometimes seemed as if the United Nations serves all the world's peoples but one: the Jews."

Matas 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 and human rights activist, addressed the UN as a representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, on the matter of alleged unequal treatment of Israel:

At the UN, the language of human rights is hijacked not only to discriminate but to demonize the Jewish target. More than one quarter of the resolutions condemning a state's human rights violations adopted by the commission over 40 years 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. Every year, UN bodies are required to produce at least 25 reports on alleged human rights violations by Israel, but not one on an Iranian criminal justice system which mandates punishments like crucifixion, stoning and cross-amputation of right hand and left foot. This is not legitimate critique of states with equal or worse human rights records. It is demonization of the Jewish state...

In the early years of its existence, 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 when Chile was added, 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.

Matas argues that the "invective against Israel by far exceeds the language used against other countries with much worse violations." For example, in 1989, a Commission resolution about alleged human-rights abuses in Israel "noted with several disapproval," using phrases like "strongly condemns," "deplores," "inhuman treatment," "terror," and "flagrant violation of human rights," while in the same year, a resolution against Guatemala, at the height of its civil war when disappearance and arbitrary execution were common, noted only that the Commission was "seriously concerned," and one against Iran, also in 1989 during the reign of the Ayatollah Khomeini, warranted only "deep concern."

The General Assembly is also criticized for its focus on Israel. There are currently around 250 Security Council resolutions and 1,000 General Assembly resolutions on Israel. Of the ten emergency special sessions the Assembly has held, six have been about Israel, and the tenth session, opened in 1997, was reconvened 13 times between then and August 2004.

Kofi Annan has called the 1975 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism, not repealed until 1991, "lamentable," saying that "its negative resonance even today is difficult to overestimate," and on June 21, 2004, Annan told a seminar on anti-Semitism: "It 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. This time the world must not, cannot, be silent." He asked UN member states to adopt a resolution to fight anti-Semitism, and stated that the Commission on Human Rights must study and expose anti-Semitism in the same way that it fights bias against Muslims. Annan asked: "Are not Jews entitled to the same degree of concern and protection?"

In 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed the United Nations Reform Act of 2005 by a vote of 405 to 2 . The bill has not cleared the Senate, nor has it become law. The bill insists that the United Nations must:

• require all employees of the United Nations and its specialized agencies to officially and publicly condemn anti-Semitic statements made at any session of the United Nations or its specialized agencies, or at any other session sponsored by the United Nations;
• require employees of the United Nations and its specialized agencies to be subject to punitive action, including immediate dismissal, for making anti-Semitic statements or references;
• propose specific recommendations to the General Assembly for the establishment of mechanisms to hold accountable employees and officials of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, or Member States, that make such anti-Semitic statements or references in any forum of the United Nations or of its specialized agencies; and
• develop and implement education awareness programs about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism throughout the world, as part of an effort to combat intolerance and hatred.

United States

On December 30, 2004, the US Department of State published its annual Report on Global Anti-Semitism, in accordance with Section 4 of PL 108-332. The report's summary says: "The increasing frequency and severity of anti-Semitic incidents since the start of the 21st century, particularly in Europe, has compelled the international community to focus on anti-Semitism with renewed vigor." "Four main sources" of the phenomenon were identified:

• "Traditional anti-Jewish prejudice that has pervaded Europe and some countries in other parts of the world for centuries. 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."

The report contains major incidents, trends and actions taken around the world in the period between July 1, 2003 and December 15, 2004.

On April 28, 2004, at the OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism in Berlin, then United States Secretary of State Colin Powell explained, "It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel, but the line is crossed when Israel or its leaders are demonized or vilified, for example by the use of Nazi symbols and racist caricatures."

On September 13, 2004, the United States Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) established for the first time that it is the policy of OCR to investigate claims of anti-Semitic harassment at institutions that receive federal educational funding. OCR continued to clarify and publicize this new approach throughout 2004.

Other commentators

Proponents

Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky, a Soviet Refusenik and former Likud cabinet minister, writes that anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism can be distinguished from legitimate criticism of Israel if it fails the "3D" test:

• The first D is the test of demonization. ... Jews were demonized for centuries as the embodiment of evil. Therefore, today we must be wary of whether the Jewish state is being demonized by having its actions blown out of all sensible proportion. For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz ... can only be considered anti-Semitic ...
• The second D is the test of double standards. For thousands of years a clear sign of anti-Semitism was treating Jews differently than other peoples, from the discriminatory laws many nations enacted against them to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick. Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively ... It is anti-Semitism, for instance, when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers like China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria are ignored. Likewise, it is anti-Semitism when Israel's Magen David Adom, alone among the world's ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.
• The third D is the test of delegitimation. In the past, anti-Semites tried to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they are trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it, among other things, as the last vestige of colonialism. While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be anti-Semitic, the denial of Israel's right to exist is always anti-Semitic. If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland ...

Critics

Critics of the contemporary usage of "New Anti-Semitism" have held the term to be inaccurate, some considering the accusation to be a strategy to deflect or stifle legitimate criticism of Israel. Others have acknowledged that recent criticism of Israel may be the result of prejudice, while also arguing that this "anti-Israelism" should be distinguished from anti-Semitism.

Noam Chomsky

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

Professor of linguistics at MIT Noam Chomsky maintains that the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups see legitimate criticism of Israeli policies as examples of new anti-Semitism while turning a blind eye to blatant examples of traditional anti-Semitism.

In 1988, allegations were published that there were several known anti-Semites in high positions in the Republican Party, and The New Republic argued in an editorial that the discovery of "seven aging Eastern European fascists in the Republican apparatus" really wasn't the threat it was made out to be. Their form of anti-Semitism was merely traditional bigotry without an agenda. The New Republic saw a greater threat in the anti-Semitism of the left, which had a salient agenda: "the delegitimization of the Jewish national movement".

In his book Necessary Illusions and subsequent writings, Chomsky saw this as an example of how the real anti-Semitism was ignored while criticism of Israel was vilified. This was his conclusion:

Thus for The New Republic, the discovery of unreconstructed Nazis in high places in a Republican Party that was then considered to "support Israel" was a minor matter; Nazism, Holocaust denial, hatred of Jews are only "antique and anemic forms of anti-Semitism," The New Republic explained, in contrast to the serious stuff: the "Jew-hatred" in the Democratic Party […]

Norman Finkelstein

Norman Finkelstein dedicates the first third of his book Beyond Chutzpah to discussing claims of new anti-Semitism, arguing that it provides political cover to supporters of Israel. He asserts that pro-Zionist groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have brought forward charges of "new anti-Semitism" several times since the early 1970s, each time with the intent of deflecting international criticism of Israel. He advances similar arguments in The Holocaust Industry and other books.

Finkenlstein has criticized much of the recent literature promoting the concept of a new anti-Semitism. In Beyond Chutzpah, for instance, he writes that Phyllis Chesler "barely disguises that alleging a new anti-Semitism is simply the pretext for defending Israel" in her book, The New Anti-Semitism. He notes that Chesler devotes eight pages to "A Brief History of Arab Attacks against Israel, 1908-1970s", but says nothing concerning Israel's actions against Arabs.

Marc Saperstein, professor of Jewish History at The George Washington University has criticized Finkelstein's arguments as an "outrageous ad hominem attack", a polemical, "prolonged diatribe" against Alan Dershowitz, in which Finkelstein "gets carried away with his rhetoric", altogether avoiding the discussion of evidence for the new anti-Semitism. Saperstein argues that Finkelstein engages in cherry picking, dismissing all evidence for the new anti-Semitism, such as that documented by The Middle East Media Research Institute. "There is no effort to analyze, to balance, or to contextualize," Saperstein writes in the Middle East Journal.

Michael Neumann

Michael Neumann, a professor of philosophy at Trent University, is critical of how the term anti-Semitism is used, and says that too often criticism of Israel is wrongly labeled anti-Semitic. He argues that anti-Semitism should be defined as hatred of Jews for what they are and not for what they do. Thus criticizing Jews for simply being Jews or applying anti-Semitic stereotypes to them would be anti-Semitic but not, say, criticizing the Jewish community for failing to hold Israel accountable for its actions. He argues that anti-Semitism also applies to the attitudes that propaganda tries to instill. Though not always explicitly racist, it involves racist motives and the intention to do real damage. Reasonably well-founded opposition to Israeli policies, even if that opposition hurts all Jews, does not fit this description. Neither does simple, harmless dislike of things Jewish.

See also

• History of anti-Semitism
• Holocaust denial, Holocaust revisionism
• Post-Zionism, Anti-Zionism
• Anti-globalization and Anti-Semitism
• Red-green-brown alliance
• Allegations of antisemitism within the European anti-war movement

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• HaLevi, Ezra. "David Duke in Syria: Zionists Occupy Washington, NY and London", Arutz Sheva, November 29, 2005.
• Iganski, Paul & and Kosmin, Barry. (eds) A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st Century Britain. Profile Books, 2003.
• 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). Accessed January 9, 2006.
• Lazare, Daniel. "The Chosen People", The Nation, December 19, 2005, accessed January 8, 2005.
• 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 1550025538
• 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 0700614443
• 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.
• Rosenbaum, Ron. (ed) Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism. Random House, 2004. ISBN 0812972031
• 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.
• 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. (2002). Rising From the Muck : The New Anti-Semitism in Europe. Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 1566635713 (published in France as La nouvelle judéophobie. Editions mille et une nuits. ISBN 2842056507).
• Wiener, Jon. "Giving Chutzpah New Meaning", The Nation, July 11, 2005.
• Wistrich, Robert S. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. Pantheon Books, 1992.
• Wistrich, Robert S. "The old-new anti-semitism", The National Interest, Summer 2003.
• Wistrich, Robert S. "European Anti-Semitism Reinvents Itself" Template:PDFlink, American Jewish Committee, 2005.
• 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.
• 2004 Annual Report on the activities of the parliamentary commissioner for the rights of national and ethnic minorities 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.

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. "Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the European Union" Template:PDFlink, Berlin Research Centre on Anti-Semitism, Berlin Technical University
• 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
• Cotler, Irwin. Human Rights and the New Anti-Jewishness, Frontpagemag.com.
• Gerstenfeld, Manfred. "Something rotten in the State of Europe: Anti-Semitism as a Civilizational Pathology", an interview with Robert Wistrich, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 1, 2004.
• Greenspan, Miriam. (Nov-Dec 2003). "The New Anti-Semitism". Tikkun 18:6. p. 33.
• Foxman, Abraham H. Blurring the Line, Ha'aretz, April 4, 2004.
• Glazov, Jamie. "Symposium: Leftist Anti-Semitism", FrontPageMagazine.com, September 19, 2003
• Horowitz, Craig. "The Return of Anti-Semitism", New York Magazine.
• 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.
• Lewis, Bernard. "The New Anti-Semitism".
• Lewis, Bernard. "Muslim Anti-Semitism" in Rosenbaum, Ron. Those who forget the past, Random House, 2003. pp. 549-62.
• Lopez, Kathryn Jean. "Liberal & Pro-Israel, Feminist Phyllis Chesler on 'The New Anti-Semitism'", National Review Online, November 25, 2003.
• 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.
• Neumann, Michael. "Criticism of Israel is not Anti-Semitism", Counterpunch.
• Pipes, Daniel. The New Anti-Semitism.
• Rosenblum, April. "If Not Together, How?".
• 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
• Taguieff, Pierre-André. (2001). The force of prejudice: on racism and its doubles. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816623724
• Yemini, Ben Dror. Collection of articles about left-wing antisemitism.

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
  • The New Anti-Semitism in Europe and The Middle East: Anti-Defamation League
  • The New Anti-Semitism in Europe and The Middle East: Threat is "Potent and Very Real" ADL Leader Says in Major Address
• From Zionism on the Web
  • The New antisemitism forum at [8]
  • Anglicans have betrayed the Jews
  • Background to Islamic antisemitism
• From other sources
  • 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
  • "Anti-Semitism in the Church?" - BeitShalom.org

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