Anti-Semitism

History's Oldest Hatred - Jeff Jacoby
Anti-Semitism is an ancient derangement, the oldest of hatreds. The misnomer "anti-Semitism" was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr, who wanted a euphemism for Judenhass, or Jew-hatred - though hostility to Jews has never had anything to do with being Semitic. In their classic study of anti-Semitism, Why the Jews?, Joseph Telushkin and Dennis Prager write: "Fascists have accused them of being Communists, and Communists have branded them capitalists. Jews who live in non-Jewish societies have been accused of having dual loyalties, while Jews who live in the Jewish state have been condemned as 'racists.' Poor Jews are bullied, and rich Jews are resented. Jews have been branded as both rootless cosmopolitans and ethnic chauvinists. Jews who assimilate have been called a 'fifth column,' while those who stay together spark hatred for remaining separate."
    Many Jews are no saints, but the paranoid frenzy that is anti-Semitism is not explained by what Jews do, but by what they are. They are the object of anti-Semitism, not its cause. (Boston Globe)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, March 11, 2009]

"When my grandfather left Europe in 1937, the graffiti on the walls read, 'Jews go to Palestine'. Today the graffiti reads, 'Jews out of Palestine'."

A Second Holocaust?  Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil" in a series of brilliant essays challenges us to think clearly about European anti-Semitism, nuclear empowered Arab anti-Semitism and the bankruptcy of the Left.

The New Anti-Semitism, Denis MacShane, September 4, 2007, Washington Post

Hatred of Jews has reached new heights in Europe and many points south and east of the old continent. Last year I chaired a blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians, including former ministers and a party leader, that examined the problem of anti-Semitism in Britain. None of us are Jewish or active in the unending debates on the Israeli-Palestinian question.

Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.  More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt.

The problem is worse in other European countries.

Europe is reawakening its old demons, but today there is a difference. The old anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have morphed into something more dangerous. Anti-Semitism today is officially sanctioned state ideology and is being turned into a mobilizing and organizing force to recruit thousands in a new crusade -- the word is chosen deliberately -- to eradicate Jewishness from the region whence it came and to weaken and undermine all the humanist values of rule of law, tolerance and respect for core rights such as free expression that Jews have fought for over time.

We are at the beginning of a long intellectual and ideological struggle. It is not about Jews or Israel. It is about everything democrats have long fought for: the truth without fear, no matter one's religion or political beliefs.

6/5/04 International A.N.S.W.E.R. Anti-War Rally in San Francisco (Courtesy LGF) Alas, Here's More

10/26/03 International A.N.S.W.E.R. Anti-War Rally in Washington D.C. (Courtesy LGF)

2/16/03 International A.N.S.W.E.R. Anti-War Rally in San Francisco (Courtesy Honest Reporting) See Also -- 3-20-04 San Francisco Anti War Rally

U.S. Report: New Anti-Semitism Disguised by Hatred of Israel
Jews worldwide are facing a new form of anti-Semitism disguised by hatred toward Israel, in addition to more traditional forms of anti-Semitism, the U.S. State Department said Thursday in a new report documenting anti-Semitic acts worldwide. "Anti-Semitism couched as criticism of Zionism or Israel often escapes condemnation since it can be more subtle than traditional forms of anti-Semitism," the report said. Critics of Israel have a "responsibility to consider the effect their actions may have in prompting hatred of Jews," it said, adding that hostility toward Israel has at times manifested itself in violence toward Jews.
    The report singled out a number of leaders, governments and state-sponsored institutions for fanning the flames of anti-Semitism, with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the top of the list. It also took to task the Syrian government, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, as well as the government-backed Venezuelan, Saudi Arabian and Egyptian media. (AFP)
    See also State Department Report on Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism (pdf) (State Department)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, March 14, 2008]

The "New" Anti Semitism:

• The alleged financial and media power of the Jewish lobby;

• Extreme demonization of Israel and extravagant assertions about the supposed worldwide effects of its policy toward the Palestinians;

• Conspiracy theories about American Jewish neoconservatives;

• A tendency to claim that anti-Semitism is a response to Jewish behavior and attitudes.

Online Anti-Semitism 2.0. "Social Anti-Semitism" on the "Social Web" - Andre Oboler (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
    Around 2004, with the new "social web" came a new "social anti-Semitism."
    This Anti-Semitism 2.0 is the use of online social networking and content collaboration to share demonization, conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, and classical anti-Semitic motifs.
    This phenomenon is spreading anti-Semitism and acceptability of anti-Semitism in new and increasingly effective ways.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, March 14, 2008]

When young Jews major in anti-Semitism

Dennis Prager, Los Angeles Times, Oct, 10, 2005

That the secular university is bad for Jews, and conservative Christians are good for Jews, is more than enough cognitive dissonance for a Jew to experience in a lifetime.

The 9/11 tragedy and the Jew hatred coming from within the Islamic world have enabled most committed Jews to see the world realistically. But Jews whose sociopolitical (i.e., left-wing) identity and values trump their Jewish identity and values do not acknowledge this. Jews for whom liberalism has become a surrogate religion — and who therefore do not wish to acknowledge a god that failed — will not acknowledge the moral failure of the university, and they will find every reason to dismiss support from conservative Christians as somehow illegitimate. [More on problems on campus.]

Demographic food for thought:  The world's Jewish population has never recovered from the Holocaust.  From a peak of 18 million in 1939, almost 1% of the world's population, today Jews number only around 13 million, comprising only 2 tenths of 1% of the world population. (The world population totals 6.421 billion.  Total world Jewish population is comparable to the number of people who live in the State of Illinois. World Christian population, 2 billion; world Muslim population,  1.2 billion.  In a room filled with 1,000 people from around the world just 2 would be Jews -- over 500 would be Christian and Muslim.)

 80% of Jews live in Israel and the United States  U.S. Jews are now just about 5.2 million in number, a decline in just two generations to a bit less than 2% of the US population from a peak in 1950 of 6 million, or 4% of the US population.  With present demographic factors the number is  headed down to 4 million in one generation, and then 3 million in the next.  And as rapidly as America's Jewish population is declining, the remainder of the Diaspora is disappearing even faster.

See: Richard Baehr, "The American Thinker:" American Demography and Support for Israel

See also 2005 Annual Assessment of the Situation and Dynamics of the Jewish People (Jewish People Policy Planning Institute) (783k pdf file)

September 2008 Update: There are 13.3 million people around the world who define themselves as Jewish and who do not belong to any other faith.  There are 5.55 million Jews in Israel and 7.75 million in the Diaspora, meaning 41.3 percent of World Jewry now resides in the Jewish state. The United States is next, with 5.3 million Jews, or 39.8%, then France with 490,000, Canada with 375,000, Britain with 295,000, Russia with 215,000 (340,000 in the entire FSU), Argentina with 183,000, Germany with 120,000, Australia with 107,000 and Brazil with 96,000.

Some perspective:  Today there are an estimated 35 million descendents of the 102 Pilgrims who embarked for Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620 -- well over twice the entire world Jewish population -- yet Jews predate that voyage by 3,000-years!  Another comparison: If the percentage of the world's population that was Jewish in the era of the Roman Empire were Jewish today, there would be 200 million Jews!

Perhaps, these numbers -- in and of themselves -- reveal a a root cause of the easy acceptance of Jewish suffering and anti-Semitism -- especially from those from whom we expect more. "You would think that the Western world would rush to defend Israel against [its] anti-human attackers." [But if you thought that, you'd be wrong: one example; The Christian Science Monitor weighs in.]

 Let's face facts: "Since the establishment of Israel, the Arabs/Palestinians have employed deviously creative means to avoid the opportunities to live in peace with Israel. These opportunities for peace included the return of land lost during repeated wars initiated against Israel, re-partitioning of land promised to Israel by the British, Palestinian self-rule experiments within the disputed territories, repeated withdrawals from disputed territories, the return of frozen assets/funds by Israel to the enemy seeking Israel's destruction, education, job opportunities, medical care and welfare. Israel did more, and still does more, than any other nation in history to live in peace with neighbors dedicated to its destruction. Israeli leadership has repeatedly, through ludicrous appeasement, denigrated its sovereignty, sacrificed its citizens and humiliated itself by venturing into various "creative" and biased peace arrangements, in order to satisfy the world's greed for oil, new economic markets and the security of other nations."  To what end.

"The main purpose [of the Geneva Initiative] is an open attempt to circumvent Israeli democracy. . . [N]o other country in the world — not even the most barbaric dictatorships, let alone a democratic country — is treated in this manner. . . [T]he Geneva show winds up treating Israel as the 'Jew of the nations.' . . Treating Israel as such a pariah that can be insulted at will can only be understood in the context of a worldwide surge in anti-Semitism."  The new anti-Jewishness almost requires a new vocabulary to define it. It can best be defined as the discrimination against, denial of, or assault upon, national particularity and peoplehood anywhere, whenever that national particularity and peoplehood happens to be Jewish: Stage 4 Anti Semitism.

The numbers also tell us that Jews better get straight what it will take to survive.

  Over 80% of the world Jewish population (10.7 million) reside in the U.S. and Israel.   Of the remaining 2 million Jews,  600,000  live in France, 480,000 in Russia and Ukraine, 365,000 in Canada and 280,000 in the U.K.  Before WWII, nearly 9 million Jews lived in Europe, before the Holocaust -- an event unequaled in the annals of modern history - the extermination of more than two-thirds of continental European Jewry and the confiscation of nearly all of its assets.   (There are 1.8 million Muslims in Britain and 280,000 identifying Jews.)

Remembering the Wannsee Conference and the Liberation of Auschwitz

This article is posted as part of the January 27, 2005, BlogBurst to remember the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, sixty years ago, on January 27, 1945.

Nelson Ascher, EuroPundits, February 14, 2004: No continent that has done to an ethnic minority what Europe did to the Jews, from the Crusades to the Pogroms to the Holocaust, can claim any kind of moral high ground, not for the next thousand years or so

Erecting memorials and museums for the Holocaust, teaching it at schools and so on are all a form of trying to put those nasty facts behind them. And maybe this would have worked were it not for the existence of Israel.

Thanks to European exterminationist anti-Semitism, there's probably no more legitimate state on the face of the earth than Israel, a country that derives its legitimacy from the simple fact that the Jews needed it not to be killed to the last man, woman or child by the Europeans.

Thus, it is Europe's history that legitimates Israel, but Israel's existence de-legitimates Europe's history and, consequently, Europe's role as universal granter of legitimacy.

If Europe's history has to be whitewashed so that the continent may assume its new role of pure vestal, of the only universal judge that may decide on anybody else's guilt or innocence, Israel has to be de-legitimized, because it is the living proof of European mega-criminality. [Also see Calling Jews, Nazis, by MANFRED GERSTENFELD,  Jerusalem Post,  Apr. 18, 2004 concerning European politicians and intellectuals use of "Holocaust inversion" to turn Jews into Nazi-like persecutors Palestinian Arabs]

NATAN SHARANSKY:  I propose the following test for differentiating legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism . . . The 3D test, as I call it, is not a new one: demonization, double standards, deligitimation.

P. David Hornik,  June 11, 2003:  The divide in the Israeli and Jewish world regarding the fate of the territories is often characterized as a dispute between Right and Left, or hawks and doves, or conservatives and liberals. I want to suggest a different categorization: between people who take anti-Semitism seriously, and people who don't.

Phyllis Chesler, August 11, 2004: Today, anti-Israel propaganda is all the rage at international film festivals and on television, world-wide. It passes for the truth and is considered "brave." In the 1940s, when the media and the American leadership refused to inform US citizens about the extermination of the Jews, a band of activists took it upon themselves to get the word out to the American people. Today, I will follow their inspiring example and make available two documentaries that honestly and accurately depict the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on my website, www.phyllis-chesler.com.

The propaganda campaign against the Jews and the Jewish state is far more global and technologically sophisticated [than it was during the Holocaust.]  The receptivity to Big Lies, especially if they are visually presented, is even greater today than it was sixty-four years ago. Such propaganda not only flourishes on every continent, especially in the Islamic world, but is especially favored by progressives, humanitarians, academics, and leftists in the West.  

There are about 14 million Jews left in the world. Each and every one, but the Jews of Israel most of all, are being systematically and perilously endangered by this non-stop onslaught of propaganda.

The Left

Catholic Church condemns anti-Zionism as a cover for anti-Semitism

Cartoon of naked P.M. Sharon devouring Palestinian infant wins 1st prize of 2003 British Political Cartoon Society.  (Courtesy Honest Reporting)  (Meanwhile, CAIR's up in arms over THIS.)

Must read: Ron Rosenbaum's Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee

Victor Davis Hanson: "Hatred of Israel is the most striking symptom of the Western disease.  On the face of it the dilemma there is a no-brainer for any classic liberal: A consensual government is besieged by fanatical suicide killers who are subsidized and cheered on by many dictators in the Arab world.. . . Instead, the elite Westerner talks about “occupied lands” from which Israel has been attacked four times in the last 60 years — in a manner that Germans do not talk about an occupied West they coughed up to France or an occupied East annexed by Poland. Russia lectures about Jenin, but rarely its grab of Japanese islands. Turkey is worried about the West Bank, but not its swallowing much of Cyprus. China weighs in about Palestinian sovereignty but not the entire culture of Tibet; some British aristocrats bemoan Sharon’s supposed land grab, but not Gibraltar."

Hold the Left Accountable: It has proved itself the Real Cradle of Contemporary Anti-Semitism.

David Brooks of The Weekly Standard puts his finger on An Ugly New Reality: Anti-Semitism And the American Left.  Winds of Change.NET observes: "Any time I see left/liberal Democratic operative/supporter ranting in print against the "neo-conservative influence" on the Bush Administration, I now mark the author as a closet anti-Semite." The new phenomenon,  "Hating America, Hating Israel."  Some ideas on what there is to do about it.

Lefty Democrats and Radical Islam: The Kucinich-CAIR Connection.  Al Gore and the Arab League's Zayed Centre anti-America, anti Semitic “think tank”

Muslims commit suicide to murder civilians in Russia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Indonesia and other countries.  But, only against Israel are masterpieces exhibited like ex-Israeli leftist anti-Semite Mapplethropian "artist" Dror Feiler's Snow White and the Madness of Truth, the one damaged by Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel.  Only against Israel are demonstrations held in the streets of Europe and protests at Berkeley and on other American college campuses  -  never against other countries, never out of an understanding for suicide bombers who murder civilians that are not Israelis.  There is no macrame for Chechnyans. There is no installation in Sweden that understands the suicide bombers in Riyadh. If this is not racism, it is unclear what is.  Snow White is not art, it is a tribute to a murderer and her motive.  The decadence of Europe is seen in its fear of us and its rejection of the right Israel — and every nation — has to defend itself.

2004 The World Social Forum -- the anti-globalization movement's answer to the Davos World Economic Forum promotes  a platform to build a global anti-Israel campaign -- some 60 WSF seminars addressed Israel's "crimes" – against Palestinian villagers, women, children and the Arab world.   [And at Davos 2004 - "[W]e were supposed to have heard the voices of moderate Islam but what we ended up hearing, at session after session, was an endless litany of complaints."  Read: Why it’s Islam vs rest of the world]

"Anti-Zionism is now being used to cloak a terrifying nexus between genocidal Arab and Islamist hatred of the Jews and deep-seated European prejudices."

September 16, 2003, San Francisco: Self-avowed "progressives" distribute leaflets denouncing American Jews as "fifth columnists" calling for the purge of Jews from American politics.  Historian Daniel Goldhagen, believes we are now witnessing the beginnings of a third phase of anti-Semitism that goes hand-in-hand with our globalized information age. "Globalized anti-Semitism [replaces] the weak but shifty Shylock [with] "Rambo Jew," who now haunts the "anti-Semitic imagination."

"A few hours before I was set to depart for Kuwait on a flight from Washington, DC, I began to realize that I would be in for a rough ride. I read on the Internet that the Kuwaitis issued a statement telling the international press corps in Kuwait that anyone transmitting reports to the Israeli media would face criminal prosecution." Click to read "Odyssey of an Israeli journalist, By Caroline B. Glick"

Discussing the Iraq war with the Washington Post last week, former General Anthony Zinni took the path chosen by so many anti-Semites: he blamed it on the Jews.  Neither President Bush nor Vice-President Cheney—nor for that matter Zinni’s old friend, Secretary of State Colin Powell—was to blame.  It was the Jews.  They “captured” both Bush and Cheney, and Powell was merely being a “good soldier.”

Arrests Made in Venezuela Synagogue Attack
Seven Venezuelan police agents and four civilians have been arrested in connection with an attack on a synagogue that sparked international condemnation, investigators said on Sunday. President Hugo Chavez told Venevision TV on Sunday: "What a coincidence, the gang leader is a metropolitan police officer who for the last four years was the personal bodyguard of the synagogue's rabbi." (Reuters)
    See also Venezuela's Jews Fear More Attacks - Fabiola Sanchez
As President Hugo Chavez intensifies his anti-Israel campaign, some Venezuelans have threatened Jews in the street and vandalized the largest synagogue in Caracas - where they stole a database of names and addresses. Now many in Venezuela's Jewish community fear the worst is yet to come. (AP/Washington Post)
    See also Jews in South America Increasingly Uneasy - Juan Forero and Joshua Partlow
In Argentina - which has the largest Jewish population in Latin America, about 250,000-strong - Jewish leaders describe a tense climate in which swastikas have been painted on Jewish schools, and graffiti demanding that Jews leave the country have been scrawled on walls. In Bolivia, President Evo Morales expelled the Israeli ambassador over the Gaza war. Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that outside of the Middle East, anti-Semitism has been most intense in Latin America. "There is no longer even an effort to differentiate between criticism of Israel and criticism of the Jewish people." (Washington Post)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, February 9, 2009]

Europe

Extent of Nazi Camps Far Greater than Realized - Monica Hesse
A decade ago, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum decided to create an encyclopedia of concentration camps. They assumed the finished work would be massive, featuring 5,000 to 7,000 camps and ghettos. Their ultimate count of more than 20,000 camps is far more than most scholars had known existed and might reshape public understanding of the scope of the Holocaust itself. "Instead of thinking of main death camps, people are going to understand that this was a continent-wide phenomenon," said Steven Katz, director of Boston University's Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies.
    "In most towns, there was some sort of prison, or holding area or place where people were victimized," says Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. "Think about what this means. For anyone who thinks this took place out of sight of the average person, this shatters that mythology. There was one Auschwitz. There was one Treblinka. But there were 20,000 other camps spread through the rest of Europe....What we are seeing in this project is that all of Europe was a camp."  (Washington Post)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, June 5, 2009]

Why Spain Leads Europe in Anti-Jewish Views - Yoav Sivan
Spanish leaders learn of Middle East affairs through El Pais, the country's flagship newspaper. El Pais consistently refers to Tel Aviv [and not Jerusalem] as the capital of Israel. It is regularly filled with references comparing Israel to the Nazis. A cartoon published during the recent Gaza campaign depicted a figure saying, "Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not the Israelis. The Hebrew myths are false, and abuse of the weak is disgusting." To whom a Jewish man with a hooked nose responds, "We are the people chosen by the God we ourselves invented."
    Even in minor stories unrelated to the conflict, El Pais displays unapologetic hatred for Israel. An illustration of the ostensibly oppressive encroachment by religious authorities on individual rights was the fact that Israeli hospitals separate cutlery for dairy and meat because of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). A survey last spring by Washington's Pew Global Attitude Project found that 46% of Spaniards view Jews unfavorably - the highest proportion in Europe - due to the shallow conception of Israel perpetuated and aggravated by Spain's leading newspaper, and the general use in Spanish media of anti-Semitic images. (Ha'aretz)

Europe's Jewish Problem - Denis MacShane
As Europe faces up to its old demons of financial breakdown and job losses, a wind from the past is blowing through the continent. The extravagant rhetoric of the demagogic left and right is gaining ground, and the most obvious manifestation is the return of anti-Semitism as an organizing ideology. According to a recent Pew survey, the percentage of Germans who hold unfavorable views of Jews has climbed from 20% in 2004 to 25% today. In France, which has the largest number of Jews of any European nation, 20% view Jews unfavorably - up from 11% four years ago. In Spain, negative views of Jews climbed from 21% in 2005 to nearly one in two this year. In Poland, the percentage of those with unfavorable opinions about Jews is up from 27% in 2004 to 36% today. The writer, a Labour MP, has just published: Globalising Hatred: the New Antisemitism. (Newsweek)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, December 19, 2008]

Rise in UK Anti-Semitic Attacks Worst in Decades - Mark Townsend (Observer-UK)
    Police patrols have been stepped up in Jewish neighborhoods following the most intense period of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain in decades.
    Anti-Semitic incidents are running at around seven a day.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, February 9, 2009]

An American in London, by Carol Gould

It is impossible to convey to Americans inside the U.S., or to American Jews, the open loathing of both groups that dominates daily life outside the U.S. today. What is significant about this rage is that it emanates not from the great unwashed but from the educated and intellectual classes. The daily dose of relentless America-bashing in the European media, combined with the abundance of criticism of Israel, has created an atmosphere of anger and hostility that for the first time in my lifetime makes me fearful for my safety in my beloved adopted country, Great Britain. There are some 260,000 Jews in Britain and more than two million Muslims, but at dinner parties all one hears about is the "birthplace of terror, Menachem Begin's Israel" and the "world's number one terrorist state, the United States."

Video: The War on Britain's Jews

British MP George Galloway

Britain suffered the sharpest rise in anti-Semitic attacks of any country in 2004.  Tehila Nahalon, an adviser to Natan Sharansky, the cabinet minister responsible for the diaspora on anti-Semitism, said: "You can't brainwash people for four years that Israel is an illegitimate country and that Israelis are like the Nazis and that Israelis are monsters and expect that nothing will happen to Jews."  September 2006:  Things get worse following Hizballah's attack on Israel.  Attacks at record high.

May 2003, the largest anti-Jewish attack on Britain since the Second World War was visited on a cemetery in east London

Anti Semitism in France - it’s everywhere, it’s like oxygen.  The case of Dieudonné and his progeny the Ka Tribe

Moving toward State Anti-Zionism?  The French government affirms its determination to combat anti-Semitism while at the same time continuing to feed the anti-Semitic discourse at its origins.  In a 2003 poll, almost 20% of French Jews said that they intend to leave France.   In the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel's existence was threatened, France's president Charles de Gaulle took a pro-Arab direction and instituted a weapons embargo on the Middle East. In his press conference on November 27 of that year he called the Jews "an elitist and domineering people." This is often considered the beginning of post-Holocaust anti-Semitism in the democratic mainstream of Europe.

In Paris, Jewish peace activists beaten by other demonstrators.

 There were less dramatic confrontations on London's million-strong march. It did not matter to the attackers that Jewish writers and activists have been vocal against the Iraq war. Nor did the attackers care that many criticize the current Israeli government's policies towards the Palestinians. Their victims were targets just because they are Jews.  In the Wake of the November 2003 Istanbul bombings: The anti-war crowd's Madness.

Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF umbrella organization of French Jews, January 31, 2004: The old anti-Semitism of the far right has not disappeared but it is no longer alone —  Jews are no longer attacked [only] by racists because of their race, but as racists by those who claim to be anti-racists

"The antiwar movement in France has turned anti-Israeli, as demonstrations against the war in Iraq have evolved into a battleground for French Arab Muslims to attack Israel and even Jews to protest Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. . . 'If the increase in the number of attacks aimed at the immigrant community is significant, the quantity of attacks aimed at the Jewish community has truly exploded.'" NYT March 30, 2003 (registration required)

ONE SICKENING STORY: "Jérémy Bismuth is Jewish, though he doesn't wear a yarmulke or Star of David pendant or adhere to a Kosher diet or leave school early on Fridays to be home before sunset. Nothing identifies the 15-year-old French boy as Jewish except his birth.  Yet because he is a Jew, he was attacked by a group of other children, mostly Muslim, at the private Catholic school he then attended. They dragged him into the school's locker room showers shouting that they were going to gas him as the Nazis had gassed Jews. He was beaten and flogged with a pair of trousers whose zipper scratched one of his corneas. . . When Jérémy broke free from his tormentors in the shower, he ran for help to the teacher's lounge but none of the faculty rose from their chairs to help the disheveled and distraught boy."  NYT March 22, 2003 (registration required)

 "There is only one group of Arabs for whom Europeans have consistently spoken out in favor of their liberation — and that is those Arabs living under Israeli occupation, the Palestinians. Those Arabs who have been living under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein or other Arab dictators are of no concern to President Jacques Chirac of France and his fellow travelers."

"We all know what this is about: the Jewish question. 'For too many Europeans, Arabs are of no moral interest in and of themselves,' observes the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen. 'They only become of interest if they are fighting Jews or being manhandled by Jews. Then their liberation becomes paramount, because calling for it is a way to stick it to the Jews. Europeans' demonstrations for a free Palestine — and not for a free Iraq or any other Arab country — smell too much like a politically correct form of anti-Semitism, part of a very old story.'"  Thomas  Friedman NYT (registration required), February 26, 2003

Anti Semitism rising in Germany (more than 50 percent of Germans believe that Israel’s present-day treatment of the Palestinians is similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews during World War II) Greece, Canada.  Moses Altsech: "Anti-Semitism occurs in Greece not only among extreme rightists and leftists, but is embedded in Greek mainstream society. It manifests itself in many ways: in a religious context, in education, in the application of the law, in the media, and through politically-motivated anti-Semitism in the major parties, as well."

Pilar Rahola: Spain is considered, today, the main source of incitation against Jews in Europe. The report of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, speaking about media coverage of the Middle East conflict, states: "since the stereotypes found in that coverage are the same waived against the Jews during the 1930s (killing children, controlling the world, related to money, dark intentions…), it is impossible to affirm that the anti-Israeli wave that crosses Spain is independent of an anti-Semitic content in the news".

Is There a Future for Jews in Switzerland? - Simon Erlanger (Jewish Political Studies Review)
    Swiss Jewry seems to be set for steady decline. There are today some 18,000 Jews in Switzerland ­ the same number as in 1900, whereas the general population has doubled since then.
    Assimilation and emigration, mainly to Israel, have reduced the Jewish population.
    In recent years a largely homemade anti-Semitism has arisen that gained momentum with the restitution debate of the 1990s.
    A 2006 study by the University of Geneva's Department of Sociology found that 20% of the Swiss are "affected by anti-Semitism" - in other words, openly anti-Semitic.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, Mar 9, 2007]

Antisemitic incidents in CANADA up by over 60% leads one man to the following grim assessment:  "I never thought it would come to this. This past weekend, my wife and I had a long and painful discussion about whether there was a future in Canada for the Jewish community and for us and our children and grandchildren."

March 23, 2004: Toronto Jews, officials rally after
a spate of anti-Semitic vandalism

On Campus

On Campus: The Pro-Palestinians' Real Agenda - Khaled Abu Toameh (Hudson Institute-New York)

• During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I was told that Israel's Gaza operation was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

• I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

• Many people I met supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to "resist the occupation," even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in Jerusalem.

• The pro-Palestinian "junta" on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and delegitimization of Israel. If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza.

• What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not really about supporting the Palestinians and ending the "occupation" as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel. What is happening on these campuses is not about freedom of speech but the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence.

• We should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from Gaza or Afghanistan but from university campuses across the U.S.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, March 25, 2009]

January 16, 2005: “Two, four, six, eight, we are martyrs, we can’t wait”  chant supporters of Palestinian terrorism, counter-demonstrating against a Berkeley, California rally against terrorism that featured a bombed Israeli bus. Posters from the event promote the bizarre blood libel conspiracy theory widely accepted in the Muslim world, that Jews steal bodily organs and eyeballs from dead Palestinians.

Also see: US Commission on Civil Rights: Public Education Campaign to End Campus Anti-Semitism

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejaad's October 2005 call to annihilate Israel finds immediate support by some at Harvard University. Courtesy LGF.

[T]he real problem with the open hatred in Ahmadinejad's remarks is the legitimacy and encouragement that they could grant to all those who choose to fight Israel instead of talking with it. Haaretz Editorial, 10/29/2005

From "The Medium, The Entertainment Weekly of Rutgers University," for Holocaust Remembrance Week, 2004 (Courtesy Little Green Footballs)

University Campus Hypocrites: "Anti-Semitism used to express itself in demanding that good Aryans boycott Jewish shops. Today it demands that good universities boycott the Jewish state." See this too: "Daniel Pipes' Foes"    Click here for a bit of good news.  And finally, Daniel Pipes' Oct 2002 speech sponsored by the PAC.

Islamic Radicals On Campus.  Case Study: UC Berkeley (update)  And Princeton.

Duke University Hosts anti-Israel Pro-Terror Conference - leads to postconference outbreak of anti-Jewish hatred.

June 19, 2003 the U.S. Congress Subcommittee on Select Education held a hearing entitled, "International Programs in Higher Education and Questions of Bias."  At issue: scholars who study the Middle East (and other areas of the world) abuse government funded programs by purveying extreme and one-sided criticisms of American foreign policy.

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