Antisemitism Today


The Merry Minuet
Dave Schuler March 16, 2006
They’re rioting in Africa,
They’re starving in Spain,
There’s hurricanes in Florida,
And Texas needs rain
This whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, The Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For Man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we can be certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off…and we will all be blown away
They’re rioting in Africa, There’s strife in Iran
What Nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our Fellow Man


Schuler: “That was written by Sheldon Harnick more than 40 years ago. No, it wasn’t the Kingston Trio or Tom Lehrer.”




This little poem made me laugh and at the same time, feel anxiety, when I first heard it at the age of 15 or so sung by the Kingston Trio. Now with the recent news articles, I think of it as a way to lighten up the situation around the world. I do hate the human tendency to foster group hatred, even though it is obviously a human instinct and probably aided their survival over bigger and meaner animals. When we lived in small groups of 50 or a hundred, this unification mechanism helped us fight off marauding enemies. Unfortunately what began as a way to improve the cohesiveness of the “in group,” may end up killing us all. This is a time that the human race desperately needs to work together worldwide rather than in our small groups. We just can't embrace the big picture and the human race as a whole as well as we need to, as long as we maintain this mindset. Heaven help us all.




ANTISEMITISM ON THE RISE


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/1000-people-join-muslim-ring-of-peace-outside-oslo-synagogue/

Hundreds join Muslim "ring of peace" at Oslo synagogue
CBS/AP
February 21, 2015

OSLO, Norway -- More than 1,000 people formed a "ring of peace" Saturday outside Oslo's main synagogue at the initiative of a group of young Muslims.
The event in the Norwegian capital follows a series of attacks against Jews in Europe, including the killings of 17 people in Paris last month and two fatal shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark a week ago.

One of the eight independent organizers of Saturday's event in Oslo, Hajrah Arshad said the gathering shows "that Islam is about love and unity."

"We want to demonstrate that Jews and Muslims do not hate each other," co-organizer Zeeshan Abdullah told the crowd, standing in a half-circle before the white synagogue. "We do not want individuals to define what Islam is for the rest of us."

"There are many more peace-mongers than warmongers," he added.

Norway's Chief Rabbi Michael Melchior sang the traditional Jewish end of Sabbath song outside the synagogue before the large crowd holding hands.

Co-organizer Hassan Raja said it was the first time he heard the song.

Ervin Kohn, head of Oslo's Jewish community, called the gathering in sub-zero temperatures "unique."

Several European countries have seen an increase in anti-Semitic incidents recently, starting when the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza intensified last year.

"Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious terrorist threat," Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union's counter-terrorism coordinator, told EU member governments in a report last month.

In Paris, three Muslim gunmen killed 17 people at a kosher grocery, the offices of weekly Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere in early January.

Last week a single assailant in Copenhagen killed a Jewish security guard outside a synagogue and a Danish filmmaker attending a free speech event.

Hundreds of graves were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France on Sunday, some painted with Nazi swastikas.

Hundreds of Jewish graves defaced today in a cemetery in the town of Sarre Union in northeastern France. (AFP Pic)pic.twitter.com/jfyRJlBkos
— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) February 15, 2015

In an interview Tuesday, a Swedish Radio reporter asked Israeli Ambassador Isaac Bachman about the causes of anti-Semitism and whether Jews themselves had any responsibility. Bachman rejected the question, saying it was like asking whether a rape victim was to blame for what happened to her.

The public radio network later apologized for the question, saying it "is misleading and blames both individuals and a vulnerable group. The Jewish community has experienced horrific terror and has all of our sympathy and condolences."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has encouraged Europe's Jews to leave.

"Again, Jews were murdered on European soil just because they were Jews," Netanyahu said at the start of his Cabinet meeting on Sunday. "This wave of attacks is expected to continue, as well as murderous anti-Semitic attacks. Jews deserve security in every country, but we say to our Jewish brothers and sisters, Israel is your home."




CBS – “More than 1,000 people formed a "ring of peace" Saturday outside Oslo's main synagogue at the initiative of a group of young Muslims. The event in the Norwegian capital follows a series of attacks against Jews in Europe, including the killings of 17 people in Paris last month and two fatal shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark a week ago.... "We do not want individuals to define what Islam is for the rest of us." "There are many more peace-mongers than warmongers," he added. Norway's Chief Rabbi Michael Melchior sang the traditional Jewish end of Sabbath song outside the synagogue before the large crowd holding hands.... Several European countries have seen an increase in anti-Semitic incidents recently, starting when the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza intensified last year. "Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious terrorist threat," Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union's counter-terrorism coordinator, told EU member governments in a report last month..... Hundreds of graves were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France on Sunday, some painted with Nazi swastikas.... In an interview Tuesday, a Swedish Radio reporter asked Israeli Ambassador Isaac Bachman about the causes of anti-Semitism and whether Jews themselves had any responsibility. Bachman rejected the question, saying it was like asking whether a rape victim was to blame for what happened to her. The public radio network later apologized for the question, saying it "is misleading and blames both individuals and a vulnerable group. The Jewish community has experienced horrific terror and has all of our sympathy and condolences."

Spontaneous demonstrations of this sort lead by Islamic young people are heartwarming and encouraging. Unfortunately a Jewish graveyard was desecrated in France on the other hand, one of many such incidents. The Swedish radio reporter asking the Israeli Ambassador whether he thought the Jews had been partly to blame for antisemitism was yet another incident indicative of religious and ethnic bias. See the following articles for commentary on the new rise of Anti-Semitism in the US and Europe.

The articles discuss a recent Swedish Public Radio interview, Jews as Liberals, a Jewish voice from The Scroll on recent anti-Semitic events in Europe, a philosophical discussion of Judaism in the modern world which appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward, and complaints against Israel by some left leaning voices. I myself have spoken out against some Israeli actions against Palestinians as going over the line of simple self defense, especially under Netanyahu. I firmly believed that the colonization beyond the borders of Israel in the Left Bank and the Gaza Strip should by all means be stopped, and likewise the terroristic attacks by Palestinian groups such as Hamas on Israel and its citizens.

I do not, however, think this perhaps overly strong stance that Israel has assumed is "the cause of anti-Semitism." The cause is the instinct to persecute "the Other" by the more numerous and dominant group, who in this case are Christians and Arabs. It's the same reason that one group of chimpanzees under the observation of Jane Goodall "went to war" with another group of chimps in a nearby territory. Chimpanzees were earlier thought to be vegetarian, but these chimps would regularly catch and eat both monkeys and chimps. Our intelligence doesn't get rid of that characteristic. Religion claims to pacify and ennoble the human animal, but when the religions become dogmatic they do exactly the opposite of that. It makes me tired to think about it.

Unfortunately, both the Jews and the Palestinians have a reasonable claim on the Holy Land as their homeland. Europe as a whole and the US followed England's lead in establishing a Jewish nation there, but the Palestinians never accepted their presence in modern times. I agree with the move to set up the Jewish state, but I disagree with the ongoing polemics against Palestine's claim of land there which is basic to forming a peaceful region and, it seems to me, clearly in Israel's best interests. It should be said, however, that the Palestinians as well have not followed though on the various peace plans that have been proposed with the help of American and European ambassadors. See “Intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for a history of the conflicts and claims by both parties.

The following is from that article, which I suggest you read completely for its historical information. -–

“Ussishkin and Borochov, Zionist leaders in the Diaspora and according to Anita Shapira unfamiliar with true Arab attitudes, expressed their belief that the Palestinian Arabs would be assimilated by the Jews. Since the Jews were further developed they would take the lead in the development of the country and the Arabs would subject themselves to Jewish cultural influence and assimilate. Borochov also said that the Arabs were a "people akin to us in blood and spirit", and embraced the concept of the brotherhood between all the descendants of Shem as the basis of his outlook. According to Shapira this approach was part of a campaign of self-persuasion that the Arabs would not threaten the realisation of Zionist aims.[5]

According to Frankel the immigrants of the Second Aliyah had a strong secular and nationalist ethos. The attitude towards the Arabs took many forms however. On one pole there were those like Yitshak Epstein and Rabi Binyamin who held that Zionism should not antagonise the Arabs. Epstein advocated settlement only in areas unworked by the Arabs. Rabi Binyamin held that modern education, full equality and modernisation would bring the Arabs to accept massive Jewish immigration. On the other pole there were those who assumed that in order to reach their goal the Zionists would have to defeat violent Arab resistance. Brenner wrote "There is now, there is bound to be, hatred between [Jews and Arabs], and it will exist in the future too.". "Blood and soil" mythology was often a theme for them. For instance K.L. Silman wrote:

'We shed our blood and we live here. Our life is the continuation of the past and so too is the spilt blood. A nation does not build its life except on the foundations of its past and blood is joined to blood.'

The Arab response to Zionism[edit]

Under the Ottomans, Palestine's Arab population mostly saw themselves as Ottoman subjects or as Moslems and, when they concerned themselves with Zionists, they generally assumed the movement (whose objectives they feared) would fail. After the Young Turk revolution in 1908, Arab Nationalism grew rapidly in the area and most Arab Nationalists regarded Zionism as a threat, although a minority perceived Zionism as providing a path to modernity.[7]

In 1856 the Ottomans issued the Hatt-i Humayun, guaranteeing equal rights for all Ottoman subjects. Despite this, Muslims kept viewing Jews as dhimmi's: people protected by, but subordinate to Muslims. This changed when, due to Jewish immigration and land purchase, they realised that Zionism wanted to make a Jewish homeland in at least part of Palestine. Both Christians and Muslims were worried.[8]”





http://tabletmag.com/scroll/189064/swedish-public-radio-asks-are-jews-responsible-for-anti-semitism

THE SCROLL
Swedish Public Radio Asks: Are Jews Responsible for Anti-Semitism?
By Yair Rosenberg
February 18, 2015

There have been many reactions to the recent deadly violence against Jews in European capitals, from Paris to Copenhagen. Some have expressed solidarity with the Jewish community. Others have worked to reaffirm the European values of tolerance and pluralism. And then there’s Helena Groll, a presenter on Sweden’s public broadcast Sveriges Radio, who suggested yesterday that Jews are to blame for their own persecution.

In an interview with Isaac Bachman, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Groll asked: “Do the Jews themselves have any responsibility in the growing anti-Semitism that we see now?” Bachman, naturally, was taken aback. “I reject the question altogether,” he said. “The question of how a woman contributes to the fact of being raped is irrelevant altogether. I don’t think there is any provocation that Jews are doing–they just exist.”

But Groll wasn’t finished attempting to pin the blame for European intolerance on its victims, and proceeded to suggest that Jews in Europe might have it coming due to the actions of completely different Jews in the Middle East. “But a lot of people would look at the Middle East today and say there are various conflicts that we know between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” she went on, “and a lot of people might say, ‘we see the Gaza war, we see things that have been happening, that Israel and Jews in Israel have a responsibility to reactions that are coming?'”

After outrage on Swedish social media, Sveriges Radio apologized for the interview and purged it from the episode’s online recording. But while the station’s move is commendable, erasing the evidence of bigotry does not actually amount to confronting the bigotry. After all, if Groll is right that “a lot of people” think European Jews should be held accountable for the actions of Israel, Sweden has a much bigger problem than one blithely bigoted radio presenter.

Indeed, the fact that a respected host on Sweden’s public radio could so nonchalantly give voice to the oldest of anti-Semitic tropes–that Jews cause themselves to be hated, and that Jews anywhere are responsible for the actions of Jews everywhere–without any awareness of the bigotry of her comments suggests a much deeper societal failure. Especially because this is far from an isolated incident.

According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 50 percent of Sweden’s 18,000 Jews fear to publicly identify as Jewish. A glance at the past year explains why:

March 23, 2014: A youth center in Jönköping in southern Sweden is vandalized with anti-Semitic slurs, including “Jewish pigs,” “you’ll burn in hell,” and swastikas.
March 27, 2014: Malmö police arrest two teenagers, out of a gang of five, who attempted to break into the local Jewish community center. When they were stopped by security at the gate, they voiced anti-Semitic slurs, according to the police. They were also seen filming and taking pictures of the building before their arrest.

April 8, 2014: An 18-year-old Jewish student in Gothenburg speaks out about anti-Semitic abuse in her high school, reading aloud the slurs she’s received on social media, including “Go gas yourselves, you Jew bastards,” and death threats from classmates. “I have been in hell,” she tells a local TV station. “I feel bad, can’t sleep, and have nightmares.”

June 17 and 25, 2014: A synagogue in Norrköping, south of Stockholm, is attacked twicein the span of two weeks, its windows repeatedly shattered by rocks. The police first decline to view the damage, then visit and decline to classify it as a hate crime due to the absence of anti-Jewish slogans.
July 6, 2014: A 38-year-old man is beaten in Malmö by a gang with iron pipes for flying an Israeli flag from his window. After sustaining heavy injuries, he is found by police in the street and taken to the hospital.

July 21, 2014: Adrian Kaba, the Malmö city council representative of Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats party, writes on Facebook that “ISIS is being trained by the Israeli Mossad.” When pressured to recant, he offers a non-apology, saying, “If there is evidence that this is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, then I reject it unreservedly.”

August 3, 2014: Jewish marchers in Stockholm’s annual gay pride parade are asked “why they are killing Palestinian children.”
August 10, 2014: Organizers cancel a planned rally in Gothenburg against anti-Semitism because Jewish participants are too afraid to attend. On the same day, popular Swedish hip-hip artist Jacques Mattar tells his followers on Instagram, “The same people who created ISIS control the media: Senior Zionists.”

September 14, 2014: The Swedish Democrats, a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots, take13% of the vote in the national elections and become the country’s third largest party.

January 21, 2015: A documentary airs featuring a non-Jewish journalist going undercoverdressed as a Jew in Malmö. He is verbally and physically assaulted, called a “Jewish devil” and “Jewish shit,” and told to “get out.” He is ultimately forced to flee after being surrounded by a dozen men shouting anti-Semitic slogans and being pelted from nearby apartments with eggs. On the same day, The Local reports that authorities have recorded 137 anti-Semitic incidents in Skåne, Sweden, over the last two years–and that none have been prosecuted.

So far, much of Europe’s intellectual and political elite has been slow to confront the continent’s rising anti-Semitism, only reacting when it explodes into murderous violence. Clemens Wergin, the Washington bureau chief of Die Welt, recalls how, “when I asked then Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt more than a year ago about anti-Semitism in Scandinavia, he didn’t even understand the question.” More recently, when the Jewish community in Denmark requested increased security outside Copenhagen’s synagogue and school last month, in light of the Paris kosher market attack, the authorities refused to commit.

There are many reasons why European elites have had trouble acknowledging and combating anti-Jewish sentiment. Interviews like the one conducted by Groll–and like that conducted by the BBC’s Tim Willcox, who also suggested European Jews were accountable for Israel’s actions–suggest another: that there is much latent acceptance of arguments that blame Jews for their own predicament, even among enlightened and educated professionals.

Until such debilitating assumptions about Jews, which have bedeviled the European mind for centuries, are exposed and expunged, the continent will have little chance of meeting the challenge of protecting its Jews.

Previous: Nearly 25 Precent of European Jews are Afraid to be Jewish
BBC Anchor Suggests French Jews to Blame for Palestinian Suffering
Related: Sweden’s ‘Damn Jew’ Problem





http://forward.com/articles/153882/why-are-american-jews-so-liberal/?p=all

Why Are American Jews So Liberal?
Enduring Political Message of the Passover Seder
The Jewish Daily Forward
By Jay Michaelson
Published April 03, 2012, issue of April 06, 2012.

Why are Jews so liberal?

Every few years, the question gets asked, often with the unspoken follow-up “… and what can we do to change that?” This year, Republican super PACs are drooling with anticipation. If you think the attacks on Mitt Romney by Sheldon Adelson — I mean Gingrich — I mean a Super-PAC that theoretically doesn’t co-ordinate with Gingrich — were mean, just wait until the general election. Israel! The war on religion! The Ground Zero mosque! Anything to wake up the Jews and get them to vote Republican.

What’s more, Jews have every reason to vote Republican. In a series of studies, political scientist Sam Abrams (together with Steven M. Cohen and others) has shown how American Jews’ views on helping the needy, on diplomacy versus war, and on other litmus test issues actually line up with the center, maybe even the center-right, rather than with the left.

Moreover, Jews are, on average, more affluent than most Americans, and political scientists tell us that the more affluent you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. (More on that below.) When Jews were hawking pickles on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, our Democratic politics made sense. But not now, when we live in gated communities.

Related
Obama Riding High With Jewish Voters
Conservatives Have Jewish Values, Too
Why Does the Heckler Get a Veto?

And yet, since Ronald Reagan, no Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 30% of the Jewish vote. It’s an anomaly.

Abrams has suggested that Jews vote Democrat largely out of identity. Judge Jonah Goldstein, a 1940s Republican from New York, said famously, “The Jews have three veltn (worlds): di velt (this world), yene velt (the next world) and Roosevelt.” No doubt, that is in large part true. But in light of the Passover holiday, I want to suggest a different, perhaps complementary, view: It’s in our religion.

The Torah says, many times, that our experience of oppression is meant to lead to ethical political action. “The stranger that dwells with you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers once in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). “You shall not mistreat a stranger, nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21) “You must open your hand to your poor and needy brother in your land… and you must remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 15:11–15)

These are clear, powerful texts. It’s only human that when we have plenty, we lose our sense of empathy for those who have little. So, religion comes to remind us not to do that — in the Jewish case, by remembering the narrative of the Passover story and our shared experience of oppression.

Now, let’s go back to that political science point from a moment ago, about how wealth and voting Republican tend to correlate. This is a telling point. Republicans tell us that they, too, are living out the mandates of the Bible — this was part of my point in an earlier column, that conservatives also say they have Jewish values. They just say that the best way to help the poor is to get government out of the way, let rich people make more money and then assume that those same rich people will generously make up the difference.

But then, if Republican policies were really for the benefit of everybody, why do wealthy people disproportionately vote Republican? Is it that the richer you get, the more you care about the poor?

No, of course not. Conservative politics are not for the benefit of everybody; that’s just spin. Trickle-down economics, for 30 years a pillar of Republican policy, doesn’t work. A little spending trickles down, but mostly, capital enriches itself. The wealth gap widens. The super-rich take bigger and bigger risks, and are then declared too big to fail. Trickle-down rhetoric — that tax cuts for the rich promote jobs, that taxing millionaire’s estates would hurt small businesses — is just a cover for rich people to pay fewer taxes and keep more of their money.

Which is why rich people vote Republican. Because we are selfish animals, and we want more stuff.

Except when we remember. We remember, because of the Passover story, that we were slaves in Egypt: slaves, with no freedom, no property and no ability to look the other way from whatever we found unpleasant. And we remember, more recently, our Diaspora Jewish experiences, whether in the Holocaust or during times of anti-Semitism. Or, not too long ago, when we were disempowered peasants in Eastern Europe and new immigrants to America — just like the new immigrants that today’s Republicans want to keep out.

Jews are predominantly liberal because we are still mindful of being outsiders, even when we are insiders, and because we have a tradition that, right at this time of year, reminds us that we should not oppress anyone and must remember that we were once oppressed.

This is the Jewish equivalent of German pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous “First they came for the Jews…” speech. Today, we may be free people, unworried by the wealth gap, or the threats to the social safety net, or people of color being racially profiled and attacked, or the Republican war on women (since, after all, we’re rich enough not to need publicly funded contraception anyway). But tomorrow we might not be. And so we are enjoined to act responsibly now. This is the lesson of Passover, observed by more than 75% of American Jews (second only to Hanukkah).

Of course, the memory of victimhood can also be very harmful. For many Jews, the lesson of anti-Semitism is that we must always be tougher, stronger and meaner than our enemies, and it colors how we understand Middle East politics. And so, cynical conservatives, interested in their own power and wealth, have begun manipulating these Jewish traumas to their own ends. Bomb Iran! Support Israel all the time! Obama is a Muslim! These cries, too, speak to Jewish experiences of victimhood. They, too, can draw nourishment from the lessons of the Seder.

But they don’t have the support of the tradition itself. Apart from isolated cases (such as the law to annihilate Amalek), you won’t find these kinds of warmongering, greed-maximizing and fear-stoking messages in Torah. Do the aforementioned passages, or the rabbinic commentaries, say, “Treat the stranger roughly, because you were once strangers in Egypt, and you don’t want to slide back there, now do you?” Of course not. They say, “Do not oppress, because you were once oppressed.” They say, “You must rise above the all-too-human inclination to essentialize and demonize the Other, because you were once that Other.”

Yes, there is a Jewish consciousness that holds that in order to survive, you have to be tough, and take every advantage. Screw the other guy before he screws you. Let the poor get sick. And hit first, because might makes right (or because “Force is all the Arabs understand”). Some of it has filtered right into the Passover liturgy, like the pogrom-inspired prayer for God to pour out His wrath on the nations. Our tradition is complicated.

But religion’s role is to harness these human instincts, take us to something at once higher and deeper, and help us to be less nasty to one another. Sometimes it backfires, and the nastiness creeps back in. But the whole point is to get beyond the merely human, to aspire to a liberation that makes the Festival of Freedom worthy of its name.




http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-resurgence-of-anti-semitism

The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and Liberal Opinion
Bernard Harrison
Review by Michael N. Dobkowski

A good deal of attention has been focused in recent years on the resurgence of anti- Semitism in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. Since the collapse of the Oslo peace accords in 2000 and the launching of a terrorist war against Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, hostility to Jews and especially to the Jewish state has escalated in ways that few foresaw. The resurgence of anti- Semitism may not have been caused by these events, but it has been fueled by them and has intensified since the 9/11 strikes in New York and Washington, D.C. and the wars that have followed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This persistent prejudice is clearly brewing in the world again. Across Europe there have been a series of violent assaults against Jews and Jewish institutions on a scale not seen since World War II. Anti-Semitism can be detected on the political right, and as Bernard Harrison so ably demonstrates on virtually every page of his important book, it has also found a home on the political left in a fierce anti-Zionism that negates the very right of Israel to exist and resembles traditional anti-Semitism at its worst. The charge often heard in Europe, and to some degree in America in the press, among academics and senior intellectuals and politicians, during protests, equating Israelis with Nazis and Zionism with Nazism and racism is emblematic of these shrill attacks. In the Muslim world, particularly in its Jihadist versions, there is a hatred of Jews that seems to be at the core of its ideology and world view. The belief in an international Jewish conspiracy is only one of the several classic myths about Jews that are currently widely believed in the Muslim world. Jewish-Zionists are behind much of what ails Islam today, this irrational theory claims, and alarmingly “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is now enjoying a new popularity and is reaching millions of new consumers.

The three books reviewed here provide some welcome light and analysis on this murky, but alarming problem. Kenneth Stern, the American Jewish Committee’s expert on anti-Semitism since 1989, offers Anti-Semitism Today, a concise account and analysis of the new global anti-Semitism. He writes with the confidence and commitment of someone who has been on the frontlines of the fight against anti-Semitism, but his passion is tempered by reflection and evidence. In addition to describing what is happening in the world, his most important contributions are his chapters on the challenges being faced on the American campus, and his suggestions for combating anti- Semitism and the need to develop new strategies and early warning measurements. The book is a primer for that struggle.

In an exceptionally well-crafted book, The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel, and Liberal Opinion, Bernard Harrison, a distinguished British philosopher, examines why the political left has become so comfortable with anti-Semitism newly dressed up as anti-Zionism. He demonstrates how it has spread to infect “left-liberal” discourse on many other levels and he explores how the anti-racist left finds itself, ironically, in the thick of fomenting one of the earliest forms of racism. As Andrei Markovits does as well in Uncouth Nation, Harrison shows that anti-Semitism in Britain and in Europe generally is connected to anti-Americanism and is gripped by an obsession with anti-Zionism which helps foster European identity, assuage old guilts about historic European anti-Semitism and has the added benefit of being cloaked in the rhetoric of moral virtue itself.

Britain is today second only to France as the site of the most numerous anti-Semitic incidents. In addition to the hundreds of annual assaults and desecrations, Britain has been at the forefront of the anti-Israel boycott and divestment campaigns led by the Church of England and the country’s largest teachers’ union. Harrison spends much of the book debunking the false charges levied against Jews and Israel and exposing the bogus nature of the accusatory rhetoric now commonly employed against Israel such as “apartheid,” “racism,” “fascism,” “genocide,” and “colonialism.”

Harrison, Markovits, and Stern reveal the nature of contemporary anti-Semitism, the groups and cultures most susceptible to these ideas, what function they play for them, and why anti-Semitism is emerging in force now. They are required reading for all who fear that the threat is real and who want to help devise the best strategy to fight it.