THE NEW FACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM
By Robert Wistrich - March 14, 2004
The ways Zionism is attacked are identical to anti-semitism of the nazi era
Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were initially two distinct ideologies that over time (especially since 1967) have tended to converge.

The more radical forms of anti-Zionism that have emerged with renewed force in recent years display some striking analogies to fascist and racist anti-Semitism preceding the Holocaust. There is, for example, the call for a scientific, cultural and economic boycott of Israel, which arouses grim associations and memories among Jews of the Nazi boycott that began in 1933.

To this, we might add the ways in which Zionism and the Jewish people have been demonized in recent years that are virtually identical to the methods, arguments and techniques of Nazi anti-Semitism. Even though the current banner might be "anti-racist" and the defamation is being carried out in the name of human rights, the same desire to stigmatize and defame the Jewish collectivity is in evidence.

"Anti-Zionists" who insist on comparing Zionism and the Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich, are de-facto anti-Semites, even if they vehemently deny the fact. For if Zionists are Nazis and Sharon really is Hitler, then it becomes a moral obligation to eliminate Israel. That is the bottom line of much contemporary anti-Zionism.

The exhibit in Stockholm in which an Islamic Jihad bomber is idealized as Snow White sailing on a pool of blood has nothing to do with "preventing genocide." It is an invitation to perpetrate another massacre of Jews, whatever the artist might claim.

Israel is the only state on the face of this planet that such a large number of disparate nations, political groups and individuals (including self-hating Jews) wish to see disappear - a chilling reminder of Nazi propaganda in the 1930s.

The most virulent expressions of this exterminationist anti-Zionism come from the Arab-Muslim world, the historical heir of earlier 20th century forms of totalitarian antiSemitism in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It is echoed even by "moderate" Muslim statesmen like Mahathir Mohammad who publicly repeat the classic anti-Semitic myth that "Jews rule the world" without eliciting any objections in the Islamic world.

The more radical Islamists from Al-Qa'ida to the Palestinian Hamas fuse indiscriminate terror, suicide bombings and a Protocols-of-Zion-style of anti-Semitism with the ideology of jihad. They embrace a total demonization of the "Jewish other" as the "enemy of mankind." The same demonizing stereotypes can be found in "moderate, pro-Western" Egypt (home to the anti-Semitic soap opera Rider without a Horse) secular Baathist Syria, conservative Wahhabite Saudi Arabia and Shiite fundamentalist Iran. This is an ideological anti-Zionism that seeks both the annihilation of Israel and a world "liberated from the Jews" - the ultimate final solution.

The danger has become especially grave because such annihilationalist anti-Zionism is spreading under the mask of anti-Israelism and hatred of Ariel Sharon to Western Europe, America and parts of the Third World. It has found grassroots support in the Muslim diaspora among radicalized youth and strong echoes among anti-globalists, Trotskyists, and far-right groups not to mention parts of the mainstream Western media.

The mobilizing power of anti-Zionism derives primarily from its link to the Palestinian cause. Since the 1960s, the PLO has worked hard to delegitimize Zionism and this policy has largely succeeded. Palestinian anti-Zionism involves a negation of Jewish nationhood and any legitimate Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Israel; a denial of any historic link between Judaism and Zion, or of the very existence of two Jewish temples in Jerusalem. No wonder Israel has never existed on any Palestinian maps even during the Oslo peace process. Nor should it be forgotten that the Palestinian Authority has frequently combined anti-Semitic motifs - including Holocaust denial, updated blood libels and Jewish conspiracy themes - with a more general incitement to jihadist violence.

Palestinian anti-Zionism has helped to infect Europe with an old-new version of anti-Semitism in which Jews are turned into rapacious, blood sucking colonialists. They are depicted as alien, rootless and imperialist invaders who conquered Palestine by brute force. Zionists are modern crusaders with no legitimate rights to the soil - an alien transplant in the region, which cleverly manipulated Britain and then America to achieve its goals. This is an Arab anti-Semitic narrative of which Hitler might have approved.

The popularity of the Protocols is one of the most telling symptoms in the Middle East of the complete merger between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Zionism is also vilified in some mainstream Western media as being criminal in essence as well as in its behaviour - another classic anti-Semitic stereotype. This flows from the left-wing mantra branding Zionism as a racist, colonialist and imperialist movement - the only empire in history whose waistline is about 10 miles wide.

Israel's military actions offer Europeans the tantalizing temptation of saying that "the victims of yesterday have become the Nazi perpetrators of today," and the opportunity to present Zionism as heir to the darkest pages of Western colonial history - i.e. Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa.

Such comparisons are not always anti-Semitic in intention however false they are in practice. But through endless repetition they become an ideological rationalization for dismantling Israel. This is a major aim of "progressive" anti-Zionism that insists on its moral purity yet turns a blind eye to so-called suicide bombings that are literally crimes against humanity.

Such anti-Zionism is fundamentally discriminatory in negating even the possibility of a legitimate Jewish nationalism while idealizing the violent nihilism of the Palestinian national movement. The anti-globalist crusaders against Zion regularly justify the terrorism, jihadism and anti-Jewish stereotypes to be found in Islamic fundamentalism. For most of the Western left, Palestinians can only be victims. Hamas bombers are militants engaged in legitimate resistance. They are never perpetrators of any crimes or responsible for their actions. Only Israel is to blame.

On the far left as well as the far right, contemporary anti-Zionism freely exploits stereotypes about the "Jewish/Zionist lobby, Jewish criminality and Israeli warmongering" that are deeply anti-Semitic. This world-view has penetrated the mainstream debate to the point where 60 per cent of Europeans regard tiny Israel as the greatest threat today to world peace.

Anti-Zionism is not only the historic heir of earlier forms of anti-Semitism. It is also the lowest common denominator between anti-thetical political trends in Europe and the Middle East - the only point on which they can agree. It is a bridge between the left, the right and the militant Muslims; between the elites, including the media, and the masses; between the church and the mosque; between an increasingly anti-American Europe and an endemically anti-Western Arab-Muslim Middle East; a point of convergence between right-wing conservatives and left-wing radicals and a connecting link between the generations.

Anti-Zionism is no longer an exotic collection of radical chic slogans that somehow survived the debacle of late 1960s counter-culture. It has become an exterminationist, pseudo-redemptive ideology in the Middle East which has been re-exported to Europe with devastating effect.

Robert Wistrich is director of the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of AntiSemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.



PAT BUCHANAN ANGERS PETER PETERS THE NEW "GOD" OF MENACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM
December 12,

I have it on good authority that Barbara Branden is spending a good portion of her time lately brooding about the Arising menace of anti-Semitism." Poor Barbara; like all Randians, she is perpetually out of sync. There is indeed a menace in this area, Barbara, but it is precisely the opposite: the cruel despotism of Organized Anti-Anti-Semitism. Wielding the fearsome brand of "Anti-Semite" as a powerful weapon, the professional Anti-Anti-Semite is able, in this day and age, to wound and destroy anyone he disagrees with by implanting this label indelibly in the public mind. How can one argue against this claim, always made with hysteria and insufferable self-righteousness? To reply "I am not an anti-Semite" is as feeble and unconvincing as Richard Nixon's famous declaration that "I am not a crook."

So far, Organized Anti-Anti-Semitism has been able to destroy, to drive out of public life, anyone who receives the "anti-Semite" treatment. True, "anti-Semitic" expression is not yet illegal (though it is banned in many Western "democracies," as well as increasingly – as with other "hate speech" – serving as grounds for expulsion, or at the very least compulsory "reeducation," on college campuses). But the receiver of the brand is generally deprived of access to organs of influential opinion, and is marginalized out of the centers of public life. At best, the victim of the brand may be driven to abase himself before his persecutors, and, by suitable groveling, apologies, and – most important – the changing of positions of crucial interest to his enemies, he may work his way back into public life – at the expense of course, of self-emasculation. Or, if, by chance, the victim manages to survive the onslaught, he may be induced to exercise due caution and shut up about such issues in the future, which amounts to the same thing. In that way, Organized Anti-Anti-Semitism (OAAS) creates, for itself, a win-win situation.

The major fount of OAAS is the venerable Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), the head of what the grand Old Rightist John T. Flynn referred to during World War II as the "Smear Bund." (Flynn was forced to publish himself his expose of the orchestrated smear of isolationists in his pamphlet, The Smear Terror.) Since the end of World War II, the key strategy of the ADL has been to broaden its definition of anti-Semitism to include any robust criticisms of the State of Israel. Indeed, the ADL and the rest of the OAAS has formed itself into a mighty praetorian guard focusing on Israeli interests and Israeli security.

Ever since August 2, Israel and what Pat Buchanan has brilliantly called its extensive "amen corner" in the United States, has been beating the drums for immediate and total destruction of Iraq, for the toppling of Saddam Hussein, for destruction of Iraqi military capacity, and even for a "MacArthur Regency" to occupy Iraq quasi-permanently. Pat Buchanan has distinguished himself, from the beginning, as the most prominent and persistent critic of the war on Iraq, and as the spokesman for a return to Old Right isolationism now that the Cold War against the Soviet Union and international communism has ended. Hence, it is no accident that the ADL picked the occasion of Buchanan's hard-hitting critiques of the war hawks to unleash its dossier, to issue and widely circulate a press release smearing Buchanan as anti-Semitic, which was then used as fodder for an extraordinarily extensive press campaign against Buchanan.

The campaign was kicked off by one of OAAS's big guns, the powerful and well-connected editor of the New York Times, who now writes a regular column of such tedium and downright terrible writing that it usually serves as a far better soporific than Sominex. If you can classify Rosenthal ideologically at all, it would probably be "left neoconservative," one of my least favorite ideological groupings. Rosenthal rose from his usual torpor in his column of September 14 to deliver a hate-filled, hysterical, and vituperative assault on Buchanan, likening him to Auschwitz, no less, the Warsaw ghetto, and "blood libel." Rosenthal winds up with a blasphemous and fascinatingly self-revelatory twist on Jesus's words on the Cross: "Forgive them not, Father, for they know what they did." Compare the contrasting ethics offered to the world by Jesus Christ and A.M. Rosenthal, and shudder.

Albert Hunt, defending Pat Buchanan on The Capital Gang, sternly declared that Abe Rosenthal has "forgotten how to be a reporter." This is all the more true when we consider the curious point that what touched off Rosenthal's ire was a statement by Pat on the McLaughlin Group, which Rosenthal oddly referred to as The McLaughlin Report. (Whaddat?) The mystery clears when we note that the ADL's press release on Buchanan, issued shortly before the Rosenthal column, makes the self-same error, twice referring to Pat's appearance on The McLaughlin Report [sic]. Pat's instincts were absolutely sound when, in the marvelous rebuttal in his syndicated column, he referred to Rosenthal's blast as a "contract hit" orchestrated by the ADL.

In a just society, Rosenthal's rabid tirade would have been laughed out of existence. Instead, it touched off a spate of editorials and columns throughout the country, almost all backing Rosenthal, accompanied by calls from the ADL, and the official Israeli lobby, AIPAC, to newspapers carrying Buchanan's column, urging them to cancel. (Probably the best single compendium of the anti-Buchanan smears and their various nuances is Howard Kurtz's front-page article in the Style Section of the Washington Post, Sept. 20, "Pat Buchanan and the Jewish Question.") Clearly, what we are seeing is neither a friendly nor even vigorous debate over issues crucial to the American Republic. What we are witnessing is nothing less than a venomous attempt to suppress dissent, to eliminate Buchanan's fearless and independent voice on the social and political scene.

Examining the attacks on Buchanan by Rosenthal and the others, we find a variant of the old shell game. On the one hand, even Rosenthal feebly concedes that it is theoretically possible to criticize Israel and not be an anti-Semite. Oh? And how does one tell the difference? For Rosenthal it is simple: "Every American...should be alert to smell the difference." So now we have to rely on Rosenthal's ineffable schnozzola! How are we supposed to distinguish one man's sense of smell from another? Some criterion! Interestingly enough, Rosenthal and the rest of the jackal pack carefully omit from their screeds the concession made even by the ADL: that Pat has often been a strong supporter of Israel! No facts, I suppose, can be allowed to get in the way of a successful smear. As a matter of fact, Pat explains the point in his rebuttal column: he confesses to having been an "uncritical apologist" of Israel until 1985; but an accumulation of facts since then, including the Pollard espionage case and the brutality against the Palestinians of the intifada, have led him to change his mind. Changing one's mind, if it is in the wrong direction, can obviously not be tolerated.

The shell game, then, is to say, first, that Pat is not necessarily anti-Semitic because he is critical of Israel, but that Rosenthal's proboscis tells him that Pat is an anti-Semite. Before writing his hate-Buchanan column, Rosenthal says that he consulted none other than Elie Wiesel, the professional Holocaust survivor, who pronounced the magic words: "Although I very rarely use the word antisemite'" (Hah! That'll be the day!), opined Wiesel, "I feel there is something in him that is opposed to my people." Well, that's it: Who can quarrel with Wiesel's ineffable "feelings"? Between Wiesel's inner oracle and Rosenthal's nose, no one has much of a chance.

But can Elie Wiesel's mystical insight really be relied upon? After all, this is the selfsame Wiesel who, in the early 1980s, pronounced his feelings to be favorable to none other than the monster Ceausescu. Why? Because of Ceausescu's pro-Israel foreign policy, naturally. Any man who confers his blessings upon one of the most savage butchers in the past half century, is scarcely qualified to hurl anathemas at anyone, much less at Pat Buchanan.

It is significant that all of the hostiles who know Buchanan personally concede that he is a great guy. Thus, take Mona Charen, who worked under Buchanan at the Reagan White House, and who provided the neat Et tu, Brute? touch by launching the anti-Semitic canard even before Rosenthal. Charen concedes that "Pat is the sweetest human being on a one-to-one level that you'd ever meet, an incredibly gentle, warm, sweet man." And yet, by launching the assault, the good deed that Pat performed by saving Mona Charen's job at the White House was not allowed to go unpunished.

The shell game on Buchanan is unwittingly illuminated by the neocon Fred Barnes, of the New Republic, and a colleague of Buchanan's on The McLaughlin Group. Asked by Howard Kurtz whether Pat is anti-Semitic, Barnes replies, with seeming judiciousness, that it all depends on one's definition. (Yes, and cabbages can become kings by definition.) "If your definition is someone who is personally bigoted against Jews," says Barnes (but what else is anti-Semitism, Fred?), who "doesn't want them in the country club" (Note the way Barnes trivializes genuine anti-Semitism), "then I don't think Pat is that." By this time we are trained to look for the explicit or implicit "but." But, adds Barnes, "If your definition is someone who thinks Israel and its supporters are playing a bad role in the world, Pat may qualify." Aha! So Pat is not anti-Semitic personally, is not a "country club anti-Semite," but he is critical of Israel, so he qualifies under that particular shell. In short, criticism of Israel, despite one's personally not being anti-Semitic, at last puts one into the dread category. The Zionist definition maximized! If you can't hook a guy as an anti-Semite under one shell, you get him under the other, as the definitions shift endlessly.

To paraphrase a wonderful comment that Joseph Schumpeter once wrote about left-wing intellectuals and their hatred of capitalism; the verdict of this loaded jury – that Pat is anti-Semitic – is a given, it has already been written in advance. The only thing a successful defense of the charge can accomplish is to change the nature of the indictment.

Putting his two-cents worth into this witches' brew is a pseudo-scholarly article by philosophy professor John K. Roth, apparently an expert on semantics and hate (John K. Roth, "Sticks, Stones, and Words," L.A. Times, Sept. 20). Amidst the usual invocations of Hitler and Auschwitz, the professor defines anti-Semitism as "the hostility aroused in irrational thinking about Jews," and says it is part of the "same hate-filled family" as "racism" and "sexism" and of "irrational thinking" about "blacks or Asians or women." Interesting categories; but why does the professor say not a word about "irrational thinking" and generalizations, and consequent hostility, toward whites, Christians, or men? Are the omissions an accident? Or does he think no such phenomenon exists? If the latter, he is invited to pick up the latest issue of his daily paper, or of the latest scholarly journal.

The only new element added by Professor Roth is ominous indeed. "One need not consciously intend anti-Semitism, racism or sexism to do or say things outside legitimate criticism." Roth then has the gall to quote the New Testament about "You shall know them by their fruits," in defense. Then comes the material about Hitler and Auschwitz. But whether he knows it or not, Professor Roth is really raising the spectre, not of the New Testament, but of the notorious Stalinist concept of "objective" crimes. When Trotsky and other Old Bolsheviks were accused of being "fascist agents," the Stalinists had a fascinating rebuttal to those who complained about the patent absurdity of the charge: that Trotsky and the others were "objectively pro-fascist" because they were undermining Stalin's rule. So – even though by any rational criterion Buchanan may not be anti-Semitic, he can be called "objectively anti-Semitic." Why? Obviously because he opposes many Israeli policies, and we're back again to the shell game.

There also runs through many of the criticisms of the anti-Buchanan pack a black thread of hatred of Christianity – a hatred, we have seen, that Professor Roth managed to omit from his litany. In Rosenthal's infamous article, one of the pieces of "evidence" for Buchanan's anti-Semitism was his frequent attacks on the "de-Christianization" of America, which Rosenthal apparently interprets as a code word for anti-Semitism.

Well, I have news for Mr. Rosenthal. Unlike Rosenthal, most Christians don't walk around thinking only about Jews. "De-Christianization" is not a code word for anything: it means what it says: the growing secularization of our society, our culture, and our school systems. Christians who oppose this are anti-secular, not anti-Jewish, and, in fact, most orthodox Jews join in much of this anti-secular and pro-religion position. Why is this a world where such elementary propositions have to be patiently pointed out?

Then there is Leon ("The Weasel") Wieseltier, the favorite theoretician of the New Republic. Pat Buchanan was upset when, two years ago, international Jewish groups led a campaign against the convent of Carmelite nuns at the site of Auschwitz. Apparently, they held it to be a desecration for Carmelites to pray for all those murdered at Auschwitz, Catholics as well as Jews. Wieseltier wrote a particularly odious article on the subject, denouncing Catholic defenders of the Carmelites as anti-Semitic, and Buchanan fired back, correctly pointing out that "anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual. Let's hope the nuns at Auschwitz are praying for him (Wieseltier). He needs it."

The Kurtz smear article now gives The Weasel the chance to get in the last word. "A hater's rhetoric," he opines. Wieseltier goes on to assert that there "can be in a religious Catholic a theological basis for anti-semitic emotion...The roots of some of this man's feelings about the Jews may be theological." Although Wieseltier covers his rear by hastening to add: Athough I emphasize that not all religious Catholics are anti-semites." How gracious of The Weasel! I am sure that Catholics everywhere are grateful for his nihil obstat.

Meanwhile, the New Republic has, predictably, made itself the GHQ of the anti-Buchanan movement among the periodicals. An editorial accused Buchanan of anti-Semitism, because, in the few seconds he could originally deal with the problem on The McLaughlin Group, he mentioned only Jewish names among the pro-war leaders. The New Republic editorial then continues with what it thinks is the clincher: referring to the much smeared Charles Lindbergh, who, in his famous Des Moines speech in August 1941, was "anti-Semitic" because he mentioned Jews as one of three groups that were agitating for the U.S. to enter World War II: the other two being the British and the Roosevelt Administration. In other words, Lindbergh was "anti-Semitic" because, in identifying the forces for war, he identified Jews as only one of several groups. In short, you can't win.

The culminating smears – so far – came in the next issue of the New Republic, in which Jacob Weisberg ties all the threads together, and adds a vile Freudo psycho-babble twist of his own. (Weisberg, "The Heresies of Pat Buchanan," New Republic, Oct. 22, pp. 22-27) After dragging in 1930s irrelevancies such as Lindbergh and Father Coughlin (the Catholic motif!), Weisberg discusses Buchanan's personal history, as gleaned from his autobiography, Right From the Beginning, and concludes that Buchanan is a brute and a proto-fascist because he liked to get into fistfights as a kid. (So much for a large chunk of the male population!) The clincher on Buchanan as brute and proto-Nazi comes with Buchanan's suggested slogan for his abortive Presidential campaign in 1988: "Let the bloodbath begin."

Let us contemplate smear-artist Weisberg for a moment. Is he really that much of a boob that he thought that Buchanan's phrase was serious? Does he really not realize that Pat was delivering a jocular and satiric thrust, aimed precisely at such serioso dunderheads as Weisberg? It is hard to know which is a sadder commentary on current American culture: whether Weisberg was cynically trying to use any smear tactic that came to hand; or whether he is really that much of a humorless left-Puritan blockhead.

Meanwhile, on the left (or should I say, the lefter), there is John B. Judis, the resident conservatologist for the Marxist weekly, In These Times, who has written a surprisingly favorable biography of Bill Buckley (or come to think of it, as we shall see, maybe not so surprising). Judis, too, admits that Buchanan is not personally anti-Semitic: "Indeed, from the few encounters I've had with Buchanan, he has always struck me as loyal, generous, personable without a trace of snobbery and willing to say what he believes – whatever the consequences." (John B. Judis, "Semitic Divisions Engulf Conservatives," In These Times, Oct. 3-9) Sounds admirable. But...then comes the knife-job, with vague references to the Old Right, and "Rothschild conspiracy" views with which Judis, in the venerable smear tradition, tars every isolationist of the 1930s. (Sorry, John, Buchanan was not even alive in those days, much less sentient.) To Judis, Buchanan's position "represents a kind of Freudian return of the repressed." (Again!) So now we have an unholy combo of Marx and Freud on the attack! In his peroration, Judis commits a real whopper, somehow linking Buchanan to the "pre-Civil War anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant Know-Nothings." Since Judis has some pretensions to scholarship, one might guess he would stop and think before linking up this ardent Catholic with historic anti-Catholicism; but, I suppose that time's a-fleetin', and one reaches for whatever smear brush may be around. (Parenthetically, while the Know-Nothings were indeed one of the most odious groups in American history, I would be very surprised to find any anti-Semitic expressions by them. As Protestant pietists, the Know-Nothings were fanatically anti-Catholic, believing that the Pope was the Antichrist and every Catholic his conscious, dedicated agent. The only "immigrants" they were concerned about, furthermore, were Catholic immigrants.)

Speaking of Bill Buckley, where does he stand on this? He is back at his old stand, a kindly but firm monarch doling out positive and negative brownie points, and trying to keep his conservative subjects from squabbling. Revealingly, Buckley is an old and close friend of Rosenthal while scarcely knowing Buchanan. Rosenthal he treats with affection, like a kid with a temper tantrum: always ready for "footloose emotional gyrations" with resulting explosions "that know no conventional limits." Buckley concludes: "I deem his attack on Pat Buchanan to be an example of Rosenthal gone ballistic." By focusing on Rosenthal's hopped-up personality, Buckley manages to avoid the main issues: the orchestrated and concerted attack upon Buchanan.

If Rosenthal is excessively emotional, Buchanan is not anti-Semitic, but of course – let's hear the chorus " I-N-S-E-N-S-I-T-V-E." (The Buckley article is entitled, "Insensitive Maybe; Genocidal, No," L.A. Times, Sept. 20) The stern admonition: "The Buchanans [Who are the other Buchanan's?] need to understand the nature of sensibilities in an age that coexisted with Auschwitz." And Mona Charen, in her second time at bat, and trying, perhaps guiltily, to call off the war she launched, still maintains that even if our current culture "slides into priggishness: on ethnic comments, our ethnically diverse society requires "a fastidious sensitivity." (Mona Charen, "Accusations," Washington Times, Sept. 27)

But not long ago, America's diverse society was glorious precisely because people were unafraid to be candid, to speak their mind, to engage in ethnic humor. Besides, what happened to Harry Truman's well-known dictum that he who can't stand the political heat should get out of the kitchen? A free and diverse society requires candor and vigorous debate, which is what we had in the United States until left-Puritanism did its work, and we are all required to be silent and mouth the Party Line. Interestingly enough, former National Review publisher and long-time Buckley colleague Bill Rusher has a different, and far healthier, view. Although Rusher, like Buckley, takes the ultra war-hawk position on Iraq, Rusher, in his column, gently reproves Buckley's comment on Buchanan and sensitivity, and reminds us that "American politics is a robust game, and it is fair to ask how long commentators on it must continue to tiptoe past the Israeli Embassy." (William Rusher, "and sensitivity," Washington Times, Sept. 27) How long, indeed?

In contrast to the standard bromides, what this country is suffering from is not "insensitivity" but hyper-sensitivity, what the shrinks in the Neanderthal days used to call "neurasthenia." It strikes me that the most effective cure for hyper-sensitivity, as for phobias in general, is the one proposed by the behavioral-shrinks: desensitization. Repeated exposure to the neurotic stimulus will gradually desensitize the patient so he no longer goes ballistic at the sight of a cat or...at reading articles by the likes of Pat Buchanan.

ANTI-SEMITISM DEFINED

Organized anti-anti-Semites will get away with their odious calumnies until they are finally forced to define their terms, to set up some rational criteria for this serious charge. It is high time that they be called on this loathsome tactic. So all right, just what is anti-Semitism: if we can get beyond vague and ephemeral "feelings?"

It seems to me that there are only two supportable and defensible definitions of anti-Semitism: one, focusing on the subjective mental state of the person, and the other "objectively," on the actions he undertakes or the policies he advocates.

For the first, the best definition of anti-Semitism is simple and conclusive: a person who hates all Jews. But here Buchanan is clearly vindicated by everyone who has ever met him, since all agree he is not "personally" anti-Semitic, has many Jewish friends, saved the job of Mona Charen, etc. Here I also want to embellish a point: All my life, I have heard anti-anti-Semites sneer at Gentiles who, defending themselves against the charge of anti-Semitism, protest that "some of my best friends are Jews." This phrase is always sneered at, as if easy ridicule is a refutation of the argument. But it seems to me that ridicule is habitually used here, precisely because the argument is conclusive. If some of Mr. X's best friends are indeed Jews, it is absurd and self-contradictory to claim that he is anti-Semitic. And that should be that.

But perhaps it might be contended that X is at heart, down deep, anti-Semitic, and that he duplicitously acquires Jewish friends to cover his tracks. And how, unless we are someone's close friend, or shrink, can we know what lies in a person's heart? Perhaps then the focus should be, not on the subject's state of heart or mind, but on a proposition that can be checked by observers who don't know the man personally. In that case, we should focus on the objective rather than the subjective, that is the person's actions or advocacies. Well, in that case, the only rational definition of an anti-Semite is one who advocates political, legal, economic, or social disabilities to be levied against Jews (or, of course, has participated in imposing them).

Let us then consider Pat Buchanan. Never – and the smear articles themselves are effective testimony to this fact – never has Pat Buchanan advocated any such policies, whether they be barring Jews from his country club or placing maximum quotas on Jews in various occupations (both of which have happened in the U.S. in our lifetime), let alone legal measures against Jews. So once again, it is absurd and a vicious calumny to call Pat anti-Semitic. If Pat passes any rational subjective or objective "litmus test" with flying colors, what else is there? It is high time and past time that the anti-anti-Semitic Smear Bund shut up about Buchanan and, while they're at it, reconsider their other vilifications as well.

But am I not redefining anti-Semitism out of existence? Certainly not. On the subjective definition, by the very nature of the situation, I don't know any such people, and I doubt whether the Smear Bund does either. On the objective definition, where outsiders can have greater knowledge, and setting aside clear-cut anti-Semites of the past, there are in modern America authentic anti-Semites: groups such as the Christian Identity movement, or the Aryan Resistance, or the author of the novel Turner's Diaries. But these are marginal groups, you say, of no account and not worth worrying about? Yes, fella, and that is precisely the point.





The Virginia Quarterly Review


The New Anti-Semitism
Jack R. Fischel


In the years preceding the establishment of Israel in 1948, Jews opposed to the creation of a Jewish state clashed with Zionists on how best to protect Jewish life in the wake of the Holocaust. Zionists contended that the Nazi extermination of the Jews conclusively proved the failure of assimilation in Europe, because anti-Semitism, in the words of Leon Pinsker, was a hereditary disease that could never be cured. Anti-Semitism, the argument went, would only disappear when Jews were secure in their own homeland. Contesting this conviction were not only assimilated Jews, frightened by the prospect of being accused of dual loyalty, but also those who identified with the universalism of the Left, whose ideological orientation viewed the nation-state as the source of a multitude of evils, and who regarded Zionism as yet another form of chauvinistic nationalism. They predicted that the creation of a Jewish state would lead to conflict with the more numerous Arab population, thus further exacerbating the already volatile situation that faced the Jewish settlements in Palestine. The Left, which included both Communists and Socialists (but not Labor Zionists), argued that the solution to centuries of anti-Semitism was not the creation of a future Israel, but for humankind to confront bigotry and eliminate the evils of prejudice, which included not only anti-Semitism in particular, but racism in general.

The divide between Zionists and “universalists” did not vanish with the formation of Israel. Subsequently, many on the left continued their opposition to Israel, calling instead for the creation of a democratic Palestinian state consisting of Arabs and Jews but shorn of its Jewish identity. At the same time, a coterie of hostile opponents, which included the Arab world, right-wing extremists, such as neo-Nazis, and Holocaust deniers, as well as traditional anti-Semites, rejected the very legitimacy of Israel and, as remains the case with Palestinian extremist groups, such as Hamas and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, called for the destruction of the Jewish state. As Alan Dershowitz points out in his The Case for Israel, ever since its founding, Israel has had to defend its legitimacy in ways not required by the immigrants who settled Australia, or those who came to the United States and displaced the native American population. Dershowitz labels this double standard anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Zionism.

What is new about the “new” anti-Semitism, according to a spate of recent books, including Dershowitz’s, is that the hatred of Jews has been cloaked behind a virulent anti-Zionism which holds the Jewish people everywhere responsible for the policies of the Israeli government in its conflict with the Palestinians. Phyllis Chesler, in her book The New Anti-Semitism, finds this especially prominent on the left, especially among her comrades in the feminist movement, where the new anti-Semitism masquerades as antiracism and anticolonialism. She concludes that inasmuch as anti-Jewish violence is justified by opposition to Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, it has become politically and psychologically acceptable to be anti-Semitic, despite increasing reports of the burning of synagogues and the vandalizing of cemeteries in Europe. Added to this situation is the silence of leftist intellectuals in response to suicide bombings in Israel, which reached endemic proportions during the past decade.

Yet in the years following World War II we could talk about the waning of anti-Semitism in the wake of our unfolding knowledge of the Nazi genocide against the Jews. Sympathy for Jews became widespread, as did support for Israel, which was viewed as a modern David fighting the millions of Arab Goliaths bent on its destruction. Empathy for Jews and support for Israel, however, slowly began to erode in the aftermath of the 1967 war, when the Jewish state defeated the combined attack of six Arab nations, conquered the West Bank and Gaza, and unified Jerusalem . Subsequently, however, when Israel commenced the building of settlements in the conquered territories, it was condemned not only by the Arab world, but also by segments of the Left, both in Europe and in the United States, as a colonial army, whose maltreatment of the Palestinians was viewed as no better than the Nazi brutalization of the Jews. This condemnation of Israel as a “settler” nation, not unlike the Afrikaners in apartheid-era South Africa, had little appeal among the mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic, but on the left and the radical right, the castigation of Israel was steady and unyielding and began to find fertile ground among cultural elites, among faculty and students on university campuses, and among a core of politicians, especially in Europe, whose sympathy for the cause of the Palestinians became ever more public. Increasingly, negative attitudes toward Israel and Jews in general found their way into public discourse. (The French ambassador to Great Britain, Daniel Bernard, for example, was reported to have referred to Israel as “this shitty little country” in a conversation with the wife of media baron Conrad Black.) It is in response to this assault that Dershowitz argues that criticism of Israel may at times be justified, but the absence of comparable denunciations of equal or greater violations by other countries creates the impression “currently prevalent on university campuses and in the press that Israel is among the worst human rights violators in the world. . . . It is not true, but if it is repeated enough, it takes on its own reality.” Thomas Friedman of the New York Times adds that “criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international censure—out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East—is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.”

In Europe during the past decade an unlikely alliance of leftists, vociferously opposed to the policies of Israel, and right-wing anti-Semites, committed to the destruction of Israel, 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 the forging of this unprecedented coalition of enemies 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. Ironically, as the French philosopher and political scientist Pierre-André Taguieff notes in Rising from the Muck, in the last three decades, Judeophobia based on racism and nationalism has given way to an anti-Semitism based on antiracism and antinationalism, wherein, among the Left, Israel has come to personify the preeminent apartheid state. How is it, however, that opposition to Israel’s existence has linked all Jews as targets of the enemies of the Zionist state? Taguieff explains that repulsive anti-Jewish traditions have merged with anti-Zionist rhetoric in the following 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.” This view that all Jews are in some fashion Zionists is not merely Taguieff’s hypothetical construct. He cites the words of Emile Algohri, the Jordanian minister of social affairs, who stated, “It is our firm belief that there is no difference at all between Jews and Zionists. All Jews are Zionists and all Zionists are Jews, and anyone who thinks otherwise is not thinking logically. We consider world Jewry our adversary and enemy, as we do imperialism and all the pro-Jewish powers.” By presenting “Zionism” as the incarnation of 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. The widespread dissemination of these anti-Zionist beliefs has resonated especially among many intellectuals in France and Germany, countries with large Muslim populations. The result, states Taguieff, has been an unconditional support for the Palestinians among many of the European cultural elite:

To denounce Israel and glorify the Palestinians in general has become the proper and most comfortable thing to do. This new political-intellectual conformism has been to establish itself through the routinization of what is conveniently known as “the struggle against racism.” . . . The so-called anti-racist organizations . . . have become, in many respects, temples of “political correctness” one of whose new faces—Islamic correctness is encouraged in Islamic studies that is almost openly apologetic about radical Islamism.”

In the aftermath of September 11, the spread of anti-Semitism reached threatening levels. Jewish spokesmen, such as Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), warned that Jews everywhere “currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s—if not a greater one.” The situation in Israel was no less critical as the insecurity of Israeli civilians intensified in the wake of suicide bombings that threatened the very fabric of the Jewish state. Subsequently, delegates from 55 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met in Berlin in April 2004 to express their determination to combat anti-Semitism, which had been widely reported in the form of large increases in violence against Jews in some European countries, many of these cases being attributed to the growing Arab population in their midst.

The violence is not limited, however, to physical attacks alone. The vehemence of the new anti-Semitism also manifests itself by an insidious effort to deny not only the legitimacy of Israel but Jewish history as well. This verbal assault rejects the Jewish claim to the territory of Israel as having no basis in history, tradition, or law, and demands that the Jewish state either abandon its legal and political status as a nation or cease to exist altogether, a position not relegated to the beliefs of Arabs alone, but also shared by many on both the left and the radical right. Indeed, Jewish identity itself is called into question, whereby the descent of contemporary Jews from the Hebrews of ancient Israel is denied.

The rise of the “new” anti-Semitism has again raised the question of whether the creation of Israel has made Jewish life in the diaspora any more secure than during the Nazi years, let alone in the Jewish state, where its citizens face an even greater threat in the form of suicide bombers. Are Jews any safer today because of Israel? For its enemies the answer is a resounding no; indeed, its presence given anti-Semites the pretext, as well as the opportunity, to again threaten the existence of world Jewry. For most Jews, however, the very existence of Israel guarantees that the conditions that led to the Holocaust will not be replicated. Israel has come to represent an “insurance policy” insofar as the Jewish state constitutes a safe haven should the ugly specter of genocide once again threaten the existence of the Jewish people.

In the wake of September 11, American Jews braced themselves for a resurgence of anti-Semitism. Unfounded rumors circulated that Israel’s Mossad was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center, warning Jews who worked in the building to stay at home on the day of the assaults. This canard was promoted by anti-Semites and continues to have wide currency on the Internet. More insidious, however, was the facile contention that al Qaeda’s attack on September 11 was driven by America’s support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, a policy which was unduly influenced by the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Even among those not necessarily antagonistic toward Israel, this uninformed understanding of the causes for the terrorist assault continues to resonate among segments of the population, despite evidence to the contrary (see Holy War, Inc., by Peter Bergen, Free Press, 2001). More surprising is that even those who should know better have accepted this false argument. Phyllis Chesler, for example, writes, in regard to September 11, “Osama Bin Laden . . . explained that the twin towers had fallen because of American support for Israel.” Peter Bergen argues that the assault on the Pentagon and the twin towers was bin Laden’s response to America’s support for the Saudi royal family and the Mubarak government in Egypt. It was only after the September 11 attacks that bin Laden added the cause of the Palestinians to his list of grievances against the United States.

The effort to associate the events of September 11 with Jewish influence on United States support for Israel caught the American Jewish community by surprise, inasmuch as only several years before, many Jews had celebrated the nomination of Joseph Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate to be selected by a major political party for vice president. A historic moment in American Jewish history, Jews hailed Lieberman’s appointment as conclusive evidence that anti-Semitism in the United States was no longer a serious problem, although they recognized its existence in many other parts of the world. After September 11 many Jews were relieved that Lieberman had not been elected, fearing that had he been in office at the time of the terrorist assault, political pundits would have linked the terrorist attack to Arab frustration over a Jew being selected for the vice presidency.

Although much of the renewed outbreak of hatred and suspicion toward Jews is unprecedented in its nature and composition, a great deal of the new anti-Semitism is also old. This is particularly true in regard to the application of conspiratorial design as a means of explaining American policy in the Middle East. Following America’s invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was accused of leading the country to war due to the influence of a cabal of neoconservatives who conspired to oust Saddam Hussein, not simply to advance democracy in the Middle East, but to primarily eliminate a major threat to Israel’s security. That many neoconservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Douglas Feith, were Jewish only added credence to the belief of political personalities such as Patrick Buchanan and Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia that Jewish influence was behind the decision to invade Iraq. Absent from this libel was the defensible argument that a by-product of overthrowing Saddam’s dictatorship was not only the opportunity to establish a democratic Iraq in the Middle East, but also the conviction that the “road map” to peace in the Middle East ran through Baghdad and required the removal of Saddam Hussein. Saddam was an obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, inasmuch as he not only rejected the very existence of Israel, but provided funds for the families of the suicide bombers who attacked Israeli civilians.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor of the neoconservative publication Commentary, finds the biased belief in undue Jewish influence on American foreign policy widely held among important segments of the media and in academia. In his book The Return of Anti-Semitism, Schoenfeld cites, for example, the comments of Fred M. Donner, a professor at the University of Chicago, who complained in a column in the Chicago Tribune that the “rosy scenario for the upcoming war against Iraq was a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the President’s team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith.” The trio also figure prominently in the thinking of noted political scientist Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard, who referred to them as “a loose collection of individuals who look on foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: is it good or bad for Israel?”

Jewish influence on Bush foreign policy can also be found in the columns of Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, who often refers to (Jewish) hawks such as Perle, Feith, and William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, “as the clique of neo-conservative intellectuals pushing for war.” Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer has written that “the ‘Get Iraq’ campaign . . . emerged first and particularly from pro-Israeli hard-liners in the Pentagon such as . . . Paul Wolfowitz and . . . Richard Perle.” Finally, there is the bile associated with the rhetoric of political personalities such as Patrick Buchanan, who accused Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and Elliott Abrams of wielding disproportionate power and of being, according to Buchanan, “fundamentally disloyal to the country.” According to Schoenfeld, the accusation that the real agenda of American Jews in the Bush administration is to serve the interests of Israel is vigorously promoted by the politically active Muslim population in the United States, which relentlessly circulates the notion of a Jewish cabal determined to push the United States in the same direction as Israel’s right-wing policy.

Schoenfeld’s tome also notes how the European press is selectively biased in its reporting on Israel. As the unpopularity of America’s war against Iraq fanned outrage against the Bush administration in much of Europe, it was also coupled with worldwide denunciation of the Sharon government’s policy of protecting its citizens from terrorist attacks by launching military strikes at perceived terrorist strongholds in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as targeting leaders of Hamas for assassination. Israeli incursions into Palestinian cities such as Jenin brought about public condemnation throughout much of Europe, as Israel was constantly compared to the Nazis and the Sharon government accused of genocide. The British press, in particular, showed its animus toward Israel in its reporting on Israel’s incursion into Jenin in the spring of 2002. Schoenfeld describes how the British press publicized Israel’s “slaughter” of the Palestinians in Jenin and cites the historian A. N. Wilson, who wrote in the London Evening Standard that “we are talking here of a massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide.” The Guardian compared the battle of Jenin to the attack on New York on September 11, and a reporter for the London Times wrote that “Rarely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.” Although the British press stated that thousands of Palestinians had been killed in Jenin, subsequent investigations revealed a total of 52 Palestinian deaths, most of whom were guerilla fighters, while the Israeli army lost 23 soldiers. Absent from this type of reporting were Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties, at great risk to its own men, by sending in reservists on foot as well as prohibiting the deployment of attack helicopters.

Schoenfeld also notes the prevalent role that Jews on the left have played in the dissemination of anti-Semitism. He finds that the “anti-Semitic Left in the United States is largely a Jewish contingent.” Jewish radicals, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, but also Jewish progressives, such as Rabbi Michael Lerner, Susannah Heschel, and Marc Ellis, are described as “preening left-wing Jews” who by their one-sided support of the Palestinians have tacitly promoted anti-Semitism in their criticism of Israeli social and political policy. Schoenfeld locates this Jewish self-hatred in “the murky waters of the psycho-social, as individual Jews try to deflect the poisonous arrows coming at their fellow Jews from larger hostile forces.” (This criticism was directed at Jewish intellectual Tony Judt following the publication of an article in the New York Review of Books, where he called for the end of Israel as the Jewish homeland and the creation of a democratic binational state of Jews and Palestinians.)

Whereas Schoenfeld and Chesler find much of the new anti-Semitism emanating primarily from the Left, Foxman views the peril equally from both the Left and the radical Right. All of the authors, however, agree that the menace of Islamic fundamentalism poses the greatest long-term danger to Jewish survival in general and to Israel in particular. The evidence of a “new” anti-Semitism in these books, however, is at times misleading. Anti-Semitism in its modern form is a case of old wine in new bottles. Although the political conditions which have led to a rebirth of anti-Semitism are different from the past, nevertheless, much of the negative rhetoric that is written and believed about Jews is familiar. In the Islamic countries, where historically Jews were considered as dhimmis or inferior to Muslims, there was never the intense hatred that existed in Christian Europe. Foxman’s description of the evolution of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world reveals that many of the contemporary stereotypes about Jews and Israel are imports from the West, ranging from the medieval canard of child ritual murder to, most significantly, the widely held acceptance of the fabrications in the forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

A staple belief of anti-Semites, the Protocols purports to reveal the existence of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. The Protocols first appeared in czarist Russia during the reign of Nicholas II to divert attention away from reform by blaming Jews for the revolutionary ferment that ultimately led to the collapse of the monarchy. The collection of essays that make up the Protocols were inspired by a novel written about Napoleon II in the mid-19th century but subsequently rewritten by a Russian monk, who claimed that the work was an eyewitness account of a meeting of Jewish elders plotting strategies that would lead to the Jewish conquest of Christian Europe. The Protocols later found its way to the United States, where Henry Ford published it in his Dearborn Independent. Hitler believed the Protocols explained the “Jewish-Bolshevik” revolution in Russia, and it became mandatory reading among Nazi officials in the Third Reich. Despite having been proved in a court of law to be a forgery, the Protocols continues to be distributed by anti-Semites, who continue to assert that Jews influence all aspects of American life. Our own native-born terrorists, such as Timothy McVeigh’s Aryan Nations and Matthew Hale’s World Church of the Creator, promote the belief that the power of the Jews emanates from their control of the entertainment industry, the news media, and the international banking system, a strategy that is discussed in the Protocols. Native-born American anti-Semites, in fact, refer to the United States government as ZOG, an acronym for Zionist Occupation Government.

The Protocols have also become ubiquitous throughout the Middle East as anti-Semitism has become a weapon among Arabs in their conflict with Israel. The work is used to encourage Palestinians and other Muslims to engage in murderous attacks against Israelis and Jews. Foxman notes that some suicide bombers have been found with copies of the Protocols and “were obviously convinced they were conducting a struggle against a Jewish-world-embracing conspiracy that poses a direct threat to the Muslim nations.” Recently, Egyptian television produced a “documentary” on the Protocols. The 41-part series, Horseman Without a Horse, fostered the theme that Jews were engaged in secret machinations to take over the world, or that Jews already control the world, a view that is increasingly believed in the Arab world. The program was shown across the Middle East during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The Muslim world is filled with divisions, but regardless of its rivalries (Osama bin Laden versus the House of Saud, for example), the hatred of Israel is the single issue on which the most determined Islamic fundamentalist and the most dedicated secularist can find common ground. This explains why governments in the Muslim world continue to use anti-Semitism as a convenient and useful tool to deflect attention from their populations’ profound poverty and economic problems. The Protocols, note Taguieff, Foxman, and Schoenfeld, is one of the many weapons in the Muslim arsenal of propaganda used against Israelis and Jews.

A staple of Nazi propaganda, the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been resurrected in Europe as well as in the Muslim world. As Taguieff notes, Jews in Europe are charged by their enemies with a will to dominate global economies (George Soros as an elder of Zion) or a plot to control the world. Thus the world of Nazi fantasy in regard to Jews is reborn more than fifty years after the death camps but, as Taguieff notes, with the difference that the “new anti-Semitism” now translates into “the Zionists are guilty, or Israel is guilty.” The result is a resurgence of worldwide anti-Semitism, bent on the elimination of the Jewish state and the perpetration of violence against world Jewry. A resultant casualty of the new anti-Semitism is that it has blurred the distinction between those with a legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and those who seek its destruction.

Because of modern communication systems such as the Internet, the Protocols is widely disseminated throughout the Muslim world and has reached audiences larger than at any time in its sordid history. Through the distribution of the Protocols, Muslim leaders encourage a delusional conspiratorial view of the world which fosters hatred of Jews and Israel. Accordingly, the new “Elders of Zion”—Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and Elliott Abrams—are identified as the actual formulators of Bush foreign policy, which serves not only Israel’s interests but also those of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. The renewed prominence of the Protocols exemplifies the increasing threat of the “new” anti-Semitism, which will remain a threat in the foreseeable future, regardless of the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.