The new anti-Semitic fashion
By Amnon Rubinstein
The map of the new anti-Semitism does not follow the contours of Jewish collective memory. Instead, its lines overlap with those of dispersed Arab and Muslim communities. For instance, a small Jewish community dwells in Sweden, and in 2000 the country's prime minister initiated an international task force for Holocaust studies; the country has not until recently suffered any bouts of anti-Semitism. Now Swedish newspapers report on repeated attacks leveled by Arab and Muslim groups. The Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter reported on October 20 that there have been 131 attacks on Jews in the country during the past year. The newspaper also disclosed that Arab and Muslim pupils oppose Holocaust studies on the grounds that they are "Zionist propaganda."
In contrast, Slovakia and Romania, two countries not exactly known historically for philo-Semitism, have witnessed virtually no attacks on Jews during the past two years. This can be attributed to the small size of the countries' Muslim populations.
There is something ominous about this trend: members of a religion that is a spiritual cousin to Judaism are spearheading a hate campaign against Jews; and no Arab or Muslim leader is standing up to oppose this trend. As Le Monde pointed out (October 19), the real problem with the anti-Semitic declarations made by Malaysia's then-prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, is that they were acceptable throughout the Islamic world.
Put together, do these facts stem from issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and not anti-Semitism? Leftist Jewish intellectuals recently published a book about "Anti-Semitism: The Insufferable Coercion," which argues not all opposition to Israel is anti-Semitism.
True, it is possible, and sometimes obligatory, to criticize Israeli policy, just as France and the U.S. were attacked for their policies in Algeria and Vietnam. The problem is that criticism of the State of Israel ought not to include attacks against the ethnic community that is close to it. Were all Russians everywhere subjected to attacks on account of the destruction of Grozny? Were all Frenchmen responsible for the war in Algeria?
An example of such collective accusation is provided by the admired Portuguese writer, Jose Saramago, a Nobel Laureate, whose incendiary comments about Jews are cited in a volume written by Phyllis Chesler, "The New Anti-Semitism." Saramago refers to Jews who are "spiritually blinded by the vision of Greater Israel," who have a "monstrous confidence that they are the chosen people, and that their psychopathological, racist acts are justified," and who are "convinced that the suffering of others, particularly the Palestinians, is inferior, compared to the Holocaust."
Hatred of Israel and the Jewish people blinds people who are in every other way models of humanitarian tolerance. Italy's former ambassador to the United Nations, and current ambassador to the U.S., Sergio Vento, accused Israel of allowing its soldiers to go to Ramallah in October 2000 so that they would be murdered in a cold-blooded act that would repair Israel's image, after the killing of the Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura.
Criticism of Israel is increasingly compulsive. There is considerable similarity between blood libels and a story published on Nov. 8, 2001, in Le Nouvelle Observateur, according to which Israel Defense Forces soldiers raped Arab women at roadblocks so that they would be murdered by their own families in honor killings.
This story was retracted after a month, but its original publication reflects a willingness to believe that Israelis are capable of any abomination. The hysterical obsession with Israel's "crimes" (both with and without the quotation marks) is such that it loses all sense of proportion, as though the Geneva Convention hasn't been violated wholesale by many other states. The claim is that more should be expected from Israel - that is a true claim. But Israelis also expect that the anti-Semitic fashion will be contested by the strong opposition of democratic states.
