# Posted 1:05 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE MYTH OF THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM: You figure The Nation had to give it a try. To admit that there has been a resurgence of anti-Semitism is to discount much of the fierce criticism of Israel that has recently emerged, especially in Europe. It even suggests that there may be a darker side to the anti-Americanism that has been on display over the past eighteen months. And yet, Brian Klug tells us up front that

There is certainly reason to be concerned about a climate of hostility to Jews, including vicious physical attacks. On one Saturday this past November, for example, two synagogues in Istanbul were truck-bombed during Sabbath services, while an Orthodox Jewish school in a Paris suburb was largely destroyed by arson. Some researchers report a 60 percent worldwide increase in the number of assaults on Jews (or persons perceived to be Jewish) in 2002, compared with the previous year. At the same time, something is rotten in the state of public discourse. Anti-Jewish slogans and graphics have appeared on marches opposing the invasion of Iraq. Jewish conspiracy theories have been revived, such as the widely circulated "urban legend" that Jews were warned in advance to stay away from the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. And recently, certain public figures on both the right and the left have made negative generalizations about Jews and "Jewish influence."

No question, Klug gets points for honesty. And he also deserves credit for providing historical background to the current debate that is quite interesting regardless of whose side one is on. Klug also poses the interesting question of what is new about the new anti-Semitisim. And it is here where our opinions depart.

According to Klug, those who believe that there is such a thing as the new anti-Semitism tend to define it as hypocritical and anti-Semitically motivated attacks on Israel that hide behind the facade of "legitimate criticism". However, I believe that there are two other phenomena that play a critical role in defining the new anti-Semitism. Klug touches on both of them, but either overlooks or explicitly discounts them.

The first issue is the social acceptability of anti-Semitism. While few individuals will go on the record with statements about "the Jews", it has become almost fashionable in certain European circles to think of the Jews as a crude people and to resent the political correctness that prevents one from saying so in public. In a sense, this phenomenon is not new because sophisticated condescension toward upstart Jews was the status quo for much of modern European history.

But we wanted to believe that this sort of parlor anti-Semitism was dead. Moreover, its death was the ultimate guarantor that Europe could never return to the overt anti-Semitism of old. It is also hard to avoid the conclusion that sophisticated anti-Semites do not care much about the violent attacks on Jewish individuals and institutions perpetrated by lower-class European Muslims. After all, they had it coming.

Which brings us to the second point that Klug misunderstands. A second critical aspect of the new anti-Semitism is the way in which the wrongdoings of the Israeli government have become an accepted justification for the assault on European Jewry. While Klug denounces such violence as "repugnant", he nonethless writes that

Israel does not regard itself as a state that just happens to be Jewish (like the medieval kingdom of the Khazars). It sees itself as (in Prime Minister Sharon's phrase) "the Jewish collective," the sovereign state of the Jewish people as a whole. In his speech at the Herzliya Conference in December, Sharon called the state "a national and spiritual center for all Jews of the world," and added, "Aliyah [Jewish immigration] is the central goal of the State of Israel." To what extent this view is reciprocated by Jews worldwide is hard to say. Many feel no particular connection to the state or strongly oppose its actions. On the other hand, in spring 2002, at the height of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, Jews gathered in large numbers in numerous cities to demonstrate their solidarity, as Jews, with Israel. Many Jewish community leaders, religious and secular, publicly reinforce this identification with the state. All of which is liable to give the unreflective onlooker the impression that Jews are, as it were, lumping themselves together; that Israel is indeed "the Jewish collective."

Unreflective? Unreflective? How about hateful? How about anti-Semitic? Imagine if Russians were being beaten up on the streets of Paris, Marseilles and Lyon because of French sympathy for the Chechens. Would anyone describe the assailants in such attacks as simply "unreflective"? Of course not. In doing so, Klug unintentionally validates that new anti-Semitism which supposedly doesn't exist. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion