[cross-posted to Daimnation!]
During the summer Olympics a few weeks ago, famed Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis was interviewed by an Israeli reporter. He denied having an anti-semitic in his body, and then spent the rest of the interview saying Jews were "at the root of evil," "hold world finance in their hands," "control most of the big symphonic orchestras in the world," that "there is a group of Jews who surround Bush and control the policy of the United States," and that the 9/11 attacks were almost certainly carried out by the Americans, probably with assistance from the Mossad. For good measure, he also denied there was any anti-semitism in Europe: "it really allows the Jews to do whatever they want. Not only psychologically, but also politically, it gives the Jews an excuse. The sense of victimhood. It gives them a license to hide the truth. There is no Jewish problem in Europe today. There is no anti-Semitism."
That Theodorakis - a cultural superstar in Greece - had no qualms about spouting this nonsense is disturbing enough. That the International Olympic Committee subsequently awarded Theodorakis the "Olympiart Prize" - as "a man who symbolises the spirit of the country of origin of the Olympic Games" - is downright terrifying.
59 years after Auschwitz, Jew-hatred is back: that's the thesis of Gabriel Schoenfeld's The Return of Anti-Semitism. Schoenfeld, a senior editor for Commentary magazine, argues that a rabid hatred of the Jews - stoked by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and alternatively tolerated and encouraged by the region's despotic governments - has engulfed the Middle East, that the phenomenon is growing rapidly in Europe, and that it's even showing up in North America at levels unimaginable just a few years ago. (He begins his book by noting the security barriers and alarms set up outside his workplace, the American Jewish Committee headquarters in New York. It sounds like a military base.)
It's almost impossible to look at modern antisemitism without dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and as Schoenfeld notes, today's Jew-haters have simply taken all the old antisemitic slanders, replaced the word "Jew" with "Zionist" or "neocon", and carried on as usual. That's why it's among the "anti-imperialist" left, instead of the extreme right, where antisemitism presently finds its most fertile ground. But where does legitimate criticism of Israel end, and blatant antisemitism begin? That's a difficult question, and Schoenfeld doesn't really give a satisfactory answer. (Here's my own test: if a "Zionism is Nazism" protestor is willing to condemn the region's Muslim theocracies as persistently and loudly as they condemn the Jewish state, we can probably take her at her word. I leave it to you to determine how often that happens.)
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Excellent job Damian and very disturbing that this bilious piffle comes not just from Islamic hate-beds, but from supposedly educated and "worldly" Europeans and even Americans, although it must be presented in a much more circumspect manner here.
2 - Andrew Ian Dodge
Hopefully this book will get a bit more attention than the EU report on anti-semiticism in Europe. That got mothballed by the EU and had to be leaked in order to get it out to the public. It seems the French weren't too keen on its findings.
3 - jadester
most of this is good but i'm not sure about:
"...or "neocon", and carried on as usual. That's why it's among the "anti-imperialist" left, instead of the extreme right, where antisemitism presently finds its most fertile ground."
here, you seem to be turning it into a right-versus-left (as in political sides natch) argument. But the fact is, like with racism, the spread is probably almost equally split between people on the right and people on the left.
However, as to the re-emergence of anti-semitism, that is all too real. I remember seeing some documentary here on UK tv a few years ago now, that showed anti-semitism is on the increase again, on a scary scale. Particularly scary (not to mention stupid) when you consider that WWII only ended just over 60 years ago...aha, maybe we're about due another full-on world war? it's been about twice as long as the gap between WWI and WWII =+/