Denis MacShane, a member of the British Parliament and currently serving as a member of the Council of Europe, has an op-ed in today's Washington Post. He describes the findings of a committee he chaired investigating anti-Semitism in Britain, Europe and the world. The results are not encouraging.
Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens — there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant — that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.
More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt.
MacShane says that the problem is becoming very severe in Europe, especially in those places where anti-Semitism has a long history of being official government policy. But it is getting much worse than that even in the Middle East – that isn't exactly a shocker, of course.
Europe is reawakening its old demons, but today there is a difference. The old anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have morphed into something more dangerous. Anti-Semitism today is officially sanctioned state ideology and is being turned into a mobilizing and organizing force to recruit thousands in a new crusade — the word is chosen deliberately — to eradicate Jewishness from the region whence it came and to weaken and undermine all the humanist values of rule of law, tolerance and respect for core rights such as free expression that Jews have fought for over time.
The president of Iran is the most odious example of this new state-sanctioned anti-Semitism. But from the Egyptian Writers Union to the notorious anti-Jewish articles in the charters of Hamas and Hezbollah, hatred of Jews is an integral element of a new ideology rising to prominence in many regions of the world.
The one problem with MacShane's take on all this, as I see it, is his attempt to finesse the distinction between Israel and Jews in general. Yes, there is a real difference, of course, but the fact is that there really isn't a lot of nuance in the current anti-Semitism. The terms are interchangeable for far too many people – especially in the West where people should know better. MacShane may be correct in pointing out the distinction, but in practical terms there is no real difference. At the close of his piece he actually does get it right, incidentally:
We are at the beginning of a long intellectual and ideological struggle. It is not about Jews or Israel. It is about everything democrats have long fought for: the truth without fear, no matter one's religion or political beliefs. The new anti-Semitism threatens all of humanity. The Jew-haters must not pass.
MacShane is at least trying to address this. But in many ways and in many (too many) places the old mindsets that led to pogroms and official persecution are making a comeback. That is a a very ugly old monster.
I just saw a report that said history classes in English schools are skipping the story of the Holocaust, because it’s offensive to Muslim students for whom it is a matter of faith that the Holocaust never happened.
No surprise there, unfortunately.