Omer Bartov in the LA Times (invasive registration required) with another take on the new antisemitism. "Memories are Short, Hatred is Forever"
Europe's anti-Semitism did not vanish. It was banished to the fringes of society; it was buried in the recesses of people's consciousness; it was transformed into philo-Semitism and fads for things Jewish; it seeped back in as self-righteous indignation against Israel; and it was exported into the Muslim world. Now that it is back, we can see where it was hiding all these years.
The new anti-Semitism employs images strikingly similar to Hitler's. It condemns the Jews as controlling the world's only superpower and seeking to take over the rest of the world, as promoting a destructive policy of globalization, as supporting the allegedly criminal and illegitimate Nazi-like state of Israel. It is obsessed with fantasies of secret cabals, visions of bloody upheaval and apocalyptic devastation. Like its Nazi predecessor, it promises to do to the Jews what they are supposedly doing to the world. It is inherently, then, genocidal.
I'm torn between feeling that this message can't be emphasized enough and a growing suspicion that we've reached the stage of piling on. It's getting hard to find anything new to say about the "new" antisemitism, and at some point, people are just going to start thinking, "oh, that again" and turning off. Yes, I know some people are probably there already. On the other hand . . .
Bartov also has a few words to say about a certain "nauseating film." But enough of that.
