Joel Mowbray reports: The new anti-Semitism
Joel Mowbray (jdmowbra@erols.com) has forwarded his third and final dispatch from the Herzliya Conference. It's on the new anti-Semitism, and it focuses on a speech given by Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations:
While most of the sessions at the Herzliya Conference, Israel’s premier security conference, dealt with Iran, Hezbollah, and Islamic terrorism more broadly, one of the most talked-about speeches was on the threats posed by increasing global anti-Semitism.Thanks to Joel for his three excellent dispatches from the Herzliya Conference. Joel's two earlier dipatches are "Dead man speaking" and "The case for Romney."To American ears, “increasing global anti-Semitism” sounds odd. While not non-existent in the United States, it is certainly not common in everyday life for most Americans. Jews occupy top positions across American society, from Hollywood to Madison Avenue to elected office—and it’s no big deal.
Yet there is little doubt that anti-Semitism is on the rise.
Unlike the bulk of 20th century anti-Semitism, today's version is found primarily on the political left—which explains why Europe is far worse than the U.S. Most anti-Semitism, though, is directed not at “Jews,” but rather at Israel. Not that all criticism of the Jewish state is inherently anti-Semitic, of course. The speaker, Malcolm Hoenlein, made that point explicitly: “It’s clear you can criticize Israel without being an anti-Semite, otherwise, I guess, 90% of Israelis would be anti-Semites.”
But as Hoenlein explained, criticism of Israel at least verges on anti-Semitism when the Jewish state is held to a standard that applies to no other nation.
Demonization of Israel and its supporters has taken many forms, but it is particularly prevalent in academe. According to Hoenlein, “The intellectual elites have been bitten with this cancer in Great Britain and elsewhere.” In Britain, there was a move to forbid universities from hosting professors from just one country: Israel. No effort was made to block professors from any nation with far worse human rights records.
Political movements to demonize Israel are abundant, yet much of the case is made using half-truths or outright lies. Witness the move to brand Israel the new South Africa. Conveniently overlooked by those activists is that Israel doesn’t indoctrinate its children to hate Palestinians or believe that killing them will result in a trip to paradise. Also ignored is that Israel’s Arab citizens--supposed victims of “apartheid”—overwhelmingly prefer to stay Israeli citizens, even when a new Palestinian state is created.
Efforts to turn Israel into the new South Africa ironically got kickstarted at the UN Conference on racism—held days before 9/11—in Durban, South Africa. Though the conference ostensibly was to focus on racism in all its forms, the primary purpose of the event ended up being castigation of the Jewish state. Save for a few exceptions, in fact, anti-Semitism wasn’t even mentioned.
To get a feel for the environment surrounding Durban, consider what happened just outside the event. According to conference attendee Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, 17,000 Muslims were brought in from Cape Town to stage a massive demonstration. Among other items distributed there were pamphlets proclaiming, “Hitler was right.”
Durban participants obviously had little control over the actions of outsiders, but they obviously were handed an opportunity to react with disgust. They didn’t. According to Rabbi Cooper, in fact, not one word of condemnation of the protesters was uttered by any of the non-Jewish attendees at the conference.
Thankfully such overt anti-Semitism is incredibly rare in the United States. But Hoenlein discussed victims of less obvious bigotry. Former AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman are set to stand trial for doing what lobbyists inside the beltway do everyday: Trading in gossip that often contains classified information.
Rosen and Weissman would certainly seem to be victims of a double-standard: no one else outside of government has ever been prosecuted under the same provision since the enactment of the Espionage Act in 1917.
Can it be proven that the prosecution of the former AIPAC officials is driven by anti-Semitism? Of course not. But it needs to at least be discussed as a possibility.
Kudos to Hoenlein for being one of the few willing to do so.
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