From Anti-globalism to a New Anti-Semitism

The new anti-Semitism in Europe has finally found its new ideological ally: the anti-global Left.

The margins, and not only the margins, of the European Left are awash lately with radical anti-Israeli-ism. It is not bordering on anti-Semitism, it is real anti-Semitism.

Even the post-Zionism of the European Left has gone a stage further: it is already permissible to speak of a Euro-Arab world after the dismantling of the State of Israel, it is legitimate to predict the expected conciliation between the workers of Europe and the Moslem minorities who live among them immediately after the State of Israel stops existing as a separate Jewish entity, and concentrating the Jewish population of “Palestine” into the coastal strip between Hadera and Gedera can now be talked about.

The link between the movements against globalization and the movement against Israel is becoming tighter. It is not against Israel’s policies, but against Israel’s existence. This alliance was exposed at the UN conference in Durban in South Africa (last September). At this conference, hundreds of NGOs took part. Their resolutions, in practice, called for the destruction of the Jewish state for it being the only racist country in the world and the source of all of humanity’s troubles.

Although the NGOs of eastern Europe and the US left, the western European NGOs continue their campaign of delegitimizing Israel and are working to revoke the UN partition plan of November 29, 1947.

A member of the British Global Opposition Group: “For many people in our movement, the heart of the matter is that Israel has no right to exist.” His colleagues from France, Italy and Spain tell of a rejuvenated spirit among the activists ever since their attention was diverted from multi-national corporations to “Israel’s crimes:” emotions are re-igniting and members are again enthusiastic and enlisting into action. This time against Israel.

The deliberations they had after the terror attacks on the Twin Towers have passed and are gone. Bin Laden is dwarfed by Sharon. The Taliban is a peace-seeker compared to the IDF. The Internet sites of the movement regularly describe Israelis as “Zion-Nazis.” We are no longer simple Jewish fascists, but Jewish Nazis.

The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, which devoted an in-depth investigation to the anti-Semitism of the European Left, notes in wonder that “the main issue of the European movement against globalization today is a comparison between the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were annihilated, and the Palestinian uprising, which has so far cost the lives of about 1,3000 Palestinians.”

Only in Germany; the paper wrote, are “such comparisons not easily made.” Nor in the United States. The anti-Semitism of the European anti-global groups has caused a complete break between them and their counterparts in America, most of whom are of Jewish extraction. The American professional unions have also disavowed them.

It is possible to relate to this phenomenon with derision. When compared to millions of demonstrators in Khartoum and in Casablanca, what importance is there to 2,000 demonstrators in The Hague, 5,000 in Rome, 20,000 in Paris? However, the danger is more complex.

In a collection of articles “Five Moral Meditations,” the author and philosopher Umberto Eco raised an important argument about anti-Semitism (and intolerance in general). He said that the pseudo-scientific anti-Semitic ideology of the 20th century influenced so many Europeans because it fit in well with the latent hatred of Jews that was in their hearts since time immemorial. Primitive, emotional, rooted hatred, hundreds of years old. This anti-Semitism is uncontrollable, is motivated by dark passions and cannot be countered with rational arguments.

The anti-Israel propaganda of the European anti-globalization groups grows in the same soil. It has a familiar ring, and that is why it is dangerous.

This article ran in Yediot Ahronot on April 9th, 2002