The Jerusalem Post reports that Professor Robert Wistrich, author of the classic book about antisemitism The Longest Hatred, has said that England is exhibiting classic ‘obsessive’ antisemitism of a kind that was once confined to mainland Europe:

Robert Wistrich, who heads the Hebrew University's Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, pointed to recent characterizations of Jews as the cabal behind the Iraq war and anti-Israel rhetoric leading to activities such as boycotts. Historically, Wistrich explained at a lecture Wednesday night, British Jew-hatred has been less ideological, less violent and less successful in influencing government policies than in places such as Germany, Russia and Poland...He attributed England’s less ‘compulsive’ anti-Semitism in part to British ‘self-confidence’ as a prosperous empire with no need to feel threatened by a small minority, which started to change in the 20th century as the empire began to fall apart...

Another speaker at this meeting, Brenda Katten, chairman of the Israel, Britain and the Commonwealth Association, put her finger on another particularly troubling aspect of this phenomenon:

She said that members of the Jewish community, who face regular antisemitism, were beginning to blame themselves.

As with all previous such outbreaks of this longest hatred, there are now some Jews – mainly those prominent in intellectual circles and other areas of public life, and mainly those with only a tangential connection to the Jewish community – who are turning on their own people by regurgitating the tropes of anti-Jewish scapegoating, which masquerade under the apparently respectable soubriquet of anti-Zionism and which are being deployed by their enemies. Although historically a commonplace, this development is nevertheless currently a source of the most intense division, concern and grief within the Jewish community. A new book edited by Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor, entitled The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders brings it out into the open. You can read about this book, with many references to much other related material, here.

Posted by melanie at March 9, 2006