Here’s Bernard-Henri Levy on the new Judeophobia:

Then, he holds court, telling us that the old anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitism that blamed the Jews for the killing of Jesus and vilified Jews as an inferior race, is largely dead. In its place, a new anti-Semitism has taken shape that is every bit as dangerous and disturbing. ‘If I had to describe this, I would describe it in three words,’ he says, pausing for effect. ‘Israel and anti-Zionism.’

This ‘anti-Zionism as a vehicle for anti-Semitism,’ Lévy says, appears in newspaper and magazine articles that attack Israel without providing the political and historical context found in stories about other countries. Another variant of this new anti-Semitism occurs when the Jews’ enemies resort to anti-Semitic canards in their vicious attacks on Israel. ‘A lot of things that you are no longer allowed to express, that you don’t dare to express, you can express through your hatred for Israel,’ he says. ‘For instance, you can no longer say Jews are thieves, but you can say Israel has robbed the earth of the Palestinians.’

Posted by melanie at May 2, 2006