The Old-New Anti-Semitism

Robert Solomon Wistrich

 (April 7, 1945 – May 19, 2015) 

The topography and lexicography of post-Holocaust anti-Semitism changed dramatically after 1945, yet the essential elements of ideological continuity have been remarkably tenacious. Today, the geographical center of gravity is neither Germany nor the European continent (despite the alarming revival of old prejudices) but the Arab-Muslim world and its diasporic offshoots. Anti-Jewish rhetoric in the new millennium tends to be Islamic, anti-globalist, and neo-Marxist far more than it is Christian, conservative, or neo-fascist. Whether the assault comes from the far Left or Right, from liberals or fundamentalists, its focus now is above all the collective Jew embodied in the State of Israel. Despite the incessant hair-splitting over the need to separate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, this has in recent decades become a distinction without a meaningful difference. Whatever theoretical contortions one may indulge in, the State of Israel is a Jewish state. Who ever wants to defame or destroy it, openly or through policies that entail nothing else but such destruction, is in effect practicing the Jew-hatred of yesteryear, whatever their self-proclaimed intentions. 

excerpt from 

The Old-New Anti-Semitism

by Robert S. Wistrich

in

Those Who Forget The Past

The Question of Anti-Semitism

Edited by Ron Rosenbaum

2004 Random House