The Old-New Antisemitism

Excerpts from Anti-Semitism: return of a perennial horror - After several decades in remission, this intractable hatred is again on the rise globally, by Walter Reich:

...anti-Semites now speak in the language of anti-Zionism. They focus obsessively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ignoring all other countries and zones of war. They pay no attention, and don't care about, suffering and human rights violations anywhere else - in, for example, Chechnya, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Darfur....But every incident at a checkpoint or in a clash in the West Bank or Gaza, real or fabricated, is highlighted, and Israel is condemned. Those anti-Semites who use the language of anti-Zionism always deny that they're anti-Semites. They're anti-Zionists. And anti-Zionism makes them good, they insist, not bad.

Certainly, one can be an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite. In fact, there are many who oppose Israeli policies - and are against the idea of the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland, or the very existence of Israel - for reasons that have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. But there are few, if any, anti-Semites who aren't also anti-Zionists. For them, anti-Zionism is primarily a way to express anti-Semitism without being labeled an anti-Semite. It's a cover.