By Britten Schear, JTNews Correspondent
Switching on government-run Egyptian television in November of 2002, one might have joined the millions of other viewers across the Middle East who were tuned in to the prime-time, 41-part series “Horseman without a Horse.”
Airing during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, “Horseman” was a docu-drama based on the anti-Semitic 19th-century czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a work that “reports” on the evil Jewish conspiracy to control and corrupt the world. The series was seen by an audience familiar with Protocols: the Islamic world is rife with publications of the book, where it has been translated into many languages, and is rarely treated as a work of fiction.
Gabriel Schoenfeld cites this incident in his new book The Return of Anti-Semitism (Encounter Books, 2004, $25.95) as one small example of the anti-Semitism pouring out of the Islamic world and spreading into Europe and America. But far from blaming only Muslims for this trend, Schoenfeld said he has come upon a disturbing reality: the new adherents and disseminators of anti-Semitism are the educated left-wing elite of the West.
Schoenfeld, a senior editor of Commentary magazine in New York, spoke on the topic of his book to a crowd of about 90 at Benaroya Hall in March. Invited by the Discovery Institute, a Washington State-based public policy center that promotes lectures, books, and articles on issues of government, free markets, and individual liberty, the soft-spoken Schoenfeld—who was repeatedly asked to step closer to the microphone—illustrated the unsettling pattern of anti-Semitism radiating from its epicenter in the Middle East, and specifically from the “center of the center” in Saudi Arabia and Iran.
France is now the prime example of how Islamic anti-Semitism has extended beyond traditionally Islamic countries, Schoenfeld said. With a Muslim population now estimated at 10 percent, French Jews are experiencing a persecution that is rekindling Holocaust terrors for the older generation.
“Every major city in Europe was nearly destroyed by bombing during World War II,” Schoenfeld explained, and yet, “more synagogues have been destroyed in France in the last five years than under the whole Nazi occupation.” Due to fears of violence against them, “French Jews are pulling their children out of the public school system.”
The U.S. is experiencing a large influx of Muslim immigrants, though not at a rate comparable to France. Just as there are Jewish day schools, there are also Muslim day schools, Schoenfeld noted, where textbooks filled with Jewish conspiracy theories are imported from Pakistan, the maps hanging on the walls do not show a country called Israel, and “no laws exist that prevent extreme Islamism from being taught in Muslim schools.”
So why hasn’t the West arrested this rising tide of anti-Semitism? Because, Schoenfeld argued, the West has become part of the problem.
“Europeans remember where a war against the Jews led Europe,” Schoenfeld explained, “and in the post-War era, Europe has been inoculated against genocidal anti-Semitism. But now the left-wing tradition of anti-Semitism is coming to the fore.”
One indication of this shift is a change in the language of anti-Semitism. “Anti-Semitic language is not as frank,” Schoenfeld stated, “as that has become disreputable. Now code words are used, such as ‘neoconservative,’ or ‘Zionist,’ in the place of traditionally anti-Jewish terms such as ‘kike.’”
Anti-Israel rallies are often held on campuses—including the University of Washington—where placards are seen condemning the “Zionist occupation,” which is a phrase that has been accepted as political disagreement with Israeli policy, but which actually is a short step away from the new brand of anti-Semitism. Schoenfeld noted a passage in his book an example of how quickly the term “Zionist” can be turned into an evil term:
“…in the Spring of 2002…the campus of San Francisco State was blanketed with slogans like ‘Zionism equals racism,’ and ‘Jews equals Nazis’….”
“The victims of the Holocaust,” Schoenfeld stated, “the Jews, have been transformed into the Nazis.”
Again, hiding behind the cover of disagreement with Israeli policy, some American professors have begun Israel divestment campaigns to get academic institutions to sever ties with companies that do business with Israel, in order to protest “human rights abuses.” Schoenfeld noted that no such petition is in circulation protesting the human rights abuses in China, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or any other country.
While it is fitting for members of a democracy to criticize the policies of Israel, or any other country, Schoenfeld argued, “The Jewish State alone, out of all the countries in the world, is singled out as the worst human rights violator. In my mind, this is unadorned bigotry.”
Speaking privately after the lecture, Schoenfeld stated that he felt the rise of anti-Semitism among militant Islamists has a connection with the rise of the left-wing type of anti-Semitism.
“There is a coalition between the anti-American left and radical Islam,” Schoenfeld stated, indicating that because both are anti-American, they share a common cause; this, however, is a link he does not explore fully in his book, nor did he expand upon it in his lecture.
Another topic that is briefly touched upon in the book, and which Schoenfeld mentioned during his lecture is the painful issue of Jewish anti-Semitism. “There is this idea among Jews that if you do not identify yourself as a Jew, you will not be targeted for persecution,” Schoenfeld noted. The result, he said, is that many Jews turn from their roots and joining the chorus of anti-Semitism in Europe and America. Schoenfeld feels that this topic deserves further exploration.
Schoenfeld closed his talk by describing the dangers borne from anti-Semitism’s resurgence: benign forms of anti-Semitism have become normalized, with writings such as Protocols filtering into mainstream media and the casual use of “Zionist” as an insult, and the most fervently anti-Semitic countries around the world are also among the ones most determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear capabilities.