Resurgent Antisemitism , livre ebook

RESURGENT ANTISEMITISM
STUDIES IN ANTISEMITISM
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor
RESURGENT ANTISEMITISM
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
EDITED BY
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Resurgent antisemitism : global perspectives / edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld.
pages cm. - (Studies in antisemitism)
The scholarly papers collected in this book originated in the inaugural conference of Indiana University s newly established Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism held in Bloomington in April 2011 -
Introduction.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00878-7 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00890-9 (eb)
1. Antisemitism-History-21st century-Congresses. I. Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (Alvin Hirsch), 1938- editor of compilation. II. Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (Alvin Hirsch), 1938- End of the Holocaust and the Beginnings of a New Antisemitism.
DS145.R47 2013
305.892 4-dc23
2012050898
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
This book is dedicated to Louis and Sybil Mervis and to the memory of Sara I. and Albert G. Reuben with immense gratitude
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction \ Alvin H. Rosenfeld

1. Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and the Rhetorical Manipulation of Reality \ Bernard Harrison
2. Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism as a Moral Question \ Elhanan Yakira
3. Manifestations of Antisemitism in British Intellectual and Cultural Life \ Paul Bogdanor
4. Between Old and New Antisemitism: The Image of Jews in Present-day Spain \ Alejandro Baer
5. Antisemitism Redux: On Literary and Theoretical Perversions \ Bruno Chaouat
6. Anti-Zionism and the Resurgence of Antisemitism in Norway \ Eirik Eiglad
7. Antisemitism Redivivus: The Rising Ghosts of a Calamitous Inheritance in Hungary and Romania \ Szilvia Peremiczky
8. Comparative and Competitive Victimization in the Post-Communist Sphere \ Z vi Gitelman
9. The Catholic Church, Radio Maryja, and the Question of Antisemitism in Poland \ Anna Sommer Schneider

10. Antisemitism among Young European Muslims \ G unther Jikeli
11. The Banalization of Hate: Antisemitism in Contemporary Turkey \ Rifat N. Bali
12. Antisemitism s Permutations in the Islamic Republic of Iran \ Jamsheed K. Choksy
13. The Israeli Scene: Political Criticism and the Politics of Anti-Zionism \ Ilan Avisar
14. The Roots of Antisemitism in the Middle East: New Debates \ Matthias K ntzel
15. Anti-Zionist Connections: Communism, Radical Islam, and the Left \ Robert S. Wistrich
16. Present-day Antisemitism and the Centrality of the Jewish Alibi \ Emanuele Ottolenghi
17. Holocaust Denial and the Image of the Jew, or: They Boycott Auschwitz as an Israeli Product \ Dina Porat
18. Identity Politics, the Pursuit of Social Justice, and the Rise of Campus Antisemitism: A Case Study \ Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
19. The End of the Holocaust and the Beginnings of a New Antisemitism \ Alvin H. Rosenfeld
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
In an exceptional display of collegiality, all of the authors who contributed to this book did so in a friendly and timely manner. I thank them, therefore, not only for their important critical insights into the challenging subject matter before us but for their cooperation with an editor who insisted on their producing scholarly work of the highest caliber and on meeting strict publication deadlines.
My editorial assistants, Defne Jones and M. Alison Hunt, proved to be invaluable in more ways than one in helping to prepare the manuscript for publication. I thank them for being such congenial and efficient co-workers.
The scholarly papers collected in this book originated in the inaugural conference of Indiana University s newly established Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. This conference, which was held in Bloomington in April 2011, brought together some thirty-five scholars from a dozen different countries. Special thanks go to Sarah Wasserman, Melissa Deckard, and Janice Hurtuk for their steadfast assistance in helping to organize the conference.
I am also deeply grateful to various benefactors whose generosity, in addition to being of direct practical help, is the best vote of confidence in our work that I could possibly hope for. I am especially grateful to Jay and Marsha Glazer, who endowed the Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, which was a major source of financial support for the conference, as well as to Alice and Theodore Cohn, Michael and Sue-ann Finkelstein, Michael Leffell, and Jacob and Dafna Levanon.
Major gifts from Louis and Sybil Mervis and from Lawrence M. Reuben, in memory of his parents, Sara I. and Albert G. Reuben, not only enabled us to convene the April 2011 conference but have made possible the publication of this book. My deepest thanks go to these devoted and magnanimous friends.
A number of my colleagues in the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University chaired conference sessions and in other respects as well have shown interest in the work of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. I thank them all and, in particular, wish to express appreciation to Jeffrey Veidlinger, the Director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program, for his support.
Few undertakings are more dispiriting for scholars than the study of antisemitism. For lightening the hearts and strengthening the resolve of conference participants, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the special contribution of Marija Krupoves-Berg, whose gift of Yiddish songs helped us through some difficult, but meaningful, days.
Finally, I am most grateful to President Michael McRobbie, former provost Karen Hanson, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Larry Singell for their support of the work of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Indiana University is one of only two institutes of higher learning in the United States that houses a research institute of this kind. It is both a privilege and a pleasure to work at a university whose administrative leadership is as understanding, cooperative, and supportive of such new initiatives as these distinguished colleagues are.
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
RESURGENT ANTISEMITISM
Introduction
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Nazism was defeated in Europe almost seventy years ago. Antisemitism was not. Resurgent over the past decade, it is once again a disturbing presence on the European continent, in many Arab and Muslim countries, and elsewhere. According to the Year in Review 2008/09 report of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, the year 2009 began with a wave of antisemitic manifestations [that] swept the world, with close to one thousand attacks reported in January alone. Such incidents have become virulent over the past decade. Denis MacShane, a British Labour Party MP and author of Globalizing Hatred: The New Antisemitism (2008), notes that hatred of Jews has reached new heights in Europe and many points south and east of the old continent. He continues: Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions. 1
In response to this upsurge in violence, Prime Minister Tony Blair commissioned MacShane and others to investigate new outbreaks of antisemitism in the United Kingdom. Their report, issued in 2006, is sobering. In a parallel move, the U.S. Congress passed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, which requires the Department of State to document acts of antisemitism globally. The annual reports issued by the State Department to date confirm the rise of antisemitic hostility throughout much of the world. Similar reports issued by monitoring agencies in Europe confirm these same troublesome findings.
To cite MacShane again: The antisemitism of old has morphed into something new. . . . Neo-antisemitism is a twenty-first century global ideology, with its own thinkers, organizers, spokespersons, state sponsors and millions of adherents. 2 He concludes, We are at the beginning of a long intellectual and ideological struggle. It is not [only] about Jews or Israel. It is about everything democrats have long fought for: the truth without fear, no matter one s religion or political beliefs. The new antisemitism threatens all of humanity. 3
A phenomenon of this scope and consequence demands scrutiny at the highest scholarly levels. This book undertakes to provide such scrutiny by presenting fresh research on contemporary antisemitism by many of the world s leading scholars of the subject. The nineteen authors whose work is represented in these pages come from a dozen different countries and demonstrate how anti-Jewish hostility is now resurgent on a global scale. Focusing especially on the social, in