Today’s anti-Semitism, writes Shmuel Trigano, even if it is not so different from the anti-Semitism of previous eras, finds its main expression in objection to the Jewish state’s existence. But while the Muslim variant is explicable in that it is rooted in religious rejection of Jewish sovereignty in the midst of the Middle East, the Western variety is harder to understand:
Western anti-Zionism . . . predicates itself on “compassion” and memory of the Holocaust. Not only does Western anti-Zionism accuse the Jews and the state of Israel of cynically exploiting the memory of the Holocaust; not only does it equate the Holocaust with the Palestinian “Nakba” (caused by the failed war of annihilation against the Jews in Israel) by establishing the Jews as modern-day Nazis, but the West has become a world where monuments and museums are erected to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, while the state of Israel is simultaneously outcast and stigmatized under the auspices of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and legal warfare. Memory of the Holocaust is permitted; the right to the Western Wall is not.
The French [statesman] General Charles de Gaulle expressed this view perfectly in his outrageous comments following the Six-Day War, when he asserted that Israel had crossed its moral and political boundaries. The existence of the Jewish state, according to de Gaulle, was a form of compensation for the Holocaust and reparation for Europe’s crime against the Jewish people. With that, the Jews—in his mind—do not have the right to [violate European-imposed] boundaries or deem themselves sovereign or independent, and if they dare think otherwise, they will lose the support of France, which will no longer come to help them if they are in danger of being destroyed. . . .
At the core of [this sort of anti-Semitism], which [is just the old anti-Semitism] cloaked in different attire, is the humiliated Jew, stripped of legitimacy, denied any justification for living according to the accepted norms of the times, [and] attacked in a tangible way.
Read more on Israel Hayom: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18181