The Jewish co-chair of the Oxford University Labor Club has resigned over that organization’s increasing anti-Semitism. Responding, Simon Schama reflects on the resurfacing of the European left’s historical hatred of Jews and, in time, the Jewish state:

In the 19th century, . . . the left made its contribution to [modern anti-Semitism]. Demonstrating that you do not have to be Gentile to be an anti-Semite, Karl Marx characterized Judaism as nothing more than the cult of Mammon, and declared that the world needed emancipating from the Jews. Others on the left—the social philosophers Bruno Bauer, Charles Fourier, and Pierre Proudhon and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin—echoed the message: bloodsucking, whether the physical or the economic kind, was what Jews did. . . .

The Communist Moses Hess, who had been Marx’s editor and friend, became persuaded, all too presciently, that the socialist revolution would do nothing to normalize Jewish existence, not least because so many socialists declared that emancipating the Jews had been a terrible mistake. Hess concluded that only self-determination could protect the Jews from the phobias of right and left alike. He became the first socialist Zionist. . . .

[Now, with] the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of Marxist socialism around the world, militant energies have needed somewhere to go. The battle against inequalities under liberal capitalism has mobilized some of that passion, but postcolonial guilt has fired up the war against its prize whipping boy, Zionism, like no other cause. Every such crusade needs a villain along with its banners—and I wonder who that could possibly be?

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.