Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of the new book “The Return of Anti-Semitism” (Encounter Press), said Tuesday that he “hesitates to brand” as anti-Semitism all news media criticism of Israel’s killing this week of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas.
But the “general pattern of hostility to Israel” in many news media outlets “has elements of anti-Semitism in it,” said Schoenfeld, who is senior editor of Commentary magazine.
Schoenfeld also said to an audience of about 40 at the Helfaer Jewish Community Services Building that the “risk of terrorist violence” to the Jews of the United States “is increasing.”
As evidence, he said that documents and computer hard-drives discovered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan contained names and addresses of U.S. Jewish organizations; and that “Iran had its diplomats taking photos of Jewish buildings here and in Britain.” So “Jews are in their sights,” he said.
In response to a question from the audience about what American Jews can do to counteract the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe, Schoenfeld said American Jewish organizations have to “focus on the right battles.”
He criticized the recent focus on the film “The Passion of the Christ” by such organizations as the Anti-Defamation League, saying it has not been Christians who have been attacking Jews. Focusing on this film displays “a lack of perception where the danger is coming from,” he said.
In his talk at a lunch event sponsored by the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations and the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Schoenfeld summarized the findings of his book.
He said he was first inspired to investigate the issue when he saw more stringent security measures in and around the American Jewish Committee building in New York City, where the Commentary offices are located.
“That provoked a series of questions,” he said. “What is the nature of the threat?” and “Was there a real threat or a groundless fear?”
He concluded that there is “a lethal threat to Jews around the world” such as there hasn’t been since the 1930s.
The main source of that has been the Muslim world, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia; but it also stems to some degree from the growth of Muslim immigrant populations in Europe and the United States, many of whom “bring ideas and hatreds from their former countries and replicate them.”
In addition, as “right wing anti-Semitism” — from such people as neo-Nazis and racists — has gone into “eclipse” in Europe and the United States, a tradition of “left wing anti-Semitism” tracing back to Enlightenment figures like Voltaire and Karl Marx has been revived.
Today, “socialists, environmentalists and anti-globalists” rather than neo-Nazi skinheads are holding demonstrations “denouncing Israel with anti-Semitic symbols,” Schoenfeld said. “The ‘progressive’ movements have become the agents of the reactionary aspects of Europe’s [anti-Semitic] past.”
And compounding this problem is a tendency of some observers to deny that manifestations of anti-Semitism are really anti-Semitism. Schoenfeld not only cited reported news events about this, but also said he had encountered an example during his research.
A faculty advisor of a college student newspaper at Rutgers University had denied that an obviously anti-Semitic article calling on Jews to die was anything but “blowing off steam,” he said.
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