Anti Zionism = Anti Semitism

Anti-Zionism has become the most dangerous and effective form of anti- Semitism in our time, through its systematic de-legitimization, defamation, and demonetization of Israel. Although not a priory anti-Semitic, the calls to dismantle the Jewish state, whether they come from Muslims, the Left, or the radical Right, increasingly rely on an anti-Semitic stereotypization of classic themes, such as the manipulative "Jewish lobby," the Jewish/Zionist "world conspiracy," and Jewish/Israeli "warmongers."

One major driving force of this anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism is the transformation of the Palestinian cause into a "holy war"; another source is anti-Americanism linked with fundamentalist Islamism. In the current context, classic conspiracy theories, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are enjoying a spectacular revival.

The common denominator of the new anti-Zionism has been the systematic effort to criminalize Israeli and Jewish behavior, so as to place it beyond the pale of civilized and acceptable conduct.

Indeed, Israel is today the only state on the face of this planet that such a large number of disparate people wish to see disappear - itself a chilling reminder of the Nazi propaganda of the 1930s. The most virulent expressions of this "exterminationist" or genocidal anti-Zionism have come from the Arab-Muslim world, which is the historical heir of the earlier 20th-century forms of totalitarian anti-Semitism in Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union.

Even "moderate" Muslim statesmen such as Mahathir Mohammad have publicly repeated the classic anti-Semitic belief that "Jews rule the world" while eliciting virtually no objections in the Islamic world.

The more radical Islamists from Al-Qaida to the Palestinian Hamas go much further since they fuse indiscriminate terror, suicide bombings, and a Protocols of Zion style of anti-Semitism with the ideology of jihad. In this case, the so called "war against Zionism" unmistakably embraces the total demonization of the "Jewish other": as the "enemy of mankind," as deadly poisonous snakes, as barbarian "Nazis" and "Holocaust manipulators" who control international finance, not to mention America, or the Western mass media, while they busily instigate wars and revolutions to achieve world domination. Such conspiracy theories sailing under "anti-Zionist" colors constitute a highly toxic, even murderous worldview that today is linked to religious fanaticism and a worldwide revolutionary agenda.

The same demonizing stereotypes can, however, be found in moderate pro-Western Egypt (home to the Protocols based anti-Semitic soap opera Rider without a Horse), secular Baathist Syria, conservative Wahhabite Saudi Arabia, and the Shiite fundamentalist Iran of the ayatollahs. This is an ideological anti-Zionism that seeks both the annihilation of Israel and a world "liberated from the Jews" - in other words, it is a totalist form of anti-Semitism.

Palestinian suffering and Arab "anti-Zionism" have helped to infect Europe with an old-new version of anti-Semitism in which Jews are rapacious, bloodsucking colonialists. The theme is that Jews were rootless, imperialist invaders who came to Palestine to conquer the land by brute force, to expel or "cleanse" it of its natives. They are the modern "Crusaders" with no legitimate rights to the soil - an alien transplant, absolutely foreign to the region.

They succeeded only because of a gigantic occult conspiracy in which the Zionists manipulated Great Britain and subsequently America. This is a typically anti-Semitic narrative of which Hitler might have approved - widely believed around the world, even credited by millions of educated people in the West.

The popularity of the Protocols today is the one telling symptom of the growing merger between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Zionism is increasingly depicted in some mainstream media as being "criminal" in its essence as well as its behavior.