The Vocabulary Changes, the Target Does Not

One question keeps returning, in one form or another:

Who is behind all this?

Is it the universities? The media? The UN? The political Left? Islamists? Activists? NGOs? Social media? Foreign governments?

In public discourse, the list often becomes more specific: certain governments are named, particular media networks are accused, major universities are singled out, and international organizations are portrayed as coordinated actors.

My answer is always the same:

Those institutions may amplify the phenomenon, but they are not the phenomenon itself.

The temptation is to search for a mastermind, a headquarters, a conspiracy. But history suggests a simpler and more disturbing explanation. The hatred directed at Israel today is not fundamentally new. It is very old. It is antisemitism wearing contemporary clothing.

Only eighty years have passed since the Holocaust. In historical terms, that is a blink of an eye. Entire generations are still alive whose parents or grandparents witnessed, participated in, enabled, excused, or survived the greatest antisemitic catastrophe in human history. Why should we assume that a hatred cultivated for centuries simply vanished in a few decades?

What we are witnessing today is the largest global surge of hostility toward Jews and the Jewish state since World War II. The slogans have changed. The vocabulary has changed. The targets have shifted from “the Jew” to “the Zionist.” But the obsessive fixation remains remarkably familiar. Israel is judged by standards applied to no other nation. Jewish........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)