There is one crucial difference between the antisemitism of the past and the antisemitism of the present.

The old antisemites could do the killing themselves. The new ones need subcontractors.

For centuries, Jews were the easiest people in the world to persecute. They were scattered minorities, dependent on rulers who could turn against them, protected by no sovereign state, defended by no national army. A mob could burn a Jewish quarter. A government could expel its Jews. A churchman could preach a libel on Sunday and a massacre could follow on Monday.

And then came the Nazis, who industrialized what Europe had spent centuries rehearsing.

They did not need to pretend. They did not hide behind euphemisms about being “critical of a policy.” They did not say they were merely asking difficult questions about the excessive influence of German Jewry. They were quite open about what they wanted. Jews were to be removed, crushed, expelled and, ultimately, exterminated.

The propaganda was just as shameless. Jews were accused of poisoning societies, corrupting nations, controlling finance, manipulating governments and conspiring against civilization. Before that, medieval Europe had accused them of murdering Christian children and using their blood for ritual purposes.

The details changed. The principle did not: Invent a monstrous Jew, and then claim that monstrous things are justified against him.

But something happened after Auschwitz that changed the mathematics of antisemitism.

The Jews got a country. They got a government. They got an army.

And, perhaps most offensively to the people who had grown accustomed to seeing Jews as permanent victims, they learned how to fight back.

Israel did not abolish antisemitism. It simply made the old methods more difficult. You cannot casually march into Tel Aviv, gather Jewish families into the town square, burn their businesses and expect no consequence. You cannot assemble an invading army on Israel’s borders without discovering that the descendants of Europe’s defenseless Jews now possess tanks, fighter jets, intelligence services and soldiers.

The Jews had learned to shoot back. And that changed everything.

Modern antisemitism has therefore undergone a public-relations transformation.

The old accusation that Jews murder Christian children is no longer fashionable enough for television studios. The claim that Jews drink children’s blood would sound medieval because, of course, it is medieval.

So the vocabulary was modernized:

The Jew became “the Zionist.” The blood libel became “genocide.” The conspiracy about Jewish power became concern about “the Israel lobby.”

The accusation that Jews secretly control society became endless speculation about who........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)