Yes!Well, sort-of. This an issue that as the lone-Jew in an Anthropology class, I’ve run into a little to often for comfort. After thinking on it for some time, I do think there are legitimate critiques one could make of Israel, or any nation. However, simply being anti-Zionist out of a feeling of compassion for Palestinians is the form I most often run into on campus. Now, there’s certainly nothing wrong with compassion for your fellow human-beings, but it does set quite a few people up for massive over-simplification and double-standards of the situation. If, for example, you claim Israel is an apartheid nation then you are absolutely a Jew-hating-bastard. Period. You may as well go to your nearest Temple, yell KIKE and see what happens. The fact is, this is not a legitimate criticism. There are some 1 million Arab Muslims living within Israel, serving within its military, represented in the Knesset, and allowed to freely practice their religion. Government services are extended to them at the same rate as any Israeli Jew. Here’s another way to look at it:
Historian Bernard Lewis argues that the new antisemitism represents the third, or ideological, wave of antisemitism, the first two waves being religious and racial antisemitism.[33]
Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of cosmic evil. He writes that what he calls the first wave of antisemitism arose with the advent of Christianity because of the Jews' rejection of Jesus as Messiah. The second wave, racial anti-Semitism, emerged in Spain when large numbers of Jews were forcibly converted, and doubts about the sincerity of the converts led to ideas about the importance of "la limpieza de sangre", purity of blood.[33]
He associates the third wave with the Arabs, and writes that it arose only in part because of the establishment of the State of Israel. Until the 19th century, Muslims had regarded Jews with what Lewis calls "amused, tolerant superiority" — they were seen as physically weak, cowardly, and unmilitary — and although Jews living in Muslim countries were not treated as equals, they were shown a certain amount of respect. The Western form of antisemitism — what Lewis calls "the cosmic, satanic version of Jew hatred" — arrived in the Middle East in several stages, beginning with Christian missionaries in the 19th century, and continued to grow slowly into the 20th century, up to the establishment of the Third Reich. He writes that it increased because of the humiliation of the Israeli military victories of 1948 and 1967.[33] (See 1948 Arab-Israeli War and Six Day War.)
Into this mix entered the United Nations. Lewis argues that the United Nations' handling of the 1948 refugee situation convinced the Arab world that discrimination against Jews was acceptable. When the ancient Jewish community in East Jerusalem was evicted and its monuments desecrated or destroyed, they were offered no help. Similarly, when Jewish refugees fled or were driven out of Arab countries, no help was offered, but elaborate arrangements were made for Arabs who fled or were driven out of the area that became Israel. All the Arab governments involved in the conflict announced that they would not admit Israelis of any religion into their territories, and that they would not give visas to Jews, no matter which country they were citizens of. Lewis argues that the failure of the United Nations to protest sent a clear message to the Arab world.
He writes that this third wave of antisemitism has in common with the first wave that Jews are able to be part of it. With religious antisemitism, Jews were able to distance themselves from Judaism, and Lewis writes that some even reached high rank within the church and the Inquisition. With racial antisemitism, this was not possible, but with the new, ideological, antisemitism, Jews are once again able to join the critics. The new antisemitism also allows non-Jews, he argues, to criticize or attack Jews without feeling overshadowed by the crimes of the Nazis.[33]
