(San Francisco Chronicle) - Yitzhak Santis In Europe and the Muslim world, anti-Semitism has undergone a startling revival. Historian David Goldhagen speaks of anti-Semitism as an "evolving" phenomenon having gone through two major eras. The first was the Christian, where Jews were accused of being "Christ-killers" and ritual murderers. The second phase was the Nazis' secularized, racial anti-Semitism that defined Jews as engaged in an "international conspiracy" working against all humanity. Goldhagen believes we are now witnessing a third phase. "Globalized anti-Semitism is a new constellation of features grafted onto old ones," writes Goldhagen. Replacing the weak but shifty Shylock is "Rambo Jew," who now haunts the "anti-Semitic imagination." As such, anti-Jewish hatred has focused on Israeli and American Jews "as the alleged central moral and material culprits of the international arena."
2003-11-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive