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In Britain, Anti-Semitism Endures
(Washington Post) George F. Will - When Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, asks his audiences if Britain's government can be criticized, everyone says yes. But when they are asked, "Do you believe Britain should not exist?" no one says yes. Then Sacks tells his audiences: "Now you know the difference" [in attitudes toward Jews and Israel]. In the Middle Ages, says Sacks, Jews were hated for their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were hated for their race. Now they are hated for their nation. The new anti-Semitism remains, Sacks says, "essentially eliminationist." It disguises its genocidal viciousness, insisting that it seeks the destruction not of a people but only of the state formed as a haven for this people that has had a uniquely hazardous history. The international "boycott, divestment and sanctions" movement, supported by many American academics, aims not to pressure Israel to change policies, as South Africa was pressured to abandon apartheid, but rather to de-legitimize Israel's existence as a nation.