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Anti-Zionism Is the New Anti-Semitism

(Newsweek) Jonathan Sacks - On March 27, speaking to the Sunday Times, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressed his concern at rising levels of anti-Semitism on British university campuses. There are, he said, "worrying echoes" of Germany in the 1930s. Two days later, in The Times, Chris Bryant, the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and a senior member of the British Labour party, warned that the political left was increasingly questioning the right of the State of Israel to exist, a view he called a "not too subtle form of anti-Semitism." A survey in 2013 by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights showed that almost a third of Europe's Jews have considered emigrating because of anti-Semitism, with numbers as high as 46% in France and 48% in Hungary. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel. Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism. Israel - the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary - is regularly accused of five crimes against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide. This is the blood libel of our time. When bad things happen to a group, its members can ask two different questions: If it asks, "What did we do wrong?" it has begun the self-criticism essential to a free society. If it asks, "Who did this to us?" it has defined itself as a victim. It will then seek a scapegoat to blame for all its problems. Classically this has been the Jews. The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. People of all faiths and none must stand together, not just to defeat anti-Semitism but to ensure the rights of religious minorities are defended everywhere. The writer served as Britain's chief rabbi from 1991 to 2013.
2016-04-04 00:00:00
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