Those Who Forget the Past by Ron Rosenbaum

from an unexpected place. He defined himself as not an alarmist, not a victim of “ethnic panic,” so to speak, described himself as not the kind of person who hears “the sound of breaking glass,” of
Kristallnacht,
in every insult or slight to Jews.
    Nonetheless, he said, he felt compelled to sound an alarm:
    â€œ[W]here anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israel have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populaces, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not intent.” The perception of a new anti-Semitism, he continued, is “less alarmist in the world of today than [in the world of a] year ago.”
    It is that phrase—anti-Semitic in “effect if not intent”— that may have been even more provocative than his description of the shift from Right to Left in the debate that followed. It spoke to the question of when anti-Zionism became antiSemitism.
    â€œEffect if not intent . . .” I believe it’s clear what Summers was trying to say. The effect/intent relationship was elucidated this way by the British historian Peter Pulzer: 14 Some anti-Zionists deny their
intent
is anti-Semitic, and are thus heedless of the
effect
of their double standard in singling out the Jewish state for human rights opprobrium ignored elsewhere. “Effect simply consists,” Pulzer wrote, “ultimately of the resurfacing of the underground repertoire of anti-Jewish stereotypes, instinctively understood by both the utterer and their recipient.” Effect was evident in indisputably anti-Semitic incidents growing out of “anti-Zionist” activism on American campuses such as those reported on by eyewitnesses such as Dr. Laurie Zoloth at San Francisco State and Eli Muller at Yale.
    I’d tend to agree with Pulzer. Purportedly “anti-Zionist” criticism of Israel increasingly couched in the rhetoric of ancient anti-Semitic stereotypes—“grasping” Jews, hook-nosed caricatures of money-grubbing Jews—is not mere anti-Zionism. Consider the cartoon that appeared in the
Chicago Tribune
in 2003 that featured Ariel Sharon crossing a bridge labeled “peace”
only
because the bridge had been “baited,” so to speak, with dollar signs (symbolizing U.S. subsidies). That would surely persuade the stiff-necked but money-grubbing Jew Sharon (drawn with an exaggeratedly hooklike beak for a nose) to be reasonable! I think one can safely say this is no longer simple anti-Zionism. Whatever the “intent,” the effect is anti-Semitic. 15 It is here that one finds special relevance in Berel Lang’s reflections on the very popular defense that denying one is anti-Semitic proves that one
can’t
be anti-Semitic.
    But to return to the question of the shift in the locus of antiSemitism from Right to Left, I don’t mean to imply that more traditional right-wing anti-Semitism has evaporated. There are of course old-fashioned white racists and neo-Nazis scattered throughout the Western world. As Andrew Sullivan put it, “It’s important to realize that old far-Right anti-Semitism has not been replaced by the new far-Left variety. Just supplemented.” One can find it among some “paleoconservatives,” as they’re called. And while there is some reason to welcome the apparent philo-Semitism of the fundamentalist movement in America, there is also some reason for concern about the doctrine beneath some of the philo-Semitism: the belief in the ultimate conversion, or self-erasure, of the Jews in the eschatology of the Last Days.
    But the appearance of anti-Semitism on the Left is, at least on the surface, paradoxical. The Left is, or was supposed to be, about Tolerance, against prejudice, the friend of the Jews (or, as