Can a Jew be anti-Semitic?
That sounds like an oxymoron. But history has known some instances of Jews who became ferocious Jew-haters. The Spanish Grand
Inquisitor, Torquemada, was of Jewish descent. Karl Marx wrote some very nasty things about the Jews, as did Otto Weininger, an important Jewish writer in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Herzl, his contemporary and fellow-Viennese, wrote in his diaries some very uncomplimentary remarks about the Jews.10
If a person criticizes Israel more than other countries that do the same, is he an anti-Semite?
Not necessarily. True, there should be one and the same moral standard for all countries and all human beings. Russian actions in Chechnya are not better than ours in Nablus, and may be worse. The trouble is that the Jews are pictured and picture themselves as (and indeed were) a "nation of victims." Therefore, the world is shocked that yesterday's victims are today's victimizers. A higher moral standard is required from us than from other peoples. And rightly so.11
Has Europe become anti-Semitic again?
Not really. The number of anti-Semites in Europe has not grown; perhaps it has even fallen. What has increased is the volume of criticism of Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians, who appear as "the victims of the victims."
The situation in some suburbs of Paris, which is often cited as an example of the rise of anti-Semitism, is a quite different affair. When North African Muslims clash with North African Jews, they are transferring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to European soil. It is also a continuation of the feud between Arabs and Jews that started in Algeria when the Jews supported the French regime and Muslims considered them collaborators of the hated colonialists.
Then why did most Europeans state in a recent poll that Israel endangers world peace more than any other country?
That has a simple explanation: Europeans see on television every day what our soldiers are doing in the occupied Palestinian territories. This confrontation is covered more intensively than any other conflict on earth (with the possible exception of Iraq, for the time being), because Israel is more "interesting," considering the long history of the Jews in Europe, and because Israel is closer to the Western media than Muslim