Defining New Anti-Semitism

Gradually, a consensus is developing on the definition of "new" anti-Semitism, i.e., the variety of Jew-hatred targeting the state of Israel. Once this mutation's key characteristics have been classified, an analysis of any speech, writing or action can be made to determine its anti-Semitic elements. It is no longer relevant who the author is and whether he is Muslim, Christian, atheist, communist, Maoist, Trotskyite, Socialist, Liberal, neo-Nazi, Israeli or Diaspora Jew.

One effort to define the borders between critique and anti-Semitism was made by the Berlin Technical University's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism. It characterized new anti-Semitism inter alia as a critique of Israel - that the Jewish state is negatively distinct from all others, and therefore has no right to exist.3

Irwin Cotler, the Canadian Justice Minister undertook a more detailed analysis of the multiple aspects of the new anti-Semitism. He claims that people become anti-Semites when calling for the destruction of Israel and the Jews; when denying the Jewish people's right to self-determination; when they de-legitimize Israel as a state or attribute all the world's evil to Israel; when Nazifying Israel, denying the Holocaust or singling out Israel for discriminatory treatment in the international arena. Cotler also mentions cultural anti-Semitism as a characteristic of the new anti-Semitism. He defines it by saying that "Israel is attributed a mix of evil qualities by salon intellectuals and western elites."4

http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-30.htm