ANTI-SEMITISM

Haaretz: Anti-Semitism, Real And Exaggerated

Much was revealed by the study of anti-Semitism in Europe that caused such a controversy when the European Center for Monitoring Racism decided to shelve the results.

It showed a growing distancing from Israel and from European Jews, the ostensible representatives of the Jewish state. It exposed the failure of the immigrant absorption and integration policies adopted by European countries toward their Muslim minorities. And finally, the attitude to the report, whose data was not always well-grounded, showed how much hostility there is to Europe, particularly among members of the coalition parties in Israel, and the disproportionate manner in which they use the ghosts of anti-Semitism to distract themselves and Israeli public opinion in general from their own domestic problems.

First to the matter of anti-Semitism. Since September 11, it is being felt the way anger toward America is felt. But this is not the old style of race hatred against Jews; rather, it is more a general rejection of everything Israeli. Jews are identified with Israelis, just as the Israeli public is identified with its government. That first identification is more grave - it shows that hundreds of years of life in Europe and the memory of the genocide of the Jews has not been enough for the Jews to be recognized as citizens of their countries.

Add to that the criticism of Israeli policy. It can be justified, but the intensity with which it is expressed discloses not only the extent to which Germans are unable to put themselves in the place of a people suffering from constant terror; it also reveals a desire to disconnect, to get rid of decades' worth of complexes.