Some 125 parliamentarians gathered together last week for the historic founding conference of the Interparliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA), brought together by a new sophisticated, globalizing, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 1930s, and without parallel or precedent since the end of World War II.

Israeli soldiers take position during clashes with Palestinians following a demonstration against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank town of Kalkilya.
Photo: AP

The new anti-Jewishness overlaps with classical anti-Semitism but is distinguishable from it. It found early juridical, and even institutional, expression in the UN's "Zionism is racism" resolution - which the late US senator Daniel Moynihan said "gave the abomination of anti-Semitism the appearance of international legal sanction" - but has gone dramatically beyond it. This new anti-Semitism almost needs a new vocabulary to define it; however, it can best be identified using a rights-based juridical perspective.

In a word, classical or traditional anti-Semitism is the discrimination against, denial of or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever host society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism involves the discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations - the denial of and assault upon the Jewish people's right even to live - with Israel as the "collective Jew among the nations."

As the closing "London Declaration" of the ICCA conference affirmed: "We are alarmed at the resurrection of the old language of prejudice and its modern manifestations - in rhetoric and political action - against Jews, Jewish belief and practice and the State of Israel."

Observing the complex intersections between the old and the new anti-Semitism, and the impact of the new on the old, Per Ahlmark, former leader of the Swedish Liberal Party and deputy prime minister of Sweden, pithily concluded: "Compared to most previous anti-Jewish outbreaks, this [new anti-Semitism] is often less directed against individual Jews. It attacks primarily the collective Jews, the State of Israel. And then such attacks start a chain reaction of assaults on individual Jews and Jewish institutions... In the past, the most dangerous anti-Semites were those who wanted to make the world Judenrein, 'free of Jews.' Today, the most dangerous anti-Semites might be those who want to make the world Judenstaatrein, 'free of a Jewish state.'"

Genocidal Anti-Semitism

The first modality of the new anti-Semitism - and the most lethal type - is what I would call genocidal anti-Semitism. This is not a term that I use lightly or easily. In particular, I am referring to the Genocide Convention's prohibition against the "direct and public incitement to genocide." If anti-Semitism is the most enduring of hatreds and genocide is the most horrific of crimes, then the convergence of this genocidal intent embedded in anti-Semitic ideology is the most toxic of combinations.

There are three manifestations of this genocidal anti-Semitism. The first is the state-sanctioned - indeed state-orchestrated - genocidal anti-Semitism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, dramatized by the parading in the streets of Teheran of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the emblem "wipe Israel off the Map," while demonizing both the State of Israel as a "cancerous tumor to be excised" and the Jewish people as "evil incarnate."

A second manifestation of this genocidal anti-Semitism is in the covenants and charters, platforms and policies of such terrorist movements and militias as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, which not only call for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be, but also for the perpetration of acts of terror in furtherance of that objective.

The third manifestation of this genocidal anti-Semitism is the religious fatwas or execution writs, where these genocidal calls in mosques and media are held out as religious obligations - where Jews and Judaism are characterized as the perfidious enemy of Islam, and Israel becomes the Salmon Rushdie of the nations.

In a word, Israel is the only state in the world - and the Jews the only people in the world - that are the object of a standing set of threats by governmental, religious and terrorist bodies seeking their destruction. The London Declaration - again in a significant clarion call - recognized that "where there is incitement to genocide signatories [to the Genocide Convention] automatically have an obligation to act." This promise must now be acted upon.

Ideological Anti-Semitism

Ideological anti-Semitism is a much more sophisticated and arguably a more pernicious expression of the new anti-Semitism. It finds expression not in any genocidal incitement against Jews and Israel, or overt racist denial of the Jewish people and Israel's right to be; rather, ideological anti-Semitism disguises itself as part of the struggle against racism.

The first manifestation of this ideological anti-Semitism was its institutional and juridical anchorage in the "Zionism is racism" resolution at the UN. Notwithstanding the fact that the there was a formal repeal of this resolution, Zionism as racism remains alive and well in the global arena, particularly in the campus cultures of North America and Europe, as confirmed by the recent British All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism.

The second manifestation is the indictment of Israel as an apartheid state. This involves more than the simple indictment; it also involves the call for the dismantling of Israel as an apartheid state as evidenced by the events at the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism in Durban.

The third manifestation of ideological anti-Semitism involves the characterization of Israel not only as an apartheid state - and one that must be dismantled as part of the struggle against racism - but as a Nazi one.

And so it is then that Israel is delegitimized, if not demonized, by the ascription to it of the two most scurrilous indictments of 20th-century racism - Nazism and apartheid - the embodiment of all evil. These very labels of Zionism and Israel as "racist, apartheid and Nazi" supply the criminal indictment. No further debate is required. The conviction that this triple racism warrants the dismantling of Israel as a moral obligation has been secured. For who would deny that a "racist, apartheid, Nazi" state should not have any right to exist today? What is more, this characterization allows for terrorist "resistance" to be deemed justifiable - after all, such a situation is portrayed as nothing other than occupation et résistance, where resistance against a racist, apartheid, Nazi occupying state is legitimate, if not mandatory.