THE SECULARISTS' TIME OF ILLUSIONS:

Goodbye to All That? (TONY JUDT, January 3, 2005, The Nation)

"Anti-Semitism" today is a genuine problem. It is also an illusory problem. The distinction between the two is one of those contemporary issues that most divide Europe from the United States. The overwhelming majority of Europeans abhors recent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions and takes them very seriously. But it is generally recognized in Europe that these attacks are the product of local circumstances and are closely tied to contemporary political developments in Europe and elsewhere. Thus the increase in anti-Jewish incidents in France or Belgium is correctly attributed to young people, frequently of Muslim or Arab background, the children or grandchildren of immigrants. This is a new and disconcerting social challenge and it is far from clear how it should be addressed, beyond the provision of increased police protection. But it is not, as they say, "your grandfather's anti-Semitism."

As seen from the United States, however, Europe--especially "old," or Western, Europe--is in the grip of recidivism: reverting to type, as it were. Last February Rockwell Schnabel (the US ambassador to the European Union) spoke of anti-Semitism in Europe "getting to a point where it is as bad as it was in the 30s." In May 2002 George Will wrote in the Washington Post that anti-Semitism among Europeans "has become the second--and final?--phase of the struggle for a 'final solution to the Jewish Question.'" These are not isolated, hysterical instances: Among American elites as well as in the population at large, it is widely assumed that Europe, having learned nothing from its past, is once again awash in the old anti-Semitism.

The American view clearly reflects an exaggerated anxiety. The problem of anti-Semitism in Europe today is real, but it needs to be kept in proportion. [...]

It is increasingly clear to observers in France, for example, that assaults on Jews in working-class suburbs of big cities are typically driven by frustration and anger at the government of Israel.

Setting aside, for now, the implication that "they asked for it," Mr. Judt is right that if you place Europe's hatred of Jews into a wider perspective you'd have to incorporate its rising Islamophobia, as witness the French scarf ban and the recent violence in Holland, and its equally virulent Christophobia. Anti-Semitism is a symptom, not the disease.

MORE:
-Evangelicals See Snags as French Stress Secularism (Tom Heneghan, 12/20/04, Reuters)

Evangelical Christians in France face growing problems as authorities enforce secularism, favor Muslims or view them as supporters of President Bush, French Protestant leaders say.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 22, 2004 8:25 AM