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Looking for a Scapegoat The world again turns to Jews.

by Vic­tor Davis Han­son
Tri­bune Media Ser­vices

Who recent­ly said: “These Jews start­ed 19 Cru­sades. The 19th was World War I. Why? Only to build Israel.”

Some holdover Nazi?

Hard­ly. It was for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Necmet­tin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went on to claim that the Jews — whom he refers to as “bac­te­ria” — con­trolled Chi­na, India and Japan, and ran the Unit­ed States.

Who alleged: “The Arabs who were involved in 9/11 coop­er­at­ed with the Zion­ists, actu­al­ly. It was a coop­er­a­tion. They gave them the per­fect excuse to denounce all Arabs.”

A con­spir­a­cy nut?

Actu­al­ly, it was for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Sen. James Abourezk of South Dako­ta. He denounced Israel on a Hezbol­lah-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion, adding: “I mar­veled at the Hezbol­lah resis­tance to Israel. . . . It was a mar­vel of orga­ni­za­tion, of courage and brav­ery.”

And final­ly, who claimed at a Unit­ed Nations-spon­sored con­fer­ence that demo­c­ra­t­ic Israel was “much worse” than the for­mer apartheid South Africa, and that it “under­mines the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s reac­tion to glob­al warm­ing”?

A rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ist wacko?

Again, no. It was Clare Short, a mem­ber of the British par­lia­ment. She was a sec­re­tary for inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment under Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair.

A new vir­u­lent strain of the old anti-Semi­tism is spread­ing world­wide. This hate — of a mag­ni­tude not seen in over 70 years — is not just espoused by Iran’s loony pres­i­dent, Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad, or rad­i­cal jihadists.

The lat­est anti-Semi­tism is also now mouthed by world lead­ers and sophis­ti­cat­ed politi­cians and aca­d­e­mics. Their loathing often mas­quer­ades as “anti-Zion­ism” or “legit­i­mate” crit­i­cism of Israel. But the ven­om exclu­sive­ly reserved for the Jew­ish state betrays their exis­ten­tial hatred.

Israel is always lam­bast­ed for enter­ing homes in the West Bank to look for Hamas ter­ror­ists and using too much force. But last week the world snoozed when the Lebanese army bom­bard­ed and then crushed the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, which har­bored Islam­ic ter­ror­ists.

The world has long object­ed to Jew­ish set­tlers buy­ing up land in the West Bank. Yet Hezbol­lah, flush with Iran­ian mon­ey, is now pur­chas­ing large tracts in south­ern Lebanon for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es and purg­ing them of non-Shi­ites.

Here at home, “neo­con­ser­v­a­tive” has become syn­ony­mous with a sup­posed Jew­ish cabal of Wash­ing­ton insid­ers who hijacked U.S. pol­i­cy to take us to war for Israel’s inter­est. That our state depart­ment is at the mer­cy of a Jew­ish lob­by is the theme of a recent high-pro­file book by pro­fes­sors at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

Yet when the Unit­ed States bombed Euro­pean and Chris­t­ian Ser­bia to help Balkan Mus­lims, few crit­ics alleged that Amer­i­can Mus­lims had undu­ly swayed Pres­i­dent Clin­ton. And such charges of improp­er eth­nic influ­ence are rarely lev­eled to explain the bil­lions in Amer­i­can aid giv­en to non-demo­c­ra­t­ic Egypt, Jor­dan or the Pales­tini­ans — or the Sau­di oil mon­ey that pours into Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties.

The world like­wise dis­plays such a dou­ble stan­dard. It seems to care lit­tle about the prin­ci­ple of so-called occu­pied land — whether in Cyprus or Tibet — unless Israel is the accused. Mass mur­der­ing in Cam­bo­dia, the Con­go, Rwan­da and Dar­fur has earned far few­er Unit­ed Nations’ res­o­lu­tions of con­dem­na­tion than sup­posed atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by Israel. A num­ber of British aca­d­e­mics are spon­sor­ing a boy­cott of Israeli schol­ars but leave alone those from auto­crat­ic Iran, Chi­na and Cuba.

There are var­i­ous expla­na­tions for the new anti-Semi­tism. For many abroad, attack­ing Jews and Israel is an indi­rect way of damn­ing its main ally, the Unit­ed States — by imply­ing that Amer­i­cans are not entire­ly evil, just hood­winked by those sneaky and far more evil Jews.

At home, there are obvi­ous prag­mat­ic con­sid­er­a­tions. Some Amer­i­cans may find it makes more sense to damn a few mil­lion Israelis with­out oil than it does to offend Israel’s adver­saries in the Mid­dle East, who num­ber in the hun­dreds of mil­lions and con­trol near­ly half the world’s petro­le­um reserves.

Cow­ardice explains a lot. Libel­ing Israel won’t earn some­one a fat­wa or a death sen­tence in the man­ner com­pa­ra­ble crit­i­cism of Islam might. There are no Jew­ish sui­cide bombers in Lon­don, Madrid or Bali.

This new face of anti-Semi­tism is so insid­i­ous because it is so well dis­guised, advanced by self-pro­claimed diplo­mats and aca­d­e­mics — and now embraced by the sup­pos­ed­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed left on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es.

When nation­al, col­lec­tive or per­son­al aspi­ra­tions are not met, it is far eas­i­er to blame some­one or some­thing rather than to look with­in for the source of the fail­ure and frus­tra­tion. More recent­ly, some­one must be blamed for get­ting ter­ror­ists (with oil and its prof­its behind them) mad at us.

That some­one is — no sur­prise — once again Jews.

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