This one lists many incidents of violence against Jews not just in France, but throughout Europe, and explains how this violence is fed by a synergy of media propaganda and old stereotypes. A must read for those who demand specifics.
This overview of the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe and the Muslim world is good for bringing someone up to speed who hasn't been paying attention to the issue. This article is similar, from the point of view of a historian who knows what he is looking at when he sees nasty stereotypes and calls for isolationism (scroll down for some cartoons whose themes should look familiar). (More here.)
The article on how antisemitism is fed by anxieties about globablization is noteworthy in making several points I have not seen raised elsewhere:
It is paradoxical that Jews should find themselves swept up in the backlash against globalization, since Jews were the first truly globalized people. The survival of Jewish civilization—despite 2,000 years without a state and the scattering of its diaspora to nearly every nation on Earth—undermines the claim that globalization creates a homogenized world that destroys local cultures. Jews accommodated, and at times embraced, the foreign cultures they lived in without sacrificing their identity. The golden age of Jewish learning was not in ancient Israel, but in medieval Spain, where Jewish religious study, literature, and poetry flourished under the influence of Muslim scholars.The last sentence is actually false, as the Mishnah and Talmud - bedrocks of Jewish Oral Law which supercede anything produced in medieval Spain - were first redacted in Israel after the fall of the second Temple, but the larger point is sound. Our particular blend of universality and particularity (anchored by our our concepts of human rights and dignity) is one of the most valuable gifts we have to offer the world. It is ironic that the movement which purports to defend local and indigenous culture against dehumanizing global blandness should then attack the Jews for actually embodying their principles.
This article also sympathizes with Jews who work in the antiglobalization movement:
Last year, there were fears that the Johannesburg-hosted World Summit on Sustainable Development would turn into a replay of the ill-fated 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, where anti-Semitic rhetoric culminated in a draft resolution adopted by the NGO forum singling out Israel as guilty of “genocide.” The [Simon Weisenthal center] urged 180 ecological organizations planning to attend Johannesburg to ensure the conference stayed on message. The responses were largely positive, reflecting the frustration of many Third World NGOs who felt that the controversy at Durban had overshadowed vital issues on their agendas.Another bright spot in the miasma of global anti-Jewish prejudice is the Czech Republic. Why? Because the Czechs can relate:
And then there are the Jews within the antiglobalization movement itself. Many are drawn to the movement for the same reason that Jews have always been disproportionately represented in campaigns for social justice: the principle of tikkun olam (repairing the world). It imparts a commitment not only to care for the Jewish community, but for all of society. The antiglobalization activists who are Jewish carry a unique burden in that they are made to feel like strangers even though they are passionately devoted to safeguarding the environment, advocating human rights, and promoting economic equality. But rather than abandoning the movement, they seek to wrest the agenda from the extremists who would exclude them. A measure of their success could be seen in the final day of the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. While street protesters waved their swastikas, a small group of Jewish and Palestinian peace activists organized a series of workshops, funded by local Jewish and Palestinian communities in Brazil. The result was a joint statement, read to 20,000 cheering activists, calling for “peace, justice, and sovereignty for our peoples,” and a Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel.
Exactly two thirds of a century ago the British and French governments forced Czechoslovakia to give up territory that Germany considered to be "occupied." A few months later, Germany wiped Czechoslovakia entirely off the map. British and French leaders thought appeasement would protect them from Germany's wrath, saving them from having to fight a terrorist state. Once he got this Czech territory, German leader Adolf Hitler explained, he would have no more demands and would get along just fine with the British and French. They believed him. They were wrong. But they also justified their behavior in terms of human rights and charity to the weaker side. After all, the land Czechoslovakia was forced to yield was inhabited by ethnic Germans. Berlin's demand to rule those citizens could be portrayed as reasonable. Also, Germany had been humiliated a few years before, in World War I, so it was only trying to regain national pride and reacting against its mistreatment by the victors.
. . . After a half-century experience of Nazi and communist rule, Czechs don't evince romanticism toward radical ideologies, respect dictators, tolerate propaganda, or suffer from illusions about rationalizing terrorism. They can tell the difference between a fence to stop terrorists and the Iron Curtain wall that not long ago crossed their own country where those trying to flee were shot down. . . . . If you talk to a Czech about ignorant, craven leaders trading off the rights of a far-off land of which they know little, he recognizes this as a paraphrase of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's remark about their country when he was selling it out.
IN SHORT, there is not much patience with nonsense.
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