The politics of ressentiment

The new Judeophobia in contemporary Germany is a mutation of earlier varieties of antisemitism. It is a politics of "ressentiment" whose most novel feature is the convergence between anti-Americanism and Jew-hatred, pacifism, right-wing radicalism, and militant Islam, along with a special focus on the evils of Zionist Israel. Since 9/11 (2001), and even more in the wake of the Iraq War (2003), anti-Americanism has been a potent factor in the hostile attitudes toward Jews and Israel - as the alleged architects of the war and as aggressors in the Middle East. Identifying Jews with the USA, spreading conspiracy theories with an antisemitic subtext, and downplaying Palestinian terrorism and the genocidal antisemitism rampant in the Muslim and Arab media (while highlighting Israeli counterviolence as gratuitous sadism) are shared by the Left, Right, and part of the mainstream media. Much of contemporary German antisemitism can best be understood as opposition to the constant reminders of the Nazi past, and to a desire to reverse the roles and to turn Israelis and Jews into perpetrators. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)