A very good article from the The Times.
Anti-Semitism is not the real danger to Jews today
Mark Mazower
Professor of History at Birkbeck College London
Is anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe? Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister, this week gave warning of the re-emergence of “an anti-Semitism that has always existed”. Attacks on Jewish targets in France and the bombing of the two synagogues in Turkey look like straws in the wind. And when a German MP assigns the Jews responsibility for the crimes of Bolshevism and the commander of the German special forces publicly agrees, then it is worthwhile addressing the question.
No historian would want to deny the extent of European anti-Semitism in the early 20th century. However, the Holocaust led to a profound transformation of attitudes in Europe. After the war the commonly-held belief in scientific racism fell into disrepute and Unesco issued its famous declaration that race was a social myth. The basic law of Konrad Adenauer’s West Germany explicitly outlawed racial prejudice…