by Dr. Gilbert N. Kahn

February 5, 2009

LONDON — After the euphoria and excitement of his inauguration, President Obama began the daunting task of governing. Similarly, after being an attendee in Washington at the festivities, I arrived in Europe to discover how dangerous the world has become from the perspective of Europe’s Jews. It suggests we are living on totally different planets.

In England, in the three weeks following the start of the Gaza campaign, there were 220 reported anti-Semitic incidents. They ran the gamut, from graffiti and defacing of Jewish buildings, cemeteries, and institutions to attempted arson, hate mail, incidents of physical attacks, and extensive verbal threats. According to the Community Security Trust, a British-Jewish defense organization, the period saw the single largest set of anti-Semitic incidents since it began collecting such data in 1984.

Equally appalling was the activity at some of London’s universities, where protesters staged selective sit-ins to protest Israel’s invasion, occupation, and killing of civilians in Gaza. Protesters at the the London School of Economics “occupied” its Old Theatre for more than a week, and some classrooms at Kings College were “occupied” beginning shortly after the students returned from their Christmas holiday. These protests were largely the work of the left-wing Socialist Workers Party, and with the participation of Palestinians and Muslims.

Perhaps even more outrageous were the protests launched against Israeli academics invited to a conference at the London School of Oriental and African Studies that was convened to mark the centenary of the founding of Tel Aviv. The SOAS Student Union voted to support the protest and boycott the conference. Their action occurred despite the fact that the scholar convening the SOAS conference, Colin Schindler, is himself a left-leaning, pro-peace faculty member.

The resolution was put forth by the students, although a Palestinian scholar from Bethlehem was on the program as well as a left-wing Israeli scholar. These protesters were interested not in academic freedom but in reinventing the academic boycott of last year. It was another effort to restrict the free exchange of ideas and a clear ad hominem attack on Israeli scholars seeking to participate in academic dialogue. The anti-Israel agitation turned violent when police confronted pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the Israeli embassy in London. As a result, the British authorities brought in mounted police to ensure safety at the SOAS conference.

(The BBC, meanwhile, which for years has been accused of an anti-Israel bias in its reporting, took extremely curious action. First, the BBC presented a far more balanced reportage of the war in Gaza than it had, for example, during the 2006 war in Lebanon. Perhaps responding to a 2007 internal audit confirming signs of bias, the BBC shocked virtually the entire British media by refusing to give free air time to a public service effort on behalf of a group raising funds to provide food, clothing, and medicine to those left homeless and wounded in Gaza by the war.

Throughout Europe, the anti-Semitic attacks against Jews — weakly disguised as critiques of Israeli actions in Gaza — were rampant since the start of the war.

As if to add insult to injury, as Israel and Hamas reached a tentative cease-fire and the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. There came news from Rome that Pope Benedict XVI had decided to consider rehabilitating an English bishop, Richard Williamson, who had been excommunicated 21 years ago by Pope John Paul II. This despite the fact that Williamson had just recently reiterated his public denial of the Holocaust!

There have been anti-Israel demonstrations in the United States and rallies on college campuses in support of the victims of the Gaza war, but they all have been relatively minor. Serious newspaper stories and analyses have raised many questions about Israel’s use of unnecessary or excessive force in their conduct of the war. The Israelis were not blameless, but their conduct of the war hardly justified the drumbeat racing through Europe demanding a war crimes investigation.

For the Jewish communities in Europe, absent movement on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, it may take them a very long time to regain their equilibrium after the repercussions created by the Gaza war.

Dr. Gilbert N. Kahn is a professor of political science at Kean University in Union (e-mail gkahn@kean.edu).

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