By Schmoel Yitzhak
The term "anti-Semitism" always has seemed too saccharine a synonym for what it really is -- Jew-hating.
Over the past three decades Jew-hating has become virtually synonymous with Israel-bashing.
Nor do you have to look very far to find those -- invariably leftists -- who treat the Middle East's only true democracy with fallacious contempt.
In Israel itself, the newspaper Haaretz reads like a contemporary Quisling sheet whose columnists' computers regularly punch out venomous stories designed to bring down the Jewish State.
Going a bit farther afield we find a group of Irish academics who have nothing better to do than boycott Israel.
In this case -- as it is in so many others -- it's merely a ruse only this time it is employed by the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) whose members are -- by their actions -- identifying themselves as Jew-haters.
How can it be interpreted any other way?
If those Irish men and women of the TUI were serious about boycotts, they would focus on countries that virtually cry out for a boycott. Or as Eilliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations points out, you can find dozens of nations whose abusive academic practices should be condemned -- and not Israel.
"There's no mention -- much less boycott -- by the Irish teachers of China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba," says Abrams, "or anyplace else where students are 'struggling for the right to education under extremely difficult conditions' that include repressive governments, no academic freedom and political tests for admission to higher education."
Does the TUI really care about academic freedom or is it merely bashing Israel as another type of Jew-hating gesture?
If those Irish academic anti-Semites gave a hoot about academic freedom, they would single out Saudi Arabia where there are greatly restricted educational opportunities for girls.
Or, as Abrams cites the Irish hypocrisy: "What a lesson to their (Irish) students: ignorance, bias, bigotry, narrow-mindedness and anti-Semitism wrapped in self-righteosness."
And speaking of the self-righteous Israeli-bashers, there's none worse than the erstwhile "newspaper of record," the New York Times which long ago decided to forgo any attempt at objectivity in order to promote pro-Palestinian coverage of the Middle East conflict.
So egregious have the Times' editorial sins been that they inspired an intensive study by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
The result has been a 97-page monograph -- actually a small book -- ripping the Times for what can best be described as a vicious anti-Israel agenda. The monograph is called "Indicting Israel -- New York Times Coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict."
"The dominant finding of the study," CAMERA'S Ricki Hollander and Gilead Ini assert, "is a disproportionate, continuous, embedded indictment of Israel that dominates both news and commentary sections. Israeli views are downplayed while Palestinian perspectives, especially criticism of Israel, are amplified and even promoted.
"The net effect is an overarching message, woven into the fabric of the coverage of, Israeli fault and responsibility for the conflict."
It's worth noting that while the Holocaust actually was taking place during World War II the Times treated it as some sort of mythical occurrence. Coverage was either ignored or limited to relatively tiny stories buried on the back pages.
Meanwhile, vicious attacks on the memory of the Holocaust continue making it easy to identify Jew-haters in such diverse countries as Egypt, Iran, England, Lithuania and Hungary.
While Barack Obama blandly accepts the Muslim Brotherhood's dictatorship in Cairo the senior Egyptian official in charge of appointing editors of all state run Egyptian newspaper declares, "The myth of the Holocaust is an industry that America invented."
In Great Britain the Sunday London Times published a cartoon on Holocaust Memorial Day depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall cemented with blood and bodies of Palestinian men, women and children.
None of the aforementioned is surprising. Militant Islam is infecting Europe and spreading its tentacles world-wide while the civilized world cows in fear.
These are trying times for Israelis as well as Jews world-wide.
Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism go hand in glove promoted by the likes of Irish academics and the New York Times, each in its own venal manner.
At times like these it's worth digesting the thoughts recently delivered by Bibi Netanyahu.
"In every generation our enemies rise against us to destroy us," the Prime Minister concluded. "In every generation, each man (and woman) must view himself (and herself) as though he had survived the Holocaust and went on to found the state of Israel. In every generation, it is our duty to ensure that the Holocaust does not recur."
