The outdated and inaccurate euphemism 'anti—Semitism' is on its way out, to be replaced by much preferable neologism 'Judeophobia,' a phenomenon mostly identified with the left. Contemporary hatred of Jews in the West is primarily found among so—called progressives. An important discourse on Euro—Judeophobia is newly available in English, courtesy of Frontpage Magazine. Pilar Rahola, a Catalan from Barcelona, is a noted figure on the Spanish left who has opened her eyes, and speaks honestly about reality as she sees it. A feminist, Rahola has something of the tone of a Camille Paglia about her: someone who doesn't mind probing deeply into the modern mentality, regardless of where it takes her.

Her analysis of why the European left is so taken with the Palestinian cause, and so eager to overlook its sins, while engaging in hypercritical examination of Israel, is telling. Here are just a few of the gems she scatters before us.

We are convinced that the current view of the conflict, so Manichaean—with the good, always the Palestinians, and the evil, always the Israelis—has deep roots. It comes from an ancient anti—Jewish feeling that exists in Spain and that also explains the history of Spain. This feeling softened slightly after the Franco era [translator's note : post—1975], but today there is a virulent resurgence of this savage feeling....

in the ultimate paradox, the Jewish soul is part and parcel of Europe. Europe cannot be explained without its Jewish soul, but it is also explained by its hatred of the Jews. Thus, all the repeated attempts of Europe to get rid of its Jewish soul are, in fact, a kind of suicide.

After the Holocaust, after Auschwitz, that is, after the ultimate stage in the destruction of the Jewish soul—a process which lasted for centuries in Europe—Europe is shattered, many of its elements are dead, but it also has a bad conscience; it knows it is guilty. Since then, Europe has looked for and found in the Palestinian cause the expiation for its guilt. It is from this that the uncritical and Manichean attitude toward the Palestinian cause emerges—it is, primarily, the last heroic (European) adventure. Further, the more the Jews are presented as being the evil party, the bad ones, the less difficult it is to carry the responsibility and the guilt. This is a process of collective psychology. From such a perspective, there essentially is no difference between France, for example, and Spain... It is unbelievable how Europe continues to hate its Jewish soul, even after it has expelled it!

There is undeniably of late a very serious effort at disinformation about everything to do with the Middle East. There is a kind of madness that excuses all the crimes, abuses, and errors of the Palestinian side, and, at the same time, there is a historical predisposition that condemns any single error of the Israeli side—and this to the point where the Palestinian victims are given maximum attention and the Israeli (victims) are ignored. It is as if the Jewish victims didn't exist, on the pretext that they were responsible for their own deaths!

The worst thing is that there is also a problem of terrorism in Spain, but when the crimes of ETA [translator's note : the Basque terrorist group] are mentioned, one speaks of terrorism, while when the crimes of Hamas are mentioned, one speaks of militants, activists, resistance, struggle...When one mentions the Palestinian victims, one speaks of children, civilians, innocents, but when one mentions the Israeli victims, one speaks of people without a name, as if to suggest that they are only soldiers, members of the army. There is a distortion in the presentation of the conflict, a dangerous manipulation that feeds the hatred and the anti—Semitism....

Today one must prove oneself to be on the left ; it is necessary to be anti—Semitic to have credibility. Things have reached the point where, for instance, Sharon is always guilty of being guilty, while Arafat is seen as an honest figure, innocent, a tireless old resistance fighter, a heroic figure, a kind of Gandhi—in brief, a person gussied up in romantic finery, when in reality he is head of an oligarchy that has so much blood on its hands.

Israel is not (just) a country that is trying, for better or worse, to survive for fifty years, but it is reduced to one sole image: a country that occupies the territories and whose vocation is to make life miserable for the poor Palestinians. The history of the Holy Land is being reinvented. Everything takes place as if there were instructions: Never recall the faults and errors of the Palestinians, never recall their alliances with dangerous countries such as Iraq, in order to heap more shame on the United States and Israel. The profound reasons for this war are never made clear, never discussed....

The majority, the unconscious European collective, does not understand, does not absorb, nor accept, the Jewish phenomenon. And it is there that the essential meeting point between the European and the Palestinian takes place. Palestinian identity is not just a recent phenomenon, but it is, above all, built on hatred of Israel, hatred of the Jews.

If Europe can be explained by its Jewish component and by its hatred of the Jews, as if they were two sides of the same coin, Palestinian identity can essentially be explained only by its anti—Jewish component. It is for this reason that the Palestinians have such difficulty putting an end to their violence.

If the Palestinians renounced their hatred of the Jews, they would at the same time lose a significant part of their identity. To get beyond this violence, they would have to get beyond the hatred and thus change their identity. In other words, they would have to reinvent themselves. It is on the basis of this hatred that the Palestinian meets and agrees with the European. Often, this takes place with people of the Left, which is a veritable calamity for people like myself, as we are of the Left.

Read the entire interview!