While acknowledging that many non-Jews, and even Jews, express weariness with the subject of anti-Semitism, EPPC senior fellow Hillel Fradkin declared at a March 15 seminar that we have a duty to our children and our country to face the signs of its renewed toxicity. Since 9/11, political conditions have become more hospitable to anti-Semitism, and without exposure "what is marginal can become mainstream." He applauded speaker Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary for tackling the topic in his "extremely timely and unfortunately necessary new book," The Return of Anti-Semitism.

Schoenfeld said that the increasingly stringent security measures at his New York office building, which houses several Jewish organizations, had first prompted him to question whether the terrorist threat was "a real problem or ethnic panic." After considerable research, he regretfully concluded that "a lethal anti-Semitism is abroad in the world, and its epicenter is in Islam." Iran and especially Saudi Arabia bear particular responsibility for nurturing virulent, genocidal hatred of "evil Jews" in their media, textbooks, and mosques, and for exporting this ubiquitous anti-Semitism to other Muslim countries and communities around the globe.

The new anti-Semitism in Europe, however, springs not only from the large, alienated Muslim populations there. Though "the right-wing brand of anti-Semitism is in eclipse," the left-wing version is enjoying a renaissance. Contemporary European progressives are usually careful to speak in code about "Zionists" and "neoconservatives" rather than Jews, Schoenfeld noted, but their extreme and unfounded charges against Israel make it clear that they have become "agents of the most reactionary aspects of the European past." Even the United States, which continues to show considerable immunity to this disease, mirrors some of its symptoms on college campuses, inside prisons, and among young American Muslims subject to the propaganda of Islamic day schools. Here and in Europe, moreover, blatant instances of anti-Semitism are being denied or ignored, and "more benign forms are becoming acceptable."

Fradkin moderated the question-and-answer period. Among those attending the seminar, which was taped and subsequently broadcast by C-SPAN, were Liz Chapman of Senator Rick Santorum’s office, Alan Cooperman of the Washington Post, Lloyd Eby of The World and I, Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Eugene Fisher of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Jody Hassett of ABC News, Nancy Hewett of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, Max Kampelman of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, Carl Mairson of National Geographic, Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Steven Menashi of the Hoover Institution, Azar Nafisi of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Leo Ribuffo of George Washington University, Ira Rifkin of Jerusalem Report, Susan Silverman of B’nai B’rith, Knox Thames of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Kenneth Weinstein of the Hudson Institute, and Alaa-Eldin Youssef of the Embassy of Egypt.