What is undisputed is that, in a dramatic fashion, the Middle East conflict has taken bitter root in European soil. Nowhere are feelings running higher than in France and Germany, home to the continent's largest concentrations of Muslims (4.5 and 3.2 million, respectively) and Jews (600,000 and 100,000). If it is hard for Americans to appreciate how traumatic the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become for Judeo-Christian Europe and the poorly integrated Muslim immigrants in its midst, consider that in both the French and German languages it is referred to not as the "Middle" but the "Near" East. For all that, and the continuing anti-Jewish violence in a number of European states, Europeans still view the conflict with a certain balance.

Although the European media are more willing than the U.S. media to criticize Israel (a phenomenon described as "pro-Palestinian bias" by the American Jewish Committee, which commissioned a scientific analysis of German reporting on the Mideast in 2002), nearly half of Europeans have not chosen sides. The ADL poll also shows that while Europeans feel more sympathy for the Palestinians than for the Israelis, even greater numbers feel sympathy for neither. The sharp spike in anti-Semitic acts and speech in 2002 and 2003 has by now been fairly conclusively laid to two causes: First, a minority of angry, poorly integrated Muslim immigrants, especially in France, are lashing out at the nearest Jewish targets they can find; and second, classic extremist right-wingers, are capitalizing on a gradual loosening of post-Holocaust taboos on anti-Jewish hate speech, nearly 60 years after World War II.

This is not to minimize the severity of the outbreak: Even today, the Conseil Répresentatif des Institutions Juives de France, the Jewish umbrella organization, tracks attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools and individuals daily on its Web site, as the NAACP once hung black flags outside its office each time an African-American was lynched. There has been "a real explosion of anti-Semitic hate" in France, which continues to be strong to this day, French parliamentarian Pierre Lellouche told OSCE ministers. Simone Weil, a Bergen-Belsen survivor and revered former French minister, said, "It is becoming more and more difficult to be Jewish in France, to have a Jewish name, or even wear a pendant with a Jewish symbol."

Sharp increases in anti-Semitic acts have also been recorded in Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain in the past two years, according to the EU Monitoring Centre's revised report published in late March. Political cartoons in both Europe and the United States have frequently compared Israeli occupation to Nazi genocide, using what researchers call "classic" anti-Semitic imagery similar to that used by the Third Reich. In Germany, where neo-Nazis have a history of criminal acts against Jewish sites, resurgent anti-Semitism has appeared mainly as a tide of threatening letters, not attacks on property (although the number of extremely violent personal attacks has also risen). This relative calm is due to many factors, including a secular tradition among Turks -- Germany's largest immigrant group -- anti-fascist youth leagues, and a political "immune system" that continues to reject even the slightest public anti-Semitic utterance. Even so, an upsurge in German anti-Semitic attitudes is "detectable," for the first time in 50 years, says Bergmann, the anti-Semitism researcher. Still, he insists, the problem is, for the moment "not significant."

It is striking that many Europeans are quick to caution against easy parallels between Nazi Germany and what is happening today. Many, including Weil, say that to do so is to grievously insult the memory of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. European leaders, anxious not to stigmatize the entire Muslim community, have urged the American Jewish community not to panic, but this cautious approach has led the ADL and American Jewish Committee, among others, to accuse Europe of "denial" or "official indifference." As recently as January, a host of seasoned researchers in the field convened by the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, a German Green Party think tank, took the view that such anti-Semitic outbreaks are cyclical and thus, while deplorable, no cause for undue alarm. Most researchers concur that anti-Semitism is a constant phenomenon over time, manifesting in 15 to 20 percent of most populations.

What is new about the current outbreak is Israel. It is clear, says Brian Klug, a senior fellow at Oxford and a founding member of Britain's Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights, that "the perpetrators of the anti-Jewish attacks in France were animated by political outrage, not bigotry." What is also new is that in the violent and deadlocked situation in the Middle East, and in their fury against Israeli government policy in the occupied territories, parts of the European left and the wider pro-Palestinian movement -- from moderates to radical Islamists to the German neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), which has pledged fealty to Palestine -- have momentarily found common cause.

But is it therefore fair to say that the left's strident criticism of Israel necessarily leads to anti-Jewish violence? Or even, as France's Jewish leader Roger Cukierman maintains, that the anti-globalization movement -- in particular its revolutionary, Trotskyist elements -- has entered an unholy alliance with radical Islam and ultra-nationalism, espousing anti-Jewish hate in a new coalition of the "red, green and brown"?

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