We live in a world in which the contagion of anti-Semitism is spreading once again. Indeed, the profusion of hostility to Israel is the proof that hatred of Jews is now quite alright, thank you. But, whatever individual and isolated wrongs Israel commits, there are comparisons to be drawn. And the comparisons are to the Arab states and to Palestinian Arab society, in which oppression has flourished since the early years of the last century. And has not stopped flourishing yet.

There must be a certain frisson that attaches to the loathing of Jews and of Israel by the chic folk who express it and cotton to it, like those who carried around Mao’s “Little Red Book” in a previous generation or wore a Che Guevara sweatshirt long after everyone knew he was a murderer. In the last few months and around the Cannes movie festival season, the world was treated to notable outbursts of malignance targeting the Jewish people and its polity. From the first generation of the new cinema to its most recent fashionable eminence came declarations of revulsion against the nation designated for hate: the first from Jean-Luc Godard and the last from Lars von Trier. At just about the same time, the idolized Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis pronounced his wisdom: “Everything that happens in the world today has to do with the Zionists,” including the Greek financial catastrophe. And, of course, John Galliano, poor John Galliano who worked in the schmata trade. This is actually something of an epidemic. In Europe, the epidemic has also infected both the political and journalistic congregations—although in somewhat, but only somewhat, less hateful language. Western Europe does not especially like Jews or Israelis, but it also doesn’t want Arabs or Muslims as neighbors.

America is not alone in the world in its friendship for Israel or in its historical hospitality to Jews. Already, in the days of the early Jewish migration to the United States, the new arrivals grasped that this was di goldene medinah, the golden country. The American people are allies of the state of Israel, however much its prime minister irritates Barack Obama. More to the point: The relationship between America and Israel is about historic and strategic ties, not about whether Obama is offended by Bibi’s rhetorical style. But why is he so offended? Is he as offended by President Chavez of Venezuela?

Right-wing anti-Semitism in the country is now fundamentally a bad memory. Yes, of course, Pat Buchanan! And who else? But left-wing anti-Semitism is now an advancing reality, one that traces its past to the scheissjuden of Karl Marx. Still, essential anti-Semitism is hard to express except in jokes about the garish Jewish rich, which itself is an expiring phenomenon. The timorous Jew no longer exists: He has been replaced by the skilled and defiant Israeli soldier. Perhaps because of this soldier, Israel has become the vehicle for anti-Semitism as well as its target. Some feel this soldier is more than a bit uppity, reversing the sacred cerebral role of the Jew in history. (You can tell that to the Jewish Nobelists and to the scientists and scientific entrepreneurs who have made Israel the most fertile intellectual soil in the world, maybe excluding California.)

NOT EVERYONE ON the left who is bothered by this is an anti-Semite. Many are simply Jews who cannot reconcile themselves to the notion of a strong Israel. Consider Roger Cohen, the International Herald Tribune columnist, who told us about the happy state of the Jews of Iran and who virtually non-stop tells us about the sins of the Jewish state, almost like I do about its virtues. He has also told us, poor man, that he was called a “Yid” at Westminster, “one of Britain’s top private schools, an inspiring place hard by Westminster Abbey,” and suffered other minor indignities that American Jews ordinarily do not. Anyway, he now fits in quite comfily, and, when he writes about Israel, he follows the model of The Guardian, which is known to, well, sort of improvise. He doesn’t much appear in The New York Times, the IHT’s blood relative. But this is hardly because the Times editors don’t like his opinions, like the ones they turned down when Richard Goldstone wrote about the colossal errors of his own report. The judge’s confession was subsequently published by The Washington Post.