Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

A Note from the Editors: The Year in Hate
One of us (Baum) returned last month from the annual Association for
Psychological Science conference in Chicago. APS is the premier research
group for American psychology. Convened by JSA associate editor Florette
Cohen and JSA board member Lee Jussim, our panel was to present the
latest findings of American antisemitism research. The papers were fairly
well received, and the audience of professors and graduate students listened
quietly—quietly, that is, until the Q & A session began.
I think it is fair to say that while hundreds of other papers were
presented over the next few days, our panel members were the only ones to
have their work dismissed because of pro-Palestinian politics. In particular,
one professor asked the panel to “take it up a notch” (read: speak truth to
Jewish power) and began a litany of several baseless claims along the lines
of “Nothing really happens to Jews like lynching, so why bother researching
antisemitism?”
I quickly reminded him of the French schoolyard killings that occurred
two months before (see Manfred Gerstenfeld’s essay “The Toulouse
Murders” in this issue) and that the last recorded lynching in the United
States was during the 1960s, though no one would think of stopping racism
research. But the key concern on the audience’s mind was the next indictment
from a professor: Why study antisemitism if Israel is a perpetrator
racist nation like Serbia or South Africa?
I started to inquire how long he has held these perceptions, knowing
that for most Westerners, it has been about ten years with the start of the
Second Intifada and the Palestinian winning of the war of words. Terms
such as apartheid, perpetrator, Nazi were not uncommon descriptors of
Jewish Israelis in the Arab news media but had now transitioned to the
Western news media and championed by the left.
Occupied Territories Israel
Gaza W. Bank Total
Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces 4,633 1,840 6,473 69
Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians 4 46 50 3
Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians 39 215 254 500
Israeli security force personnel killed by Palestinians 105 147 252 90
Foreign citizens killed by Palestinians 11 7 18 40
Foreign citizens killed by Israeli security forces 6 6 12 0
Palestinians killed by Palestinians 535 134 669
Data from September 29, 2000, to April 30, 2012, http://old.btselem.org/statistics/english/
Casualties.asp.
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