We also need to reconsider certain conventional wisdoms in analysing the current wave of anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel in the West. For decades Jewish communities saw the traditional enemy as being on the Right - whether conservative, nationalist, Fascist, racist or Nazi. This was always an oversimplification since the conservative Right has often been a powerful barrier against Fascism. The neo-Nazi enemy has not yet disappeared but it has been considerably weakened and is often preoccupied with other (non-Jewish) targets. The populist Right is a more serious potential source of anti-Semitism that needs to be carefully watched - especially in the area of Holocaust denial and general xenophobic violence. But it lacks real respectability in the mainstream media. On the other hand, anti-Zionist anti-Semitism has for several decades enjoyed far more legitimacy and has grown at an alarming pace. Its rhetoric is "anti-racist" and it views Israel, and the Jews who support it, as an obstacle to Humanity (with a capital H), to the realisation of universal ideals and to the brotherhood of man. This liberal, humanist and leftist anti-Zionism is in love with all "others" - except the "Jewish other". In its eyes, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and third world immigrants can do no wrong. The only "good Jews" in this supposedly humanist discourse are usually dead Jews - the martyred Jews of the Holocaust - or else those who ostentatiously denounce Israel. With such "friends", who needs enemies?

Then there is the phenomenon of "Chavismo" - the populist, authoritarian and Third Worldist radicalism exhibited by Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez. Sitting on the largest oil reserves in the Western hemisphere, allied to Iran, as well as being an icon for Hizbollah and other Islamist groups, Chávez has developed an obsessive anti-Semitism alongside his extreme anti--Americanism. Anti-Semitic statements have emerged with increasing frequency in the Venezuelan media in recent years, casting aspersions on the Jewish community's "dual allegiances" and on "Semitic banks" and denouncing "Zionist-Nazi" genocide against the Palestinians. Graffiti branding Jews as "child murderers" and "dogs" have increasingly appeared on synagogues and communal buildings. Worse still, Venezuelan government agents have raided the local Hebraica community school in Caracas twice in recent years, looking for weapons and signs of subversive activity.