The most dangerous form of anti-Semitism today is that of radical Islam. Islamism cannot be dismissed as "extreme" because it has become increasingly mainstream. It directly threatens 5.3m Jews in Israel with annihilation. It is a danger to Europe, to America, to the whole world. The usual educational and political methods will not work because Islamist anti-Semitism is tied in to jihad (holy war), international terrorist networks and global ambitions. Petro-dollars, the cult of death and martyrdom and messianic fanatical fervour give it an especially dangerous edge. It is suicidal and genocidal at the same time. In Iran, radical Islamism is linked to preparing the next planned genocide (with Israel as a prime target) - in other words, Holocaust II while denying Holocaust I. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, could become an imitation Hitler with nuclear weapons unless Israel or the US and the "international community" stop him. But the Muslim Arab countries which need to worry about Iran as much as Israel does (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf States, Jordan) are also major purveyors of anti-Semitism - as are Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. The Iranian, Hamas and Hiz-bollah style of anti-Semitism can in my view be qualified as "exterminationist" or "eliminationist" in spirit. Already 20 years ago, in a book entitled Hitler's Apocalypse, I called this threat "apocalyptic" anti-Semitism and presented Khomeini's Iran as the heir of Nazi Germany, long before it became fashionable to do so. The popularity of European imports like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the widespread use of the Christian blood libel in the Muslim mass media, strengthen the feeling that here we are confronting a danger that is potentially, at least, on a par with that of the 1930s.

We are talking here about fully fledged conspiracy theories concerning Israel and the Jews, which are not amenable to rational discourse at all - hardcore anti-Semitism of the vilest kind. Spectacular series like the Egyptian production Horsemen without a Horse or Al-Shattat (a Syrian-Lebanese film series) are as bad, if not worse, in my judgment, than the Nazi anti-Semitic cinema. Much of the anti-Semitism of the Arab-Muslim world is indeed based on classic stereotypes - Jews as ruthless exploiters, cunning, selfish and cruel, always scheming and plotting, corrupt, evil and ultimately demonic. Instead of subverting Christendom, the Jews are now said to be undermining Islam, seeking to erode and destroy faith in Allah. Neither Israel nor the West does enough to expose this vicious anti-Semitism in which Jews (and, of course, Israelis) are reduced to little more than a diabolical abstraction - the source of all the world's troubles. This is not merely the "normal" anti-Semitism based on ethnic prejudice or religious and social discrimination. This is an ideologically grounded dehumanisation and demonisation - phenomena which we know can lead to genocide. Israel is the prime target for this scapegoating not for its policies but because of its existence as such. Jewish self-determination in the form of a national state in Zion is treated by its Arab and leftwing enemies as a total heresy. Though the conflict with the Palestinians was originally national, territorial, political, it has now developed a traditional religious twist that makes it much more dangerous. You cannot compromise with that, you cannot finesse it. One has to confront the intransigent enemies of human freedom by exposing the ugliness and nihilism of this Islamo-fascist ideology. There is simply no option of running away from it.