Mark Steyn makes an absolutely spot-on observation in his latest essay for Maclean's, connecting modern anti-Semitism with its pre-World War II predecessor. For centuries, Steyn writes, Jews in Europe were stereotyped as "sinister rootless cosmopolitan types unbound by allegiance to whichever polity they happened to be residing in":

So, after the Second World War, the ones who were left became a more or less conventional nation state, and now they're hated for that. But all the hoo-ha about Holocaust denial (and granted, from President Ahmadinejad to Mel Gibson's dad, there's a lot of it about) has obscured the fact that the world has re-embraced, with little objection, an older form of anti-Semitism. Israel is, in effect, subject to a geopolitical version of the same conditions endured by Lazarus the Jew in Anthony Hope's Strelsau. The Zionist Entity is for the moment permitted to remain in business but, like Aaron Lazarus, it's not entitled to the enforceable property rights of every other nation state. No other country -- not Canada, not Slovenia, not Thailand -- would be expected to forego the traditional rights of nations subjected to kidnappings of its citizens, random rocket attacks into residential areas, and other infringements of its sovereignty.

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These are dark times for the world: we are on the brink of the nuclearization of ancient pathologies. It's a very strange feeling to read 19th-century novels and travelogues and recognize the old psychoses currently re-emerging in even more preposterous forms. I'm a bit behind in responding to the gazillion Jews-are-to-blame-for-everything emails, but when I do I usually say I take a relaxed view of hatred but take my advice and don't get over-invested in it. There's a very sharp short book by Andrew Roberts called Hitler And Churchill: Secrets of Leadership and, as you go through it, you realize that the key difference between the two is that the prime minister had a very shrewd understanding of what the Führer was like and the Führer had absolutely no clue about the prime minister. To Hitler, Churchill was "that puppet of Jewry": he didn't offer that as a bit of rhetorical red meat for the Saturday-night Nuremberg crowd, but as a serious analysis in the privacy of his study. That's the problem with full-blown Jew-hatred: it's not just a toxic frosting on what may otherwise be a perfectly agreeable cake, so much as a reliable indicator that your entire worldview has been infected. Which is why it doesn't usually work out so well for the Jew-haters. "I have a premonition that will not leave me," wrote Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, after the '67 war. "As it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."

As with anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism defies a clear, objective definition. It must always be explored, pondered and reflected upon, but it is too protean to pin down in the sense of trying to state exactly where it stops and starts. The frequently-heard and increasingly tiresome argument about whether criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic or not almost always misses the point deftly made here by Mr. Steyn. The Arab world has done a stupendous job in persuading most of Europe and much of North America that the grand reconciliation between the West and the Islamic world hinges upon “settling” their dispute with Israel, and that such a resolution will keep us all safe and prosperous. As most of them don’t even bother to hide that they mean never recognizing Israel’s legitimacy and ultimately occupying or even destroying it, is it not a fair question to ask why such irrationality continuously falls on so many receptive ears?