The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews.

Old tropes, such as Jews as well-poisoners or as conspiratorial power brokers, have been transformed into Jews as inoculators of AIDS in the Arab world or contaminators of Palestinian water sources or manipulators of American foreign policy. The spread of these calumnies has been especially rapid in the Muslim world, but Europeans, not only those within Muslim communities, have been susceptible to the virus. As Prof. Rosenfeld points out, “those who denounce it [Israel] as an outlaw … are found on both the left and the right, among the educated elites as well as the uneducated classes, and among Christians as well as Muslims.” A “conflation of interests” among these divergent groups has led to a well-documented spike in violence against Jews on streets of European cities as well as a parallel rise in verbal aggression—whether it be tarring Israel as a Nazi state or its prime minister as a “terrorist” and a “war criminal.”

The infamous Muhammad cartoons--whose publication so inflamed the Muslim world--were initially commissioned by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Postem for the purpose of focusing attention on a climate of fear in Europe that is characterized by the practice of self-censorship as a way to appease sensitive Muslims. Contrary to the claims of Muslim protestors, they were not examples of a European tendency to vilify Islam. The regular appearance of anti-Semitic cartoons in several European newspapers is shining light on the Continent’s true prejudice: a deep hatred of Jews and Israel.

In working-class Parisian suburbs like this one, heavily populated by North African immigrants, the word "Jew" is now a standard epithet. It appears in graffiti on middle school walls, neighborhood playgrounds and on the tongues of the young.

It is impossible to deny the reason for such disproportional empathy with the Palestinians. Through history, each group that has blamed the Jews has been utterly convinced that its own unique reason for doing so is fair and obvious. Surely, they say, the Jews would recognize they are at fault if only they'd stop crying "Anti-semitism!"

It is common knowledge that anti-Semitism in Western Europe has been on the rise for the last five years.