JOEL KOTKIN: Anti-Semitism Isn’t Just for White Supremacists. It never was.

This was evident in 2020, when the ADL and many mainstream Jewish groups openly embraced the anti-Israel Black Lives Matter, even while CEO Jonathan Greenblatt acknowledged the hateful views of many of BLMs supporters. Greenblatt, like most Democrats, has genuflected towards Al Sharpton, a past dealer in anti-Semitic calumnies.

The third and perhaps the most disturbing face of antisemitism is neither left or right, but essentially black. This reflects the recrudescence of a dormant but persistent hostility that has characterized a century of relations between two prominent minority groups. African American communities, according to surveys, are the least admiring of Jews of all ethnic groups while many of their most prominent leaders—Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton—have all embraced, without much criticism, antisemitic tropes more recently adopted by such high-profile black celebrities as Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. . . .

American Jews, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, generally reserve their public concern and fear for the far right, who more closely resemble historic persecutors from Czarist Russia and the Nazis. But, contrary to the notions backed by the ADL and their claque in the mainstream media, Jews face an arguably bigger, if perhaps less lethal threat—at least in terms of politics, culture and education—from the Left. Two decades ago the famous Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld predicted that the main threat in the future would come from an alliance of Islamists and left-wing activists.

For many, the assault on Jews reflects a larger kulturkampf being waged against Western civilization; if Hitler saw the Jews as dangerous outsiders to European culture, the Left today blames them for being too influential in shaping continental values and ignoring Arab concerns. In Great Britain, for example, the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn embraced the virulently anti-Jewish Hamas and attended ceremonies laying wreaths at the graves of such heroes as the terrorist killers at the 1992 Munich games.

The Left’s antisemitism is less crude but rests on a wider base of political opinion. Today barely half of Europeans think Israel has a right to exist. The generally middle class Green Parties, which have emerged as big winners in Germany and across the continent, tend to support the BDS movement, with aims to demonize and eliminate the Jewish state. . . .

Despite media tropes to the contrary, a detailed survey from the University of Oslo found that in Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, and France, most antisemitic violence comes from Muslims, including recent immigrants. Similarly, a poll of European Jews found that most incidents of antisemitism came from either Muslims or from the left; barely 13 percent traced it to right-wingers. Violence against Jews is worst in places like the migrant dominated suburbs of Paris or Malmo in Sweden.

We see a similar pattern emerging in the United States. Far right antisemites tend to be alienated left-behinds with little institutional influence, but their leftist counterparts thrive in the comfy confines of college campuses, including Harvard, where “third world” oriented academics push “disinvestment” from Israel. Student groups at the publicly funded University of California, Berkeley School of Law recently voted to ban any speakers or participants who “support Zionism.” This prohibition is not specific to panels related to the question of Zionism; it excludes, presumably, any Jew who refuses to denounce Israel. Their candidates also find home in the fiercely anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America. Pitched merely as anti-Zionism, these same political warriors show their prejudice by targeting Israel and ignoring the depredations of far more repressive states as China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

This leftist antisemitism is now embedded in the Democratic caucus in Congress, largely in the progressive “squad.” Ilhan Omar’s pronouncements about Jews, about the power of money and their “dual loyalty,” have been tolerated by a party leadership intimidated by the rising Left.

That’s different because shut up.