BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Durban II mixes the same old Israel-bashing with new attacks on free speech. One of Colin Powell's best moves as Secretary of State was to pull out of the 2001 United Nations Durban confab against racism once it became an anti-Semitic rant. One of the best moves the new U.S. administration and Europe could make is to stay away from the follow-up meeting altogether. "Durban II," planned for April in Geneva, promises to be an encore of the same old Israel-bashing. The draft declaration says Israel's policy toward the Palestinians amounts to no less than "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security." We'll spare you the rest of the diatribe. Israel will be the conference's main object of obsession, but it's not the only target. The draft declaration also goes after the West's freedom of speech and antiterror laws under the guise of protecting religion -- read: Isl...

Vilifying Jews By Ruthie Blum Likening anti-Semitism to pollution, Manfred Gerstenfeld makes a distinction between that "which comes out of a chimney and spreads over a huge area," and that "which comes from the exhaust pipes of millions of cars, each one contributing its little bit." The former, he says, was characteristic of the Nazi era - with its "boss," Adolf Hitler, as the central smokestack the world over. The latter, he claims, describes today's post-modern form of the phenomenon: global, but fragmented, with no single leader or source - and primarily aimed at the Jewish state. The academic area Gerstenfeld - chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) - has spent the last few years researching is one he feels has been given short shrift precisely among those most immediately and directly threatened by it. It is what he sees as the gradual mushrooming of anti-Israel bias on campuses across the world, culmi...