Why do so many Holocaust survivors sense emerging anti-Jewish threats before seeing them? Because they know how supposedly "innocent" insinuations grow into accusations and that accusations can become discrimination and soon after legislation. It is then that hysteria is set loose. Survivors sound the alarm because they know what is at stake. By doing so they strengthen our democracies in ways that no other people can. We listen to the survivors so that we survive.

That we have cause to listen is clear, as the results of the first round of the French presidential elections demonstrate. But not only demagogues like Jean-Marie Le-Pen and Europe's other lumpen extreme rightists incite trouble.

Throughout the 20 ^th century people who regarded themselves as "intellectuals" often became fellow travelers of fascism or communism without joining political parties based on those ideologies. In the 21 ^st century - in the "chattering classes" linked to the mass media, to politics, government and universities - we encounter people who condemn Israel in language that reminds us of the fellow travelers of those fallen anti-democratic movements. These are not majority voices in the Western world - not yet, thankfully - but are powerful and influential minority ones.

Take the case of the French Ambassador to Britain. At a dinner party in London not long ago he described Israel as "that shitty little country." His vulgar comments are not particularly frightful. What is worrying is the response. He was not recalled by his government; Tony Blair's government did not request his recall; popular opinion treated the matter as merely another scandal. Indeed, the French press thought the ambassador a victim of Britain's tabloid press, not of his contemptible sentiments.

Sadly, the French ambassador to the Court of St. James has many allies among Europe's elites. But Ambassador Bernard did provide a service; he helped us to recognize how widespread this new anti-Jewishness is. As one columnist notably said, Israel has become "the object of hate that dare not speak its name."

But we must not only dare, we are obliged to speak. We must not be silent about the daily attacks in France against Jews and synagogues. It is a shame for all of Europe that many French Jews cannot send their children to school without worrying about their security. Anti-Semitic outrages are also reported elsewhere: in Berlin and London, in Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, and in parts of Eastern Europe.

We must not be silent about the fact that denial of the Holocaust is becoming routine; so too the parallels that anti-Semites/anti-Zionists draw between Israel and the Third Reich. We must "confront the new Nazi plague which is nesting in Israel," wrote a Syrian paper as Palestinian TV portrays Israeli soldiers as rapists and cold-blooded murderers. The Mufti of Jerusalem stated that "it's not my fault that Hitler hated the Jews, they hate them just about everywhere." One Friday sermon on Palestinian TV told Muslims "to have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where you are...kill them... and those Americans who are like them."

What we must remember about anti-Semitism is that, although it always starts with Jews, it never stops with Jews. Jew-hatred, if not contained, almost always develops into assaults on other groups and minorities and finally undermines democratic institutions and the rule of law. So the struggle against anti-Semitism is a task for Jews and non-Jews alike.

But it is now a more diffuse struggle than ever because an astonishing element in today's anti-Semitism is its flexibility. Although anti-Semitism never changes its goal - to attack Jews - it does change its face, its strategy, its rationalizations, even its vocabulary.

Once Jewish religion was the target. When Judaism did not surrender, Jews were expelled or killed. In the 19 ^th century, when race became an intoxicating theory, Jews were attacked for being an evil race. Today, with Israel a source of pride and protection for most Jews, Zionism is slandered as a racist ideology.

I do not equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. It is as legitimate to oppose certain Israeli policies and decisions as it is to scrutinize any nation. But anti-Zionism is becoming akin to anti-Semitism.

Sometimes anti-Zionists claim that they are not against Jews but are "only" against the Jewish state. But suppose someone said: "I am only against the existence of Great Britain, I am not anti-British!" Or if somebody told me that "I love Swedes, but Sweden should be abolished." You would not believe them. It is hard to love or respect a people and hate their state.

Yet people pretend that they can where Israel is concerned. In several UN agencies, Israel-bashing is routine. This demonization of the only democracy in the Middle East is a central part of the new anti-Jewishness. When Israel is described "as the enemy of all good and the repository of all that is evil," says Professor Irwin Cotler, a member of Canada's parliament, it becomes a "teaching of contempt" within the UN.

This constant singling out of one nation as humanity's enemy is in fact a campaign directed against the Jewish people. Indeed, many anti-Jewish outbursts in a number of countries are rooted in condemnations of Israel that exploit anti-Semitic terminology. Attacks on synagogues are often triggered by a defaming language about the Middle East.

Compared to previous anti-Jewish outbreaks, today's anti-Semitism is less an attack on individual Jews than an attack on the "collective Jew," the state of Israel. Such attacks, however, have started a chain reaction of assaults across Europe and Latin America on individual Jews and Jewish institutions.

In the past the most dangerous anti-Semites were those who sought to make the world Judenrein , free of Jews. Today the most dangerous anti-Semites are those who want to make the world Judenstaatrein , free of a Jewish state.