What I've been reading in links: Anti-Semitism and veiled Jew Hatred

As I listened to the Pope's speech in Jerusalem, hearing him come out strongly against antisemitism, I wonder why the pretty Latinate phrase rolls so much more smoothly than what it actually means: Jew hatred. Hating Jews. Really, antisemites don't very much care about other Semites and in fact, many of them are of Semitic peoples. And antisemites don't turn around and have flat or positive feelings towards African Jews, European Jews, Latin Jews. They hate us all. But it sounds so much prettier in the Latin, doesn't it? The Pope sounded so sincere, so decent: How can he not understand how his actions work so strongly against what his stated beliefs are?

Here's a periodic purge of some of the reasons why my children need to be under police guard in Europe, and why I sometimes just feel overwhelmed. I leave these links open in my browser until I feel that I can handle them.

This is the way that I feel all the time. And I feel the bubble shrinking.

Philip Pullman: We are living in a little bubble of time. It might not last much longer, but it is a bubble of time that is still warmed by background radiation from the Enlightenment. We are very fortunate to live in a time and place where you don't get dismembered for having the wrong political convictions, and we should be thoroughly grateful for it every day of our lives.

A fellow expat blogger asked some time ago why people who speak against Israel are considered antisemitic. She closed her comments and she did not respond to my e-mail, so I won't link her here. But here is a thorough understanding of how truly a lie it is to pretend that in most cases the two do not go together and how to tell when being against the actions of a country are not simply code for being a Jew hater. I have no respect for those who pretend, falsely, not to see the real connections. I am afraid, in this real world, that pretending does not make things true.

"...so long as it's anti-Zionist, who cares whether it's anti-Semitic?..."