The objective is not to help solve an intractable national conflict (made even more difficult by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism) but to demonize Israel as the embodiment of ultimate “racist evil” – an accusation designed to remove any moral grounds for its existence.
Those engaged in delegitimization initiatives – whether Iran, the Palestinians, Arab states, left-wing militants or members of Western academic elites – are engaged in propaganda and politicide, not the pursuit of truth.
And while academics, activists and world leaders attempt to combat this evil, tenaciously pursuing the truth and trying to figure out if and how we can win the war against those who delegitimize Israel (as Canadian MP Cotler and his fellow panelists will later this month in Jerusalem at the Israeli Presidential Conference), I believe the current success in defaming Israel is but a Pyrrhic victory.
Like the repressive tyrannies and benighted theocracies in the Muslim Middle East, which are slowly crumbling before our eyes, their days are numbered. We will still be here after they are long gone.
Prof. Robert S. Wistrich is the director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (SICSA) and the author of “A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad” (Random House, 2010).