Instead of worrying about Islamist terrorism, there are racists in Europe who want to crush Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. The scriptures tell us that this little nation would be the focus of world attention and the subject of increased persecution in these last days.

They all falsely claim to be “peaceful”, using “economic means” to correct “wrongs” in the Palestinian territories. However, they never seem to try to correct any of the wrongs of the corrupt, repressive governments of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, or even to advocate there for a free press, for the rule of law or for building a stable economy. Their true, racist motives are unmasked.

The pre- or post-1967 lines are only an alibi for these new Nazis. Many consider Israel in its entirety illegal, immoral, or both — even though Jews have lived on that land for 3,000 years — part of it is even called Judea. Their appetite for accusing Jews of having the audacity to “occupy” their own historical, Biblical land only reveals their collusion with the darkest lies of Islamic extremists, who are trying to destroy the indigenous Christian Copts in their native land of Egypt, and the indigenous Assyrian Christians whom we see being slaughtered throughout the Middle East. Should the French be accused of “occupying” Gaul? Just look at any map of “Palestine,” which blankets the entire state of Israel: to many Palestinians, all of Israel is a single giant settlement that has to be dismantled.

“In Nazi Germany,” noted Brendan O’Neill in the Wall Street Journal, “it was all the rage to make one’s town Judenfrei.”

“Now a new fashion is sweeping Europe: to make one’s town or city what we might call ‘Zionistfrei’ — free of the products and culture of the Jewish state. Across the Continent, cities and towns are declaring themselves ‘Israel-free zones,’ insulating their citizens from Israeli produce and culture. It has ugly echoes of what happened 70 years ago.”

The Nazis said “kauft nicht bei Juden“: do not buy from Jews. The slogan of these new racists is “kauft nicht beim Judenstaat“: do not buy from the Jewish State. The Nazis repeated “Geh nach Palästina, du Jud“: Go to Palestine, you Jew. Racists in Europe shout “Jews out of Palestine!”

Let us take a look at who they are. The city council of Leicester, for one, recently approved banning products “made in Israel.” Think of that: a city without Israeli products. This is not Nazi Germany in 1933; this is a British city under Labour leadership in 2016. Two Welsh councils, Swansea and Gwynedd, blocked commercial partnerships with Israeli companies. In Dublin, a well-known restaurant, Exchequer, decided not to use the Israeli products. The Irish town of Kinvara became “Israel-free”. In Spain, the town of Villanueva de Duero no longer distributes Israeli water in its public buildings. The French city of Lille froze an agreement with the Israeli town of Safed.

An early case of trying to destroy Israel through economic means occurred in 1980, when L’Oreal had bought the Helena Rubinstein cosmetics company. Arab regimes had threatened to truncate the lucrative relationships with the multinational companies if they did not cut ties with Israel. Instead of rejecting the blackmail, L’Oreal bowed to the blackmail. Today, this antisemitism is not led by either Arab states or Western states. France, for example, recently outlawed calls to single out Israel for boycotts. Today’s hate campaign and these Nazi policies are now largely led by universities, trade unions, businesses, and hypocritical so-called “human rights” groups, as well as other NGOs.

And, shamefully, churches. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), on August 11, 2016 called on the U.S. government to end all aid to Israel and embrace tactics to destroy the country by economic means. Last winter, the US Methodist Church also unchristianly divested from five Israeli banks.

They all falsely claim to be “peaceful”, using “economic means” to correct “wrongs” in the Palestinian territories. However, they never seem to try to correct any of the wrongs of the corrupt, repressive governments of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, or even to advocate there for a free press, for the rule of law, or for building a stable economy. Their true, racist motives are unmasked. They are simply coordinating with the violent strategy of Palestinians and Muslim fundamentalists in the West — those who have repeatedly refused to make peace with Israel for seven decades and have chosen terrorism instead.

Others in the world of academia who have approved these neo-Nazi measures include the British historian Catherine Hall and, disgracefully, the severely disabled Stephen Hawking, who is able to speak thanks only to an Israeli voice device.

This academic boycott campaign began when Oren Yiftachel, a scholar at the Ben Gurion University, had an academic paper rejected by the journal Political Geography. The rejection came with a note informing him that the magazine could not accept a submission from “Israel,” and his paper was returned unopened. The publishing house St. Jerome Manchester, specialising in translations, refused to send academic volumes to the Bar Ilan University in Israel. The British magazine, Dance Europe, refused to publish an article about the Israeli choreographer Sally Anne Friedland; Richard Seaford declined to review a book for the Israeli magazine, Antiquity Scripta Classica Israelica. A professor of pathology at Oxford University,Andrew Wilkie, rejected an application by Amit Duvshani, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University. Wilkie wrote in his rejection: “no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army.”

These new Nazis serve up, instead of an argument, untrue and deceptive slogans such as “apartheid state”, “occupation”, “repressive”, “violator of international law” (which Israel meticulously is not). Their goal, like that of the original Nazis, is to manipulate people, and instil in them bias and hate against Israel, and just behind this subterfuge, against the Jews.

extracts from article by Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.