"New Anti-Semitism" in the Bay Area

The SF Chronicle usually skews so far left it makes the New York Times look like Forbes, but today it did a good job of straight reporting on a controversial issue--the resurgent of repackaged Jew-hatred in the Bay Area. They don't mention the 2002 SFSU incident that opened a lot of eyes to what was going on, but here's an incident I hadn't heard before:

A letter sent by more than 50 shoppers to the San Francisco co-op Rainbow Grocery has been labeled as "new anti-Semitism" because it equated Gaza with concentration camps and the Israeli government with South Africa's apartheid regimes. There were also accusations that Israel supporters "threatened to poison the bulk bins" at the store to protest an attempt by shoppers to boycott Israeli-made goods in 2003.

A google search for "poison the bulk bins" suggests these accusations were first aired in that open letter discussed in the Chronicle article. It sounds like a textbook example of the old anti-Semitism: these moonbats have conjured up a conspiracy of shady Jews skulking around, poisoning their groceries.

But amidst all this ill-will in the Bay Area, we also see a bright spot: the Presbyterian Church's movement to divest itself from Israel was blocked by a preacher from San Jose:

The Rev. Rebecca Kuiken, a San Jose resident, led the successful effort to stop the church's national divestment effort. She believes divestment and the church's allegations were blatantly anti-Semitic, in part because they didn't address the roles of terrorism and neighboring nations in Israel's history.

"It places the spotlight of blame and evil on Israel alone in ways that distort the many interconnecting and systemic injustices and issues of the international community," said Kuiken, 50, the former pastor at Stone Church of Willow Glen in San Jose. "It becomes one of the ways that anti-Semitism is expressed, when Israel is demonized and set apart."

I'm just glad to see this issue being discussed in the Chronicle instead of ignored. There was an anti-war rally in SF today; maybe the Zombie will offer us some more photographic fodder for the discussion.