Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, Antizionism and Anti Normalization

Naya Lekht’s timeline—Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, and Antizionism—does a great job of tracking the history of Jew-hatred in the West.

But to fully understand how this hatred operates today, we must add the Arab world's specific contribution to this history: Anti-Normalization.

It began in the 1920s as a policy of the Arab League to reject the very idea of a Jewish state (Israel was declared in 1948). If antizionism is the belief that Israel shouldn't exist, anti-normalization is the policy designed to enforce it.

Here is how it works: It removes personal choice. In the Arab world, "anti-normalization" laws mean that even if a citizen wants to have coffee with an Israeli, the state and society will crush them for it.

Now, through the BDS movement, Qatari-born Omar Barghouti and his Ramallah-based network of terror-affiliated cousins are trying to import this exact 100-year-old Arab mechanism into the West. They are attempting to force Western universities, city councils, and cultural institutions to adopt strict, enforceable rules to exclude Israel—and anyone who supports it—from public life.

But here is the profound irony:
While the BDS movement is heavily funded by European tax money (look up NGO Monitor), the Arab world itself is breaking free from it. In recent years, several major Arab nations have defied the OIC and officially broken the anti-normalization taboo, signing historic peace and normalization agreements with Israel—including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

A new Middle East is coming, one that will soon include Lebanon and Iran. It is a region finally choosing progress over anti-normalization.
The only question that remains now is: Will Europe ever normalize its relationship with Israel?