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This is cross-posted by Richard, at his blog: Essays on the Arab Israeli Conflict

A disturbing trend has been developing over the past few years. One in which vile anti-Semitic rhetoric can be found coursing through the comments section of articles on Israel or Jewish subjects in almost any mainstream media publication.

I first noticed the trend in the blog section of the British publication the Guardian UK. There the Guardian seems to have made it one of its main objectives to delegitimize the existence of Israel, and subsequently demonizes anybody that dares to support Israel. Its modus operandi is the application of the new anti-Semitism, which can be identified by two primary factors:

1. It projects traditional anti-Semitic tropes onto Israel (the Jew of the world), that insinuate that they magically control the media or politicians (in Israel’s case, control the American government), portray them as Nazis, or as being driven solely by greed or their hunger for money
2. The coverage and criticism of Israel is extremely disproportionate to that of other nations in similar situations or just as newsworthy for other reasons

For a separate blog post on this subject, see Israel, Europe and the New Anti-Semitism

For the most part, the Guardian was the only mainstream publication that took such bold steps to use the new anti-Semitism in mainstream blogs. It did not, however, allow its journalists to use it in regular articles, thereby being able to claim that the opinions expressed in the blog section known as Comment is Free were not necessarily their own, while still being able to promote their political agenda. The comments section of these blogs are a cesspool of barely veiled anti-Semitic sentiment. And the Guardian does little to discourage this discourse. It was so bad that a group of activists set up a monitoring website to document the anti-Semitic comments and the Guardian’s lack of actions to stop it, known as CiF Watch.

Over the course of the past two years, the phenomenon of anti-Semitic discourse in the comments sections of articles in mainstream publications has grown dramatically. All of the sudden one can find them in places like the New York Times, CNN, even the Wall Street Journal. Another location which this phenomenon has become particularly notable is the Huffington Post. It got so bad there that another activist setup a website to expose this activity in the blog The Brothers of Judea. Previously known as The Huffington Post Monitor. [Editor's note: the new site is actually called Huffington Post Monitor, not the other way around]

One of the driving questions has been why would all of these seemingly respectable mainstream publications tolerate openly anti-Semitic dialogue in their comments section. They all too often seem willing to allow it to take place unmoderated. I personally experienced this on numerous occasions in the Huffington Post. One in which the word “Zionist” was used by one of the moderators as an insult. Which is discussed in a piece I wrote titled Zionist as a Racial Slur.

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