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Manfred Gerstenfeld

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is a senior research associate at the BESA Center and a former chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He specializes in Israeli-Western European relations, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and is the author of “The War of a Million Cuts.”

The strengths and weaknesses of the Jewish state are hard to assess. It has a great deal of both hard and soft power, but underperforms diplomatically when it comes to combating anti-Israel propaganda.
The best-known and most virulent full-time anti-Semite in the United States is Louis Farrakhan, the longtime leader of the Nation of Islam.
For anyone curious to see how ugly ultra-liberalism can get, Sweden is the ideal case study. The deep presence of anti-Semitism reveals that the country’s image as a near perfect liberal democracy is false.
For the French government, the country’s economic problems are far bigger than issues of anti-Semitism. Both seem insolvable.
Denmark’s largest bank, Danske Bank, has admitted that its Estonian banking subsidiary has been involved in what is probably the largest dirty money-laundering scandal in Europe’s history.
Iceland’s attitude towards Jews, both recently and in the past, can be described as wretched. It’s difficult to find in Iceland’s history more than one substantial occasion when it played a positive role for Israel.
The most extreme comments come disproportionately from Muslims, a subject that is taboo for the British media.