How and at what point do isolated events start to form a pattern? Hold that thought as you consider the following examples.

On August 18, the Guardian ran a commentary by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek which argued that Israel was attempting to eradicate Palestinians from the West Bank. In a clearly calculated attempt to Nazify the Jewish state, the writer used, and the Guardian editorial team allowed, the word “Palestinian-frei” — a blatant inversion of the Nazi term Judenfrei.

In the same week, Sweden’s top-selling newspaper, Aftonbladet, ran a two-page spread in its “culture” section alleging that soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces routinely kill Palestinian children and harvest their bodily organs for sale on the black market. The allegations were juxtaposed with reports of an American Jew who had been arrested on charges of trafficking a human kidney.

Later in August, Virgin boss Richard Branson visited Israel and chided his hosts in the following manner: “After the Second World War,” he said, “the world had enormous sympathy for the Jewish people. Over a number of decades, that sympathy has been lost.” Last week in Spain, the newspaper El Mundo hosted Holocaust-denier David Irving as part of a series of interviews with “experts” on the Second World War.

Again, how and at what point do isolated events start to form a pattern? Four egregious instances in as many weeks may not make the grade for some. So, in my recently published book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s problem with Israel, I have included dozens of such examples from the past 10 years to prove a point that I do not believe can now sensibly be denied. Vigorous and unremitting hostility to Israel has become part of mainstream discourse right across western Europe. Israel has become a pariah. Why?

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A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, by Robin Shepherd, has now been published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Readers can purchase the book at the link to Amazon at the bottom of this article.

Every author wants his work to be read as widely as possible. So, I make no apology for a rather blatant piece of self-promotion here on my blog!

No country in the world has attracted as much censure and vilification in Europe in recent years as Israel. It seems to me that a more reasonable state of affairs will continue to elude us until we truly understand why this has happened.

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A new opinion poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for The Israel Project has shown a sharp rise in support for Israel in the United States. The poll also showed an extraordinary level of support for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and for many key policies endorsed by his party, Likud.

The poll is highly significant since the Obama administration is believed to be on the verge of announcing a new strategy for peace in the Middle East.

Among the most striking findings of the survey are the following:

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Given that Norway’s most notable contribution to 20th century history was to give the world a new word for cowardice and treachery, reports that the country’s massive $400 billion sovereign wealth fund — the second largest such fund in the world — has been banned by the Norwegian government from owning shares in an Israeli arms company would not usually raise eyebrows.

But at a time of increasing hysteria against the Jewish state the move from the country that gave us “Quisling cowardice” — after wartime collaborationist leader Vidkun Quisling — may set an important precedent for the wider boycott movement across Europe. According to the international wire services, the fund was instructed to divest from Israel’s Elbit Systems because it provides surveillance equipment for the security barrier which has prevented countless suicide bombings emanating from the West Bank.

“We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law,” Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen was quoted by Reuters as saying.

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David Irving, Europe’s most prominent Holocaust denier, is fond of arguing that time is on his side. “All that interests me now,” he said on his website in August, “is the question, whose books will scholars be using in a hundred years’ time — mine, or those of the conformist historians like Sir Ian Kershaw and Sir Martin Gilbert?”

But why wait a hundred years? On Saturday this week, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo is set to run an interview with Irving as part of a series of stories with “experts” for the 70th anniversray of the start of World War II. Irving, always keen to portray himself as a kind of hunted hero, gleefully reports on the controversy that the article has aroused in Israel with a headline in his online newsletter saying: “Israel’s Ambassador to Spain pleads wth Madrid’s leading daily newspaper El Mundo not to publish their major interview with British Historian David Irving.” (My italics)

It is only a matter of weeks since Sweden’s top selling newspaper Aftonbladet published a two-page spread of its own alleging that American Jews and Israeli soldiers were involved in a conspiracy to harvest the bodily organs of Palestinian children and sell them on the international black market. Is there something in the air?

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