WORLD VIEW/Paul Gillespie: 'The whole world is against us'. A popular song in Israel since the 1970s, this phrase has taken on a much more political meaning recently.
International criticism of the Yassin assassination has reinforced it.
"Europe against Israel" was the banner headline on a feature in the country's most popular newspaper, Maariv, last week. It echoes a widespread assumption that Europeans are no longer sympathetic to the Jewish state under the influence of a "new anti-Semitism" dressed up as anti-Zionist hostility to Sharon's government.
Just as Israelis must learn to distinguish between fair criticism of their government's policies and paranoia about anti-Semitism, so must Europeans learn not to cross the line between such criticism and hatred of the Jewish people. This was the theme of a seminar last weekend in Tel Aviv University between European and Israeli journalists examining bias in their media.
Examples were shown of the swastika and the cross in Italian and Spanish papers linking them to Sharon's behaviour, which Israelis rightly regard as anti-Semitic. We had a vigorous discussion about whether it is fair to conflate anti-Sharonism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, as do many Israeli critics of European media.
A linked question is whether there has been a great increase in European anti-Jewish feeling. That there has is widely reported in Israel and the United States, based on a rise in violent attacks on synagogues and other Jewish targets in 2000 and 2002 in France and other EU states. They have since decreased; almost all the perpetrators were young, poor and unemployed Muslims reacting to events in the occupied territories.
Surveys by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and other pollsters show low and stable levels of anti-Semitic attitudes in most EU states (lower than in the US) and higher levels of anti-Muslim feeling. This is no cause for complacency, since historical amnesia on both left and right has affected sensitivities about older European anti-judaism. But in Europe highly-educated people are the most likely to consider Israel a threat to world peace, yet the least likely to be anti-Semitic.
Many centre-left Israelis are bewildered by the sharp increase of criticism from the same constituency in Europe, having previously relied on its sympathy. They believe European media criticise Israel far more than states which behave much worse. Disproportionate attention is related to growing EU reliance on Middle East oil and a desire to appease Muslim minorities.
Together with their pessimism about reaching a peace agreement after the second intifada that followed the breakdown of the Clinton-Barak-Arafat talks in 2000, it has encouraged the conviction that Palestinian terrorism is directed against the very existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.
A headline in the Guardian in 2001 on an article by a Muslim journalist was considered anti-Semitic because it said "Israel simply has no right to exist"; even though this contradicts the paper's editorial policy, was balanced by many other articles in a special report on Israel and the Middle East and elsewhere, and expressed a common view in Britain's Muslim community.
One participant suggested that if the headline had read "Israel simply has no right to exist as a Jewish state" it would not have been as objectionable, because it would not carry a subliminal existential threat to the Jewish people.
The article itself did not say this, but argued that a state based on a biblical claim to legitimacy is unwarranted and concluded: "However, take away the biblical right and suddenly mutual co-existence, even a one-state solution, doesn't seem that far-fetched ... Jews will continue to live in the Holy Land - as per its promise - as equals alongside its other rightful inhabitants".
This goes to the heart of the matter. As Shimon Peres put it in January, "Between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river there are now 5.1 million Jews and 4.9 million non-Jews. Will they vanish in thin air? Will they disappear? Are you planning a transfer?" he asked Sharon.
Palestinians will soon outnumber Jews there. After 1.2 million Russian Jews came to Israel during the last decade there is little prospect of a similar flow from the other 8-9 million-strong world Jewry.
These demographics point to three possible political outcomes. A negotiated two-state agreement as foreseen by the current international road map would separate the two peoples and maintain the special Jewish nature of the Israeli state. This is still supported by most Israelis who are prepared to withdraw to 1967 lines and dismantle settlements in the West Bank and Gaza to achieve it. But has not Yassin's death killed the road map?
Or, secondly, Sharon's unilateral policy would maintain the occupation and hold open the possibility of a transfer, as many in his coalition believe and some openly advocate.
The third possibility - one binational state, formerly taboo - has been attracting much more attention. It is a minority position on both sides, but based on increasingly realistic premises. Its advocates believe a two-state solution is now impracticable, politically and demographically.
Zionism's central claim that the Jewish people are a nation entitled to their own state is anachronistic and cannot be democratically sustained. Israeli politics is one thing, Jewry another. A binational state would allow reconciliation from a position of strength for the existing Jewish community in Israel.
Is it anti-Semitic to deny the right to a Jewish state? Much Israeli criticism of European media assumes so. And what of Sharon? The French sociologist Edgar Morin believes he is orchestrating an "infernal dialectic" to link anti-Semitism, anti-judaism and anti-Israelism by relentless pressure on Palestinians, demanding solidarity from world Jewry and demonising Europe.
An alternative account of what is going on was set out by the Israeli writer Akiva Eldar in Haaretz: "It is much easier to claim the entire world is against us than to admit that the state of Israel, which rose as a refuge and source of pride for Jews ... has become a genuine source of danger and a source of shameful embarrassment to Jews who choose to live outside its borders."