Solomonia draws our attention to this screed by Joseph Massad in Al Ahram. Massad appears to have written the article in 2003; still, the views he expresses tell us a great deal about the character of anti-Zionism.

Sol makes wise observations about Massad’s “bizarre bigotry, including a repeat of his theory that it’s actually the Zionists (and not people like him who are particularly interested in erasing Israel — but nowhere else — from the map) who are the real anti-Semites.”

What triggered this rant from Massad, a Columbia University academic with scant regard for scholarship and a predilection for near-hysterical argumentation? This time, it’s the late French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre passed away in 1980, but Massad is firm that his legacy is the main reason why Palestinians receive such little sympathy from European leftist intellectuals.

Yes, you did read that correctly. Most of us bemoan the fixation so much of the European left has with the cause of Palestine, to the detriment of other pressing issues, but Massad wants more. Much more.

He wants European leftists - those that haven’t already done so, that is - to recognize that Zionism is racism, that Israel should be dissolved as apartheid South Africa was dissolved, that Jews have been transformed into antisemites, while Palestinians have become Jews.

These dreadful, hackneyed arguments have been around for more than half a century, ever since the Soviet Union decided that it would be a good idea to dress up antisemitism as anti-Zionism. But while the substance of Massad’s accusations could have been lifted from Pravda circa 1973, his theory of why things are as they are - or so he believes - is, to borrow Solomonia’s word, bizarre.

It’s all Sartre’s fault, you see. The “Sartrian (sic) legacy” means that European leftist thinkers perceive European Jews in the guise of Holocaust survivors, and not as they truly are: the colonizers of Palestine, the bearers of “racist colonial violence.”

The truth is actually a great deal more complicated. Anyone scanning the European press or European political journals can see how common the motifs of contemporary anti-Zionism have become. As Alan Johnson argued on the Guardian blog site today, even Perry Anderson, one of the more thoughtful and prolific Marxist intellectuals, has fallen for the Zionist Lobby interpretation of US foreign policy.

Massad’s narrative of victimhood obscures all of that. It also, incidentally, obscures the complexity of Sartre’s own position. Sartre’s views on Zionism were quite torn, particularly in his later years. He also was prone to glorifying anti-colonial violence in fiery language that would no doubt be very appealing to someone like Massad; just read his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth.”

The main point, however, is this: Massad is really a propagandist. He believes that by saying that Israel is an apartheid state often enough, people will start to believe it. And once they believe it, they will act against Israel as they acted against apartheid South Africa. It’s a winding road from hectoring condemnation of a long-dead French existentialist-Marxist to yet another, one-size-fits-all call for an academic boycott, but Massad got there in the end.

He’s angry that European leftist intellectuals like Etienne Balibar (a one-time collaborator of another long-dead French Marxist, Louis Althusser) and Slavoj Zizek had the temerity to lecture in Israel. He’s angry that they refuse to accept his dogma that Zionism and Israel, from conception to implementation, represent the apogee of racism.

Massad’s ire demonstrates, ironically, that the European left could be worse. It demonstrates just how intellectually dangerous a world-view that takes anti-Zionism as its starting point can be. And it demonstrates that, no matter how many times they lose, no matter how often their arguments are discredited, then as now, advocates of an academic boycott of Israel won’t give up.