Hitch "Gets" Jew-Hate--But Only the Religious Kind

In the current Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens reviews two doorstoppers I happen to have read--Robert Wistrich's The Lethal Obsession and Anthony Julius's Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England. And while Hitchens is able to come up with a succint and cogent analysis of what Jew-hatred is and how it differs from all other hatreds, he is unable and/or unwilling (because of his late-in-the-day discovery of his Jewish roots?; because of his aversion to all things religious?; because at the end of the day he remains a Troskyite manqué?; because of all of the above?)  to make that final leap and see Zionhass as the latest manifestation of Judenhass, and acknowledge that a great deal of it has no religious basis whatsoever. Here's how he sums it up:

I began by saying that anti-Semitism is protean and contradictory, but then, so are Judaism and Zionism. Is there such a thing as “chosenness”? Is there a special “covenant”? Does the state of Israel have the right to speak for all diaspora Jews? Is Israel not in fact a part of the diaspora? Will the Messiah come? Does he take an interest in certain territories and not others? Who is a Jew, anyway? Rabbinical authorities and Israeli spokesmen have proved themselves unable and unqualified to decide these matters, and meanwhile vast numbers of Jews have secularized themselves and become big friends of a smaller Israel. This implied self-criticism of the faith and the project is not self-hatred, nor does it owe anything traceable to the disgusting slanders anatomized by Wistrich and Julius. The chief impetus of anti-Semitism remains theocratic, and in our epoch anti-Semitism has shifted from Christian to Muslim: a more searching inquiry into its origins and nature might begin by asking if faith is not the problem to begin with. This would also entail the related and essential question of whether the toxin of anti-Semitism is a threat only to Jews.

The answer to that, of course, is that the Jews, as ever, are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, and that Jew-hate, quite often employed by totalitarians as a means to an end (that being global dominance) threatens all freedom-lovers. Were that Hitch was able to get away for even a moment from his aversion to all religions (an aversion that verges on the neurotic, if not the pathological). That would have enabled him to see that, while, yes, "chosenness" did get the ball rolling hate-wise with both Christians and Muslims, it ignores the Judenhass, including the Hitlerian, that emanates from non-religious quarters. (Voltaire, that paragon of the secular enlightenment, wasn't exactly a Jew-fan.)