Worms for Brains

Timothy Garton Ash makes the acquaintance of a young Moroccan, one of many thousands of young Arab men who have made their way to Italian soil:

For now there are more than 5,000 Arab boat people on the Italian island of Lampedusa, most of them from Tunisia. "The revolution has changed nothing," they tell Le Monde – and they want Europe to give them work.

In the confusion of a new semi-freedom, some very nasty old worms will come out of the woodwork. I got a small taste of this from a young Moroccan sitting at a bus stop here. Apropos nothing in particular, he started telling me that "all the problems in the world are the fault of the Jews". The prophet Muhammad had a problem with the Jews, he explained, and ever since the Jews have been making trouble for the Muslims. He worships at a mosque where the chief imam is from – how did you guess? – Saudi Arabia.

To call pathological Jew-hate a "old worm" is an insult--to old worms.