Jakob Augstein a “Top Ten Anti-Semite”

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Augstein, publisher of Der Freitag,
son of Der Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein, and himself a
Spiegel-columnist, is one of the world's top ten anti-Semites, along
side other personalities like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and groups such as
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (see the list- pdf).
BY including Augstein on this list, the Wiesenthal Center has made a
big mistake; it diminishes the Center's important work and demeans the
concept of "anti-Semitism".  There is nothing "anti-Semitic" about any
of Jakob Augstein's writings.  Like many Liberal thinkers within Israel,
Augstein has been highly critical of Israel's settlement policies and
the positions of Bibi Netanyahu.  His criticism of Israel – still
something of a taboo in Germany – has enraged LIkud apologists, who are
eager to excoriate Germans for any hint of ant-Semitism. 

In this case, the Simon WIesenthal Center has overreached, and even conservative publications like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung have come to Augstein's defense: 

In seinen Texten geht es nicht um die Juden und nicht um den Juden. Er
propagiert keine Gewalt, zieht keine Traditionslinien und operiert nicht
mit Vorurteilen. Was er kritisiert, ist nicht das Symptom eines in der
Existenz der Juden oder Israels wurzelnden Übels, sondern das Resultat
politischer Entscheidungen der aktuellen israelischen Regierung. Ein
Vergleich seiner Zitate auf der Homepage des SWC mit denen der anderen
aufgeführten Personen macht diesen entscheidenden Unterschied sofort
deutlich.

("There is nothing in his writings about Jews or "the
Jew".  He does not advocate violence, doesn't draw on lines of tradition
and doesn't operate with any prejudice.  He's not criticizing some
fundamental evil rooted in the existence of Jews or Israel, but rather
the result of political decisions made by the current Israeli
government.  A comparison with the other people or groups on the list
makes this distinction clear.")

Why did the Wiesenthal Center turn their attention to Jakob
Augstein?  It turns out they were influenced by none other than Henryk
Broder  – a notorious Islamophobe who makes a nice living in Germany by
smearing anyone who disagrees with him as an anti-Semite (an effective
technique for stifling discourse in Germany). Henryk Broder was an inspiration to the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik.  Last year, when the writer and anti-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali expressed sympathy for Breivik in a speech given in Berlin, Broder gave her a standing ovation.