The prospect of a withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the incipient democratization of that sliver of a Mediterranean country, and the growing hope of the Bush administration that the Middle East’s mostly young population could wrest greater social and political freedoms from reigning despots and theocrats – these are elements to be welcomed.

But these potential developments cannot cloak the problem of anti-Semitism. It is deep-rooted, growing, and, democratic prospects notwithstanding, poisoning the political climate. Western – and American – leaders who are delighted over the possibility of widening freedom in the Middle East have failed to address the question of anti-Semitism.

Many of us who’ve covered the Middle East for the last several decades have been intrigued by constant and often parallel references in Islamic countries to a three-letter word, a four-letter word and a six-letter word. The words are Jew, free, and Israel.

In Arab societies long dominated by tyrants, and characterized by corruption and nepotism, free hasn’t simply meant political freedom; it’s meant freedom from domestic oppression by secret services deployed by sheiks and mullahs. So when young Lebanese course the boulevards of Beirut chanting anti-Syrian slogans, the subtext is that their society of 4 million Sunnis, Shias, Druze, and Maronite Christians would do well to be released from monitoring by Russian-trained Syrian intelligence personnel, the mukhabarat.

Often caricatures out of the movies, mukhabarat personnel almost always wear shiny leather jackets, and sport villainous mustaches and fierce expressions. They are easily spotted at public places; ubiquitous SUVs with darkened windows idle nearby. I have seen Lebanese – Christians and Muslims alike – spirited away by the mukhabarat, sometimes forcibly.

But if utter dislike of Syrian heavy-handedness is a common thread in Lebanese society, so is despising of Israel. I have witnessed on several occasions Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the 44-year-old leader of the terrorist Hezbollah, boasting about how his guerrillas were the only Arabs who ever “defeated” Israel when it retreated from southern Lebanon in 2000. On several occasions, I saw him say the word “Yehudi” – Arabic for “Jews” – and then spit on the ground. Is this the man America now wants to do business with?

It’s not just Sheik Nasrallah and his Hezbollah that hate Jews; the sheik has even called for the destruction of Israel, echoing a formal tenet of Yasser Arafat’s discredited Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s. Even among supposedly sophisticated Maronite Christians, one detects a continuing anti-Semitic sentiment. President Lahoud, whose every decision is taken only after he’s consulted with his political landlord, President Al-Assad, has frequently highlighted the fact that Lebanon remains technically in a state of war with Israel.

Lebanese publications are forbidden from carrying Israel datelines, unless the stories are about Israel’s alleged “racism” against Palestinians. The Daily Star, an English-language daily in Beirut that is published in cooperation with the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune, refuses to print pages of the IHT that carry ads from American Jews; the IHT’s publisher – and New York Times Company vice chairman – Michael Golden declines to comment about this. I served as the business editor of the Star in 2003, and this led in part to my resignation.

It isn’t enough for the Lebanese – and other Arabs – to pledge allegiance to the concept of democracy. They need to be held to the universal standards of tolerance. Why is the New York Times supporting a newspaper like the Star? Why isn’t the Bush administration raising the question of anti-Semitism with leaders of the Arab countries it cites as open to democratic ideals – states such as Jordan where associates of Abdullah, the Hashemite king, are often less than complimentary of the history and heritage of the Jewish state with whom Jordan now has diplomatic ties?

Why does the World Bank tolerate unapologetically anti-Semitic practices in economies it praises such as Dubai, whose crown prince and de facto ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, refused to be in the same room as the Israeli delegation when Dubai hosted the Bank’s annual meeting in 2003?

Now that President Bush has appointed Karen Hughes to spearhead the State Department’s public diplomacy – a job in which she’s supposed to focus on Islamic countries and make them more friendly to America – there’s an opportunity to widen Washington’s exhortation about freedom. The president and Ms. Hughes need to say to Arab societies that freedom doesn’t mean only adult franchise and a multiparty political system. It doesn’t mean just a market economy either. Tolerance of all religions and of neighbors is a prerequisite of such freedom. That blood libels, canards about Israel’s racist intentions against Palestinians, and hostility toward the very existence of the Jewish state are not on, this is something that needs to be pressed at every turn, and in blunt language. It needs to be said now, as the prospects of political freedoms supposedly brighten in the Middle East.