Whatever happened to antisemitism?

JVL Introduction

Antony Lerman’s starting point in his thoughtful new book is that confusion and disagreement have never been greater about who is antisemitic, what antisemitism is today, what its sources are, how it manifests itself, who is responsible for it and what to do about it.

Much of the disagreement is about the treatment of Israel as the “collective Jew”, and criticism of Zionism equated by many with antisemitism tout court.

The bitterly abusive nature of much of the discussion on the topic  seems to be amplified by the fact that many of these exchanges take place between Jews.

We have reached a point where even questioning what has become the dominant narrative is seen as a form of antisemitism denial.

In this book Lerman tries both to account for what has happened to antisemitism and to suggest ways out of the current impasse.

Our thanks to Pluto Press for permission to repost an extract from the Introduction to the book below.

You can also see Heather Mendick’s interview with the author here.

Special offer to our readers – 30% off the book if you use the discount code JVL30 when ordering on the Pluto website.

Whatever happened to antisemitism?

Redefinition and the myth of the “collective Jew”

Warnings about the threat posed by antisemitism* today are as dramatic, extreme, apocalyptic and frightening as they have ever been since the end of the Second World War. For example, in an article for Haaretz in July 2021, Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, wrote: ‘Reports gauging hatred of the Jews in the world are unprecedented and horrifying’.¹ The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), the high-profile Los Angeles-based, organisation dedicated to confronting antisemitism worldwide, reported on 28 December 2021 that ‘There is no greater existential threat to the Jewish people than the growing nuclear threat from the antisemitic, Holocaust-denying, terrorist-sponsoring, human rights-abusing Iranian regime. In November, a bill was presented to the Iranian parliament obliging the country to “destroy” Israel by 2041’.² In January 2020, Walter Reich, former Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote: ‘I watch antisemitism’s global resurgence, so soon after the Holocaust, with alarm and foreboding. Could murderous antisemitism, on a large scale, resume in our time? Could “never again,” vowed so solemnly and so repeatedly after the Holocaust, revert to “yet again”?’³

At the same time, and set against the same 75-year period, confusion and disagreement have never been greater about who is antisemitic, what antisemitism is today, what its sources are, how it manifests itself, who is responsible for it and what to do about it. In 2017, Professor David Feldman, director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, London University, one of the world’s leading academic antisemitism research bodies, began a lecture on ‘The Meanings of Antisemitism’ saying:

The starting point … is our present confusion over what antisemitism is … When it comes to antisemitism many of us literally don’t know what we’re talking about and are happy to admit it. And as for the rest of us who think we do know what antisemitism is, we are congenitally unable to agree among ourselves.⁴

The dissonance between the first two and the third statements about antisemitism is stark. If the current state of affairs in the third statement is accurately described, on what grounds can those who issue dire warnings like those in the first two statements, be so certain about their judgements? Is there some way of explaining these incompatibilities? Furthermore, can they be resolved?

There can be no doubt that forms of hatred, vilification, demonisation and dehumanisation of Jews are alive and well, and closer to you, wherever you are in the world, than you might imagine or ever wish to know. Spend a minute or two searching ‘antisemitism’ on the web and the most vile, dehumanising and vicious antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews’ nefarious control of the world, disgusting and sinister hook-nosed caricatures, blood libel accusations, Holocaust denial screeds and white supremacist Jew-hate is in your face, on your screen, in seconds. These are what most people who know anything about Jew-hatred would regard as classic expressions and manifestations of antisemitism.

And it is likely that many of the same people would include in this antisemitic horror show what they regard as wholly new: hatred of Israel, the Jewish state; a post-Second World War, and now very familiar modern form of antisemitism. This is often presented as synonymous with ‘anti-Zionism’, which could loosely be described as opposition to the political ideology upon which the state of Israel is based, but is also commonly known as ‘new antisemitism’. At the core of this notion is the claim that ‘Israel is the (persecuted) “collective Jew” among the nations’.⁵ In other words, it is argued that classic or pre-Israel antisemitism was hatred, discrimination, ostracisation from society and ultimately mass murder directed at Jews. Since the establishment of the Jewish state, antisemitism has taken the form of hatred, discrimination, ostracisation from the community of nations and, ultimately, plans for the destruction of Israel. Expressions of this are said to include: the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; accusations that Israel, as a Jewish state, is a racist endeavour; arguing that Israel has no right to exist; proposing that the entire area of what was Mandate Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River should become one single, democratic, secular state; charging Israel with responsibility for the naqba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in the 1948 war and subsequent wars; singling out Israel for criticism in a manner that would never apply to other states; and holding all Jews responsible for acts of military aggression undertaken by Israel.

This alleged antisemitism is undoubtedly ‘new’, at least in the sense that it could only have arisen after the establishment of Israel in 1948. But it is probably accurate to say that for almost all who define such discourse about Israel as antisemitic, ‘new antisemitism’ has not replaced the old antisemitism. They also subscribe to the eternalist understanding of antisemitism: that a continuity of Jew-hatred has characterised more than two millennia of Jewish history.

For Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), America’s leading Jewish defence organisation, and for many others, it is very simple: ‘the reality [is] that anti-Zionism is antisemitism’.⁶ But in truth, whether or not they are the same is a matter of the most extreme controversy and bitter argument, which is at the very heart of the confusion and disagreement about antisemitism that I referred to in the opening paragraph of this introduction.

There are also many other ways in which Palestine–Israel and antisemitism interact and confuse in modes that have highly significant political implications. At the top of such a list would likely be the fact that former US President Donald Trump claimed to love Israel and support Zionism, but allied himself with overt antisemites, sometimes using blatantly antisemitic images and ideas. But many Jews overlooked this or were untroubled by the implication that a case could therefore be made for a ‘legitimate’ antisemitism that is compatible with love of or support for Israel. Can such antisemitism ever really be justified?

Closely following the Trump example, like a reverse mirror image, is that of Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the British Labour Party, the largest social democratic party in Europe. A long-standing advocate of the rights of the Palestinians, Corbyn also has a long track record of supporting the safety and security of Jewish communities in the UK and joining protests when Jews have been subject to antisemitic harassment. He has also maintained very good relations with both secular and orthodox Jewish communities in his constituency, including very friendly relations with dozens of Jewish members of Islington North CLP. Nonetheless, no sooner was he elected leader than he came under unprecedented attack for his long-held, pro-Palestinian views and was branded an antisemite. In August 2018, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) accused him of ‘declaring war on the Jews’, a hyperbolic claim, typical of many, and part of a sustained campaign that played a significant role in the Labour Party losing the 2019 general election.⁷ The only person called to mind by such an extreme statement is Hitler. This sets up a patently irrational and absurd comparison, one that was not only a gross insult to the Labour leader but also trivialised the mass murder of Jews for which the Nazi dictator was responsible. Nevertheless, saying it is absurd does not explain why apparently rational individuals can play fast and loose with antisemitism, politicising it in this fashion and draining the word of any useful meaning.

As testified by the existence of differing views about its sources, salience, impact and potential threat, antisemitism today is a political phenomenon of some complexity. But if these differences are so unbridgeable that no consensus exists about what it is that needs to be fought; and that measures to combat it are radically different or even contradictory depending on what the threat is said to be, the danger is that either the phenomenon escapes being dealt with or that measures to tackle it will impact negatively and unnecessarily on human rights, including free speech, as well as Jews’ religious and cultural aspirations to freely practice their religion, or maintain and develop their cultural activities; chill free speech; and have negative connotations for the promotion and maintenance of human rights.

And there can be no doubt that the differences are indeed stark. As Professor Jonathan Judaken, the Spence L. Wilson Chair in Humanities, Rhodes College, puts it: ‘Like so much else in politics today, the debate about contemporary antisemitism is a dialogue of the deaf waged as a battle to the death. Both sides are correct about a number of their claims, but neither can hear the truths of the other’.⁸ As a result, whatever you say or write on this subject, whether in a scholarly article, a lecture, a serious op-ed or a series of tweets, it is now perfectly normal to be subjected to abuse from some quarter or other. Rather than expect firm but respectful challenge that could lead to a constructive dialogue, one must prepare for bitter, abusive and wounding ad hominem attacks on social media.

An extraordinarily high proportion of these exchanges takes place between Jews. And this intra-Jewish conflict over antisemitism is overwhelmingly hateful and bitter. Some Jews seem to believe that there is a special place in hell reserved for other Jews who question the existence of a ‘new antisemitism’. Jews who do not go along with the mantra that anti-Zionism is antisemitism are singled out for special vilification, being labelled as ‘antisemitic’, ‘self-hating’ or, at the very least, ‘fellow travellers’ of antisemitism, whose ‘contributions to antisemitism are significant’, in the words of Anthony Julius.⁹ Criticise the ethno-nationalist basis of the Jewish state and/or its discriminatory policies towards its Palestinian citizens and the Palestinians it controls in the West Bank and Gaza, and suggest that these features of Jewish nationalism and Israeli government policies contribute to antisemitism, and you are marked out as completely beyond the pale. Even being professionally engaged in Jewish communal life for decades, or heading a university antisemitism research institute provides no protection against such accusations.

It must be understood that the degraded discourse around current antisemitism not only entrenches a simplistic conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and normalises the indiscriminate branding of anti-Zionist, non-Zionist or determinedly unclassifiable Jews as ‘self-hating’, or as ‘kapos’. This trend, which has been gaining pace since the late 1970s, has lodged itself permanently in public debate about antisemitism, and shows no sign of abating. It connects with, draws on and mutually reinforces deeper social, cultural and political fractures, which characterise a world where ‘post-truth’, ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ undermine the values of trust, integrity and critical discourse.

Anyone seeking to understand, and choosing to write about, the controversies and battles that are so central to what has happened to antisemitism from a perspective not based on some or all aspects of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’ is stepping into a minefield. The mines have been laid, as it were, by those who have helped shape and/or adhere to the dominant narrative which, inter alia, takes popular assessments of the dire dangers of current antisemitism for granted, sees most of that antisemitism manifested in demonisation and vilification of Israel as the ‘collective Jew’ among the nations, lays the blame for it on left-wing groups whose solidarity with the oppressed allegedly leads them to justify hostility and hatred towards Zionist Jews, affirms that anti-Zionism is antisemitism and regards Zionism as integral to Judaism and Jewish faith.

This dominant narrative has been strongly reinforced in the UK over the last five years as a result of the furore over antisemitism in the Labour Party, and the pressure exerted by government and other bodies for all kinds of institutions, including universities and local councils, to adopt the ‘working definition’ of antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). There are those who go against this grain; writers who are sceptical about, or fundamentally reject, the dominant narrative based on their recognition and exploration of the complexity of the subject. This approach is regularly brushed aside as if it were a form of antisemitism denial. It is no such thing.

In this book, I offer a combination of ways of exploring what happened to antisemitism, drawing on my own work and that of other scholars, researchers and informed commentators in this field. I try to bring some new analytical approaches to the question and reach conclusions that lead to a new understanding of why we are where we are.

Notes

* It is increasingly common practice to abandon ‘anti-Semitism’ spellings and use only ‘antisemitism’ – no hyphen and no upper case ‘S’. The meaning is the same however it is spelt. And spelling it only one way avoids confusing the reader. I have therefore used ‘antisemitism’, ‘antisemitic’ and ‘antisemite’ throughout the book, no matter how it was spelt in the original or any quoted text.

1. Yair Lapid, ‘Is antisemitism racism?’, Haaretz, 26 July 2021.
2. wiesenthal.com/assets/pdf/global_antisemitism_2021_top_ten.pdf
3. Walter Reich, ‘Seventy-five years after Auschwitz, antisemitism is on the rise’, Brookings, Washington DC, 28 January 2020, www.brookings. edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/01/28/75 Brookings-years-after-auschwitz- antisemitism-is-on-the-rise/
4. David Feldman, ‘The meanings of antisemitism’, 13 February 2017, Birkbeck University podcast, https://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2017/02/ david-feldman-the-meanings-of-antisemitism/
5. See Irwin Cotler, ‘Defining the new antisemitism’, National Post, 9 November 2010, https://nationalpost.com/full-comment/irwin-cotler-defining-the-new- antisemitism
6. A tweet by Greenblatt on 13 December 2018, https://twitter.com/jgreenblattadl/ status/1073229821768028160?lang=en
7. Zack Beauchamp, ‘The fall of Jeremy Corbyn: Why Labour lost and what it means for Britain’, Vox, 13 December 2019, www.vox.com/world/2019/12/ 13/21004755/uk-election-2019-jeremy-corbyn-labour-defeat
8. Jonathan Judaken, ‘Ten Commandments for thinking about modern antisemitism’, Forward, 5 January 2018.
9. Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Antisemitism in England (Oxford: OUP, 2010), 523–525, 554.

Seee also