The term has entered common usage to refer to what some writers describe as a wave of antisemitism that escalated, particularly in Western Europe, after the Second Intifada in 2000, the failure of the Oslo accords, and the September 11, 2001 attacks. [2][3] The concept is used to distinguish this wave from classical antisemitism, which was largely associated with the political right. [4]


Photographed at an anti-war rally in San Francisco on February 16, 2003, a placard mixed anti-imperialist, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist and anti-globalization imagery with some classic antisemitic motifs. Photograph taken by zombie of zombietime.com. [5]Proponents of the concept argue that anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, anti-globalization, third worldism, and opposition to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland are coupled with antisemitism, or constitute disguised antisemitism. [2][3] Critics of the concept argue that it serves to equate legitimate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and that it is used to silence debate. [6]


History
An early use of the concept in close to its modern form was in the late 1940s, when the Soviet Union was accused of pursuing a "new anti-Semitism" against Jews, of the sort manifested in the so-called Doctors' plot, a supposed conspiracy by Jewish doctors to poison the Soviet leadership. [7] Stalinist opposition to "rootless cosmopolitans" – a euphemism for Jews – was rooted in the belief, as expressed by Klement Gottwald, that "treason and espionage infiltrate the ranks of the Communist Party. This channel is Zionism." [8]


A Nazi German cartoon circa 1938 depicts the Jews as an octopus encircling the globe; see article Anti-globalization and anti-Semitism [9]
The same imagery revived on the cover of the 2001 Egyptian edition of The International Jew by Henry Ford. [10]French philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff writes that the first wave of the new antisemitism emerged in the Arab-Muslim world and the Soviet sphere following the 1967 Six Day War, citing papers by Jacques Givet (1968) and historian Léon Poliakov (1969) in which the idea of a new anti-Semitism rooted in anti-Zionism was discussed. [11] He argues that anti-Jewish themes centered on the demonical figures of Israel and what he calls "fantasy-world Zionism": that Jews plot together, seek to conquer the world, and are imperialistic and bloodthirsty, which gave rise to the reactivation of stories about ritual murder and the poisoning of food and water supplies. The Israeli victory of 1967, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the Palestinian deaths during the first Intifada all served to reinforce the caricature. [2]

In 1974, Forster and Epstein, officials of the Anti-Defamation League, published The New anti-Semitism, which appears to be the first book-length treatment of the subject. They expressed concern about manifestations of antisemitism and opposition to Israel, drawing attention to what they called "Arab propaganda" and "the oil weapon" in international affairs. [12] Part of their criticism is directed towards left-wing American organizations of the period, such as the Young Socialist Alliance, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Spartacist League. [13]

Allan Brownfeld, writing in the Journal of Palestine Studies, argues that the term "new antisemitism" emerged as a result of efforts by some to re-define the term "anti-semitism" to include anything that opposes the policies and interests of the state of Israel. He cites the Forster and Epstein book as one of the first manifestations of this trend. Brownfeld argues that this altered definition trivializes the concept of anti-semitism, by turning it into "a form of political blackmail" and "a weapon with which to silence any criticism of either Israel or U.S. policy in the Middle East". He adds that the "false imputation of anti-Semitism" is a "violation of Jewish ethics and values", and that the shift in the term's meaning "will be welcomed by genuine anti-Semites who will, as a result, be able to escape responsibility for their own bigotry".[14]

In the 1980s, radical left-wing movements voiced increasing opposition to Israel, controversially claiming that Zionism was a racist and colonialist movement. In 1984, historian Robert Wistrich delivered a lecture in the home of Chaim Herzog, the President of Israel, in which he spoke of a "new anti-Semitic anti-Zionism," the characteristic mode of which was the equation of Zionism with Nazism. He stated that "in recent years these grotesque Soviet blood-libels have been taken up by a part of the radical Left — especially the Trotskyists — in Western Europe and America". [15]

In the mid-1980s, the Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban argued that "the New Left is the author and progenitor of the new anti-Semitism."[16] Other commentators stated that the tendency to criticize Israel actions more vehemently than those of other nations was a form of antisemitic prejudice. Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher said in 1983: "Nobody says anything against the Egyptian authorities for oppressing the Coptic Christians. No one protested vehemently against the forced closing of St. Joseph's College years ago in Iraq, nor against the laws in Jordan prior to 1967 which prohibited Christians from acquiring new property. If Israel did any of these things, everyone would cry bloody murder... This is prejudice." [17]

In The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, Father Edward H. Flannery writes that, because most of the spectacular displays of antisemitism have come from the right — for example, Czarist pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair, and Adolf Hitler — it has blinded onlookers to what he calls an "uninterrupted strain of antisemitism on the Left," [18] quoting Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin who write: "The further Left one goes, the greater the antisemitism." [19] Flannery writes that it came as no surprise to historians of the left that, as William D. Rubinstein wrote in 1978: "Today, the main enemies of the Jews and Israel are almost exclusively on the left, most obviously the Communist states, the radical Third World anti-Zionist nations and their sympathizers in the West." [20] Flannery argues that "all the progenitors of socialist theory, with the exception of St Simon, were bitter antisemites," [18] arguing that Marx and Engels took much of what Flannery calls their antisemitism from Proudhon, Bauer, Fourier, Toussenel, and Fichte. Flannery writes that in 1891, the Second International Socialist Congress refused to condemn antisemitism without also condemning philosemitism. He cites historian Zosa Szajkowski, who writes that he could not find a "single word on behalf of Jews" in the entirety of French socialist literature from 1820 to 1920. The link between antisemitism and the ideology of the left is "not accidental," Flannery argues, because Judaism stresses nationality, peoplehood, or religious commitment; extreme leftist ideologies and traditional Judaism are "almost by definition incompatible." [21][dubious — see talk page]


Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, an American research group that tracks the far right, writes that, during the early 1980s, isolationists on the far right made overtures to anti-war activists on the left to join forces against government policies in areas where they shared concerns,[22] mainly civil liberties, opposition to U.S. military intervention overseas, and opposition to U.S. support for Israel.[23] [24]

As they interacted, some of the classic right-wing anti-Semitic scapegoating conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles, [23] including stories about how a "New World Order", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus," [22] was manipulating world governments. Berlet writes that antisemitic conspiracism [25] was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups, and that the left adopted the rhetoric, which Berlet argues was made possible by the left's lack of knowledge of the history of fascism and its use of "scapegoating, reductionist and simplistic solutions, demagoguery, and a conspiracy theory of history." [23]

Toward the end of 1990, as the movement against the Gulf War began to build, Berlet writes that a number of far-right and antisemitic groups sought out alliances with left-wing anti-war coalitions, who began to speak openly about a "Jewish lobby" that was encouraging the United States to invade the Middle East. This idea morphed into conspiracy theories about a "Zionist-occupied government" (ZOG), which Berlet writes is the modern incarnation of the antisemitic hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. [22] Berlet adds: "It is important to recognize that as a whole the antiwar movement overwhelmingly rejected these overtures by the political right, while recognizing that the attempt reflected a larger ongoing problem." He cites the example of Wisconsin anti-war activist Alan Ruff, who appeared on a panel in Verona to discuss the Gulf War. Also on the panel on the anti-war side was another local activist, Emmanuel Branch. "Suddenly I heard Branch saying the war was the result of a Zionist banking conspiracy," said Ruff. "I found myself squeezed between pro-war hawks and this anti-Jewish nut, it destroyed the ability of those of us who opposed the war to make our point." [23]


Arguments for and against the concept

A new phenomenon
Jack Fischel, chair of history at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, writes that the new anti-Semitism is a new phenomenon stemming from what he calls an "unprecedented coalition" of enemies: "leftists, vociferously opposed to the policies of Israel, and right-wing antisemites, committed to the destruction of Israel, [who] were joined by millions of Muslims, including Arabs, who immigrated to Europe ... and who brought with them their hatred of Israel in particular and of Jews in general." It is this new political alignment, he argues, that makes new antisemitism unique. [26] Mark Strauss of Foreign Policy links it to anti-globalism, describing it as "the medieval image of the 'Christ-killing' Jew resurrected on the editorial pages of cosmopolitan European newspapers. It is the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement refusing to put the Star of David on their ambulances ... It is neo-Nazis donning checkered Palestinian kaffiyehs and Palestinians lining up to buy copies of Mein Kampf." [27]

“ It is the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement refusing to put the Star of David on their ambulances ... It is neo-Nazis donning checkered Palestinian kaffiyehs and Palestinians lining up to buy copies of Mein Kampf. — Mark Strauss [27] ”

The French philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff argues that Judenhass based on racism and nationalism has been replaced by a new form based on anti-racism and anti-nationalism. He identifies some of its main features as the use of anti-racism for anti-Jewish purposes, identifying Zionism as racism; the use of material related to Holocaust denial becomes an ordinary feature of discourse e.g. doubts about the number of victims, allegations of a Holocaust industry; discourse is borrowed from third worldism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-Americanism, and anti-globalization; there is widespread dissemination of what he calls the "myth" of the "intrinsically good Palestinian — the innocent victim par excellence. [28]

In part because the concept of new antisemitism is a recent one, and because of the nature of it, there are no indices of measurement, according to Irwin Cotler, Professor of Law at McGill University, and Canada's former Justice Minister. [29] Cotler defines classical antisemitism as "the discrimination against, or denial of, the right of Jews to live as equal members of a free society," the focus of which is discrimination against Jews as individuals. He argues that the new antisemitism, by contrast, "involves the discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations"; that is, discrimination against Jews as a people. He argues that antisemitism has expanded from hatred of Jews (classical antisemitism) to hatred of Jewish national aspirations (new antisemitism). [29] The latter is hard to measure because the usual indices used by governments to detect discrimination — standard of living, housing, health, and employment — are useful only in measuring discrimination against individuals. Because it is difficult to measure, it is difficult to show convincingly that the concept is a valid one.