Antisemitism

Different bias-versions of this article are available. This is the Infogalactic main article on antisemitism forked from RationalWiki.

For the highly controversial white nationalist perspective on antisemitism forked from Metapedia, see: Antisemitism (National Socialist view)

For the right-wing perspective on antisemitism, see: Antisemitism (right-wing view)

For the left-wing perspective on antisemitism forked from Wikipedia, see: Antisemitism (mainstream view)

For examples of theories or beliefs that are considered antisemitic, see: List of claimed reasons for antisemitism

Your friendly neighborhood Evil Jew (Cartoon from Vienna, Austria, home of Hitler, 1873.)

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.

— Albert Einstein

Antisemitism is the prejudice against, the hatred of, or the discrimination against Jews as an ethnic, religious, or racial group, and is widely recognized as a form of racism. While the term antisemitism would seem, on the face of it, to mean prejudice against all the so-called Semitic peoples — the Arabs, Assyrians, Samaritans and Jews of the Levant, as well as some Ethiopians; it is almost universally understood to refer exclusively to anti-Jewish propaganda, attitudes, and actions.

Antisemitism has taken on a number of different forms over the centuries, with severity that ranges from hateful or inflammatory discourses that paint Jews as embodying particular stereotypical and malignant characteristics, to the outright organized mass genocide of Jews with the overt goal of depleting their populace regionally or even globally. Historically, antisemitism has had a long-standing presence in Christian and Muslim communities alike, and the unprovoked stirring of antisemitic animosity against the Jewish people has been undertaken (to a varying degree, at different times and in various nations) by both church and state, sometimes to a sufficient extent (over the decades and even centuries) as to climax into the outbreak of pogroms directed against the Jews.

While the accusation of antisemitism is occasionally used as a snarl word to dismiss valid criticisms of Zionism and of Israeli foreign policy, it is completely aptly applied in most cases of anti-Zionist crankery - typically involving variants on the International Jewish Conspiracy theory, the Zionist Occupied Government, or other nonsense involving The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Holocaust denial also embodies one of several modern pseudohistorical outlets of antisemitic sentiment, as do various conspiracy theories regarding allegedly malevolent Jewish banksters.

Much less commonly, antisemitism can also be used to refer to prejudice against speakers of Semitic languages or adherents of Abrahamic religions. (See: [[Antisemitism#Usage|Etymology of Antisemitism}}</ref> The most specific and literal definition would be any bias against the biblical character of Shem, specifically.

Origin and usage in the context of xenophobia

Etymology

1879 statute of the Antisemitic League

The origin of "antisemitic" terminologies is found in the responses of Moritz Steinschneider to the views of Ernest Renan. As Alex Bein writes: "The compound anti-Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, who challenged Renan on account of his 'anti-Semitic prejudices' [i.e., his derogation of the "Semites" as a race]." Avner Falk similarly writes: 'The German word antisemitisch was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) in the phrase antisemitische Vorurteile (antisemitic prejudices). Steinschneider used this phrase to characterise the French philosopher Ernest Renan's false ideas about how "Semitic races" were inferior to "Aryan races"'.

Pseudoscientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. He coined the phrase "the Jews are our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis. According to Avner Falk, Treitschke uses the term "Semitic" almost synonymously with "Jewish", in contrast to Renan's use of it to refer to a whole range of peoples, based generally on linguistic criteria.

According to Jonathan M. Hess, the term was originally used by its authors to "stress the radical difference between their own 'antisemitism' and earlier forms of antagonism toward Jews and Judaism."

Cover page of Marr's The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1880 edition

In 1879 German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet (The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. Observed from a non-religious perspective) in which he used the word Semitismus interchangeably with the word Judentum to denote both "Jewry" (the Jews as a collective) and "jewishness" (the quality of being Jewish, or the Jewish spirit).

This use of Semitismus was followed by a coining of "Antisemitismus" which was used to indicate opposition to the Jews as a people and opposition to the Jewish spirit, which Marr interpreted as infiltrating German culture. His next pamphlet, Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum (The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit, 1880), presents a development of Marr's ideas further and may present the first published use of the German word Antisemitismus, "antisemitism".

The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year he founded the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Antisemites), apparently named to follow the "Anti-Kanzler-Liga" (Anti-Chancellor League). The league was the first German organization committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence, and advocating their forced removal from the country.

So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in 1881, when Marr published Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte, and Wilhelm Scherer used the term Antisemiten in the January issue of Neue Freie Presse.

The Jewish Encyclopedia reports, "In February 1881, a correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums speaks of 'Anti-Semitism' as a designation which recently came into use ("Allg. Zeit. d. Jud." 1881, p. 138). On 19 July 1882, the editor says, 'This quite recent Anti-Semitism is hardly three years old.'"

The related term "philosemitism" was coined around 1885.

Usage

From the outset the term anti-Semitism bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews. The term is confusing, for in modern usage 'Semitic' designates a language group, not a race. In this sense, the term is a misnomer, since there are many speakers of Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs, Ethiopians, and Assyrians) who are not the objects of anti-Semitic prejudices, while there are many Jews who do not speak Hebrew, a Semitic language. Though 'antisemitism' has been used to describe prejudice against people who speak other Semitic languages, the validity of such usage has been questioned.

The term may be spelled with or without a hyphen (antisemitism or anti-Semitism). Some scholars favor the unhyphenated form because, "If you use the hyphenated form, you consider the words 'Semitism', 'Semite', 'Semitic' as meaningful" whereas "in antisemitic parlance, 'Semites' really stands for Jews, just that." For example, Emil Fackenheim supported the unhyphenated spelling, in order to "[dispel] the notion that there is an entity 'Semitism' which 'anti-Semitism' opposes." Others endorsing an unhyphenated term for the same reason include Padraic O'Hare, professor of Religious and Theological Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Merrimack College; Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and James Carroll, historian and novelist. According to Carroll, who first cites O'Hare and Bauer on "the existence of something called 'Semitism'", "the hyphenated word thus reflects the bipolarity that is at the heart of the problem of antisemitism".

Objections to the usage of the term, such as the obsolete nature of the term Semitic as a racial term, have been raised since at least the 1930s.

Definition

Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or prejudice against Jews, and, according to Olaf Blaschke, has become an "umbrella term for negative stereotypes about Jews", a number of authorities have developed more formal definitions.

Holocaust scholar and City University of New York professor Helen Fein defines it as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews."

Elaborating on Fein's definition, Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne writes that, to antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature: (1) Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective. (2) Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies. (3) Jews bring disaster on their 'host societies' or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character."

For Sonja Weinberg, as distinct from economic and religious anti-Judaism, antisemitism in its modern form shows conceptual innovation, a resort to 'science' to defend itself, new functional forms and organisational differences. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist. It promoted the myth that Jews conspired to 'judaise' the world; it served to consolidate social identity; it channeled dissatisfactions among victims of the capitalist system; and it was used as a conservative cultural code to fight emancipation and liberalism.

Caricature by C.Léandre (France, 1898) showing Rothschild with the world in his hands

Bernard Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil." Thus, "it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the two features specific to antisemitism.

There have been a number of efforts by international and governmental bodies to define antisemitism formally. The United States Department of State states that "while there is no universally accepted definition, there is a generally clear understanding of what the term encompasses." For the purposes of its 2005 Report on Global Anti-Semitism, the term was considered to mean "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."

In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (now Fundamental Rights Agency), then an agency of the European Union, developed a more detailed working definition, which states: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." It also adds that "such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity," but that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." It provides contemporary examples of ways in which antisemitism may manifest itself, including: promoting the harming of Jews in the name of an ideology or religion; promoting negative stereotypes of Jews; holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of an individual Jewish person or group; denying the Holocaust or accusing Jews or Israel of exaggerating it; and accusing Jews of dual loyalty or a greater allegiance to Israel than their own country. It also lists ways in which attacking Israel could be antisemitic, and states that denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor, can be a manifestation of antisemitism—as can applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel. Late in 2013, the definition was removed from the website of the Fundamental Rights Agency. A spokesperson said that it had never been regarded as official and that the agency did not intend to develop its own definition. However, despite its disappearance from the website of the Fundamental Rights Agency, the definition has gained widespread international use. The definition has been adopted by the European Parliament Working Group on Antisemitism, in 2010 it was adopted by the United States Department of State, in 2014 it was adopted in the Operational Hate Crime Guidance of the UK College of Policing and was also adopted by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, and in 2016 it was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, making it the most widely adopted definition of antisemitism around the world.

1889 Paris, France elections poster for self-described "candidat antisémite" Adolphe Willette: "The Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!" (see file for complete translation)

Evolution of usage

In 1879, Wilhelm Marr founded the Antisemiten-Liga (Anti-Semitic League). Identification with antisemitism and as an antisemite was politically advantageous in Europe during the late 19th century. For example, Karl Lueger, the popular mayor of fin de siècle Vienna, skillfully exploited antisemitism as a way of channeling public discontent to his political advantage. In its 1910 obituary of Lueger, The New York Times notes that Lueger was "Chairman of the Christian Social Union of the Parliament and of the Anti-Semitic Union of the Diet of Lower Austria. In 1895 A. C. Cuza organized the Alliance Anti-semitique Universelle in Bucharest. In the period before World War II, when animosity towards Jews was far more commonplace, it was not uncommon for a person, an organization, or a political party to self-identify as an antisemite or antisemitic.

In 1882, the early Zionist pioneer Judah Leib Pinsker wrote that antisemitism was a psychological response rooted in fear and was an inherited predisposition. He named the condition Judeophobia.

Judeophobia is a variety of demonopathy with the distinction that it is not peculiar to particular races but is common to the whole of mankind.'...'Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.'... 'In this way have Judaism and Anti-Semitism passed for centuries through history as inseparable companions.'......'Having analyzed Judeophobia as an hereditary form of demonopathy, peculiar to the human race, and having represented Anti-Semitism as proceeding from an inherited aberration of the human mind, we must draw the important conclusion that we must give' up contending against these hostile impulses as we must against every other inherited predisposition. (translation from German)

In the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, German propaganda minister Goebbels announced: "The German people is anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."

After the 1945 victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany, and particularly after the full extent of the Nazi genocide against the Jews became known, the term "anti-Semitism" acquired pejorative connotations. This marked a full circle shift in usage, from an era just decades earlier when "Jew" was used as a pejorative term. Yehuda Bauer wrote in 1984: "There are no anti-Semites in the world... Nobody says, 'I am anti-Semitic.' You cannot, after Hitler. The word has gone out of fashion."

History

Hatred of Judaism and the Jewish people is quite ancient. In Jewish tradition, antisemitism first appears in the book of Esther, in which the evil Haman plots to annihilate the Jews of Persia because their traditions and laws are different from others. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus Flavius wrote an entire work, "Against Apion" that sought to refute the claims of ancient antisemites such as Manetho, the eponymous Apion, and others. Ancient writers like Tacitus also wrote about the Jews in highly negative terms. In general, pre-Christian antisemitism portrays the Jews as savage, barbaric (circumcision was particularly frowned upon), warlike, fanatical, anti-social, and, in at least one case, ritual cannibals.

Christianity made antisemitism into religious doctrine through blaming the Jews for rejecting the revelation of Jesus and then engineering his crucifixion. Church doctrine held that the Jews were a cursed people doomed to walk the earth for eternity due to their sins against God. Over the centuries, this led to considerable discrimination, prejudice, and violence. In Europe, Jews were often confined to ghettos, exiled, forced to convert, killed en masse, and accused of nefarious crimes and rituals, most famously, the blood libel, which holds that the Jews kill Christian children and consume their blood in a ritualistic manner. The rise of Protestantism did not help matters, as its founder, Martin Luther, became a ferocious antisemite after the Jewish community failed to convert to his new form of Christianity.

The Enlightenment and the growth of secularism did away with much of this, allowing the Jews to become free and equal citizens in many areas of Europe. However, it also created new problems. Jews were often asked to choose between their Jewish identity and the deracinated civil identity demanded by the new, modern nation-states. At the same time, opponents of modernity saw the Jews as the symbol and primary beneficiaries of the new order they despised. This led to a new, political form of antisemitism that saw the Jews as undermining civilization in order to assert Jewish control over the non-Jewish world. The most famous expression of this was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious fraud that remains popular among neo-Nazis and other antisemites and has become a bestseller in the Muslim world. These issues eventually led to the creation of the Zionist movement, which sought to solve the "Jewish question" by achieving self-determination in a Jewish nation-state.

The new political antisemitism eventually merged with a distorted form of social Darwinism and racial determinism, forming the antisemitism eventually embraced by the Nazi party, which saw the Jews as a parasitical disease that was destroying the "master race," i.e., Aryan white Europeans. This led directly to the murder of six million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust.

In Islam, the Quran contains several anti-Jewish passages, including one saying the Jews are sons of apes and pigs who will be killed on the apocalyptic day of judgement. Muhammad himself conquered the Jewish tribes of the Hijaz and, in several cases, committed atrocities against them, such as slaughtering all the male members of the Banu Qurayza. Jews and Christians were both placed under a system that allowed them to practice their religions and retain their autonomy as second-class citizens, though they faced certain restrictions and were required to pay a special tax. This status changed, however, depending on the political and religious atmosphere in any given part of the Islamic empire. For example, the Yemenite Jews were expelled several times, the Jews of North Africa were subjected to forced conversion, and female Jewish children were often forcibly taken from their parents and raised as Muslims.

With the rise of Zionism, a number of Jews began to immigrate to the Holy Land. Around this time, Arab Nationalism began to flourish. There were a minority of Arab nationalists who sought to ally with the Zionist groups, seeing them as "fellow Arabs" with skills that could be used to modernize the Arab world without being placed under the European boot so to speak. But this did not pan out, and with things such as the betrayal of the British and the Balfour Declaration, Jews began to be viewed as a 5th column. With the Arab world carved up by Britain and France, propaganda by a certain German group became rather popular. Even the Jews that had been living in the Arab world for centuries became viewed with suspicion, and life grew steadily worse.

Then came the civil war in the Mandate of Palestine, culminating in the founding of Israel. This was not a good time to be an Arab; ethnic cleansings occurred, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced. Local Jews were blamed, and in retaliation riots broke out, and Jews throughout the Arab world were cleansed in response. The only Muslim communities with Jewish populations of note are Turkey and Iran, though most Jews left during the Iranian revolution. Whereas Israel was eager to absorb the Jews into their population, the Arab world was not so eager to do the same with the Palestinians, keeping the issue alive. Life has steadily gotten worse for most of the refugees, and since violence breeds more violence, well, today Jews do not win any popularity contests in the Arab world. And as long as the issue remains open, with Palestinians stuck in camps for decades and the Israelis and Palestinians unable (or unwilling) to settle it peacefully, it's unlikely to get better.

General prejudice

Most such beliefs feed off of ignorance and prejudice that arises from historical interpretations of Christianity and its teachings, and have traditionally been fanned with accusations of heresy and obvious cultural differences, as well as Biblical associations of Jewish leaders (often referred to simply as "the Jews," or that perennial sign of Nazi beliefs, "the Jew," by the dumb and those who tend to misspeak), with the death of Jesus. Antisemitism also pops up among Muslim communities, often combined with banking conspiracies and 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Anti-Semites frequently claim that Jews secretly control banks/governments/the media/the Treaty of Versailles. Tragically, on occasion some Jews fail to respond appropriately to such accusations, confirming conspiracy theorists' baseless concerns in their minds. It is similar to racism in that it frequently applies a stereotype or stereotypes to all members of a diverse group. Nazism took antisemitism to horrific extremes, resulting in the Holocaust. Modern antisemitism frequently takes the form of Holocaust denial or mass media/governmental conspiracy theories such as the "Zionist Occupational Government" (ZOG) beloved of white supremacists, but classic antisemitic tracts including the infamous 19th century Russian forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion have become increasingly popular in the Middle East. Some lunatic anti-Semite may think almost every person he/she doesn't like (or is rich) is Jewish, even when they aren't.

Both the left and right are guilty of antisemitism. Ruth Fischer, a Communist leader of Weimar-era (1919-1933) Germany, called for "Jewish capitalists" to be hanged from lampposts; ironically her contemporary Hitler, considered Communism to be a Jewish plot - but he also liked the stereotype of the Jewish banker.

How Antisemitism differs from plain old racism

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

While most racists believe that the victims of their hatred are inferior to them (e.g. no white supremacist thinks that black people secretly control the world), antisemitism ascribes some traits of "superiority" to its victims. In the mind of the antisemite "the Jews" own or control "the money", "the media" and are behind Capitalism, Communism or both. Also characteristic for antisemitism (though this may be found with some racists as well) is that Jews can do what they want because they are always "evil" for it. If Jewish men have sex, they are the "evil perverters of the youth." If they don't, either they must not be "normal" or they're in some "diabolical pact" that prohibits them from having sex. If Jews are poor, in the eyes of the antisemite, they are "useless moochers." If they are wealthy, they "control the banks" and are "usurers". While many antisemites grant that Jews are (supposedly) more intelligent than average people, they are again accused of using that intelligence for their nefarious schemes.

Antisemitism does not necessitate the presence of Jews. In Japan, for example, there is virulent antisemitism within the right wing but there are hardly any Jews to be found. The same is true for much of the Muslim world, although that animus is driven by some legitimate anger over Zionism and Palestine. And even more surprisingly, antisemitism may indeed work while never uttering the word "Jew". Some simply replace "Jews" for "Zionists" (see below), while others use the evil bankster trope without ever saying or implying that the "banksters" are Jews. (Hint: If your opponent starts quoting the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion they might just be a tad antisemitic.) This kind of antisemitism has also infected mainstream political culture in Malaysia to a small extent. And it can be found to some degree or other around the world.

Khazar myth

Main article: Khazar myth‎

Some antisemites attempt to discredit Israel and the ethnic origin of many Jews by claiming that Ashkenazi Jews (i.e. those descended from a German bloodline) actually descended from the Turkic Khazar Empire and therefore are not the "real" Jews. This myth has no evidence behind it. Although Jews did settle in the Empire and the Khazar ruling class adopted Judaism, Jews had already inhabited Europe long before the Turkic Khazar Empire came about. There is historical and genetic evidence that discredits this pseudohistorical "theory" too. This myth is often used as a way to justify the elimination of Israel and/or to explain why the British/Aryan/[insert race here] are the chosen people of the Bible, and not the Jews.

A similar myth espoused by some people, such as Louis Farrakhan, is that Jewish people who come from Europe are not the original Semitic peoples and that many Arab Muslims are more closely related to the original Semites. Based on this myth, they claim that even if they hate Jews, they like Muslims, so they aren't antisemitic, you are. Regardless of who the "real" Semites are, the term antisemitism was popularized in Germany in 1873 specifically to replace Judenhass ("Jew-hatred") with a more scientific-sounding word.

Antisemitism of various groups

While many like to portray Antisemitism as a problem of the fringes of society and political discourse, antisemitic tropes, stereotypes and even more or less open hostility can be found in basically all strata of society and all political groups. Unfortunately, it has become a bigger taboo calling someone an Antisemite - unless they are foaming at the mouth "gas the Jews" types - than holding certain antisemitic views.

Islamic Antisemitism

In a very similar way to Martin Luther, Muhammad was initially somewhat sympathetic to the local Jews, especially since he was accepted by them when he fled Mecca for Medina and as he believed that all previous "false" religions were not worthy for the Jews to convert to, but he having the truth right from Allah himself would make them see the error of their ways and they'd convert en masse. After said mass conversions failed to occur, Muhammad became increasingly hostile towards Jews, even calling them infidels. Hence it is excessively easy to find Suras in Quran that portray Jews as bad and evil and it is also easy finding Suras that advocate tolerance.

Despite this early seed for Jew hatred within Islam, Jews sometimes lived comfortable lives under Islamic rule and Islamic rulers were not necessarily worse to their Jewish subjects than Christian rulers of the same era and region. As a matter of fact perhaps the greatest Jewish scholar of all times - Maimonides - lived under Islamic rule. However, pogroms and calls for persecution happened under Islamic rule as well and Jews had to flee or were expelled from Islamic lands as well as Christian lands. Rulers sometimes exploited the anti-Jewish sentiment of their subjects, sometimes tried to protect their Jewish subjects from a hostile population and sometimes fanned the flames of religious and ethnic hatred for personal gain or out of bigotry.

During the 19th century, the Islamic world was in a crisis, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly weakened and European powers made more and more inroads into territories like Egypt or Algeria. This initially prompted a response where Arab intellectuals called for learning from the Europeans and copying their progressive ideas. Unfortunately, Antisemitism fell on a fertile ground of pre-established animosity towards Jews in many places and was seen as "scientific" and "modern". Both secular thinkers like the founders of Arab nationalist movements and Islamists increased their hatred of and rhetoric against Jews.

During the late 19th century, there was increasing Jewish immigration into the general area of the Levant, which provoked various responses. While some local Arabs hoped for economic development and investment, others stoked xenophobia and yet others combined xenophobia and antisemitism, resulting in massacres targeting even those Jews that had lived in the area for centuries. After the establishment of Israel and the humiliating defeats of Arab armies in basically all wars they fought against Israel, autocratic leaders made hatred of Israel and/or Jews (the two basically being portrayed as one and the same in propaganda) the only kind of expression allowed to manifest itself publicly or in the media.

Consequently many Muslims from Arab states but even some from Iran or the Philippines today hold antisemitic views. On the other hand, this is frequently exploited by xenophobe populists in the West who say they're opposed to Arab immigration on the grounds of their (supposed or real) antisemitism.

Left wing Antisemitism

Left wing antisemitism has its roots in the opposition towards "usury" or taking interest for a loan. Some leftists have always criticized this wrongheaded criticism of capitalism and even Karl Marx has written about this phenomenon. While not everybody who speaks of "banksters" and "loan sharks" may necessarily mean Jewish "banksters" and "loan sharks", the undertone is quite notable in many of those screeds.

Another type of leftist antisemitism first showed up after Six Day War when Israel first demonstrated to the world that it was capable of militarily annihilating its neighbors. Prior to that, many leftists around the globe had sympathy with Israel and saw it as an oppressed people finally reclaiming its rights, not least because the kibbutzim had strong elements of socialism and the Labor Party was politically dominant throughout Israel's first twenty years of statehood. After the Six Day War, however, criticism of Israel became par for the course and quite often it was and is done in such a way as to make use of old antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, calling Israel bloodthirsty (especially for "children's blood"), alleging that Israel poisons wells and frequently resorting to old antisemitic clichés when portraying Israel such as long noses, an octopus holding the world in its grasp or "shadowy" "controlling" figures. Talk of a "Jewish lobby" and its supposed or real influence on the governments of the West is also a frequent antisemitic trope employed by leftists.

Leftist antisemitism is often virulently rejected as a total impossibility as true leftists cannot be Antisemites, besides the Nazis were the one that perpetrated the Holocaust and did you see what Israel does?

Leftist violent groups in Europe and Japan also cooperated with Palestinian and other Arab violent groups throughout the Cold War era and thus often shared their views on Jews and Israel to at least some extent. There have been attacks on synagogues, individual Jews, Jewish institutions as well as Israeli citizens or other Israeli targets perpetrated by Western and Japanese leftist groups either by their own volition or in cooperation with Arab and Palestinian violent groups. One example of such intertwined violence is the Red Army Faction that trained with the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine with a 1977 hijacking of an airliner perpetrated by the PFLP on behalf of the RAF. Similarly, the Japanese Red Army perpetrated the Lod Airport massacre on behalf of Palestinian groups.

Right wing Antisemitism

Right wing Antisemitism is the most universally acknowledged antisemitism and it was this type of antisemitism that ultimately resulted in the Nazi Holocaust. Today it manifests mostly in Holocaust denial and the kind of anti-Jewish screeds found in the kookier corners of the internet such as White supremacists, White nationalists, Neo-Nazis, adherents of Christian Identity, the KKK, hardcore sections of the Alt-right, Radical Traditionalist Catholic groups Black supremacists/nationalists such as the Nation of Islam, conspiracy news websites such as HenryMakow.com, The Daily Stormer, The Right Stuff, Smoloko News, Real Jew News, Jew Watch etc.

Everyday Antisemitism

Antisemitic tropes crop up in everyday conversation even among "normal" people. Be it being uncomfortable when the word "Jew" is uttered, having a compulsory reflex to say something about Israeli foreign policy when Israel is mentioned how ever tangentially (think about it, how many people would react with a tirade about Emmanuel Macron when you talk about French wine?), or the "joking" use of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Unfortunately, this all combines to make Jews one of the most targeted minorities for violence based on ethnic or religious persuasion and synagogues or Jewish community centers have to have police protection and other security measures in many places where churches, temples or mosques don't need to be protected like this.

Zionism and anti-Zionism

Israel is odd because (tongue entirely in cheek) it was a successful Jewish conspiracy and is run by Jews. Criticism and support of Israel is plagued by hardliners on both sides who are leveraging different causes and labels. There are hard-right Israelis who call for the creation of Greater Israel and just place it under the label of "Zionism" so any criticism is conflated with calls to eradicate Israel altogether. Those who'd dismantle Israel happily use that equivocation, claiming they are only "anti-Zionist" in terms of thinking Israel is big enough already.

Many antisemites use anti-Zionism as a kind of cover and entry-level recruiting tool. In addition, most antisemites see Zionism not as a modern movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, but as some kind of ancient, all-encompassing world conspiracy — in their language, the term "Zionism" means more or less the same as The Jews.™

On the flip side, Israel's staunchest gentile defenders in the United States tend to be extreme evangelical Protestants, who eagerly look forward to the "ingathering" of Jews in Israel followed by their massacre and/or forced conversion to Christianity. No, seriously: John Hagee, one of these tireless soldiers for Christ and Israel, got into a little trouble after opining that the Nazi Holocaust was all part of God's plan to punish European Jews for being too irreligious, or something. Strange bedfellows.

The 3D Test

Obviously, not all criticism of Israel and Zionism is antisemitism, but it can be difficult to determine the line as "Zionism" is used as a dog whistle and many antisemites will hide behind criticisms of Israel (legitimate and otherwise). So there exists a need to demarcate. One such attempt at doing this is the so-called 3D Test proposed by Natan Sharansky.

• Demonization. Exaggerations or outright lies intended to portray Israelis or all Jews as subhuman or evil.
• Delegitimatization. Claims that Israel has no right to exist or the Jews are not "real" Jews or descendants from the Jews that left Israel 2000-2500 years ago, commonly using the Khazar myth.
• Double Standards.

Important: While having a heavy or even exclusive focus on Israel is not in itself evidence of a double standard (people volunteering at animal shelters don't necessarily hate the homeless), focusing on the plight of the Palestinians while handwaving away or outright denying the extent of ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Islamic world post 1948 very much is. On the flip side, highlighting the Jews that fled while engaging in apologetics or outright denial of the ethnic cleansings the Palestinians faced is also double standard.

This does not mean the test is without critics.

Freedom of speech at stake, or is it?

The problem with the 3D test is the implementation. Both the term "double standard" and the term "demonization" are arguably very open to interpretation. Free speech "extremists" like Christopher Hitchens were opposed to laws against Holocaust denial for that reason - once you start outlawing speech, it becomes hard to draw the line and define which speech is just disgusting, racist, and stupid and which should be a crime. However, the test can still be applied without it being made law. While applying the 3D test cannot and should not replace a critical mind with regard to statements that may or may not be antisemitic, but it provides a handy tool for laypeople who don't want or can't visit a three year course on the history of antisemitism to decipher all the dog whistles.

Adopting a law codifying the essential definition of the 3D test, France has made it de facto illegal to advocate for boycotts of Israel.

See also

• International Jewish Conspiracy
• Anti-Defamation League
• Blood libel
• Evil Jew
• Nazi Germany
• Holocaust
• Holocaust denial
• Passion play
• Racism

External links

• Antisemitism doesn't always come doing a Hitler salute, The Grauniad