The New Frontier of Hate—Peoplehood Antisemitism (Article)

The murder by a depraved anti-Israel lunatic of a pair of Israeli Embassy staffers about to be engaged is the latest in a series of horrific attacks against Jews dating to well before 2018, when the current wave of antisemitic killings is supposed to have begun. At this point, Jews and their allies should have no doubt about the source of these attacks. They are the outcome of the new antisemitism.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks identified three types of antisemitism: religious, racial, and peoplehood antisemitism. The first dates back to Jews’ experience of oppression and persecution under the pagan, Christian, and Islamic empires of the ancient and medieval worlds. The second took shape during the early modern period and culminated in the Holocaust. The third is the current dominant model. Peoplehood, or nationhood, antisemitism has roots in the previous two models; they are intermixed with it. But in an increasingly secular world, where scientific racism is thoroughly discredited, this third model—hatred of Jews as a collective, focused especially on the political form that this collectivity takes in the Jewish nation-state—provides a contemporary, legitimizable outlet for the world’s oldest hatred.

How did peoplehood antisemitism take shape? The nature of antisemitic activity was briefly in flux in the mid-twentieth century. After the Holocaust antisemitism wasn’t a respectable hate in any but the most fringe and depraved spaces. Gone were the days when you could be an industry titan like Henry Ford, a respected professor of philosophy like Martin Heidegger, or a world-famous writer like Voltaire—and also be openly antisemitic. This rule was not without exceptions of course (the Muslim world heightened rather than repented of its oppression of Jews after the Holocaust), but in broad swathes of the world hating Jews became a social and professional liability.

While hatred of Israel existed from the moment of its founding, before there was ever a Palestinian national movement, it wasn’t at first clear that Israel could be the locus of a new form of antisemitism. Israel was recognized by both the world’s superpowers, it belonged to the tradition of nation-states, and its story of return to sovereignty after 2,000 years, despite the efforts of colonial powers, stirred the hearts of onlookers. What was required to make Israel the centerpiece of a new form of antisemitism was a systematic delegitimization of the concept of nationhood. And that is precisely what occurred over the past sixty years....

You can read the rest at Times of Israel

May the memories of Yaron and Sarah be for a blessing

Medardo Rosso, The Jewish Boy (c.1892). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1970.33. Public domain image.