Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives

Introduction

Introduction Alvin H. Rosenfeld Nazism was defeated in Europe almost seventy years ago. Antisemitism was not. Resurgent over the past decade, it is once again a disturbing presence on the European continent, in many Arab and Muslim countries , and elsewhere. According to the Year in Review 2008/09 report of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, the year 2009 began with “a wave of antisemitic manifestations [that] swept the world,” with close to one thousand attacks reported in January alone. Such incidents have become virulent over the past decade. Denis MacShane, a British Labour Party MP and author of Globalizing Hatred: The New Antisemitism (2008), notes that “hatred of Jews has reached new heights in Europe and many points south and east of the old continent.” He continues: “Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on pub­ lic transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-­Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-­left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.”1 In response to this upsurge in violence, Prime Minister Tony Blair commissioned MacShane and others to investigate new outbreaks of antisemitism in the United Kingdom. Their report, issued in 2006, is sober­ ing. In a parallel move, the U.S. Congress passed the Global Anti-­Semitism Review Act of 2004, which requires the Department of State to document acts of antisemitism globally. The annual reports issued by the State Department to date confirm the rise of antisemitic hostility through­ out much of the world. Similar reports issued by monitoring agencies in Europe confirm these same troublesome findings. To cite MacShane again: “The antisemitism of old has morphed into something new. . . . Neo-­ antisemitism is a twenty-­ first century global ide­ ology, with its own thinkers, organizers, spokespersons, state sponsors 2 | Rosenfeld and millions of adherents.”2 He concludes, “We are at the beginning of a long intellectual and ideological struggle. It is not [only] about Jews or Israel. It is about everything democrats have long fought for: the truth without fear, no matter one’s religion or po­ liti­ cal beliefs. The new antisemitism threatens all of humanity.”3 A phenomenon of this scope and consequence demands scrutiny at the highest scholarly levels. This book undertakes to provide such scrutiny by presenting fresh research on contemporary antisemitism by many of the world’s leading scholars of the subject. The nineteen authors whose work is represented in these pages come from a dozen different countries and demonstrate how anti-­ Jewish hostility is now resurgent on a global scale. Focusing especially on the social, intellectual, and ideological roots of the “new” antisemitism, their work elucidates many of the forces that nurture such hostility and bring it prominently into the pub­ lic sphere. There are intense debates today about the nature and causes of antisemitism and whether today’s antagonism to Jews and, especially, the Jew­ ish state is continuous with past manifestations of Jew-­ hatred or a departure from them. These debates frequently turn on conceptual differences—­ with sharply contrasting views on what antisemitism is and is not—and, consequently, also on definitional differences. The contributors to this vol­ ume understand antisemitism and engage it in their work in ways that are generally in accord with the main emphases of the European Union’s “Working Definition of Antisemitism.”4 Some invoke this document by name and quote some of its key passages. Others share the document’s basic assumptions even if they do not refer to it explicitly. All recognize that, in contrast to past antisemitisms, which drew largely on religious and racial biases against Judaism and the Jews, much of today’s anti-­ Jewish animus is driven by ideological and po­ liti­ cal biases. The older forms of Jew-­ hatred are not altogether gone, but among most enlightened people in the West they no longer are considered respectable or persuasive. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, which made shockingly clear the genocidal thrust of race-­ based antisemitism, racial hatred of Jews has largely been discredited. As for religious arguments against Judaism and the Jews, they, too, have lost much of their former power, in part owing to reforms instituted in Christian teachings and liturgical practices in the post-­ Holocaust period and in part owing to the fact that many West­ ern countries seem to have entered a post-­ Christian phase, their...