Anti-antisemitism

Anti-antisemitism is opposition to antisemitism or prejudice against Jews, and just like the history of antisemitism, the history of anti-antisemitism is long and multifaceted. According to historian Omer Bartov, political controversies around antisemitism involve "those who see the world through an antisemitic prism, for whom everything that has gone wrong with the world, or with their personal lives, is the fault of the Jews; and those who see the world through an anti-antisemitic prism, for whom every critical observation of Jews as individuals or as a community, or, most crucially, of the state of Israel, is inherently antisemitic".^[1] It is disputed whether or not anti-antisemitism is synonymous with philosemitism, but anti-antisemitism often includes the "imaginary and symbolic idealization of ‘the Jew’" which is similar to philosemitism.^[2]

Strategies

A key Zionist belief is that antisemitism cannot be meaningfully addressed in any way other than the establishment of an independent state where Jews make up the majority of the population.^[1]

Yair Wallach argues that non-Bolshevik Jewish activists played an essential role in the successes of early Soviet anti-antisemitism, and he also argues that this fact proves that Jewish activists are essential to effectively combating antisemitism in 2021.^[3]

In the US, a plethora of novels which opposed antisemitism was published in the 1940s, a subgenre of social protest literature.^[4]

After the 2015 European migrant crisis, the German institutions have created positions for fighting antisemitism, sometimes specifically, sometimes with additional responsibilities. These positions are covered by non-Jews, but they work with German Jewish organizations and the German-Israeli Society.^[5]

Anti-antisemitism and antiracism

Opposition to antisemitism in the United Kingdom is historically connected to anti-racism, but in the 1990s, it began to diverge. Anthony Lester, the drafter of the Race Relations Act 1976, cited his experience of antisemitism to write a bill combating all forms of racial prejudice. According to Gidley et al, this divergence came about in part due to disagreement over Zionism and anti-Zionism.^[6] The idea of white privilege, structural racism, and perceptions that racism is based on skin color and colonialism made it harder to identify antisemitism.^[3][6]

Islamophobia is similar to antisemitism because both prejudices are ethnoreligious prejudices.^[7] In the twenty-first century, several populist radical right parties in Western Europe began to use anti-antisemitic and pro-Israel rhetoric as a means to oppose Muslim immigration and promote the belief that a clash of civilizations is occurring between Judeo-Christian Europe and the Muslim world.^[8] This belief is expressed along with the belief that Jews who live outside Israel are not part of the nations in which they live because they are only tolerated guests.^[8] In Hungary, right-wing parties such as Fidesz and later Jobbik distanced themselves from antisemitism and expressed pro-Israel beliefs, although Fidesz also promotes George Soros conspiracy theories. According to anthropologist Ivan Kalmar, "Anti-antisemitism allows populists to promote Islamophobia openly without the fear of being labelled Nazis."^[7]

Anti-antisemitism is "a defining marker of post-war German identity". The belief that Germany has successfully confronted The Holocaust enables the projection of antisemitism onto the outside world, especially to Muslim immigrants—a subtle form of Islamophobia that coexists with the vehement rejection of antisemitism.^[9] Hannah C. Tzuberi argues that in Germany, anti-antisemitism can go beyond the identification of Germans with Jews because it can even include the identification of Germans as Jews and the identification of Germany as Israel.^[10]

The German institutional effort against antisemitism is not accompanied by an equivalent effort against Islamophobia, racism and anti-Ziganism.^[5] Berlin officer Samuel Salzborn has argued that antisemitism and racism in Germany are different.^[5][11]

Anti-antisemitic watchdogs

According to Jonathan Judaken, anti-antisemitic watchdogs "may inadvertently help stoke new cases by giving activists a megaphone". He suggested that watchdog groups raise money by portraying antisemitism as a serious threat. In the United States, all watchdogs are pro-Israel.^[12]

Public opinion

According to public opinion surveys, the amount of anti-antisemitism in Poland (defined as "the rejection of any statements criticizing Jews") increased between 2002 and 2012.^[13]

See also

• Anti-antisemitism in Germany

References

1. Bartov, Omer (2022). "Antisemitism in History and Politics". Antisemitism Studies. 6 (1): 100–114. ISSN 2474-1817.
2. Samuels, Maurice (2021). "Philosemitism". Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism. Springer International Publishing. pp. 201–214. ISBN 978-3-030-51658-1.
3. Wallach, Yair (2021). "How to fight antisemitism? Lessons from the Russian Revolution" (PDF). Ethnic and Racial Studies. 45 (8): 1520–1527. doi:10.1080/01419870.2021.1954221. S2CID 237641688.
4. Gordan, Rachel (2021). "The 1940s as the Decade of the Anti-Antisemitism Novel". Religion and American Culture. 31 (1): 33–81. doi:10.1017/rac.2021.6. S2CID 235473785.
5. Kuras, Peter (July 18, 2023). "The Strange Logic of Germany's Antisemitism Bureaucrats". Jewish Currents. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
6. Gidley, Ben; McGeever, Brendan; Feldman, David (2020). "Labour and Antisemitism: a Crisis Misunderstood". The Political Quarterly. 91 (2): 413–421. doi:10.1111/1467-923X.12854. S2CID 218969189.
7. Kalmar, Ivan (2020). "Islamophobia and anti-antisemitism: the case of Hungary and the 'Soros plot'". Patterns of Prejudice. 54 (1–2): 182–198. doi:10.1080/0031322X.2019.1705014. S2CID 219021241.
8. Kahmann, Bodo (2017). "'The most ardent pro-Israel party': pro-Israel attitudes and anti-antisemitism among populist radical-right parties in Europe". Patterns of Prejudice. 51 (5): 396–411. doi:10.1080/0031322X.2017.1394663. S2CID 148849065.
9. Judith Gruber (2021). "At the Intersection of Racial and Religious Othering: Theologies of Interreligious Dialogue as a Performance of White Christian Innocence?". Answerable for our Beliefs. ISBN 978-90-429-4742-9.
10. “THE SUN DOES NOT SHINE, IT RADIATES”On National(ist) Mergings in German Philosemitic Imagery of Tel Aviv Hannah C. Tzuberi
11. Sandrisser, Nils (24 February 2020). ""Antisemitismus" und "Rassismus" erklärt" (in German). Evangelische Kirche in Hessen und Nassau. Archived from the original on 31 July 2023. Retrieved 13 August 2024. Im Unterschied zum Rassismus, der auf punktuellen Vorurteilen aufbaut, ist Antisemitismus aber ein umfassendes Weltbild. Das heißt, dass Antisemiten alles, was sie an der modernen Welt nicht verstehen oder ablehnen, antisemitisch deuten. Im Unterschied zu anderen Diskriminierungsformen erscheinen Juden im Antisemitismus zudem immer als schwach und mächtig zugleich.
12. Judaken, Jonathan (2021). "The Politics of the Gesture: The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, Antiracism, and Intersectionality". American Jewish History. 105 (1): 205–211. doi:10.1353/ajh.2021.0011. ISSN 1086-3141. S2CID 239734933.
13. Krzemiński, Ireneusz (2019). "Polish National Antisemitism". Polin Studies in Polish Jewry. 31: 515–542. ISSN 2516-8681.

Further reading

• Judaken, Jonathan (2006). Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-0563-5.
• Lapidot, Elad (2020). Jews Out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-8046-6.