Four Questions Academics Missed at the Contemporary Antisemitism Conference
There’s an element of masochism to spending two days listening to brilliant scholars from around the world lecture on antisemitism. It could be very depressing, and I wasn’t going to attend. But the International Conference on Contemporary Antisemitism, which began on July 7, was being held at Haifa University, and I hadn’t been to Haifa since arriving in Israel a year ago. So, when I saw that a city tour was on the conference agenda, I packed my bag.
I’m glad I went. I not only saw Haifa but, by the end of the second day, realized four crucial questions that scholars haven’t been asking about contemporary antisemitism.
To begin with, the term antisemitism is problematic. It doesn’t properly account for how Jew hatred is tied to contemporary antizionism which, as Adam Lewis-Klein argues, is a distinct form of anti-Jewish bigotry. The term also fails to account for the distinctions between historic antisemitism and the new or “contemporary” forms of antisemitism. By virtue of the conference’s title, Contemporary antisemitism, this last critique seems implicitly accepted.
Older antisemitism, according to Shalom Hartman Institute Research Fellow and Conference presenter Tomer Persico, portrays Jews as a threat to the world through their liberal values. Holding out the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an example, Perisco shows how this 1903 antisemitic Tsarist forgery claims that Jewish liberal values are a poison which will “weaken humanity, allowing the Jews to take over the world.” Classic antisemitism, by Persico’s account, also includes the blood libel claim that Jews killed the messiah, engaged in ritualistic slaughter of children, greedily exploit the poor, and portray Jews as purveyors of communism. Jews are the emblematic “Other,” the eternal outsiders, the perpetual wanderers, “the pariah on the periphery of culture, the threat to the purity of the people and the wholesomeness of the family.”
This sharply contrasts with contemporary antisemitism, which Persico contends arises from a theological scheme composed of a “combination of post-colonial discourse, an atmosphere of post-nationalism, and a damning introspective critique of the West [that] have created a zeitgeist in which colonialism is seen as the original sin, Western cultural dominance and globalization its poisonous fruits…” out of which “once again the Jews who are the apotheosis and incarnation of evil. They are the greatest of colonizers, of nationalists, of oppressors, and the State of Israel, the most gruesome and heinous manifestation of Western dominance.”
To cut through the scholarly rhetoric, older antisemitism casts Jews as Christ killers, outsider villains, and communists who threaten the world order with their liberal values and seek to take it over (if they haven’t already). Contemporary antisemitism is the opposite of the communist liberal character. Instead, Jews are nationalists, colonists, and oppressors, with Israel as the manifestation of Western dominance and all evils.
Jew haters: make up your minds. Are we communists or capitalists? Are we the peripheral outsiders or the domineering colonist settlers? These contradictions between old and contemporary antisemitism raise two questions: Who is responsible for this change? Who benefits from contemporary antisemitism?
Over 240 scholars across 60 panels gave presentations during the two days I attended the conference. In that time, I had the privilege of witnessing 44 of those scholars mold antisemitism into different shapes, sizes, and dimensions as they described, measured, and explained it. It was a work of social science art that made me dizzy as I moved from scholars of history, religion, and politics who explained antisemitism within Islam to a presentation by a quantitative sociologist whose findings showed a statistical relationship between populism and antisemitism. I listened to political scientists explain antisemitism on the left from the sixties to the present, followed by a quantitative psychologist who presented his study that showed how antisemitic surges in the U.S. track with military campaigns against Israel. I took in a fascinating lecture on antisemitism as an interpretive system. I heard a presentation on post-colonialism and antisemitism. I listened to a lecture on the political theology of antisemitism on the left and on antisemitism as inverted redemption (not sure what that was).
I heard nothing new.
Because when I cut through all the complex statistical analyses, social-psychological behavior theories, and historical accounts, it became clear to me that the matter of antisemitism is simple and always has been. A lot of people don’t like Jews; some even hate us; it can turn violent and genocidal at times, and this hatred has followed Jews throughout history and wherever we go.
Only during the final panel presentation on “Following the Money and Coordinated Actions” did my thoughts on antisemitism crystallize, which speaks to the value of this conference. Four scholars detailed how Arab-Islamist groups are coordinated, interrelated, and clever. These scholars presented evidence of connections among the many U.S. Arab groups and how they may have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist organizations. This was nothing new to me, as I had conducted preliminary research on Arab groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. But hearing this presentation made it clear that scholars were not asking the most important questions about contemporary antisemitism.
The left-wing alliance with the Palestinian cause was evident well before October 7. As an example, the concept of intersectionality, pioneered by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in her seminal 1989 law review article Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, concerns the intersection of race and gender. Crenshaw theorized that “because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which black women are subordinated.”
Clearly, Crenshaw’s intersectionality had nothing to do with Palestinians and was never meant to be an all-encompassing thought system. Yet Islamist youth movements saw this concept as “major catalysts for the involvement of non-Palestinian college students in pro-Palestinian initiatives in college campuses in the US in organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Group Movimiento Estudiantil ChicanX de Aztlán(MEChA), and Black Student Alliance.” Accordingly, they appropriated intersectionality for their purposes.
In some cases, Islamic groups openly admit to hitching their cause to the anti-racism, settler colonialism, indigenous communities, the Black Lives Matter, and the gay rights bandwagon. These movements have nothing to do with Palestine. Yet, pro-Palestine-Islamist ideology has successfully attached itself to these movements. The Democratic Party in America is an unfortunate example when you examine how this once staunch ally of Israel has turned against the Jewish state. In effect, the Democratic Party has been taken over by “Free Palestine” ideology when it comes to Israel.
All this sets up the questions scholars have overlooked about contemporary antisemitism:
Who is benefiting most from present-day antisemitism?
Who are the chief architects of present-day antisemitism?
What methods are used to disseminate Jew hatred?
From the last panel discussion I attended, the answers to the first two questions seemed clear. Radical Islam, as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran and its proxies, Hamas, and Hezbollah, is the chief beneficiary and architect of contemporary antisemitism. In fact, a study by the French government identified how the Muslim Brotherhood planned and executed plans to infiltrate French communities and gain political and ideological control.
My observations are not enough. These questions demand scholarly investigation.
Finally, given the state of contemporary antisemitism, it’s also not enough for academics to study the subject, explain it, and then sit on the sidelines. Academics must join the fight by helping answer the final question: How do we fight back?
