“New antisemitism”: a brief history and why it matters
JVL Introduction
This brief overview of how antisemitism was redefined to focus on Israel and, especially on the internationalist, anticolonialist left, provides a useful overview of how we got where we are today, with the IHRA so called (working) definition of antisemitism so firmly embedded in so many institutions.
Those who support Israel, especially those, such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews (the BoD) claim that the IHRA is THE internationally recognised definition when it is no such thing. We have written as well as published much on the IHRA definition and its inadequacies; this article, very focused on the USA, provides more historical information and, in doing so, firmly places the support for rights and justice for Palestinians as part of the wider anticolonial struggle.
We first saw the article in Mondoweiss under the title “How the creation of the ‘New Antisemitism’ was used to shield Israel and attack the Left” with the standfirst “Challenges to Zionism in the late 1960s and 1970s sparked an effort to redefine antisemitism focused on defending Israel while attacking the political Left. This resulted in the IHRA definition and the assault on Palestine activism we see today.”
We thank the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism for the article.
LL
This article was originally published by The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) on Mon 28 Apr 2025. Read the original here.
From the “New Antisemitism” to the IHRA Definition
Loading article text…
It is unfortunate that this otherwise reasonable article repeats the zionist propaganda that
“in 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) adopted a subtly modified version of the EMUC Working Definition which kept intact the 11 examples”
The examples were NOT part of the actual IHRA (so-called) definition itself, as numerous scholars have observed including its lead author Kenneth Stern, David Feldman and many others. This point is absolutely crucial in understanding the systematic misrepresentation used by agents of the Israeli state to promote the IHRA. Put bluntly, the technique depends on noting that if a decision on the formal approval of an insidious text is to be made by a committee of not very bright but solidly opportunist political appointees, the best strategy is to make the actual text so “bewilderingly imprecise” [Feldman] as to appear quite anodyne, and then to add some “illustrative examples” by way of explanation which are not part of the text to be approved, but which can easily be misrepresented as such later on.
Which of the worthies present when the committee “approved” the text of the definition would wish vociferously to stick their neck out by contradicting received wisdom – and risk being abused as an antisemite and an incompetent liar to boot?
This article is helpful but does not provide the full history of the term ‘anti-semitism’. Semitic itself was invented by Europeans to describe linguistic groups which included both Arabs and Jews. It is really an example of ‘orientalism’, well analysed by Edward Said. The ‘anti-‘ was added in the 1870s by European racists actively attacking Jewish citizens.
With this sort of history who would want to use the term at all.
And don’t forget Robert Fine, ‘Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question’ (2017).
Proponents of the idea that theres a major problem of left wing antisemitism will sometimes also argue that being Jewish is a race or ethnicity, not just religion, and will use examples of secular and atheist Jews, saying that although these people don’t follow the religion, their culturally Jewish. What is being culturally Jewish, and what about the culture is separate from the religion ?
Further, in the Middle East, where lots of people are semitic, are Jewish people not just one of many semitic speaking people’s ?