How antisemitism has complemented Zionism

Webinar held on 3 December 2024
Sponsored by the Open University (OU) Palestine Solidarity Group and Jewish Network for Palestine (JNP)

Introduction:

Since the late 19th century, the Zionist project has been promoted as an essential refuge and defence against antisemitism. Yet it has embraced a racist stereotype of Jews as not belonging wherever they live and so needing a Jewish supremacist settler-colonial ethno-state in Palestine. Zionism originated as a Christian racist movement idealising the ‘return’ of Jews to the Holy Land in order to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus. From the start, Jewish Zionism has seen antisemites as important allies in motivating Jewish emigration to Palestine.

The philosemitic origin of Zionism continues today in various religious and secular forms: 50 million US evangelical Christians comprise the largest part of the Israel lobby there. Israel’s strongest supporters today include antisemitic regimes and movements around the world. Many see Israel as a crucial bulwark against ‘the Islamist threat’. These movements and regimes idealise Zionist Jews as 'the Jewish community', while marginalising and stigmatising anti-Zionist Jews.

In recent decades, mainstream institutions have recast antisemitism as ‘the New Antisemitism’, i.e. as hostility to Israel -- rather than to Jews. Antisemites were formerly people who dislike Jews. Now the term means people whom pro-Israel Jews dislike.

Why? As a plausible reason, the above approaches help promote Western imperial, neocolonial, white supremacist domination, both in the Middle East and globally.


Questions:

How has antisemitism complemented Zionism?

How has philosemitism related to them both?

How have mainstream Western institutions changed the meaning of antisemitism?

What does this mean for a comprehensively anti-racist decolonial agenda?

Since Israel’s genocide began in October 2023, what are new opportunities for such an agenda?


Speakers:

Tony Lerman, author of the book, Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the 'Collective Jew', Pluto Books, [ Ссылка ]

Barnaby Raine, PhD candidate, Columbia University. Author of several articles, e.g. ‘Jewphobia’ in the journal Salvage, [ Ссылка ]

Michael Richmond, independent writer, author of ‘Philosemitism: an instrumental kind of love’, New Socialist, 2022, [ Ссылка ]; also co-author of Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics

Tony Greenstein, author, Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and NationReferences


References

Brenner, L. 1983. Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. Available here: [ Ссылка ]

Finkelstein, N. G. 2024. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Penguin Random House.

Greenstein, T. 2023. Zionism During the Holocaust: The weaponisation of memory in the service of state and nation.

J-BIG. 2013. Zionism and Antisemitism: Racist political twins. Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG), Available here: [ Ссылка ]

Jewish Voice for Peace. 2017. On Anti-Semitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Resistance. Haymarket Books

Klug, B. 2013. What do we mean when we say ‘antisemitism’? Echoes of shattering glass. Conference talk at the Jewish Museum Berlin, Available here: [ Ссылка ]

Lerman, T. 2022. Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the 'Collective Jew', Pluto Books,

Pappé, I. 2025. Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic. One World.

Perez, A. 2023. Understanding Zionism: History and Perspectives. Augsburg Fortress Publishers.

Winstanley, A. 2023. Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. OR Books.

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