“While there is an obvious overlap between antisemitism and other forms of hatred against the ‘other,’ Jew-hatred is unique. No other antipathy to any group has such deep historical roots, beginning in pagan Egypt and the Hellenistic world, where the Jewish refusal to acknowledge the divinity of kings was regarded as intolerable arrogance and monotheism as an affront to the ‘religious pluralism’ of the gods. No other hatred is so adaptable to seemingly any ideology and circumstance.

In its way, the persistence of antisemitism through most of recorded history is as astonishing as Jewish survival. Antisemitism has even managed to outwit its most formidable challenge, the Holocaust.

Conflating antisemitism with racism does an injustice to both. Each is distinct; each creates its own misery. Depending on the era, antisemitism has been nurtured by religion, secularism, utopian longings, racism, and anti-racism.

The term ‘anti-Semitism’ is an invention of nineteenth-century European racists. Acknowledging that there is no such thing as ‘Semitism,’ many now prefer the term ‘antisemitism,’ removing the capital ‘S’ and the hyphen. Even in its amended form, though, the term is problematic and implicitly reinforces the identification of Jew-hatred with racism. (Given the pervasive use of the term, this article reluctantly uses ‘antisemitism’ as synonymous with Jew-hatred.)

Defining antisemitism
Antisemitism is the transformation of the Jews into ‘The Jew,’ a symbol of whatever a given civilization regards as its most loathsome qualities. For Christians until the post-Holocaust era, The Jew was a Christ-killer, guilty of the ultimate crime of trying to murder the source of hope. For Muslims, The Jew was the ‘killer of prophets,’ the ultimate crime for a faith founded in veneration of the Prophet. For Marxists, The Jew was the ultimate capitalist; Marx, the son of a Jew who converted to Christianity, wrote that money was the ‘jealous god of Israel.’ And for Nazis, The Jew was the ultimate race polluter and, no less dangerous, the inculcator of conscience, undermining the Aryans’ ability to survive in a brutal world.”

Read the full piece by Yossi Klein Halevi in the Times of Israel