The saga about antisemitism, the Left and the British Labour party just goes on and on. In April Labour MP Richard Burgon, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor, was forced to apologise for saying that the enemies of the Palestinian people are not the Jews but Zionists and Zionism. He was forced to apologise because the Labour Party has adopted the definition of antisemitism that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRI) adopted in 2016.
This is an account of antisemitism which incorporates what is known as the ‘new antisemitism’ into its definition. ‘Classical antisemitism’ focused on discrimination against the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever society they inhabited. However, most contemporary controversies around antisemitism have been a result of the extension of the notion to include discrimination against, denial of, or assault upon the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations, with Israel as the targeted “collective Jew among the nations”.’ The ‘new antisemitism’ concept seeks to conflate the notion of racism against Jews with any critique of Zionism, the Israeli occupation or the Israeli state in generic terms.
The ‘new antisemitism’ concept seeks to conflate the notion of racism against Jews with any critique of Zionism, the Israeli occupation or the Israeli state in generic terms.
While the notion of ‘new antisemitism’ spread during the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is not a new phenomenon. An article I published in the British feminist paper Spare Rib in 1984, (to be reprinted in Feminist Review, forthcoming), warned against the long-term dangers of such a conflation. However, in recent years the legitimacy of this notion has spread from the USA to the EU and elsewhere and received a particular boost when it was absorbed into the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016.
