Al-Qalam 
By Ebrahim Rasool (Former Ambassador to the USA)
Antisemitism – hatred of, prejudice towards, and discrimination against Jewish people – is real. Jews were expelled from England in 1290; from France in 1306; from Germany from 1430; from Spain and Portugal by 1492; and after 1848 Jews fled the pogroms in Central Europe. And no one should deny the twentieth-century genocide and holocaust wrought by fascism in Western Europe against the Jews.
Even today, antisemitism is real. Indeed, Jews suffer antisemitic incidents ranging from slurs, online targeting, assaults, and terror. Antisemitism is a real member of the family of bigotry, the persistent and pernicious hatred and intolerance of people who are different. And so, in a world of revived supremacism and chauvinistic nationalisms, and increasing prejudice and discrimination, antisemitism takes it place alongside racism, misogyny, xenophobia, islamophobia, homophobia, and all other siblings in the family of bigotry.
An evolving definition
But as antisemitism remains real, its definition and application are evolving and changes in definition have accelerated with the onset of the twenty-first century. Antisemitism in the Middle Ages remained, in definition, quite stable; its drivers were theological (like accusations of the deicide of Jesus) and economic, which could be solved through conversion or expulsion. The definition adopted a race dimension in the twentieth century as the Nazi regime prioritised ethnic origin rather than mere religious beliefs. After the horrors of the holocaust were uncovered, the recoil from Western Civilisation tended towards inclusion in the definition of antisemitism any criticism of Jews, whether in questioning the holocaust or being remotely critical of the Zionist vision and solution.
Resistance, brutality, and an all-encompassing antisemitism
However, the onset of the twenty-first century saw two parallel trends: Intensified Palestinian resistance with brutal Israeli responses, accompanied by a more expansive, all-encompassing definition and application of antisemitism. Triggered by Ariel Sharon’s show of strength at the Aqsa Mosque after the scuppering of the Camp David Summit, the second Intifada (2000-2005) saw an Israeli response of assassination of Palestinian leaders, Operation Defensive Shield that occupied West Bank Cities, and the construction of a security barrier. Following Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006, Israel blockaded Gaza in 2007, and maintains this till today, eliciting various attempts to break the blockade. Between 2008 and 2014, three Gaza wars were conducted by Israel: “Cast Lead”, “Pillar of Defence” and “Protective Edge,” using airstrikes, missile attacks and ground invasions to destroy lives, livelihoods and infrastructure in a futile chicken-and-egg puzzle of what came first: Hamas rockets or Israeli atrocity? Ongoing hostility climaxed in 2021 as Palestinians rose to repel the planned Israeli evictions from Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, the raids on the Aqsa Mosque, and the incursions into, and settlements onto, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, which today almost total 192 “officially sanctioned”, and about 350 “unauthorised” settlements by Israelis on Palestinian lands. Across these settlements, more than 780 000 Israelis are now entrenched. This is the powder keg that was lit on 7 October 2023: the prelude to the genocide.
New Antisemitism – Conflating Jew, Zionist and Israeli
Shadowing this cauldron of resistance and brutal suppression is the weaponisation of antisemitism. In 2000, the Stockholm Declaration saw the need to promote Holocaust education, remembrance, and research because “humanity remains scarred by antisemitism and xenophobia, establishing that the international community shares a solemn responsibility to fight these evils.” This further gets tightened by the European Union in 2005 as a framework for a Working Definition of Antisemitism and now includes “rhetorical and physical manifestations” against anything Jewish. This builds towards the formal adoption in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) which evolves towards “Israel-Related Contexts” such as singling Israel out for criticism as applying “double-standards”; or opposition to Israel as “denying Jews self-determination”; with examples of antisemitism, in some cases, equating or conflating “Jews as a people, or Israel as a State”; or questioning whether Jews are “more loyal to Israel” than their national state.
The clinchers, however, are that it is anti-Semitic to draw “comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis…” and “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state or Israel.” Ostensibly this is meant to blunt “third wave Antisemitism” because “…antisemitism is growing among those who use their hatred of Zionism and Israel as a proxy for their hatred of Jews.” (AIJAC Fact Sheet, 19 August 2021).
Weaponisation – Anti-Genocide is Antisemitism!
Such conflation of Jew, Zionist, and Israel is merely the precursor to the weaponisation of antisemitism, which becomes particularly evident in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, and the genocide it occasioned. This period of genocide (2024-5) sees the chronicling of “cases of antisemitism” with the main prosecutors being the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) based in the USA, and the Community Security Trust (CST) in the UK. Both agree that antisemitism had reached historic heights globally, especially because they now use the ‘weaponised’ definition. By this application, their research fields in the West are anti-genocide protests on university campuses, the incidences of online and digital ‘harassment’ of Jews, as well as physical targeting of Jews and their institutions.
The ADL and the CSK on Third Wave Antisemitism
The ADL report (05/20/2024) on ‘Global Anti-Semitic Incidents in the Wake of Hamas’ War on Israel’, include the following as anti-Semitic: ‘Free Palestine’ or ‘Free Gaza’ graffiti; the allegation that Israel treats Palestinians as sub-humans; the accusation that Israelis or Zionists are ‘murderers’ or ‘child killers’; the demand that ‘genociders should get out of our neighbourhood’; or to be confronted with the question ‘do you support the IDF?’. The CST Report on Anti-Semitic Incidents in 2025 is a lot more detailed. It totals 3700 such incidents in the UK. Of this, 55% are related to the Palestine-Israel conflict, of which 1766 (48%) are “Anti-Zionist”, with “Zionist” deemed to be a proxy for ‘Jew’. Furthermore, 1541 (42%) of these incidents are ‘online antisemitism’ of which 70% are related to ‘events in the Middle east’. In total 2821 incidents (76%) constitute political or ideological discourses.
What both the ADL and CST reports illustrate is that such reaction to the political, geo-political, military and ideological events – and indeed the occupation, settlements and genocide – are now firmly under the “Third Wave Antisemitism” and no longer simply outrage at the death of 70 000 Gazans, the destruction of infrastructure and livelihoods, the increasing occupation of the West Bank, and the sustained incursion into Lebanon. This has become the weaponisation of antisemitism to shield Israel from moral judgement and legal accountability, and to shield Zionism, as a political ideology, from scrutiny, when, in its name, destruction is actual and devastating.
Antisemitism Now – Shield and Sword!
Albert Camus, in his work, The Rebel, argues that the twentieth century shows what occurs when political movements abandon moral constraints in the name of history, progress, revolution, because every genuine rebellion contains within itself a limit, a point beyond which the rebel, in destroying what it opposes, replicates it. Indeed, the weaponisation of antisemitism is not just to shield Zionism from its excesses. It is also a sword! Since dubiously achieving its apotheosis – the state of Israel in 1948 – Zionism has progressively shrugged off its limits: it has occupied beyond its mandate; it has resourced itself beyond its needs; it has settled to create immutable facts on the ground; it has muted and maimed journalists to hide its shame; it has lobbied to exploit Western guilt; it has killed and assassinated to quell resistance; and ultimately, it is in the throes of a genocide.
Zygmunt Bauman, in Modernity and the Holocaust, notes: “…it was not illiterate savages, but graduates of the finest education systems in the West who designed the gas chambers used to burn millions …. in Germany.” In fact, today the Muslim world – portrayed as the ‘savages’ by the ‘most moral and civilised Israelis’ – can look back at the history of antisemitism and rightfully claim that when the ‘civilised’ expelled Jews from Europe, we welcomed you in Istanbul, Morocco, and indeed Palestine! No wonder Dr Israel Shahak, who lived through the Warsaw Ghetto, survived the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, joined the IDF after moving to Palestine, and later was active in the Israel League for Human and Civil Rights, says today: “The Nazi’s made me afraid to be a Jew, and the Israelis make me ashamed to be a Jew”.
It should never be that the current genocide – with the growing and legitimate outrage globally – should be a fig leaf for real antisemitism to find a new lease on life, where bigoted slurs, caricature, conspiracy, vandalism, terror, and Nazi fantasies continue to be directed at Jews as Jews. We cannot replicate what we oppose. But we must oppose genocide in the name of Zionism and Israel, while fervently redeeming the divine and the human in Jews and Judaism!
*Ebrahim Rasool is the former ambassador to the United States and former Premier of the Western Cape.
