Antisemitism
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemitic tendencies may be motivated primarily by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually known as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
There are various ways in which antisemitism is manifested, ranging in the level of severity of Jewish persecution. On the more subtle end, it consists of expressions of hatred or discrimination against individual Jews and may or may not be accompanied by violence. On the most extreme end, it consists of pogroms or genocide, which may or may not be state-sponsored. Although the term "antisemitism" did not come into common usage until the 19th century, it is also applied to previous and later anti-Jewish incidents. Historically, most of the world's violent antisemitic events have taken place in Europe, where modern antisemitism began to emerge from antisemitism in Christian communities during the Middle Ages. Since the early 20th century, there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents across the Arab world, largely due to the advent of Arab antisemitic conspiracy theories, which were influenced by European antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Beginning in 1879, the compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany as a "scientific-sounding term" for Judenhass, and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone. In the 21st century, the idea that there is a variation of antisemitism known as "new antisemitism" has emerged on several occasions. According to this view, since Israel is a Jewish state, expressions of anti-Zionist positions could harbour antisemitic sentiments, and criticism of Israel can serve as a vehicle for attacks against Jews in general.
Origin and usage
Etymology
First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, the coining of "Semites" as a biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites.The origin of "antisemitic" terminologies is found in the responses of orientalist Moritz Steinschneider to the views of orientalist Ernest Renan. Historian Alex Bein writes: "The compound anti-Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, who challenged Renan on account of his 'anti-Semitic prejudices' ." Psychologist Avner Falk similarly writes: "The German word "antisemitisch" was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase "antisemitische Vorurteile". Steinschneider used this phrase to characterise the French philosopher Ernest Renan's false ideas about how 'Semitic races' were inferior to 'Aryan races.
Pseudoscientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. He coined the phrase "the Jews are our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis. According to Falk, Treitschke uses the term "Semitic" almost synonymously with "Jewish", in contrast to Renan's use of it to refer to a whole range of peoples, based generally on linguistic criteria.
According to philologist Jonathan M. Hess, the term was originally used by its authors to "stress the radical difference between their own 'antisemitism' and earlier forms of antagonism toward Jews and Judaism."
In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet in which he used the word "Semitismus" interchangeably with the word "Judentum" to denote both "Jewry" and "Jewishness". He accused the Jews of a worldwide conspiracy against non-Jews, called for resistance against "this foreign power", and claimed that "there will not be a single office in the land, including the highest, which will not have been usurped by the Jews".
This followed his 1862 book "Die Judenspiegel" in which he argued that "Judaism must cease to exist if humanity is to commence", demanding both that Judaism be dissolved as a "religious-denominational sect" but also subject to criticism "as a race, a civil and social entity". In the introductions to the first through fourth editions of "Der Judenspiegel", Marr denied that he intended to preach Jew-hatred, but instead to help "the Jews reach their full human potential" which could happen only "through the downfall of Judaism, a phenomenon that negates everything purely human and noble."
This use of Semitismus was followed by a coining of "Wikt:Antisemitismus" which was used to indicate opposition to the Jews as a people and opposition to the Jewish spirit, which Marr interpreted as infiltrating German culture.
The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year Marr founded the "Antisemiten-Liga", apparently named to follow the "Anti-Kanzler-Liga". The league was the first German organisation committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence and advocating their forced removal from the country.
So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in 1881, when Marr published Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte, and Wilhelm Scherer used the term Antisemiten in the January issue of Neue Freie Presse.
The Jewish Encyclopedia reports, "In February 1881, a correspondent of the "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums" speaks of 'Anti-Semitism' as a designation which recently came into use. On 19 July 1882, the editor says, 'This quite recent Anti-Semitism is hardly three years old.
The word "antisemitism" was borrowed into English from German in 1881. Oxford English Dictionary editor James Murray wrote that it was not included in the first edition because "Anti-Semite and its family were then probably very new in English use, and not thought likely to be more than passing nonce-words... Would that anti-Semitism had had no more than a fleeting interest!" The related term "philosemitism" was used by 1881.
Usage
From the outset the term anti-Semitism bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews. The word "Semitic" was coined for use in linguistics by German orientalist August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781 to designate the Semitic group of languages—Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and others—allegedly spoken by the descendants of Biblical figure Shem, son of Noah.Definition
Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or prejudice against Jews, and, according to Olaf Blaschke, has become an "umbrella term for negative stereotypes about Jews", a number of authorities have developed more formal definitions.Writing in 1987, Holocaust scholar and City University of New York professor Helen Fein defined it as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews."
Elaborating on Fein's definition, Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne writes that, to antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature: Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective. Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies. Jews bring disaster on their 'host societies' or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character."
For Swiss historian Sonja Weinberg, as distinct from economic and religious anti-Judaism, antisemitism in its specifically modern form shows conceptual innovation, a resort to "science" to defend itself, new functional forms, and organisational differences. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist. It promoted the myth that Jews conspired to 'judaise' the world; it served to consolidate social identity; it channeled dissatisfactions among victims of the capitalist system; and it was used as a conservative cultural code to fight emancipation and liberalism.
File:Antisemiticroths.jpg|thumb|A caricature by Charles Lucien Léandre showing Rothschild with the world in his hands
In 2003, Israeli politician Natan Sharansky developed what he called the "three D" test to distinguish antisemitism from criticism of Israel, giving Delegitimization, Demonization, and Double standards as a litmus test for the former.
British-American historian Bernard Lewis, writing in 2006, defined antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil". Thus, "it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the two features specific to antisemitism.
There have been a number of efforts by international and governmental bodies to define antisemitism formally. In 2005, the United States Department of State stated that "while there is no universally accepted definition, there is a generally clear understanding of what the term encompasses." For the purposes of its 2005 Report on Global Anti-Semitism, the term was considered to mean "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."
In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, an agency of the European Union, developed a more detailed working definition, which stated: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." It also adds that "such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity," but that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." It provided contemporary examples of ways in which antisemitism may manifest itself, including promoting the harming of Jews in the name of an ideology or religion; promoting negative stereotypes of Jews; holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of an individual Jewish person or group; denying the Holocaust or accusing Jews or Israel of exaggerating it; and accusing Jews of dual loyalty or a greater allegiance to Israel than their own country. It also lists ways in which attacking Israel could be antisemitic, and states that denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor, can be a manifestation of antisemitism—as can applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.
The EUMC working definition was adopted by the European Parliament Working Group on Antisemitism in 2010, by the United States Department of State in 2017, in the Operational Hate Crime Guidance of the UK College of Policing in 2014 and by the UK's Campaign Against Antisemitism. In 2016, the working definition was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. IHRA's Working definition of antisemitism is among the most controversial documents related to opposition to antisemitism, and critics argue that it has been used to censor criticism of Israel. In response to the perceived lack of clarity in the IHRA definition, two new definitions of antisemitism were published in 2021, the Nexus Document in February 2021 and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism in March 2021.