Why Explain Antisemitism?

Sam Harris speaks with Simon Sebag Montefiore about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the history of the Jews, and the rise of global antisemitism.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is an internationally bestselling author and historian. His books include Catherine the Great and Potemkin, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Young Stalin, Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East, The Romanovs: 1613–1918, The World: A Family History of Humanity, and The Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter.

The Intra-Communal Professorial Group (ICPG) is a network of academics dedicated to researching and combatting antisemitism in UK higher education and improving the environment for Jewish students, academics, professionals, and other staff.

Since 7th October 2023, the date when Hamas perpetrated the worst and most murderous single massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, there has been a surge in antisemitism in UK universities. This report offers a summary of research by the Intra-Community Professorial Group (ICPG) about antisemitism at UK Universities since the 7th October attacks, aimed at understanding and documenting problems on and off campus and proposing evidence-based solutions to address them.

The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023 plunged the world into a frenzy of antisemitism and extremism. Today, The Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism took out full page ad in the National Post to deliver a strong message.

Soirée de mobilisation organisée par la revue La Règle du Jeu, le 3 juin 2024, au Théâtre Antoine.

Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. He is the author or editor of 36 books, including six about antisemitism. Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles was published this April. He was president of the national AAUP from 2006-2012.

Antisemitism has been part of Judeo-Chrisitan-Islamic culture for centuries, taking various forms and expressions. After its most horrendous and destructive outburst in the 20th-century Holocaust, it gave rise to the collective determination: “Never Again!” Yet recent and current genocidal outcries against Israel and the Jews testify to the enduring power and relentlessness of antisemitism.

On the night of Monday to Tuesday, the Wall of the Righteous, located at the Shoah Memorial in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, was tagged with red hands. This despicable anti-Semitic act refers to the lynching, immortalized by a photograph that has remained famous, showing a Palestinian, brandishing his bloodied hands following the lynching of two Israeli soldiers murdered and dismembered on October 12, 2000, in Ramallah, by a group of Palestinians.

This document that expresses concern about the rise of antisemitism in German has been signed by over 300 academics. The English text follows the German.

As the morning of Oct. 7 recedes into the distance, its horrors only seem to be growing. Again and again, we Israelis tell ourselves what has become part of the formative story of our identity and our destiny. How for several hours Hamas terrorists invaded the homes of Israelis, murdered some 1,200 people, raped and kidnapped, looted and burned.

Sabrina Soffer is former Commissioner of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism at the George Washington University and author of My Mother’s Mirror: A Generational Journey of Resilience and Self-Discovery. She argues that ‘the lasting effects of Nazi ideology on Arab-Israeli relations post-1948 underscore the imperative to critically address hateful propaganda and education in shaping Arab-Israeli tensions’.

Lucy Aharish is one of the most prominent television broadcasters in Israel—and the very first Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew-language Israeli television. Born and raised in a small Jewish town in Israel’s Negev desert, as one of the only Arab Muslim families, she has a unique lens through which to view the divisions in Israeli society, the complexity of the country’s national identity, and the Middle East more generally.