Why Explain Antisemitism?

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.

A review of the book by Matthias Küntzel.

Anti-Semitism always existed. Depending on the times, it has the freest way and the necessary legitimacy to demonstrate without shame. But these days there is also a less strident anti Semitism: the one that is based on the impossibility of repudiating the terrorist act perpetuated by Hamas without ifs or buts.

An important document, with the full judgement by judge Sebutinde, a judge on the International Court of Justice on the case brought by South Africa against Israel. She joined Judge Barak in her dissent.

Aharon Barak (Hebrew: אהרן ברק; born 16 September 1936) is an Israeli lawyer and jurist who served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006. Prior to this, Barak served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1978 to 1995, and before this as Attorney General of Israel from 1975 to 1978. He is one of the judges in the International Justice Court in relation to South Africa application.

Notwithstanding the repeated denials by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and its insistence that it has zero tolerance for hatred and antisemitism, UN Watch continues to find abhorrent antisemitism and support for jihadi terrorism by UNRWA staff on social media. This report details how UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre while at the same time asking when their UNRWA salaries will be paid.

For historian Georges Bensoussan, the International Court of Justice’s recent decision against Israel stems from a militant use of history.