Why Explain Antisemitism?

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.

When Michelle Obama, Oprah, Malala Yousafzai, Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian – and the rest of the civilized world – saw the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram in April 2014, within days they took to Twitter and demanded “Bring Back Our Girls.” Why isn’t the world demanding the same now? It’s been one hundred days in captivity: bring back our girls.

It is Hamas that should go on trial at the International Court of Justice, not the Jewish state.

Rosalie Silberman Abella FRSC is a Canadian jurist. In 2004, Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, becoming the first Jewish woman and refugee to sit on the Canadian Supreme Court bench. She retired from the federal bench in 2021.

For many decades, virulently antisemitic forms of ‘anti-Zionism’ were central to the cold war propaganda of the Communist states. In this powerful essay Izabella Tabarovsky not only lays bare the entire shameful story of Soviet Judeophobia but shows us that, to quote William Faulkner, ‘the past is not dead, it is not even past’.

I refuse to teach students who lack basic critical thinking skills—or who condemn my Jewish identity.

Please set aside ten minutes to listen to this speech by Germany’s Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. It covers everything with a strategically sober and morally firm perspective and avoids all the tired cliches.