Skip to player
Skip to main content
Skip to footer
Search
Connect
Watch fullscreen
Like
Comments
Bookmark
Share
Add to Playlist
Report
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism - the difference and why it matters
360info
Follow
2/6/2024
When is anti-Zionism antisemitism? As Professor David Slucki from the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University explains, the history of each is tied to the other, and there isn't always a clear difference between the two.
Category
📚
Learning
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Antisemitism is surging once again, particularly online.
00:04
Using data from Jewish advocacy body the Anti-Defamation League,
00:07
the New York Times reported that antisemitic content soared more than 919% on X
00:13
and 28% on Facebook in the first month since the Hamas attacks of October 7.
00:18
It has been a growing trend over the past few years.
00:22
According to a European Commission report from 2021,
00:25
there was considerable growth in the use of antisemitic phrases across French and German social media accounts during COVID.
00:32
It's a theme that has been replicated across the world,
00:35
echoing a centuries-old narrative where racists use global events as an excuse to attack and scapegoat the Jewish people.
00:42
Antisemitism is a historic phenomenon.
00:52
We call it the oldest hatred because it really goes back to anti-Putin.
00:57
From biblical times, history shows antisemitism developed as Christianity grew with it.
01:03
It is seen in the artworks of the Renaissance,
01:06
where depictions of Christian dominance and Jewish persecution hung in galleries and palaces across Europe,
01:12
time-stamping the suffering.
01:14
How Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or be kicked out of their homes during the Spanish Inquisition,
01:19
pushed into ghettos by the Popes of Rome, or murdered in Germany for perceived conspiracies against Christianity.
01:26
These works reinforce racism through culture as a constant.
01:30
The way we recognise antisemitism today,
01:34
really, we can trace that back to the kind of early to middle 19th century,
01:40
where this pseudoscience emerges, which really follows the revelations of Charles Darwin on the origin of species.
01:49
And Darwin's principles get misapplied to analysing human beings and humanity.
01:55
So what we get with the rise of these kind of ideas is the notion that there are inherent traits linked to your racial makeup.
02:06
It was around this period that a Jewish nationalist movement emerged, Zionism.
02:12
Its founder, a Hungarian journalist named Theodor Herzl,
02:15
believed European antisemitism had grown so bad that Jews would never be allowed to assimilate,
02:21
meaning they needed a homeland of their own.
02:24
At the first Zionist Congress in 1897,
02:27
he and his fellow members agreed that the movement's aim was to
02:30
"establish a home in Palestine for the Jewish people, secured under public law."
02:35
Around the time Herzl was developing his movement,
02:38
a German named Wilhelm Mahr had written a paper that Germans were losing out to Jews.
02:44
Along with founding the League of Antisemites,
02:46
Mahr's attempt at intellectualising his racism established some of the tropes that endure to this day.
02:52
So at the same time as the race science part,
02:55
there also emerges this notion that Jews are taking over the world,
03:00
this conspiratorial thinking around Jews and their power.
03:06
And it's nonsense, but it becomes quite popular in certain parts of the world.
03:11
And so this kind of modern antisemitism,
03:15
which revolves around race science and around Jewish conspiratorial thinking,
03:21
it brings Jew hatred into the modern world.
03:26
This transforms antisemitism.
03:29
And it persists to this day.
03:32
The biggest sort of flashpoint is the Holocaust.
03:35
And really that first half of the 20th century,
03:38
when violence against Jews is almost non-stop.
03:44
The violence in the early 20th century saw many Jewish people make 'aliyah',
03:49
a Hebrew term that describes Jewish people moving back to Israel.
03:53
Yet despite having just fought a war to depose the Nazis,
03:56
and decades later the fall of the Soviet Union,
03:58
antisemitism remained entrenched,
04:01
spiking around global events and harming new generations.
04:05
So why does this racist conspiracy hold such sway?
04:08
I think it stems back to the fact that antisemitism is slippery,
04:12
even though in the West antisemitism became less acceptable after the Holocaust.
04:20
It never went away.
04:23
People still, people have not stopped blaming Jews for their problems.
04:28
The rise of social media has played a huge role in the spread of antisemitism.
04:33
You know, with the rise of YouTube, Twitter, TikTok,
04:38
it's just much easier to be confronted with antisemitism.
04:42
You don't have to go looking for it.
04:45
Recently, antisemitism has evolved again.
04:48
Some people, like the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
04:52
are concerned that antisemitism is behind criticism of the State of Israel,
04:56
and the political movement that created it, Zionism.
05:00
Zionism wasn't something dreamed up entirely by Theodor Herzl.
05:04
The idea that God promised those lands to the followers of Abraham called the Israelites
05:08
goes back to the Old Testament.
05:10
It took until 1948, when Israel was declared by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion,
05:16
who was then head of the World Zionist Organization.
05:19
The declaration meant there was now one Jewish nation in the world,
05:22
along with the numerous established around Islamic and Christian beliefs.
05:26
However, since this point, the concept of what Zionism is,
05:29
and what it hopes to achieve, has become heavily debated.
05:33
Zionism isn't one thing, and it's never been one thing.
05:37
It's been attached to a whole range of political worldviews.
05:43
There was rarely agreement on what that ought to look like,
05:46
whether that took the form of a nation-state, which was the most prevalent version of it.
05:52
But Zionism was one of many political movements in the pre-Holocaust Jewish world.
06:00
It wasn't even the dominant one.
06:03
But the Holocaust changed things for many Jews.
06:05
The fact that there was nowhere to go,
06:07
establishing a Jewish state in what was then Palestine, came at a huge cost.
06:15
As Israel developed, decades of war marked its foundational years,
06:19
and this difficult relationship with its neighbours continues.
06:23
It sparked war with not only Palestinians, but also surrounding neighbours.
06:32
It saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.
06:40
And it's been an intractable quagmire, I guess.
06:46
So there's this kind of, in a way, unsolvable problem between the notion that
06:52
only Israel can shore up the Jews' existence,
06:56
and if you don't have a Jewish state, then that leaves Jews vulnerable,
07:00
versus at what cost.
07:03
And I think that's really the position of many anti-Zionists,
07:06
that the cost of statehood is too great.
07:09
The intractable bargain accelerated both anti-Semitism
07:12
and questioning of Zionist ideals across the globe.
07:15
But is criticism of Zionism criticism of all Jewish people?
07:19
But I really think we should think about it more like a spectrum,
07:23
and there are people on all different positions along the spectrum.
07:27
Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism?
07:32
It can be, and this is part of the struggle to define anti-Semitism.
07:39
Many governments, universities and organisations use what is known as the IHRA definition,
07:45
the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of anti-Semitism.
07:50
It states that anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews,
07:53
which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.
07:56
It goes on to say,
07:57
"Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
08:05
And that was adopted by countries, by universities, as the definition.
08:12
And one of the critiques that came out of that was it was a bit too rigid in some ways,
08:19
that it would have a kind of chilling effect on particularly academic freedom and freedom of speech.
08:28
In 2020, to alleviate these concerns, a range of Jewish academics convened the Jerusalem Declaration.
08:34
This attempted to create space between the racism against Jewish people and the acts of the state of Israel.
08:40
On the face of it, it is not anti-Semitic to support the Palestinian demand for justice,
08:45
offer evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state, or boycott or divest from Israeli businesses.
08:52
The quest for definitions has offered no confirmed position.
08:56
You know, we're in a heightened period right now as well,
09:00
where many Jews in places like Melbourne and Australia more broadly feel very vulnerable and very sensitive to anti-Zionism.
09:13
And when I say many Jews, I say that because there's also like a cohort of Jews that identify as anti-Zionism,
09:18
so I don't want to generalise and say Jews feel this way or another way.
09:23
Again, it's a spectrum.
09:24
Instead, communities, hurt and scared, recede further from the difficult conversations needed to be had.
09:30
One of the things that's concerned me locally, you know, obviously I'm very concerned about the unfolding crisis in Israel,
09:41
and particularly in Gaza, but one of the things I've been concerned about locally when I look around
09:46
is the impact that it has on our social cohesion and our ability to connect with one another
09:54
and our ability to have difficult conversations, and these are difficult conversations, necessarily so.
10:01
And I think it starts from a place of empathy, you know, and that's our role at universities also,
10:07
is to teach and model how to have those discussions.
10:12
So I think it comes from a place of understanding why people feel the ways in which they do,
10:19
and seeing them as fully human and imperfect.
10:22
[Music plays]
10:28
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Recommended
4:40
|
Up next
Israel-Hamas: Harvard, Penn, MIT Heads Face Congress Over Campus Anti-Semitism Acts | Oneindia News
Oneindia
12/6/2023
7:28
What is anti-Semitism and why has there been so much of it in Australia?
Australian Community Media
3/4/2025
1:27
French lawmakers to debate if anti-zionism should be a crime
FRANCE 24 English
2/19/2019
1:08
Antisemitism
The Canberra Times
1/8/2025
2:44
Anti-Semitism rearing its ugly head again? | DW News
DW (English)
3/15/2016
1:35
Australian universities agree to new definition of antisemitism
ABC NEWS (Australia)
2/26/2025
2:20
Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and Israel's leaders - UpFront
Al Jazeera English
7/1/2017
2:49
Antisemitism in Europe reaching levels unseen in decades, says top Rabbi
euronews (in English)
10/25/2023
3:00
Israel's antisemitism conference sparks debate over alliances with Europe's right wing
euronews (in English)
3/28/2025
2:36
Hundreds gathered demanding for more action against rising antisemitism
ABC NEWS (Australia)
12/15/2024
1:33
Jewish people react to anti-Semitic tensions in London
ODN
10/13/2023
2:06
Jewish Berliners encounter anti-Semitism | DW English
DW (English)
4/24/2017
1:39
Huge rise in antisemitism in UK, says charity
ODN
2/15/2024
2:48
Jewish community leaders call for tougher penalties following more antisemitic attacks
ABC NEWS (Australia)
1/14/2025
1:19
Ex-Israeli official: Demonization of Israel fueled antisemitism
AlArabiya English
5/23/2025
1:20
Antisemitic incidents in Germany go up by more than 80%, report says
euronews (in English)
6/25/2024
3:01
Jillian Segal named as first Envoy to Combat Antisemitism
ABC NEWS (Australia)
7/9/2024
26:00
Living in fear: How anti-Semitic is Germany? | DW English
DW (English)
1/25/2018
0:31
Police update on anti-Semitic attack investigations around Sydney
Australian Community Media
2/19/2025
1:18
Antisemitic acts rise in Belgium and France amid Gaza conflicts
euronews (in English)
1/25/2024
11:08
'It Is Not Antisemitic To Speak Out Against The Extremist Israeli Government!': Bernie Sanders
Forbes Breaking News
5/1/2025
1:46
What should Australians know about migration before the election?
360info
4/8/2025
2:48
Professor Fethi Mansouri: The immigration debate
360info
3/27/2025
2:33
Professor Fethi Mansouri: Dismantling immigration myths
360info
3/27/2025
5:14
Talking public health with Laureate Professor Peter Doherty
360info
3/12/2025