Understanding Antisemitism
The work to realise Palestinian freedom requires dismantling all forms of oppression, including antisemitism. That work begins with understanding antisemitism.
Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility, or violence against Jews as Jews. It can take many forms including violence, threats of violence, repeating or circulating antisemitic conspiracy theories, and other aggressions.
As progressive Jewish groups have pointed out, antisemitism is part of the machinery of division and fear created and used for specific political or material gain. The fight against antisemitism is inseparable from the struggles against racism, xenophobia, and hatred of ethnic and religious groups.
Dismantling antisemitism must include a focus on the systemic, movement-wide manifestations of antisemitism coming from white supremacist, Christian Zionist and neo-Nazi movements which pose the most powerful and grave threat to Jewish safety around the world.
Here are some of what we are reading to inform our understanding of antisemitism:
- On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice The uses and abuses of antisemitism in the 21st Century, collected by US-based Jewish Voice for Peace.
- Understanding Antisemitism – A resource written for social justice movements from Jews for Racial & Economic Justice in New York City
- Granting no quarter: 2012 statement condemning antisemitism, written by Palestinians
- Jewdas’ ‘How to criticise Israel without being antisemitic’ – A chatty guide on how to avoid antisemitic pitfalls
- Tania Shew: My perspective on Antisemitism – A young, Jewish, Labour Party activist shares her experiences with antisemitism on the Left, including a short history of antisemitism in the UK
- Zionism Antisemitism and the Left Today, talk given by Professor Brian Klug in London 2017
- Ongoing data and analysis from Political Research Associates
