«معاداة السامية».. كيف تحوّلَ من حركة سياسية لسلاح يحمي إسرائيل!!

What are we talking about when we talk about anti-Semitism? For most of its history, anti-Semitism has been seen as a threat from the political right, a bastion of ethno-nationalists who exploited Christendom's ancient suspicions of its small Jewish population and infused it with racist pseudoscience. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of world Jews lived in Europe. For them, there was no ambiguity about the source of the danger of anti-Semitic politics, a danger that culminated in the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Now, in a fascinating book covering the period from the term's invention in the late nineteenth century to the present day, Mark Mazower argues that the situation is very different. More than four-fifths of the world's Jews live in two countries, Israel and the United States, the latter of which ensures the military dominance of the former over its region. Before World War II, Jews were an isolated minority, drawn by their opposition to fascism into alliance with other oppressed peoples. By contrast, today Jews are viewed as “white,” and for contemporary anti-colonialists, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has become a crucial issue. The days of old leftist solidarity are over; Indeed, the loudest voices denouncing anti-Semitism are seen as coming from the left, not the right. Mazower shows us clearly and concisely how we got here, traversing this thorny field through a history that seeks to enlighten rather than blame, showing how the rise of a pessimistic post-Holocaust sensibility, coupled with growing international criticism of Israel, has led to a gradual conflation of Jewish interests with the Jewish state. Half a century ago, few people believed that anti-Semitism had anything to do with hostility toward Israel; Today, the dominant Jewish voices are often equated between the two. The word itself has not changed, but its meaning has.