Anti-Jewish hostility is often treated as a static phenomenon: either present or absent, explicit or taboo. In reality, it is adaptive. It evolves in response to political norms, moral constraints, and ideological fashion. What changes is not necessarily the animus itself, but the closing or opening of socially intelligible forms through which it can be expressed.¹
To understand this evolution, it is useful to distinguish between three related but conceptually distinct modes of hostility:
- Anti-Judaism: religious hostility toward Jews as a faith community
- Antisemitism: racialised or conspiratorial hostility toward Jews as a people
- Antizionism: hostility toward Jewish collective sovereignty
These categories are not interchangeable, nor are they always neatly separable. How societies manage (or blur) these distinctions reveals how hostility toward Jews is legitimised in different moral environments.²
This typology builds on but differs from existing frameworks. Where the IHRA definition focuses on manifestations, and Sharansky’s 3D test emphasizes double standards, this essay traces institutional adaptation — how anti-Jewish hostility evolves in response to changing moral constraints rather than simply manifesting in various forms.
Fusion in Parts of the Middle East and North Africa
In much of the Middle East and North Africa, hostility toward Jews has historically tended toward fusion: religious, racial, and political animus merge into a single moral category. “Jew,” “Zionist,” and “enemy” are frequently treated as interchangeable identifiers, with little conceptual pressure to distinguish between them.³
This pattern is not uniform. Tunisia’s post-independence protection of Jewish heritage differs markedly from Iraq’s expulsions; Morocco retains a small Jewish community where Yemen does not. State policy, elite rhetoric, and popular sentiment often diverge.⁴
Nor did this fusion arise in isolation. European colonial powers both imported modern antisemitic conspiracy theories into the region and exploited Arab-Jewish tensions for political advantage — legacies that complicate any simple civilisational narrative.⁵
Yet despite regional variation and historical complexity, a recurring feature of much contemporary discourse remains: opposition to Israel is often not disentangled from hostility toward Jews as such. This fusion helps explain why attacks on Jewish civilians outside Israel are sometimes celebrated as legitimate “resistance,” and why genocidal rhetoric toward Israel can circulate with minimal moral censure.⁶ The target is not simply a policy or a border, but an identity.
Rebranding Under the Soviet System
The Soviet Union pioneered a different strategy: not fusion, but rebranding.
Under state atheism, overt religious hostility toward Jews was suppressed, and antisemitism was officially condemned. But it was not dismantled. Instead, it was recoded as antizionism. Zionism became the sanctioned ideological container for longstanding antisemitic tropes: dual loyalty, global Jewish power, moral corruption, and conspiratorial influence.⁷
This model — Zionology, the pseudo-academic treatment of Zionism as a global conspiratorial system — portrayed “Zionists” as uniquely malevolent actors undermining humanity.⁸ The distinction was bureaucratic rather than ethical. Jews could no longer be attacked as Jews, but “Zionists” could be denounced relentlessly, systematically, and with state approval.
This framework proved influential far beyond the Soviet bloc, shaping activist and academic language that persists in Western discourse today and at the UN.⁹
Differentiation in the Western Moral Settlement
In the West, anti-Jewish hostility underwent a third transformation: formal differentiation.
After the Holocaust, antisemitism became morally taboo and institutionally defined as hatred. Anti-Judaism faded into historical memory. Antizionism, however, was reframed as a legitimate political stance — particularly as post-colonial and settler-colonial frameworks gained influence.¹⁰
This differentiation produced genuine moral gains. Explicit antisemitism was marginalised. Jews gained legal protection and cultural recognition. But differentiation also created conceptual space: opposition to Jewish sovereignty could now be articulated in moral and political language without triggering the alarms associated with antisemitism.¹¹
This does not mean all antizionism is antisemitic. Many critics of Israel (including Jews) act in good faith. Palestinians have genuine grievances that long predate contemporary antisemitism. Other nation-states are rightly criticised for their conduct without such criticism constituting ethnic hatred.¹²
The problem arises when differentiation becomes insulation.
When Antizionism Warrants Scrutiny
If intent alone determined meaning, almost no rhetoric would ever be accountable for its consequences. Yet judging solely by effects risks delegitimising legitimate critique. A more rigorous approach requires diagnostic criteria.¹³
Antizionist rhetoric warrants scrutiny when it exhibits one or more of the following features:
- Reliance on classic antisemitic tropes (global control, dual loyalty, malevolent Jewish power)¹⁴
- Application of standards to Israel that are not applied to any other nation¹⁵
- Denial of Jewish historical connection to the land while affirming all others’¹⁶
- Framing Jewish self-determination as uniquely illegitimate¹⁷
- Justification or celebration of violence against Jewish civilians as political resistance¹⁸
These criteria do not erase nuance — they restore it.
Applying the Framework: Test Cases
- Criticism of settlement expansion, grounded in international law, is not antisemitic.¹⁹
- Advocacy for Palestinian statehood is not antisemitic.²⁰
- Settler-colonial analysis is not inherently antisemitic, but becomes so when it denies Jewish indigeneity, treats Jewish historical claims as uniquely fabricated, or implies that Jewish national existence is uniquely illegitimate among post-colonial states.²¹
- A one-state proposal becomes suspect when it affirms collective or national rights for all peoples involved while requiring Jews alone to relinquish their right to self-determination.²²
- BDS encompasses diverse tactics with different moral implications. Economic pressure targeting settlement enterprises or military occupation differs substantially from campaigns seeking to isolate Israel entirely. Cultural or academic boycotts that exclude Israeli Jews categorically raise concerns about collective punishment rather than policy critique.²³
The question is not whether Israel may be criticised, but whether Jewish sovereignty is treated as uniquely illegitimate.
October 7 and the Collapse of Conceptual Boundaries
The atrocities of October 7 — the deliberate murder of over 1,200 people — constituted the primary moral catastrophe.²⁴ Yet the global responses also revealed something significant — justifications, celebrations, and the rapid mobilisation of academic and activist language to rationalise mass violence against Jewish civilians.²⁵
Conceptual ambiguity did not cause the violence — but it was exploited to excuse it.
Power, Responsibility, and Double Standards
Some argue that Israel’s state power makes antizionism categorically different from other forms of anti-Jewish hostility. But this conflates criticism of a government with the legitimacy of Jewish collective existence — and ignores how diaspora Jews are routinely targeted based on presumed identification with Israel.²⁶
The deeper question is whether Jewish sovereignty is legitimate on the same terms as other peoples’, or whether Jews alone must meet preconditions that would delegitimise most existing states.²⁷
Toward Moral Clarity
Legitimate criticism of Israel abounds. Settlement expansion raises serious legal and moral concerns. “West Bank” governance produces discriminatory realities. Military operations warrant scrutiny under proportionality and civilian-protection standards. These critiques apply universal principles without denying Jewish peoplehood, erasing Jewish history, or rationalising violence against civilians.²⁸
That is what healthy criticism looks like in a democratic world.
The central insight remains simple: anti-Jewish hostility adapts to moral environments. Where hatred is acceptable, it fuses openly. Where it is discredited, it is rebranded. Where it is taboo, it exploits conceptual ambiguity.
Applying a consistent standard — one that neither suppresses critique of Israeli policy nor excuses hatred of Jewish people — is what moral clarity demands.
References
- David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013).
- Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986).
- Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979); Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
- Georges Bensoussan, Jews in Arab Lands in Modern Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
- Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred (New York: Telos Press, 2007).
- Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
- Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
- Izabella Tabarovsky, “The Roots of Soviet Anti-Zionism,” Fathom Journal (2019).
- Paul Bogdanor, “Soviet Anti-Zionism and Contemporary Western Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism 5, no. 2 (2022).
- Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005).
- David Hirsh, Contemporary Left Antisemitism (London: Routledge, 2017).
- Benny Morris, Righteous Victims (New York: Knopf, 1999).
- Kenneth L. Marcus, The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
- IHRA, Working Definition of Antisemitism (2016).
- Natan Sharansky, “3D Test of Antisemitism,” Jewish Political Studies Review 16, nos. 3–4 (2004).
- Amnon Ben-Tor, “The Denial of Jewish Indigeneity,” Israel Studies 27, no. 1 (2022).
- Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
- ADL, Global 100: Antisemitic Attitudes in 100 Countries (latest ed.).
- UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016).
- Oslo Accords I & II (1993–1995).
- Shany Mor, “Settler Colonialism and Israel,” Fathom Journal (2020).
- Yossi Klein Halevi, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (New York: HarperCollins, 2018); Ruth Gavison, “The Jews’ Right to Statehood: A Defense,” Azure 15 (Summer 2003).
- Cary Nelson, Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and the Faculty Campaign Against Israel (Indiana University Press, 2019).
- Israeli Ministry of Health, ‘October 7 Attack: Final Casualty Report’ (updated December 2023).
- David Schraub, “Justifying Massacre: Rhetorical Responses to October 7,” Lawfare, October 2023.
- Jonathan Greenblatt, It Could Happen Here (New York: Mariner, 2022).
- Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
- Aeyal Gross, “Human Rights, Proportionality, and Armed Conflict,” Israel Law Review 54, no. 2 (2021).
