Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, and Israel’s subsequent bombing and invasion of Gaza, antisemitic incidents have been rising across the world. Governments and civil-society groups in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Africa have reported a significant increase in attacks against Jewish people and their property. To try to understand these hate crimes, and the historical forces behind antisemitism, I recently spoke by phone with David Feldman, the director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, at Birkbeck College, University of London. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how different ideological strains of antisemitism coexist and overlap, what makes the latest wave of incidents so disturbing, and whether there are dangers in focussing too much on the Middle East when talking about hatred in America.
We’ve seen upsurges in antisemitism before. Does this feel similar or different to you?
From the U.K., at least, it feels different, and it feels different in two ways. One is that I think the rise in antisemitic incidents recorded by the police over the last three weeks or so, since the 7th of October, has been more dramatic than anything we’ve experienced in the past. And also, as you’ll know, in recent years we’ve had—and not just in the U.K. but in other countries in Europe as well—debates and arguments about how to talk about Israel, the lines between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and what definitions are helpful. This has been happening since the war in Gaza in 2006. But this war is on a much greater scale, and of course was preceded by a massacre in Israel. Whereas previous instances were chiefly about how we should talk about events going on in Israel-Palestine, the current moment is about responses to dreadful slaughter.
What are the different definitions of antisemitism that you alluded to, and how have they featured in these prior debates?
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted its definition of antisemitism in 2016. It was an attempt to distinguish antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israel—although it spoke about other things, that is what was at its core. I would argue that in its design it narrowed the possibilities for speech. It’s a rather unclear and complicated document. It says that context is important, but it has often been invoked by people in debate to accuse others of antisemitism without reference to context. But it was widely adopted. [The I.H.R.A. definition states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” Seven of the eleven examples given make reference to Israel.]
Then, in 2019, a group of people, myself included, began working on what became the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was a response in many ways to the I.H.R.A. definition. The Jerusalem Declaration sought to be clear that anything which denied Jews’ individual or collective rights was antisemitic, and identified narratives and stereotypes which are antisemitic, and which are sometimes invoked in the context of discourse in Israel-Palestine. However, it tried to be much more clear about distinguishing what was antisemitic and what were legitimate criticisms of Israel and claims made in the cause of justice for Palestinians.
The background to our conversation is what happened on October 7th, and Israel’s response to it. On a basic level of cause and effect, some of these incidents would not have happened without the bombing of Gaza. That being said, I do not want to excuse people committing hate crimes by tracing it back to a cause. After 9/11, there were a lot of people in America who committed hate crimes against Muslims, but I don’t want to blame Osama bin Laden for, say, someone in Wisconsin burning down a mosque.
No one makes anyone act in an antisemitic way. There’s a difference between comprehending the circumstances in which people act and which lead them to act in particular ways and excusing hate crimes, and I would simply draw the line there. I do think that one of the problems in the current debate, whether it’s over hate crimes outside of Israel or in responses to what happened on the 7th of October, is that some people who seek to explain are then accused of condoning. And, of course, that is what happened to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in which he both condemned Hamas’s actions but said that those actions did not emerge from a vacuum. So there’s a difference between trying to talk about cause and effect and excusing an action.
Hamas arose in a political context of a long-term conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There’s definitely a context for Hamas, even if we’re horrified by the way they behave. I don’t know what the context is for someone yelling slurs at British Jews in London.
I think that the issue we reach here is the way in which events in Israel and Palestine reverberate and divide people beyond Israel and Palestine. So obviously, as you will know, Jews in the U.K. and elsewhere don’t speak with one voice on this, but mainstream Jewish institutions have lined up quite solidly behind Israel’s actions and policies since the 7th of October. So there is a way in which mainstream Jews in the diaspora identify with Israel and are then identified by others with Israel, which I think is simply providing a context in which Jewish buildings are attacked.
Something awful just happened, which is that the word “Gaza” was daubed in red paint outside the Wiener Holocaust Library, which is a library and archive dedicated to the study of the Holocaust. There’s no way in which that is a legitimate action, but clearly whoever was performing that action identified the building as one associated with Jews, and he associated Jews with the support for the State of Israel. This is me speaking, if you like, as an academic. And in that context, it seems to me that either we give up or we try to understand why people are acting the way they’re acting. Otherwise, the humanities are not really serving a useful purpose.
