Thread by @tonylerman

A short thread on key arguments in my new book Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the ‘Collective Jew’ which you can buy direct from Pluto Press here /1 plutobooks.com/9780745338774/…

Discussion about #antisemitism is plagued by confusion and bitter argument. In his endorsement of my book @PeterBeinart calls contemporary debate on it ‘both incoherent and appalling . . . a hot mess.’/2

Yet we were told that the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (#IHRA) ‘working definition’ of #antisemitism had brought ‘international gold standard’ clarity to its contemporary meaning; that without IHRA it wasn’t possible to fight antisemitism./3

But #IHRA provided no clarity just more confusion. The only thing clear about it is that it codified ‘new #antisemitism’: with the ‘old’ being hatred of the individual Jew; while the ‘new’ is hatred of Israel, the targeted ‘collective Jew’ among the nations—or so it is argued./4

So, where once the relationship between #antizionism and #antisemitism was a question, for the promoters of redefinition it became, unequivocally, an equals sign—but it remained a contentious and consistently disputed notion, as did the very idea of ‘new antisemitism’ itself./5

Redefining #antisemitism was a political project, devised and promoted by a diverse network, not an academic endeavour. It included Israel’s government, Israel advocacy groups, Zionist organizations, Jewish community defence bodies, governments and international organizations./6

#Israel remained detached from the public struggle against #antisemitism until the late 1980s, but by 2016 was firmly leading it, having already swallowed ‘new antisemitism’ and fully embraced the framing of Israel’s position as the persecuted ‘collective Jew’ after 9/11./7

But let’s be clear: this notion was codified not only as an expression of the ‘new antisemitism’ but, underpinned by the premiss that #antizionism is antisemitism, as the principal form of #antisemitism./8

This made #IHRA a charter for pursuing a racist agenda against #Palestinians, chilling free speech, denying them their inalienable rights and doing them immeasurable harm—and making #Jews no safer from real #antisemitism./9

Most Zionist Jews can’t accept that struggling for full realisation of equal rights for #Palestinians is a just cause. It would deny Jews the ‘right’ to be a majority in ‘Greater Israel’ in perpetuity. Thus, it could only reflect a continuation of ancient antisemitic hatred./10

I explore the structural influences and discourse that warrant this hatred of #Palestinians. One factor is the groundless idea, now widely adopted, that only Jews can define #antisemitism. This was meant to be self-empowering but is just Jewish exceptionalism on steroids./11

It further poisons debates about #antisemitism and has given substance to the argument that antisemitism used to be about people who hate Jews, but is now about people who Jews hate—including radical, dissenting Jews./12

The Israel=‘collective Jew’ metaphor is seductive but false:
*it’s a category mistake
*reduces Jews to a singularity: ‘they’re all the same’: an antisemitic trope
*places ‘the Jewish state’ beyond criticism, thus an object of worship
*makes Israel the climax of Jewish history/13

But Abraham Joshua #Heschel, the renowned Jewish theologian who marched with Martin Luther King at Selma, said: ‘#Judaism is not a religion of space and does not worship the soil’, and ‘Israel is not the climax of Jewish history’./14

Nonetheless, for now at least Israel’s geopolitical strength guarantees international approval of its weaponization of #antisemitism to further Jewish ethnonational interests, at mounting cost to the #Palestinians./15

You cannot fight #antisemitism with #Zionism, an inherently discriminatory ideology, the only form of which that has any agency today seeks to purify the tribe through neo-colonial settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory./16

#Antisemitism nurtured and empowered #Zionism. It was mobilised for the sake of the Zionist project. And as my book demonstrates, this is ongoing; it’s not just historical. We recognise it through the antisemitic resonances of the myth of Israel as the ‘collective Jew’./17

My book, @NathanThrall says, ‘powerfully unmasks the so-far successful effort to twist the battle against #antisemitism into a defence of the indefensible: Israel’s subjugation of millions of people on the basis of their national and ethnic identity’./18 plutobooks.com/9780745338774/…