This timely volume is a compilation of seventeen papers presented by scholars from all over the world at a 2016 conference, organized by Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) to “examine the links between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.”
In his introduction, editor Alvin H. Rosenfeld quotes Stephen Harper, a former Canadian prime minister, who called anti-Zionism “the face of the new antisemitism. It targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel and attempts to make the old bigotry acceptable for a new generation.”
The book is divided into four sections, each devoted to a different aspect of the aforementioned “new” antisemitism. The first section deals with ideological and theoretical sources, and discusses issues such as the “Denial of History,” the “Jewish Problem,” and feminism. Part Two examines the “Role of legal and Justice Discourses in Promoting the New Antisemitism,” “Anti-Israel Attitudes on Perceptions of the Holocaust,” and other university campus issues.
A third section, “Israeli Voices” contains three papers dealing with Israeli domestic issues, such as collectivization, corruption, and Jewish-Arab relations; the final section examines relationships and issues with other countries, including Poland, Germany, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, India, and South Asia.
While the style and approach of each of the authors of the papers is different they all help to illuminate the virtually daily features one finds in The New York Times and other leading newspapers and magazines. There are also a number of surprising “revelations” obviously designed to stoke latent or existing anti-Israel sentiments, especially in Russia and the former Soviet Union. For example, Zbynek Tarant reports that the Czech antisemitic movement circulated rumors that the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 lost in 2014 is now in a hangar at Ben Gurion Airport and that Israel is responsible for the shooting fown of another Malaysian plane near Donetsk. And finally, that there is a movement afoot to establish a new Jewish state in Ukraine.
