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Jewish communities around the world have had various experiences with discrimination, bigotry and violence throughout history. The most well-known examples are the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the massacre and persecution of Jews in the pogroms of Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the genocide of six million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust of the 1940s. Contemporary antisemitism has been revealed harshly in the current upsurge of violence perpetrated against Jews in the US and Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n Definitions of antisemitism<\/i><\/span> are generally straightforward regardless of the source. Most recognize a core meaning apart from beliefs about Israel and Palestine, in spite of some also falsely characterizing criticism of Israel as antisemitic. For example: \u2022 Webster\u2019s Dictionary:<\/i> Hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious,ethnic, or racial group<\/font><\/p>\n \u2022 Anti-Defamation League: Belief or behavior hostile toward Jews … It may take the form of religious teachings that proclaim the inferiority of Jews … political efforts to isolate, oppress, or otherwise injure them [or] prejudiced or stereotyped views about Jews. \u2022 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and US State Department: A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred, directed toward individuals or Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. [C] riticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. <\/font><\/p>\n To discuss and expand on these definitions, we have borrowed liberally from the 2016 essay \u201cJVP\u2019s Understanding of Antisemitism in the United States,\u201d by the national organization Jewish Voice for Peace. We also draw from Judith Butler\u2019s introduction to JVP\u2019s 2017 book, On Antisemitism<\/i>. For further background, we strongly recommend the \u201cCountering Anti-Jewish Oppression Resource List,\u201d compiled by Showing Up for Racial Justice, found at www.showingupforracialjustice.org\/surj-faith.html. Racial antisemitism<\/span><\/i>, and the term \u201cantisemitism\u201d itself, emerged from pseudoscientific theories of race in 19th-century Europe that placed categories of people into a racial hierarchy. This racist logic has had institutional and governmental support, including in the US, where historically, Jewish refugees were ghettoized and discriminated against along with other immigrant groups. European Jews in the US have largely been racialized as white over time. Even as the Trump administration emboldens anti-Jewish speech and violence, antisemitism is not currently reinforced by state institutions in the same ways that racism and Islamophobia are, through structural barriers to opportunity, Religious antisemitism<\/i><\/span> includes the everyday and pervasive dominance of Christianity in US culture in ways that impact all religious minorities. While many Christian communities practice liberation theologies and work towards justice for all ople, some use antisemitic misreading of doctrine and treat Judaism as inferior to Christianity. Christian Zionism, which encourages Jewish return to Israel as a means to achieve Christian redemption, is founded on antisemitic interpretations of scripture. Contemporary expressions of antisemitism<\/i><\/span> include treating Jews as a monolithic group, stereotyping Jews as rich or greedy, or demonizing Jews as secretly in control of political events. These tropes are evident when the US-Israel relationship is blamed solely on Jewish power, exempting the US government from its responsibility for unconditional support of Israel. Indeed, the alt-right staunchly supports Israel even as it disseminates antisemitic myths of Jewish dominance. Some on the left claim that hate crimes are just a response to the oppression of Palestinians and Jewish support for Israeli policies; in fact, most of the antisemites in the US who commit anti-Jewish hate crimes are also profoundly anti-Muslim and support Palestinian dispossession. Antisemitic incidents are on the rise and should not be minimized from the right or the left. A surge in nationalism<\/i><\/span> around the world has brought neo-Nazi ideologies back into the mainstream, and right-wing parties with antisemitic agendas have made electoral gains. The Jobbik party in Hungary, whose leaders have claimed that Jews are a threat to national security, won representation in the national assembly in 2018. Golden Dawn in Greece rallies anti-Roma, anti-refugee, and anti-Jewish sentiment and maintains alliances with far-right groups in the UK, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia and Bulgaria. Austria\u2019s vice chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has been photographed participating in paramilitary exercises with Nazi groups. This year on Good Friday, the town of Pruchnik, Poland enacted a ritual beating of an effigy of Judas caricatured as an Orthodox Jew. Hate crimes<\/i><\/span> in the US against Muslims, African-Americans, Latinxs and Jews swelled immediately following Trump\u2019s election and have continued. Synagogues, cemeteries, and college campuses have been desecrated by swastikas and antiJewish epithets; at the time of this writing these were found newly spray-painted on schools, museums and a Democratic Par- These examples show that we need to call out resurging forms of fascism forcefully and clearly. When the charge of antisemitism becomes a tactic to suppress <\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Carole and Julie are Syracuse activists, members Jewish communities around the world have had various experiences with discrimination, bigotry and violence throughout history. The most well-known examples are the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the massacre and persecution of Jews in the pogroms of Russia in the 19th and 20th…<\/p>\n
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\nsurveillance, policing practices and more. Non-European Jews and Jews of Color in the US have their own histories and experiences of both racism and antisemitism.
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\nty headquarters in Oklahoma. Two 2018
\nstudies show an increase in antisemitic
\nposts on social media. In New York City,
\nantisemitic crimes in 2018 were up 22%
\ncompared with 2017, and 55 hate crimes,
\ntwo-thirds of them antisemitic, were re-
\nported in the first six weeks of 2019. In
\nAugust 2017, the individuals who rallied
\nas part of Unite the Right in Charlottes-
\nville chanted \u201cJews will not replace us.\u201d
\nIn March 2019 in Manhattan, Polish na-
\ntionalists and Holocaust deniers, rallying
\nto protest a bill seeking recovery of prop-
\nerty confiscated from victims of Nazism,
\nwaved dollar bills in the faces of Jewish
\ncounter-protestors. In October 2018 a
\nterrorist killed 11 people in the Tree of
\nLife Synagogue in Pittsburgh. On April
\n27, 2019 a gunman with an automatic
\nrifle attacked a synagogue in Poway, CA
\nduring services to observe Shabbat and
\nthe last day of Passover, resulting in one
\ndeath and multiple injuries.
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\nopen criticism and debate about the State
\nof Israel, we lose the power to accurately
\nname and oppose antisemitism and its
\ntoxic effects. We welcome this discussion
\nin the PNL and hope it brings clarity and
\nrenewed purpose.<\/font><\/p>\n
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\nof Congregation Tikkun v’Or in Ithaca, members
\nof Jewish Voice for Peace, and committed to work-
\ning for the liberation of the Palestinian people.<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n
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