Anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing?
Not at all, and the difference between them is relevant, although they are categories that are perversely confused like any racism. His starting point was anti-Judaism…
How is it different from the other antis?
Christian anti-Judaism blamed the Jews for not wanting to convert and for having murdered Jesus: that is, God.
Weren’t Luther and Calvin and other Christian reformers also anti-Jews?
Without a doubt, like all the splits in Roman Catholicism, starting with the Orthodox.
Why don’t you, like so many others, charge against the Spanish Inquisition in your book?
Because there was an inquisition and the like in many other countries; but the genuine Spanish contribution is the “cleansing of blood”…
Why is it crucial in anti-Judaism?
Because Judaism was just a religious option; but “cleansing of blood”, on the other hand, already converts it into “blood”: it is biological, racial, inherited and, therefore, inalienable.
Don’t you decide and can’t avoid being Jewish anymore?
That is why it was the precedent of the scientific discourse on race in the 19th century, which science did not deny – scientifically, races do not exist – until the 20th, and Rome did not condemn it until the Second Vatican Council, already in the 1960s, which finally liquidated the race. Catholic anti-Judaism.
How was the Jewish “race” invented?
A racial pyramid was concocted with the whites, who invented it, at the top and (thus anti-Semitism was born) placing it below.
Weren’t the Arabs also Semites?
Yes, and it was all colossal stupidity that culminated with the invention in Germany in 1879 of the “Jewish race and blood” to be exterminated, because “the Jew conspires, perverse…”.
The Jewish religion could be abandoned, but Semitism was already inalienable?
And, in the same way, the new racial pyramid reinforced European colonial white supremacism, which culminated in Nazism…
Which ends in resounding military defeat.
Therefore, the victors conclude that anti-Semitism leads to gas chambers…
Why does it persist, then?
Because it transformed into anti-Zionism with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948…
It was the Zionist dream come true.
But he had many Jews against him who preferred to be cosmopolitan or from other countries: they were anti-Zionist Jews, but no longer anti-Semitic. The “Zionist” debate was only for Jews.
Was the world divided between anti and pro?
Every day more Jews supported the new Israel and Stalin celebrated it because it ended the British occupation of Palestine. And we must remember that Israel supported apartheid in South Africa; hence now it is hostile to it. But, after the Six Day War of 1967, the image of Israel became popular…
Jewish David against the pan-Arab Goliath?
But Stalin again mixed the three antis by disguising his anti-Semitic purges by saying he was only persecuting “Zionist” traitors…
Can I be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic?
Anti-Semitism may have been fueled by Israeli mistakes and horrors; but the distinction between the three antis is still confusing: there is, for example, a Trumpist extreme right that is anti-Semitic but pro-Zionist…
And what do you say?
Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism when it does not limit itself to criticizing a politician or a policy of Israel, but calls for its total destruction.
Is Netanyahu now criticizable?
Israel is a democracy attacked by terrorists and Netanyahu has been elected at the polls; but he is also a nationalist allied with religious radicals in a Government that mixes nationalism with theocracy.
Is there anti-Arab racism in Israel?
Palestinians lack rights, which Israeli Arabs do have, who, on the other hand, are deprived of military service.
Is Israel a full democracy, then?
Israeli society is a society that is going wrong, it is sick; while throughout the West, left-wing anti-Semitism against Israeli “colonialism” resurfaces.
Israel is a democracy attacked by terrorists, but it must follow the law?
It is the debate now and it will not be resolved if we limit it to confronting those who say that Israel only defends itself against terrorism against those who say that it behaves in a no less terrorist manner. And when two unacceptable logics clash, nothing positive happens.
What would be positive?
Work for a fair and balanced solution that would thus be lasting. And to achieve it, the Government of Israel would have to change; the Palestinians, elect a leader capable of truly negotiating; and the states of the region, agree on that solution and support it.
Why does it seem more difficult every day?
Because the PLO was not religious; Hamas is as much a part of the Israeli Government. We have gone from a problem of territory to one of religion. And that makes any solution even more difficult.
