Aren’t anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism the same thing?
Not at all, and the difference between them is relevant, even if they are categories that are perversely confused like any racism. His starting point was anti-Judaism…
How does it differ from the other antis?
Christian anti-Judaism blamed the Jews for not wanting to convert and for having killed Jesus: that is, God.
Perhaps Luther and Calvin and other Christian reformers were not also anti-Jewish?
Undoubtedly, like all the divisions of Roman Catholicism starting with Orthodoxy.
Why don’t you charge in your book, as so many do, against the Spanish Inquisition?
Because there were inquisitions 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 only a religious option; but the “cleansing of blood”, on the other hand, turns it into “blood”: it is already biological, racial, inherited and, therefore, inalienable.
You don’t decide and you can’t avoid being a Jew anymore?
That is why it was the precedent for the scientific discourse on race in the s. XIX, which science does not disprove – scientifically races do not exist – until the s. XX and Rome did not condemn until the Second Vatican Council, already in the 60s, which finally liquidated Catholic anti-Judaism.
How was the Jewish “race” invented?
A racial pyramid was fabled with the whites, who invented it, at the top, and – thus anti-Semitism was born – putting it at the bottom.
Were not the Arabs also Semites?
Yes, and it was all a colossal stupidity that culminates in the invention in Germany in 1879 of the “Jewish race and blood” to be exterminated, because “the perverse Jew conspires to dominate the world”.
The Jewish religion could be abandoned, but was Semitism already inescapable?
And, in the same way, the new racial pyramid reinforced the European colonial white supremacism that culminated in Nazism…
Which ends in resounding military defeat.
Therefore, the victors conclude that anti-Semitism leads to the gas chambers…
So why does it persist?
Because it transforms 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 about Jews.
The world was divided between anti- and pro-?
Every day more Jews supported the new Israel and Stalin celebrates it because it ends the British occupation of Palestine. And we must remember that Israel supported apartheid in South Africa; that’s why he’s hostile to him now. But after the Six Day War of 1967, the image of Israel became popular…
The Jewish David against the pan-Arab Goliath?
But Stalin again mixed the three antis by disguising the anti-Semitic purges by saying that he was persecuting only “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, the Trumpist extreme right which 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 the policy of Israel, but calls for its total destruction.
Is Netanyahu now objectionable?
Israel is a democracy attacked by terrorists and Netanyahu has been elected by the ballot box; 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?
The Palestinians lack rights, which the Israeli Arabs do have, who, on the other hand, are denied military service.
Is Israel a full democracy already?
Israeli society is a society that is going wrong, it is sick; while a left-wing anti-Semitism against Israeli “colonialism” is resurgent throughout the West.
Israel is a democracy under attack by terrorists, but must it abide by the law?
That’s the debate now and it won’t be resolved if we limit it to pitting those who say Israel is only defending itself against terrorism against those who say it behaves no less terroristically. And when two unacceptable logics collide, nothing positive happens.
What would be positive?
Work for a fair and balanced solution, which would thus be lasting. And to achieve it, the Government of Israel would have to change; the Palestinians, elect a leader capable of serious negotiation; and the states of the region, to agree and support this solution.
Why does it seem harder every day?
Because the OLP was not religious; Hamas, on the other hand, 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.
