Anti-Israelism, Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Israel’s Evolving View

This lecture traces the historical emergence of the Israeli perception that anti-Zionism constitutes a form of antisemitism. While much of the scholarly literature attributes this shift to the post-1967 era, when Israeli society became more traditional, Jewish-centered, and inclined to interpret criticism through a sense of isolation and siege, this study argues that the change began earlier. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, it shows that the identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism first took shape in the early 1950s, following the antisemitic and anti-Zionist campaigns in the Soviet bloc, rather than as a product of domestic ideological transformation. By examining Israeli press discourse, political speeches, and public debates from the 1930s to the 1970s, the article demonstrates that Israeli understandings of antisemitism evolved not in isolation but through engagement with global events. The findings challenge the prevailing assumption that the conflation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism was rooted mainly in internal developments and instead reveal how external threats and international antisemitic trends shaped Israeli attitudes. 

Yossi Kugler is a historian of antisemitism, Holocaust memory, and Israeli society. He is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the director of the newly established Center for Law and Antisemitism at the Striks Faculty of Law, College of Management. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research and currently studies the views of Israeli leaders and intellectuals toward antisemitism, as well as the place of Holocaust memory in public discourse.

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