Anti-zionism and Antisemitism ― The Dynamics of Delegitimization

How and why have anti-Zionism and antisemitism become so radical and widespread? This timely and important volume argues convincingly that today’s inflamed rhetoric exceeds the boundaries of legitimate criticism of the policies and actions of the state of Israel and conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The contributors give the dynamics of this process full theoretical, political, legal, and educational treatment and demonstrate how these forces operate in formal and informal political spheres as well as domestic and transnational spaces. They offer significant historical and global perspectives of the problem, including how Holocaust memory and meaning have been reconfigured and how a singular and distinct project of delegitimization of the Jewish state and its people has solidified. This intensive but extraordinarily rich contribution to the study of antisemitism stands out for its comprehensive overview of an issue that is very much in the public eye.

Navras Jaat Aafreedi is Assistant Professor of History at Presidency University, Kolkata, India. He is an Indo-Judaic Studies Scholar who specializes in study of the Holocaust, antisemitism, mass violence, and inter-communal relations. Among his numerous publications is Jews, Judaizing Movements and the Traditions of Israelite Descent in South Asia.

Balazs Berkovits has been a research fellow at the Psychological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miskolc, Hungary, visiting scholar at Indiana University, and a post-doctoral fellow at EHESS, Paris. He has widely published on topics related to the sociology of education, social theory, the epistemology of the social sciences and social constructivism.

Catherine Chatterley is Editor-in-Chief of Antisemitism Studies and the Founding Director of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism. Catherine specializes in modern European and Jewish history, with a focus on the history of antisemitism and the dynamic relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Western history. She is author of Disenchantment: George Steiner and Meaning of Western Civilization After Auschwitz.

Thorsten Fuchshuber is a research associate at the Centre Interdisciplinaire d’Etude des Religions et de la Laicite, Universite libre de Bruxelles. His research interests concentrate on critical theory, legal philosophy, Jewish philosophy, and anti-Semitism.

Simon Gansinger is a graduate student in the Philosophy Department at the University of Vienna.

Ilan Greilsammer is professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

His main fields of research and teaching are European politics and the Israeli party system. He has published extensively on French politics, including a biography of Prime Minister Leon Blum, and on Israeli political parties. He is author of La Nouvelle histoire d'Israel: Essai sur une identite nationale.

Marc Grimm is an academic researcher at the Centre for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence at Bielefeld University. His work focuses on empirical social research, critical theory, and on social and socialization theories.

Anne Herzberg is the Legal Advisor of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute. Her research interests include international criminal law, universal jurisdiction, international human rights and humanitarian law, the UN, and the role of NGOs in international frameworks. She is author (with Gerald M. Steinberg and Jordan Berman) of Best Practices for Human Rights and Humanitarian NGO Fact-Finding.

Alan Johnson is Senior Research Fellow at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. He is editor of Fathom: for a deeper understanding of Israel and the region, a quarterly online journal. He is a co-author of the "Euston Manifesto," a modern statement of social democratic antitotalitarianism, and he is editor of Global Politics After 9/11: The Democratiya Interviews.

Lesley Klaff is a senior lecturer in law at Sheffield Hallam University and an affiliate professor of law at Haifa University. She is a member of UK Lawyers for Israel, where she has responsibility for giving legal advice and assistance to victims of campus antisemitism. She publishes on campus antisemitism, Holocaust inversion and antisemitism in the Labour Party.

Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the University of Haifa. Among his more than thirty authored or edited books are The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel and Dreams Deferred: A Concise Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Movement to Boycott Israel.

Giovanni Matteo Quer has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism, University of Haifa, and he has worked for NGOs and international organizations. His interests include diversity management, human rights, and Israel studies.

Gil Ribak is Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona. He is author of Gentile New York: The Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants.

Milton Shain is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the the University of Cape Town. He has written and edited several books on South African Jewish history, South African politics, and the history of antisemitism. He is author of A Perfect Storm: Antisemitism in South Africa, 1930-1948, which won the Recht Malan Prize (Media 24) for English and Afrikaans Non-Fiction for 2016.

Gerald Steinberg is Professor of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel and president of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute. His research areas include Middle East diplomacy and security, the politics of human rights and non-governmental organizations, and Israeli politics and arms control. He is author (with Anne Herzberg and Jordan Berman) of Best Practices for Human Rights and Humanitarian NGO Fact-Finding.

Karin Stogner teaches social theory and topics related to gender, antisemitism, and nationalism at the Departments of Sociology and Gender Studies of the University of Vienna, and she is research fellow at the Center for Austrian Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently chair of the Research network on Ethnic Relations, Racism and Antisemitism within the European Sociological Association. She is author of Sexismus und Antisemitismus. Historisch-gesellschaftliche Konstellationen and editor (with Anton Pelinka and Karin Bisch) of Handbook of Prejudice.

Zbynek Tarant is Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic. While his main topic of research is the history of Holocaust memory and its institutions in the State of Israel and the USA, he has been actively involved in research on contemporary antisemitism since 2006. He specializes in the monitoring of cyber-hate and the analysis of emerging threats in contemporary Central European political extremism.

Jim Wald is Professor of Modern European History at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His research interests in antisemitism include: Nazi and racist ideology; the persistence of traditional Christian supersessionist attitudes in the modern and secular realm; antisemitic denials of Jewish history; and modern conspiracy theories (e.g. the Khazar myth).