Anti-Semite: the history of a term that is ever so timely

Words are rarely neutral, and some are less so than others. Indeed, there are terms that weigh like stones and, like stones, can be thrown and hurt. Anti-Semitism is one of these terms. It is a word that has dramatically marked the twentieth century and has never stopped, unfortunately, being relevant. Violence and hate speech against the Jewish people have, in fact, a centuries-old and dramatic history that did not end with the Shoah. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, a new and insidious definition of anti-Semitism has emerged, which shifts the emphasis from the more traditional forms of anti-Jewish prejudice to hostility towards Israel. After the events of October 7, 2023, the political and cultural debate is, moreover, hostage to a militarization and serious confusion about what is anti-Semitism, what is anti-Zionism and what is not.

Starting from this confusion, Valentina Pisanty - a semiologist who has been studying public discourse on these issues for years - offers us in her essay Antisemita. Una parola in ostaggio (Bompiani, 2025, Euro 12.00, pp. 176) an extremely clear analysis of the political use of words to justify partisan interests.

The scholar's starting point is what has been happening for some years in Israel, in the halls of power occupied by the most traditionalist Right: a substantial equation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, so that criticizing the choices of the Israeli government is an automatic sign of anti-Semitic attitude. This evolution, the result of the radicalization of positions typical of our era, on the one hand ensures support for the Israeli leadership from all those governments that do not want to be even remotely touched by the suspicion of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, it creates an equation between the Israeli establishment and the Jewish people tout court that risks weakening decades of battles against anti-Semitism. If anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are considered the same thing, the risk is that someone will decide to define themselves as anti-Zionists in order to oppose Israeli choices, considering in fact the accusation of anti-Semitism as something of little importance, used in a purely instrumental manner. As Valentina Pisanty reminds us, however: "Anti-Semitism is pure racist prejudice. Anti-Zionism is a political position, and as such it is expressed in many ways. There are anti-Zionists even in the State of Israel». Pisanty then embraces a very precise definition of anti-Semitism, a definition coined in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA): «Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews that can be expressed as hatred of Jews. Verbal and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jews or non-Jews and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and buildings used for worship».

Anti-Zionism may therefore be excessive, unreasonable, Manichean, but it belongs to the field of political debate. Anti-Semitism does not. Denying political debate to those who criticize Israeli positions by resorting to the infamous label of anti-Semitism only muddies the waters, indeed leads to the mills of Holocaust deniers or minimizers. As Pisanty reminds us, in fact: "Democracy is made of the possibility of discussing what is or is not reasonable. And given that language is essential to making decisions in political debate, it is not tolerable, in a democratic context, that one of the key words be taken from the lexicon, stripped of its function, dressed in new clothes, and exhibited to the world as a guarantee of impunity for those who intend to assert their partisan reasons with force, whatever it takes. Anyone who uses the term anti-Semitic in the sense imposed by the IHRA definition must know in which chain of abuses, not only linguistic, he is placing himself. Unless we take note that the world has entered a phase of war without quarter, either we win or we die, of which the rhetoric of oppression is the natural corollary."