Why the Accusations of Genocide, Apartheid and Colonialism Against Israel Are Antisemitic

Throughout history, antisemitism has been a shape-shifting ideology. It rarely presents itself in the same form twice, because open hatred of Jews eventually becomes socially unacceptable - and so it adapts, cloaking itself in the moral language of the age.

In medieval Europe, Jews were accused of poisoning wells and killing Christian children. In early modern times, they were denounced as Christ-killers or agents of Satan. In the 19th century, they were said to be greedy capitalists manipulating finance for their own gain. In the 20th, the charge reversed - Jews became the ultimate "communists," subverting nations and traditions.

Every era has had its own formula: X is evil, and Jews are X. Today, "X" is genocide, apartheid, or colonialism - the moral evils of our age. Once again, Jews, this time embodied in the State of Israel, are accused of being the worst manifestation of whatever the world currently defines as unforgivable.

This pattern isn't accidental. Antisemitism has always borrowed the moral vocabulary of its surroundings. When religious purity was prized, Jews were accused of blasphemy. When national loyalty was sacred, Jews were deemed disloyal. When class struggle defined politics, Jews were either exploitative bourgeoisie or subversive Marxists - sometimes both.

Now that human rights and anti-colonialism shape the moral vocabulary of the West, antisemitism speaks that dialect fluently. The old hatred reappears - not as theology or race theory, but as moral outrage.

Criticism of Israel, of course, is not antisemitism. But when the only Jewish state on earth is accused of being uniquely evil - guilty of crimes worthy of public outrage, that other statistically similar or worse nations barely get a passing grumble - the pattern is unmistakable. It is not a demand for justice; it is a denial of legitimacy.

As Jean-Paul Sartre observed,

The antisemite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence.

The point was not literal theft - it was that antisemitism delights in forcing Jews to justify their existence, their motives, their right even to stand in moral space. The endless demand that Jews - or Israel - "prove" their innocence is part of the ritual humiliation that sustains the prejudice.

For those who believe these accusations, three possibilities exist:

1. It's an extraordinary coincidence: That after centuries of false charges and scapegoating, this time the story happens to be true. That every previous society which turned against Jews - from medieval Christendom to revolutionary Europe - was misled by propaganda, but we, enlightened progressives of the 21st century, are seeing the truth. Unlike the superstitious or the fascists or the reactionaries before us, we are immune to the world's oldest pattern of moral inversion. We've cracked the code. Israel really is as evil everyone says it is - and it just happens, by coincidence, to be Jewish.

2. The antisemites were right all along: That Jews - in their state, their politics, their collective identity - are in fact uniquely malevolent. Almost no one will say this aloud, but the logic of the accusation points that way.

3. Or they've been misled: That the pattern is repeating. That many well-meaning people, horrified by real suffering and drawn to the moral language of justice, have been fed a story crafted by those who understand the old game: if you can't make hatred respectable by calling it religion or race science, rebrand it as human rights.

Antisemitism never calls itself antisemitism. It always insists it is justice, truth, or progress. But when the world's only Jewish state is cast as the world's greatest villain, when Jews are once again made to turn out their moral pockets for inspection, we are not witnessing a new awakening of conscience - we are watching the oldest hatred in a modern costume.

Recognising that pattern isn't just about defending Israel. It's about defending the intellectual honesty to see when hatred disguises itself as virtue, and the moral courage to refuse the role history keeps trying to assign to the Jewish people: permanent defendant, eternal scapegoat.