The reborn state of Israel has effectively settled the matter of the “Jewish Question.” - by Daniel Krygier

Modern-day anti-Semites channel their Jew-hatred into the more politically correct avenue of so-called anti-Zionism. By conflating Zionism with racism and alleged human rights abuses, they attempt to delegitimize the very existence of the state of Israel. But their indignation, no matter how persistently or how shrilly it is expressed, cannot alter the legitimacy of the Jews’ return to their ancestral homeland. The reborn state of Israel has effectively settled the matter of the “Jewish Question.”

Daniel Krygier..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 769..
16 March '18..

The “Jewish Question” was an intense debate during the 19th and 20th centuries that dealt with the status and treatment of Jews in European societies. It was part of a wider discourse that focused on civic and national rights of minorities in emerging nation states. European extreme nationalists argued that Jews constituted an alien people that had no place in Europe. By contrast, liberals often supported equal civic rights for Jewish citizens. However, the price for civic equality was the abandonment of Jewish national identity and assimilation into European societies. The Jews themselves were divided between Western European Jews, who advocated assimilation, and the more numerous Eastern European Jewish Zionists, who worked for the return of the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland.

Seven decades after the Holocaust and the reestablishment of the Jewish homeland, Israel, the Jewish Question remains unsettled among many gentiles. In the past, Jews were mainly threatened by the political Right. Today, the main threat comes from the political Left and its Islamist allies. Yesterday’s liberals advocated civic equality for fellow Jewish citizens. Today, many “liberals” increasingly deny equal national rights for the Jewish people in Israel. The “progressive” international left does not merely oppose specific Israeli policies, but increasingly the very existence of a Jewish state within any borders.

The Holocaust made it politically incorrect to publically embrace anti-Semitism in Western democracies. However, Jew-hatred – termed “the longest hatred” by the late Israeli scholar Robert Wistrich – is far from gone in Western societies. Instead of hating Jews as individuals, 20th and 21st century anti-Semites mainly channel their hatred against the collective Jew among the nations, Israel.

In the 19th century, the German agitator Wilhelm Marr coined the term anti-Semitism in order to make Jew-hatred appear more scientific and “legitimate.” As this term has become severely tainted since the Holocaust, 21st century Jew-haters prefer to call themselves anti-Zionists.

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