Critical Studies on ‘New Anti-Semitism’

I introduce what I term critical studies on 'new anti-Semitism'. This field is needed because research on anti-Semitism often re/produced scientific racism which gives a stamp of empiricism and objectivity to Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian and anti-migrant rhetoric. Current critical research on the ‘new anti-Semitism’ discourse in Europe and Germany deals with racialization and migratization of anti-Semitism (by attributing anti-Semitism to migrants and Europe’s Others) and is a marginalized assembly of works that deals mainly with the category race. In this research the ‘new anti-Semitism’ discourse is the notion of perceived global alliances among groups labeled as left, and Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, and migrants (and some “bad Jews”) who are framed as threats to ‘Western values’ like tolerance by accusing them of ‘new anti-Semitism’ and terrorism. However, I contend that the field needs to be clearly defined as critical studies on ‘new anti-Semitism’ and, as a field, to deal with religion, race and gender as inseparable. I contend that within the politics of state philosemitism and the war on anti-Semitism, which is a necropolitics, these portrayals justify state policing, repression, surveillance and securitization under the guise of protecting Jewish life, linking European bordering politics and settler colonialism. Employing patchwork discourse ethnography, which tracks the trajectories and migrations of discourses, this study examines what I term femophilosemitism and homophilosemitism to reveal how LGBTIQ and feminist discourses om women’s rights, gender equality and sexual freedom are appropriated to sustain settler sovereignty and European bordering politics under the guise of safeguarding Jewish life. This happens especially in the context of knowledge production of “October 7^th” by framing “October 7^th” with the ‘new anti-Semitism’ paradigm rather than settler colonialism paradigm where discourses on gender equality and sexual freedom play a critical role in justifying political violence while labelling political dissent as anti-Semitism and terrorism.