Continuity and Discontinuity: From Antisemitism to Antizionism and the Reconfiguration of the Jewish Question

Abstract

This paper argues that antizionism must be understood, like the antisemitism that came before it, as an ideology. Here I draw upon Arendt’s definition of ideology as a radical distortion of social and political relations. I draw also upon Fine and Spencer’s understanding of the Jewish question as the antisemitic reaction to Jewish emancipation. I argue that antizionism is a reconfiguration of that reaction in the context of Jews’ modern emancipation in the form of national self-determination in the State of Israel. While that modern reaction, antizionism, displays both continuity and discontinuity with the antisemitism that came before it, it remains a manifestation of the Jewish question. Keywords: Jewish question, Ideology, Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, Antizionism, Hannah Arendt