The Anti-Zionist Bridge: The East German Communist Contribution to Antisemitism's Revival After the Holocaust

Abstract:Communist anti-Zionism was an ideological offensive against the State of Israel whose advocates insisted that the accusation that they were motivated by antisemitism was an imperialist or Zionist trick to defuse legitimate criticism of Israel's policies toward the Arabs and the Palestinians. The associated rhetoric of anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and anti-racism made it possible for anti-Zionism to burst beyond the bounds of European neo-Nazi circles as well as its Arab and Palestinian or Islamist boundaries and became an enduring element of global Communist, radical leftist and third worldist politics. This anti-Zionism was the primary vehicle through which pejorative views, previously applied to Jews in the Western tradition, were now applied to the State of Israel around the world.