What if the label of ‘Semite’ were to be readopted by Arabs and Muslims as part of their identity-formation, so that any antisemitism would also include them?
Contrapuntal reading is a way of listening to the plurality of voices of Jews and Palestinians, of seeing cultural identities not as essentialisations, but as mixed ensembles constituted with and through the Other.
There are significantly different motivations among Muslims with Palestinian, Lebanese or Turkish backgrounds. However, the experience of marginalisation and discrimination is a major element in the construction of identity.
Since 2000, the questions of Israel and antisemitism have become a source of ever greater conflict in British Jewry, as well as in other diaspora Jewish populations.
A considerable faction of right-wing Zionists, of the sort who have long dominated pro-Israel politics, are often linked to organised Islamophobia promotion.
There are many Jews who actively sympathise with an anti-racist political vision. But the ‘new antisemitism’ complicates how the organised Jewish ‘community’ could identify with such an enterprise.
The presence of growing Muslim populations in Europe at the same time as the rise of political Islam and the inception of Israel, was largely a legacy of twentieth century colonial history.
Both anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish racisms have played their part in legitimising global clashes. And the Palestine/Israel question has helped to encourage these conflations and racialisations.
Racisms against both Jews and Muslims across the globe are being stimulated by the question of Palestine/Israel in increasingly complex ways. Our guest editors this week, from the University of East London’s Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging, invite you to join an open forum
