‘New’ antisemitism blurs complicated and dangerous lines

Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel nearly a year ago, and the subsequent ongoing war on Gaza, there have been widespread claims that antisemitism is globally on the rise. Attacks on Jewish synagogues and businesses, some of them uncomfortably close to home, bear this out.

In the United States, antisemitic crimes tripled the week after the Hamas attacks, and the United Kingdom recorded a 1,353% increase in such incidents. In Australia, 37 anti-Jewish incidents were reported the week after the Hamas attacks, compared to one the previous week.

The history of antisemitism stretches over several millennia. It arises almost everywhere Jews have chosen to cling to their religious and cultural identity, against the dominant majority. What is “new” today is that arguments about antisemitism now blur into bitter debates over the Israel–Palestine conflict.

Today, antisemitism takes both familiar and new forms of expression. Shalom Lappin is a linguist based at Queen Mary University in London and the author of a new book, The New Antisemitism. But the term “new antisemitism” does not belong to him alone: it has been used by a number of other writers.

The basic thesis of Lappin’s book is that we can only understand the rise of antisemitism in the larger context of growing inequality and anti-globalization movements, which “share a common focus on identity politics and a sharply anti-elitist rejection of established political institutions.” I am not entirely convinced by this claim.

At the same time, he argues there are currently three strains of antisemitism: belonging to the right, the left and radical Islam. The rise of populist authoritarian movements is certainly connected with a resurgence of antisemitism in a number of