Antisemitism

What is Anti-Semitism?

Let this be answered by Volker Beck who published the following on his blog on April 13, 2012:

What is Anti-Semitism?

Prof. Dr. Armin Pfahl-Traughber, for example, offers a useful definition:

This is a collective term for all settings and behaviors that insinuate negative properties to indivuduals and groups applicable as Jews on the basis of this affiliation, to ideologically justify a devaluation, discrimination, persecution or even murder. Put it another way: There is a hostility to Jews, because they are Jews.

Today the most common form of anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism, which is defined by Pfahl-Traughber as follows:

Anti-Zionism, that is the "refusal of the right to exist of the State of Israel, i.e. the negation of the claim of Jewish national self-determination. Consciously or unconsciously, this position is tantamount to the cancellation of a secure refuge for the Jews and a related persecution. As a more attenuated variant of anti-zionism, the flat-rate "condemnation" of Israel as a negative force can apply, which need not necessarily be connected to the already seemingly unrealistic demand for abolution of the state existance. Thus, the state of the Jews is blamed being allegedly the sole entity responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often using defamatory historical equates with the German national socialism. On the basis of rigorous advertising out in two forms to hostility to the Jews and the State of Israel, sometimes a latent anti-semitism can be found behind such views of anti-Zionism. However, you cannot make lump equation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism." (Source [German text])