Rethinking Antisemitism as a new challenge of Jewish national security

Israel is homeland of all Jewish in the World. The destiny of each Jewish is a sensitive question for Israel. The common thread between these anti-Semitic notions is that there is a Jew as the target of all these attacks, his identity, religion, nation, heritage, land or state. For this reason, it is necessary to conceptualize the multifaceted antisemitism in the context of securing Jewish national security.

       The extermination of the Jews wasn’t an internal law and of natural law. It was doctrinally founded, philosophically explained, methodically prepared, systematically perpetrated, it is the application of a dogmatic theory which still exists today and which is called the scourge on humanity. «Because yes, anti-Semitism still kills in Middle East and in Western Europe in same time. And, yes, these murders are still the result of an expressed, shared, exaggerated ideology that inculcates the hatred of the Jews, human beings. Despite the obvious differences between the risks of assimilation of Judeophobia, anti-Zionism and delegitimizing Jewish State in the anti-Semitism, the three themes are linked to the Jewish national security.

To understand anti-Semitism as an essential factor in Jewish national security, a brief historical overview is needed. Anti-Semitism has persisted throughout the history of the Jewish people, from the religious anti-Jewish hatred in the Middle East to the political and racial anti-Semitism in new Europe that culminated in the Shoah. Because the anti-Semitism has always been able to reinvent itself and take new forms: the anti-Semitic terrorism of jihadists, political anti-Semitism of the extreme right, anti-Zionist anti-Semitism of the extreme left, religious anti-Semitism of a party from the Muslim world to sometimes in our neighborhoods. Since the 1990s, the demonization of Israel and the Jews reached new heights in the post-war world, when it was thought that anti-Semitism would have disappeared after the Shoah. In part, this has been reinforced by the rise of a fanatical Islamic fundamentalism, a Palestinian identity around the blatant refusal to accept the Jews' right to exercise any form of sovereignty over the land of Israel.

        On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel." The second major challenge is that İsrael is a "National Home" of all the Jews of the World and it engages a great responsibility in securing the Jews of the Diaspora too. Today, the climate of tension and the increasing attacks on the Jewish community around the world are prompting many of its members to stop living in Europe.  This growing challenge prompts the State of Israel to rethink the concepts of its national security and to include the component of multifaceted antisemitism as a major component. The direct links between anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and the efforts to de-legitimize the contemporary State of Israel will continue to exist as long as the Judaism of the Diaspora considers itself a source of strength for which Israel depends, considers Israel as the basis of its own identity and continuous culture. It should be noted that for many Jews the existence of a Jewish state is also a protection against another "mortal danger" that would keep them from assimilating the Jews without guaranteeing their security.

The impressions from the intensive two-week workshop-based curriculum development program in interdisciplinary contemporary antisemitism studies organized by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) have enabled us to come to a conclusion, by leading professors and researchers in this field, that the scourge of anti-Semitism is a sociological, theological, anthropological and legal issue as well. It is a complex issue of the postmodern era to be understood in science, it requires the concentration of scientists and academics to seek ways to eradicate the ideological foundations of Jewish hatred and diabolizing the nation state of Israel. Following the workshop on theoretical and practical studies on contemporary antisemitism, held at St John’s College of the University of Oxford from July 16, 2017 to July 29, 2017, the activists in the fight against anti-Semitism from different countries as well as USA, Germany, India, France, Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, United Kingdom, Lithuania, have agreed to combine the efforts to continue the struggle for justice of the Jew.

The new characters of anti-Semitic acts are not only verbal defamation or hate speech, targets are Jewish heritage, the attempt to detach Israel from its cultural heritage and places of worship. The rapid evolution of terrorist threats also against Israel and the changing nature of threats in the current Middle East of the new polarization, the challenges and dilemmas faced by Israel in its fight against jihadist terrorism, call for a re-examination of the structure, doctrines and strategies of action of Israel's security as well as their adaptation to the changing reality in the region. No one should blame the Israelis for Jewish security. The Jewish historical experience speaks for itself of the centuries of persecution, expulsion, antisemitism and segregation culminating with the Holocaust and followed by incessant and violent clashes with the Arab states and Palestinians. Such things have created a major psychological barrier that places national security concerns at the forefront and center of Israel's national and foreign policy. To defend the Jewish identity and the national security of the State of Israel, it would be necessary to fight against the anti-Semitism by linking to Zionism, fundamental concept of the Hebrew State. It will justify it because the only justification for the State's exist­ence is its strong ties with the whole Jewish people.