‘Anti -semitas’, as a word can explain the topicality

In conjunction with the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz in a historical period far from happy, with violent and fascist wars and regurgitations to poison the lives of people and ruin that of the desperate fleeing from the southern South, a word that was thought of destined for oblivion is relevant and which, on the other hand, repeatedly and increasingly insistently replicated: anti -Semitism.

The violent reaction of Israel to the attack attack of 7 October 2023 which led to the death of over a thousand Israelis and the kidnapping of a few hundreds, a reaction that cost the life of many tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, made the slogans rise again against the Jews again and unleashed an opinion motorcycle anti -Semitic.

In European countries they return to show themselves Nazi and clearly anti -Semitic symbols while those responsible for racial laws and the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s undergo a revaluation process or, in any case, of downsizing the faults and horrors committed. A dramatic situation in which what only ten years ago seemed impossible: Shoah symbols like Liliana Segre are insulted and threatened and forcedeven, to live under escort for the mere fact of having survived the Nazi -fascist extermination and of wanting to testify to its barbarism.

In this historical moment it is quantumously important Valentina Pisanty’s essay that comes out these days, ‘Anti -semita – a word in hostage’ (Ed.bompiani, pages 173 – price: 12 euros). Semiologist, professor at the University of Bergamo, the author explains the origin of the word “anti -Semitic”, relatively recent to say the truth (late nineteenth century in Germany where the anti -Semitic League was born to oppose the laws that recognized civil rights to the German Jews ) in an essay that also provides her to be the opportunity to set up topicality by giving an important and original contribution to the discussion on the return of hatred to the Jews in the world. With the end of the Second World War e The revelation of what the holocaust wasrightly absorbed in the role of absolute evil, anti -Semitism also began to disappear, at least formally. The word that therefore designated the hatred of the Jews, a negative and repelling feeling, seemed destined to become desuetic. Then what happened? Two wars between the state of Israel and the Arabs – that of the six days in 1967 and the Yom Kippur of 1973 – and then everything that came after starting from the occupation of the lands conquered in ’67 attracted a widespread hatred against Israel Aside from the Arab countries and also of those who were against the USA (who had helped Israel in ’73 and then they had always lined up alongside him).

You’ll happen then understandable but unexpected phenomenon: antixionism, The criticism of Israel’s expansionist policy and its claim to occupy Palestine as an elected people became more and more synonymous with anti -Semitism. If the latter, according to JDA – Jerusalem Declaration of Anti -Semitix “, is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)”, it is not automatically that one Criticism to Israel is proof of anti -Semitism. Being an anti -medicalist does not automatically mean being anti -Semitic. Pisanty cites, for example, Lord Arthur Balfour, Zionist and anti -Semitic, who in 1917 committed himself to building the “national hearth” for the Jewish people in Palestine).

Yet these two expressions have become more and more one thing to the point that we speak of “new anti -Semitism”. And this is, says the author, the reason why today there is a domineering return, especially in Europe, of the events against the Jews. Because Israel is identified with the Jews. And this is because, explains Professor Pisanty, “between the late nineties and subsequent decades some policy-makers glimpse with increasing clarity the strategic potential of the word ‘anti-Semitic’.

Become synonymous with absolute evil, the term lends itself to a variety of uses functional to politics Of those who feel custodian and owner – reads the preface – among these, as is evident, the parties of the Israeli right almost uninterruptedly in power since 1996. With the support of American and European institutions, the Israeli governments of the ultra -annualist Autoproclamano official spokesman for the victims of the Holocaust, including descendants. It does not matter that, of the current fifteen million Jews in the world, only seven have chosen to live in Israel. Since Israel is the only country with a Jewish majority, the supervision of memory belongs to its political leadership, they claim. Appointed Motu proper to memory, they claim a monopoly on that area of ​​language that refers to the historical crimes suffered by the Jews of Europe genocide, ghetto, concentration camp, pogrom, racism, anti -Semitism and other related words “.

The teacher does not mean, with her essay, “Dissolve the tire between anti -Vionism and anti -Semitism which in recent decades has suffocated the debate in the Middle East “, but wants to clarify the meaning of the word” anti -Semitism “. Yet from its semiological examination a lucid historical analysts and a key to reading today’s reality derives from its reading. A reading that certainly He will not all find it in order for the idea that Anti -Mionism is a form of anti -Semitism is widespread and commonly accepted.