Over the last year or so, there has emerged a group of scholars and activists who advocate for a new strategy for responding to the barrage of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment we’ve been witnessing recently, especially since October 7. Spearheaded by Adam Louis-Klein, Naya Lekht, and others [1], they see this onslaught as driven by a hate movement, which they call ‘antizionism’ (written without a hyphen, to distinguish it from opposition to Zionism expressed by Jews prior to Israel’s founding). Some have dubbed their position ‘the new anti-antizionism’, but I’ll just call it ‘anti-antizionism’.

A main feature of the anti-antizionists’ picture is that antizionism is a distinct form of Jew-hatred, differing from Nazi-era or “classical” race-based versions of antisemitism, as well as from earlier varieties of Jew-hatred that targeted Judaism. They maintain that in order to combat antizionism effectively, antizionism must be described and understood on its own terms, rather than through the lens of antisemitism.

While there’s much to admire in all of this, I also believe there are a number of problems with their view, including some confusion. Here I’ll focus only on what I take to be the most serious problem. As my aim is to be constructive, I’ll also suggest a remedy.

What is the serious problem?

The anti-antizionists restrict the meaning of the word ‘antisemitism’ to mean classical (Nazi-era) antisemitism.

This is illustrated in part B of image-1. Anti-antizionists take Jew-hatred to be a general, superordinate (higher-level) category, under which fall the three, more specific, subordinate (lower-level) categories—anti-Judaism, antisemitism, and antizionism—where ‘antisemitism’ means classical, Nazi-era antisemitism.

In contrast, the standard arrangement in similar three-way groupings, for people like Bernard Lewis, Jonathan Sacks, and others, places ‘antisemitism’ (or possibly ‘Jew-hatred’) in the superordinate position, but never as any of the more specific, subordinate categories—unless it’s being modified in some way (‘classical’, ‘Nazi-era’, etc.). This is shown in part A of image-1.

In what sense do the anti-antizionists “restrict” the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ to mean classical (Nazi-era, etc.) antisemitism? Although they are not very clear on this, there are two claims they might be making:

Claim 1: The meaning of ‘antisemitism’ in contemporary English is classical antisemitism.

Claim 2: The meaning of ‘antisemitism’ in contemporary English ought to be classical antisemitism.

The anti-antizionists have presented arguments for both claims. I’ll try to show why none of them work.

Why is this a problem?

Let’s first ask, What’s wrong with thinking that the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ is or should be classical antisemitism? The problem is that it flies in the face of the facts about what ‘antisemitism’ means in contemporary English.

A word’s meaning in a (living) language at a point in time is determined by how members of the language community—native speakers of the language—actually use the word at that time. It is such patterns of use that lexicographers attempt to describe in their dictionary entries, which is why dictionary entries are excellent indicators of a word’s current usage, and hence current meaning.

If we survey up-to-date entries for ‘antisemitism’ (with or without a hyphen), although they will vary somewhat across dictionaries (like with all words), still they all treat ‘antisemitism’ as a general, superordinate category that applies to all cases of (something like) unjust, discriminatory, or hateful statements or actions directed at Jews as such. We find no definitions that restrict the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ to classical, Nazi-era antisemitism.

This also holds for decades of antisemitism scholarship across thousands of articles and books, in “official” definitions (IHRA, JDA, Nexus, etc.), in the titles of dedicated antisemitism journals, conferences, and........

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