Zionism and Antisemitism
This conference brings together more than 35 scholars from institutions in eight countries, from different disciplines and with diverse perspectives, to examine the interaction between Zionism and antisemitism as it has developed from the nineteenth century through to the present day.
Political Zionism and antisemitism have been connected ever since the late nineteenth century. From the 1870s, self-proclaimed antisemites regarded Jews as an unassimilable element within their nations and states. Many Zionists concluded that the persistence of antisemitism required a Jewish state or national home in Palestine. ‘We are one people – our enemies have made us one in our despite….Distress binds us together,’ wrote Theodor Herzl in The Jewish State, in 1896.
This is a timely moment for our conference. November 2017 brings the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which enabled the Zionist movement to build a national home in Palestine and set it on the road to statehood, achieved three decades later. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War. The war and its aftermath have added further dimensions to the relationship between Zionism and antisemitism.
PROGRAMME
Wednesday 24 May
9.00–9.30 Registration
Welcome
David Feldman (Birkbeck, University of London)
9.30–11.00 Panel 1: Zionists, Semitism and Antisemitism
Chair: David Feldman (Birkbeck, University of London)
‘The organ of unifying and sanctifying love’: Jews and non-Jews in the Zionist vision of Moses Hess
Adam Sutcliffe (King’s College London)
Ottoman Jewish views on nominal semitism
Moshe Behar (University of Manchester)
Jabotinsky's interpretation of antisemitism between the two world wars
Amir Goldstein (Tel-Hai College, Israel)
11.00–11.30 Tea and coffee
11.30–1.00 Panel 2: Christianity, Jews and Zionism
Chair: tbc
Christian Europe’s figure of the fanatic and the Zionist world conspiracy: an ontological process
James Renton (European University Institute)
Christian Israel
Didi Herman (University of Kent)
Contemporary protestantism and Zionism: philosemitism and antisemitism
Yaakov Ariel (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
1.00–2.00 Lunch
2.00–3.30 Panel 3: Zionism and Politics in Europe c.1920-70
Chair: Nathan Kurz (Birkbeck, University of London)
The relationship between Zionism and the National Socialist regime in Germany between 1933 and 1941
Francis R. Nicosia (University of Vermont)
Between Liberalism and Slavophobia: anti-Zionism and antisemitism in interwar Greece
Paris Papamichos Chronakis (University of Illinois at Chicago)
The Zionist as ‘survivor’: Holocaust memory and the origins of the French-Israeli alliance
Robert B. Isaacson (George Washington University)
3.30–4.00 Tea and coffee
4.00–5.30 Panel 4: Socialism and Zionism
Chair: Brendan McGeever (Birkbeck, University of London)
Anti-Zionism, anti-fascism, and the Great Terror
Andrew Sloin (Baruch College, City University of New York)
Antisemitism and the pro-Zionist turn in Norwegian Socialism
Åsmund Borgen Gjerde (University of Bergen)
‘A Global Revision’? Late Trotsky on antisemitism and the necessity of a territorial solution to ‘the Jewish question’
Alan Johnson (Editor of Fathom journal)
Panel 5: Zionism, Racism and Antisemitism After the 1970s
Chair: Anne Summers (Birkbeck, University of London)
Anti-Zionism and the ‘new antisemitism’: theory and practice
Dave Rich (Community Security Trust)
Antisemitism, Zionism and feminism
Miriam E. David (University College London Institute of Education) and Gail Chester (writer and independent scholar)
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism: reflections from South Africa Milton Shain (University of Cape Town)
5.30–6.30 Break
6.30–8.00 Keynote lecture
Antisemitism and Zionism: ideologies or emotions?
Derek Penslar (Harvard University)
8.00 Drinks reception
Thursday 25 May
9.15–10.45 Panel 6: The New Antisemitism
Chair: Anthony Bale (Birkbeck, University of London)
International human rights discourse and the new antisemitism Gerald Steinberg (Bar Ilan University) and Anne Herzberg (NGO Monitor)
Liberal responses to antisemitic implications in the academic BDS movement, right and left Eric Alterman (City University of New York)
New antisemitism and neo-Zionism Gilbert Achcar (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
10.45–11.15 Tea and coffee
11.15–12.30 Panel 7: Anti-Israel Attitudes and Opinion Today
Chair: Philip Spencer (Kingston University and Birkbeck, University of London)
Antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiments in contemporary Europe Uzi Rebhun (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The Israeli occupation and the rise of antisemitism – is there a connection? Tony Klug (Oxford Research Group)
12.30–2.00 Lunch
2.00–3.30 Panel 8: Racisms
Chair: Ben Gidley (Birkbeck, University of London)
‘Anti-Zionism is our haven’ Les Indigènes de la République, Jews and Israel Samuel Ghiles-Meilhac (SciencesPo, Paris and University Paris8)
A candid confrontation? anti-Zionism and antisemitism after Ferguson Elliot Ratzman (Swarthmore College)
The mainstreaming of xenophobia, racism and antisemitism in contemporary populist movements David Hirsh (Goldsmiths, University of London)
3.30–4.00 Tea and coffee
4.00–5.30 Panel 9: Israel and Antisemitism in Austria and Germany
Chair: Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Technische Universität Berlin)
German-Israeli state relations in the postwar era: the role(s) of antisemitism Daniel Marwecki (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Suspicious Zionism: The right-wing populist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and its instrumentalization of Zionism, Jews and antisemitism as a means to attain political power
Helga Embacher (University of Salzburg)
Making Nazis out of Arabs/Muslims: a tertiary antisemitism?
Esra Ozyurek (London School of Economics and Political Science)
5.30–6.30 Break
6.30–8.00 Keynote lecture The memories of the Holocaust and Nakba and the politics of binationalism in Israel/Palestine
Bashir Bashir (Open University, Israel / The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute)
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