Antisemitism is
hostility toward,
denigration of
malicious lies about or
discrimination against
Jews
as individual Jews,
as a people,
as a religion,
as an ethnic group or
as a nation (i.e., Israel.)
It occurs to me that this is more than just a definition: this is a taxonomy for categorizing different types of antisemitism.
There are twenty permutations here between column A and column B. Any antisemitic incident should be able to be categorized as at least one from each column.
Let's put letters in each column:
So, for example, the popular Arab claim that there are no Jewish archaeological artifacts in Jerusalem is a malicious lie about Jews as a people and a nation. We can call that AS-LPN.
Not allowing Jews in hotels in the early 1900s was discrimination against Jews as an ethnic group, AS-AE.
The myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is hostility towards and malicious lies about Jews as a people, religion, ethnic group and nation, so it is an AS-HLPREN.
Amnesty International's recent "apartheid" report is filled with malicious lies and discrimination against Jews as a nation, AS-LAN.
Nazi Germany included everything in both columns: AS-HDLAIPREN.
Ilhan Omar's statement that Zionist money controlling Congress is an AS-LPN, and her claim that Israel is "hypnotizing the world" is AS-HLN.
Roger Waters' claim that Sheldon Adelson was a "puppetmaster" who believed that non-Jews are less than human was clearly AS-HDLI, but the larger context was clearly that he got his ideas about Adelson from antisemitic literature about the Talmud, so we can add a R on that taxonomy.
One of the things I want to accomplish with this definition is to also say what antisemitism is not. Often, stupidity is mistaken for antisemitic acts. So under this taxonomy, Whoopi Goldberg's statement about the Holocaust having nothing to do with race was quite false but it wasn't a malicious lie nor was it derogatory, therefore it wasn't antisemitic.
Attacks on George Soros would only be considered antisemitic if they tie into his being Jewish. If they are only about his politics then they don't fit into this taxonomy.
On the other hand, I would argue that Marjorie Taylor-Greene's theory that a California utility was working with the Rothschilds on a satellite that redirects sun rays to Earth to create wildfires is AS-LI - the Rothschilds as individuals but we don't know enough to know if she believes that they are proxies for the Jewish people. However she also shared a video saying that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” to replace white Europeans with Muslim immigrants, which is a AS-HLN, at least.
There are of course judgment calls here, and often we cannot know whether the hostility towards Jews are based on the idea of Jews as a people or religion or ethnic group without more context.
The most difficult examples are when antisemitic tropes or dog-whistles are alleged. We cannot know for sure whether the person accused of antisemitism invoked those tropes deliberately - Jeremy Corbyn's posting of a mural with antisemitic tropes, or Donald Trump' posting an anti-Hilary Clinton graphic that used a six pointed star. Those stories often follow the politics of the accusers more than the actual facts of the case. The artist of the mural clearly had some antisemitic intent but that doesn't mean that Corbyn necessarily had that in mind. Unless there is other clear evidence, I prefer to err on the side of caution - and this definition and taxonomy can help reduce the number of times antisemitism is invoked not out of genuine outrage but to score political points against an opponent. When that happens, Jews are not being defended - they are simply props.
That doesn't mean that both Corbyn and Trump shouldn't have realized how insensitive both of those social media posts were. It just means that without additional evidence they cannot be considered antisemitic.
Similarly, the use of the word "neocon" cannot be considered antisemitic in a vacuum, but in some contexts it clearly is.
I think that my definition, and applying the taxonomy, does a far better job as reflecting what is truly antisemitic than the other definitions out there. It can never be a science, but this definition makes it less of a free-for-all.
