A new structural definition of antisemitism

For many years, discussions of antisemitism have focused on attitudes and behaviors  -  hatred, prejudice, discrimination, or violence directed at Jews. My own definition  is more precise than many others, but it still follows the same basic pattern: identifying antisemitism after the fact, once it had already manifested in words or actions. 

But these definitions do not explain why antisemitism keeps reappearing in radically different ideological environments, nor why it so often emerges among people who sincerely deny any animus toward Jews.

After examining antisemitism across religious, racial, political, and ideological forms, I realized that there is a common denominator to all versions of antisemitism:  antisemitism reliably appears where Jews break philosophical systems.

Antisemitism emerges most consistently in worldviews that rely on false binaries — clean, totalizing categories that claim to explain how the world works. These frameworks demand legibility: oppressor versus oppressed, religion versus nation, universal versus particular, colonizer versus indigenous, progressive versus reactionary.

Jews repeatedly break these binaries.

Jews are a people, but not defined solely by territory.
Jews are a religion, but not reducible to private belief.
Jews are a nation, but not a conventional civic nation-state.
Jews are a tribe, but one that survives dispersion.

These categories overlap but do not contradict each other. Jewish identity is layered, historically continuous, and covenantal. It resists simplification. That resistance is precisely what creates friction with ideologies that require neat classification to function.

When a philosophy encounters Jews and cannot accommodate them, it does not modify itself to reflect reality. Instead, it does one of two things: it becomes explicitly eliminationist toward Jews altogether, or it redefines what Jews are and what they are not. It never adjusts its categories to accommodate Jews as they actually exist.

From this pattern emerges a structural definition of antisemitism:

An ideology is structurally antisemitic if it requires the negation, erasure, or redefinition of Jewishness — as a people, a nation, a covenant, or a moral tradition — in order to remain internally coherent.

This definition does not depend on hatred, intent, or emotional hostility. It does not require mind-reading to establish intent. A system can be structurally antisemitic even when it claims moral concern, universal justice, or even Jewish well-being. What matters is whether Jewish existence,  as it actually is, can be tolerated without collapse.

Structural antisemitism is often difficult to detect because it operates through affirmation rather than denial.  Modern Arab antisemitism defines Judaism as merely a religion, and in that way it denies Jewish peoplehood. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists define Jews as a distinct race but not as a nation or religion that a non-Aryan can join. 

The antisemitism lies not in what these systems say Jews are, but in what they cannot allow Jews to be.

If a system requires Jews not to be a people, not to have national expression, not to maintain covenantal obligations, or not to assert particular identity, the exclusion itself is the antisemitism.

This brings us to the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of Reform Judaism.

The platform famously declared: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community.”

This statement predated political Zionism. It was driven by a desire for emancipation, safety, and acceptance within liberal nation-states. But structurally, it was antisemitic.

The platform accepted a universalist Enlightenment framework that could not tolerate distinct Jewish peoplehood. In order for that framework to remain coherent - and for Jews to belong - Jewish nationhood had to be denied.

Jewish peoplehood was treated as illegitimate. The intent was not antisemitic, but the effect undeniably was.

The Reform movement later reversed course. The 1937 Columbus Platform reintroduced Jewish peoplehood and attachment to the Land of Israel. Later statements in the late 20th century fully embraced Zionism and Jewish national identity. It realized what damage can occur by denying aspects of Judaism.

But the damage had already been done. Today's antisemites often refer to the early opposition to Zionism among the Reform as proof that anti-Zionism is not antisemitic. The citation itself depends on preserving a position the movement ultimately abandoned because it was untenable.

Modern anti-Zionism relies on the same structural denial. To oppose Zionism consistently is to deny that Jews are a people with a right to national self-determination. That denial is not mere political critique – it is the categorical erasure of a core dimension of Jewish identity.

This is where the claim that anti-Zionism is merely criticism of Israel collapses. The antisemitism does not lie in criticism of Israeli policy; it lies in the denial of Jewish nationhood, peoplehood, and the right to self-determination. A framework can permit unlimited criticism of Israel and still be morally coherent. It becomes antisemitic only when Jewish collective existence itself is treated as illegitimate.

This structural definition does more than clarify history. It provides a predictive tool.

Any philosophy can be tested with a simple question:

Does this system require redefining Jews in order to remain coherent?

If Jews must not be a people, not be indigenous, not be a nation, not be a protected ethnic group, or not be morally particular,  the system is structurally antisemitic, whether or not it acknowledges that fact.

This is why contemporary frameworks such as DEI and certain identity-based models are antisemitic at the structural level. If Jews are denied tribal or ethnic status, they are excluded from protections granted to other groups. If Jews are redefined as uniformly “white” and “privileged,” antisemitism becomes morally permissible – or even obligatory – within the framework. Binary identity logic inevitably produces hostility toward Jews precisely because Jews do not fit any binary.

When systems accept every form of indigenous identity except Jewish, recognize every victim group except Jews, and validates every connection of a people to a land except the Jewish one, then it structurally requires Jewish non-existence in order to maintain its categories.

This definition changes the conversation.

Instead of Jews defending themselves against accusations of hypersensitivity or special pleading, the burden shifts to the ideology: Why does your system need to redefine Jews in order to function? What does that say about the system itself? 

When Jews insist on the proper definition of what being Jewish means, then defending Israel, Jewish peoplehood, or identity is not bigotry or supremacism. It is insisting on Jews being treated like any other national, religious or ethnic group. Jews can say, “We are protecting a category of human difference that your system wants erased.”

And what starts with Jews never ends with Jews. Antisemitism, understood structurally, is not merely a Jewish problem. It is a warning sign of philosophical failure. Systems that cannot tolerate Jewish complexity cannot tolerate other forms of complexity - and the results are too often horrible for any group that the ideology cannot handle. 

That is why antisemitism is diagnostically useful,  and why confronting it at the structural level is not only a Jewish imperative, but a moral one.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)