In this dense and heavily footnoted study, Anthony Julius tries to capture the distinct flavour of a prejudice that was never elevated into a doctrine, but could nonetheless be grotesque, murderous, vicious and pervasive. It is "a story of an antisemitism that shrinks from being named antisemitic", he writes. "It is not Jew-hatred that we must write of, but Jew-distrust . . . It is a story of snub and insult, sly whisper and innuendo, deceit and self-deception."
Yet the first version of antisemitism Julius describes, which took root when Jews arrived in England in the wake of the Norman conquest and continued to grow until they were expelled in 1290, did not look quite like that. "In medieval England," Julius writes, "Jews were defamed, their wealth was expropriated, they were killed and injured, they were subjected to discriminatory and humiliating regulation, and they were, finally, expelled." This "war against the Jews" was largely, but not solely, fuelled by the blood libel, the entirely false accusation that "Jews periodically trapped, tortured and then killed Christian boys" to use their blood for ritual purposes.
For 400 years, with Jews banished from the country, antisemitism lived on in its second form as literary antisemitism, which drew heavily on the blood libel theme and has been most famously captured in such classic works as Chaucer's "The Prioress's Tale", The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist. The medieval "war" was not revived when Jews were readmitted to England under Cromwell in the 1650s. Instead, from then to the late 20th century, a "modern, quotidian anti-semitism of insult and partial exclusion" developed (its third incarnation), which was "pervasive but contained".
The final quarter of the book is devoted to what Julius claims is the fourth and "most recent kind of English antisemitism . . . a composite of anti-Zionisms, principal among which is the 'new anti-Zionism' . . . this composite is so polluted by antisemitic tropes that it has been named the 'new antisemitism'." A highly controversial area, but undoubtedly the most important part of his project.
Julius says that his approach to antisemitism is systematic. A more accurate description would be idiosyncratic. For a so-called "first comprehensive history of antisemitism in England", historical narrative and analysis are pretty thin on the ground. The medieval period is covered adequately, but treatment of the modern period is perfunctory. The years after the second world war are dispensed with in 20 pages and stop, inexplicably, in 1967.
More problematic is his definition of antisemitism, which is in part incomprehensible. What Julius seems to say is: the word antisemitism is "a most improper term", but I'll still use it to apply to what is a "heterogeneous phenomenon", "discontinuous", with an "irreducible plurality of forms" in effect, antisemitism is what I say it is. For three-quarters of the book this bizarre definition is irrelevant, since there's barely any disagreement as to what antisemitism is until we get to the 60s. But it comes into its own as justification for the contentious position he adopts in the last two chapters.
In one respect Julius now takes the consideration of English antisemitism in the right direction, because it's almost impossible to discuss it today without reference to Israel. But nowhere does he acknowledge that the creation of the Jewish state fundamentally changed the dynamic of the relationship between Jews and antisemitism. For the first time, a collective Jewish project could exert power in the world in such a manner for example, by repressive policies towards the Palestinians as to provoke hostility to Jews. By accepting the "Jew among the nations" idea, Julius essentially sees Israel as powerless, ever the object of enmity, never the author of its own fate or a decisive influence on the fate of Jews worldwide. Thus he is predisposed to judge severe criticism of Israel as antisemitic. (This draws him into propagandistic passages defending Israel and predictable but unsubstantiated attacks on the Guardian and the BBC for "playing their part in the dissemination of the new anti-Zionism": that is, spreading antisemitism.)
This is evident when, first, he defines as anti-Zionism a cluster of different positions from "seeking to fix the world's attention on the injustices of the occupation", through "'Re-partition' anti-Zionism (also known as the 'two-state solution')", to 'Liquidation' anti-Zionism (also known as the "one-state solution')". And, second, he argues that all of them slide ineluctably into antisemitism. The first implies Israel alone is guilty; the second manifests antipathy towards the Zionist enterprise; the third wants to cancel the "last surviving Jewish political project of the 20th century". But none of these positions is necessarily anti-Zionist; none of the glosses automatically follows; and there are no grounds to see them as inevitably containing antisemitic tropes. In mitigation, I guess he would refer back to his definition of antisemitism and the "irreducible plurality of [its] forms".
Julius is not just creating anti-Zionist labels in the abstract. He pins them on individuals, giving pride of place to so-called "new Jewish anti-Zionists". And it's here that he reveals the bankruptcy, confusion and malign nature of his project. He calls Independent Jewish Voices "anti-Zionist", yet among its signatories are Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists. He then unjustifiably singles out certain individual signatories as exemplifying the "new anti-Zionism", misreading and misinterpreting their writings to prove his case. In Julius's eyes the misdemeanours of these Jews are not minor. They are accused of being fellow travellers of antisemitism, whose "contributions to antisemitism are significant". Isn't this a gnat's crotchet away from calling them "Jewish antisemites"?
The fact is that anti-Zionism which I think is like insisting the Earth is flat can be a cloak for, or synonymous with, antisemitism. He could have demonstrated this by continuing to write the history of antisemitism from 1967 on, instead of wasting 150 pages on political polemic. There is merit in the earlier sections of this book, but the deficient treatment of anti-Zionism casts a shadow over the whole work.
Antony Lerman is the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
