Jewish internationalism and the international politics of opposing antisemitism 1960-2005

Wiedemann, Emilie Ilse (2024) Jewish internationalism and the international politics of opposing antisemitism 1960-2005. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis is an examination of the international Jewish and non-Jewish politics of opposing antisemitism between 1960 and 2005. It begins with the condemnation of antisemitism by the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1960. It ends with the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s (EUMC) working definition of antisemitism, published in 2005. Between these poles, lay a wealth of contestation about what antisemitism is and how to oppose it. Successive challenges and instability for Israel as well as global geopolitical upheaval during this time raised these questions anew. The thesis centres the political agency of a diverse and evolving group of Jewish internationalist actors, including NGOs, community representatives and academics, and analyses their political responses to this context. I explore how these actors debated and contested ideas about how to identify, measure and oppose antisemitism, and with whom to ally in this struggle. At stake was the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, between anti-antisemitism and anti-racism, between Israel and diaspora, and who represented Jewish interests in the arenas of global governance. These questions brought out significant divides in international Jewish politics, between state and diaspora and among diaspora actors themselves. The thesis ends with an investigation of the immediate roots of the EUMC document in Jewish internationalism; at the same time, I contextualise the EUMC document within the longer arc of the thesis. It was one expression of long-standing, multifaceted and heated debates within international Jewish politics, and of how these debates have played out in international Jewish and non-Jewish political efforts to oppose antisemitism. Overall, I demonstrate that ideas about what antisemitism is were constantly in flux during this period, subject to debate, contestation and negotiation among Jewish and non-Jewish political actors.

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