When an Old Disease Meets a New Disease: Antisemitism and Delegitimization of Israel in the COVID-19 Era

INSS Insight No. 1311, May 5, 2020

Michal Hatuel-Radoshitzky, Shahar Eilam, Tal-Or Cohen

In recent years, the Jewish world has been beset by two longstanding diseases – growing antisemitism and the delegitimization campaign against Israel. The struggle against antisemitism has lately commanded increased attention and resources among Jewish communities, various governments around the world, and even the Israeli establishment. In tandem, the coronavirus crisis has changed the global agenda and created difficulties for Jewish communities in the Diaspora that have yet to be fully understood. The struggle against threats to the safety and security of Diaspora Jewry, alongside the multidimensional implications of the coronavirus crisis for these communities, presents not only a major challenge, but also a unique opportunity to increase cooperation and commitment, and to better the connection between the State of Israel and Jewish communities around the world.

Prior to the outbreak of the corona pandemic, the Jewish world outside of Israel was occupied with an older, more familiar disease – antisemitism, which has evidently reared its head in recent years with new fervor. Simultaneously, Jewish communities in the diaspora confronted efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and smear its name in the international arena, mainly in opposition to Israel’s policies vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The struggle against antisemitism has recently commanded increasing attention and resources, not only among Jewish communities and various governments around the world, but also within the Israeli establishment. Nowadays, alongside ongoing incidents of antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel, the coronavirus crisis – which has changed the global agenda as well as that of Jewish communities outside of Israel – has created a difficult reality with implications for these communities that are yet to be fully understood.

The high morbidity and mortality rates among certain Jewish communities in the diaspora, such as the ultra-Orthodox community in New York, are currently causing people to be deterred – not necessarily based on antisemitic sentiments – by people who outwardly look Jewish. This fear has even been expressed in discriminatory civilian-initiated prohibitions against Jews entering public places. This sentiment, which is rooted in a sense of vulnerability and helplessness against the pandemic, is not directed only at Jews, but also at foreigners and minority groups in general, including Asians in the US, who allegedly represent China, which is sometimes perceived as being responsible for COVID-19. Nonetheless, displays of hatred toward Jews are not unrelated to the increase in cases of classic antisemitism. Rather, they are translated into rhetoric that blames Jews for the spread of the disease, and a variety of other conspiracy theories regarding the role of Jews in the pandemic. Such theories include the idea that Jews created the disease as part of a plot to take over the world in general, and financial institutions or sites holy to Islam in particular; the theory that Jews hold the cure for the disease but are refusing to share it with the rest of the world; and even the belief that God sent the disease to humanity in light of Jewish stubbornness not to convert to Christianity.

Read in full: When an Old Disease Meets a New Disease: Antisemitism and Delegitimization of Israel in the COVID-19 Era