JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] THE NEW JUDEOPHOBIA 77
As we shall see below, there in this statement and in similar positions
an evident overstatement of Palestinian suffering that is nothing more than
the indicator of a high degree of irrationality in the treatment of this issue.
This trend has been even stronger and more in depth during the war
between Israel and Hamas that ended in 2008 and early 2009. The indicators
that alerted us were several social and trade union organizations, articles
and statements of intellectuals, and, for the first time, mobilizations of
repudiation of Israel toward the Jewish community—institutions showing
that, despite denying the relationship between Judaism and Zionism, in
practice their speeches are binding and indivisible.
What happens is that intellectuals who study social phenomena use in
an arbitrary fashion concepts they are well aware ignore manipulating and
trivializing categories—historical, sociological, political, and economic.
And why is it that this arbitrary use happens when you analyze the Middle
East conflict and only when it refers to Israel?
What could be happening are two things: a) a prejudiced view that
distorts the image of Israel; or b) a conscious choice to trivialize in order to
delegitimize the state. In both cases, the objective result is a discriminatory
situation against Israel, which ends up being considered unfairly (in relation
to the facts produced by other states and social groups) and disproportionately
(under facts for which this state is responsible).
These two forms of undeserved treatment can be linked to the two
forms of antisemitism that sociologist Gino Germani addressed: the first
relates to unconscious antisemitism and implies a traditional antisemitism,
while the second is more a voluntary and conscious disqualification and not
merely a mechanical reproduction of stereotypes, and refers to what
Germani defined as ideological antisemitism.
If a part of the intelligentsia—supposedly the most critical social
group—uncritically used concepts whose significance they know perfectly
and without considering the consequences decides to use them to produce a
banal distortion of its true meaning with the intention of forcing the interpretation
of certain historical fact, then something profound is happening. If
the criticism is one of the central intellectual characteristics, it makes a
powerful call to the fact that academics, scientific enterprises, and social
companies used Manichaean reductionism analysis techniques, messianic
polar dualism, and the same uncritical thinking, creating as a result a
demonization of Israel, shaping an image of this tranquilized, unconscious
state of functioning (I hate Israel not because I am antisemitic but because
Israel does “bad” or “evil” things) and creating a mental representation of
Israel that needs to be justified. It is a before-the-event condemnation that
works like self-justification.