Palestinian Knot. The “New Anti-Semitism”, Islamophobia and the Question of Non-islamophobic Europe

Abstract

Throughout twentieth-century European history Jews and Arabs, as well as Jews and Muslims, have been presented as engaged in a “civilizational” conflict that is not only political but also quasi-metaphysical. This article examines the impact of the conflict on attitudes to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and considers the Islamophobic implications of the “new anti-Semitic” discourse, focussing in particular on a variant of this discourse developed by Alain Finkielkraut. The text argues that both the struggle against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as well as the struggle against the mechanism that, in certain circumstances, creates a kind of negative feedback loop between them, requires not only opposing anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim prejudices, but also a broad critical reconsideration of the concepts of Europeanness that lie at their foundation. The author suggests that a good starting point for this reconsideration might be a postcolonial reading of the Jewish intellectual tradition as exemplified in the works of Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin and that focuses on the figure of the Mizrahi Jew.