ANTISEMITISM IS A HISTORICAL TOPIC, but because it has not yet ended, it is not solely of historical interest. The time to write its epitaph has not yet come.
There can be no dispute that the character of antisemitism has changed in recent centuries. Up to the Second World War most Jews lived in Europe, including the Soviet Union. Today almost half the world’s Jews live in Israel, with the United States as the second largest community. As the result of the Holocaust, the demographic distribution has radically changed. While in principle there can be antisemitism even in the absence of Jews—Pakistan is just one example—it is unlikely that in such circumstances antisemitism can be a decisive political issue. The weakness of neo-Nazism, a traditional pillar of antisemitism, and the emergence of major Muslim communities in Europe are other factors that will probably have a decisive impact on the character of antisemitism in the twenty-first century.
The difficulty in differentiating between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has been stressed more than once in these pages. But here again the question arises whether traditional terms explain more than they obfuscate. The hostility of sections of the contemporary left is postracialist; it has little to do with the antisemitism of the Nazi era. Nor has the left today much in common with the traditional left of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries; although often populist and anticapitalist in character, it can with equal ease turn left or right. Anti-Zionism is another outdated term, for Zionism, the movement aimed at the ingathering of the exiles and the establishment of a Jewish state, no longer exists as a significant political factor. The state has come into being, and substantial numbers of immigrants can no longer be expected. The history since 1948, in any case, is that of the state of Israel, not of Zionism. The ideology of that state includes Zionist elements but also many others. In the contemporary era, antisemitism is no longer as clear as it was, and it is used simply for want of another, more satisfactory term. But whatever the semantics, hostility toward Jews as individuals and/or a collective still exists and is unlikely to cease any time soon.
There are other factors that make a discussion of the future of this phenomenon of antisemitism highly speculative. The assimilation of Jews outside Israel continues and the birth rate (with the important exception of the Orthodox) is low; the Jewish communities in Europe and the Americas do not sustain their numbers into the next generation. It is not clear how many Jews identifying themselves as such will remain outside of Israel in the year 2050, let alone by the end of this century. An orthodox religious remnant will continue to exist, and in this sense the belief in the eternity of Israel (nezah israel lo yeshaker) will be justified; but this applies more to the spiritual than the real world. And it could be that in these circumstances global antisemitism might disappear or at least decline in importance. The critical mass needed for a movement such as antisemitism may no longer exist. Still, these are speculations, and they do not take into account the future of the state of Israel and the attitudes toward it.
At the present time antisemitism, by whatever name, is still much more than a mere historical memory.