Daniel GHEORGHE
Abstract
Based on the political evolutions in the Middle East after the failure of the Oslo Accords and the actions taken by the Sharon and Netanyahu governments with regard to Palestine, a new type of antisemitism entered the European political scene. Often named in different researches as the ‘New Antisemitism’, its main ideological novelty is the fact that it is connected to the European far-Left. In many aspects, this type of antisemitism is strongly based on ideas that characterize the existence of the State of Israel as strongly unjustified from the perspective of human rights. Additionally, the New Antisemitism has a strong anti-Zionist orientation based on rejecting the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. Based on this context, our research aims to scrutinize the main narratives of both the far-Right and far-Left parties in the chosen case studies in relation to antisemitism, and to identify what are the elements determining the tendencies of the researched political cultures for certain types of antisemitism. Thus, the research will try to examine the threat that this ‘new’ antisemitism poses not only to European democracy, but also to the evolution of political narratives in the researched countries. A crucial element of this research will be represented by the discourse analysis of different political parties in Europe expressing anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist opinions after the fall of the Iron Curtain, in the context created by the 2008 economic crisis and the 2015 migrants’ crisis. While the research will focus mainly on EU member states, the examples of the United Kingdom and Ukraine will also be examined, given the strong relevance of certain political parties expressing antisemitism in these countries.
Keywords
■ Antisemitism ■ Anti-Zionism ■ European Union ■ Human Rights ■ Political parties
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