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Quotes About Antisemitism

Since antisemitism affects Jews, some readers may be inclined to think that only Jews should be concerned. That would be a mistake. Jews, as the intended target of the antisemite, may indeed be more sensitive to it. Such is the case with any expression of particular hatred and prejudice.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
Like a fire set by an arsonist, passionate hatred and conspiratorial worldviews reach well beyond their intended target. They are not rationally contained. But even if the antisemites were to confine their venom to Jews, the existence of Jew-hatred within a society is an indication that something about the entire society is amiss. No healthy society harbors extensive antisemitism—or any other form of hatred.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
Thanks to the civil rights movement, overt religious, racial, and ethnic discrimination has become illegal. Covert discrimination persists of course. But prejudice is a hard thing to root out, and racial minorities continue to be subject to overt acts of discrimination. This, however, doesn't mean that Jews are no longer subject to antisemitism.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
According to Irving a significant number of the members of this firm are "evidently Jewish." Judge Sedley, he suggested, might be acting on his "religious instincts" more than the dictates of the law.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
Antisemitic events have been on the rise—particularly in Europe—since the beginning of the 2000s, with the outbreak of the Second Intifada and collapse of Middle East peace talks. France's Jewish Community Security Service estimates that the annual incidence of antisemitic acts in the 2000s was seven times higher than in the 1990s. A number of these incidents resulted in serious injuries and even death.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
Since antisemitism and, for that matter, all forms of prejudice are impervious to reason, they
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
The clueless antisemite is an otherwise nice and well-meaning person who is completely unaware that she has internalized antisemitic stereotypes and is perpetuating them. The only proper response, however hard it may be for you, is to politely tell this person that what she said comes under the category of an insidious and insulting ethnic stereotype.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
In February 2018, Oskar Deutsch, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Austria, observed that the Vienna-based Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal used to receive antisemitic threats all the time. But those letters were anonymous and there was little means of tracing the writers. Today, Deutsch says, "these threats clearly state exactly who they come from. That is the problem—antisemitic statements are becoming ever more normal.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's descriptor, which has now been adopted by the European Parliament, identifies it as: A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
Shortly before Corbyn became head of the party in 2015, Scottish columnist Stephen Daisley, who does not think Corbyn is an antisemite, observed, "How much easier it would make things" if he were. One could then simply attribute political developments in the Labour Party to the prejudices of one man. But, he continued, "this isn't about Jeremy Corbyn; he's just a symptom and a symbol. The Left, and not just the fringes, has an antisemitism problem.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
A persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collectivity manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore, and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews.
~ Deborah E. Lipstadt
M. E. Dodd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, expressed his belief that Hitler's moves against German Jews were unfortunately necessary because they had used their strengths "for self-aggrandizement to the injury of the German people," and he charged that "since the war some 200,000 Jews from Russia and other Eastern places had come to Germany. Most of these were Communist agitators against the government.
~ Andrew Himes
We need to defeat not just antisemites but antisemitism.
~ Clive Lewis
You know, of course," Dodd said, "that we have had difficulty now and then in the United States with Jews who had gotten too much of a hold on certain departments of intellectual and business life.
~ Erik Larson
The presence of a Jew in any movement no more guarantees it to be innocent of antisemitism than guilty. And that applies to anti-Zionism, too. Anti-Zionist Jews exist, but that tells one nothing about anti-Zionism.
~ Howard Jacobson
Su ejército, que a menudo se comportaba con crueldad e indisciplina, fue considerado como una «pureza de armas» ejemplar y a aquellos de nosotros que fuimos testigos de las matanzas de civiles llevadas a cabo por israelíes nos insultaron por ser mentirosos, antisemitas o amigos del «terrorismo».
~ Robert Fisk
His dislike of Jews may have been sharpened by dealings with the Rothschilds.
~ Ron Chernow
There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
~ David Mamet
If you have to have 25 French paratroopers to guard a single synagogue, it means that life is not healthy in France for Jews
~ Jeffrey Goldberg
Since I was first elected to Parliament in 2010, I have witnessed appalling attacks on Jewish people, including my fellow MPs.
~ Luciana Berger
In all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency.
~ Paul Johnson
America, the totem of modern democratic culture, was actually "latently" fascist. The absence of a "genuine" fascist movement in America, like the absence of any "genuine" anti-Semitism, was in fact a sign of how far the corruption had spread. As Herbert Marcuse put it somewhat later, "The fact that we cannot point to an SS or SA here, simply means that they are not necessary in this country."48
~ Arthur Herman
Some ticket buyers think they don't like Jews.
~ Jack L. Warner
Sur] l'antisémitisme, je n'ai guère envie de chercher des explications, je ressens une forte inclination à m'abandonner à mes affects, et [suis] renforcé dans ma position [peu] scientifique par le fait que les hommes sont (...), en grande part, une misérable canaille.
~ Sigmund Freud