Stand For Israel have published an intriguing interview with Georges-Elia Sarfati, a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Clermont Ferrand in France. In it, he shows how language is being used as a tool against Israel and the Jews.
Here is an excerpt dealing with the link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Sarfati further explains the historical linkage of anti-Zionism to earlier societal perceptions of the Jews promoted by their enemies. “Anti-Zionism draws from a matrix which has been developed over the centuries in theological and political anti-Semitism. Now, instead of the Jew, the state of Israel becomes the carrier of how Jews intend to develop their conspiracy and of worldwide domination. In France, one finds this today in the theories of the extreme right wing National Front party and its leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. It existed already before the Second World War in the ideology of the Action Francaise led by Charles Maurras.
“Both start from an ethnic concept of the nation. ‘Frenchness’ is defined as being born in France and being Catholic. This is very different from how modern nations define themselves as being bound together by a social contract. For some time the extreme right thought the state of Israel – based on an ethnic homogeneity – would be their ally. But they have since given up this illusion.
“What the extreme right hates in the Jews is that they have been favorable to the political revolutions which have made them equal citizens. One of anti-Semitism’s major characteristics is its rejection of the emancipation of individuals. Anti-Zionism in this perspective can be defined as a radicalization of the nineteenth century anti-Semitic refusal of Jewish equality. It is the ideology of refusing the Jews to be a collectivity, the principle of allowing them national sovereignty.”
