ABSTRACT
Negative feelings toward Israel do not coincide with negative feelings toward Jews, according to the evidence. And yet there is evidence that negative attitudes toward the State of Israel may constitute a major new watershed of international antisemitism. Because of the importance of Israel to Jews everywhere—and because the creation of Israel was partly a response to the Nazi Holocaust—there has been a tendency to equate hostility toward Israel with antisemitism. There are three axes around which sympathy or antagonism for Israel can turn, and each of them has a different implication for antisemitism. One is nationalist Zionism and nationalist anti-Zionism. The second is political anti-Zionism, which has more to do with Jews than with the Israel it invokes. The third axis turns more pragmatically around perceived mutuality or antipathy of interests. The Arab world is the source of nationalist anti-Zionism.
