Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or racism directed against Jews.

Though hatred of Jews has been around for centuries, attempts to define antisemitism are relatively recent. This is partly because hatred of and hostility toward Jews was for centuries socially and politically permissible, and partly because it was clearly understood as hatred and hostility. (1) Today the challenge of defining antisemitism relates to its elasticity. Antisemitism exists across a spectrum of intensity, from offhanded remarks that reflect embedded prejudices to explicit genocidal hatred.

The term itself is relatively new. In the late nineteenth century, German journalist Wilhelm Marr wanted a more scientific, modern and rational sounding word than Jew hatred for his new political party. He landed on Antisemitismus, and in 1879 founded the Antisemiten-Liga [League of Antisemites]. For Marr, who viewed Jews as a fundamental threat to Germany, Antisemitismus explicitly meant hatred of Jews because they are Jewish. The term soon entered wider public circulation.

When Antisemitismus first appeared in English in 1893 it was hyphenated as ‘anti-Semitism’, implying the existence of a ‘Semitism’ to which people were opposed. However, unlike anti-racism, which addresses real and identifiable phenomena (i.e., racism), there is no ‘Semitism’ for antisemites to oppose. The term ‘Semitic’ was introduced in 1781 by German historian August Ludwig von Schlozer as a linguistic classification for a group of Middle Eastern languages including Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Amharic. It was later misappropriated as a pseudo-scientific racial category, despite the fact that nothing unites the speakers of these languages as a single people. This misclassification also wrongly implies that ‘Semites’ cannot be prejudiced against other ‘Semites’. (2) For these reasons, antisemitism without a hyphen is now the broadly accepted use.

In 2016 the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental body that promotes Holocaust education, remembrance and research, adopted a non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition states:
Antisemitism is 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.

The definition provides a list of examples to help identify antisemitism. The British government adopted the IHRA definition in December 2016, and it has since been adopted by many local authorities, universities and other institutions. While there have been calls to reject the IHRA definition and particular criticism of its clauses related to forms of discourse on Israel, it is widely regarded by experts and Jewish representative bodies as a valuable framework for recognising and responding to antisemitism.

The resources in this section examine the IHRA definition and the debates and criticisms it has generated; the broader challenge of defining antisemitism; and the ways in which the definition is interpreted and applied in practice.

1. Julius, A. (2010) Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England Oxford University Press
2. Lipstadt, D. (2019) Antisemitism: Here and Now Scribe: Melbourne and London