I was asked by Sydney Staff for BDS, a group at the University of Sydney, to join a panel on ‘Why it isn’t antisemitic to boycott Israel’ on April 14 2015. Below is the ext of my brief talk.
Hannah Arendt was lambasted for talking about the flip side of antisemitism: philosemitism.
But she understood that antisemitism in fact relies on the apparent love of Jews. Or put another way, philosemitism creates antisemitism.
Arendt was talking historically about the conditions leading up to the holocaust, but philosemitism is equally a problem today in the context of the role of Jews vis-a-vis the state of Israel.
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