The following comments refer to the interview with Michael Wolffsohn that appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on July 8, 2024. The interview is published in English translation on TelosScope here.
October 7 and its aftermath are matters primarily concerning regional security in the Middle East, including Israeli national security, the status of the Palestinians, but ultimately the root cause, Iranian hegemonic ambitions and Tehran’s hostility to the United States. But October 7 has simultaneously unleashed a revival of antisemitism across the West, and often enough especially in the universities in the form of a pernicious left-wing antisemitism. Telos and the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute have devoted considerable attention to this phenomenon.
Academic antisemitism is not fully congruent with antisemitism in other social sectors. What happens at Columbia is not exactly the same as what transpired notoriously at Charlottesville, but it would be foolish to deny the unmistakable affinities in the varieties of antisemitism. In the same vein, it is important to keep in mind differences between national settings, but comparative reflections can help tease out important strands common across current manifestations of antisemitism. National particularity in this matter is most salient for Germany, given the shadow of the Holocaust. Germany also incubated a far left that pursued a radically anti-Israel politics at least since the 1960s, and Germany more recently welcomed large numbers of refugees from the Middle East, countries where antisemitic views are widespread. At the same time, however, Germany, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification, has witnessed the growth of a vibrant Jewish community. This combination of heterogeneous factors makes the German situation deserving of particular attention.
