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Antisemitism and International Relations: The international politics of the Jewish enemy within
Author(s): Jung, Laura; Leigh, Darcy
Date: 2025
Topics: Antisemitism, International Relations, Main Topic: Antisemitism
Abstract: This article examines the role of antisemitism in international politics. Drawing on a genealogy of European antisemitism, it proposes the analytic framework of the ‘enemy within’ to foreground instances when Jewish ‘enemy’ figures are positioned on both sides of the boundaries organising international political orders. This particular permutation of (racial) bordering is porous and ambivalent, even or especially as ‘hard’ and binary racial borders are simultaneously enforced. The article identifies four characteristics of the Jewish ‘enemy within’: a shared origin story with European Christendom; simultaneous presence on both sides of a (racial) boundary; a prompting of fears around contagion, infiltration and assimilation; and deployment to legitimise strategies of hyper-vigilance, surveillance and purification. The genealogy traces how the Jewish ‘enemy within’ is mobilised in consolidation or defence of, first, Christian medieval order and, second, raced nation-states, economies, and bodies, in modernity. In both periods, the Jewish ‘enemy within’ appears as both an insider and outsider whose perceived ambivalence threatens, and is mobilised to defend, religious, racial and political international orders. Finally, the article applies this framework to contemporary antisemitism. Overall, the article offers a novel engagement with antisemitism in International Relations and a tool for analysing complex forms of racial bordering in global politics.
Hierarchies, emotions, and memory in international relations
Author(s): Subotić, Jelena; Zarakol, Ayşe
Editor(s): Koschut, Simon
Date: 2020
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Post-Communist Transitions, Memory, International Relations, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This chapter has two goals. First, it aims to conceptualize how emotions intersect with status hierarchies. Despite the simultaneous growth of the research programs on emotions and hierarchies in IR, these research strands have mostly remained unconnected. In previous work, we raised the possibility that emotions may be underwritten by the structural positions of the actors. In this chapter, we further develop that theoretical suggestion by building on recent scholarship on hierarchies and extending insights into a new substantive research area. The chapter’s second goal is to explore the relationship between history, memory, and emotions. We argue that taking international hierarchies seriously can shed light on the relationship between (collective) memory and emotions. The chapter delineates the ways emotional historical narratives and symbols structured by hierarchy impact and constrain foreign policy choices of states. We illustrate these arguments with examples of contested – and highly emotionally charged – Holocaust remembrance practices in post-communist Europe. Specifically, we demonstrate how the European narrative of the Holocaust has developed as a “feeling rule” of guilt at the European level, but was resisted and contested in East European countries where it never matured into a “feeling rule” – not during the communist period, nor in its aftermath.
The International Relations of Holocaust Memory
Author(s): Subotić, Jelena
Editor(s): Kopstein, Jeffrey S.; Subotić, Jelena; Welch, Susan
Date: 2023
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Nationalism, National Identity, International Relations, Memory, Post-Communist Transitions
‘Part of the Civilized World Community’: Holocaust in Historical Politics of the Unrecognized Republics of Transnistria and Donbas
Author(s): Voronovici, Aleksandr
Date: 2024
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Curriculum and Schoolbooks, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Nationalism, International Relations, Ukraine-Russia conflict (2014 onwards)
Abstract: Based on an analysis of history textbooks and commemorative declarations on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the paper argues that the leadership of the unrecognized republics of Transnistria and Donbas has instrumentalized Holocaust remembrance to legitimize their regimes internally and externally. The use of the Holocaust in historical politics allowed the secessionist regimes to portray themselves as opponents of radical nationalism and representatives of the multi-ethnic population of Transnistria and Donbas. In external relations, the secessionist leaders have used Holocaust commemorations as a tool for self-positioning within international ‘memory wars,’ and as a channel for the consolidation of the ‘civilized’ image of unrecognized republics and the extension of international contacts. Despite a quite similar discourse on the Holocaust, the aims of the instrumentalization of the Holocaust in historical politics have differed in certain respects due to the dissimilar challenges faced by the Transnistrian and Donbas unrecognized republics.
Jewish internationalism and the international politics of opposing antisemitism 1960-2005
Author(s): Wiedemann, Emilie
Date: 2024
Topics: Antisemitism: Definitions, Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, International Aid and NGOs, Diaspora-Israel Relations, International Relations
Abstract: This thesis is an examination of the international Jewish and non-Jewish politics of opposing antisemitism between 1960 and 2005. It begins with the condemnation of antisemitism by the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1960. It ends with the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s (EUMC) working definition of antisemitism, published in 2005. Between these poles, lay a wealth of contestation about what antisemitism is and how to oppose it. Successive challenges and instability for Israel as well as global geopolitical upheaval during this time raised these questions anew. The thesis centres the political agency of a diverse and evolving group of Jewish internationalist actors, including NGOs, community representatives and academics, and analyses their political responses to this context. I explore how these actors debated and contested ideas about how to identify, measure and oppose antisemitism, and with whom to ally in this struggle. At stake was the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, between anti-antisemitism and anti-racism, between Israel and diaspora, and who represented Jewish interests in the arenas of global governance. These questions brought out significant divides in international Jewish politics, between state and diaspora and among diaspora actors themselves. The thesis ends with an investigation of the immediate roots of the EUMC document in Jewish internationalism; at the same time, I contextualise the EUMC document within the longer arc of the thesis. It was one expression of long-standing, multifaceted and heated debates within international Jewish politics, and of how these debates have played out in international Jewish and non-Jewish political efforts to oppose antisemitism. Overall, I demonstrate that ideas about what antisemitism is were constantly in flux during this period, subject to debate, contestation and negotiation among Jewish and non-Jewish political actors.
The Holocaust in the Contemporary Baltic States: International Relations, Politics, and Education
Author(s): Stevick, Doyle
Date: 2012
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Education, Communism, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Post-Communist Transitions, International Relations
Abstract: For a variety of historical and cultural reasons, many societies across Central and Eastern Europe have not embraced the history of the Holocaust as it is understood in Western Europe and the U.S. and Israel, nor have they incorporated it substantively in their education systems, textbooks, and curricula. This article reviews the shared historical experiences of the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the Second World War and the Soviet period and considers how those shaped contemporary perspectives and attitudes in the region. Using data from cross-cultural exchanges between Estonians and foreign advocates of Holocaust education, the article shows that distrust exists around evidence gathered or disseminated by the Soviets and about perceived inconsistencies in the pursuit of justice. It finally compares two approaches to foreign engagement in the Holocaust, one rooted in power that was counterproductive and one rooted in dialogue that seems more promising.
Jewish Heritage and the New Belarusian National Identity Project
Author(s): Waligórska, Magdalena
Date: 2016
Topics: Jewish Heritage, Jewish Museums, Nationalism, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, International Relations, National Identity
Abstract: Focusing on three contemporary grassroots initiatives of preserving Jewish heritage and commemorating Jews in Belarus, namely, the Jewish Museum in Minsk, Ada Raǐchonak’s private museum of regional heritage in Hermanovichi, and the initiative of erecting the monument of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in Hlybokae, the present article discusses how local efforts to commemorate Jews and preserve Jewish heritage tap into the culture of political dissent, Belarus’s international relations, and the larger project of redefining the Belarusian national identity. Looking at the way these memorial interventions frame Jewish legacy within a Belarusian national narrative, the article concentrates in particular on the institution of the public historian and the small, informal social networks used to operate under a repressive regime. Incorporating the multicultural legacy of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into the canon of Belarusian national heritage and recognizing the contribution of ethnic minorities to the cultural landscape of Belarus, new memory projects devoted to Jewish history in Belarus mark a caesura in the country’s engagement with its ethnic Others and are also highly political. While the effort of filling in the gaps in national historiography and celebrating the cultural diversity of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania overlaps in significant ways with the agenda of the anti-Lukashenka opposition, Jewish heritage in Belarus also resonates with the state authorities, who seek to instrumentalize it for their own vision of national unity.
Jewish Life in Ukraine at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Part Two
Author(s): Gidwitz, Betsy
Date: 2001
Topics: International Relations, Jewish Organisations, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Jewish Communal Futures, Care and Welfare
Abstract:

This survey of contemporary issues in Ukrainian Jewish life provides information on the following topics: local Jewish community organizations, Jewish welfare needs, Jewish education, community property, emigration, and future prospects. Part one of this article can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/10207/17996
The Slow Disappearance of Turkey's Jewish Community
Author(s): Bali, Rifat
Date: 2011
Topics: Aliyah, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Diaspora and Relations Between Diaspora Countries, Immigration, International Relations, Jewish Relations With Non-Jews: Jewish - Muslim Relations, Migration, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Communal Futures
Abstract: Turkey's Jewish community is one of the few remaining Diaspora Jewish communities in a country with a Muslim majority. Despite its apparent dynamism, its long-term viability is doubtful. The community does not have any influence or play any role worth mentioning in Turkey's cultural, political, or intellectual life. Furthermore, in recent years the entire community has become the target of much resentment and hostile rhetoric from the country's Islamist and ultranationalist sectors. For the situation to change, Turkish society would have to veer away from the current insular nationalist and Islamist atmosphere and move in a more liberal, democratic, multicultural direction. Turkey could then both come to grips with the darker aspects of its past and work for a different and better future. At present, the indications that such a transition might occur are mixed at best.
Ireland's Jews: Past, Present, Future
Author(s): Miller, Rory
Date: 2008
Topics: International Relations, Jewish Organisations, Main Topic: Other, Jewish Communal Futures
Abstract: The author reviews the history of the Irish Jewish community, the roles Jews have played in Ireland's history, culture and economy, the nature and extent of antisemitism in Ireland, the structure of Ireland's organized Jewish community, relations between Ireland and Israel, and relations between Irish Jews and Irish Muslims.
Christian-Jewish Relations in the Netherlands
Author(s): Marx, Tzvi
Date: 2007
Topics: Jewish Relations With Non-Jews: Jewish - Christian Relations, Interfaith Dialogue and Relations, Christianity, Antisemitism, International Relations, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: The establishment of the state of Israel-and not the Jewish suffering during the Shoah-has catalyzed in the Netherlands a serious rethinking of the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. The theology that Christians had replaced Jews as the “new” Israel was belied by the reempowered Jewish polity in the Land.
Christian-Jewish relations have several components. One aspect is that a number of Christians study Judaism. A second is interfaith dialogue, and a third concerns Christian attitudes toward Israel. These are to some extent intertwined.
The current Israeli-Palestinian struggle provides a cover for rehabilitating ancient anti-Jewish feelings. The deeper, historically conditioned anti-Jewish tendencies are not easily disposed of. The culture of paranoiac anti-Judaism is still alive.
Русскоязычная иммиграция в Израиль как фактор в развитии российско-израильских межгосударственных отношений
Translated Title: The Russian-Speaking Immigration to Israel as a Factor in the Development of Russian-Israeli Bilateral Political Relations
Author(s): Морозов, Владимир Михайлович
Date: 2009
Topics: Aliyah, International Relations, Immigration, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Extended abstract can be found via the link below
Jews in the European Community: Sociodemographic Trends and Challenges
Author(s): DellaPergola, Sergio
Editor(s): Singer, David
Date: 1993
Topics: International Relations, Jewish Organisations, European Union, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Post-Communist Transitions
Abstract: At the start of 1993, the European continent was emitting ambivalent and troubling political signals. Ramifications of major geopolitical changes were not fully understood or absorbed and sparked a massive wave of international migrations. These developments accounted for growing social turmoil and outbursts of xenophobia. As such, the status of Jewish communities within the framework of the European Community (EC) aroused anxiety. This article reviews the major sociodemographic processes that currently characterize the Jewish population with the EC. Basic historical background is provided, and brief attention is paid to a few issues of broader significance for the present and future of Western European Jewry.
'Now we should all acknowledge our Holocaust guilt.' Denmark and the Holocaust as European Identity
Author(s): Bechmann, Sune
Date: 2008
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Jewish Museums, International Relations
Abstract: The subject for this paper is the role of the Holocaust in contemporary European politics of identity. The Council of Europe and the European Parliament have recently adopted resolutions about the Holocaust and most European states are now member of the Holocaust Task Force. In international relations the acknowledgment of the nation’s role in the history of the Holocaust has become increasingly important and several academics have suggested that the Holocaust should and will compose the cornerstone identity marker for a future common European identity.

The contemporary institutional practices and institutions promoting the idea of the Holocaust as a uniting factor to the European peoples are analysed in the paper with Denmark as a case. The three subjects of scrutiny are the Danish Jewish Museum, the Auschwitz Remembrance Day and the teaching of Holocaust history in the Danish education system. In addition, political
and academic discourse is also studied. The paper concludes that there is currently no influential Danish promulgator of the idea that the Holocaust composes a common European experience that unites the individual Europeans.