Israelophobia

An urgent and deeply necessary book, Israelophobia will explore how - in the words of Howard Jacobson - prejudice against Israel is 'old hatred decanted into new bottles'. By coining a new term, 'Israelophobia', it will cut through arguments about where criticism of Israel ends and antisemitism begins, allowing for robust debate while exposing dangerous, hate-fuelled rhetoric. As the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said: 'In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel.' How and why did this transmutation occur?Through charting the surprising history of modern Israelophobia - starting in Nazi Germany and travelling via Soviet Moscow to Tehran and along fibre optic cables to billions of screens - and clearly defining and labelling modern Israel-hatred, this book will restore much-needed sanity to the debate, creating the space for mutual understanding, tolerance and peace.