To What Shall We Compare Gaza? Antisemitism, Genocide, Context

The changing definition of antisemitism has overdetermined the boundaries of what can and cannot be said about Israel and Palestine, while also motivating numerous cases of censorship of anti-Israel speech. Drawing on legal and literary theory, I argue for a hermeneutic critique of antisemitism—and by implication all forms of racism—that integrates context, ambiguity, and aesthetics. More generally, I consider how contextual interpretation and the epistemology of comparison jointly inform the adjudication of racism, and how they teach us to evaluate words that carry untranslatable meanings within their own time and place when they are repurposed and cause offense in new contexts. Ultimately, I develop a tenable alternative to definitional approaches to antisemitism that can inform discussion across the humanities and the social sciences, and in everyday life.