In 1952, West Germany paid reparations to Israel — not as compensation to Holocaust survivors, but in the form of supplies to the Israeli state. Coming at the same time as denazification reached its end, the move had little to do with moral atonement, and everything to do with whitewashing West Germany's international image.
In tsarist Russia and interwar Poland, the Jewish Bund developed a socialist alternative to Zionism while fighting against antisemitic oppression. The neglected international history of their movement is a vital resource for our own time.
Zionism emerged in response to 19th-century European antisemitism — but its aims in Palestine drew upon Western colonial ideologies. To present the current conflict as a timeless feud denies both European responsibility and Palestine’s multiethnic history.
Historian Arno Mayer, who died this month at age 97, infused his work with a Marxism animated by attention to ideology, passion, and the open-endedness of history.
Eighty-five years ago today, Francisco Franco declared victory in the Spanish Civil War. In an interview, historian Paul Preston tells Jacobin about the decisive role that Franco’s sympathizers in the British government played in crushing Spanish democracy.
As Israeli tanks rolled into the Sinai in the 1967 war, West Germany saw itself marching alongside them. Even former Nazis could identify with Israeli expansionism — and used this support to absolve their own pasts.
Defenders of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza have attempted to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. But since its beginning, different forms of Zionist ideology have competed with varied anti-Zionisms for Jewish allegiance.
On International Holocaust Memorial Day we should remember the resistance that organized itself in Nazi death camps.
The FN’s new image doesn’t mean the far-right party had a change of heart — it means the mainstream has accepted its program.
Israel and its supporters are ramping up efforts to outlaw solidarity with Palestinians in the name of combating antisemitism. But these authoritarian maneuvers can’t hide the fact that Israel is losing the battle for public opinion over its denial of Palestinian rights.
Evangelical Zionists want Jews to move to Palestine to set the stage for the divine requital of Armageddon. This hasn’t stopped Israel from sealing alliances with even nakedly antisemitic evangelicals, so long as they support the dispossession of Palestinians.
Germany’s main parties each have a state-funded political foundation, meant to promote a culture of democratic debate. Boasting thousands of employees, they have enforced a collective silence on the genocide in Gaza out of obedience to German foreign policy.
German police shut down a Palestine solidarity conference last week, the latest in a long line of repressive moves. The anti-Palestinian witch hunt is rooted in a political culture that stigmatizes left-wing radicalism while indulging the far right.
Anti-communist campaigns in Eastern Europe aren’t about building a more democratic society — they’re about rehabilitating the far right.
Relentless anticommunism defined the late Richard Pipes as more propagandist than historian.
We have to name the crimes against the Rohingyas, Palestinians, and Kashmiris what they are: genocide, apartheid, and colonialism.
Spaniards have flocked to an exhibition emphasizing the need to remember Nazi Germany’s crimes. Yet the Right insists that highlighting Franco’s own atrocities will only "open old wounds."
Contemporary antisemitism must be confronted. Yet liberals who insist on equating leftists like Jeremy Corbyn with the open antisemitism of right-wing figures like Donald Trump are not only blatantly dishonest, but prevent us from fighting anti-Jewish bigotry.
After decades of nurturing a culture of violent, racist abuse, Customs and Border Protection cannot be seen as just another working-class job. Like Hitler’s SS, we must see CBP not as a place where good people do bad things, but where bad people do bad things.