This essay was co-written by the people listed above and by other writers who prefer to remain anonymous. All the authors are members of the Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. The terms anti-Semite, antisemitic and antisemitism are tied up with relatively modern ideas of the racial and national identity of Jews as well as the fight for their acceptance in European and North American societies. Since the nineteenth century, antisemitic has been an adjective used to describe the way that negative perceptions of Jews, whether as individuals or as a group, are mobilized, primarily in the West, for political purposes. Antisemitic movements have sought to define, regulate, exclude, marginalize, oppress, and kill Jews. As claims of “protecting the Jewish community from antisemitism” have become a politically mobilizing force, newer instrumentalization of these terms use “positive” or philosemitic claims to pursue exclusionary, repressive political aims, particularly to insulate the state of Israel from criticism. The word antisemitic has played a crucial role in every moment of this history, from the nineteenth century to the present. Such mobilizations identify Jews and descendants of Jews as alien “others” in an otherwise seemingly unified society, frequently essentializing them as a racial, ethnic or...