Secular and Religious Forms of Antagonism to Israel: Nazis, Soviets, Islamists

This lecture is part of Antizionism: The History of an Ideology, a six-part series hosted by Chai Mitzvah. The series examines the historical origins, evolution, and contemporary manifestations of antizionism. Sponsored by the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism.

“Antizionism” is a shorthand for the belief that the state of Israel does not have moral or political legitimacy, and that its existence, not only its policies, should end. Some antizionists seek to destroy Israel by force of arms, while others hope decades of hostile propaganda will isolate Israel and erode the willingness of its people to support it. In this presentation, I discuss the secular and religious sources of this antagonism. The core of antizionism lays in the reactionary interpretation of the sacred books of Islam by “Islamists” since the 1930s, and then their collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II and the Holocaust, whose antizionism was as prominent as their antisemitism. The antizionist impulse achieved much broader legitimacy in world politics due to the policies of the Soviet Union and the secular global radical left, especially since the 1960s. This talk examines the confluence of these secular and religious antagonisms, which together have nurtured the long ideological and at times armed campaign to destroy Israel. It addresses the paradox that a reactionary tradition, evident in Hamas, has oddly found sympathy or at least an absence of criticism in parts of Western universities.

Register Here

Professor Jeffrey Herf, a historian of modern European, especially German, history, is Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1969, and received his PhD from Brandeis University in 1981. Before coming to Maryland, he taught at Harvard, and at Ohio University.

His publications include The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard U.P., 2006), Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale U.P., 2009), Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989 (Cambridge U.P, 2016), Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 (Cambridge UP, 2022). and Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist (Routledge, 2024).

Before and since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, he has published essays on Israel, Hamas, and responses to the attack of October 7 in journals of opinion including The New York Review of Books, Persuasion/American Purpose, Quillette, Sapir, Times of Israel, The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post. See, for example, “The Ideology of Mass Murder,” (October 10, 2023) in Quillette, and “The Genocide Accusation and Hamas’ Disappearing Responsibility,” Times of Israel (July 22, 2025).