TEL AVIV—In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many young Jews who sought to escape the scourge of European antisemitism turned to political Zionism, a movement that culminated in 1948 in the establishment of the state of Israel. According to the Zionist dream, as masters of their own fate in their ancestral homeland, Jews no longer would face, in the worst of times, expulsion and massacre and, in the best of times, discriminatory laws and bigoted attitudes and practices. Israelis therefore have been shocked to witness the transformation of anti-Zionism into a leading form of antisemitism.

The transformation did not occur all at once. The ancient and enduring hatred of Jews had been on the rise for years in Western liberal democracies before thousands of Hamas jihadists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, to commit unspeakable acts of depravity mostly against Jewish civilians. In a staggering instance of blaming the victim, antisemitism surged in the days and weeks following the slaughter.

Israel had hardly begun to defend itself when American campuses and the streets of London and other European cities exploded with demonstrations against the Jewish state. Protesters condemned not only Israel’s conduct but also its very existence. On the same day that thousands of Hamas jihadists murdered, raped, mutilated, and kidnapped Israeli civilians, 34 Harvard student organizations spoke the thoughts of many American intellectuals and pro-Palestinian protesters in Europe in an online statementdeclaring “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Criticism of Israel is no more inherently antisemitic than is criticism of the United States inherently anti-American. However, blaming Jews collectively for Israel’s policies, holding Israel to standards to which no other country is held, and denying Israel’s right to exist – an indignity to which no other UN member state is routinely exposed – express antisemitism.

While focused on Israel and the Jewish people, antisemitism also imperils liberal democracy – in America and throughout the West – which requires government and citizens to respect the equal rights that inhere in each person and to tolerate differences of opinion and alternative ways of pursuing happiness. What begins with the Jews, moreover, never ends with the Jews. Antisemitism’s resurgence in the West reflects a dysfunction within liberal democracy that creates room for and energizes other forms of intolerance and violence.

In “The New Antisemitism,” a lengthy essay published in late February in Time magazine, Noah Feldman........

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