Comunisti ed ebrei prima e dopo la guerra dei sei giorni. Il fenomeno carsico dell'antisemitismo di sinistra

The 1967 war between Israel and the Middle Eastern Arab states marked a crisis point in the relationship between the Italian Jewish communities, the PCI and the left in general, which was strong in the post-World War II period mainly due to the common anti-fascist matrix. In this essay, the author retraces the salient points of this crisis, privileging the use of sources from inside the community. At stake is not only an international political option, but a more comprehensive discourse that, starting from Israel, questions different dimensions committed to anti-Semitism. Reviewing that debate and extending it to the years that followed the war, he highlights the emergence of new stereotypes against Jews, first and foremost the reversal of the image of victim to that of perpetrator, which nonetheless remains an ahistorical and essentialist image. The final part briefly discusses the intellectual and political genealogies of leftist anti-Semitism which in many ways is a ‘karstic’ phenomenon.