On definitions – Etan Nechin in Haaretz:

‘You tie antisemitism to the rise of the modern nation-state. A few years after 1879, the Zionist movement gains strength. Can you talk about that tension? My starting point was the process of Jewish emancipation in the 19th and 20th centuries. Historian David Sorkin at Yale makes a powerful argument: If you're looking for the event that most shaped modern Jewish life, it's not the Holocaust, nor Zionism or Israel – it's Jewish emancipation. Zionism and the Holocaust, he says, were both reactions to the idea that Jews could be integrated as citizens into the states where they lived. That was the promise of emancipation. Political antisemitism arose as a reaction to that promise.
The Nazis were, in a sense, the ultimate anti-emancipation movement. But even they hadn't fully reckoned with what it would mean to disenfranchise a population and still live with them. We know where that logic ended. Zionism was another reaction. It rejected the belief that Jews could ever be full citizens in someone else's state. That's why it saw the creation of a Jewish state as essential to end antisemitism once and for all.’

(…)

‘We hear claims like "Hamas are Nazis" or Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that the Mufti of Jerusalem inspired Adolf Hitler – this idea of inherent antisemitism in the Arab world is being cemented again. You call the rise of antisemitism in the Arabic-speaking world as "antisemitism by detour."
In broad terms, before the foundation of Israel almost nobody paid serious attention to antisemitism in the Arab world. It was not a central issue in Arab political life, and it was not central for early Zionists thinking about relations with Arab communities. It was seen as a European problem.
In the Ottoman Empire, there were negative stereotypes about Jews, but every ethnic group held negative stereotypes about every other group, and Jewish communities were not immune to that either.’

(…)

‘And in terms of prejudice, there's also the idea of exceptionalism. Some people argue that dismantling Israel would set off a chain reaction resolving the world's ills. We see prejudice, but also a worldview that assigns special power to Jews or Israel. How do you see that? There is no question that some people think that way on the right and on parts of the left. The question is where this ends and legitimate criticism of Israel begins.
Is it antisemitic to focus solely on Israel? I don't think so. Is it antisemitic to say Israel is racist? Why? I don't get worked up if someone says New Zealand is racist, or that New Zealand was founded on violence against Indigenous people. Why should Israel be treated differently?’

(…)

‘We're seeing consequences of crackdowns on academic speech. What do you think happens when terms like antisemitism or debates over Israel and anti-Zionism become stifled in classrooms? It feels like we're in a period where everyone is digesting what has happened and feeling their way. My students remain fantastic. My colleagues remain world-class. Life in the classroom, where we come together to learn, continues for the most part as it should.
But I worry for colleagues of mine who teach contentious subjects. Their lives are very different. Meanwhile, the intellectual life and education of students have suffered and will continue to suffer.’

Read the interview here.

Every ethnic group held stereotypes about the other. That was the Ottoman Empire, I don’t think we are much better off now.

And let's avoid the cliché that we haven’t learned anything. Why should we expect that history is moving in the right direction, the direction we think that is right?

The emancipation of the Jews in Europe in 19th and 20th century shaped Jewish life and to a certain extent also the life of non-Jews Nazism was an answer to this emancipation that was part of something much bigger, modernity.
So was zionism.

Maybe it's time to get out of the 19th century, but I don't see this happening anytime soon.