| Common Themes and Aspects of Antisemitic Rhetoric
There are common misconceptions about Jews that are used to vilify them and to promote hostility towards them. These misconceptions form the basis of the belief that Jews deserve differential treatment. While this antisemitic rhetoric has been developed over a long period of time, and different justifications for Jew hatred dominated at particular times and places, elements of all of these are in current usage in the 21st century.
1. Stereotyping
In antisemitic rhetoric, Jews are stereotyped as unethical, mean and penny-pinching. Such stereotypes are used in the media and in antisemitic publications. This portrayal of Jews is sometimes believed to be a humorous caricature, but this ignores the damage done by the repetition of such a stereotype.
2. Deicide
Deicide is the accusation that the Jews are responsible for the death of Christ. The more colloquial term is “Christ Killers”. More... See also Christian antisemitism
3. Blood Libel
The Blood Libel is the myth that Jewish people use the blood of non-Jewish children in their ritual practices, for example as an ingredient in their unleavened bread baked during Passover. Originally a Christian accusation, the Blood Libel has in recent times been adopted as a part of antisemitic propaganda in Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. More...
4. The Jewish Conspiracy
A significant theme of antisemitic rhetoric is the existence of a Jewish Conspiracy to take over the world. Jews are assumed to have more power than other groups, and the collective effort of the Jewish people is said to be directed at exploitation of non Jews for personal gain. There is an inherent paradox or contradiction in antisemitic rhetoric in this regard, where Jews are believed to be capable of such conquest, while at the same time Jews are viewed as inferior and subhuman. The description of the Jewish conspiracy in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is typical of the theme of Jewish conspiracy theory. Belief in the power of the 'Jewish Lobby' is a variation on this theme. More...
5. Holocaust Denial
Holocaust Denial is the claim that Hitler and the Nazi machinery were not responsible for the death of 6 million Jews during World War II. Holocaust deniers claim that the Holocaust is a myth that has been created and exploited by Jewish people for financial and political gain.
Holocaust deniers assert that the Nazi Government did not have a policy of deliberately targeting Jews and people of Jewish ancestry for systematic extermination. They claim that there was no specific order by Adolf Hitler or other top Nazi officials to this effect. Holocaust deniers also reject evidence that tools of efficient mass extermination such as gas chambers were used in death camps to kill Jews.
While Holocaust deniers concede that there were some crimes committed against Jews, they maintain that the crimes were not centrally orchestrated and thus the Nazi leadership should not bear responsibility for the implementation of such a policy, and that the numbers of Jews killed was only somewhere between 300,000 and 1.5 million.
6. The Jewish/Nazi Analogy
The Jewish/Nazi Analogy involves the use of Nazi imagery as a shorthand way of accusing Jews of committing acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. It is used to undermine the legitimacy of Jewish/Israeli action and the very right of the State of Israel to exist.
Labelling Jews as Nazis trivialises the magnitude of the Nazis’ crimes and the conscious, systematic way that they were carried out. In effect, the Jewish/Nazi analogy is a means of using Jews’ past suffering as a means of abuse.
7. Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is the negation of the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland. It follows that Anti-Zionism involves the denial of the State of Israel’s right to exist. While legitimate criticism of the State of Israel is desirable, there is a significant difference between political and ideological debate. When the State of Israel is judged by different and higher standards than are applied to other nation-states; when Israel is singled out for condemnation while serious human rights abuses of other states are ignored; or when there is an automatic assumption that Israel is guilty even where the evidence suggests otherwise or there is no evidence at all for the accusation, allegations about Israel and opposing Zionism are unquestionably acts of antisemitism.
Another usage of the language of anti-Zionism confirms that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same. This is the slippage of terminology in which Jews are referred to as Zionists and the term Zionism is used to refer to all Jews. In the development of Nazi ideology and in Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf, the terms Jew and Zionist are used interchangeably. Similarly, Russia adopted an anti-Zionist stance where it was politically unacceptable to be antisemitic. When anti-Zionism is used in this manner, it is directed both at individuals and at the collective Jew – the State of Israel. | 
Antisemitism 
