Of all the features that define the contemporary moment in France, certainly one of the most disturbing is the resurgence of antisemitism. After falling for decades, the number of antisemitic incidents in France began rising dramatically after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000. The brutal attack on a kosher supermarket in January, 2015 by a young man influenced by radical jihadist ideology typifies what has begun to be called the ‘new antisemitism’ or the ‘new Judeophobia.’ This ‘new antisemitism’ very often takes the form of anti-Zionism. It attributes a range of crimes to Israel and by extension to all Jews. Scholars have noted that whereas traditional antisemitism is racist and xenophobic in orientation, the perpetrators of the ‘new antisemitism,’ many of them descendants of North African immigrants to France, are themselves very often the victims of racism and xenophobia.

This being France, intellectuals have not hesitated to engage in heated polemics around the issue. And the philosopher Alain Badiou has placed himself at the center of these debates. One of contemporary France's most visible intellectuals, Badiou is known primarily as a theorist of ‘the event,’ of subjectivity, and of aesthetics. Though no longer a Maoist, he has remained true to revolutionary Marxism, and his radical political positions have made him a hero to many on the far left both in France and the United States. In recent years, he has written extensively on Jews, denouncing not just Zionism but all forms of Jewish communautarisme in ways that have earned him the enmity of a range of adversaries, including Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Marty, and Jean-Claude Milner. As I will detail below, critics have accused him of crossing the line from anti-Zionism to antisemitism. Badiou has responded vigorously to these attacks, accusing his ‘inquisitors’ of deploying the charge of antisemitism against him in order to discredit his criticism of Israel and thereby further the ends of Zionist and American imperialism.