Skip to content
Lecture

Trudy Gold
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: The Virus Spreads

Thursday 28.07.2022

Summary

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism are complex and controversial topics that continue to shape global events and attitudes towards Jews and the state of Israel. Historian Trudy Gold examines both ideologies to better understand their impact on education, politics, and cultural attitudes.

Trudy Gold

An image of Trudy Gold

Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.

You see, I happen to believe it’s because we live in the old world of Christianity, and even though Christianity has become secular, it doesn’t matter. You know, we have been very strong in their consciousness for so long. If you think about it, the hymns or our hymns, Jerusalem, it’s so much part of Western culture. That’s the point. It can be benign as well. Look, I had to deal with a very dark subject today, and I really do not believe every Gentile is an enemy. I really don’t. What I was trying to explain is how it’s grown in the extreme left, and I also want to say a lot of good people can be seduced by these ideas because of the old anti-racism argument. What’s happened is little Israel has been put into the corner as a a racist, post-colonial, imperial state.

Educating them, really, really educating them. I don’t mean sending in once in a while. I mean a proper education programme of Jewish history. That’s why I’m so against the memorial in London. We don’t need another memorial to the Holocaust. It’s not going to solve the problem. I’m going to ask Anita Lasker-Wallfisch to come on and talk about it, I think.

Good question. Zionism means, if I’m going to take the “Oxford Dictionary,” quote it, and comment, it means that you believe in the creation and maintenance of the state of Israel.