On two other vital questions, also, the English used to be unusually proof against the more paranoid versions of anti-Semitism. For one thing, they had their own biblical concept of themselves as “a chosen people.” Oliver Cromwell—who first allowed the Jews back to England after earlier monarchical expulsions—expressed a view of his countrymen as “God’s elect” that is echoed in literature from Blake to Burke, which often makes explicit comparisons to the children of Israel. Second, when the English of the 19th and early 20th centuries heard tales of a worldwide financial empire that gave a single people the anointed right to rule, they were fairly sure that there was indeed such a thing, and no bad thing either, since it was they who were running it. Few other countries or cultures had such a stolid sense of security.

However, if we examine the single grandest exception to this, which is the self-evident anti-Semitism of that lofty patrician Arthur James Balfour, then we find both of our authors becoming somewhat vague and defensive. There cannot be any doubt that the British debate over the so-called Aliens Act in 1905 was heavily infected with the racial prejudice of a Conservative Party once led by Benjamin Disraeli, yet Wistrich guardedly reports this by saying that “even” Balfour (the actual leader of that party) supported the anti-Jewish agitation. He compounds this by saying that, “ironically enough,” the main opponent of the Balfour Declaration 12 years later was the British Cabinet’s only Jew, Sir Edwin Montagu. It is as if one was forbidden “even” to think that an anti-Semite could favor a separate state for Jews (a phenomenon manifested again by the Christian right in America) or that a British Jew could have a non-“ironic” reason for resenting being told that he belonged in Palestine. Julius gives a fairer and larger account of this wrenching historical episode, but rather shrinks from exploring its implications. A single anecdote that he tells, about the weird press coverage he himself received for being the sharp divorce lawyer for Princess Diana, is enough to persuade one that anti-Jewish caricatures among the English are now both widespread and weak.

I began by saying that anti-Semitism is protean and contradictory, but then, so are Judaism and Zionism. Is there such a thing as “chosenness”? Is there a special “covenant”? Does the state of Israel have the right to speak for all diaspora Jews? Is Israel not in fact a part of the diaspora? Will the Messiah come? Does he take an interest in certain territories and not others? Who is a Jew, anyway? Rabbinical authorities and Israeli spokesmen have proved themselves unable and unqualified to decide these matters, and meanwhile vast numbers of Jews have secularized themselves and become big friends of a smaller Israel. This implied self-criticism of the faith and the project is not self-hatred, nor does it owe anything traceable to the disgusting slanders anatomized by Wistrich and Julius. The chief impetus of anti-Semitism remains theocratic, and in our epoch anti-Semitism has shifted from Christian to Muslim: a more searching inquiry into its origins and nature might begin by asking if faith is not the problem to begin with. This would also entail the related and essential question of whether the toxin of anti-Semitism is a threat only to Jews.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.