In recent months, institutions and the media have targeted artists, activists, intellectuals and students in solidarity with Palestine, including Jews.

Protests have often been repressed as anti-Semitic, triggering, especially in Germany, a ‘war on anti-Semitism’ that criminalizes criticism of Israel. While recognizing episodes of anti-Semitism linked to the extreme right, this ‘war’ has been exploited to promote a racist narrative in defense of the West.

It is from this obsession with detecting anti-Semitism even among Jews critical of the Netanyahu government that the director of Cosmos Lab, professor Donatella Della Porta takes her starting point for her Guerra all’antisemitismo? Il panico morale come strumento di repressione politica (Altreconomia, 120pp., 2024).

In a volume in which she meticulously collects and documents a series of cases Della Porta analyses the moral panic and its social and institutional underpinnings, one year after 7 October and the invasion of the Gaza Strip.