From the blog of Ivan Bassov at The Times of Israel
by Ivan Bassov
Christian and Muslim theology have long engaged in spiritual supersession—claiming that Jews were once chosen but are now obsolete. According to replacement theology, Jews broke their covenant and were replaced by the Church or the Ummah.
This theological narrative led to efforts not just to reject Judaism, but to possess it—while erasing those who live it. From medieval sermons to modern propaganda, energy has been spent proving that Christianity or Islam is superior because Judaism is supposedly obsolete, wrong or corrupted.
This appropriation is the metaphysical root of antisemitism: resentment toward those whose identity you’ve claimed, yet who stubbornly persist.
And when Jews regained sovereignty in 1948, that resentment deepened. For centuries, Jews were tolerated—when they were tolerated at all—as a reminder of divine punishment. That so-called ‘tolerance’ often took the form of second-class status, ghettoization, expulsions, pogroms, inquisitions, and ultimately, the Holocaust. But Jews who build, defend, and thrive? That challenges foundational theological and ideological assumptions.
Religious Appropriation and the Roots of Ziophobia
Just as antisemitism is rooted in the theological appropriation of Jewish identity, so too is Ziophobia fueled by the appropriation—and rejection—of Jewish peoplehood. Both Christianity and Islam have historically claimed to inherit the legacy of Israel. The Church called itself the “New Israel”; the Ummah positioned itself as the rightful spiritual heir to the Holy Land. These replacement narratives not only dismissed Jewish continuity—they sought to overwrite it.
But the existence of the modern state of Israel disrupts those narratives. It forces an uncomfortable confrontation: the Jews were not erased. They returned. They rebuilt. They survived both exile and extermination—and they did so in the very land that others claimed had passed to them. That reality is not just political—it is metaphysical. It creates existential dissonance for those whose doctrines, explicit or implicit, assumed Jewish disappearance.
Ziophobia, then, is not merely policy critique. It’s an allergic reaction to Jewish persistence and sovereignty. And just as theological antisemitism found ways to marginalize Jews in diaspora, modern Ziophobia finds ways to delegitimize Jews in their homeland.
Even Atheist Antisemitism and Ziophobia Have Theological Inertia
Some might ask: what about secular antisemites—say, Soviet-educated Russians or radicalized university students in the West who are hardly devout?
The answer is simple: prejudice has cultural memory. Just as atheists may still knock on wood or avoid black cats, secular societies often inherit religious biases long after they’ve lost belief. The USSR may have buried religion, but it kept the antisemitism. In the West, decades of Christian theological contempt simply morphed into secularized forms of anti-Israel ideology—Ziophobia by another name.
The forms change; the root persists. Even stripped of theology, the supersessionist impulse remains: Jews must not lead, must not thrive, must not return—and, to some, must not even exist. Whether in scripture or on campus, antisemitism and Ziophobia flow from the same ancient current: resentment toward Jewish continuity.
The Metaphysical Function of UNRWA
This same pattern of spiritual appropriation and attempted erasure lives on today—not only in rhetoric, but in institutions like UNRWA, where metaphysical war is waged under the guise of humanitarian concern.
Ziophobia isn’t just ideological—it has been institutionalized. Nowhere is this more evident than in the continued existence and function of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Unlike any other refugee agency in the world, UNRWA perpetuates—not resolves—refugee status. Its mandate applies uniquely to Arabs from the former British Mandate territory, who can pass their “refugee” identity down through generations, regardless of actual displacement.
This isn’t humanitarianism. It’s narrative warfare.
