Fourteenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic began in 2019, spread to the rest of the world in 2020, and faded in 2022. The pandemic brought a wave of antisemitic references, anti-Zionist references, and misuses of Holocaust associations. The talk is based on scholarly work on antisemitism, Holocaust trivialization, and anti-Zionism. It analyses the main trends of this phenomenon in 2020. It reveals five central notions which appeared in 2020 in the digital press, print, public sphere, and social media: COVID-19 was caused by the Jews; COVID-19 is used by the Zionists against the Palestinians; The Jews are the pandemic, the Zionists are the pandemic, and COVID-19 restrictions are like the Holocaust. The talk introduces examples of these notions and shows how the pandemic changed for the worst the image of the Jew in the world.