Throughout the history of the Western world, Jews have suffered various forms of exclusion, stigmatization, and discrimination that have forced them always to be aware of their particular situation. The Jews became a community under siege and, as Shlomo Sand argues, Judaism was shaped by the hostile gaze of Christian civilization. While the forms of hostility endured by the Jews have varied over the centuries, it is impossible to understand twentieth century anti-Judaism, or Jewish identity itself, without taking account of the sediments of mental hatred, fueled by religious belief, which have survived the passage of time.

While antisemitism is the term commonly used today, Sand prefers 'Judeophobia', which predates the appearance of 'antisemitism' and is more precise. Looking back over the centuries, he seeks to identify some of the stages in the age-old, incandescent hatred of the Jews and tries to understand what remains today of this trenchant hostility. He also questions whether Zionism, born as a distressed response to modern Judeophobia, has ended up mirroring it. To what extent has Zionism inherited the ideological foundations that have always been characteristic of the persecutors of the Jews? This history of anti-Jewish hatred will be of interest to anyone concerned with one of the most insidious and persistent features of Western civilization.