There’s a difference between personal and ideological antisemitism. Sometimes the lines blur, but quite often they align.

Personal antisemitism is an individual hatred of Jews where ideological antisemitism stems naturally from an antisemitic ideology.

Leftist antisemitism, like that of the House ‘Squad’ is not personal, yet it’s often treated as if it is, it’s ideological. Leftist antisemitism has a long history. It emerges from the Left’s conviction that the Jews are an unnatural people (Lenin), that they embody commerce (Marx) and nationalism (the Squad).

This kind of antisemitism is not a personal aberration, it’s a systemic outcome of believing in a particular set of ideas. Much like the Fuentes antisemitism on Twitter in recent weeks on the alt-right, ideas have consequences.

The Squad’s ideas are that Israel is illegitimate not because of anything that happened in ’48 or ’67, but because, as Lenin laid down long before that, as well as H.G. Wells and other leftist thinkers, Jews are illegitimate. In these leftist theories, Jews existed only because of economic and social restrictions having to do with capitalism and religious superstition, and that once these restrictions were lifted, the Jews would disappear. The failure of the Jews to disappear required efforts to make them disappear which the Soviet Union implemented. And that work of systemic antisemitism is being carried on by the Left today.

‘Anti-Zionism’ is just an expression of one of a number of classically antisemitic ideas that within the Squad emerge from leftist theories or, in a few cases, Islamic ones, all having to do with the illegitimacy of the Jews.