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Do you believe before the Jewish community can cry antisemitism all the time?
Do you believe it's time they stop pointing the finger at everybody and look at their own racism and bigotry? |
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Since October 7, 2023, people — at least people on the (ostensible) left — have been trying to define the word “antisemitism’ more narrowly. I myself have had it explained to me, by more than one (non-Jewish) individual, that what antisemitism is, is when someone explicitly calls for the extermination of all Jews, using those exact worlds. That is, provided the call is made in the context of political activism, not in a private conversation or a classroom, where budding scholars should be free to engage in a robust cost-benefit analysis of killing all Jews, without fear of harm to their precious future careers as corporate lawyers, Wall Street bankers and populist lawmakers. Also, the word “all’ has to be in there; 90% won´t do. Any expression of hostility to Jews that falls short of calling for the extermination of all Jews within the narrow context of a political rally is either too ambiguous to be deemed antisemitic or is a mere “slight criticism’ of Israel.
Oh, how quickly the world has changed! It was not too long ago that future Friends of Hamas would deride Trumpers for antisemitic dogwhistles — the triple parentheses, the constant insinuations about George Soros, the number 1488. But now that instead of pasty-faced freaks running around with tiki torches and Margery Taylor Greene blathering about “space solar generators’, it´s Brown Freedom Fighters cutting off Jewish women´s breasts while gang-raping them, and setting Jewish children on fire, the cudgels have become the cudgeled. Nothing to see here, folks; just some Slight Criticisms of Israel. After all, did that breast-cutting rapist scream that he wants to kill all Jews while raping? No? Not antisemitism then. Just fighting oppression, with his penis (and a cutting instrument).
Going by how upset people get by accusations of antisemitism, and taking these complaints at face value, it seems true antisemites are vanishingly rare in this world. After all, even Hitler isn´t known to have said, at a political rally, that he wants to kill ALL Jews. Nor Eichmann, nor Goering.
Today, reasonable people are quick to distinguish between antisemitism (which is wrong and bad) and anti-zionism (which is right and good). Distinctions of this sort exist, however, outside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout history, articulate people who had a problem with Certain Jews have been quick to point out they don´t have a problem with ALL Jews, just Jews who do Jew things. In an effort to give these very reasonable and peaceful folks their due for not being antisemites, I will call their belief system by a term used by one of my old college friends — not-antisemitism.
I grew up in a country with a long history of deep and abiding hostility towards Jews; even assimilated Jews, and even, paradoxically, because of this very assimilation. A country where talking about the Holocaust was verboten — the fact of the atrocities like Babiy Yar and Auschwitz were taught in school, but stripped of any reference to the ethnic identity of the people who perished in them. I therefore have had a lot of experience with not-antisemitism, since early childhood.
Soviet not-antisemitism, circa 1972.
Nazi not-antisemitism, circa 1940.
The aforementioned friend defined “not-antisemitism’ as “When Jews make the outrageous claim that they are human beings, and people explain to them, at length and with infinite patience, that this is not the case.’
So let´s talk about what not-antisemites believe and what they tell us about themselves. Below is an admittedly long, but by no means exhaustive, catalogue of not-antisemitic beliefs.
The not-antisemite will tell you he has no problem with Jews. He has Jewish friends. He enjoys Jewish comedians. He thinks Amy Schumer is cute. He just doesn´t like Certain Jews who [insert grotesque antisemitic stereotypes]. A Jew may earn the not-antisemite´s respect if the Jew proves he´s not like Those Jews who [insert grotesque antisemitic stereotypes]. A Jew would have to do this primarily by demonstrating disdain for other Jews and conceding that Jews do not deserve any of the benefits that other groups take for granted, like having a country in which they are guaranteed not to be a reviled, persecuted minority. Explicit and ostentatious self-hatred and the hatred of Those Jews is a must. The downside is that you have to prove yourself to the not-antisemite each and every day of your life, and the slightest misstep will put you into the Those Jews category. The second you get slightly upset at a terrorist attack or a pogrom against Jews (otherwise known as “Slight Criticisms of Israel’), the claws will come out, and passive-aggressive barbs will come at you fast and thick.
The not-antisemite loves nothing so much as goysplaining Jewish history, experience and religion to Jews. This is the moment when the not-antisemite believes himself to be at his most reasonable, most benevolent and most intellectual — which is to say, it is the moment of purest lack of self-awareness, a lack so complete, it makes even hypocrisy impossible. The not-antisemite lectures Jews — kindly and benevolently — on who is or isn´t a “real Jew’, on how Jews should perceive their own historical experience and what “lessons’ Jews should derive from their own victimization.
Continuing in the same vein of breathtakingly unaware pseudo-intellectualism, the not-antisemite will invoke the conspiracy “theory’ that Jews are actually descendants of Khazars, and not real Jews, whose descendants are actually the Palestinians. He will explain how this is “proof’ that Jews are actually … just ordinary Germans? Or ethnic Poles? Europeans, at any rate. Nevermind that this “theory’ never had an ounce of historical support to begin with and was always an antisemitic canard. Nevermind that Khazars were actually a Turkic — which is to say, Asian — people. Nevermind that this theory has been debunked (with DNA evidence, among other things). It will still be invoked as “proof’ that Jews are European.
The not-antisemite believes Jews should be receptive to, or at least civil in the face of, arguments that they are not “real’ Jews; and that Israeli Jews should demonstrate a similar graciousness with regard to arguments that they should not exist at all. The not-antisemite has no problem with Jews or even Israelis, just those Jews or Israelis who unreasonably refuse to compromise with the position that they are not who they are and/or that they should disappear (somehow).
Not-antisemites of old argued that Jews were foreign invaders in Europe because Jews are actually Asian. Not-antisemites of today argue that Jews are foreign invaders in Asia because Jews are actually European.
Not-antisemites of old (like Louis Ferdinand Céline, for instance) argued that Jews were actually Black people (only he used the n-word) who used black Jew magic to make themselves appear white. Not-antisemites of today argue that Jews are too pale-skinned to be Middle-Eastern.
Not-antisemites, in all their pseudo-intellectual glory, completely erase the history and experiences — nay, the very existence — of non-European Jews, who constituted more than half of worldwide Jews on the eve of the Holocaust. They deny the existence of over ten million people, whose descendants comprise more than half of Israeli Jews today and have significant communities in the Western Hemisphere and Australia. Not-antisemites insist all people who call themselves “Jews’ today are European. Yemeni Jews? Never existed. Moroccan Jews? Never existed. Egyptian Jews? Lalalalalala, can´t hear you. Tunisian Jews? No such thing. In a different context, of course, the not-antisemite will tell you that erasure of ethnic groups by denying their existence, their history or their experiences, is in itself an act of genocide. That´s exactly the not-antisemites´ response to the arguments made by some that Palestinians are not a “real’ ethnic group. But, as we´ve already established, those values do not apply to denying the existence of Jews.
The not-antisemite will accuse Jews of being unable to prove to his satisfaction that they are lineal descendants of Biblical-era Jews. The same not-antisemite will claim, without any evidence whatsoever, that Palestinians are lineal descendants of Canaanites and Philistines. The not-antisemite is unaware — and will deny as lacking evidence, despite a mountain of evidence — that Philistines were actually a Grecian people speaking an archaic Hellenic dialect, and in all likelihood, were descendants of a group of Sea Peoples who caused the Bronze Age Collapse in the Mediterranean and founded their boutique kingdom on the ashes of an earlier civilization they had obliterated. The not-antisemite is not interested in even exploring this history because it runs counter to his narrative that Palestinians are lineal descendants of people who have lived in the Levant since the very Creation and were always peaceful and hospitable, never warlike. He will angrily dismiss having it pointed out that modern Palestinians do not retain a single vestige of the ancient culture or language from which they are supposed to have lineally descended. (Unlike, you know, Jews.)
The not-antisemite will tell you he likes Mel Brooks. Or Jerry Seinfeld. Or the Three Stooges. Not-antisemites (I´ve noticed) are very fond of Funny Jews in particular. They will point out that they also like Jewish artists, like Marc Chagall, though they can never name a single one of his works. A particularly educated not-antisemite may name-drop Sarah Bernhardt, whose bod was legendary. (She played Hamlet! In hose! Legs forever!) Of course, in a different context, in a conversation about a different group of people, the same not-antisemite will say that white people´s consumption of art created by Black people (for instance) is not at all incompatible with racism; and that in fact, the act of consumption itself may be predatory and racist in certain contexts. But laughing at a Jewish comedian´s joke proves beyond reasonable doubt the not-antisemite is entirely free from the taint of antisemitism. Ditto ogling a Jewish woman, especially one who is funny.
The not-antisemite admires Einstein. He has sympathy for the Holocaust victims — mainly, he says, for how similar they were to the Palestinian victims. In sum, these are the three categories that Good Jews fall into: (1) famous comedians; (2) scientists of colossal international repute; and (3) Jews murdered for being Jews, except for Jews murdered for being Jews in the name of Palestinian “liberation’. Or some combination. If you are a Jew, and you do not fit into at least one of these three categories, you are one of Those Jews. The Bad Jews. The Jews who give the virtuous fundamentalist yahoos of Neturei Karta a bad name. Funny, Brilliant or Dead (conditions, exceptions and limitations apply): everyone else is garbage.
The not-antisemite is very upset about Palestinian children being killed by the Israeli military, because the killing of children in a war, even unintentional and in any number, is completely unacceptable and a war crime. The not-antisemite is not upset about Jewish children being deliberately tortured and murdered by Hamas, because the torture and murder of children is simply a normal part of war; totally legal and totally cool.
The not-antisemite has the most humane and modern notions about the role of women in society and women´s entitlement to safety and respect. He´s #BelieveThe Women and #MeToo, and so forth. However, when it comes to the rape, torture and murder of Jewish women by Hamas, the not-antisemite is a patriarchal traditionalist and a fainting-couch-hogging, pearl-clutching enthusiast, invoking every justification and rationalization for that which he would have unequivocally condemned in any other context:
Pix or it didn´t happen;
Video or it didn´t happen;
Jew-free investigation, or it didn´t happen;
It didn´t happen because it didn´t happen;
If it happened, it´s a normal part of war;
If it happened, it´s normal behavior by men who are enraged by the mistreatment of their people;
If it happened, it wasn´t so bad;
It couldn´t have happened, because we weren´t told about it 5 minutes later;
It couldn´t have happened, because the survivors are Jews, and therefore liars;
If it happened, it was consensual;
If it happened, it was done by kids who don´t know any better;
If it happened, the women were asking for it;
If it happened, we shouldn´t talk about it, because do we insert the plight of Rohingya women into every conversation? Why should Jewish women be treated special???;
If it happened, it´s irrelevant;
It didn´t happen because no amount of proof will convince me that it did;
If it happened, we shouldn´t talk about it because it´s lurid;
If it happened, it´s okay, because those women were sluts anyway;
It didn´t happen because Muslims don´t do that;
If it happened, it doesn´t matter, because back in 1967, some IDF soldiers raped an Arab woman (no, there are no pix, no video, no confession and no DNA evidence, but those are not required for that case to be true; the accusation proves itself, because see #BelieveTheWomen and #ConditionsExclusionsAndLimitationsApply).
If it happened, the victims should be flattered by the attention;
If it happened, it´s the victims´ fault for resisting;
The international community has bigger things to worry about than some Jewish broads being tortured and raped, allegedly, by some freedom fighters. Like how it´s Israel´s fault that Palestinian men are beating their wives.
If it happened, it was a case of friendly rape by Israeli soldiers.
If it happened, and it was done by Hamas, which hasn´t been proven and never will be, it´s Israel´s fault anyway, because oppressed people are not responsible for their actions.
If it happened, talking about it is “hasbara’;
If it happened, we shouldn´t talk about it, because it makes Palestinians look bad;
If it happened, it´s a liberation tactic whose validity shall not be questioned;
If if happened, and you criticize it, you are saying no oppressed people has any right to resist oppression. You probably think American slavery was a good thing;
If it happened, it´s only because men can´t control themselves in the midst of a battle;
And last, but not least:
The not-antisemite will always admonish you that the Palestinian people are not to be confused with Hamas, even though the Palestinian people elected Hamas, and even though poll after poll after poll has shown that they currently support Hamas — and the October 7 pogrom in particular — by commanding majorities. The not-antisemite will always conflate the Israeli government with the Israeli people, despite the unpopularity of the current right-wing administration in Israel and the broad spectrum of opinion in the Israeli society about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And while the not-antisemite may — up to a point — distinguish between Jews and Israeli Jews, he will do so only in the context of of pointing out who the Acceptable Jews are: insular and hyper-religions, or utterly self-hating.
The not-antisemite is appalled whenever some right-wing yahoo celebrates the deaths of Palestinian children and civilians on the ground that “they are or would be terrorists anyway’. The not-antisemite justifies the torture and murder of Israeli civilians on the ground that they all serve in the IDF, or will serve in the IDF someday, or might serve in the IDF, or are connected to someone who serves, will serve, or might serve in the IDF. The validity of the “nits make lice’ argument varies depending on which group it is applied to.
The not-antisemite calls the displacement of of 700 thousand Palestinians in 1948 “The Catastrophe’ equivalent to the Holocaust. The same not-antisemite calls the displacement and ethnic cleansing of 850 thousand Jews from Middle-Eastern countries, a bloody process that eliminated Jewish communities that were thousands of years old, a normal thing that just happens. Not a big deal, and if it was, the Jews probably deserved it. Or maybe it´s Israel´s fault, because God knows, it´s not just the Palestinians — Arab governments too have no agency.
The not-antisemite will repeat the myth that prior to the founding of Israel, Jews had always lived in peace and harmony in Muslim countries (even though he simultaneously denies the existence of non-European Jews), and that Palestinians welcomed Holocaust refugees with open arms. When events are pointed out to the not-antisemite that demonstrate that Muslims, in fact, have always persecuted and periodically massacred Jews, and the only reason we think of Europe as particularly antisemitic is because the European values of the Enlightenment led European societies to evaluate their own histories with a critical eye, a factor that does not exist in Muslim societies, the not-antisemite will respond that he cannot comment on this or that medieval massacre because he hasn´t read about it. If the not-antisemite hasn´t read about it, it didn´t happen. For obvious not-antisemitic reasons, he will never read about it.
The not-antisemite will justify the “infidel tax’ that Jews have always had to pay living as ghettoized minorities in Muslim countries on the ground that it was the cost of protection. Muslims governments have always benevolently protected Jews (who didn´t exist), you see, went out of their way, and just needed Jews (who didn´t exist) to pay the cost of that protection. Protected Jews from what, you might ask (because you are one of the Bad Jews). From …. from … The Muslims protected the Jews from … From things and stuff, okay??
The not-antisemite accepts all of Hamas´ pronouncements on faith. No evidence is necessary. Hamas never lies. Besides, its claims are always backed up by local UN organizations staffed with honest Hamas operatives. Anything that the Israeli government says is automatically assumed to be a lie.
The not-antisemite does not support Hamas. He will say “it goes without saying’ Hamas are assholes. But he believes Hamas. He supports Hamas´ aims, by denying they are what they are. He supports Hamas´ methods, by downplaying and rationalizing them. He supports Hamas´ narrative, by giving credence to its obvious falsehoods and hypocrisy. He supports Hamas´ strategy by placing absolutely zero demands on Hamas — not even a demand to release the hostages.
The not-antisemite will point to photographs of Palestinian civilians and children killed or wounded in the Hamas-Israel War. How can you look at these images and remain so hard-hearted? he will ask with pathos. The same not-antisemite will tear down posters with the photographs of hostages and object to images of Israeli victims on the ground that this is a cheap appeal to emotions. Israelis — and Jews, by extension — when they are killed, must remain faceless, voiceless victims, the manner of whose demise shall never be particularized. In the name of justice and balance, or course.
The not-antisemite will characterize Zionism as “white supremacy’ deployed against “brown’ people; “brown people’ who were actually classified as white in Jim Crow America and palled around with actual real Nazis.
Yes, he will argue with a straight face and without shame that the reason the managers of provincial shinki in Imperial Russia, and the shtetl cobblers, and the Yemeni peasants started buying up land in the Ottoman Levant with a view towards creating a Jewish homeland was not because of pogroms, the massacres and the second-class status, but because all these people undertook a study of American history and were inspired by John C. Calhoun. And for some reason these people decided to practice “white supremacy’ on a bunch of whites who at most had a slight tan.
The not-antisemite loves to complain that “Zionists’ intentionally “mistranslate’ terms like “intifada’ and “jihad’ and put a spin on the phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be Free’. Mean Zionists, Bad Jews, acting as if words and phrases should be interpreted within their appropriate historical context! Of course, there are lots of other words and phrases that are perfectly innocuous on their face, such as: “final solution’; “resettlement to the east’; “work shall set you free’; “1488’; “all lives matter’; “white lives matter’; “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children’ — plus some ancient spiritual symbols and innocent punctuation marks. Somehow, though, we all know the term “final solution’ ain´t referring to some new mechanism for preventing socks from being lost in the wash. Insisting that an interpretation stripped of all context is the only correct one is, of course, a particularly contemptible form of gaslighting. Or you´d say that if, like me, you were a Bad Jew.
I could go on. And I probably will, as I encounter the ever diversifying forms of not-antisemitism in the press and on Quora. This will suffice for now, and let me tell you how I personally feel about this:
I am not scared of antisemites. I am not scared of Hamas. An individual Jew´s chances of dying at the hand of an antisemitic terrorist are vanishingly small (or pretty small for an Israeli Jew).
You know who truly scares me? The not-antisemites. You, peace-loving, history-revising pseudo-intellectuals. You thoughtful liberals, who think a world where hundreds of thousands of Jews, perhaps millions of Jews, get massacred, would be a more just one than the one we have now. You idealistic collegiate set who dream of a utopia in which Israel is no more, and its 8 million Jews just … disappear. Somehow. You, thoughtful humanitarian assholes, who took to the streets on October 8 to celebrate the atrocities against Jews and to revel in the carnage, before the victims were even buried; hell, before all the burned and dismembered remains were even identified. You self-enamored bloviators, who put your names to statements carefully, surgically worded to dehumanize the victims of Hamas while disingenuously lamenting the “violence’ and blaming it on the victims — that is, before you screamed bloody murder when your names, which you willingly signed to those atrocious statements, were disseminated beyond your fetid academies, to the general public. You bloody hypocrites, living on the ash heaps of exterminated indigenous civilizations, enjoying the First-World societal wealth soaked in the blood of millions of innocents (including my ancestors), imbibing the gifts of the very white supremacy of which you accuse Israel, marking Jews to be your sin-eaters, in order to assuage that deformed, necrotic abortion you call your conscience. You, grotesque advocates for a world which you believe will be just, and peaceful, with freedom and equality for all (except for the 8+ million people you want to just disappear, somehow). You … reasonable folks.
Folks like the policeman who came to arrest the Frank family after they had been outed, a hard-working servant of the state who was courteous and polite, who complimented Otto Frank on having raised his daughter to be a fine young woman — before shipping said fine young woman to her death, thereby transforming her from a fine young woman into a Good Jew. All of you who pussy-footed around Nazism and its Jew-hating talk, and its Jew-hating policies, both-siding genocide to death. You, who have, still are, and always will rationalize every atrocity perpetrated against Jews on the ground that some Jews are No Angels. (Unlike the Palestinians, amirite? Or your own ethnic groups?)
YOU are the existential threat to us. You are the enablers of antisemitism, and of violence against Jews. You are the suppliers of antisemitism´s oxygen. You are the eternally complicit. You are the ones who make me wonder whether I´ll be able to live out the rest of my life before the people you claim you don´t support start exterminating us again, with your tacit support.
So, fine. I will concede you this: you are not some penny-dreadful cartoon villains.
What you are, is real-life, three-dimensional, well-rounded villains.
UPDATE: Comments are closed due to an onslaught of offended not-antisemites attempting to prove me wrong by posting the exact arguments I called out in my answer.
I just want to make a note about one of these, whose author assured me that I had not changed anyone´s mind, and that he´s happy I wasted a whole day on something that won´t make a dent in people´s righteous hatred for Jews. Which, of course, completely misapprehends the purpose of what I wrote.
There are several reasons I posted this answer.
First, it´s a message to the people described in it: I see you. You´re not fooling me, you´re not fooling anybody.
Second, I am sure I am not the only person who has noticed all of this, and to other Jewish people, and to the good people of the world who sympathize with us, I want to let them know they are not alone. Your impressions are valid, your anger is justified, you´re not crazy, it´s not all in your mind. Don´t let anyone gaslight you into thinking otherwise.
And third, the purpose of this post was to punch some holes in the false façade of enlightened antisemitism, to force the people I describe in this answer to see themselves in what I wrote. And what do you know? A bunch of them showed up in the comments sneering, complaining and rationalizing. So clearly, it´s working.
