Antisemitism: Humanity’s totalitarian swamp

Decades ago, when we commemorated Tisha b’Av at Young Judaea’s Camp Tel Yehudah, we related to the long list of Jewish traumas as historical events that afflicted our unfortunate ancestors, forever ago, in ghettoised galaxies far, far away.

Born into the post-Auschwitz covenant, we considered Jew-hatred passé, doomed, like racism. Alas, today, it’s surging.

Jew-hatred spikes when societies are under stress and totalitarian thinking spreads, Left and Right. Antisemitism is humanity’s totalitarian swamp thing. This creature thrives when people start mistrusting one another, thinking in all-or-nothing terms, seeking scapegoats, or being stirred by demagogues.

Over centuries, this swamp creature acquired certain characteristics; that’s why Jews keep getting accused of being devilish, committing the most hated acts of the moment, seeking power and money. While each bigoted act is uniquely despicable, Jew-bashers often build on slurs festering in the swamp. That makes antisemitism particularly useful to haters: from this foundation of familiar lies, it can be constantly updated – as we see with today’s anti-Zionist antisemitism abroad, and Jew-hating, anti-Zionism against Israelis.

In my forthcoming book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and Jew-Hatred, I define antisemitism as an obsessive hatred exaggerating the centrality and supposed wickedness of Jews and anything Jewish – the Jewish people, Jewish tradition and values, Jewish institutions, and Israel, the Jewish state. The disproportionate hatred is often expressed through demonisation, delegitimisation, and double standards – Natan Sharansky’s “3 Ds.”