What is Antisemitism?

Antisemitism[1] has been described as “the longest hatred.” It is a disease of the mind and the soul which, at various times throughout history, has forbidden Jews the right to live as Jews or even the right to live. It has forced Jews to choose between their faith and participation in society, between citizenship and religious practice, between life and death.

Many definitions have been offered to describe the condition of antisemitism. Most simply, it is the hatred of Jews manifested in words and deeds. Other definitions, such as the one developed by the European Forum on Antisemitism, are worthy of consideration.[2]

As with all diseases, the virus that drives the infection must constantly re-invent itself in order to survive. So it is that the hatred of Jews, once focused on actual membership in a faith community, transformed itself into a murderous biological hatred. A Jew could not escape his or her Jewishness through conversion or lack of religious practice. One was Jewish not by choice or by birth, but by DNA. 

Under the terror of Nazism, this biological antisemitism was yoked to the racial theories of National Socialism. Jews were perceived as a disease that infected the purity of the Aryan race. The population of Germany and those countries falling under Nazi domination was subjected to repeated messages that proclaimed the Jews to be lice, a cancer, and a bacillus. Those who doubt the power of words to motivate populations to action do so only by ignoring the deadly results of Nazism.

While the horrors of the Holocaust offer a chilling example of man’s inhumanity to man, the events of 1939-1945 can also form a barrier to our understanding of antisemitism. There is a danger that the Holocaust will be seen not only as an example but also as a definition: confronted by an incident of a swastika scrawled on a synagogue wall, or of a kippah[3]-wearing student struck by an egg as he walks home from school, we may be tempted to wave these incidents off as being insignificant compared to the massacres in the ghettoes of Europe and the death camps of Nazi-occupied Poland. Such a perception can result in the paralysis of society’s healthy defensive mechanisms. Danger is often not perceived until it is too late.

The old forms of antisemitism are still very much with us today. The ancient lies of Jewish culpability for the crucifixion of Jesus still find their adherents. The vicious lie of the Blood Libel – which accused Jews of murdering Christian children so that their blood could be consumed – continues to circulate.[4] The idea that Jews were responsible for the Black Death that swept Europe in the 14^th century has been revived in the modern age, with Jews being accused of creating and spreading the AIDS virus.[5]

What do all of these lies have in common? Each of them posits that the Jews, either singly or corporately, are malicious and malevolent creatures whose aims and goals are incompatible with the welfare of the societies in which they live; that the Jews will corrupt the nations that offer them shelter and that the relationship between a Jew and the established social order is not a mutually beneficial one, but parasitical in nature.  Thus, to supporters of aristocratic privilege, the Jew is a carrier of democratic principles and a threat to their status. To the communist, prosperity betrays Jews as capitalists. To capitalists, the presence of Jews within the socialist movement is proof that they desire the destruction of the economic system. Only within the mind of the antisemite can such contradictions be sustained. Such conspiracy theories bring dangerous comfort to those who seek easy answers to the ills that beset the world. The answer they find is the same that was coined by Heinrich von Treitschke and later adopted by the Nazis: Die Juden sind unser Unglück! (The Jews are our misfortune).

How does contemporary antisemitism manifest itself? 

And now, in the early years of the 21^st century, we watch as antisemitism once again mutates. With the traditional forms of Jew-hatred banished, more or less, to the fringes of society, this longest hatred has found a new way to express itself and to wrap itself in a garment of greater respectability. Antisemitism may now no longer speak of a goal to make a country Judenrein (cleansed of Jews) but instead it may aim for a world that is Judenstaatrein (cleansed of a Jewish State): Israel within the community of nations becomes the stand-in for the individual Jew and anti-Zionism becomes the new antisemitism.

There are those who claim that the linking of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a misleading attempt to shield Israel from legitimate criticism of its behaviours. This position is incorrect. One has only to look at the vibrancy of debate on Israeli policies and practices that takes place within the Jewish state itself to realize that Israel has no immunity from legitimate criticism. Nor should it. While not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, some criticism does cross that line, and it does so by invoking very specific themes.

Former Israeli Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky has noted that words and actions that demonize or de-legitimize Israel as a Jewish state, or that hold it to discriminatory double standards are unacceptable. Bradley Burston, a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, has also provided a useful checklist to determine where the line is drawn. One such example is: “It is racist to suggest that all peoples have a right to self-determination in the land of their ancestors, with the exception of the Jews.” [6]

What lurks in the dark heart of antisemitism in all of its manifestations, the thing that lies in the nucleus of the virus, is paranoid suspicion. When the sociologist Theodor Adorno was asked to define the phenomenon, he put it simply: “antisemitism is a rumour about the Jews.” It is a belief that the Jews are not like us (they don’t share our values); that they are not committed citizens (the charge of dual loyalties); that they are dishonest (Holocaust denial, for example, charges that Jews manufactured the “lie” of the Holocaust in order to extort money from nations and corporations and to force the creation of the state of Israel). Like a caricature from a poor novel, Jews are, for antisemites, always seen as manipulative, treacherous and evil. In earlier times, Jews were linked to Satan – the ultimate evil. Today, in more secular times, ultimate evil is found not in theology but in ideology. Thus we see the portrayal of Israel as an apartheid practitioner or the new Nazi state.

The comparison of Israel to Apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany demonstrates the way in which the line between legitimate criticism and antisemitism can be crossed. Nazi Germany was so irredeemably evil that the nations of the world united to fight for its destruction. Apartheid South Africa was based on a theory and practice of racial discrimination that negated the most fundamental principles of equal human worth. To place Israel in this company is to say that it, too, is unworthy of membership in the community of nations and, indeed, cannot be permitted to survive.

There can be no doubt that such comparisons are intended to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state. Neither the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia nor the genocidaires of Rwanda were compared to Nazis. This “honour” is reserved for Israel. In such a way, the Jewish people (the victims of Nazism) are made to appear indistinguishable from their oppressors. Simultaneously, the Jews become deserving of the same treatment that was meted out to the Third Reich (total destruction) and are further condemned for committing the evils that were done to them. In a similar vein, boycotts, a tool of Nazi Germany used against the Jews, are now being used against the Jewish state.

Canada has not been immune to the infection of this new form of antisemitism. In 2006, the Ontario Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees passed a resolution calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Since then, elements within CUPE Ontario have attempted to promote the BDS campaign within the wider labour movement. Also in 2006, the United Church of Canada considered a BDS proposal at its triennial general council. That proposal was transformed through debate into a more balanced initiative.  However, demonstrating the fashion in which the new and old forms of antisemitism resemble each other, the United Church in 2009 debated three fresh anti-Israel proposals. These proposals relied on background material that, using traditional themes of antisemitism, alleged the willingness of Jewish organizations to engage in bribery and the potential disloyalty of Jewish Canadians.

On Canadian campuses, the ritual known as Israel Apartheid Week has taken root at the University of Toronto, York University and other locations. This annual event creates a poisoned environment where Jewish and pro-Israel students become subject to harassment and intimidation.

The notion of Israel as an Apartheid state came to full bloom at the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism. This conference, better known as Durban I, was convened to discuss serious manifestations of racism, such as the plight of aboriginal peoples and to consider redress for the injustice of the Atlantic slave trade. Instead, the conference was transformed into an opportunity for the persistent and continuous demonization of Israel. Virtually every session within the NGO forum became an occasion for condemnation of Israel. Jewish delegates were silenced while copies of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a centuries-old forgery alleging a Jewish plot to dominate the world, were openly sold. Durban I, described by Canadian MP Irwin Cotler as a “festival of hatred,” demonstrated – not for the first time – how international organizations such as the United Nations can themselves be used by activists with a darker agenda. It is for this reason that Canadian Jewish Congress was so vocal in its concerns regarding the Durban Review Conference, held in 2009 and commonly referred to as Durban II, and why we were so appreciative of the principled stand taken by the government of Canada, with support from the opposition Liberals and New Democrats, as it declined to attend this tainted event.

[1] The term “anti-semitism” was coined in the late 19^th century by Wilhelm Marr and has always been used to describe the condition of hatred of Jews, both individually and collectively. Those who attempt to widen the definition of the term to include all Semitic peoples do so out of error or malice. In the latter case, the purpose is to deprive Jews of even the words to describe those who hate them. It is for this reason that Canadian Jewish Congress employs the term without a hyphen. An antisemite is not a person who is “anti” Semites.  Antisemites hate Jews.

[2] http://www.european-forum-on-antisemitism.org/working-definition-of-antisemitism/

[3] The head covering traditionally worn by observant Jewish men. Its use is associated with showing reverence and respect to G-d.

[4] The Blood Libel accused Jews of making use of the blood of Christians to prepare the unleavened bread that is consumed during the Holiday of Passover. One example of a  recent use of this slander appears at http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sd&ID=SP15000

[5] In a review of “Progressive” Jewish Thought and the New Antisemitism: “Although the new anti-Semitism relies on traditional themes such as that Jews are ‘clannish, conspiratorial, money-hungry, manipulative, predatory, etc.,’ Rosenfeld maintains that it is protean and evolving. The Palestinians, for instance, charge that Jews are poisoning their wells; Arabs claim that Jews are disseminating AIDS in the Arab world.” Click here to see this review

[6] Other observations by Burston are: It is racist to maintain that Muslim historic and religious claims to Jerusalem and the Holy Land are absolute and date to antiquity, and at the same time to negate and dismiss Jewish historic and religious claims, to call Jews interlopers and usurpers and carpetbaggers in the land of their Bible, which is a sacred reference for Muslims as well. It is racist to declare Zionism as an evil before which all other evils in the world pale, and to argue that any act of violence against non-combatants is justified in the service of defeating Zionism. It is racist to take Israel and only Israel to task for its shortcomings in the areas of civil equality, sharing of resources, and the search for peace, while keeping silent or even taking pains to legitimize the same failures on the part of the countries and peoples one happens, as blindly as a pre-pubescent football fan, to support. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/955402.html