There is Jew dislike and there is intense Jew hatred. Where does the second one come from?
The late Dr. Rabbi Abraham Twerski told a story of a rabbi who was involved in a rabbinic court. As he sat through the case of two fellows who had claims against each other, he kept feeling that Litigant A was right. It did not matter how hard he tried to be impartial, all arguments made him conclude that A was in the right over the other fellow. Because he felt that he could no longer serve impartially, he asked that someone else take his place. When he returned to his office, he hung up his coat. It felt heavy. He put his hand in one pocket and pulled out a large stack of bills. The rabbi looked at it dumbfounded. “I knew that a bribe could affect a person when he knowingly took the money. I didn’t know that it could also work even if he was unaware.”
There was a recent report that Georgetown University—the school most closely associated with State Department employees and all things Washington—has taken in over $1 billion from Qatar. Qatar is the non-nuclear Siamese twin of Iran, both of whom hope to spread Islamism throughout the world. Qatar’s investment allows the Gulf state to affect hiring, programs, teaching directions and of course, the school’s Qatar campus. The report states that the money has tilted the school into a “pro-Islamist and anti-Israel orientation.” Imagine that. Think of an aspiring diplomat taking courses that describe how evil Israel is, how it has stolen Palestinian lands, and how it supposedly has murdered Palestinian children by the thousands. How could tenured scholars be anything but impartial? Then imagine additional courses saying how Islam is the religion of peace, wherever Islam goes, life gets better, and on and on. And finally imagine our undergraduate getting her degree and beginning her professional life at the State Department. Is there any chance that she can be unbrainwashed? She thinks that she got an impartial college education; she did not know that she was bribed to favor a religion incompatible with the West. Does Israel ever stand a chance against her and dozens more like her at State? Qatar has spent its money well in buying off depraved, cash-intensive universities, politicians and some of the bigger names in the right-wing MAGA online world.
While I know that there are official definitions of antisemitism, a good and simple rule of thumb when it comes to Israel is the following: anyone who holds Israel alone to some standard but ignores countries doing the same or worse clearly has some anti-Jewish animus in his bones. Let’s take a boring example. Let’s imagine that Israel is releasing X tons of dangerous waste into the Mediterranean Ocean every year. And let’s imagine that some UN office writes a scathing report on Israel and its offending industries. But let’s also imagine that there are five countries that release far more waste than Israel but are never censured by the UN. Now take the same approach and apply it to human rights, land ownership, defensive war strategies, etc. Israel is always singled out even when dictators and brutal regimes are far worse in all possible categories.
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Israel is called an occupier but no one says a word about Turkey in Cyprus. Israel is accused of starving Gazans, yet there are no recorded cases of Gazans dying of starvation. Israel is accused of war crimes, but nobody is currently suggesting charging the Iranian leadership for the same over bombing Israeli citizens and even a hospital. We often see journalists and others accuse Donald Trump of things that either he has never done or others have done worse. This is generally called Trump Derangement Syndrome. When Israel is accused while others get a pass, we’ll simply call it antisemitism.
There are all different types of antisemites and reasons for antisemitism. After a rash of attacks against Jews in Crown Heights, New York, a reporter asked local blacks why such attacks (almost exclusively at the hands of local blacks) occurred. To a man, they said that the Jews owned all of the apartments and thus were getting beaten up for being too wealthy. This is the old economic or “the Jews are too successful” branch of the antisemitism tree. Israel was required to feed the same people who raped and murdered her citizens, something that no nation in military history was ever asked to do. This is the Jews have to be kept to a higher standard for reasons unknown wing of the antisemitic story.
Then we move to the right wing MAGA base that accuses Israel of things that are completely detached from reality. Well-known names froth at the mouth about Israel getting American soldiers killed. Israel has not asked the U.S. to join the fight, and I don’t know anybody planning a ground operation in the current Iran battle. Israel is super grateful for all of the support but it has never asked anyone to fight in her place. Israel is accused of starting World War III, though the current fighting is limited between Israel and Iran and the big players like Russia and China have made it clear that they are enjoying their seats on the sidelines. This is antisemitism from delusion—not based on any perceived financial or worldly success, but rather from the fantasies inside the minds of famous Jew haters. One formerly normal commentator accused Bibi Netanyahu as coming from the “synagogue of Satan,” whatever that is supposed to mean. I’ve been to some pretty bad synagogues, but accusing a fellow who has been running a seven-front war of somehow running with the devil is simply hate from the heart.
And where does that hate come from? Many of those on the hate-Israel right profess to be active Christians. Just as there are Muslims who hate Jews and there are others who do not, there are those Christians who hate Jews and by extension, the Jewish state. Either for historical reasons or some perceived threat that the continued existence of a proud, active Judaism as seen in Israel, these people lose all sense of reality when they discuss Israel and Jews. Donald Trump has recently called Tucker Carlson “kooky,” and certainly when he discusses Israel, he puts forth all kinds of theories about how the country wants to make the U.S. fight for it or start World War III with “thousands” of American GI’s dead. It reminds me of the scene in Splash where Daryl Hannah is watching a western movie and thinks that the actors are actually being shot and killed, until Tom Hanks explains that it’s only make-believe. While most Christians are strong supporters of Israel and their Jewish friends and neighbors, there is a vein of Christian nationalism that rests on a certain animus towards Israel and Judaism. I once met a black guy at Burlington’s who told me that he was really a Jew and I was a fraud. I asked if that meant that I could have a ham sandwich.
One does not have to love Jews or Israel, but when comments are not evenly applied to all countries or hatred is not based on facts but rather delusion, then we enter the red zone of antisemitism. Many of the right wing talking heads have millions of followers, and when they trash Israel, one sees tens of thousands of likes associated with their comments.
Iran was on its way to obtaining nuclear weapons, and it planned to use them against Israel, the U.S. and Europe. Those whose white-hot Jew hatred blinds them to this reality will claim that Bibi is trying to start a world war or that Israel is trying to dominate the Middle East. Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. And MAGA has a serious liar problem.
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