In the first century, the Roman poet Juvenal disliked Jews. Besides circumcising themselves, he wrote, in the 14th chapter of his Satires, that they “revere the Sabbath … treating every seventh day as a day of idleness, separate from the rest of daily life.”
They were, well, lazy. Marx, in his 1843 critique of Bernard Bauer, suggested that “the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism. … Money is the jealous god of Israel. … The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew.” Hating Jews for economic reasons seeks to tarnish them.
There is also the application of a stigma, a black mark of disgrace or worse. Jews killed Jesus. Jews killed Christian children, especially before Passover, so they could use their blood for baking matzah. Jews poisoned wells. Jews enticed little children and innocent maidens.
In Spain, racial definitions emerged. It wasn’t what Jews did or did not do, but whether they possessed “pure blood” that would determine who was and who was not Jewish. This approach, using a biological standard for religious identification, created a revulsion against “Jewish contamination.”
Then there was Martin Luther’s antisemitism, which resulted from a frustration with Jewish unwillingness to convert to Christianity.
That theme, it is suggested, lay at the root of Muhammad’s confrontation with the Jews of Medina and nearby communities. Jews are portrayed as ingrates because they rejected Muhammad and his status as a prophet. Quranic verses are negative and hostile to Jews, as Muslims presume to judge Jewish disobedience of God.
Subsequently, the Muslim Hadith literature late posits that a Jewish woman, Zaynab bint Al-Harith, of the conquered town of Khaybar, prepared for Muhammad a roasted, poisoned sheep of which he took but one bite. Four years later, it contributed to his death. Jews had Jesus killed, and Jews killed Muhammad. A continuation of the theme of collective guilt.
For more than 2,000 years, Jews have been and are hated. Hated for their religious customs, for their presumed economic success. Hated for their genes, for the blood in their veins. Hated for their accomplishments. And for what they did or some did or very few did, if at all, but mostly hated for what they haven’t done.
Most of all, hatred of Jews is not directed at individuals, for, after all, “some of my best friends are … .” Nevertheless, any Jew can be hated and usually for any reason.
Today, Jews are informed that tens of thousands of “children” are being killed by the Israel Defense Forces along with the starvation visited on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. There is no real fact-based objective truth to that claim, or to the claim the IDF is gunning down aid seekers. That Israel is engaged in “genocide. ”
What’s at work here is a desire and a willingness to attach both blemish and stigma to being Jewish. To tarnish, discredit, shame and taint Jews. Jews, not Israelis. Jews, not Zionists. Stalk and harass them in cafes and on subways. Make them feel extremely uncomfortable for something they personally haven’t done.
Jewish schools, school buses and young schoolchildren have recently objects of vicious verbal beratement. Synagogues and Jewish-sponsored hospitals as well. Pro-Palestine protesters can enter a subway car, and threaten and yell at someone with a Jewish appearance for an action that occurred in Gaza, just like an action that happened in Khaybar or Jerusalem or Lincoln, England in 1255, or at the Tower of London in 1279, where almost 300 Jews were executed for “coin-clipping.”
False accusations, made-up crimes and misinterpreted events are among the many historical causes for the deaths and injuries of Jews. That history continues. Jews are to be considered contaminated, a singular caste of modern “untouchables,” due to their love of Zion, their attachment to Jerusalem and their 3,000-year-old religious traditions that include nationalist elements.
Whether practiced and propagated by non-Jews or Jews, Muslim Arabs or those practicing other religions or no religion, anti-Zionism is a subset of classic antisemitism paradigms. Lauren Smith calls the British version the “Rise of ‘Respectable’ Antisemitism.” Progressives are utterly convinced that their antisemitism is simply a crusade for morality and humanitarian values. However, at its root, it’s not only Jew-hatred but seeing the age-old opportunity for that hate to evolve into acts of violence done to Jews and, ultimately, their eradication, along with Israel’s elimination.
It’s crystal clear. But it leaves us with a dilemma: Why would, for example, New York City rabbis support mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who hasn’t spoken well of the Jews? And do so to “address antisemitic violence?” They cannot expect that from a person who founded the chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin College in Maine, and who cannot seem to decry the hate-filled chant to “globalize the intifada.”
Self-tainted Jews?
