Did you hear the latest?
An estimated 2.2 billion people – almost half of the world’s adult population (46 %)—hates Jews. Or, as the people at ADL phrase it, “harbor deeply entrenched antisemitic attitudes.”
It gets worse. The estimated 2.2 billion Jew-haters are more than double what they were 10 years ago. Indeed since the group started tracking these global trends, the latest figures are the highest on record.
Well done, haters!
In announcing this sobering news, the ADL noted that the survey revealed areas “where governments must take action to tackle antisemitic hate.”
That’s nothing new. They say pretty much the same thing year after year, press release after press release, new fundraiser after new fundraiser: We must take action to tackle the hate!
The word tackle is interesting. It comes from football, when a burly linebacker will tackle an opposing player. For ardent fans, a tackle is very satisfying to watch. It’s finite. It’s closure.
So I can see why it’d be a handy word for those who fight against hate: Let’s tackle this nasty virus and put it down for good.
Of course, there’s one inconvenient detail: we’ve been “tackling” haters for years and no one’s going down. In fact, based on this latest survey, it seems as if the more haters we tackle and the more millions we pour into the fight, the more haters pop up.
Either we’re terrible tacklers or there are just too many haters. For all we know, if it weren’t for all those calls to tackle Jew haters, there might be, God forbid, 3 million of them today instead of 2.2 million.
Maybe that’s why the fundraising calls never stop. Activists, evidently, need more money to slow down the growth of Jew haters. Better to have double the haters, I guess, than triple the haters.
Are we fighting a losing battle?
Like many Jews, I get regular emails from activists telling me that more and more people hate Jews. I get it. We have a reporter at the Journal whose only beat is to cover antisemitism. We’re not denying the bad news. We cover it.
And, as much as I hate to admit it, our readers lap it up. The more bad news about the Jews, the more they inhale it. Maybe it’s a Jewish survival thing. When you’re the world’s favorite scapegoat for centuries, you tend to develop a radar for trouble. One graffiti of a swastika in LA and the Whatsapp alarmist groups are off to the races.
For many Jews, alarmism and even paranoia are prudent choices. After all, with 2.2 million Jew haters out there, and with our long history with the world’s oldest hatred, we can never be too vigilant.
All that said, I leave you with one cautionary note. When we focus so relentlessly on the 46% who hate Jews rather than the 54% who don’t, which number are we helping? Which number are we growing?
In trumpeting so broadly and widely the hatred of Jews, how do we know that it doesn’t encourage more and more people to follow along and jump on the hatewagon? Are we reminding people that there’s something about Jews worth hating rather than loving?
Based on this new survey, there’s only one thing we know for sure: Over the past 10 years, no matter how much “tackling” we’ve done and money we’ve spent, the haters have doubled.
That may be good for fundraising and readership, but it ain’t good for the Jews.
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