Pity the Poor Antisemite

The antisemite must be the most frustrated person on the planet. Has anyone ever put more effort into any project? And what does he have for millennia of dedicated effort?

After the Jews lost their temple and their sovereign state two thousand years ago, they wandered wherever they could find refuge—from Babylonia, eventually to Europe and north Africa and later North America.

Each host country in time turned on the Jews as scapegoats for hard times or, most often, as an excuse for religious persecutions. Being a Jew in a Christian land or a Muslim state was not a long-term solution to statelessness. Too many stubborn Jews refused to convert in spite of intense pressure and chose to practice their religion in secret or leave for temporary greener pastures elsewhere—hence, “The Wandering Jew.”

And they survived. Every country that took in Jews benefitted enormously from their industriousness, energy, intelligence and efforts. Eventually, though, those Jews became “too powerful” or “too different” to fit in, so they were expelled (in England in 1290, in Spain in 1492, in Portugal in 1496).

The Jew had the misfortune of having the wrong religion, even if it was the one that gave birth to the others. Later in history, it was decided that it was their race that was hated. That’s when Jewish life became really dangerous. You can convert from your religion, but you can’t convert from your race. So, it was no longer good enough to expel the Jews who wouldn’t convert. They had to be killed. And now, in our time, it is the nation state of the Jewish people that is the cause of all the problems in the world. For the antisemite, Israel must be delegitimized at all costs in order to destroy it.

Imagine the horror and dismay of the antisemite. After two thousand years, at the mercy of others, defenceless, alone, needing to run anywhere they would be taken in, the Jews rebuilt their ancestral homeland and created a modern, vibrant, prosperous country out of the desert. That is unbearable to the poor antisemite. It must be dismantled at all costs.

Israel makes its neighbors look bad. Democracy in the Middle East? Jews and Muslims living as citizens in a Jewish country? Opportunity and prosperity for all? No, this is intolerable. Israel must be portrayed as an interloper, oppressor, foreigner. Truth and history must take second place to outrage.

Israel makes its neighbors look bad.

Jews with an army means that others cannot carry out a pogrom or farhood with impunity. Jewish blood has become expensive. This is not the wandering Jew, the ghetto Jew, the cowering Jew. The antisemite is hysterical. All of his energy, time, effort to erase this remnant, this formerly powerless, troublesome group, and they come back, strong and determined! It is enough to drive a hater to distraction.

The antisemite could have put his mind, such as it is, to create something, to build, to contribute to society, to add value to life, whether in the Middle East, Europe or North America. He and the hated Jews would all be much better served.

Bloody but not bowed, the Jew exists, always tiny in numbers. The small number should signal to the antisemite that the Jew could not possibly control the world, could not be the author of his misfortune, that conspiracy theories are offerings to the feeble minded who will not accept their own responsibility for their lives. Now, the punching bag is punching back and where will this all end?

Well, there’s hope. There’s Iran. Iran spends countless billions with the sole purpose of wiping Israel off the map. It is obsessively focused on that one goal above all else. It has dedicated proxies that surround the Jewish state in a constant state of war and successfully enlist support from antisemites throughout the world. They have the same zeal and goal as the Nazis. Will they succeed where others have failed? Ask the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Romans, the Greeks who all failed and whose great empires are now dust and ashes.

What the antisemite can do is cause damage, inflict pain and loss, celebrate death, wreak havoc on a grand scale. He breaches every norm of civilized life as embodied in the U.S. constitution, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the U.N. charter and Enlightenment values, not to mention normative religious values.

The endless suffering of the Jew and the frustration of the pathetic antisemite make a hell of a world that is filled with much beauty and mostly decent people. The antisemite is the most extreme and enduring symptom of a society in crisis. His bitterness and rage are not shared widely in normal times, but when tears appear in the social fabric, the reaction is not better policies and rational examination of problems but radical and harmful responses. This predictable and destructive cycle has a long history and causes so much needless pain.

The yearning for a better life of peace and tranquility is as permanent and desirable as the persistence of hatred and destruction. Someday, the arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice, in the immortal words of the Reverend Martin Luther King, for Jews and for all people. Someday.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.