A Train of Jew-Hate, Left and Right

I’ve felt a train speeding down the tracks since I was a kid. Felt the ground trembling beneath my feet — not always audible — but always present. Today, it’s not just a feeling. The train is real.

Swastikas carved into desks. Drawn on lockers in thick black marker. Jewish kids slammed into lockers while the others — the non-Jews — walked by untouched. I saw it. I heard it, too: “Himmelman, you’re one of the good Jews. Not like those other f—ing kikes.”

This essay is about more than antisemitism. But it begins with that deathless, shape-shifting depravity. There is a new form of Jew-hatred rising, and like every other form before it, it wears the mask of moral clarity.

“You know who the Jews are. The same ones behind the slave trade, the banks, the media …” — Ice Cube, 2020

There’s always a reason. The Jew is too poor, or too rich. Too much of a capitalist, too much of a communist. Too distant, too embedded. Too degraded, too powerful. A one-size-fits-all animus that never disappears — only burrows beneath the surface and waits. And when societies begin to crack, when people grow desperate or disoriented, it crawls out again.

Clearly, that’s the time we’re living in now.

And who do we blame? Not the Seminole Indians, of course — that wouldn’t make any sense; there are so few of them. The Jews? They’re statistically inconsequential too. Just 0.2% of the global population. But they “run the world, right? Isn’t that what we’re hearing now—from the far left and the far right?

And their state, that Jewish state — that “ethno-state,” that “colonial oppressor,” that “Nazi regime.” That’s the one that must be condemned.

Surely we’ve evolved past this, haven’t we?

Apparently not.

We don’t scrutinize the ethno-nationalism of France or England. We don’t question why dozens of Muslim-majority countries identify openly with Islam, or why countries like Belgium and Greece still maintain official state religions. But we fixate on Israel.

Why? Well, you may have your reasons. But I’ll tell you up front. I’m not buying them.

Here’s mine:

It’s because Israel is Jewish. And because Jews are never allowed the same dignity as everyone else.

Israel has become a global scapegoat — a moral punching bag for the weak and the weak-minded. No longer just the “apartheid state.” It’s worse. It’s the new Nazi Germany. Its soldiers are the new SS. Its mission, we’re told, is genocide.

Nazis? Never mind that the Jews of Europe didn’t launch wars or invade sovereign nations. Never mind that they didn’t kidnap, burn or rape. Those facts are inconvenient.

And if you’ve heard there’s a genocide, it must be true.

“The Jewish usury and banking systems caused the Holocaust.” — Mahmoud Abbas

If you’ve heard it from Qatari-funded news outlets, from wise, chin-scratching professors, from famous actors, musicians, and self-proclaimed humanitarians, or from the United Nations — which, between 2015 and 2023, passed 154 General Assembly resolutions against Israel, compared to just 71 for the rest of the world combined, including North Korea, China, Syria and Iran — well, it must be true.

And we dare not examine the facts. Gaza’s population has been growing — even during the war. In 2012, it was 1.64 million. By 2023, it had reached over 2.2 million. Even after Oct. 7, and even amid an ongoing war, the population has continued to rise.

Yes, the war that Hamas began has created many horrible, many tragic deaths, deaths of civilians. It’s also a war that could end tomorrow morning with the release of every hostage, the living and the dead, along with Hamas’ surrender.

“The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them …”  — Hamas Charter, Article 7

But that doesn’t matter. I know this because I don’t hear a loud, clear cry against Hamas, except from people whose sense of right and wrong hasn’t been hijacked. What matters most is outrage. What matters is purity of moral posturing. What matters is declaring:

Not Iran, where homosexuals are hanged from cranes.

Not China, where Uyghurs are enslaved.

Not Sudan, where Black Christians are massacred by Muslims in the tens of thousands.

Not Hamas. Whose charter calls for the deaths of Jews everywhere — and who has shown on 10/7/2023, just what that looks like.

Not Hezbollah, who until they were neutered by the singular brilliance of the IDF, had served as the Iranian regime’s chief weapon of terror against the Jewish State.

But Israel. The sole democracy in the Middle East, the sole nation of the Jewish people.

“Black people are the true Hebrews. Jewish people have stolen our identity.” — Nick Cannon

Let me take you back — not all the way to the Bible — but to a foundational idea that Judaism gave the world. An idea that has been appropriated, distorted, and universalized beyond recognition.

Judaism taught:

• “So God created man in His own image…” (Genesis 1:27)

• “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19)

• “Do not pervert justice … Judge your neighbor fairly.” (Leviticus 19:15)

These were radical declarations for their time: that all human beings carry divine dignity, that strangers deserve compassion, and that justice must not be partial. All of it true. Then, as now.

“Rothschild Zionists … are a secret cabal of Jews controlling world events.” — David Icke

But hundreds of years later, a man named Paul took these Jewish principles and gave them a new context. Perhaps he believed in them. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to enlarge his flock. Either way, he flattened them into a new doctrine: universal love. We are to love everyone equally. No hierarchy, no divisions.

But the very notion of universal love is false. It has never once been practiced by any nation or human being. Love, which is rooted in particularity — in real families, in real tribes, in real history and in real individuals with names and faces — was suddenly meant to be all-encompassing. A love with no borders, no loyalty, no distinction.

It may sound beautiful. But it’s a lie. And as we’ve seen throughout history — even, and especially, from its most ardent purveyors — it was never practiced. Certainly not as it pertained to the Jews, whose slaughter was commonplace and unspeakably horrific, right through the 20th century.

Real love cannot be universal. Its nature is fiercely specific.

I have two sons. And I love my sons more than I love your sons. That’s not wrong, that’s not exclusionary. That’s human. That is where I come to know how to extend my love to others outside my sphere of particularity.

Universal love, when it becomes dogma, leads not to compassion — but to abstraction. And abstraction can be brutal.

“The Jews are a base, whoring people … their synagogues should be set on fire.” — Martin Luther

The Jews never bought the myth of universalism. They remained stubbornly particular. Even under pain of death, they did not accept Jesus. They did not accept Muhammad. And so, they became heretics. Outsiders. Dangerous. Fair game for pogroms.

This has long been true of those who demanded submission to a universal ideal — first from the Church, then from the State. That tension never went away. And today’s secular progressives — as we’ve witnessed on university campuses — have inherited the same Paulist, universalist theology, even while rejecting religion itself. They preach universal compassion — but not for the Jews. Never for the Jews.

Dangerously, the most radical ends of the ideological spectrum now appear to be marching in lockstep.

“I’m not anti-Semite, I’m anti-Termite. The Jews are my enemy.” —Louis Farrakhan

Because the Jew is still particularist.

Still a profound Peoplehood, a family.

Still inconvenient.

And Israel — the world’s only Jewish state — is the ultimate embodiment of that refusal to blend in. It is unapologetically Jewish. It defends borders that make up its ancestral homeland. It mourns its dead. It loves its own. Just like everyone else does.

But unlike everyone else, it must be punished.

I know people who are disturbed by my support for Israel. They can’t understand why I won’t use the word “genocide” in reference to Gaza. They speak with such certainty, such righteousness.

But genocide is not merely a descriptor. It’s a death sentence.

If Israel is committing genocide, then Israel must be destroyed.

If Jews support genocide, then Jews must be stopped.

This language — this canard, this blood libel dressed up as moral concern — is not neutral. It is a weapon. And it places a target on every Jewish back.

“Why can’t Israel just sit down with Hamas and hash it out?,” they say.

“What does war ever solve? Why can’t those Israelis just stop the fighting?”

“The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition.” — Voltaire

Because war sometimes does solve something — when your daughters are raped, your babies beheaded, your people dragged into tunnels. Because war becomes the only path when your enemies are awake underground, plotting the next massacre.

But safe in LA, in Minneapolis, in Boulder, one needn’t be too concerned. And if a conditionally pacifist-minded person felt threatened, he or she would simply dial 911, knowing that the police would wage a potentially deadly little war on their behalf.

Here are my questions:

Why are so few people calling on Hamas to release the hostages?

Why aren’t more voices demanding that Egypt open its sealed-tight border with Gaza — that it take responsibility for its role in creating the so-called “open-air prison”?

And while Netanyahu is being excoriated — and perhaps he deserves some of it — no one seems to offer an alternative for dealing with Hamas. The unspoken answer is chilling in its passivity: Israel should simply learn to live with them intact.

“The Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the white race.” —Adolf Hitler

Would you live with a monster under your bed?

Would you be content leaving a terrorist army — bent on your death, and your family’s — entrenched underground and still capable of murder, a mile from your home?

War is horrific. It always is. The deaths of innocents are tragic beyond words.

And war, at times, is also defense. War is what happens when love is particular enough—powerful enough — to fight for. Deep enough to want to live for.

If you believe that all ideologies are the same —  that deep down, all of them are good—you will find it impossible to comprehend Oct. 7. You will only understand war when its violence comes banging on your door, as it has for the Jews, both historically and today. And only if your moral compass hasn’t been warped will you recognize this truth: evil is not an abstraction to be wished away.

“It’s about time we had an intifada in this country.” — Hatem Bazian (UC Berkeley)

In 1935, the writer Ben Hecht stood in New York and warned of what was coming:

“Of the 16,000,000 Jews in the world, more than half are trapped inside Europe. They are facing death, and no one sees the train coming down the track.”

I see that train too.

And this time, I refuse to pretend it isn’t real.

Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author.