The Denial Disease

The hatred of Jews, from time immemorial to the outlandish way it has resurfaced globally today, is truly breathtaking. What on earth could this infinitesimal population of Jews, and their tiny ancestral homeland, Israel, have possibly done to inspire such universally unflinching contempt?

Many of the original justifications for why Jews are to be despised above all others —why hating them is so justly deserved—have been debunked by the absurdity of those blood libels and the upsurge of a (relatively) enlightened public.

No, Jews did not kill Christ; and no, they don’t murder Christian children to improve the taste of Passover matzoh. As for having horns and tails, no one has ever seen a Jew with such anatomical features.

More stubbornly historical tropes require Olympian suspensions of disbelief. You don’t need to be a savant to recognize that levers that “control the world” are not being pulled by Jews. Would Israelis and the Diaspora be this perpetually miserable if they were in possession of such powers?

Here’s one obvious example: the yellow fever of yellow journalism practiced daily against the Jewish state. Only a diehard conspiracist believes that Jews actually control the major news outlets.

Anyone who has visited an Ivy League campus these days knows that Jews were defenseless to curtail the antisemitic convulsions and open calls for their death. Overrepresentation in certain professions did not empower Jews, either. Doctors and lawyers were unable to sway patients and clients to adopt more sympathetic views about Israel’s war against terrorists.

Lies about a “genocide” and “mass starvation” persist, despite all kinds of rebuttal evidence that receives little attention. Causalities of war are not victims of genocide. In any other war, the Palestinian body count would be tragic but typical collateral damage. The IDF, however, is charged with war crimes before they fire their first shot.

The Jews of Hollywood provide another example of the myth of Jewish invincibility. When the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened four years ago, the permanent installation forgot to mention the outsized role Jews played in inventing literally everything about the movie industry.

Jews were left out of the picture, ironically. That, too, happened when African-Americans scrubbed their own history clean of any Jewish involvement in the struggle for civil rights.

Antisemitism in this new digital age where information is readily available, but all too often falsified, is a disease largely about denial.

The list is exhaustive: The Holocaust is still being denied, despite an overabundance of dispositive proof—including actual survivors being told that their nightmares are just dreams.

Imagine if people said that about American slavery?

Nations around the world deny the very existence of Israel, even though the Jewish state was formally created and recognized by both the League of Nations and United Nations. Meanwhile, a Palestinian state—a true global fiction without any historical or legal legitimacy—has been unilaterally recognized by several Western powers.

Almost immediately after the massacre on October 7, 2023, the drumbeat of denial could be heard. Painstaking film footage simultaneously taken by Gazans and projected around the world was not to be believed. Posters of hostages were torn from walls by snickering antisemites. No measure of Jewish sympathy was allowed.

Almost immediately after the massacre on October 7, 2023, the drumbeat of denial could be heard. Painstaking film footage simultaneously taken by Gazans and projected around the world was not to be believed.

When female survivors of Hamas’ brutality testified to the sexual assaults that took place on October 7, and inside tunnels in the days and weeks that followed, their anguished retellings were dismissed. The #MeToo movement now had a new hashtag: #BelieveBarbarians.

Speaking of barbarians on film, the Toronto International Film Festival cancelled the screening of an October 7 documentary that left no doubt as to the savagery of Hamas’ assault. Was the aim now to bury the incriminating evidence? Although already in the public domain, the festival organizers claimed that Hamas’ permission was necessary to showcase the movie.

Hitler and his henchmen instantly burst out in laughter from their front row seats in hell.

One of the subjects of the film who led the rescue operation said, “The truth cannot be erased. The atrocities committed by Hamas cannot be erased or denied.”

The documentary was ultimately screened, but that doesn’t prevent erasure. It was all reminiscent of “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” a 2009 book on the Danish cartoons that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and led to worldwide Muslim rioting. The publisher, Yale University Press, chose not to include the actual cartoons in the book. They, understandably, feared a lethal response from the “Religion of Peace.” Muslims have repeatedly shown a true weakness for setting liberal values aflame.

Denial is much easier when risks come with speaking truth. The world believes the worst about Israel with little pushback. Independent verification is for sissies. An “academic” who teachers at Rutgers University wrote, “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability.” It is not sold as a work of fiction even though it charges the IDF with deliberately firing bullets to maim children and harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.

The world believes the worst about Israel with little pushback. Independent verification is for sissies.

No evidence is introduced to support these claims. Apparently, it is unnecessary given the ovations the author receives whenever she presents her “findings” at universities around the country.

Meanwhile, actual evidence is too inconvenient to share widely if it exonerates Israel. The USAID inspector general’s office uncovered evidence that Hamas has, indeed, confiscated humanitarian aid trucks and placed terrorists in U.N. facilities. Moreover, we now know that the U.N. is playing fast and loose with data on the famine they claim is happening in Gaza. An entirely different metric applies to Palestinians, a lowered threshold for categorizing malnourished children.

Media factfinders also failed to report that an Israeli hostage whose body was returned in February had been tortured to death, according to an updated autopsy. He did not, as Hamas had pronounced, die of a heart attack.

Yet, the international media lost their minds when “one of their own” had been killed by the IDF. He was actually a Hamas terrorist moonlighting as an Al Jazeera correspondent. Major news outlets ignored his Hamas affiliation. The story accused Israel of cynically covering up its genocide by murdering journalists.

The social media postings of this erstwhile “journalist” and full-fledged terrorist, however, showed him to be a giddy participant on October 7. Newsprint should not paper over the blood on his hands.

But it does in this ever-replenishing cesspool of denial, indefatigably erasing and trivializing crimes against Jews. Blatant antisemitism seamlessly explained away. Unadulterated hate, truly without shame.