Israel Drives Them Crazy

The haters, antizionists, antisemites, the intimidating protesters —  they are all driven crazy by the existence of the State of Israel. In London, Paris, New York, Toronto, in the entire diaspora. 

From 2015 to the present, the U.N. General Assembly has passed 187 resolutions against Israel and 90 resolutions against all other countries combined. 

Why “crazy”? Because for 2,000 years, almost all Jews lived in countries during golden ages where they were loyal and productive, but those times always ended. They thought they were home, only to discover that they were no longer welcome. They were uprooted and left to find a safe haven until it, too, was no longer safe. Others would decide the Jews’ fate. Always at the mercy of others. 

And now, there is a Jewish state. Jews prayed for 2,000 years for a return to their homeland, a place where Jews belong. After a Holocaust! After all the fevered efforts to erase Jews from the Earth. 

The Jews are back! And not just back. With a rebirth, on their ancestral soil, speaking the language of their forefathers and mothers, praying the same prayers: it’s a nightmare for those who were taught to hate and to believe the Jews were inferior and destined to disappear.  

Not just that: the Jews have an army, an air force, a navy and an intelligence service that is actually intelligent. And a thriving economy: Start-Up Nation. The Jews have created a thriving democracy in an area of the world where no other democracy exists. This is intolerable! It can drive an antisemite insane. It does drive them insane. No wonder there is vilification, demonization, fabrications about genocide and floods of malignant lies everywhere.  

The Jews have created a thriving democracy in an area of the world where no other democracy exists. This is intolerable! It can drive an antisemite insane. It does drive them insane. No wonder there is vilification, demonization, fabrications about genocide and floods of malignant lies everywhere.

The very existence of this thriving, successful, dynamic Jewish country must be delegitimized so that Jews can again become vulnerable and wander the Earth, begging for asylum as in the past.  That is why the rhetoric keeps getting more deliriously fevered. According to those committed to putting the Jews in their place, reducing them to dependents again, there never was a Holocaust. They deny the real genocide, documented and verified historically – the Holocaust – and, to add insult to injury, they accuse the Jews of committing a genocide in Gaza, a complete fabrication. According to the haters, the Jews weren’t persecuted throughout history, they are an apartheid state persecuting others. Reality is lost; history is denied; facts don’t matter. Whatever it takes to portray the Jewish State as illegitimate and unworthy of existence.

As Kathleen Hayes wrote in the Jewish Journal, the Trotskyites she knew, and later disavowed, rejected truth that did not support their claim and instead invoked a “higher truth” which fit their fixed narrative. This corrupted thinking is morally bankrupt, intellectually dishonest and loathsome but it soothes the conscience of the self-righteous and has been adopted by antisemitic woke culture. 

If Christianity and Islam are supremacist religions that have attempted to leave Judaism behind in the dust of history as an obsolete relic, Israel’s rebirth and success undermines their claim and challenges their view.

The persistence of Jew-hatred is no mystery. In her book “As a Jew,” Sarah Hurwitz reminds us that Constantine, Emperor of the Roman Empire, converted to Christianity, and it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christianity was not only a religion but a state power. The Jews’ position became greatly compromised. 

St. Augustine, in the first years of the Common Era, proposed that the Jews become subservient rather than killed. The Jews’ “Old Testament” would be interpreted as the basis for a superior “New Testament” and the Jews’ suffering and misery “would indicate that God is punishing them for rejecting Christianity.”  

Hurwitz also quotes the enlightened Christian theologian Gregory Baum, who wrote that “the church made the Jewish people a symbol of unredeemed humanity; it painted a picture of the Jews as a blind, stubborn, carnal and perverse people.” Author and historian James Carroll adds: “However modern Nazism was, it planted its roots in the soil of age-old Church attitudes and a nearly unbroken chain of Church-sponsored acts of Jew Hatred.” 

The Jews’ subsequent field of nightmares was well prepared long before the rise of Islam and Islamists. A thousand years of received thinking and official, sanctioned hatred will not disappear. 

Jew-hatred, of course, is not limited to Israel. In the final analysis, it is about Judaism and Jews wherever they live. 

Whether in the Diaspora or in Israel, Jews have become an obstacle to Christianity’s and Islam’s claim to preeminence.  It did not need to be. They could have understood that Judaism is the rock, the foundation on which their beliefs are founded, rather than competition in a zero-sum game. Except for those exceptional individuals whose great humanity saw in the Jew a common bond of humankind, the past 2,000 years were a tragic failure of western civilization.  

Whether in the diaspora or in Israel, Jews have become an obstacle to Christianity’s and Islam’s claim to preeminence.  It did not need to be. They could have understood that Judaism is the rock, the foundation on which their beliefs are founded, rather than competition in a zero-sum game.

Is there no remedy? Well, we still live in democracies. We do have friends who accept and even love their Jewish fellow citizens. We have agency and are far from powerless even in the Diaspora. We are not alone. Ironically, the largest pro-Zionist organization in the U.S. is Christians United for Israel. 

But we cannot afford to wait for the woke to awaken. Montreal, an epicenter of out-of-control antisemitism, has taken effective action, according to a writer in Canada’s National Post: “The Quebec government acted decisively by strengthening its secularism laws and making it clear that intimidation would not dictate public policy” as well as adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism. Jewish organizations took university administrations to court. In addition, they built alliances with Italian, Greek, Filipino, Hindu, Armenian and other communities. There are still serious challenges, but Montreal Jews are actively involved in change for the better. 

There are many organizations doing important work on behalf of the Jewish community. StandWithUs has launched a new legal program to support Jewish students; the Legal Forum for Israel will be training students to assist organizations and individuals fighting antisemitism around the world; the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF) informs and hosts many speakers and writers in person and online. These and other organizations, like EndJewHatred, need our support.

In addition, write letters to the editor, write and phone politicians. Take action. 

In the Diaspora and in Israel, we cannot turn back the clock and undo the harm that was done to us. But we can shape our own future. Israel is strong and resolute. So must we be.

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