ON ANTISEMITISM - The primary form of antisemitism in our time is called Anti-Zionism.

By: Joseph Puder

Friday, February 2, 2024

Antisemitism has been around since antiquity. In the Greek and Roman worlds, Jews were resented because of their dietary laws and circumcision. Jews avoided eating at non-Jewish homes for fear of violating dietary laws. Circumcision for the Greeks and Romans meant a mutilation of the body. To them it was a barbaric act. And since Jews were deemed different, they were resented, if not hated.

With Christianity becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century of the Common Era, Jews were accused of rejecting Christ and of deicide (killing of Jesus). The Church perpetuated the anti-Jewish prejudice with decrees that isolated Jews and prevented them from engaging with people. European royalty expelled Jews and stole their properties. This happened in England, France, and throughout Europe.  Faltering economies prompted the medieval European elites to recall the Jews recognizing in them an economic engine. Sadly, those who returned were ghettoized and isolated. However, if a Jew converted to Christianity all was well.

The monarchy and the Russian-Orthodox Church conspired to destroy Judaism and Jews. It sought to convert a third, exile a third, and ultimately kill a third through pogroms. Drafting 8–12 year-old Jewish boys for 25 years of service resulted in taking them away from their parents and community and, ultimately, converting them to Christianity.

The antisemitism of the time was religious in nature.

Not until the Napoleonic era did Jews gain some form of civil rights in Europe. It started in France and spread to western Europe. In Tzarist controlled Eastern Europe antisemitism was a state-initiated policy.

Nineteenth century ethno-nationalism rejected the idea of a political nation united under a social contract that equalized the citizenry. Western European elites saw their nations as a biological community linked by common descent in which Jews might be tolerated but could never belong.

In 1879, Wilhelm Marr, a German journalist, coined the term antisemitism. It reflected his anti-Jewish ideology that was based on race, not religion. He saw Jews as being racially different, namely, “semitic,” based on the semitic language group that includes Hebrew. Antisemitism became a core issue in the platform of new political parties, and they used it to unite otherwise opposing groups, especially lower-middle classes including farmers and shopkeepers.

The dislocation caused by modernization prompted many of those members of the lower middle class who were conservative and anxious about change to look for someone to blame. The Jews, seen as a major driver of modernization were thus blamed for their troubles. The incredible rise of Jews from the ghetto to social and economic prominence, in the arts, science, finance, and in academia, caused major resentment especially in the German speaking lands. Antisemitism became a comfortable worldview for them. For the antisemites the Jew became an historical and comfortable scapegoat.

Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century included the notorious essay by French diplomat, Comte Joseph de Gobineau (1816-1882) titled “Essai sur l’inegalite des races humaines.” It distinguished between Aryan virtue and Semitic degeneration. It became a guidebook for German antisemites. There were several other French antisemitic writers, including Ernest Renan (1823-1892) and Edouard Drumont, who wrote about Jewish inferiority. The Dreyfus affair in the mid 1890’s exhibited, in full force, French antisemitism. There were three main layers to this antisemitism: the first was pseudo-scientific (Gobineau), envy was the second, and the French Catholic church was the third. The military establishment could be counted as fourth.

German antisemitism was even more systemic. Historian Heinrich on Treitschke accused Jews of being an alien and destructive intrusion on Germany’s natural historical development. The composer Richard Wagner absorbed the race teachings of Gobineau, and later took more such teaching from British-German race theorist Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Hitler and the Nazis had much to draw from, including Paul de Lagarde (originally Botticher) who demanded a physical campaign against Jewish “vermin.”

Tzarist Russia’s autocracy contributed to the perpetuation of antisemitism with the notorious libelous and fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was an invention of the Russian secret police, which intended to portray the Jews as a radical threat and major conspirators to control the world. In this plot, the Sanhedrin – the body of leaders that Napoleon assembled to grant Jews civil rights - became a group of villainous Jewish elders conspiring to take over control of the world. In Tzarist Russia, antisemitism was an official policy.

In America, Henry Ford’s 1920’s serialized publication of “The International Jew,” based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, created a powerful tool for Jew haters trying to validate their antisemitic sentiments. Father Charles Coughlin, a Canadian-born, American Catholic priest was another major driver of antisemitism in America. His vile antisemitic radio broadcasts, reached many American households in the 1920’s and 1930’s. He also defended the state-sponsored violence of the Nazi regime against Jews.

The enormity of the Holocaust tragedy created a moratorium on antisemitic manifestations in Europe after World War Two.  The Arab-Muslim Middle East, however, did adopt European antisemitism. In recent years, while the old moratorium has been discarded, a new antisemitism has found legitimacy in certain quarters – Anti-Zionism.

Zionism, the Jewish national movement seeking self-determination for the Jewish people in their historical homeland in the Land of Israel, and in Zion (Jerusalem), its eternal capital, became the object of anti-Jewish agitation. Since traditional European antisemitism was no longer acceptable in polite society another, more subtle, way was needed to express Jew-hatred. Anti-Zionism became a guise for deep-seated antisemitism. It didn’t deploy the traditional characteristics of the past, at least not outwardly and, it pretended to care for the Palestinian-Arabs.

Former Soviet dissident, human rights activist, and author (Fear No Evil, A Case for Democracy), Anatoly (Nathan) Sharansky, formulated a set of criteria to define antisemitism, known as the Three D’s test. It distinguishes between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The Three D’s are: Delegitimization, Demonization, and Double-Standards as applied to Israel. Lately, we have witnessed in the UN, in the US Congress, and on US and European campuses and streets, the manifestation of the 3 D’s. Israel has been demonized, and some antisemites are hard at work to delegitimize Israel. There is no question that when dealing with Israel, there are clear double-standards. The oldest hate -antisemitism, has found a new form, and it’s called anti-Zionism.