Those are questions Jews across the world have been wrestling with ever since the October 7 Hamas massacre. The massacre and subsequent war, which should have turned a horrified world against these barbaric terrorists, instead turned into a massive Jew hatred fest.
The show of support for Hamas across the United States and Europe has exploded while support for Jews – the victims, is now low key and, in many circles very politically incorrect.
As Jews know all too well, Jew-hatred is not new. It’s there – often it’s usually bubbling under the surface. Today, this Jew-hatred is different.
Long before October 7, 2023, an easy answer was that Jew-hatred was a Christian religious hatred of Jews. Plainly and simply, the Jews killed Jesus and hence, they were hated. But now, that answer has no credence. In today’s attacks against Jews we rarely, if ever, encounter those old Christian tropes against Jews.
Closer to our own day, another common answer was jealousy. People who hated Jews were upset at the role Jews attained for themselves in society. They lashed out against Jews because they were jealous.
Then, there were those who were simply racists. They viewed the Jews as interlopers and outsiders invading their host culture and, as racists, they were trying to protect their society from contamination and dilution. The Jews were contaminating the purity and the authenticity of their society. A few Jews maybe, but certainly not too many.
These old responses only partially answer today’s questions. But history should never be ignored. Today, it is even more worthy of our time to understand the origins of Jew-hatred.
In the 1870s the science of racism arose. Those original racists developed a philosophy to protect society from the Jew. Their new science was based not on the old religious stereotype of the Jew. To this new Racist, traditional Jew-hatred was for the uneducated, uncultured and unrefined. They realized that their old hatred was antiquated and not worthy of the new German or the new Frenchman.
A new form of hatred needed to be invented. A new word needed to be created.
And so, in the late 1870s people like Wilhelm Marr in Germany and Eduard Drumont in France developed a new philosophy. It was Marr who coined a new term: “Antisemitismus.”
They called themselves “racists” and “antisemites” with pride, signifying their ultra-nationalistic patriotism. In the famous pamphlets that spread their message – Marr’s “The Victory of Judaism over Germanism” and Drumont’s “La France Juive” – Judaized France”, they made almost identical points: Free access of Jews to society will change the nature of society. Germany will not be the same Germany and France will not be the same France.
This new form of hatred was created to protect the host society from external non-German or non-French influences. To protect them from the influences of the outsider – the Jew.
Today’s hatred of the Jew is different. It is, quite frankly, a mishmash of the old and the new. It is an insult to antisemites of old. They, at least, had an ideology. Today’s haters have only hate – a passionate fervor of hatred.
Today, religious hatred of the Jew swaps Christian for Muslim hatred, which comes with a whole series of conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews. This certainly explains Hamas, who see murdering Jews as a Muslim obligation.
Then there is the anti-Western and anti-colonial component that feeds into a total rejection of Israel. All Jews are lumped together with Israel as being a racist colonial power. For these Jew-haters Hamas represents all Palestinians and Israel represents all Jews.
And that is why these new Jew-haters side with Hamas, the terrorists, the mass murderers, mass rapists, kidnappers. That is how they can take the side of the terrorist and the mass murderer over the victim or the nation acting in self-defense. To their mind – often shaped by social media, Israel and Jews never had the right to be there in the first place. In their minds they are no less entitled to hate Jews than Hamas is entitled to mass murder, rape and kidnap Jews.
And then there are those for whom hating the Jew and getting others to join their hatred is a form of Muslim religious observance. For Hamas it is a religious obligation. That is why the chant Allahu Akbar is heard at almost every pro-Hamas anti-Jewish rally.
Post-October 7, Jew hatred is here for the long haul. Stopping it requires a strong effort at re-education. It requires social media. It requires good people to enforce codes of conduct and laws to punish people who violate those codes. It requires accountability. The masses have forgotten that the right to freedom of speech is limited when it amounts to incitement.
That’s why they hate us so much.
The writer is a social and political commentator. Watch his TV show Thinking Out Loud on JBS.