Jew-haters must have felt some ambivalence after 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust. How are we going to demonize these guys now?
I thought about those Jew-haters as I watched scenes of mangled Jewish bodies in the must-see film “Nuremberg.” The Holocaust was so horrific some argue that the Jews got an unofficial “reprieve” from the scourge of antisemitism, as evidenced by the UN partition vote that endorsed the state of Israel.
Ironically, that very Jewish state became the source of a most sinister form of Jew-hatred we now call antizionism.
Antizionism may be flying high these days, but its venom is rooted in history. As Jonathan Eric Lewis writes on his Substack, “Contemporary antizionists, like the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s and the Soviets in the 1970s and 1980s, traffic in conspiratorial tropes about Jews and draw upon a legacy of classical antisemitism.”
For the garden variety Jew-hater, the state of Israel was like hitting the jackpot. Imagine: Instead of going after Jews directly and being called an antisemite, they could now go after a Jewish country and still bash the Jews.
Slowly and inexorably, the Jewish state became the big bad Western oppressor and the Palestinians the poor and oppressed victims longing for their own home.
That antizionist narrative hasn’t changed much through the years; it just got more lethal and intersectional. “Rather than a critique of Zionism,” Lewis writes, “[antizionism] is an all-encompassing ideology of hate that posits that not only is Israel ontologically evil, but that anyone who supports the very existence of Jews living safely in the Land of Israel is guilty of enabling ‘genocide.’”
As if things couldn’t get worse, they did after the massacre of 1200 Jews by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Suddenly, the mighty Jews looked vulnerable like never before.
Unlike 1945, when the Jews did not have a state, this time there was no guilty reprieve after the massacre of Jews. Quite the opposite: Jew-haters and antizionists came out in full fury. This may have been shocking but it wasn’t surprising. Remember that by 2023, Israel was already the target of a global BDS campaign; libelous accusations like genocide and apartheid had become routine; and the Palestinian cause had infiltrated virtually every social justice heart on the planet.
The stage was set, then, for Jew-haters and antizionists to go all in, and they did. The long and ugly war in Gaza, combined with the popularity of the Palestinian cause and the support of a gullible media, triggered an unrelenting aggression on the Jews that flourishes to this day.
Jews are left with a conundrum: Zionism is as hard as ever to defend, but antizionism is as crucial as ever to combat, especially as it encourages more and more animosity toward Jews.
Besides the obvious point that Jews must fight like hell to prevent the kind of violence we saw at Bondi Beach– including demanding repercussions, better intelligence and tighter security– I don’t have any magical solutions.
I do, however, have a starting point: With Jew-hatred becoming so global, we must begin to think globally. The Jewish community must get into the habit of asking two simple questions: What is good for the world and what is bad for the world?
So far, we’ve been focusing on what is good and bad for the Jews and Israel, but with Israel becoming a pariah state, much of the world has shrugged and said: Who cares?
With our backs to the wall, we must raise the stakes and focus more on what is good for the world. Yes, antizionism is a singular sin and a uniquely evil expression of Jew-hatred that targets Jews as Zionists, but it’s much worse than that. It’s also a poison for humanity.
Antizionism is anti-West, anti-America, anti-truth, anti-justice, anti-peace and anti-world. Being a hate movement, it is an affront to the common good. With Zionism now under siege, antizionism has become a hater’s paradise where all angry haters and liars of the world are welcome. That is terrible for the world, and it behooves us to make that case.
If antizionism is bad for humanity, the corollary, as I argued in a recent op-ed, is also true: Zionism is great for humanity, especially the West. As Joshua Hoffman writes on his Substack: “The West is losing something essential that Israelis do best. While many people in the West feel embarrassed by their own countries, Israelis carry deep-seated pride rooted in history, responsibility, and a clear-eyed understanding of reality.”
Israel’s contributions to the planet have become so ubiquitous, we have a tendency to take them for granted. We shouldn’t.
If Zionism is good for the world, so is Judaism. Just as antizionism is rooted in Jew-hatred, Zionism is rooted in Judaism. The two are inseparable. By keeping these two pillars of Jewish identity tightly bonded, we can craft a bold and unapologetic message for the next century that will also boost Jewish pride: Zionism and Judaism are a blessing for the world.
Let’s also be real: It’s important not to downplay the grim reality that Jews around the world are under assault and there are no easy fixes. But if we want any chance against the evil we’re up against, let’s at least put our best feet forward: Jewish and Zionist.
We owe it to those decimated Jewish souls I saw in “Nuremberg.”
