I’ve lost a lot of friends since the war began. I don’t mind as it’s become clear that they were, without exception, bad people. Their antisemitism has put them beyond the boundary of what could ever be considered acceptable.
Reading this, I’m sure that most of them would be offended. They would argue that like so many Jews today, I’m crying antisemitism in order to shut them down. They would tell me that they're standing up for what’s right. How dare I say that because of that, they’re terrible human beings?
That’s to be expected. Nobody likes being told that they’re a terrible person. It’s why hate groups have historically found ways to reframe their awfulness in a more socially acceptable narrative. The Ku Klux Klan has long insisted that they’re not racist murders, they’re simply “proud of their southern heritage.” Skinheads likewise claim that instead of spreading hatred and violence, they’re simply “defending white culture.”
It’s long been a favorite tactic of antisemites. In days past, they would argue that they were not against Jews, they were simply against “the Internationalists”, the “Talmudists” or “the Subversives.” It’s a tactic that has never died and in the current situation is once again transforming itself and taking on a new life.
Since October 7th, antisemitism has reached heights not seen since the Holocaust. Jews are being attacked in record numbers. Universities have turned into dens of Jew-hatred where students no longer feel safe. Major media outlets and political organizations are using their power and influence to assail the Jewish community. Small businesses and multinational corporations alike are actively barring Jews and boycotting Jewish products.
Yet despite all this, the gentiles attacking Jews claim that they are not at all antisemitic. To justify their outrageous claims, they employ a veritable bingo sheet of excuses such as “some of my best friends are Jewish.” “I know Jews who feel the same way I do.” “How can I be antisemitic when Arabs are also Semitic?” “You think that everything’s antisemitic” and “what about the powerful Zionist lobby?”
But the claim most commonly made, and the one that most reshapes the narrative to make antisemites look like the hero is some version of the following: “I’m not against Jews, I’m against genocide.” Expanding this, they will say that they have nothing against Jews as a people or even Israelis, they are instead very rightly against Israel’s senseless slaughter of innocent Palestinian Arabs. They want to make clear that their animosity is not against Jews, but against the actions done by Jews.
How then, they ask in all earnestness, can we accuse them of being antisemitic for that?
On the surface, it’s a reasonable enough challenge. Protesting atrocities is a laudable action by any account. Standing up against evil in whatever form, defending the innocent, and putting down oppressors. These are virtues almost universal in every belief system. Therefore, they cannot understand why they could possibly be viewed as being against Jews for making such statements.
To answer this claim, I would refer these gentiles to look at Jewish history. There are countless examples to choose from, so I will stick with just one. It's a story about the Jews in England during the Middle Ages.
Emerging at a time when the Church and particularly the Crusades were driving increasingly anti-Judaic discourses, blood libels began spreading across England at the beginning of the 12th century. When William of Norwich, a child from Norwich, was discovered dead in the woods in 1144 with stab wounds, the Jews of Norwich were wrongfully accused of ritual murder. Thomas of Monmouth, William's hagiographer, fabricated the idea that there was an international council of Jews that selected the nation where a child would be killed during Easter. He claimed that a Jewish prophecy stated that the annual killing of a Christian child would guarantee the return of the Jews to the Holy Land.
This was followed by similar accusations in Gloucester (1168), Bury St Edmunds (1181), and Bristol (1183). The lie was presented as fact by Matthew Paris and the story was later included by Chaucer in his famous “Canterbury Tales.” The libel formed the basis of the Sir Hugh ballads, which have remained popular down to the present day. The libel was given legitimacy by its support by the Crown, the first time an accusation of ritual killing had been given royal credibility.
Other versions of the libel soon spread. One popular story held that Jews were required to kill gentile children and use their blood to make their Passover matzoth. According to Thomas of Cantimpré, ever since the Jews cried out to Pontius Pilate, "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 27:25), Jews suffered from male menstruation. The only cure was believed to be Christian blood. In the year 1260, Thomas of Monmouth wrote: "It is quite certain that the Jews of every province annually decide by lot which congregation or city is to send Christian blood to the other congregations." It’s thought that the myth of vampires originated with the claim that Jews drink the blood of gentile children.
The response against Jews as a result of the libel was exactly would could be assumed. In 1190 on 16 March, 150 Jews were attacked in York and then massacred when they took refuge in the royal castle, where Clifford's Tower now stands. In Norwich between the 12th and 13th centuries, 17 Jews were murdered. Afterward, their bodies were thrown in a well as punishment for the supposed murders. After the death of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, there were trials and executions of Jews. In 1290, the persecution culminated in the expulsion of all Jews from England, an edict that remained in effect until 1657.
These people were undeniably antisemitic. But let me be clear, they were not antisemitic because they were against murdering children and drinking their blood. Everyone will agree that murdering children and drinking their blood is a bad thing. I will gladly go on record to the effect. Rather, they were antisemitic because they willingly chose to believe the insane story that Jews were in fact murdering Christian children to drink their blood.
Similarly, nobody is claiming that the Jew-haters of today are antisemitic because they are opposed to Jews committing genocide. They are antisemitic because they willingly choose to believe the modern-day libel that Jews are committing genocide.
The contemporary claims are just as fallacious as those made a thousand years ago. And they’re even more unbelievable. Overwhelming evidence as thoroughly debunked every allegation that Israel is committing atrocities in Gaza, Lebanon, or with Palestinian Arabs.
Every allegation against Israel has not only been disproven but disproven with video and/or forensic evidence. Everything has been carefully documented for just such people. Systematically, stories like Israel attacking hospitals, schools, and medical transportation have been proven to be outright lies by Hamas. Meanwhile, insane accusations are made such as Jews harvesting the organs of dead Palestinian Arab children, or purposely shooting them in the head, and are taken for fact without a shred of proof.
Yet every time, these charges are accepted by many as incontrovertible truths. And it is here, exactly here that the denouncement of antisemitism becomes fully justified. To believe that Jews are committing these horrors, either without proof and in most cases with evidence entirely disproving the claim, does indeed make one an antisemite.
Their antisemitism is in practice a double-edged sword. Antisemites are willing to believe anything about Israel without proof and despite proof of the opposite. But they are unwilling to believe anything Israel says despite the evidence.
Taken alone, this singling out of one group for different standards, especially unfair and impossible ones, is the textbook definition of racism. But the absurd nature of the actual claims themselves that they willingly accept as true only compounds the bigotry and discrimination these Jew haters spew out in the name of justice. It also makes believers a combination of terrible. When they believe such blatant lies, they are not only racist but stupid.
I hasten to add that while they focus on Israel, their prejudice is not limited to the Jewish state but extends to Jews around the world. This week Jews in Amsterdam experienced the worst pogrom since the Holocaust. Jews were viciously hunted down in the streets after a soccer match. Jews were kidnapped, rammed with cars, gang beaten, and thrown in the river. In the modern world, they were forced to flee for their lives by angry Muslim mobs, while the police and bystanders calmly looked on. As the attacks went on for hours, Jews found themselves alone and left to fend for themselves.
Almost immediately, antisemites were taking to social media to justify the carnage, arguing that it was the Jews themselves who were at fault. Countless social media posts were quickly picked up and spread by the mainstream media claiming that the Jews were the aggressors and the poor rioters were justifiably protecting themselves from a Jewish assault.
This has been excepted as the official version of events. In spite of numerous videos and eyewitness accounts verifying what really happened. It is also in spite of documented messages from WhatsApp and Telegram showing that the hunt was planned days in advance by the Muslim assailants.
Falling as it did on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, it’s important to remember that on Kristallnacht as well the Nazis blamed the Jews and claimed that it too was a response to Jewish actions.
If anyone made the same claims that are regularly made against Jews against blacks, Hispanics, gays, or any other marginalized group, they would rightly be denounced as a racist. What’s more, they’d be thoroughly mocked for being gullible enough to believe such blatantly obvious falsehoods in the first place.
Antisemites might try to plead ignorance. After all, they might argue, they have been flooded for so long with so much deliberate misinformation, and have had so many lies spewed at them by the trusted news authorities, that it’s only natural that they come to accept what they hear as fact.
Putting aside the value of critical thinking, this argument collapses for anyone in the Western world, who has most likely met a Jew at some point in their lives. The people who are spreading this 21st-century blood libel are the same people who claim that they can’t be anti-Jewish because they have Jews who are their neighbors, friends, and even their family.
If this is true, it means that they have witnessed Jews up close and firsthand. This being the case makes their immorality all the greater. That they could know Jews, that they could have personal meaningful relationships with them, and still believe afterward that they were capable of doing the things that they’re accused of requires a cognitive dissonance that defies all logic. It necessitates someone to completely black out the reality of what they have experienced firsthand to be true. There’s no rational explanation to do so. And so, it becomes clear that the only explanation can be the irrationality of hatred.
Today’s antisemites still try to couch their rationalizations in righteous-sounding language. They’re only fooling themselves. They’re spouting the exact same antisemitism that has always existed while refusing to see where the problem in their words lie. They might never see it but history certainly will.
Perhaps it’s too much to hope that they will somehow gain a sense of understanding and change their ways. But at least their dishonest defenses can be held up to the light and exposed for the world to see. Believing slander about Jews does not make you enlightened. It only makes you an antisemite. And a fool.
Ilan Goodman is a museum collections professional and exhibition curator. He also serves as a rabbi and educator. He made Aliyah to Israel in 2011 and lives with his wife and children in Beit Shemesh