Today, May 7, is exactly seven months since the Hamas massacre of October 7, the largest massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, the commemoration of the extermination of one third of world Jewry by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Hamas has the same intentions the Nazis had, to wipe out the Jewish people. However, thanks to the miraculous rebirth of the State of Israel and the creation of a powerful army to protect the people of Israel, Hamas does not currently have the capability of replicating the Nazis’ genocide of six million Jews.
This makes a lot of people very upset.
The continued prevalence of antisemitism has led to an international campaign to stop Israel from eliminating Hamas and its genocidal threat. Defenders of the indefensible like to claim that they are merely protesting Israeli policy or anti-Zionist, not antisemitic. But what would the anti-Israel campaign look like if all antisemitism was removed from it?
If I could snap my fingers and eliminate all antisemitism from the world in an instant, the world would be a very different place.
Take the recent tent encampments established on college campuses across the US. With antisemitism removed as a motivating factor, there would be no calls for “every day” to be October 7, no signs pointing to Jewish students calling on Hamas to kill them next, no chants of “we are Hamas,” no intimidation against Jewish students and faculty.
Without antisemitism, there is good reason to believe that these protests would not even exist in the first place, as there would be no reason to support a genocidal terrorist organization that butchers babies, rapes women before executing them, and kidnaps innocents. These misguided students might be able to turn their energies to their studies or to more worthy causes such as the real genocide being committed against the Uyghurs in China or the latest crimes against humanity being committed in Sudan.
In a world without antisemitism, the United Nations might actually start to fulfill its mission of preventing conflict and fostering cooperation. The General Assembly would finally condemn Hamas for the atrocities of October 7 instead of overwhelmingly passing every motion against Israel that comes up. The Human Rights Council would end its permanent agenda item singling out Israel, the only country in the world to be singled out in such a manner, and may finally start turning its attention towards the real human rights abusers that sit in the council.
If antisemitism vanished from the world, we would never again hear statements from the likes of Francesca Albanese or Navi Pillay that Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Hamas or see books from Albanese blaming Israel for the massacre Hamas committed.
In an antisemitism-free world, fallen human rights NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International would be freed from the shackles of Jew-hate that lead them to single out and libel the world’s only Jewish State and to return to their original mission of fighting real human rights abuses.
Women’s organizations around the world would end their silence on the rapes committed by Hamas and end the ‘me too – unless you’re a Jew’ phenomenon.
Without antisemitism, the calls of “death to Israel,” “from the river to the sea,” and celebrations of October 7 would never again occur.
In the absence of antisemitism, Israel would be praised for its unprecedented efforts to prevent civilian casualties and the historically low combatant to civilian casualty ratio in Gaza. The March operation at the al Shifa Hospital, where 200 terrorists were killed and not a single civilian died, would enter the history books as a shining example of how a moral army fights its wars.
With no Jew-hatred, it would be unfathomable for the International Court of Justice to consider charging Israel with genocide or for the International Criminal Court to consider issuing arrest warrants against Israeli officials. South Africa would immediately drop its charges and perhaps devote the time, money, and energy wasted a the Hague to salvaging its failed state.
An antisemitism-free world would, in short, be a world in which the evil of Hamas was universally recognized and in which Israel would have far more freedom to do what is necessary to stop the would-be Nazis of today.
Moreover, a world free of the hatred of Jews would no longer see Jewish people or institutions attacked by so-called ‘anti-Zionists.’ No synagogues in Teaneck, New Jersey would be targeted by hundreds of demonstrators. No Holocaust memorials in London would be covered up or visibly Jewish men threatened with arrest to “protect” them from the anti-Israel mobs. No elderly Jewish men countering anti-Israel protesters would be struck on the head with megaphones and killed, nor would Jewish student journalists be stabbed in the eye with Palestinian flags.
Perhaps most importantly, in a world in which antisemitism no longer existed at all, the Arab-Israeli conflict would instantly end, as antisemitism is the root cause of the entire conflict.
In this utopian world in which Jew-hatred was nothing but a bad memory, Hamas would have no reason to exist. Instead of building rockets and tunnels, the residents of Gaza could turn their coastal enclave into a paradise with a bustling economy and a high standard of living.
It would not only be Hamas and Gaza that would be completely transformed. The Palestinian Authority and its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, would as well.
Without antisemitism, the ‘pay for slay’ policy would be seen for the evil and waste that it is and be quickly ended. The constant incitement to murder Jews would cease to exist, and there would be no more talk of a Jewish threat to the Al Aqsa Mosque or condemnations of Jews simply visiting the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. The PA would stop calling for a Judenrein state and with their safety guaranteed even in a Palestinian state, the settlements would no longer be an issue.
If the world had truly learned the lessons of the Holocaust, if the slogan “never again” was ever more than empty words, then perhaps this dream would be closer to reality today. But alas, these lessons were not learned, and we live in a world in which antisemitism is commonplace and protected, in which many seek to protect and defend those who openly attempt to finish the job Hitler started, in which Jews are accused of genocide for the crime of not laying down and dying.
Antisemitism is a disease for which there is no cure. That is why decent people must continue to fight for the truth and against hate every day. There is no magic wand to end Jew-hatred. The only thing that can be done is to confront it and bring it into the light of day, so the whole world can see how ugly and disgusting antisemitism truly is.
Gary Willig is a member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.