For ages, people have talked about defeating antisemitism. As long as there are Jews, there will be antisemitism. The only thing that the West can do is to keep a lid on it and make it painful for those who wish to express their Jew-hatred publicly or act on it to harm others.
One of the shibboleths of the left from the 1960’s and forward was that education would solve many social problems. If people were knowledgeable of other peoples and cultures, then their prejudices would vanish. The problem is that most forms of bigotry are not based on misinformation or lack of knowledge. Most hatreds are visceral and have little or nothing to do with “facts.” I remember a Klan member decades ago having as part of his sentence a requirement to sit in on a course on black Americans and their contribution to the country. The prisoner told the judge that he would attend the course for lack of choice, but that his opinions about blacks would not budge.
When G-d spoke to Abraham, He told him that anyone who blessed him would be blessed and anyone who cursed him would be cursed. So we see from the very beginning of the Jewish people, the stage was set for people hating Abraham’s Jewish offspring. The excuses for hating Jews are many, most having nothing to do with reality. Some of the popular ones:
- Jews are too rich (come to Israel and you can see poverty that will make you cry)
- The Jews are shady in business-related matters
- Religious-based teachings or concepts that lead to Jew-hatred
- Israel-related reasons to hate not only Israelis but also Jews in general
- A personal interaction with a single Jew leading to hating the whole lot
- Jealousy of apparent rapid Jewish progress from immigrants to business and social successes
In practice, one who hates Jews does not need a particular reason. You look at the massive protests in favor of the Hamas butchers, and you see a lot of non-Muslims participating with keffiyehs and PLO flags.What is their beef with the Jewish people to the point that they join in with those who want to wipe minimally the Israeli Jews off of the face of the Earth and possibly all Jews? They are too ignorant to realize that their Islamist friends wish to come for them as well, after the Jews.
Some small percentage of antisemites change their views, and not because Jews have won many Nobel Prizes or invented many of the technologies or drugs that are a part of their lives. One of the most famous is Hassan Yousef, the son of a founder of Hamas who became a key informant for Israel and saved many Jewish and Arab lives during the second intifada. But most antisemites stay as they are. Some points not well known is that the sister of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas sitting pretty in Qatar, has for a long time been receiving cancer treatments in Israel. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza and the ostensible planner of the10/7 massacre, was previously treated in Israel for cancer. Israel has taken in hundreds of non-combatants wounded in Syria and treated them at world-class hospitals. Has any of these actions reduced the antisemitism of those involved? Obviously not. Again, Jew-hatred is visceral, and one of the Wehrmacht’s biggest fears around 1944 was that young recruits had never seen or known a Jew, and it was becoming harder to get them fired up to make war against a people who were about as common as a unicorn.
So if antisemitism is like a cancer that cannot be defeated, what is the prescription for the West? The disease can only be contained. We have heard a few stories of people losing their jobs for openly supporting Hamas’ grotesque actions. Companies are not bound by First Amendment concerns. A person can be an antisemite, but not at our company. The same with universities. I have exchanged emails with the president of Harvard. What she needs to do and I know that she will not do it is to go through hundreds of hours of closed-circuit video and start throwing out students who clearly expressed genocidal intentions towards Jews including fellow students or harassed Jewish students going about their business. There is nothing that a student at a high-end university fears more than damage to his or her economic future. Getting booted from Harvard or Yale would pretty much end their dream job at Goldman Sachs or Skadden Arps. Again, that is what needs to be done, but I doubt that our weak university leaders, who for decades tolerated left-leaning cosplay of their students, will throw students out as a warning to the remainder that there is a price for public antisemitic behavior on campus.
The West needs to reduce immigration from countries where antisemitism and anti-Westernism are endemic. It also needs to throw out anyone involved in the marches who is in a host country illegally or violated the terms of his/her visa. But what about local citizens? What can the authorities do with Mr. and Ms. Goodwimple of Kent who held a sign reading, “By any means necessary!” in the capital of CCTV coverage, London? The UK, the US and all other Western countries have robust anti-racism laws, and that banner clearly implies killing Jews by any means—as Hamas did on 10/7—in order to be rid of them.These people need to be prosecuted no less than the illegally-present Islamist who held the other half of the banner. Do they know what “any means” means? I saw a video this morning of Hamas terrorists firing an anti-tank Kornet missile at a private car in the city of Sderot on 10/7. This missile is meant to incapacitate a 70-ton Abrams tank. The car and its passengers were incinerated and ripped to shred by shrapnel
Don’t expect the British or anyone else to tackle their citizens’ very public antisemitism. The London police were supposed to arrest anyone who mentioned “jihad” in the protests, but they came to the conclusion that there are five meanings to the word and one of them is personal growth; as such, they could not make any arrests of people foaming at the mouth to kill the Jews in the name of jihad.
This is not a time for weak half-measures or declarations of intent with no teeth. The future of Jews in Western countries is on the line. I do not believe that our current crop of leaders has the will or the moral clarity to make those who wish ill-will on the Jewish people pay with their freedom, income, or presence in the West. Antisemitism cannot be defeated, but if we have leaders with the courage to act, it can be contained and made very painful for its public practitioners. Losing a job, getting kicked out of a tier 1 college,being sent back to Islamabad, or being socially shunned—these punishments may be enough to keep antisemitism at the dining room table and not outside on the streets. If the cancer cannot be destroyed, let’s work together to make it as small as possible.