Anti-Semitism is Always Wrong

Mourners attend a funeral for the four Jews murdered in January 2015 at a kosher grocery store in Paris.

Ziv Koren / POLARIS

Assaults on Jews have taken a marked upsurge in the past year. The most flagrant examples — such as the killing of four Jews in a kosher grocery store in Paris this January, or the attack in February on the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen — are reported in the media. But what is rarely reported, and even less integrated into the thinking of many people on the left, is the defacement of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and other sites of the Jewish community. According to a Pew Foundation report released this year, harassment of Jews has risen steadily in the seven years that Pew has been tracking vandalism of religious property, desecration of sacred texts, and violent assaults against Jews in 198 countries.

Some on the left dismiss these acts as merely an expression of anger at the State of Israel’s brutality against Gaza in 2014 and its continued oppression of Palestinians. Indeed, this is part of the picture. But that is no excuse — any more than bad behavior among some other minority group would be an excuse for random assaults on members of that population. This is what racism looks like — and it is as ugly when it is directed against Jews as when it is directed against African Americans.

The hatred of Jews was fostered in part by Christianity’s teaching that “the Jews” were responsible for the killing of Jesus. This teaching led to systematic assaults every Easter on Jews throughout the Christian world. Even though the Catholic Church abandoned that explicit teaching at Vatican II, it has never adopted a curriculum to teach its adherents about its own disgraceful role in perpetuating this anti-Semitism throughout the centuries.

Ironically, the rise in anti-Semitism strengthens the hands of the most right-wing elements in Israel. As Jewish fear rises, the need for Israel as “the only safe haven” seems more plausible to many, and criticism of Israel can then (mistakenly) be seen as anti-Semitism. It is time for liberals and progressives to engage in a more explicit campaign against anti-Semitism, even as we correctly criticize Israeli policies toward Palestinians and insist that Israel use its resources to create an economically and politically viable Palestinian state that includes both the West Bank and Gaza.