To make sense of Israel’s trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, Marco Roth turns to the trial of the moneylender Shylock, and Shakespeare’s portrayal of Jews’ supposed mercilessness:

The Merchant of Venice offers up a theater of justice in the case of a Jew who is both wronged and vengeance-seeking. This Jew operates in a hypocritical Gentile world governed by Gentile laws both written and unwritten, according to which the audience judges the Jew’s case according to its own prejudices. In this way The Merchant of Venice continues to provide a paradigm for certain ideas of justice and fairness, both for Jews and about Jews.

Whatever the merits and measure of Shylock’s anger, the play also continuously invites us to find him repulsive, to jeer from his first line (“Three thousand ducats, well.”). We are to despise him—for this is what it means to be a Jew: to be despised, not for anything in particular but precisely for nothing in particular, only because a Jew.

I would suggest that a lot of what Jews have recently perceived as anti-Semitism—at least from institutions and otherwise mild-mannered advocates of boycott and sanctions and shunning—would be better understood more specifically as Shylockism, a subtype of anti-Semitism that often does not feel like “Jew hating” to those engaged in it.

Shylockism often comes across as a wish to save Jews from themselves, most especially from Jewish anger, however righteous, by making them into something else, either through assimilation/conversion (as with Shylock’s daughter, Jessica) or through an extra-legal but pseudo-legal framework—adherence to a higher law—that will ensure a happy end for everyone, once the Jews have renounced their claims.

Shylockism also effectively names the persistence of a certain kind of imaginary Jew who lives in the heads of Gentiles. [For instance]: Josep Borrell, the European Union’s head of foreign policy, used a visit to Kibbutz Be’eri to ask Israelis, “not to be consumed by rage.” . . . Borrell is basically saying “don’t be so Old Testament.”

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.