On September 12, 2011, Benjamin Kerstein experienced his first encounter with anti-Semitism in a college class taught by a young adjunct professor. He writes:
During a long discourse on why America thoroughly deserved what it got [on September 11, the professor] wrote out “ISRAEL” in enormous leaders on the chalkboard—we still used chalkboards back then—and as if it were a pronouncement from on high, he, flush with triumph, declaimed “The Cause!”
To my credit, I think, my first instinct was to put his nose through the back of his head. The second was to attempt to argue with him. This proved a depressing experience, as he unceremoniously told me . . . that in blaming Jews for the murder of 3,000 Americans—an atrocity committed, ironically, by a gang of Jew- and Israel-hating Arabs—he was merely “criticizing Israeli policies.” This was the sum total of what he told me, with copious repetition, over the course of a three-day correspondence. By the end of it, I realized, as I imagine Jews over centuries have realized, one by one, with a feeling of terrible solitude each time, that nothing, absolutely nothing I could say would ever change his mind. . . .
That anti-Semitism is immune to rational argument seems, paradoxically, both breathtakingly obvious and nearly impossible for most Jews to grasp. The overwhelming majority of us appear to believe, despite centuries of evidence to the contrary, that by marshaling the facts and deploying incisive arguments and convincing rhetoric, anti-Semitism can be effectively countered.
What my brief and bitter exchange [with the professor] also taught me was that anti-Semitism is, utterly and forever, immune to rational argument, [and], as a result . . . cannot be reasoned with. It can only be resisted.
Read more on Algemeiner: https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/06/04/toward-a-judaism-of-resistance/