By several metrics, hostility toward Jews appears to be on the rise, both in the U.S. and in the world at large. Alvin Rosenfeld considers the origins and nature of anti-Semitism with an eye toward better confronting its present manifestations:
There are two important sources of anti-Semitism. One, popularized in modern times by the malicious 1903 Russian hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is the figure of the conspiratorial Jew. The other is his figurative brother, the diabolical Jew. Bring the two together, and you have the delusional but abiding portrait of Jews as a community inherently hostile to non-Jews, intent on bringing endless suffering to mankind—a community that must be dealt with decisively before it is too late.
Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, . . . wrote. “All Jews by virtue of their birth and their race are part of an international conspiracy against National Socialist Germany. They want its defeat and annihilation and do all in their power to bring it about.” But if all Jews are guilty simply because they are Jewish, it does not take much analysis to see that the Jews are guilty not because they have done something wrong, but that they have done something wrong because they are guilty.
That key sources of anti-Semitism have remained constant over the centuries is not to downplay the seriousness of the situation today.
Rosenfeld makes several suggestions about how American Jews can confront the threats against them, the last of which applies to the “particularly virulent strain of anti-Semitism [that] holds not just the Jews but the Jewish state guilty.”
American Jews must recognize that the wellbeing of the state of Israel is fundamental to their own thriving. Many Jews now appear to feel embarrassed by Israel, particularly as the country seems to be going through a populist moment similar to those we have seen all across the world’s advanced economies. . . . We would do well to invest considerable resources in making an unapologetic case in our own communities and in non-Jewish communities for the proposition that Israel, for all its faults and all the difficulties in reaching a modus vivendi with the Palestinians, has fulfilled the long-held Jewish dream of national self-determination. No apology is needed for this extraordinary accomplishment. It’s one to be proud of.
Read more on Sapir: https://sapirjournal.org/antisemitism/2023/08/the-jews-are-guilty-reflections-on-antisemitism-old-and-new/