Antisemites Only Prove That We Are Right
The late Prof. Shalom Rosenberg, one of Israel’s leading intellectuals, once said that during the Holocaust, the devil itself came down to earth, pointed at the Jews, and acknowledged: “You have chosen us from among all the nations.” In doing so, he pointed to the paradox at the heart of antisemitism. The depth of hatred directed at Jew actually points to the uniqueness of the Jewish people. The irrationality of this hatred is the other side of the coin of the idea of Jewish chosenness. If so many people have hated the Jews for so many generations, perhaps there really is something special about the Jewish people.
The Sages expressed this idea in a teaching about the name Mount Sinai: “Why was it called Sinai? Because it is the mountain from which hatred descended upon the nations of the world” (Shabbat 89a). At Sinai, the Jewish people became a treasured and distinct people. They distinguished themselves from other nations through the story they told about themselves and through the laws that gave expression to it. The Torah made them different from all other peoples. In a world that celebrated power, beauty, and physical strength, the Jewish people offered a culture that placed charity, knowledge, and the spirit at its center. Against kings who sought to rule over others, the Israelites spoke in the name of freedom. And against societies that treated the foreigner as inferior, the Jewish people taught that every human being was created in the image of God.
The covenant at Sinai and hatred of the Jewish people came together. Of course, we do not want it that way. As Jews, we strive for peace. Our greatest prophets envisioned a day when all humanity would live together in harmony. But we also recognize the reality of an imperfect world in which hatred of Jews still exists. Antisemites may not realize it, but through their hatred they actually testify to the enduring nature of the Jewish people. As Prof. Rosenberg said: they point to us and say, “You have chosen us from among all the nations.”
But this is not only a matter of religious tradition. The same paradox can be found in the way antisemites relate to Israeli nationalism.
In interviews with the media, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said that he opposes Israel as a state with an ethnic identity, i.e. as a Jewish state. In his view, a democratic state should not favor one population on the basis of ethnicity but should be open to everyone. Behind this position lies a common Islamist anti-Zionist argument: that Judaism is merely a religion and not also a nationality. From this perspective, Islam denies Jews any historical claim to the Land of Israel. Many anti-Zionist voices around the world have joined this argument.
We do not need elaborate deep arguments to expose the contradiction in Mamdani’s position, as well as in that of anti-Zionist Islam. The people who contradict them most clearly are the same antisemitic anti-Zionists who are shouting in the streets “free Palestine.” Who are these protesters addressing their arguments to? Whom are they targeting? They are not attacking only Israel’s representatives around the world, but Jews wherever they are. At times, they even target Jews who are themselves among Israel’s harshest critics.
But why? What connection does a Jewish student studying at a university in the United States, Britain, or France have to the way the State of Israel behaves? What responsibility do innocent Jews living their private lives in Spain, Italy, or Germany have for what is happening in Israel?
If Judaism were really only a religion, there should be no connection between them—just as a Christian living in South America is not responsible for actions carried out in Europe, and a Muslim living in Indonesia is not responsible for terrorism carried out by Iran. But anti-Zionists apparently see things differently. When they target Jews around the world, they are actually admitting that Mamdani is wrong: Jews are connected not only by religious faith, but also by a shared national identity. There is therefore an identity-based connection between Jews everywhere and the State of Israel.
If so, by targeting Jews, they are actually affirming the existence of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people – the very entity whose legitimacy they seek to deny. A paradox, indeed.
It was Theodor Herzl who argued in the late nineteenth century that antisemites understand us better than we understand ourselves. We are a nation, and therefore we need a state. That truth still resonates today. In the face of every display of hatred toward Jews around the world, we can answer with a single sentence: In your hatred of us, you are simply acknowledging the truth about who we are. We are a distinct nation. And therefore we have basic right you seek to deny us, that the State of Israel is the state of the Jewish people.
