Can Good People Be Antisemites?

A Jewish American friend recently asked me an important question.

“My friends are turning against Israel,” he said. “They aren’t antisemites. They aren’t evil. Do you really think all those people are wrong?”

Yes. They can be.

Not because they are stupid or evil. And not because every criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

But because large numbers of good, intelligent people can share a false perception of Jews.

That is not merely a theoretical possibility. It is part of the history of antisemitism.

The word “antisemitism” itself was coined only in 19th-century Germany. Hatred and persecution of Jews are thousands of years older.

Ancient Greeks did not call themselves antisemites. Yet Jews were persecuted for their religion. Ancient Romans did not use the term either, yet Jews were massacred by them. The Inquisition did not call itself antisemitic, yet Jews were persecuted, tortured, forced to convert or expelled.

Soviets did not regard themselves as antisemitic. Yet Jews could be persecuted as religious or bourgeois enemies, “rootless cosmopolitans” or alleged enemies of the state.

The ideology and vocabulary changed. Sometimes even Jews themselves embraced the prevailing ideology, sincerely believing that abandoning Jewish particularity was progress and ultimately better for Jews.

What remained was the tendency to construct a negative image of the Jew appropriate to the ideology of the age.

And that is an important point about antisemitism that is easily missed: it does not require everyone to be evil. It requires the stereotype to become normal.

For centuries, Jews were widely portrayed in European society as dirty, dishonest, alien, greedy, cowardly or somehow less fully human. Many who accepted such images were not monsters. They were ordinary people; some were compassionate, highly educated, and capable of great works of literature, music and philosophy. They could possess many admirable qualities and still accept ideas about Jews that we now recognize as profoundly wrong.

The problem was not simply the character of each individual. It was the surrounding culture’s picture of the Jew.

Could something similar happen again?

This is where contemporary anti-Zionism becomes difficult.

I am not suggesting that criticism of Israel is antisemitic. The question is what happens when criticism stops being about particular Israeli policies or actions and becomes a generalized picture of Israelis, Zionists or the Jewish state as such.

Today Israelis are increasingly portrayed as racist, aggressive, colonial, supremacist and inherently oppressive. Of course Israelis can be racist. Of course Israeli governments can act wrongly. Of course Palestinians can be victims of terrible suffering.

The question is whether a negative image can become so pervasive that it ceases to be an assessment of particular actions and becomes a stereotype of the Jewish collective.

A person who holds such a view may not hate Jews at all. He may sincerely believe, “I am fighting racism.” He may have learned from the Holocaust that he must stand with the persecuted. He may genuinely care about Jews.

That may make him particularly resistant to the suggestion that he could be participating in antisemitism.

But this is precisely the historical lesson worth considering. People do not have to recognize themselves as prejudiced in order to participate in a prejudice. A widespread stereotype does not feel like a stereotype to the person who has absorbed it. It feels like reality.

But surely they cannot all be wrong?

If millions of people have reached the same conclusion about Israel, can they really all be mistaken?

The fact that a belief is widespread is evidence that something has influenced millions of people. It is not evidence that the belief is true. History contains many examples of societies reaching widespread conclusions about minorities that later generations recognize as profoundly mistaken.

The relevant question therefore isn’t whether all these people are evil, or even whether all of them are antisemites. It is whether a large number of decent people could be participating in a widespread stereotype without realizing it.

That possibility deserves consideration precisely because the people involved may be decent.

So when someone says, “I love Jews. I just oppose Zionism,” the useful response is not necessarily, “You’re an antisemite.” That simply invites a battle over the person’s moral identity.

A more productive question is: What are you saying about Jews, Israel and Zionism—and would you apply the same standards to other peoples and national movements?

Another is: What would happen to the Jews living in Israel if the political program you support actually succeeded?

These questions matter because roughly half the world’s Jews live in Israel. Whatever one’s views about Israeli governments or particular Zionist policies, delegitimizing Jewish national self-determination has consequences for millions of Jews who actually live there.

The point is not that everyone who opposes Israel is an antisemite. It is not that every criticism of Zionism is antisemitic. And it is certainly not that people who have become hostile to Israel should simply be shamed.

The point is more unsettling.

Good people can be wrong about Jews.

They have been before.

And if a negative stereotype becomes sufficiently widespread, people can participate in it while sincerely believing that they are acting out of compassion, justice and opposition to racism.

So perhaps the question for someone who sincerely believes he is standing against racism is not, “Am I an antisemite?”

It is: “Could I be participating in a widespread stereotype about Jews without realizing it?”

And then one final question: If this kind of stereotype was once used against European Jews, would it be fair to apply its modern equivalent to Israeli Jews today?

That is not an accusation.

It is an invitation to look again.