D’you Eat? No, Jew?
It’s everywhere. You see it on the street, in schools, in workplaces, in restaurants, wherever one goes, where – Jew hatred. Label it how you like – antisemitism, anti-Zionism (with or without the hyphen?), anti-Israel, whatever. It is still hating Jews.
When I was growing up in Canada, antisemitism was, of course, there. On the High Holidays, there was a police guard at our conservative synagogue. There was a phone number to call to listen to John Beattie, founder of the Canadian Nazi Party, rant about the evil Jews and what to do with them. Ernst Zundl was a German immigrant eventually convicted and then deported for Holocaust denial. Every now and again, a synagogue would be defaced, somebody would be physically assaulted. Jewish organizations and prominent personalities would go to great lengths to minimize the significance, or the threat, claiming that the act/event “was an isolated incident, and did not reflect the position or attitude of Canadian society at large.” One does not hear that so much these days. Might that be a lesson learned?
My own personal experience was predominantly verbal abuse, and a punch to the back of the head from a guy sitting behind me at a Toronto Marlboros hockey game, who took issue with me and a group of kippah-wearing friends from a Jewish school. He was asked to leave.
It has always been around, everywhere. England had expelled its Jews in 1290 and did not return until the mid-1600s. Yet, Shakespeare still felt that a Jew would be an acceptable boogie man in The Merchant of Venice. There were no Jews in England when Shakespeare lived. But fear, suspicion and reputation remained. (As an aside, one might ask how, with no Jews, there was theatre…)
When Theodor Herzl argued for a Jewish state, he thought that with political independence and the ability to protect themselves, Jews would become a “normal” nation. Like everyone else. He clearly did not foresee the adaptability of Jew-hating. One would think that he would. How easy it was to turn France against a decorated soldier who happened to be a Jew did not tip him off that anti-Jewish sentiment was quite adaptable to circumstances.
What he really did not see coming was how Israel would become one of the – if not the – centre for antisemitic rhetoric and actions. Colonize, genocide, ethnic cleansing, massacres, poisoning water sources, harvesting body organs – what have we not done? But it gets better. I don’t have statistics that bear this out, but I would submit that the most numerous and violent acts of antisemitism occur right here in Israel. On the streets of this country – all over the country – Jews get blown up on buses, shot, stabbed, run over, and stoned. Here, it is not called antisemitism. More sophisticated terms are used – words like resistance and intifada.
While we look for a way to educate and enlighten those who are ignorant, uninformed, or just hate, the flip side may be a little enlightening for us as a state and as a nation: wherever you are, fight the fight, and sometimes win. But remember – as eternal as we are as a people, so too is the hatred that threatens us.