No, South Park, We Are Not to Blame for Jew-Hatred

In a recent episode of South Park, Sheila Broflovski, the Jewish mother character, flies to Israel to confront the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In the middle of the war against Hamas, she accuses him of fueling antisemitism, declaring: “You’re making life for Jews miserable.”

The satire lands on a poisonous trope—that Jews bring hatred upon themselves. And while it’s just a cartoon, the message is deadly serious. Too often, this is precisely what Jews are told.

The Double Standard

Notice the double standard.

No one blames Palestinians for making people hate Palestinians because their leaders and militias carried out the most barbaric massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. No one blames them for gleefully butchering families, for raping women, for taking children hostage.

Nor does anyone suggest that Palestinians worldwide should face acts of hate because of these atrocities. Rightly so. Our society would never tolerate it. Collective blame is condemned as unjust and immoral.

The same principle has applied after Islamist terrorist attacks. After 9/11 in New York, the Bataclan massacre in Paris, the Charlie Hebdo killings, the London Tube bombings, the Madrid train bombings, and countless others, governments and media outlets rushed to insist: Do not blame all Muslims.

And that was the correct message. Collective guilt is wrong.

But when it comes to Jews, the rule changes. Suddenly, Jewish existence, Jewish statehood, Jewish defense provoke lectures: You brought this hatred on yourselves.

When Jewish Leaders Repeat the Lie

It is especially disheartening when Jewish leaders lend legitimacy to this accusation. There are rabbis, community figures, and intellectuals who, too often, tell their own communities that if antisemitism rises, it must be because of Israel’s behavior.

Instead of condemning those who discriminate against Jews, those who impose a cruel litmus test for Jewish acceptance—“You may be Jewish, but only if you denounce Israel”—they scold their own people.

I would caution people from listening to “prophets,” whether Jewish or non-Jewish, who have used their platforms for decades to point out the supposed wrongs of the Jewish state while remaining silent about the wrongs of those who demonize it, who seek its destruction, or who justify the ostracization of Jews who see their identity tied to their ancestral homeland. An Irish-American may look to Ireland as his homeland, and an Italian-American to Italy, regardless of its politics. So too for the Jew with Israel. To demand otherwise is a double standard—and to reinforce it is a betrayal.

This is a betrayal of leadership. To blame Jews for Jew-hatred is no different from blaming a victim for his own abuse.

The Old Theology of Blame

The roots of this thinking run deep. In rabbinic tradition, suffering was often explained as the result of sin. The Talmud teaches: “When a person sees suffering befall him, let him examine his deeds” (Berakhot 5a). Midrashim go further, linking specific calamities to specific transgressions. Some sages divided suffering into categories—if it prevented Torah and mitzvot, it was seen as punishment; if not, it might even be considered a sign of God’s love.

This was a way for our ancestors to make sense of catastrophe, to impose meaning on exile, destruction, and persecution. It was a theology of survival, a way of insisting that Jewish destiny was still tied to God’s covenant, even in the darkest times.

But we must be careful about applying that theology to modern history. Do we dare say that the Holocaust was punishment for Jewish failure? That Hitler was the rod of divine anger? God forbid. No serious Jewish leader today would frame the Shoah in those terms. And yet, when leaders suggest that today’s antisemitism is “caused” by Israel’s actions, they are recycling the same logic: that Jewish suffering must somehow be our fault.

It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now. The Holocaust was not our fault. The pogroms were not our fault. The massacres were not our fault. And today’s antisemitism is not our fault.

Pagani’s Plea

This is why Jewish musician and artist Herbert Pagani’s 1975 Plea for My Land remains so powerful. Confronted with contempt for Jews and their state, he rejected pity and self-blame. He declared, defiantly: “I defend myself, therefore I am.”

Pagani understood that Jewish survival is not conditional on pleasing others. It is not dependent on proving to the nations that we are sufficiently docile, apologetic, or useful. Jewish survival depends on Jewish strength, Jewish pride, Jewish continuity, Jewish defense.

And this is new to the Jew. For two thousand years in exile, our survival did not rest in our own hands. It rested on the goodwill—or whim—of kings, rulers, and governments. Our protection was conditional, always precarious, and dependent on others.

Israel changed that equation. Israel restored to the Jewish people the right, and the power, to defend ourselves. What was once alien to the diaspora Jew—self-reliance in matters of survival—has become the cornerstone of Jewish sovereignty.

That is precisely why some Jews, still shaped by a diaspora mentality, recoil from it. They cannot imagine Jewish existence on our own terms, without apology. But that is what Israel represents.

Antisemitism Belongs to the Antisemite

The South Park caricature only dramatizes a lie that already circulates in polite society: that Jews must manage antisemitism by changing our behavior. But antisemitism belongs entirely to the antisemite. It is his sickness, not ours. As author Ben M. Freeman wrote, “Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem. But there is something that we can control: We can control how we see ourselves.”

Our task is not to explain away hatred but to resist it, to defend ourselves, and to strengthen our peoplehood. Instead of berating Israel, Jewish leaders should denounce those who discriminate, those who hold double standards, those who create conditions in which Jews must prove their worthiness to belong.

We must respond to antisemitism with Pagani’s clarity. No, we will not apologize for existing. No, we will not take responsibility for the hatred of others. No, we will not bow our heads and pretend that Jew-hatred is provoked by us.

We defend ourselves. We exist. We endure. Like any other people, we must not apologize for being who we are. We are Am Israel, the people of Israel. And no matter what the cartoonists of South Park or the critics in real life may say, Jew-hatred is not Netanyahu’s fault. It is not our fault. It never was. It never will be.