Old Hatreds – Refurbished
There are many nations that face territorial disputes, internal unrest, or military conflicts. Yet few confront enemies like Iran and Hamas who openly and repeatedly proclaim their intention to eliminate them altogether. Israel, by contrast, is engaged in a struggle against organizations and regimes that explicitly call for the destruction of the Jewish state and the murder of its citizens. Its wars are not fought for conquest or empire, but for survival.
Yet Israel alone is routinely singled out for boycotts, sanctions campaigns, and international condemnation. Israeli citizens are denied service in restaurants, harassed at sporting events, ostracized on university campuses, and depicted in public discourse as uniquely malevolent. Israel, the only liberal democracy and open society in the Middle East, is increasingly treated as a pariah by segments of Western society that profess devotion to human rights, pluralism, and tolerance.
This hostility does not arise in a vacuum. Europe, despite its many achievements, has a long and troubling history of persecution directed against Jews. From expulsions and pogroms to ghettos and the Holocaust, anti-Jewish prejudice was woven into the fabric of European civilization for centuries. While modern Europe rightly condemns those chapters of its past, remnants of those attitudes have not disappeared entirely. They have, in many cases, simply found new languages and new targets.
Those who insist, “We do not hate Jews; we only oppose Israel,” are confronted by an uncomfortable reality. If the animosity is directed solely at Israeli government policies, why are Jews in Paris, London, New York, Melbourne, and elsewhere harassed, assaulted, threatened, and held collectively responsible for events occurring thousands of miles away? Why are synagogues vandalized, Jewish students intimidated, and Jewish institutions forced to increase security whenever conflict erupts in the Middle East? The answer is obvious, even if many are reluctant to acknowledge it.
Criticism of any government, including Israel’s, is legitimate and often necessary. Democracies thrive on debate. But what we are witnessing in many quarters goes far beyond criticism. Israel is frequently judged by standards applied to no other nation. Actions considered understandable or even obligatory when undertaken by other countries are denounced as uniquely criminal when undertaken by the Jewish state. The result is a double moral standard that transforms political disagreement into something far more troubling.
The fury directed at Israel for defending its citizens against those who seek their destruction is not always a rational response to policy differences. Too often it reflects the resurrection of an ancient prejudice in modern form. The world’s oldest hatred has been repackaged in the language of social justice, anti-colonialism, and human rights, allowing many to indulge old biases while convincing themselves they are advancing a noble cause.
What passes today as enlightened activism frequently bears an unsettling resemblance to something much older and darker: the demonization of Jews recast for the twenty-first century. The targets may have changed from the individual Jew to the collective Jew among nations, but the underlying impulse remains strikingly familiar. When Israel is denied, rights routinely granted to every other state, when Jews everywhere are held responsible for Israel’s existence, and when hostility toward the Jewish state spills over into hostility toward Jewish people, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish anti-Zionism from the antisemitism it so often resembles.
A society that truly values justice must be capable of recognizing this distinction. It must be able to criticize Israel without demonizing it and oppose policies without condemning an entire people. When that line is crossed, what emerges is not principled activism but prejudice disguised as virtue.
