Psychology, Medicine, Physics, Politics, Sociology, Philosophy, Judaism, etc.
Overlooked: most commonly, Jew-hatred is fed and spread by regular, good people
It can easily be prevented by education of basic facts
Nasty, blatant Jew-hatred is so outrageous and dangerous that we easily overlook the more innocent-looking form that spreads among billions. That category is not (meant to be) Antisemitic but easily feeds Jew-hatred.
Philosemitism
Some people can’t get enough of telling the world how fantastic Jews are. Unfortunately, if they are ill-informed, they do more harm than good.
‘Jews are rich, brilliant, and very special. And they all play the violin beautifully.’ Such a ‘positive’ perpetuation of stereotypes, exaggerations, and untruths can easily flip to the radical opposite. When only one Jew turns out to be less of a saint than proclaimed, suddenly Jews are not smart but shrewd, not rich but leeches, and not very special but too weird and evil to understand and empathize with.
Claiming, with much admiration, that they are ‘chosen by the L^rd Himself to be His favorite’ can fuel jealousy, such a potent part of Jew-hatred. In truth, this chosenness only means that He has higher expectations of Jews, leading to higher responsibility and harsher punishment when not living up to it. Only when Jews follow their higher Calling do they equal Gentiles just being good people. G^d is fair and shows no favoritism.
‘Only three years after the Holocaust, they built their own State.’ Thanks for the compliment, but modern Zionism started over 200 years ago. A major reason the UN in 1947 accepted a sovereign Jewish State was that Europe and the US refused to absorb the 250,000 Jewish concentration camp survivors—so shameful, the total moral collapse of the Western-Gentile world. But classical Zionism started four thousand years ago.
Some Jews are rich, and even fewer are very rich, but most Jews live paycheck-to-paycheck. When I first heard, as a kid, that ‘all Jews are rich,’ I thought, ‘Nice, but where’s the money?’ My father grew up dirt-poor.
‘Jews are half a percent of humanity but acquired 20% of all Nobel Prizes; that shows how smart they are.’ An elderly gentleman in Amsterdam once told me, ‘All Jews are geniuses.’ I said, ‘You shouldn’t have to feed all Jews who are not.’ He replied, ‘You’re right. Before the war, I had three Jewish boys in my class and they each were dumber than a box of rocks.’
The basic reason why many Jews do so well in academics is not because they are smarter on average but because their culture says that a good education is important and that life is precious, and the fear of persecution presses them on to work harder. (Just like many Chinese in their diaspora.) The Nobel Prize is only awarded to people who are still alive, so longevity is important too, which happens more easily if you value it. This way, it also has a bias for people in democracies, where most Jews live.
There is some truth in that Jews on average are ‘extraordinarily fantastic,’ but that is true for every oppressed group, like women, US Blacks, etc. The art is not to exaggerate; don’t say ‘all’ or ‘most,’ and don’t say Gentiles are less, but brag about things that are not in the set of stereotypes, like the beauty of Hebrew or our art of cooking from different Jewish cultures.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes self-perpetuate. You see five Jews, two of them well-to-do, and you say, ‘You see, Jews are rich.’ You hear a Jew play violin beautifully, so you say, ‘They all play violin beyond description.’ You see ten Jews, two of them in religious garb, and you think, ‘All Jews are Orthodox.’
Not all Jews grew up in a close-knit, warm family. Not all Jews are happy and humbled to be Jewish. Not all Jews know Hebrew. Nasty Jews exist.
Don’t stay silent about the stereotypes—most of them are bad. Name them, expose them, and then contradict them with subtle facts to yourself and others—also when you’re Jewish yourself.
Advice
Leading, caring Gentiles, often the best of friends of Jews and Israel, seem to find it hard to treat Israeli Jews with equality and respect. So many outside politicians and foreign ambassadors tell Israeli Jews what to think or do. Do Israelis lack morality or intelligence? Certainly not! They don’t hear how disrespectful they sound, giving unrequested advice all the time. It’s the old supremacy that Jews are morally inferior (Untermenschen).
The news world is obsessed with Jews, especially in the area of trouble. No places on earth have as many foreign ‘specialized’ correspondents as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. What the viewers often don’t know is that many of these reporters are biased against Jews or Zionism, so much so that they can’t describe what really is going on here. Some of them certainly and clearly are hateful, but some of them seem unaware of their hostility.
In the past two years, after we were mercilessly slaughtered by Chamas & Co., many Gentile friends assumed that we would enter Gaza and in a blind fury take revenge. That Jews have a religion of revenge and Christians one of love is an old, nasty stereotype used to be all but loving toward Jews. We did no such thing. The IDF waited 10 days in order to strategize and not fall into all the traps Chamas must have prepared. The army went after the terrorists, sparing the civilians as much as possible. The cleanest war in human history in terms of collateral damage, completely twisted as cruel genocide without a thread of proof, parroting the terrorist propaganda.
Good for those Gentiles who sincerely are against genocide. But why do they believe terrorists and their propaganda over Jews? It smacks of the old stereotype that you can’t trust Jews. In Israel, no misdeed stays hidden because there are ultra-left-wing and ultra-right-wing Jews everywhere: in the army, in the parliament, and in the media. Most of the Western world suffers under a public flood of fake news (Internet, social media) and homogenized and monolithic media conglomerates, while Israel has the most diverse reporting in the world. If you really want to know what goes on here, avoid the extremists with an agenda and read the Israeli mainstream media, so not just Haaretz (ultra-left) or WIN (ultra-right).
Last but not least, the accusing Jews—take what they say with a grain of salt. Some Jews certainly justify anything any Jew does or says, but many are hypercritical of anything by another Jew. Notice the stress from Jew-hatred that leads to infighting. Also, Jews are trained to be a light unto the Nations, and we typically care about anyone, even our sworn enemies.
Don’t be afraid to say ‘the wrong thing’ or to be accused of sounding like an Antisemite. You’ll make mistakes; say sorry, improve, and continue to stand with the Jews. ‘Making mistakes is the privilege of those who act.’
Well-meaning Gentiles as outsiders can play a terrific role in stopping Jewish infighting and showing all Jews that they firstly should respect all Jews. (As for criminal suspects, in the modern era, we don’t humiliate or curse them or spit at them, but we bring them to trial to face justice.)
Read also: ‘Jews are not a race or religion,’ ‘encyclopedic overview,’ ‘working class,’ ‘misinformed,’ ‘Woke,’ and ‘war crimes.’
Related Topics
