The Banality of Antisemitism

Hannah Arendt wrote famously about the banality of evil. She was referring to how ordinary people could perpetrate extraordinary evil. Her ideas arose from her witnessing of Adolf Eichman’s trial in Jerusalem. Bureaucrats could be Nazis. Your next-door neighbor could be their sympathizers, and your betrayers. They could also acquiesce by their silence.

Today we are witnessing a new chapter in the banality of antisemitism. Not the overt violent antisemitism of terrorists, but the covert “quiet” antisemitism of intellectuals and their accomplices. Not the classic anti-religious and racist tropes of the past, but the novel vilification of Jews and the Jewish State as persecutors.

As Noah Feldman puts it, “The core of this new antisemitism lies in the idea that Jews are not a historically oppressed people seeking self-preservation but instead oppressors: imperialists, colonialists, and even white supremacists”.

This new doctrine is a deceptively toxic brew of half-truths, mis-directions, revisionism, and willful ignorance.

The new antisemitism has been lying just below for some time, sporadically bubbling up to the surface in the guise of anti-Zionism. Then it exploded, in one of the great ironies of our time, after Oct. 7. As we approach the first anniversary of that tragedy it shows no sign of abating.

As heinous as the Hamas attacks were, straight-faced academics and protestors alike intone that Israel is not innocent; that Israel somehow deserved what happened because of its oppression going back the Nakba of 1948; that the Jewish usurpation of Palestine is centuries if not millennia old; that it is the Palestinians who have the right to return “from the river to the sea”; that the Zionists have now turned into genocidal avengers.

Here’s my J’Accuse, when the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is crossed:

If you deny Israel’s right to exist…you are an antisemite.

If you deny Israel’s right to self-defense…you are an antisemite.

If you fail to condemn the evil of Hamas… you are an are antisemite.

If you tacitly support those who want to eradicate Israel… you are still an antisemite.

If you distort history to fit only your anti-Zionist narrative… you are still an antisemite.

And if you remain silent with regard to all this…you are on your way to becoming an antisemite.