SWIMMING IN ANTISEMITISM

ONLY A SOCIETY IMMERSED IN RACISM COULD MISTAKE THE MEANING OF “GLOBALIZE THE INTIFADA!”

Translation: “Kill the yids.”

I’m reading the 1932 novel For Two Thousand Years, by the Romanian author Mihail Sebastian. It is an unsettling story of pervasive antisemitism in Europe before the Holocaust.

It is, I’m sure, more alarming to today’s readers than it was to Sebastian’s contemporaries, knowing what we do of what was to come.

Amid a litany of casual antisemitism, the book includes this reflection:

At the corner, towards Boulevard Elisabeta, was a group of boys selling newspapers. “Mysteries of Carpul! Death to the yids!”

I have no idea why I stopped. I usually walk calmly by, because it’s an old, almost familiar cry. This time I stopped in surprise, as if I had for the first time understood what these words actually meant. It’s strange. These people are talking about death, and about mine specifically. And I walked casually by them, thinking of other things, only half hearing.

I wonder why it is so easy to call for “death” in a Romanian Street, without anyone batting an eyelid. I think, though, that death is a pretty serious matter. A dog crushed beneath the wheels of a motorcar — that’s already enough for a moment of silence. If somebody set themselves up in the middle of the street to demand, let’s say, “Death to badgers,” I think that would suffice to arouse some surprise among those passing by.

Now that I think about it, the problem isn’t that three boys can stand at a street corner and cry “Death to the yids,” but that the cry goes unobserved and unopposed, like the tinkling of a bell on a tram.

Fast forward to 2026.

On the streets of my hometown and yours, people in the past two-and-a-half years have been chanting, “Globalize the intifada!”

This is an unequivocal call for the mass murder of Jews worldwide.

I do not give a damn about any equivocations and prevarications around the definition of “intifada” or justifications for what this bloodchilling chant “actually” means.

We all know what it means. Some of us face facts.

Just as we know that “resistance” in this context means kidnapped, raped, dismembered, and immolated Israelis, “Globalize the intifada” means “Death to the yids.”

I had a high school teacher who had previously taught swimming to blind kids. One of the biggest challenges she faced in this was trying to explain how the kids could be immersed in and surrounded by water but still visible to her.

I think of that teacher whenever I hear denials or deflections when someone is accused of exhibiting anti-Jewish traits.

In every other instance of alleged racism, we are conditioned to engage in self-reflection.

In almost every instance of alleged antisemitism, the reflexive response is contradiction, refusal to reflect, and accusing the accuser of bad faith.

Antisemitism is so immersive in our society today that those who are swimming in it can’t fathom what it looks like.

We pass by people on downtown streets chanting for the death of Jews and we walk casually by them, thinking of other things, only half hearing.

Where will this indifference lead?

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