THE ENVY OF THE ANTISEMITES

Bigots hate Jews because they perceive Jews as successful and smart. So is heralding the achievements of Jews and Israelis a good strategy? It’s not about PR. It’s about Jews being who Jews are.

Last night, I came across another of those videos listing all the amazing things Jews and Israelis have invented, fixed, built and perfected. These sorts of social media fodder always get my hackles up — not because they are wrong, but because they seem counterproductive.

Memes and videos celebrating all that Jews have accomplished are, presumably, intended to show the haters that, despite all the hurdles the world has thrown up and the centuries of persecution, Jews turn challenges into opportunities, forge triumph from the fires, make diamonds under the pressures to which they are subjected, whatever analogy one chooses.

But antisemites have never doubted that Jews are “clever.”

That’s why they hate them.

Antisemites (and, well, plenty of others to boot) prefer their Jews victimized and defeated, not unveiling cutting-edge medical technologies or winning Nobel prizes.

The subjugation of Jews has always held a weird urgency for societies around the globe. At different times, and in different cultures, the oppressors have used religious reasons to attack Jews, in other places and times “racial” reasons. Sometimes it is economic reasons. In anti-Zionism, they use national reasons.

In all instances, though, it is not these superficial Jewish appearances, or identifiers, that the enemy picks on. It is intrinsic Jewish ideas that are at the root of their animus.

Against other people, haters have always been able to single out some relatively simple reason to oppress: skin color, theological difference, gender, sexual orientation.

Jews present a more complex “problem,” a fact that, in itself, makes the antisemites furious.

Antisemitism, among its many permutations, hates Jews for being so thinky. Antisemitism forces the enemy to engage on an intellectual playing field — a field they almost invariably admit is tipped in the Jews’ favor, as they themselves acknowledge with such bigoted phrases as “No one can out-negotiate those people” or “You can’t best a Jew in an argument.”

Anti-intellectualism is at the core of both antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Anti-Zionism is ahistorical, founded on false principles and undergirded by mountains of lies. But this is not mere strategy (although it seems to work wonders). 

The antisemite and the anti-Zionist do not abuse truth only because it is effective. They revile facts, intellect, veracity and reason because these are traits they associate with Jews.

Look at the BDS movement’s obsession with academic boycotts. Want to punish the Jews? Kick ’em where it hurts — right in the books!

Few people recall the declaration by Joseph Goebbels in 1933, right at the black dawn of the Nazi regime: “The age of rampant Jewish intellectualism is now at an end.”

Racists can convince themselves that they are better than other people because they have white skin. Misogynists think they are better than women by mere dint of a penis. Homophobes hate because of who others love.

But hating on the Jews draws the hater into a self-defeating spiral. Rather than making one feel superior, antisemitism makes the perpetrator feel intellectually and socially inferior. And that opens a whole different cabinet of wonders.

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Envy plays a role in antisemitism to an extent that it doesn’t in other hatreds. (Though it exists in other hatreds — white racists may envy assumed Black sexual supremacy; homophobes envy gay people our presumed licentiousness and rejection of oppressive societal norms; misogynists envy women’s unique biological powers to create life.)

But envy has always been the beating heart of antisemitism.

Now, antisemitism has procreated with a broader anti-capitalist ideology that detests effort and accomplishment, the very things that antisemitism has always hated about Jews.

This is a strain of progressivism that venerates failure and reviles achievement. No matter how hard one works, success, in this worldview, is ill-gotten, a result not due in part to innate privilege but due exclusively to innate privilege.

Failure, a form of martyrdom to capitalism, is the only uncorrupted state.

In this context, all the Israeli perseverance, from draining swamps to building some of the world’s greatest universities, is nothing but the illicit product of oppressive imperialist white supremacism privilege.

And ubiquitous Palestinian failure has nothing to do with decades of the worst imaginable choices by their leaders, the stifling by Arab tyrants of their people’s innovation and fruitfulness, or the determination to prove Zionist iniquity by ensuring that, no matter what, Palestinians achieve the worst possible outcomes in every measure of human development because nothing spites a face like cutting off its nose.

Instead, in this ascendant worldview, Palestinian misfortune is due to the confluence of Zionist malevolence and an unassailable conspiracy of systemic unfairness that was always going to guarantee Palestinian failure no matter what they did, free will being the dominion of gullible stooges.

When we contest the idea that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism,” this is what we mean. It’s not that anti-Zionists hate Jews. It’s that they have ideas about Jews that they project onto Israel. In this case, it is an enduring prejudice of powerful, intellectual, successful Jews (Israelis) against whom the hapless “indigenous” people cannot possibly compete or succeed.

Envy is an unbeatable foe. It eats the carrier up, which enrages the perpetrator all the more, often leading to a lashing out. In a situation where people perceive themselves (because of their own perverted ideology) as powerless against an enemy (in this case, those ubiquitous “powerful Jews”) the worst atrocities can be justified because “any means necessary” are justifiable when the cause is just so righteous and the enemy so unbeatable.

Given all this, isn’t waving Jewish and Israeli successes a red flag to the antisemitic bull?

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I watch the video again. The messaging strategist in me says this is not an effective approach.

I have always had a gut reaction to this sort of “hasbara,” as the haters say. (“Hasbara” is basically Hebrew for “explaining,” but antisemites who learned one Hebrew word and think they’ve cracked a secret code dismiss all defenses of Israel as “hasbara,” thinking it means “propaganda” or “fool the goys” or some such.)

Until last night, I never really stopped to ponder why Jews and Zionists would employ this approach if it seems (to me) so obviously not only ineffective but actually counterproductive.

I must be missing something.

I’ve been hanging around with Jews and Israelis now for about half my life, and reading and writing on Jewish and Israeli topics. Why can’t I understand this core tactic in fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism?

In the aftermath of October 7, a lot of Jews I know have concluded (some for the first time, others not) that the world is never going to like them, no matter what they do.

They can form a nucleus of antiracism, feminist, gay rights and other social justice movements and still be rejected by social justice activists.

They can publish world-leading academic research and invent techniques for noninvasive responses to medical crises and they will still be targeted for blackballing in academic journals and conferences.

They can make the desert bloom, invent drip irrigation technology that exponentially maximizes agricultural outputs and still be accused of “starving” Gazans when the dystopic catastrophe created by the Palestinian terror regime causes war, total societal breakdown and the collapse of food systems.

And still Israelis and Jews just go on with their work of studying, inventing, improving, building, creating.

Because, simply, that’s what Jews do.

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Golda Meir said: “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”

So are these “Yay Jews!” videos a rejection of Golda’s dictum? Is this Jews saying, Look at us, we’re not so bad. Please like us!?

Meir was speaking about the determination of Israelis to defend themselves against military and terrorist enemies sworn to annihilate them.

The sort of celebration of Jewish successes that we are talking about here is of a different caliber. It is about telling the world that no matter how people treat the Jews, the Jews will just keep doing what they do — which is tikkun olam, repairing the broken world.

This is why Jews, across centuries, have been driven to advance civilization through philosophy, to extend and enrich life through medicine, to seek justice through the law, to commit themselves to learning, endeavoring to improve themselves individually and the world they live in.

Despite all this, the world has yet to fall in love with the Jews. Sometimes, sadly, it seems the more the Jewish people give to the world, the more the world hates them.

So is showcasing these gifts really the answer?

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It took me a while. But I think I get the goal, even if maybe not all my friends who share these videos understand it consciously.

These videos and memes that seem, on first glance, aimed at convincing antisemites that Jews are good after all are not quite as they appear.

The subtext is not Hey bigots, look at all the good things we’ve done, please love us.

It is, perhaps, something more like this …

Nothing we do will ever make you love us. No good works, no philanthropy, no medical breakthroughs will convince you that we deserve your respect. But we are going to keep doing it because that’s who we are.

You will always hate. You tear down, you destroy, you condemn.

We build, we fix, we perfect, we invent, we progress.

You won’t change. 

But you sure as hell won’t change us.

This may be the better explanation for those videos and memes, and the broader strategy they represent.

It is not overeager Jews desperate to be liked.

On the contrary, it is Jews who have given up on being liked rededicating themselves to doing what their people have done for thousands of years, even though it is not going to win them any popularity contests.

And if, in the process, that sends a big screw you to the envious haters, that’s just a bonus.