The Longest Hatred, Part Two
In his recently released book, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House), Prof. Robert S. Wistrich provides one of the most comprehensive overviews to date of the “longest hatred,” which he has spent the better part of his life documenting and analyzing.
Part one of my interview with Wistrich concerned the historical mindset of anti-Semitism. This is the second and concluding part of my interview, which begins with Professor Wistrich’s look at Iran.
Q: You refer to the Palestinian-Arab narrative and its negative influence on the West. Iran is not an Arab country, yet it is seen today as the greatest threat to Jews and the Jewish state. Can you address that?
A: Iran is a major part of the Middle East. It is a country of 70 million people, with a small Arab minority. It was conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century, as part of the expansion of Islam, and it was converted initially to Sunni Islam. At the beginning of the 16th century — a thousand years later, more or less — it became the largest and most powerful Shiite state in the world. Persians are the dominant people in Iran, but it is a multinational country, with many different ethnic groups. And there is a traditional hostility, going back centuries, between Persians and Arabs. Persians often have very deprecating attitudes towards Arabs, and Arabs regard Persians as a threat. More recently, let us not forget that the bloodiest war in modern times was fought in the 1980s between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic of Iran.
What needs to be understood — and it’s a case I make strongly in the book — is why the ayatollahs have invested such great efforts in their propaganda against Israel. The reason they have presented themselves as — and have carried out a policy of being — the avant garde of total opposition to Israel’s very existence is that they see this as their most powerful card in a much broader and more ambitious aim. This aim is first to establish hegemony throughout the Middle East, and then to be in a position where they can actually challenge the hegemony of the West.
Hatred of Israel and this very intense, religiously driven indoctrination on Iran’s part is designed primarily for the Arab street, and it has had some success. Its most important success was in underwriting and reinforcing the Hizbullah movement it created in Lebanon in 1982. Hizbullah (the Party of God) is a movement which operates in an Arab country and whose members are all Arabs. But they are Shiites — Arab Shiites who have become a proxy of Iran, and closely controlled by its regime. Their ideology is completely Iranian-oriented, and includes a visceral hatred of Jews.
Q: What about Hamas?
A: That Hamas, a Sunni Muslim organization, has increasingly become another Iranian proxy in the region has been one of the most striking developments in the last five or six years. The seeking of Israel’s destruction has become the most effective glue linking Iran to an Arab world that is naturally and rightfully suspicious of its intentions. Countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, which are all Sunni, and often considered to be moderate or pro-Western in some way — though that would have to be seriously qualified in practice — do feel threatened by Iran. In their own ambiguous way, they are seeking means to diminish or neutralize the Iranian threat.
Then there are the smaller Gulf States, which are literally defenseless in the face of a nuclearized Iran. Presently, they may feel they have an American shield to protect them from future Iranian threats. But how much would such a shield be worth if there were a nuclear Iran nuclear? Not very much.
Q: You describe the current elites in the West as ignorant and even dismissive of the Bible and religion. How do you explain, then, the sympathy on the part of students on Western campuses for anti-Israel movements whose fervor is religious? And how do you account for the almost natural inclination of academia to side with them over Israel?
A: The bulk of them have completely bought in to the Palestinian version of the conflict: that the Jews came in and stole the land; that the state of Israel was an illegitimate creation with no historic justification; that its establishment was a colonialist and imperialist conspiracy. This is now a kind of lingua franca of a whole generation of students. Probably 90% of the books they are assigned in Middle East studies point in that direction.
Q: If that’s the case, then you could say that that their anti-Zionism — and even, perhaps, their anti-Semitism — is rational.
A: I wouldn’t use the word “rational.” I would say it is comprehensible, in light of certain ideological factors that have accumulated in the last two-three decades. It’s not merely a kind of herd-like mentality, although that plays a role, because students have to be both knowledgeable and courageous to go against the stream and risk unpopularity — harassment even — and all such unpleasantness that is now normal on many Western campuses.
Q: How would a student be equipped with the psychological and educational tools upon his arrival at a university to withstand the bombardment? How would he even know that doing so was an option?
A: He wouldn’t — unless there was a comparable effort being made on the Jewish and Israeli side. This has come very belatedly, and thus is an uphill — even Sisyphean — struggle. There still hasn’t been engagement, except among a handful of people, with the prevailing ideas in the political culture in the West about Israel.
Q: What difference can such “engagement” make? Would an effort to deal with “the prevailing ideas in the political culture” have made any difference in pre-Holocaust Europe?
A: We have far more possibilities than the Jews of the pre-Holocaust period had. We have an independent state, with a very advanced and flourishing society. Admittedly, our adversaries today have much more extensive resources with which to circulate and amplify the cycle of lies. This doesn’t mean, however, that we are fated to be passive recipients of vilifying accusations on the part of forces intent on Israel’s demise. One of the reasons I wrote this book was to identify those forces and the impetus behind them. Their build-up is something that only seems to have hit home to many Israelis after the Goldstone report. But that report is only the last straw in a long indictment that has been mounting with very little response, other than from a handful of people.
Q: That “handful of people” would and are often accused by Israeli academics and members of the media of being fanatically right-wing. In fact, a large percentage of Israelis think the government and the military should have cooperated with Goldstone. How can the things you speak about be counteracted if Israeli society and the Jewish people are themselves divided on the issues — and the narrative?
A: Here we are touching on one of the core problems of dealing with this escalating process of undermining the moral foundations and legitimacy of Israel.
It’s difficult for me to be cool, calm and collected when, as part of my everyday work, I have to read so many self-accusatory statements and indictments either by Israelis who have left Israel, or by those who remain and teach in Israeli universities, or by Diaspora Jews who have jumped on this bandwagon and seem so keen to produce their “divorce certificates” from the Jewish state. And they do this in order to give themselves the appearance of a clean bill of health. It is their way of saying: “We are good Jews; we have nothing in common with those bad ones.”
Q: Didn’t many German Jews have that very attitude on the eve of the Holocaust?
A: Indeed, I think there is an analogy to be drawn between the highly assimilated, well-off, middle- and upper-middle-class Jews of Weimar Germany, who believed that if only they could demonstrate to non-Jewish Germans that it was the east European Jewish immigrants at the root of all the problems, they themselves would be spared anti-Semitism. This, of course, was all blown away after 1933, because it wasn’t of the slightest interest to Hitler and his supporters what kind of Jew you were. As a matter of fact, it was the well-established Jewish professionals and intellectuals who the Nazis were determined to “cleanse” Germany from first.
Today, those left-wing and liberal Jews who feel that if only they can show they fully share the anti-Zionist zeitgeist, they will be spared the indictment that is being handed out, are victims of the same delusion.
Q: Is this not typical of Jewish responses to anti-Semitism since time immemorial?
A: We recently celebrated the festival of Purim. And though nobody believes in the literal historicity of the events in the Book of Esther, it is a document of great importance, because of what it tells us about anti-Semitism and Jewish responses to it. It is astonishing to find such continuities from more than 2,000 years ago to today. And it is ironic that the great Jew-hater of the story, Haman, hails from the same country — what was then Persia — as Ahmadinejad today.
In the story, the Jews are already in the Diaspora — so presumably it was written in the Hellenistic period — and they are described as being a dispersed people, and divided among themselves, although they have their own laws and customs, which are distinct from those of the other habitants of the kingdom. And the bait that Haman offers to the king to carry out the extermination of the Jews is that it will bring great economic benefits to the treasury, and that it will introduce an element of uniformity in the kingdom that is actually a multicultural, multinational, perhaps quite shaky empire. And how do the Jews react? Well, Mordechai and Esther engage in a political action; there are court intrigues; a complex plot unravels. But ultimately, in the Diaspora, Jews are dependent on fate, on the powers-that-be, and on persuading at least some of those powers-that-be to allow them to defend themselves. This was less and less true in the history of the Diaspora, and Jews were less and less able to organize and defend themselves — which is one of the primary reasons why modern Zionism came into existence.
So, clearly, anti-Semitism is an ancient phenomenon. That’s why the subtitle of my book begins with “from antiquity.” And many Jewish responses are traditional ones. We can almost say that nothing new has ever been invented in the history of Jewish self-defense. Some techniques are more refined than others. Jews have achieved greater amounts of power in a number of diasporic societies. But the scenarios don’t change that much.
What has changed is the existence of Jewish sovereignty. Of a state. Of an army. Of a cohesive society which is willing and able to defend itself with all the means at the disposal of a modern society, to make sure there is no repetition of the Holocaust or of lower-scale massacres. This is a crucial development, even though it has not diminished anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it has simply given it new pretexts and sources on which it can feed.
Still, we Jews are privileged in comparison to all the generations that went before us. For the first time, with our own hands, and using all the creativity, talent, determination and tenacity that we have shown over the centuries in adversity, we can frustrate the evil designs of our enemies.
Q: The Zionists established Israel as a safe haven for Jews, yet it has become one of the most physically dangerous places for Jews in the world. Can you address that irony?
A: In the Bible, Israel is the name given to Jacob, one of the three patriarchs of the nation, after he struggles with the angel — this mysterious figure, half-God, half-man, God, man, something else, the stranger, a phantom of his unconscious imagination, a real person, who knows?
All name changes in the Bible have great significance. And the literal meaning of Israel is “he who struggles and prevails.”
Delving into the broader meaning of Israel, both historically and today — and asking what its purpose is, for itself as a people and for the nations — you could say that it represents a struggle for truth.
Q: Is this your interpretation of Israel’s serving as “a light unto the nations?”
A: I can already hear the cynics saying, “Oh, some light unto the nations.”
My point is not that we are, but that we struggle to be.
It is a struggle to transcend ourselves, to find our better part, to aspire to the light. Contrary to the stereotype branding Jews as the incarnation of materialism, anybody really familiar with the annals of Jewish history knows this is ludicrous. This is not to say there aren’t materialists among us, of course. On one level, we are no different from anybody else. But there’s another level on which we operate, which, for a lack of a better word, I would call metaphysical. And it is this level, which Israel represents, that is one of the deepest reasons for anti-Semitism.
I’m often asked, “Don’t you get depressed by studying anti-Semitism?”
The answer is that, among the many other intrinsically fascinating and horrendous features it has, anti-Semitism is also a continuous challenge to the Jewish people. It is a kind of barometer to us and to the nations, both of what is wrong — because it is often a symptom of major pathologies in a given society — and a warning signal of catastrophes to come. Indeed, it is clear that its current rise is a herald of a catastrophe already in the making. Rather than deluding ourselves that it is a passing storm, if we could only see it as a galvanizer, we could put our energies to more constructive use, and understand that fighting it, too, is part of a wider struggle for continual self-betterment.
As with all forms of persecution and oppression, running away doesn’t work. You have to stand up and fight your adversary and — as in the case of Jacob, who becomes worthy to be called Israel — to overcome him, even if this means sustaining a limp, as he apparently did.
Anti-Semitism is a complete mystery to me. I’m a non-Jew, raised by agnostic parents in an area where there are very few Jews. When I first moved to the big city and began meeting and becoming friends with Jews, I thought of them along the lines of “oh, he’s a Presbyterian”, “he’s a Buddhist”, “she’s a Jew”, etc. That’s still pretty much how I feel about it. I read about anti-Semitism, pay attention to middle eastern politics, the domestic interfaith dialog, etc., and shake my head. Rationalize how we ought to deal with it. But when I’m confronted with evidence of real anti-Semitism in the press or in personal life, it always floors me. I just don’t get it. Can someone explain the genesis of it?
I have a theory… most Jews I know are smart, industrious and often very successful. Is this the problem? Jealousy? Ultimately though, doesn’t really seem to fully explain it.
This may seem like a strange/naive post, but I just wanted to take a step back from addressing anti-Semitism in the context of it’s ongoing, malevolent existence, and point out the utter ludicrousness of it.
To say that no one believes in the literal historicity of the Book of Esther is simply not true, and completely ignores Orthodox Judaism and the phenomenon of the Ba’al Teshuva movement. Prof. Wistrich already commented on the prophetic nature of the Jewish presence in Israel in part 1 of the interview, saying “Our presence in the land of Israel is providential, and cannot be explained by purely rational arguments.” Having acknowledged the possibility of a supernatural power, or otherwise something beyond our understanding operating in history, to dismiss the veracity of scriptural documents outright is a rather close-minded position. What makes the religious ideology rational is that the Jewish return from exile is a prophecy made in the Torah (see Deut. 30: 1-5). This shouldn’t be a forum for discussing the veracity of various religious beliefs, but I feel that what appears to be a blanket dismissal of traditional religious opinion as unintellectual is biased and incorrect.
Otherwise a fascinating article. I look forward to purchasing the book (perhaps better described as a tome).
It is of course only the leaders of Islime that “insult the Koran/Islime” by claiming the Jews have know connection with the land, (the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims Koran:3:113)
The Koran is obsessed with converting the Jews; but according to today’s “insulters of Islime”, “Jews have no claim/connection to the land” except the Koran makes it clear that “the Jews exist on the land” predating Islime
… while the US/EU claim to be at war (Iraq/Afghan) with the same terrorist they demand set up a state on the West Bank/Gaza.
One can only conclude that the US/EU soldiers are in fact human sacrifice to the Islime G-d and that this war is in fact a phoney “nice Long lasting War and sell lots of weapons” exactly as I informed every member of congress between 1989-1991. c 1991 getty…
We send army men to die fighting people; while we demand that that same enemy/people set up a terror state on the West Bank and Gaza exactly like the States we are fighting/human sacrifice…this is “bazaar…
The US: with friends like this who needs enemies…
Sadly, sadly, sadly I have come to the conclusion Prof. Wistrich is right about assimilated American Jews, they are cowards. They are appeasers, they want to be liked and accepted. Their moral outrage toward the Holocaust must now be seen in the light of their abandonment of Israel itself. They’ll stand with Israel, as long as there is no personal risk involved. He is right: “We are good Jews; we have nothing in common with those bad ones.” And that is why they will always be Democrats, one of the in-group. Until they too are targeted.
Every Jew in this country must decide, am I a JINO or am I a Jew.
Rocker #1 Thank you for your bewilderment and lack of anti-semitism. We need to address your question and there are many books on the subject, including the one by Joan Peters called From Time Immemorial. I highly recommend it. However, the reality is that Jews are accused of killing God in the being of Christ and now I learn that we also supposedly poisoned Mohammed. How can we not be in trouble? Perhaps the only answer to this ancient poison is agnosticsm. Oh yes, you are right about the jealousy as well.
I always appreciate anything by Professor Wistrich, but a little more care needs to be taken in editing, just so the important message doesn’t get diluted by minor mistakes. Iran’s population is around 70 million, not 17 million. I also disagree with the supposition in the question that Israel is one of the world’s most dangerous places. Yes there is always an existential threat, but so far less Jews have been killed in all of the Arab wars and terrorism directed against Israel than were murdered in a single afternoon during the “Harvest Festival” at Majdanek in 1943.
Well, I believe the story of Ester. When you think yourself so smart to write G-d’s word is not correct 100%, then how many others not so smart will not believe in Noah, or Moses. It is just a story.
Bow your head in Shame Prof. Wistrich. G-d’s word IS 100% correct.
I fervently hope this post is not taken wrongly, and I want to be careful not to offend… I think I understand why Jews are so worried about their long term health, given the historic evidence of anti-Semitism. Having said that, I also feel strongly that Jews do not own “the longest hatred” any more than anyone else does — and I’d also suggest that “the longest hatred” is not so much directed against Jews solely, but emanates from virtually EVERY tribe of humans against EVERY other tribe that are considered “the other”. Further, there is a tremendous risk in attempting to depict Jews as the foremost owners or victims of this kind of human behavior/hatred of “the other”. It is probably accurate to say that virtually ALL groups have, at one junction in their history, experience heinous and even genocidal hatred directed against them by another competing group. It is also probably accurate to say that most or all groups, at one or more junctions in their history, have waged hateful, and even sometimes genocidal war on others.
The most pressing example of tribal hatred I can think of today pertains to the widespread Islamic Jihad. After decades, and trillions in unearned wealth has flowed into Muslim coffers, the Muslims are once again waging Jihad to spread their evil mechanism of supremacism, oppression, and genocide. Israel is may indeed be on the front line of this Jihad, but even the Muslims refer to their Jihad against Israel as the “Lesser Jihad” against the “Lesser Satan”. The “Greater Jihad” is the one directed against the entirety of the non-Islamic world — in short WE ARE ALL IN THE CROSS HAIRS. To the extent that any single group attempts to depict themselves as the foremost, or worse, sole target of this hateful tribal Arab Nazism is the extent to which understanding by the wider targets is muddied and deflected.
Respectfully I suggest that concerned Jews would do well to take pains to widen the understanding of the Jihad being waged by Muslims. This can only help others understand that they too are in the murderous pathway of Islam and will not be spared. For too long the festering problems in the wider “Middle East” have been largely depicted by Jews and Gentiles alike as an ancient fight between two tribal Semitic tribes — not only is this false, it has done great damage to a truer, deeper understanding of the sinister and existential dangers of Islamic Jihad.
Over the last 2,000 years, Jews have managed to get themselves kicked out of nearly every country in Europe and the Middle East. This isn’t a coincedence, and it’s not a result of some widespread conspiracy against them (aka “anti-Semitism”).
The reality is that Jews bring this upon themselves, and the sooner they realize this, the better off we will all be.
Imagine if you know a guy who goes out to bars every single Friday night and gets into a fight every single time. Yet this friend constantly maintains his innocence, claims he was just minding his own business, and somehow a fight started and he’s not to blame. You might believe him the first couple of times, but eventually you realize that HE is the problem.
ExtraSpout is of course not correct. Christian countries and later Islime countries, in their desperate insecurity characterized by a need to “convert people at the point of a gun”, were/are none too happy the Jews would not convert. Outside of those two scenarios no one/country is unhappy with the Jews.
So ExtraSpout is an Al Qaeda operative type.
Rocker, I am sure part of the reason for antisemitism is as you stated, jealously over perceived Jewish success(they should have looked a my career to see how that is not always the case), however I suspect there is a more fundamental reason; people need to hate. Furthermore by hating Jews the frustrated person is no longer alone, he has a group, identity, excuses for his own failures, diversions from those failures and a holy cause to dedicate his life to. There are a lot of psychological benefits to hatred. Look at the contemporary Arab world; they do not have to work, think or risk, hating Jews provides millions of people and several governments to simple and easy cope-outs. For that matter look at ExtraStout, the above commenter.
10. Jay Getty,
“Al Qaeda operative type”
Either that or I think Barry’s own beloved Reverend Jeremiah Wright found PJM.
Hey, Rev Wright, when I was a poor kid growing up my mom moved us around all of the time and I was always the perpetual ‘new kid’ in school who got picked on by bullies even though I was painfully shy, kept to my studies and never bothered anyone. I have a sneaking suspicion you’re the type that was/is a bully too.
Umm no, jay getty the two big institutionalized antisemitic machines of the 20th century — german and soviet/russian persecuted for genetic makeup; no conversion would help. So the reason for hate is indeed cultural/genetic. Number/letter aptitude plus nearby genes. And those hates are rather different if you get close and smell them — slavs, brits, muslims. Very different hates.
You do realize, I hope, that the writer and readers of this article are members of a doomsday cult. What’s very odd is that only American Jews, who have never been persecuted, believe in this cult. European Jews, who have actually experienced persecution, find American Jews’ obsessive, almost eager embrace of victim status bizarre, since Jews would not even make the top 100 on a list of groups that have been systematically persecuted in America. Imagine what the Chinese, the Navajo or African-Americans could do with this sort of masochistic zeal! Instead they show a remarkable willingness to get on with their lives. Only a small group of elderly, wealthy, pampered American Jews revels in this ahistorical fantasy of permanent, unchanging victimhood.
14. Shef Rogers,
American Jews politically belong [exponentially] to the Leftists who hate their guts and hate Israel. Was your post supposed to be /sarc?
Israel was born of a people who were slaughtered for the corporate profits of the German steel barons who built Auschwitz and Dachau. They have a tradition of love and compassion that expresses itself in the Kibbutzim. However, since 1967 Israel has been hijacked by the genocidal forces of American hate and greed. Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop-Grumman have made billions in profits building Israel’s own Auschwitz(West Bank) and Dachau(Gaza Strip). If the forces of compassion in Israel prevail and they tell the American munitions kingpins to shove it, Israelis and Palestinians will live in peace happily ever after.
Apostle of Love, seek professional help.
Apostle Of Love: dream on. Jew hatred is at the root of Islam. Muslims have the objective to destroy the Jewish people, to have a second holocaust to finish what Hitler couldn’t complete.
Extrastout is of course correct. People who do not fit in get slammed down. Jews who have maintained their customs in the face of local custom have been characterized as “other.” Now local custom could have been child sacrifice or the right of “first night” or “your money or your life” or “you have misunderstood the way the universe is organized and so you must convert, leave or die.” But those damned Jews would simply not engage in the idolatry of the local time or place.
Yes, Mr. Extrastout Jews need to be protected from you and anyone else who believes there must be something wrong with the victim just because he was the victim.
Apostle of Love
You really, really should consider not taking drugs.
Dziga: You are of course not correct.
The Commuless Moscow Weapons Company (AKA:USSR)(the song remains the same) like Islime were/are at war against free speech: to criticize Islime/or “communism”; that is of course the “proof” that they were not communist or religious Islime…
The Commuless Moscow Weapons Company (AKA: USSR) was at war with all religions, even the Russian Orthodox Church, it was nothing personal against Jews; it was all religion.
The Nazi were Christian anti-semites…
Jerry: you made a mistake…see #21.
Jay Getty, under the Soviets, teaching of all religion was banned. The Jewish religion nearly died out within a single generation. But people who know nothing about the Jewish religion still had Jewish as the nationality on their internal passport, whether they liked it or not. Their advancement in the Party (and therefore society) was limited as a result. Talk to a Jew who grew up in the FSU, or read N. Sharansky’s “Fear No Evil”, and you will be disabused of the notion that Soviet anti-Semitism had anything to do with the communist suppression of religion in general.
To ExtraSnout: If you believe what you wrote, then do you also believe that when a woman is killed in an Islamic “honor killing”, it is her fault for being born into a Moslem environment? And when a woman gets raped, it is her fault for not being uglier?
I agree with a great deal of what Professor Wistrich says. I love Israel–I have Israeli children and grandchildren–what troubles me is what he doesn’t say about Israel’s part in the Arab-Israeli conflict. As in any conflict, nothing can change if both parties refuse to see their role in things’ falling apart.