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You don't know me from the wind; you never will, you never did; I'm the little Jew who wrote the Bible. I've seen the nations rise and fall. I've heard their stories, heard them all. But love's the only engine of survival. Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: it’s over; it ain’t goin’ any further. And now the wheels of heaven stop; you feel the devil's riding crop. Get ready for the future: it is murder. - from Leonard Cohen’s “The Future”
Martin Luther King Jr.—arguably the father of social justice—pointed out that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. But why? “Why?”—my non-antisemitic friends complain, “Why can’t I criticise Israel?”
My first question is: “What on earth are you talking about? Israel is without exaggeration the most criticised nation on the planet. Are you afraid of a fatwa? What prompts you to make such an outrageous claim?”
The irony begins there, and the ironies abound. “Tell me, my non-antisemitic friend, why don’t you criticise Palestine? Or once we’re on the topic, how about North Korea, Uganda, Nigeria, Syria, Iran, Turkey, the Ukrain, and China?” Or how about the bicyclists, for that matter?
So first of all, you are by all means allowed to criticise Israel. In fact, you are encouraged to criticise Israel by every cultural signal imaginable. So let’s do away with that urban myth, which, let’s face it, is so blatantly false, it hides a deeper question. “Why does criticising Israel make me an antisemite?” And this gets us to the heart of the matter. The answer is that no other country when “criticised” has its legitimacy to exist called into question. Furthermore, criticism of Israel—because it’s accused (often falsely) of doing what so many other countries do—winds up being a case of scapegoating. When you criticise Israel, you single out one country for censure. And since your discourse generally doesn’t include this sort of banter regarding any other country, what you’re doing is belittling the Jew. It’s not complicated.
Perhaps the oddest part about most antisemitism is how it hides under a rock of the psyche. None of my non-antisemitic friends have any clue that they are antisemites. In fact, alerting any of them to the fact that they are promoting the classic canards of antisemitism cuts close enough to make them vanish in a miasma of self-righteous insult. Why, pray tell, do they get so insulted? Why am I not allowed to criticise an antisemite?
I even had one tell me that my having lived in Israel for a decade counts against me because it makes me biased. (Could you imagine someone talking to a black person or a Muslim like that?. . . telling them that their opinion on matters pertaining to their own heritage doesn’t count?) Meanwhile, I’m tempted to ask, “So why are you posting Palestinian messaging? Aren’t the Palestinians biased?” Well, they’re the indigenous of the region, goes the reasoning. The Jews are settler-colonialists. Another urban myth. And another mind-blowing irony.
The Jews are the original indigenous, colonised, displaced, dispossessed, disenfranchised, and persecuted people. Moreover, the region too often referred to as “Palestine,” is the ancestral homeland of the Jews. Everyone knows this, especially Muslims—who don’t dispute the matter. Sure, some disingenuous arguments have been made to the contrary, but the Bible settles the matter. And for those who hate the Bible and claim (out of an absurd and spiteful denialism) that it has zero historical relevance, there’s solid archaeological evidence, placing the Jews there before 1200 BCE. But the Bible is the source of the matter and the locus of animus toward the Jew. Allow me to explain.
The ancient practice of colonising a region—you can find this in Herodotus and Thucydides, for instance—consisted of conquering a city-state, killing the king and the royal family, and liquidating the population by killing off or enslaving those who would represent a threat, exiling others, repopulating with conquering soldiers, leaving a slim remnant of the original inhabitants, and installing a puppet ruler to collect taxes. That’s the model. The result in all cases was the erasure of the culture. Find me an ethnic Lydian or a Boeotian or an Arcadian today!
The Jew however is stiffnecked. Despite the same process being practiced upon him time and again, the Jew was not erased. Instead, something else happened. The Jews had this book, you see, this mixture of metaphysics, mysticism, chronicles, stories, laws, prophecies, and religion. And they had this culture of memorising, reproducing, discussing, and disputing the text and its messages and of recording their thoughts and philosophies in more books. And this process engendered an unprecedented self awareness, a culture of meta-analysis.
True, the Greek philosophers engaged in this sort of thing, too, but the efforts weren’t concentrated and formulated into one book and memorised and made the cornerstone of their culture. It is telling that the Greeks murdered Socrates for corrupting the youth. No culture wants to be forced to look at itself; and authorities don’t like folks asking too many questions. Are you seeing the pattern here? This is why I can’t criticise an antisemite. It is also why the antisemite ironically projects his own worst traits on the Jew.
I have not found a more self-critical people than the Jews. In fact it’s disconcerting how many antisemites are themselves Jews—a fact that encourages gentile antisemites who often enough point to those self-loathing Jews as sources of their non-antisemitism. You see? Even that Jew over there agrees that Jews are the colonialists or the lobbyists or the baby killers or that they’re genocidal or perpetrators of apartheid or whathaveyou!
Meanwhile, Adolph Eichmann (1906-1962), general manager of the various Nazi solutions to “the Jewish Question,” had Jewish relatives and a Jewish lover, and swore he was no antisemite. To make matters worse, Eichmann’s superiors, Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942)—the actual architect of the genocidal wetwork—and Gestapo chief, Heinrich Müller (1900-1945), were both half-Jewish. So we can do away with another myth adored by non-antisemites: i.e. plenty of Jews agree with my antisemitic sentiments, therefore I can’t be an antisemite.
I digress, but with purpose. Understanding the Jewish antisemite is central to understanding antisemitism. The Jew resents the Jews for the very same reasons everyone else does. Humour me. The next seven short paragraphs will clarify.
Something extraordinary happened in the case of the conquered and liquidated Jews. Not only did the Jewish culture survive, it snowballed. It took on elements of the Persian culture, the Pythagorean-Socratic culture, and the Roman, and as the respective empires dissolved, it provided the structure for ALL the post-pagan cultures.
For those with a background in literary studies, this is Harold Bloom’s (1930-2019) anxiety of influence on the world stage. Briefly, Bloom posited that great literature often enough emerges from misreadings of earlier texts, followed by a rejection, and a reformulation of style and direction. In our context, the Torah is cast as the Old testament—a text that is replaced by the New and Final revelation. Or if you’re Muslim, they’re both replaced by a newer and even more finally Final revelation. To make it all finally final, however, requires a Final Solution for the Jew, who is inevitably dispossessed by this succession and therefore has no place in the new world order.
So although the Jew is by no means a colonialist of Palestine, he is most definitely a pioneer and coloniser of the collective inner world (our recurrent theme here at analogy magazine). That’s why he has come to represent colonialism and white supremacy. That’s why basic reasoning today is being cast as white supremacist, colonialist oppression.
The Bible has had an absolutely pervasive influence on the modern world, even as this influence has morphed ineluctably from religion into science through its clear impulse toward the desacralisation of nature—an observation suggested by medieval historian, Tom Holland, which I’ve discussed in “Science & Textbook Pedagogy.” It is this pervasive influence that engenders societal resentment, especially when the culture meets with crisis. After all, who else is to blame, archetypally speaking? This archetypal aspect is key. That’s why antisemitism is unconscious and fundamentally irrational: it lurks in the twilight inner world of archetypes.
At the same time, the Jew is the ubiquitous reminder of the world’s bad behaviour, of its repeated attempts at genocide. If the genocide were over and done with, at least the world could sit in the penalty box for three minutes and feel bad, and then move on. Instead, we’re continually faced with the biggest Jewish guilt trip ever perpetrated, this Jew hanging on a cross saying, “Fa you, I did this. I died for your sins.”
And irony of ironies, the Jews are held responsible for this too, as though no other culture had ever done wrong by a member of its own community. The Italians aren’t vilified for the murder of Julius Caesar; nor are the Greeks held accountable for the murder of Socrates. Even when such wrongs are acknowledged, no one makes a religion of it. So the Jew winds up perpetually crucified on the mound of skulls—and raised as a symbol of everyone else’s murderous betrayals.
What I’m after here is that to account for these ironies, all we have to do is look at the fact that the Jews came up with the paradigm, the shared stories, and the fundamental laws by which the world is organised and understood; and as a consequence, they are blamed for the accompanying psychology along with the whole social structure and all the ills of civilisation. David Solway reminds his readers in his book on this subject, The Big Lie (2007), that Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that “Conscience is a Jewish invention.” Not a bad insight for the antisemite par excellence!
Having done a quick re-immersion in the literature on this subject in preparation for this article via Solway’s various books—The Big Lie, Hear O, Israel (2009), and Crossing the Jordan (2023)—I am well aware that what I’m saying is barely original. The literature on antisemitism is so vast, that it is indeed possible that what I’m offering here today is old hat. Be that as it may, I personally haven’t come across the pieces of the puzzle assembled quite in the manner proposed in this short bit, and I hope I’ve managed to express my perspective in a way that untangles the webwork of ironies that has, until now, left me flummoxed and speechless. Despite my readings of the many opinions on this subject over the years, I’ve inevitably come away feeling confused and overwhelmed. Indeed, I have considered the matter to be fundamentally intractable and mysterious. I hope this essay leaves readers with a different sense. What do you think? Does this model adequately account for the phenomena?
Setting this matter aside, I’d like to turn to the current post-October-7th social climate, which despite my best efforts, I cannot avoid addressing. Every now and again, my non-antisemitic friends confront me with various talking points promoted by the non-antisemitic, Israel-criticising CBC, CNN, BBC, Google, The Guardian, Catholic news, and what appears to be every campus paper under the sun. They want to know what distinguishes a terrorist from a freedom fighter; or they tell me that the Israelis are settler-colonisers in Palestine; or they tell me that the UN has declared that Israel has indeed been committing war crimes; or they tell me that they feel sorry for all the children (on both sides of course!). It can be a challenge to respond to these various comments and queries without being drawn into quibbling. I mean, generally, the folks who bring up these subjects are so ignorant of the situation, one has to design a course plan and ask them to attend at least 90 hours worth of lessons. Since that’s never going to happen, I’ve come up with a basic response.
What is the end goal of your vision for the region? What would a free Palestine look like, do you think? What freedoms are these so-called freedom fighters fighting for, as you understand it? In a way, these are all formulations of the same question, and they cut right to the chase. Because at the end of the day, we’re talking about a new Jewish Question or Judenfrage—as the Nazis called it—and a new Endlösung or Final Solution, which is genocide of the Jews. It’s not like my non-antisemitic friends believe that Hamas promotes liberal, progressive values. They just need a reminder that the Hamas “freedom fighter” is hell bent on destroying those values, imposing sharia law, and destroying all signs of any other religion or culture that has preceded them or that gets in their way, with no intention of emancipating anyone from anything.
With that issue settled, I feel I can come to terms with their non-antisemitic antisemitism because I don’t really have a choice in the matter short of taking up the cowl and finding a cave to live in.
Asa Boxer’s poetry has garnered several prizes and is included in various anthologies around the world. His books are The Mechanical Bird (Signal, 2007), Skullduggery (Signal, 2011), Friar Biard’s Primer to the New World (Frog Hollow Press, 2013), Etymologies (Anstruther Press, 2016), Field Notes from the Undead (Interludes Press, 2018), and The Narrow Cabinet: A Zombie Chronicle (Guernica, 2022). Boxer is also a founder of and editor at analogy magazine.
I read this twice. Thanks for the article, your deep pain is evident here. There is much to criticize in the world and I do think people analyze and appraise what governments do in a great many nations, not just Israel. Believe it or not we criticize ourselves heavily here in the U.S. I understand some of the history of antisemitism and this article adds some nuances that help me understand even more. The first shock of the atrocities of Oct. 7th was something difficult to grapple with and hold. What possible action could be taken to gain any kind of justice? We held our breath. What has shaken people to their core, I believe, is seeing the revenge and response up close in real time on TikTok and Facebook. Not blurry videos in black and white like the Vietnam war, not images of bright light trails falling from the sky and landing on a remote bit of land like we saw during the US invasion of Iraq. These are videos of civilians buried under cement buildings, children with bones poking through their skin, mothers and fathers running with broken bodies in their arms. I think for many people it’s the amount of military response and the continuation of it that is outrageous.
I've often wondered if simple resentment at Jewish priority--being first, set apart--plays a large role in hatred of Jews and of Israel. Your point about anti-Zionism is astute. What other states are told they must disappear because of their alleged wrongdoing? Imagine if the entirety of the Middle East was populated by Jewish states, many large and populous, and there was one tiny Muslim state that was continually warred upon by all the surrounding Jewish states, which had previously kicked out all their Muslim inhabitants and made it clear that Muslims were worthy of murder as a religious duty. Then imagine all the progressivists and enlightened thinkers pointing the finger at the tiny, beleaguered Muslim state, demanding that it exercise restraint in its response to atrocities, and that other states not befriend it.