The Great Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-73 C.E.) and the Bar-Kokhba revolt (132-136 C.E.) resulted in the deaths of millions, the destruction of Jewish communities throughout the land of Israel, and the enslavement and exile of up to 100,000 Jews. For the next 2,000 years, most Jews lived in foreign lands, nearly always as second-class citizens, experiencing frequent subjugation, persecution, expulsions, pogroms, and mass murder, culminating in the Holocaust.
Historically, anti-Semitic defamation often took the form of the blood libel, in which Jews were accused of killing non-Jewish children and using their blood in the preparation of matzah for Passover.
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Nowadays, anti-Semitism has morphed into the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – a collective accusation against the Jewish state – which has gained popularity particularly on US and European college campuses. The goal is to destroy Israel by undermining its economy.
Why is Jew-hatred now on the rise throughout the West and beyond? Has the world forgotten the agonizing 20th-century history of crimes against the Jewish people?
As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I am constantly mindful of the atrocities perpetrated against my family and my people, and vigilant to ensure that they never, ever happen again.
As a post-Holocaust, Israeli-born child, I never experienced anti-Semitism until I moved to the United States. Then, as a single woman, I began dating a non-Jewish man who, to my chagrin, had anti-Semitic friends. Our courtship ended fast, but not before I let his friends know how I felt about them.
American Jews have mainly been sheltered from anti-Semitism. Jews are treated as an oddity, but not necessarily disliked, in American society.
Nevertheless, American Jews are not complete strangers to anti-Semitism. Many are the descendants of Jews who fled the pogroms of late-19th- and early-20th-century Russia. American Jews are well aware of the obsessive anti-Israel agenda pursued at the UN; the anti-Semitic terrorist attacks that have targeted buses, restaurants, and clubs in Israel, and schools and synagogues in Europe and the United States; and derogatory references to Jews made by supposedly respected leaders.
According to statistics compiled by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish community in the United States is experiencing near-historic high levels of anti-Semitism, with attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions doubling between 2015 and 2018.
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein of Chabad of Poway, California, shot in both hands during a recent deadly attack on his synagogue, suggests that "we need to battle darkness with light."
Social media has allowed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to spread through sound bites and simplistic memes. Anti-Semitic individuals, often living in small, isolated communities, once had only marginal influence on American society, but now they have access to a worldwide audience and their ideas are becoming ubiquitous.
Since 2013, anti-Semitic incidents in the US are up 150%. These include cases of harassment, vandalism, and assault, sometimes ending in death, perpetrated by both lone individuals and people connected to extremist groups. Children are exposed to outrageous anti-Semitic sentiments from grade school through university, preparing them to become anti-Semitic adults.
Muslim migrants to Europe often bring anti-Semitic beliefs from their countries of origin, adding much to the increase in violent anti-Semitic attacks, which grew by 60% in Germany, 74% in France and 80% in Belgium in recent years. Scandinavian governments, influenced by anti-Zionism and often opposing Jewish religious practice such as kosher slaughter and circumcision, are partially at fault for the rise of anti-Semitism there. These governments' foreign and domestic policies encourage radicalism and fail to address anti-Jewish hate-crimes.
Britain's Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, as well as other European political groups, have joined with radical Islamists to back an anti-Zionism that overlaps strongly with anti-Semitism. And now the same phenomenon is infecting the US Democratic Party, whose members have been far too reluctant to denounce politicians like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar when their criticism of Israeli policy makes use of anti-Semitic arguments.
Anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, as old as Islam, itself, is characterized by dhimmitude and sporadic frenzies of mass murder. One 20th-century example: the 1941 Farhud pogrom in Iraq, which saw the mass looting of Jewish businesses and claimed over 180 Jewish lives.
In late August 2019 Israelis marked the 90th anniversary of the 1929 Hebron massacre. In the aftermath of that atrocity, Jews were temporarily displaced from a city where they had lived continuously since the time of Abraham. The 1929 anti-Jewish rampages extended to Jerusalem, Safed, Jaffa, Haifa, Ramle, Beit Shean, Acre, and Nazareth, with 133 Jews killed and 241 injured.
At that time, there was no State of Israel, no occupation, no checkpoints, no Nakba, no "Zionist provocations," no excuse whatsoever. It is impossible to understand the ongoing Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts without considering the long history of Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism.
Where do we go from here?
I am fearless, but many Jews are understandably anxious and their concerns are growing.
We must not sit idle. As Martin Niemöller's widely quoted poem teaches, we must combat not only anti-Semitism but all forms of prejudice, ethnic and racial discrimination, bigotry, and hatred. Education is imperative and hate-filled sentiments must not be shielded from criticism by free-speech excuses.
We must not allow "never again" to become a meaningless slogan.
