The rise of part-time antisemitism blurs traditional definitions
Much of contemporary Jew-hatred can best be called part-time antisemitism.
By MANFRED GERSTENFELDLouis Farrakhan(photo credit: REUTERS/REBECCA COOK)
There is much debate about whether some people are antisemitic. While many write about antisemitism, very few who do so understand its current complexities. One of the issues many observers have to come to grips with is that much of contemporary Jew-hatred can best be called part-time antisemitism. These are people who commit antisemitic acts or make such statements intermittently. On other occasions, some may even make positive remarks about Jews and/or Israel.Until the Second World War, antisemitism had a limited number of core motifs. These recurred over the centuries. Gradually there were also new mutations of these motifs, while occasionally a new motif appeared. Since the Holocaust, further new expressions of hatred have emerged.One of these is Holocaust inversion: “Israel behaves toward the Palestinians like the Nazis did toward the Jews.” Yet one can also consider this a mutation of an almost 2,000-year-old core motif: “Jews are absolute evil.” In our days, being a Nazi is often considered the greatest evil in Western society.There are other changes in expressions of antisemitism taking place. These are often related to general culture. Living in post-modern societies means that many themes have fragmented.That is also the case with antisemitism. This makes the analysis of contemporary antisemitism far more difficult than that of historic antisemitism. Even the widely accepted antisemitism definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) covers only part of what Jew- or Israel-haters say or do.The foremost antisemite in the United States is probably Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. He has called Judaism a “gutter religion” and a “religion of Satan.” Farrakhan has also used the word “termite” to describe certain Jews. He has called Hitler a “great man.” Farrakhan joined students in Tehran in 2018 shouting “Death to Israel,” and “Death to America.”Nevertheless, Farrakhan has on occasions said that he doesn’t attack all Jews. He, albeit marginally, doesn’t qualify as a full-time antisemite.One cannot describe former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a full-time antisemite either. He regularly states that antisemitism is vile and may not even hold any of the anti-Jewish prejudices that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) used in its global survey. It is, however, clear that he is a part-time antisemite.Corbyn called the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, which want to commit genocide against the Jews, his “friends” and “brothers”; shared a platform with the leading Dutch Jewish antisemite; gave money to an organization run by a Holocaust-denier; went to meetings where Israel was compared to Nazi Germany; and was occasionally was involved in an antisemitic act.A part-time antisemite may even make only one major antisemitic remark without repeating it.ONE EXAMPLE is German Ambassador to the United Nations Christoph Heusgen. In explaining one of his country’s many anti-Israel votes at the UN, Heusgen made this vile statement in March 2019: “We believe that international law is the best way to protect civilians and allow them to live in peace and security and without fear of Israeli bulldozers or Hamas rockets.”The largest German daily, Bild, wrote a response to Heusgen’s statement in which he compared Palestinian rockets to Israeli bulldozers. It remarked, “This equivalence is pure malice... in a week in which the Israeli population frequently had to flee from rockets shot by Hamas terrorists. Referral to the bulldozers, however, is a measure which the Israeli government takes against illegal building that concerns mainly Palestinians, but also Israeli settlements.”The Simon Wiesenthal Center included Heusgen’s UN statement in its 2019 list of the world’s major antisemitic incidents.An iconic example of a prominent part-time Jewish antisemite was the late Austrian socialist prime minister Bruno Kreisky. He said about the Jews, “If they are a people, they are an ugly people.”The leading antisemitism expert in academia of our generation, Robert Wistrich, described Kreisky as the quintessential left-wing, self-hating Jew. Kreisky claimed that he suffered no antisemitism in his youth. This seems highly improbable in view of the widespread antisemitic hatred in Austria during the pre-World War II period.Wistrich also wrote that Kreisky was “the one Jew who could grant gentile Austrians full exculpation from a latent sense of guilt over their prominent role in the Holocaust.”Kreisky did this in several ways. He ruthlessly attacked Simon Wiesenthal, branding him “a dangerous reactionary.” Kreisky was a pioneer in the slandering of Israel as a “semi-fascist” and “apartheid” state. He also called Israel “undemocratic,” “clerical” and “militarist.”Many people have some prejudices against Jews. In its global study, the ADL asked people their opinion on 11 such prejudices. If they held at least six of them, they were categorized as antisemites. That didn’t mean that they held all 11 prejudices. They may thus have been partly antisemitic. And are those who had less than six prejudices not also partly antisemitic?In Jewish history, full-time antisemites often prevailed. They were against Jews in everything and opposed everything Jewish. Hitler was a full-time antisemite. The Nazi movement that saw the Jews as subhuman, vermin or bacteria was full-time antisemitic, 24 hours a day. The same can be said about the Norwegian wartime prime minister and Nazi ally Vidkun Quisling.The many expressions of part-time antisemitism is one major reason why the analysis of contemporary antisemitism is so difficult. Even many people in law enforcement have great difficulty in defining and dealing with these expressions of hatred.The writer is the emeritus chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and a strategic adviser for more than 30 years to some of the Western world’s leading corporations. Among the honors he has received are the 2019 International Lion of Judah Award of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, recognizing him as a leading international authority on contemporary antisemitism.
