Why Don’t Antisemites Hate Me?

I have many friends whom most of you would call “antisemites.”

Notice how I didn’t say they “are” antisemites – I said you’d call them such. And that’s because most of you have a distorted understanding of what antisemitism actually is.

And considering that I’ve managed to befriend these people, while being open about the fact that I’m Jewish, proves that I know something you don’t. So maybe it would be wise to spare a few minutes of your time, to listen to what I have to say – if you want to actually do something about rising antisemitism, rather than just complain about it.

Why don’t they hate me?

Because they don’t hate Jews for what we are. They hate us for what we do. And when we don’t do those things, they don’t hate us.

It was never complicated.

When Jews display honor, people don’t hate us. The problem is, most of us do not display honor towards them, because if we did, we would listen to what they have to say about the history of our people’s relationships, and apologise for the bad things our people have done to theirs.

That would be fair, no? We expect them to apologise to us – for the discrimination, for the expulsions, for the pogroms, for the Holocaust. We expect them to spend time in public school learning about it. We expect them to go to museums to learn about it. We expect them to fund those museums with public tax money. We expect them to build memorials with public tax money, and put them right in the middle of their busy urban public squares so that everyone has to look at them, every day, and be reminded, every day, of what everyone’s done to the Jews, and carry guilt around for it.

Yet most of us will not even sit for one conversation about what we’ve done to them.

And that is dishonourable. It displays a superiority complex. It says “We, the Jews, don’t have the same duties that the rest of you have.” Everyone else is expected to solve their conflicts through dialogue, humility, and sincere introspection, while Jews have no such duty – and in fact, the mere suggestion of it results in accusations of antisemitism. The idea that Jews should hold ourselves to the same standards as everyone else. That idea is considered fringe and bigoted.

And that is the most weaselly, petty, dishonourable way a people can interact with other peoples.

And I don’t do that.

And that’s why they don’t hate me. The people who you think “hate all Jews, just for being Jewish”, don’t hate me – even though they know from the start that I’m Jewish.

I recently spent a week staying at someone’s house who believes the Holocaust was a hoax and that a sinister cabal of Jews are controlling the world and working towards a global Jewish theocratic techno-dictatorship where all Gentiles will be either killed or enslaved to Jews. We went hiking together, just us, no other people, far out into the woods. We’ve been on many such hikes together, and every time, I’m completely unarmed. If he’s what the rest of you *think* he is, why did I make it back home?

Why have I been able to put myself at the mercy of numerous people like him – people who think the hero of WW2 was the Tiny Moustache Man – and make it out alive every time? Not just alive, but with a new friendship?

Because they don’t see me as their enemy – even though I’m Jewish – because I’m not contributing to Jewish supremacism, but rather opposing it. Their enemy is Jewish supremacism – not Jewish people.

And it’s always been like that.

Out of all the people you *think* are Jew-haters, 99% of them hate our behaviour, and only 1% hate us for our DNA – but even in those cases, it’s because they believe our DNA inexorably predisposes us to the problematic behaviour. So even when it’s about DNA, it’s still really about behaviour.

And even with them, after a few exchanges the result is usually them acknowledging that there’s at least one decent Jew, and so maybe genes aren’t everything.

And you know what? Genes aren’t everything. I think genes don’t make behaviour unavoidable. I think we all have the power to change the way we act. We all get to change our choices.

So I’m asking my fellow Jewish people to change. To introspect. To consider the possibility that we are the drivers of our perennial conflicts with the nations, and to start dialoguing and listening to people who can tell you how we did that.

This whole dilemma is a maturity crisis for the Jewish People, and if we’re going to survive, we must evolve.