Antisemitism: The Oldest Hatred

By John Mann

'The Jewish people in its very being constitutes a living protest against a world of hatred, violence and war' - Emeritus Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks

The history of Jewish persecution is as old as the written word, though the epithet `antisemitism` was only conceived in the late nineteenth century as it reached the beginning of its most horrifying chapter. Throughout Christian history the hatred and prejudice towards the Jewish people have often been blamed on the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ, but ethnic Jewish oppression began long before.

It is beyond dispute that antisemitism in our societies is on the increase. Following the Israeli bombing of Gaza, antisemitic feeling has grown significantly - though a prominent group of French Orthodox Jews in Paris recently demonstrated with placards saying 'Israeli action in Gaza is not the action of the Jewish people`. Yet still Jewish graves are desecrated and Synagogues daubed with swastikas.

John Mann has assembled a Reader on the theme of antisemitism ranging from the writings of Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein and Jean-Paul Sartre to George Washington, Jesse Jackson and Emile Zola.
The book is published under the auspices of the 'All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Anti-Semitism' and will come to be seen as a contribution of major importance on a subject of incipient lethal danger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Aug 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781472920768

John Mann

John Mann has been Labour MP for Bassetlaw since 2001. He sits on the influential Treasury Committee in the House of Commons. He was formerly Chair of Labour Students. Since 2005, he has been Chair of the Parliamentary Committee Against Anti-Semitism and commissioned the all party parliamentary inquiry into anti-semitism.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

As Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism since 2005, I have sought to combat anti-Jewish prejudice according to three underlying principles. First, that non-Jews should lead the fight against antisemitism, because the struggle against prejudice is not just the responsibility of its victims. Second, that any success we achieve in combating antisemitism should be used to fight all forms of racism and discrimination. Third, that parliament must set the national standard in these matters and do so across party political lines.

More broadly, we have sought to reshape the debate on antisemitism and to examine afresh some of red lines that have been eroded. I commissioned the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiries into Antisemitism which reported in 2006 and 2015 respectively. These processes provided unprecedented opportunities to evaluate the political landscape and to recommend improvements that would be of tangible benefit. The impact of the subsequent reports has been seen as considerable.

Working together with key stakeholder groups we have: inspired the establishment of a Whitehall Government Working Group on Antisemitism; secured improved recording and prosecuting of hate crimes; state funding for the security of Jewish schools; a school linking programme; collaborative British and Israeli academic exchange projects; the appointment of a UK Government Envoy for Post-Holocaust issues; and we have taken a lead in re-energizing international parliamentary efforts to combat antisemitism – devising global protocols for tackling online hate and inspiring similar inquiries in a number of other national parliaments. We also undertook our own secondary inquiry, which focused on the behaviour of politicians and political parties during elections.

The impact of our work has benefited not just the Jewish community but other victims of hate crime. We adhered to those principles, which have guided me, but there is a fourth key tenet that I perhaps overlooked, as for many of us it is a natural reaction to intolerance: speaking out.

I have been approached numerous times by Jewish young people and others, registering their concern that there are so few people willing to speak out and support them. Thankfully, our group is not alone in our anti-racist endeavours. There are household names, historical powerhouses and legendary leaders who have seen anti-Jewish hatred in their midst and addressed it. Their words have not been given due recognition. In bringing their works together for the first time, I hope more leaders will be inspired to speak out.

The importance of shining a light on antisemitism cannot be overstated. Would France, Hungary, Sweden and other European countries find themselves in the midst of a Jewish exodus from their countries if politicians were doing more to combat prejudice? The first section of the book aptly collates speeches for survival, given it is the continued existence of a people which is at stake.

Antisemitism, in its most developed form, does not just cause harm to Jews but to other minority communities, as Pastor Niemöller so eloquently explained. Jews will be first and the rest will follow. Uniquely as a form of racism, antisemitism, rather than casting its victims as lowly and inhuman, more often defines them as all-powerful. If McCarthyism has taught us anything, it is that irrational accusations of subversion and disloyalty know no bounds. Consequently, however, speaking out and acting against antisemitism benefits not just those suffering from anti-Jewish prejudice but rather all victims of hate crime. This idea is explored further in the second section of the book, which focuses on intersectionality.

Modern antisemitism has become all too frequent and is not as simple to deconstruct as classical antisemitism, given its common staging ground of the Middle East conflict. With this complexity has come a reluctance to recognize anti-Jewish prejudice for what it is, and so the third section of the book focuses on the links between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Our group has worked to explain what the acceptable boundaries of discourse are, and we have asked parliamentarians to take the lead when problems occur in their own backyard. We ask them to speak out, rather than stay quiet.

Too often, civil leaders have taken the easy path: they have stayed silent. In the silence, antisemitism spreads.

In speaking out, combating silence, filling the void, the people in this book have inspired freedom: liberating minds from ignorance, prejudice, malice and lies. That is the raison d’être of our work and our resolve has not, nor will it ever, waver.

John Mann, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

PART ONE

SURVIVAL

The history of Jewish persecution is as old as the written word, though the term ‘antisemitism’ was only conceived in the late nineteenth century as it reached the beginning of its most horrifying chapter. Throughout Christian history the hatred and prejudice against the Jewish people has often been blamed on the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ, but ethnic Jewish oppression began long before. The Torah chronicles ancient oppression, but non-biblical sources trace the earliest historically recorded instances back to third-century BC Alexandria in the writings of Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian who mixed ethnic and religious differences in his hate-filled prejudice. The value and position of the holy land has led to many occupations and inevitable cultural and religious clashes between the Jewish people and their temporary overlords, whether polytheistic Egyptians, Greeks or Romans or the subsequent Christians and Islamists. The first focusing by Christians on the sin of deicide didn’t occur till 167 AD, and as the centuries passed and Christianity became the dominant religion and supreme force, the hatred and prejudice spread throughout the medieval world. By the time of the Crusades and the Black Death the Jewish people had become a common enemy of the Christian world, to be blamed for all wrongs and used collectively or individually whenever a scapegoat was required. The advent of printing merely enabled the further spread of antisemitic sentiment and writings, though the fires of hatred and prejudice were long since lit.

In the history of antisemitism the ‘Enlightenment’ can be seen to be anything but. Though in many countries it brought brief respite from state-sanctioned oppression as civil liberties were extended to the Jewish population, anti-Jewish sentiment was still rife and the era sowed the seeds in false scientific developments for what grew into the racial antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the mid-1800s across mainland Europe, Jewish persecution grew increasingly sanctioned and increasingly violent and saw a wave of mass immigration to America as the Russian pogroms sought to completely eliminate the Jewish population through a combination of destruction, displacement and assimilation. As National Socialism rose in Germany, a policy of violent displacement was initially instilled, turning after 1938 to mass destruction.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1466–1536), QUOTED IN THE APOPHTHEGMES OF ERASMUS (TRANS. NICHOLAS UDALL), LINCOLNSHIRE 1877

In all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency.

PAUL JOHNSON, ‘THE ANTI-SEMITIC DISEASE’, COMMENTARY MAGAZINE, JUNE 2005

Charlie Chaplin

By 1941, when The Great Dictator was released, Chaplin had been one of the most famous men in the world for almost three decades. The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first significantly political work as well as being his first ‘talkie’ (he had continued to make silent films long after talkies became the established form of cinema in the 1930s).

Chaplin plays the joint roles of a Jewish Barber and Adenoid Hynkel, a dictator explicitly based on Hitler. Following repeated persecution, internment and escape dressed as a soldier, the barber is eventually mistaken for Hynkel and taken to a rally to give a speech. Introduced by his number two, Garbitsch (a parody of Goebbels), who argues against free speech and for the subjugation of Jews, the barber gives his response, announcing a democracy and calling for our humanity to free us all.

The film was released to great acclaim, though arguments have been made that its overt politicization marked the beginning of the end for Chaplin’s popularity. Chaplin himself said in his 1964 autobiography that he would never have made the film had he known the true monstrosity of the Nazis: ‘Had I known of the actual horrors of the concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator, I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.’

Speech from The Great Dictator

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone – if possible – Jew, Gentile – black man – white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness – not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost …

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men – cries out for universal brotherhood – for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world – millions of despairing men, women, and little children – victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish …

Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes – men who despise you – enslave you – who regiment your lives – tell you what to do – what to think and what to feel! Who drill you – diet you – treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate – the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: ‘the Kingdom of God is within man’ – not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power – the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then – in the name of democracy – let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world – a decent world that will give men a chance to work – that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world – to do away with national barriers – to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Albert Einstein

Einstein was born in Germany to secular Jewish parents in 1879. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921, he was visiting the US in 1933 when Hitler came to power and never returned to his homeland. Though calling himself an agnostic, he had a strong kinship with his fellow Jews and threw himself passionately – personally and publicly – into the refugee effort, giving dozens of speeches, participating in fundraisers and discreetly acting as guarantor to many escaping to America.

He was also a public supporter of the Civil Rights movement. When the celebrated contralto Marian Anderson was refused a room in Princeton in 1937 when she came to give a concert, Einstein offered to put her up in his own home, and thereafter until his death she stayed with him whenever she was visiting Princeton. He was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and in 1946 called racism America’s ‘worst disease’, later saying: ‘Race prejudice has unfortunately become an American tradition which is uncritically handed down from one generation to the next. The only remedies are enlightenment and education.’

In 1952, after the death of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion offered Einstein the largely ceremonial position. Einstein refused, claiming that he lacked ‘both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official function’. He went on to say: ‘I am the more distressed over these circumstances because my relationship with the Jewish people became my strongest human tie once I achieved complete clarity about our precarious position among the nations of the world.’

In 1938, when ‘Why Do They Hate the Jews?’ was published, there was a strong antisemitic current in American society. In Princeton, where Einstein taught and lived for his entire US career until his death in 1955, a poll among the incoming freshmen of 1938 declared Adolf Hitler ‘the greatest living person’, with Einstein coming second.

Why Do They Hate the Jews?

I should like to begin by telling you an ancient fable, with a few minor changes – a fable that will serve to throw into bold relief the mainsprings of political anti-Semitism.

The shepherd boy said to the horse: ‘You are the noblest beast that treads the earth. You deserve to live in untroubled bliss; and indeed your happiness would be complete were it not for the treacherous stag. But he practised from youth to excel you in fleetness of foot. His faster pace allows him to reach the water holes before you do. He and his tribe drink up the water far and wide, while you and your foal are left to thirst. Stay with me! My wisdom and guidance shall deliver you and your kind from a dismal and ignominious state.’

Blinded by envy and hatred of the stag, the horse agreed. He yielded to the shepherd lad’s bridle. He lost his freedom and became the shepherd’s slave.

The horse in this fable represents a people, and the shepherd lad a class or clique aspiring to absolute rule over the people; the stag, on the other hand, represents the Jews.

I can hear you say: ‘A most unlikely tale! No creature would be as foolish as the horse in your fable.’ But let us give it a little more thought. The horse had been suffering the pangs of thirst, and his vanity was often pricked when he saw the nimble stag outrunning him. You, who have known no such pain and vexation, may find it difficult to understand that hatred and blindness should have driven the horse to act with such ill-advised, gullible haste. The horse, however, fell an easy victim to temptation because his earlier tribulations had prepared him for such a blunder. For there is much truth in the saying that it is easy to give just and wise counsel – to others! – but hard to act justly and wisely for oneself. I say to you with full conviction: we all have often played the tragic role of the horse and we are in constant danger of yielding to temptation again.

The situation illustrated in this fable happens again and again in the life of individuals and nations. In brief, we may call it the process by which dislike and hatred of a given person or group are diverted to another person or group incapable of effective defence. But why did the role of the stag in the fable so often fall to the Jews? Why did the Jews so often happen to draw the hatred of the masses? Primarily because there are Jews among almost all nations and because they are everywhere too thinly scattered to defend themselves against violent attack.

A few examples from the recent past will prove the point: towards the end of the nineteenth century the Russian people were chafing under the tyranny of their government. Stupid blunders in foreign policy further strained their temper until it reached the breaking point. In this extremity the rulers of Russia sought to divert unrest by inciting the masses to hatred and violence toward the Jews. These tactics were repeated after the Russian government had drowned the dangerous revolution of 1905 in blood – and this manoeuvre may well have helped to keep the hated regime in power until near the end of the World War.

When the Germans had lost the World War hatched by their ruling class, immediate attempts were made to blame the Jews, first for instigating the war and then for losing it. In the course of time, success attended these efforts. The hatred engendered against the Jews not only protected the privileged classes, but enabled a small, unscrupulous and insolent group to place the German people in a state of complete bondage.

The crimes with which the Jews have been charged in the course of history – crimes which were to justify the atrocities perpetrated against them – have changed in rapid succession. They were supposed to have poisoned wells. They were said to have murdered children for ritual purposes. They were falsely charged with a systematic attempt at the economic domination and exploitation of all mankind. Pseudo-scientific books were written to brand them an inferior, dangerous race. They were reputed to foment wars and revolutions for their own selfish purposes. They were presented at once as dangerous innovators and as enemies of true progress. They were charged with falsifying the culture of nations by penetrating the national life under the guise of becoming assimilated. In the same breath they were accused of being so stubbornly inflexible that it was impossible for them to fit into any society.

Almost beyond imagination were the charges brought against them, charges known to their instigators to be untrue all the while, but which time and again influenced the masses. In times of unrest and turmoil the masses are inclined to hatred and cruelty, whereas in times of peace these traits of human nature emerge but stealthily.

Up to this point I have spoken only of violence and oppression against the Jews – not of anti-Semitism itself as a psychological and social phenomenon existing even in times and circumstances when no special action against the Jews is under way. In this sense, one may speak of latent anti-Semitism. What is its basis? I believe that in a certain sense one may actually regard it as a normal manifestation in the life of a people.

The members of any group existing in a nation are more closely bound to one another than they are to the remaining population. Hence a nation will never be free of friction while such groups continue to be distinguishable. In my belief, uniformity in a population would not be desirable, even if it were attainable. Common convictions and aims, similar interests, will in every society produce groups that, in a certain sense, act as units. There will always be friction between such groups – the same sort of aversion and rivalry that exists between individuals.

The need for such groupings is perhaps most easily seen in the field of politics, in the formation of political parties. Without parties the political interests of the citizens of any state are bound to languish. There would be no forum for the free exchange of opinions. The individual would be isolated and unable to assert his convictions. Political convictions, moreover, ripen and grow only through mutual stimulation and criticism offered by individuals of similar disposition and purpose; and politics is no different from any other field of our cultural existence. Thus it is recognized, for example, that in times of intense religious fervour different sects are likely to spring up whose rivalry stimulates religious life in general. It is well known, on the other hand, that centralization – that is, elimination of independent groups – leads to one-sidedness and barrenness in science and art because such centralization checks and even suppresses any rivalry of opinions and research trends.

Just What Is a Jew?

The formation of groups has an invigorating effect in all spheres of human striving, perhaps mostly due to the struggle between the convictions and aims represented by the different groups. The Jews, too, form such a group with a definite character of its own, and anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jews by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. But for the political abuse resulting from it, it might never have been designated by a special name.

What are the characteristics of the Jewish group? What, in the first place, is a Jew? There are no quick answers to this question. The most obvious answer would be the following: a Jew is a person professing the Jewish faith. The superficial character of this answer is easily recognized by means of a simple parallel. Let us ask the question: what is a snail? An answer similar in kind to the one given above might be: a snail is an animal inhabiting a snail shell. This answer is not altogether incorrect; nor, to be sure, is it exhaustive; for the snail shell happens to be but one of the material products of the snail. Similarly, the Jewish faith is but one of the characteristic products of the Jewish community. It is, furthermore, known that a snail can shed its shell without thereby ceasing to be a snail. The Jew who abandons his faith (in the formal sense of the word) is in a similar position. He remains a Jew.

Difficulties of this kind appear whenever one seeks to explain the essential character of a group.

The bond that has united the Jews for thousands of years and that unites them today is, above all, the democratic ideal of social justice, coupled with the ideal of mutual aid and tolerance among all men. Even the most ancient religious scriptures of the Jews are steeped in these social ideals, which have powerfully affected Christianity and Mohammedanism¹ and have a benign influence upon the social structure of a great part of mankind. The introduction of a weekly day of rest should be remembered here – a profound blessing to all mankind. Personalities such as Moses, Spinoza and Karl Marx, dissimilar as they may be, all lived and sacrificed themselves for the ideal of social justice; and it was the tradition of their forefathers that led them on this thorny path. The unique accomplishments of the Jews in the field of philanthropy spring from the same source.

The second characteristic trait of Jewish tradition is the high regard in which it holds every form of intellectual aspiration and spiritual effort. I am convinced that this great respect for intellectual striving is solely responsible for the contributions that the Jews have made toward the progress of knowledge, in the broadest sense of the term. In view of their relatively small number and the considerable external obstacles constantly placed in their way on all sides, the extent of those contributions deserves the admiration of all sincere men. I am convinced that this is not due to any special wealth of endowment, but to the fact that the esteem in which intellectual accomplishment is held among the Jews creates an atmosphere particularly favourable to the development of any talents that may exist. At the same time a strong critical spirit prevents blind obeisance to any mortal authority.

I have confined myself here to these two traditional traits, which seem to me the most basic. These standards and ideals find expression in small things as in large. They are transmitted from parents to children; they colour conversation and judgement among friends; they fill the religious scriptures; and they give to the community life of the group its characteristic stamp. It is in these distinctive ideals that I see the essence of Jewish nature. That these ideals are but imperfectly realized in the group – in its actual everyday life – is only natural. However, if one seeks to give brief expression to the essential character of a group, the approach must always be by the way of the ideal.

Where Oppression Is a Stimulus

In the foregoing I have conceived of Judaism as a community of tradition. Both friend and foe, on the other hand, have often asserted that the Jews represent a race; that their characteristic behaviour is the result of innate qualities transmitted by heredity