Anti-Semitism cannot be fought effectively if paganphobia continues to be ignored

A few years ago, it was customary for newspapers to report after a terrorist attack that members of a community had “rushed to donate blood for the victims.” Today, after the single most egregious act of mass slaughter in recent history against Israelis, such courtesies are no longer even deemed necessary. A wall of noise has erupted in real life, social media and college campuses to drown out the voices of the victims. From Australia to England, thousands of zombified propagandists have taken to the streets to scream for the extermination of Jews and the annihilation of Israel. Israel is widely seen among young Americans as just an irredeemably imperialist “White” country, and worthy of full condemnation. It is as if thousands of angry “Woke” youth see in Israel the burden of every sin European Whites have done in the past; colonisation of the Americas and Native American genocide, African slavery, “Islamophobia”, and so on. Is this some ancient Jew-hate among Christians and Muslims that has resurfaced? Or is it simply a legitimate critique of “Zionism” and “Western settler colonialism” as even some liberal Jews insist? And if the US “Jewish lobby” is as influential as people assume, why are so many Jewish people afraid? Finally, what are the lessons that Indians in general and Hindus particularly in the diaspora might take from this tragic situation? Clearly, no community outside the Jews seems to feel as much sympathy for Jews at this moment as Hindus. But is this sympathy understood or reciprocated in the Jewish diaspora? If not, why not? And who will suffer as a result? Anti=Semitism: Two Views I find that there are two views of the history of anti-Jewish hatred at play at the moment. The dominant one, built in academia and normalised in media over the past few decades, uses a convenient, selective frame. It admits that anti-Semitism is real, but only when it comes from the Western “Right Wing,” “White Supremacists,” or Trump supporters. In this view, progressive whites, Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians, stand up for principled opposition to bigotry which is embodied, in their eyes, exclusively by White Supremacists, Zionists, and Hindu Nationalists in the world today. This view is also held perhaps by many progressive Jews, although some of them are somewhat “mugged by reality” in recent times. Naturally, people and institutions who uphold this view do not believe that anti-Semitism can exist among the Left, or among Muslims or Arabs. Whatever they say or do, is only “anti-Zionism,” and not anti-Semitism or bigotry against Jews. That is their belief. The second view, which used to be a common one in the Jewish community but seems to have become slightly complicated with generational change, centres on the long, relentless religious persecution of their ancestors. Ancient Egyptians, Romans, early Christians, the Catholic church in Spain and Italy, Martin Luther and the Protestant revolution in Germany, all reproduced hatred against Jews generation after generation. The religious bias then entered supposedly secular and (pseudo) scientific discourse through racism and eugenics in the early 20th century, culminating in the monstrous industrial-scale propaganda, dehumanisation and genocide by the Nazis. The Catholic church is often criticised for its silence and failure to help the Jews, so the overlap of religious and modern elements in anti-Jewish prejudice was clearly not forgotten. This part of the history is commonly known among Jews and others, but in the past few decades something seems to have changed in how younger Jewish Americans, especially progressives, understand the growing propaganda against them in universities especially. How to Fight Anti-Semitism Former New York Times writer and The Free Press creator Bari Weiss has written insightfully on this issue in her book How to Fight Anti-Semitism. Her book is a good guide to understanding how liberal Jews are beginning to make sense of the existence of anti-Semitism on the Left, but also shows some limits in the (progressive) Jewish understanding of current civilisational threats to them in comparison to how Hindus, who have been supporting Jews unhesitatingly, see these threats. Weiss correctly identifies that anti-Semitism comes from both the Right and the Left in the United States. She also expresses concern about the impact of the latter particularly on progressive Jews, who, she says, “are being asked to erase more and more of themselves to remain inside the fold (and) some don’t even know they are making this choice, having grown up with little Jewish education or understanding of Jewish history.” However, as Hindus sympathetic to Israel might have noticed, there is something relentless about the propaganda against Jews calling out anti-Semitism on the Left today, and something perhaps ineffective about Jewish critique of the same (they are effective in only tactical ways, like cutting funding or securing dismissals of antisemites, but less so in getting minds to change). Despite the horrors of 7 October, and the brave efforts of many writers and activists, I do not know how many of the 18-24-year-olds polled in the Harvard CAPS Harris survey who said that the Hamas attacks were justifiable by Palestinian grievances have changed their minds (an alarming 51 per cent of them and 48 per cent of 25-34 year olds, compared to much smaller fractions among older Americans say Hamas was justified). The dominant worldview that youth around the world are being trained in from school to college to workplace has a simple binary of good and bad people. Good people are victims; Blacks, Muslims, Trans, to name a few. Bad people are oppressors and colonisers; Whites, Jews/ “Zionists,”, Hindus/”Hindutva/ Sanatana Dharmis” and “Terfs,” for example. The causes of this worldview that is clearly biased and designed to harm certain communities are starting to be understood. A new report just published by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), for example, finds that US colleges have been awash with billions of dollars in donations from countries like Qatar, and there is a marked rise in anti-Semitism in campuses which have been heavily accepting of such funds. But then is an understanding of these causes leading to a collective narrative of bias against, say, Hindus, Jews, and others, or is the pushback against the dominant narrative of today doomed to remain divided, and on the back foot? (This is Part 1 of a two-part series.) The writer is Professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco. He has authored several books, including  ‘Rearming Hinduism: Nature, Hinduphobia and the Return of Indian Intelligence’ (Westland, 2015). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. 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