JPost: “Jewish Self-Hatred Is The Leaven We Must Clear Out”

The Jerusalem Post published my new article “Jewish Self-Hatred Is The Leaven We Must Clear Out“

If there is any hatred more enigmatic than antisemitism, it is Jewish antisemitism. Our self-hatred is a sinister, undying fountain, but it will not dry out until we find its trigger and defuse it.

History is replete with examples of Jews who hated their people so vehemently that they dedicated their entire lives to its destruction. The rebellion of the Maccabees, circa 160 BC, was first and foremost against Hellenized Jews rather than the Seleucid Empire. Likewise, the commander of the Roman armies that conquered Jerusalem and exiled the Jews was Tiberius Julius Alexander, an Alexandrian Jew whose own father had donated the gold and silver for the Temple gates that Alexander shattered. In fact, prior to the ruin of Jerusalem, Julius Alexander obliterated his own Jewish community of Alexandria, causing “the whole district [to be] deluged with blood as 50,000 corpses were heaped up,” according to Jewish-Roman historian Titus Flavius Josephus. Similarly, during the Spanish Inquisition, the chief inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada was of recent Jewish descent, but that did not abate his zeal in expelling and killing the Jews. And just this past century, the Association of German National Jews supported and voted for Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Indeed, George Soros and Noam Chomsky did not invent Jewish self-hatred, a.k.a., Jewish antisemitism. In fact, the past week has seen a galling parade of this mania. First, we learned that the majority of JCCs bomb threats had a single perpetrator and that the felon was not an alt-right zealot or a Muslim extremist, but a 19-year-old Israeli-American from Ashkelon, a small town in southern Israel. Next, we saw the scores of self-righteous Jews protesting Vice President Mike Pence’s speech at AIPAC, claiming that if there is no peace for the Palestinians (who declare every other day that they do not want peace with Israel but its destruction) then there will be no peace for Israel. And third, while the state of Israel and some Jewish organizations have finally mustered enough international support to hold an anti-BDS conference at the UN General Assembly Hall, the BDS movement itself is rife with Jewish activists and Jewish organizations that support it, such as J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Jews for Justice for Palestine.

Indeed, Jewish self-hatred seems to be an undying fountain of sinister ingenuity. If there is any hatred more enigmatic than antisemitism, it is Jewish antisemitism.

How We Became a Nation

In September 2014, I wrote an article in The New York Times titled “Who Are You People of Israel” that talked about the unique origin of the Jewish people and the reason for antisemitism. Following numerous requests to elaborate on the idea of Jewish unity as the solution to antisemitism and the sources I relied on to support my view, I wrote a more elaborate essay titled “Why Do People Hate Jews.” The essay quickly became a mini-Internet site that contains, in addition to the essay, a video clip explaining the ideas and a free copy of my book, Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour. Under the constraints of a newspaper column, I can only offer a brief explanation, but you are welcome to follow any of the above links for more details.
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