Why always the Jews? Is antisemitism overstated?

“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”

W.H Auden, September 1, 1939
(This is a longer version of an article that originally appeared in the Jewish Chronicle)

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In academia there is an argument being conducted with polemical passion about how seriously we should treat threats to modern Jews. The loudest voices belong to those who insist that we should not worry too much about antisemitism.

The old hatreds that led to the fascist persecution are history, they tell us. Jews face only isolated acts of violence that cannot begin to be compared with the systemic racism inflicted on others today. I do not mean to diminish the seriousness of the intellectuals involved when I say that this conversation is not happening in isolation.

Everything goes back to Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In theory, one ought to be able to oppose antisemitism and support a Palestinian state; to agree with the International Criminal Court and say that both the leaders of the Israeli government and of Hamas should face trials for war crimes.

But human beings – or most human beings – don’t like balance. They want clear story lines with heroes and villains, oppressors and victims. There is a global market for anyone willing to say that fears about antisemitism really should not concern us.

I think we can all agree that it would be jolly nice if that were true. But surely the October 7 massacres show that attempts to minimise antisemitism just do not work.

Yet, and here is what is strange, the killings, rapes and abductions did not lead to a reassessment in academia or a resolve to treat anti-Jewish prejudice as a dark and potent force in the world. On the contrary, mass murder appeared to make many in academia keener than ever to downplay its significance.

Six weeks after October 7, the New York Review of Books published an “An Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory”.