Sharing a blog I wrote at the Times of Israel:
Source for image: iStock; Frazao Studio Latino
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Sharing a blog I wrote at the Times of Israel:
Source for image: iStock; Frazao Studio Latino
No posts
I think antisemitism is too vast a topic for a monocausal explanation, although economist Thomas Sowell also suggested Jewish success as a cause of antisemitism. It would at least explain why Asians, like Jews, are increasingly seen as “white adjacent” or just “white” by the contemporary Western left, even though Asians, like Jews, have suffered discrimination and persecution. And the DEI/”anti-racist” assumption that in a “racist” world, all success is illegitimate and the product of “privilege” generates a cult of mediocrity (Claudine Gay?) in which successful people, Jewish or otherwise, can’t help but be hated.
That said, I prefer more philosophical/religious explanations, but maybe that’s the point: we find explanations that fit our pre-existing worldviews without really explaining the phenomenon.
I think it's probably significant that, given the small and concentrated nature of the world Jewish population, most non-Jews will never meet a Jew. It's doubtful that Chaucer or Shakespeare ever did. This allows Jews to function as a metaphor or symbol without reality intruding.
I don’t know if this was deliberate, but your choice of reader for We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen, is one of the UK’s leading “As a Jews” (“As a Jew, I condemn Israel blah blah blah”). Maybe he internalised a lot of antisemitism.