So, how about that antisemitism?

No, seriously, there were a couple of very significant posts from Caitlin Johnstone recently that talked about antisemitism, and I think both of them were misunderstood. A more recent one said that antisemitism was simply not a problem in the world anymore, and a lot of people were outraged by it, because that's not true. However, I think they were missing the point she was making, which was that there's hardly anyone who hates Jews the way the Nazis did. Yes, there are people who dislike Jews, but it's either a mild dislike, or it's for a reason other than simply that they are Jewish.

Which leads to the other point she made, which was just an aside in a longer post from earlier. I think people skimmed over this point, largely discounting it, but I think it's highly troubling. She talked about how Zionists worldwide are pushing this idea that anyone who criticizes Israel is by definition antisemitic. We see it here in America where there was actually a non-binding resolution in Congress that declared criticism of Israel to be antisemitism. The problem with this (other than the fact of its ludicrousness given that many Jews actually consider Israel to be illegitimate) is that if you keep saying this, eventually people who (rightly) hate Israel are going to decide that since they're beinge labeled antisemites, they must actually hate all Jews.

Johnstone talked about it like a possibility, but it's my personal view that this has already come to pass. It was over a month before Johnstone wrote that when I saw something on Quora where an anti-Israel group had posted something that was...well it was essentially pro-Nazi. I commented on it that they should take it down because it was legitimately antisemitic, and the response I received was, "So? They're going yo call us antisemitic anyway, so who cares?"

It seems like since then I've seen a barrage of antisemitic posts and comments that express hatred towards Jews on the whole due to the unsavory nature of Israeli Jews. Now all Jews get painted with the same brush, and it's an ugly one. Just today on Substack, someone responded to one of my comments with, "Time to renounce your Judaism entirely?" I've been seeing this sentiment a lot lately. I am Jewish by the fact that both of my parents are Jews, but people keep urging me to stop being Jewish.

The thing is, as I keep pointing out to these people, Jews are both a religion and an ethnicity. In fact, (while the weren't called "Jews" back then) Jews were an ethnic group *before* they were a religious group. That goes for whether you believe the Biblical record, which has them as a group with common ancestry coming out of Egypt and then being presented with the law on Mt. Sinai, or whether you believe anthropologists, who suggest they lived in ancient Israel before developing the religion.

Anyway, I can denounce the religion, but I don't feel I can denounce my ancestry, as much as many people seem to want me to. Anyway, I'm seeing a lot of hatred directed at Jews online, but whenever I ask for clarification, I get told about terrible things that Jews do. These terrible things are not within my personal experience of Judaism, but rather indicative of what I hear about Israelis and Zionists: a Jewish supremacist attitude. I continue to insist that this is not how all Jews are, but honestly, it's a large enough portion of the world Jewish population (maybe even a majority?) that it's hard for people to separate it out. "Why would you want to associate with this?" people ask me, and I don't want to associate with it, but I nonetheless am a Jew.

And this is the terrible part of it: I don't believe for a moment that this was the way Judaism was ever meant to be. In Genesis chapter twelve, we read

The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Israeli Jews seem to focus on the "whoever curses you I will curse" part, while I think we miss out on the "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" which is far more important. Are people being blessed by Israeli Jews? No, I don't think they are at all. In fact, I believe that Israeli Jews are becoming a curse to Jews elsewhere in the world who are being hated by our association to them. As one antisemite said to me recently online, "But the truth is that the ‘good’ jews have never waged war on the ‘bad’ jews to stop them from making ‘the jews’ look bad." The problem with this is that unlike the "bad" Jews, the "good" Jews don't have an army.

Israel is dragging Judaism into a cesspool of evil that fewer and fewer of us seem to be able to escape, and furthermore, it even seems like they are possibly dragging the rest of the world into World War III. I wonder where God is in all of this.