UK media is in much ado over the (re)suspension of anti-Semitic Labour Party Member, Vicky Kirby. Mrs. Kirby was suspended from the Labour party in 2014 after posting several anti-Semitic tirades on her Facebook page, but shortly after she was readmitted. The renewed criticism erupted when news website Guido Fawkes disclosed that Kirby was not only readmitted into the Labour party, but was also elected as the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) vice-chair.
Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was urged by furious MPs to expel the verbose Mrs. Kirby, especially after his tweet stating that “The vile anti-Semitic abuse being directed @lucianaberger is completely unacceptable. It has no place in our society.” All this comes on the backdrop of the accusations against the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) that they are “having a problem with Jews,” which pictures the ostensibly liberal party in rather unappealing colours.
However, one should only expect a party that elects a leader who defines Hamas, Hezbollah, and a host of anti-Semitic individuals as friends to be home to the likes of Kirby and to students who “have a problem with Jews.” However, even if the labour party were to oust them all, it would hardly make a difference. The chase of anti-Semites is futile as long as the cause that creates it is thriving and spreading its venomous ambiance.
The chase of anti-Semites is futile as long as the cause that creates it is thriving and spreading its venomous ambiance.
In “Why Do People Hate Jews,” I elaborated on the myriad pretexts Jew-haters have used over the centuries. But more importantly, as I wrote there, we should pay attention to the fact that in each era, different reasons and rationalizations were used in order to explain the hate toward the same group of people. When you consider the diverse, often conflicting reasons for hating Jews, you are left with a distinct impression that none of them is the root cause, but that there is a deeper motivation here that lurks beneath the surface, probably beneath even the consciousness of the anti-Semites struggling scrambling to explain “the irrationality of Jew hatred.”
Hating Jews begins to make sense when you examine the reasons for the hatred as a whole, rather than examining each reason separately. From this broader perspective it becomes clear that Jews are hated because they are blamed for problems. In fact, it is hard to find a problem for which they are not blamed. Perhaps this is why comedian and writer, David Baddiel, suggested, “Short of a conspiracy theory? You can always blame the Jews,” or as one anti-Semite stated, “Even when fish fight in the sea, the Jews are behind it.”
Blaming Jews for every wrong seems to make even less sense than when you focus on each reason for itself until you consider that Jews are judged by a different standard compared to all other nations. People judge Jews much more harshly compared to other nations when it comes to morality and humanism. This makes the Jews inadvertent role-models.
As a result, whatever Jews project spreads throughout the global human society and reflects itself in people’s behaviour. When Jews display brotherhood, it reflects in people’s relations with one another. When Jews display ill will toward each other, the nations follow suit among themselves. Deep down, they feel this dependence on the Jews and reflect it in their statements.
If the world is in a poor state, people feel it is the fault of the Jews and reflect it in anti-Semitic tirades, and sometimes in actions. Most anti-Semites cannot provide a rational explanation as to why they feel they do, at least not one that cannot be refuted in two sentences by anyone with minimal knowledge about Jewish history and the state of Israel. However, anti-Semites feel that the ill-will among people emerges from the Jews. They expect the Jews to be a positive role-model, or to put it in more Biblical terminology, to be “a light unto nations.”
In that regard, renowned English historian, Prof. Paul Johnson, wrote in A History of the Jews:
“No people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny. At a very early stage in their collective existence they believed they had detected a divine scheme for the human race, of which their own society was to be a pilot.”
If Jews want to uproot anti-Semitism, they need to focus on their own relationships and shift from alienation and separation into brotherhood and cohesion. The Jewish society is still today expected to be a pilot, since the world has no role-model society worthy of emulating, and only the Jews have prior experience. When Jews unite, their unity will reflect on the rest of the world. Just as currently the Jewish internal schism reflects itself in worldwide conflicts—as the nations themselves claim—when Jews unite, their unity will reflect in worldwide cessation of conflicts and collisions.
Featured in Huffington Post