“The explosion of Jew-hatred today is based on deeply held moral objections to Israeli policy.”

“Jews are not detested today because they are outsiders.”

“Jewry today is loathed because of Israel’s merciless onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

These are direct quotes from an opinion piece, by turns extraordinary and appalling, published by the Church Times, a London-based newspaper closely aligned with the Church of England. The author is one Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a U.S.-born Reform rabbi who lives in the United Kingdom, where he is currently professor emeritus in Jewish studies at the University of Wales.

If you are going to blame Jews for the current surge in antisemitism, particularly in an outlet serving the Christian community, it helps to have a Jewish author do so. The thinking here is easily explained—if a Jew says these things, then they can’t possibly be antisemitic.

Actually, the reverse is true. Having a Jew pen this tissue of lies, distortions, omissions and libels serves to legitimize and reinforce antisemitic beliefs, rather than undermining them. The tactic of using Jews or ex-Jews to denounce Judaism and its organic manifestations, which unquestionably include Zionism and the State of Israel, dates back at least to the Middle Ages.

What makes Cohn-Sherbok’s contribution noteworthy is the astonishingly crude sleight of hand he applies to make a distinction between the “old” antisemitism, which he argues revolves around the “outsider” status of Jews, and the “new” antisemitism, which he insists is based on decent moral convictions about supposed Israeli crimes. As he writes, “For more than 2,000 years, Jews have been hated because, in numerous ways, they were different from the general population. But, today, the situation is different: Jew-hatred is largely fueled now by the actions of the Israeli government.”

At no point does he question the assumptions behind this portrait of Israel. His piece takes it as self-evident that the Israeli government, and by extension the Israel Defense Forces, is motivated by a bloodthirsty desire to expunge the Palestinian presence in the Gaza Strip, and Judea and Samaria. Anyone reading his words will simply be unaware of the long track record of Palestinian violence against Israel, rooted in an eliminationist campaign to destroy Jewish sovereignty in a part of the world that belongs, according to Islamic theology, to Dar al-Islam (“Domain of Islam”).

The most glaring omission is, of course, the absence of any mention of the Hamas-led pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the IDF’s war against the Iranian-backed terrorist organization in Gaza. But there are other examples from the past century that he could have cited, both before and after Israel’s creation in 1948: the slaughter of Hebron’s Jewish community in 1929; the alignment of the Palestinian and Arab leadership with the Nazi regime in the ensuing decades; the attempt to snuff out Israel at birth through a combined attack waged by Arab armies; the various hijackings, bombings and other terrorist attacks in the last three decades of the 20th century; and the rise of Hamas, which makes no secret of its desire to remove Israel from the map, in this one.

Since I don’t know Cohn-Sherbok, I am reluctant to speculate on why he is apparently so keen to denounce the Jewish state, but given what he does for a living, I can’t believe that his is merely a case of ignorance.

He may believe that he is representing the tradition of Jewish opposition to Zionism that was definitively marginalized after World War II, not least because so many of its proponents, like the Socialist Bund, were exterminated during the Holocaust. But if so, he has failed to realize that Jews do not set the terms for the contemporary discussion.

The vast majority of modern-day opponents of Zionism are non-Jews who know nothing at all about Jewish history, and who are in thrall to a “Palestinianist” political cult with its own dress code and slogans. Just as the early Jewish followers of Jesus were overwhelmed by the gentile embrace of Christianity 2,000 years ago, which quickly led to the rejection of Judaism as an ossified, resentful faith that bore ultimate responsibility for the execution of Jesus at the hands of the Romans, the Jewish anti-Zionism that crystallized at the end of the 19th century has undergone a similar experience—morphing into what I call an “antizionism” driven by non-Jews that borrows generously from deeper antisemitic traditions in both Christianity and Islam.

Cohn-Sherbok’s evident reluctance to draw the necessary links between antisemitism before the advent of Zionism with its shifts afterwards goes a long way in explaining his false distinction between old, discredited forms of antisemitism and new, “understandable” ones. The absurdity of this position cannot be overstated, especially as he lives in a country where the pro-Hamas solidarity movement openly attacks “Jewish supremacy,” invokes the ancient “blood libel” to denounce the Jewish state, and asserts that Jews are a foreign body in the Middle East (sadly, he would not be the only Jewish studies academic to share this latter view.)

He then opines that hatred of Jews will not “cease because the Jewish community demands it. Instead, antisemitism will intensify until the Palestinian problem is solved.”

This, again, is ludicrous, particularly as the “solution” advanced by Hamas, by radical left Palestinian factions and, in their hearts, by the bureaucrats running the Palestinian Authority would require Israel’s extinction. What does he imagine would happen to those Israeli Jews who survived the destruction of their state? That they would be welcome in a “free Palestine”? That the European demonstrators presently lauding Hamas would provide them with new homes and livelihoods?

What Cohn-Sherbok should know is that antisemitism is not a phenomenon that will just disappear. Instead, it transforms and mutates. In the 80 years since the defeat of the Nazis, Jews have learned that lesson the hard way. Whether they exist as a defenseless minority or within an empowered, sovereign state, the persistence of antisemitic beliefs among non-Jewish populations is something that Jews will always have to confront.

That is why the overwhelming majority of Jews regard Israel’s existence as providing the justice denied to them over two millennia, as well as a lifeline for them and their families. No amount of slimy propaganda—published in the example under discussion here by an outlet that really should know better—will change that.

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