Bondi Beach: license to kill

In Western liberal democracies, antisemitism kills. Each time, it is Jews who are killed – not “members of a community” or “followers of a religion”. But Jews, and no diversion will change that.

Taken in its entirety, this evil takes many forms: aggressive words, insults, ostracism, public condemnation and threats, as well as everyday violence in all its forms, in every conceivable social circle. The sociological contours of the phenomenon, which has taken on global dimensions and is not limited to old nations with deep-rooted antisemitic traditions, remain largely out of sight of the studies that should be analyzing it, but which instead strive to look the other way. The groups involved are disparate, ranging from fringes of the bourgeoisie to fringes of the working classes, where frustrations and indiscriminate resentment towards fantasized “dominant” and “oppressive” groups coalesce. This creates a vast breeding ground for opinions and statements that can effectively lead to actions, some of which result in extreme violence. Among the latter are the murders of Jews, targeted executions of Jewish men, women, and even children, wherever they may be found. Some of this extreme violence, as in Sydney, tends toward mass murder. The murderers thereby show that they are determined to kill as many Jews as possible when the opportunity arises, such as when Jews gather to celebrate their holidays. That is, when they exercise their right to exist as a minority, as members of a community protected by law in states that are supposed to guarantee it.

In Western liberal democracies, in states governed by the rule of law where almost all Jews now live, antisemitism is thriving, and it is anything but “residual”. It is expanding everywhere because it draws on many sources.

The reality is that this guarantee is increasingly failing, and the slope is one of unchecked violence. In Western liberal democracies, in states governed by the rule of law where almost all Jews now live, antisemitism is thriving, and it is anything but “residual”. For Jews, this gives the question they have always asked themselves, about the search for a place safer than any other, a dimension that is now abysmal. Antisemitism is expanding everywhere, precisely because it draws on many sources. No one is unaware that the perpetrators of bloody crimes over the past two decades have a similar profile. Islamism, particularly in its globalized form, which now has followers all over the world, is their most common denominator, and fighting it relentlessly is therefore obviously imperative.

And yet, this denominator does not sum up the problem of the causes, not only of what drives the killers of Jews to act, but also of what enables them to act. They explicitly state their motivation – to punish Jews for wanting to exist, wherever they may be, in Israel or elsewhere. That is to say, no more elsewhere than in Israel itself. No more in the diaspora than in the state they have created for themselves. But the acts themselves find fertile ground in a background of hatred that has many other components besides Islamism. Ultimately, it is the license for antisemitism, with its very broad social base, that is the foundation of all manifestations of antisemitism, even those that kill, i.e., those of which Islamists are only the armed wing.

To still claim that it is “residual” is a shame from which Western liberal democracies are not exempt. A shame in which they wallow.

When will we understand this? Antisemitism must be tackled as one of the most serious public problems facing Western democracies. To merely lament the permeability of these democracies to currents of thought that come from elsewhere, or that are only carried by the reactionary opinions of the nationalist right, is to completely miss the point. Democracies today continue to manufacture their own antisemitism, based on a vast complex of motivations that they themselves have created. And it is this domestic complex that constantly threatens to erupt into murder. Yet, for some in the academic and scholarly world, this current mode of domestic incitement to hatred is met with denial. The urgent need is above all to remain silent and look the other way. Of course, when acts occur, it is fashionable to condemn them. In Manchester three months ago, we still tried to dispense with this. Today, in Sydney, given the number of victims, this seems impossible. Whatever one may say, however, words ring desperately hollow when the conditions for effective condemnation remain carefully ignored. Policies for the enhanced protection of Jewish communities, however indispensable they may be, repel the phenomenon but do not address it. On the contrary, they reinforce a separation that, for Jews, corresponds to a new experience of ghettoization to which they are subjected.

We must come to this conclusion. To still claim that this is a “residual” problem is a shame from which Western liberal democracies are not exempt. It is a shame in which they wallow, through that part of their enlightened elites for whom the breeding ground of antisemitism, in all its dimensions, is precisely what must remain covered up. Recognizing this and rectifying attitudes and judgments accordingly requires a work on oneself that very few, it seems, are currently willing to undertake.