The new anti-Semitism

text by O.B

The new anti-Semitism

‘Where was I? he says joyfully…

The schmaltz, the Jew, the wife… We really are a special people, aren’t we, my friends? You just can’t compare any other nations to us Jews. We’re the chosen people! God had other options but he picked us!’ The crowd applauds. “which reminds me – and this is kind of a huge thing – I’m really fed up with the new anti-Semitism, you know? Seriously, I was finally getting used to the old kind, you could even say I was becoming ever so slightly fond of it, you know, with those charming fairytales about the elders of Zion, those bearded old hook-nosed trolls sitting around together, munching on tapas of leprosy with cilantro and plague, exchanging recipes for quinoa braised in well-poison, slaughtering the occasional Christian child for Passover – “Hey guys, have you noticed the kids are tasting a little astringent this year?” Anyway, we’ve learned how to live with all that, we got used to it, it’s like part of our heritage. But then these guys turn up with their new anti-Semitism and … I don’t know … It doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve gotta say I even feel a little aversion towards it.’ He presses his fingers together and shrugs his shoulders with genuine awkwardness. ‘I don’t know how to say this without offending the new anti-Semites, God forbid, but for fuck’s sake, people, don’t you think your attitude is just a little bit grating? Cause sometimes I get the impression that if, let’s say, an Israeli scientist came up with a cure for cancer, right? A medicine that would finish off that cancer once and for all? Well I guarantee you the next day people all over the world start speaking out and there’d be protests and demonstrations and UN votes and editorials in all the European papers, and they’d all be saying, “Now wait a minute, why must we harm cancer? And if we must, do we really need to completely annihilate it right off the bat? Can’t we try and reach a compromise first? Why go in with force straight away? Why not put ourselves in its shoes and try to understand how cancer itself experiences the disease from its own perspective? And let’s not forget that cancer does have some positives. Fact is, a lot of patients will tell you that coping with cancer made them better people. And you have to remember that cancer research led to the development of medications for other diseases – are we just going to put and end to all that, in such a destructive manner? Has history taught us nothing? Have we forgotten the darker eras? And besides”’ – He adopts a contemplative expression – “is there really anything about man that makes him superior to cancer and therefore entitled to destroyed it?”’

from “A Horse Walks into a Bar” by David Grossman

As a spectator of the new-Antisemitism first-hand I could add another, equally entertaining example, only this one is real. Suppose you are suffering from the Holocaust trauma that has been passed down to you by your survivor parents and you have been accused by your “friends” – empathy lacking bystanders – that this experience equals being raised with hate and fanaticism and nationalism and that you are overly exaggerating the crime of the holocaust, which by the way “you” (the jew, the Israeli, the zionist? In fact the 18year-old Greek physics student) are repeating towards the Palestinian people. And in your effort to work on your trauma, in the year 2024, 7 months after the 7/10 brutal terrorist attack towards innocent Israeli civilians, you attend a discussion titled “Traumatic memories” paneled by scientists on psychoanalysis, members (and president) of the Greek Society of the New Lacanian School, discussing the trauma of the Holocaust. And at the end of a speech about the history of anti-Semitsm and it’s role in the society for at least 2000 years, after acknowledging that it is a passion that will not end before both Jews and anti-Semites cease to exist, he closes the session with the comment “An antisemite used to be he who hates the jews, today an antisemite is he that the jew hates”. And you wonder how did it happen that your naive effort to sooth your holocaust and antisemitism trauma through scientific knowledge ends up being fueled and you body and heart and mind are bursting. And you wonder what king of sadistic hypocritical motives would urge an, otherwise typical antisemite study anti-Semitism and the Holocaust trauma and proudly site Jean Amery in their public lectures, only to confirm that good-old Anti-semitism is alive and kicking. It appears that the new anti-Semitism is not so new after all, just slightly modified and smartly caped with the anti-anti-Semitism narrative. Lovers of Jewish corpses of history and haters of living Jews. If these are the experts of psychoanalysis for treating holocaust trauma in my dear country (hey dear friends, Greece is my country) I guess I will just have to keep living with it till the end of my days. But thanks for trying anyway.

I shrug my shoulders with genuine awkwardness and move on with my life.