Language of Hate and Intimidation

How do you make one group of people hate another group of people they have never met?

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In the dimness of the kitchen, the air thick with the aroma of cooking, my grandmother prepared the Shabbat meal. I stood in the narrow hallway, inside the door frame, and watched; her body planted firmly in the chair, deft fingers kneading the dough with long, slow movements, turning the sticky mound, pounding, and rolling it. She continued to move the rolling pin until the dough thinned, and soon, gaping holes stared back at her.

But she didn’t see them. These widening spaces lead her behind her eyes. Eyes that had seen a life perish before it even began. By men too hateful and heartless to her soul, they took her children away, her family, their fingers red with blood.

She frequently paused from kneading, a strange distant look entered her eyes, and I felt the rush of all the years of grief and the ocean of pain pouring forth. At that moment, the continuing and unwelcome sense of gloom blotted the line between real and imagined worlds and infected me.

Why do I remember chiefly the unpleasant, disastrous incidents connected with my family?

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The proverb “what will befall all Jews will befall each Jew” has assumed my reality.

During the Passover holiday, a dark cloud of fear and uncertainty looms over the Jewish community. The recent rise in bias crimes and anti-Semitic attacks weighed heavily on our minds, triggering old wounds and provoking feelings of unease. These incidents remind me of the legacy I inherited, and I still experience the residual effects of my family’s terror.

For me, it was enough to set off my PTSD, bringing back memories of past traumas and reminding me of the constant threat that surrounds me—and reminding me that most of my ancestors disappeared into ovens and burned alive.

It's a deeply personal issue for me, as my father himself was a survivor of the Holocaust. He endured and survived the horrors of Auschwitz.

And so, I felt compelled to pour my thoughts onto paper, to bring attention to this pressing issue and reflect on its impact on our collective psyche.

From the early years of my life, I’ve learned to carry the burden of my close and distant family’s catastrophe and sadness. It is a legacy that I inherited. How does a history of destruction begin?

Once, my grandfather told me, "Questions die with people, and so do answers.”

I grew up in the murky shadows of a family buried so deeply in their past lives that they could not stand back and consider the nature of their present lives. They talked about mistrust and instilled in me the idea that people were evil and not to be trusted. Their words had the stench of charred flesh, rotting and decaying.

The Final Solution of the Jewish population entailed the attempted disappearance of the Jews, the Jewish religion, and the Jewish culture. The Holocaust, then, became a link in my historical chain of Jewish suffering. And I am left with one question:

How does one explain a history of destruction?

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It all begins with language

The whole essence of human beings is communication. People are eager to say something to each other, to learn or teach, to agree or reject, to show affection, and so on. Language also has the capability of setting off the immeasurable suffering that people inflict on each other—the uttered words that fuel a climate of hate and intimidation. The spoken words have the power to spread ignorance, resentment, and unimaginable death.

Science backs up the idea that hate speech can cause ‘a dehumanizing effect.’ When left unchecked, hate speech can lead to violence and even set conditions for genocide. Between 1938 and 1945, the ‘dehumanization effect’ was evident in the mass murder of 11 million people — 6 million of whom were Jews.

Discourse was used to weaponize for self-serving gain with hostile rhetoric directed at Jews who were called rats and vermin by the Nazis before the Holocaust. Butchery and harassment are the predictable results of such rising intolerance, of singling out a group and declaring that these people are the source of misery, the monster in the dark, that they are not like us, they do not share our humanity and are undeserving of our compassion.

In the modern era - Why won’t antisemitism die, or at least die down?

Antisemitism is a shapeshifting, protean, creative force. Throughout history, it has managed to reinvent itself multiple times, keeping some of the old tropes around while simultaneously creating new ones adapted to present circumstances.

Anti-Semitism has emerged as a political ideology that claims Jews control the world and are to be blamed for phenomena such as capitalism and communism. Anti-Semitic narratives, such as blood libel, continue to be heard today.

But worse. In the months following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents increased substantially. It can be hard to think clearly and reason calmly about antisemitism. For us, 15 million Jews around the world, our resilience engenders fear, pain, sadness, frustration, and intergenerational trauma going back to the Holocaust and beyond.

Complex contemporary challenges like the financial crisis or the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are reduced to placing blame on the Jews, drawing on such anti-Semitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories. Arson and graffiti on synagogues, the desecration of Jewish graves, and assaults on persons wearing religious garments, including their murder.

In October 2018, one of the worst acts of violence against the American Jewish community left 11 dead in a Pittsburgh synagogue. In April 2019, a worshiper was gunned down at a California synagogue, followed by a July shooting that targeted a Miami temple.

Today’s antisemitism lies in the idea that Jews are not historically oppressed people seeking self-preservation but instead oppressors: imperialists, colonialists, and even white supremacists. This view preserves vestiges of the trope that Jews exercise vast power. It creatively updates that narrative to contemporary circumstances and current cultural preoccupations with the nature of power and injustice.

The term imperialism was initially used to describe European nations that colonized and took advantage of territories in the Global South and East. However, this label does not accurately fit Israel's unique circumstances.

As a regional power in the Middle East with a small land area, it cannot be compared to global empires seeking resources and labor. It was established in 1947 by a United Nations resolution with the intent of providing a homeland for Jews who had been displaced after 6 million were killed in the Holocaust. To perpetuate the narrative of Jews as oppressors, modern antisemitism must ignore not only centuries of Jewish oppression but also the horrific events of the Holocaust, which saw the organized murder of millions of Jews.

In today's world, debates are often polarizing. I hope to encourage introspection and self-reflection. I challenge both myself and others to consider whether our beliefs and feelings would be different if we understood the history and context of antisemitism. My goal is not to accuse anyone of being antisemitic but rather to explore the topic in a way that deepens our understanding of its origins and evolution. Creating laws that equally address all forms of discrimination is the most effective way to combat biased behaviors.