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your own savagery. Libel the Jew with blood ritual, and you describe
your own practice. Declare that the Jew suppresses your nationhood,
and you admit to your enduring refusal ofJewish sovereignty. When the
Jewish state defends itself against attack, cry aggression. Cry racism when
the Jewish state opens its arms to refugees of every color, to Vietnamese
boat people, to Bosnian Muslims. On the American campus, profess di–
versity and malign the Jews. Whatever you are - maligner, reviler,
aggressor, oppressor, racist, strongman, murderer, liar, denier - to see
your own face, look to what you say of the Jews.
Anti-Semitism is the anti-Semite's looking glass. Anti-Semitism is a
kind of Platonism; it has no need of real Jews. It can thrive where no
Jews have ever lived, or where all the Jews are already dead . Anti–
Semitism has nothing to do with Jews; it is not about Jews. It is, it al–
ways has been, it always will be, about the body and soul of the anti–
Semite.
Edith Kurzweil:
I want to thank the speakers. We have time for only
a question or two from the floor , so here's the first one: How do you
account for the anti-Semitism of American blacks and how can we deal
with it?
Saul Bellow:
Well, these are very touchy questions, and they should be
discussed in as reserved and moderate a way as possible, because the facts
are inflammatory, and there doesn't seem to be any language for public
discussion of these questions in the United States at all. They have been
under a taboo for so long that it's a little weird to see how people
prefer to hold opinions rather than to discuss points of view. So I don 't
feel, with lights shining in my eyes and before a large audience, that I
should really tell you what I actually think about these things.
I've had some personal experience with this, one way or another.
There was a case a few years ago in which I involved myself. People in
the office of Mayor Sawyer - the black mayor of Chicago - who were
connected to the Farrakhan organization started a conspiracy charge
going, namely that Jewish doctors in hospitals were infecting black chil–
dren with AIDS. To my astonishment there was not a single black leader
in the Chicago community who questioned this. They all seemed to ac–
cept it. They said, "Well, um, maybe other doctors are doing it too ,
and not only the Jewish doctors." Leaders of the black community in
Chicago went on to affirm these allegations. Black members of the
Congress concurred with them. This man who had started the rumor
was eventually let go, after great pressure was brought to bear on the
Mayor's office. But he was taken to the floor of the Democratic
convention that year by the national convention, by Congressman
