IS THERE A CURE FOR ANTI-SEMITISM?
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such a development as serving the interests of social justice. Jews in
America remain a prosperous group, heavily represented in all the upper
reaches of our society, including government. And as Irving Kristol re–
cently said, Gentiles nowadays are so busy marrying J ews that they have
no time to persecute them. So what, really, is there to worry about?
Well, for one thing, the spread of anti-Semitism among blacks has
already led to what can, without too large a stretch, be called a pogrom
- and in New York yet. This does not, of course, mean that
Chmielnicki, let alon e Auschwitz, is around the American corner. On
the contrary, I for one find it hard to imagine that any such horrors
could ever happen in America. I cling to the view, discredited in some
circles, known as American exceptionalism, at least on the Jewish issue.
But the truth is that neither I nor anyone else knows what may follow
when the poisons of anti-Semitism begin spewing freely into the air. All
we know for certain is what followed in the past. And what followed in
the past ranged from discrimination to mass murder. Surely, then, no Jew
with a sense of the history through which his people have lived has any
business being complacent in the face of a resurgent anti-Semitism.
What we - and here I am talking not just about Jews but all decent
people - need to do is recognize anti-Semitism when it rears its ugly
head, call it by its proper name, refuse to accept justifications or excuses
for it, and work to make it as disreputable again as it was for a season
not so very long ago. I doubt that much more than that can be done .
But even that much would represent a great advance over the confusion,
the timidity, the passivity, the apologetics, and the cowardly acquiescence
that have characterized much of the response to the reappearance of
anti-Semitism in this country in the past twenty-five years and that have
permitted it to spread and grow.
Edith Kurzweil:
Thank you, Norman. Now we'll hear from Robert
Wistrich.
Robert Wistrich:
Good morning. I am coming at this subject, I sus–
pect, from a very different angle than Norman Podhoretz, probably be–
cause my own background is European and, more recently, Middle
Eastern. I think that the varieties of anti-Semitism I've had to deal with,
both as an historian and as someone who comments on current events,
have been of a rather more serious and virulent nature than those which
exist in the United States, both in the past and in the present. I want, in
a very telegraphic way, to suggest or to attempt to provide some reasons
as to why anti-Semitism has been and continues still to be a powerful
force in the contemporary world. Let us remind ourselves of a few basic
facts about what I choose to call "The Longest Hatred," and which I
