He fierce Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 began a new stage in the conflict in the region that put the world on alert. And especially to the Jews, who saw the resurgence antisemitism in the westas an effect of the reading that certain political and social sectors made of Israel’s defense actions. Fights in the street, harassment in various universities around the world and even the rape of a Jewish girl in France in June of this year, were part of a climate of hatred that grew in intensity over the months. Some speak today of “new” antisemitismwhile many believe that it is the same as always, that it remained dormant for almost a century and that it dates back to ancient times, from the origins of Christianity.
Miguel Bronfman has just published “The hatred of Jews. Past and present of a global threat” (Libros del Zorzal)a book that covers the long history of this persecution until today. Bronfman is a lawyer and has been carrying out the “AMIA cause” representing the institution since 1998. “That led me to study and closely follow not only what is happening in Israel and the Middle East in general, but specifically the phenomenon of terrorism, the Hezbollah group and the Iranian regime -explains to NEWS-. Let us remember that for Argentine justice, the attacks on the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and the AMIA headquarters in 1994 were planned and executed by Iran and Hezbollah. “What happened on October 7, 2023 in Israel had the same matrix of murderous hatred.”
In his book, he analyzes in depth the accusations made against the State of Israel, as genocidal and responsible for an attempt at “ethnic cleansing” and reviews possible options to resolve the conflict with Palestine. “Israel needs peace, but for that it is necessary that those who seek its destruction and a new genocide of the Jews stop being relevant actors in the conflict, that the path be cleared to resume what seems to be the only possible solution, the of two independent states that coexist as neighbors. “They don’t have to be friends and love each other, as the writer Amos Oz said, but rather they have to tolerate each other and each one accepts the existence of the other,” says Bronfman.
NEWS: Why are all Jews, wherever they live, confused with the State of Israel?
Miguel Bronfman: There are several issues. On the one hand, Jews are a small minority in the world’s population. Less than 0.2%. And, as is known, there is only one “Jewish state”, Israel, while there are almost sixty officially Islamic countries. So it is easy and in some sense natural to associate the Jews of the world with Israel. On the other hand, criticizing Israel or the Israeli government is perfectly valid, as can be the case with any other country. Now, when that criticism leads to promoting the disappearance of Israel, or the genocide of the 8 million Jews who live thereor when Jews from any other part of the world are attacked with the excuse of criticizing Israel, it must be clear that there is no “criticism” of Israel, but a clear and open anti-Semitism or hatred of Jews. What is the justification for burning down a synagogue in Australia, as happened days ago, given what is happening in Israel or Gaza? That is not being against Israel: that is hatred of the Jews. Israel is simply the current excuse. When Europe murdered six million Jews just for being Jews, Israel didn’t even exist.
NEWS: Who benefits from the story that puts Israel at the center of all evil?
Bronfman: Unfortunately there is no single answer to that question. If we think that Jews – and by extension Israel – throughout history have been and are accused of extremely varied and often mutually exclusive things, such as being communists but also of being capitalists, of being rich, but also poor and destitute; of being very intelligent and also an inferior race, and a long etcetera, we see that there are a multiplicity of actors who have promoted and promote anti-Jewish hatred, which change according to the times and circumstances. I try to show in the book how placing Israel as the sole and exclusive culprit for the Palestinian Arabs not having their own state, to give a current example, is not only false, and removes all historical responsibility from the Arab leadership (both Palestinian as of the Arab countries in general) and terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, but it precisely enables all manifestations of anti-Jewish hatred that is millennia old and predates the State of Israel by two thousand years to be exacerbated.
NEWS: In Europe today Jews are harassed but Muslims are also discriminated against. What is the relationship between these two attitudes?
Bronfman: Europe has always discriminated against and mistreated Jews, and European history is full of expulsions and massacres of Jews (in England, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, among others), from the ghettos in the Middle Ages to culminating in the industrial massacre of the Holocaust in the 20th century. Islamophobia is a much more recent phenomenon, with other causes and historical reasons. Both coexist in Europe, contrary to what is maintained, for example, by the Italian historian Enzo Traverso, who postulated a few years ago that Islamophobia had displaced anti-Semitism in Europe. Everything that happened after October 7 clearly shows that this approach was incorrect. The result is that the Jewish minority is once again unprotected in countries like England or France, where, for example, incidents of anti-Semitism have grown more than 1,000 percent since October 2023.
NEWS: Is anti-Semitism becoming widespread in the West or is it only concentrated in some political sectors?
Bronfman: Unfortunately, what the reports show is that it is becoming widespread, regardless of the political sector. Anti-Jewish hatred cuts across political arcs and ideologies. This is how we see it present in an ultra-right white supremacist in the United States, in deputies of the Argentine or Spanish left, in false progressives supposedly defenders of diversity and human rights, in elite North American universities or in some leaders of the workers party When internationally prestigious and massive media, such as The New York Times or the BBC, just to give two well-known examples, contribute to misinformation and distortion of the conflict, not to mention the damage caused by social networks in which misinformation and “ “fake news” reaches millions and millions of people, it is inevitable that one of the consequences of all this is the growth of anti-Semitism.
NEWS: Among the reasons for this resurgence of anti-Semitism is the excessive “use” of the Holocaust as a justification for the excesses committed by Israel. How do you interpret this accusation?
Bronfman: I think it is a dishonest accusation. I don’t see much sense in the “overuse of the Holocaust”especially when, despite overwhelming historical evidence, there are still people who try to deny it. Iran, the main sponsor of hatred against Israel, has repeatedly tried to deny the murder of six million Jews. Renowned historians, like the Englishman David Irving, too. Therefore, keeping the memory alive and preventing the greatest massacre of the 20th century from being trivialized, reduced or even forgotten, can in no way be classified as excessive use. Although a ceasefire has now been agreed with Hezbollah in the north, for more than a year Israel was being attacked simultaneously on several fronts, by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, by Iraq’s Shiite militias, and, for the first time openly and directly, by Iran, which launched around two hundred missiles on its civilian population. What is alarming is to see how the world, while Israel defends itself and fights for its existence surrounded by enemies who long for its disappearance, focuses so feverishly on criticizing and condemning it.
NEWS: What is your opinion of Benjamin Netanyahu?
Bronfman: When On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched its surprise attack and committed the worst massacre against the Jewish population. Since the Holocaust, Israel had been mired in one of its most serious political crises, mainly due to the judicial reform that the Prime Minister wanted to establish, which had divided Israeli society. The Israeli Supreme Court of Justice has already ruled against this reform, which in my opinion would have been detrimental to Israeli democracy. Personally, I believe that, once this war ends, it would be desirable for an independent commission to evaluate and eventually determine political responsibilities for what happened that tragic Saturday, as happened after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, with the surprise and simultaneous invasion. from Egypt and Syria.
NEWS: What are the effects on the world Jewish community of the events that occurred on October 7, 2023?
Bronfman: The Jews of the world, outside of Israel, feel affected by that indescribable horror, by that hatred beyond all dimension. Because the victims, before children, women, old men and women, men, babies, and even before Israelis, were Jews. This is not an interpretation, but what the murderers themselves shouted out loud. Many of us heard the phone call that a Hamas assassin made to his parents to tell them, in an uncontrolled ecstasy, that he had killed ten Jews with his bare hands, and that he was going to kill many more during the rest of the day. His parents on the other end of the line celebrated proudly. He did not say that he had killed Israelis, or settlers, or invaders, or oppressors: he said that he had killed Jews, and he was ecstatic that he had done so. The incomprehensible horror of this uncontrolled demonstration of hatred was followed, for Israeli Jews and for Jews around the world, by a second, equally painful realization: that of loneliness. The displays of solidarity and empathy were few and brief. They barely lasted 24 hours. As soon as Israel even began to prepare to defend itself from such an attack on its own territory, condemnations began from around the world. The combination of these factors, precisely, was what led me to write. The combination between the bestial hatred directed at the Jews, and the indifference of the rest of the world. Because we already lived it, because we can live it again.
NEWS: How does the misinformation and simplification that networks reproduce today contribute to creating a distorted image of the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians?
Bronfman: The result of this misinformation is the simplistic (and false) narrative of “imperialist-colonizing state versus oppressed people”, which completely distorts a much more complex reality that, precisely, is what I try to expose and explain in the book. A logic of “good versus bad” is established, in an unacceptable reductionism. Thus, for those who consider Israel to be “evil,” it matters little that it is being attacked on multiple fronts at the same time, nor does it matter the fate of the kidnapped, innocent and defenseless civilians, because in that dual logic, there is no place for another type of analysis, much less sensitivity. This dual narrative also explains so many ominous silences after the massacre. Where were the voices of feminism in the face of the massive rapes and outrages against Israeli women? Where are the defenders of children’s rights in the face of the kidnapping of defenseless boys and girls, some of them whose fathers and mothers had been brutally murdered in front of them? Where are the defenders of Human Rights, where are the defenders of the rights of minorities, of the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community? The truth is, even today, I don’t know where they were or where they are, more than a year later and with a hundred hostages still kidnapped in the tunnels of Gaza, outraged and on the brink of death every day, but I do know that they all stayed silent. silent, and the only explanation for that silence is that the victims were, and are, Jews.
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