Confessions of a Former Antisemite
Hopefully my story can help people acknowledge profusely misguided errors of the antisemitic way.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay written by Amir Pars of Amir's Musings.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
As an Iranian in Sweden, I was dubbed a “svartskalle.”
Directly translated, it means “black head,” a slur aimed at the demographic which, in the Anglo-sphere, is often referred to as “brown” people.
Just like the “N-word” in the United States, it is also an epithet which has been reappropriated into daily vernacular by the same people whom it is meant to attack.
Sweden has an enormous immigrant population from the Middle East, and us “svartskallar” (plural) more often than not band together. Every new town I moved to — Falkenberg, Mariestad, Hudiksvall and Gothenburg — the first group of friends I made were fellow immigrants from the Middle East.
One thing was consistent, regardless of where I went: We all hated Jews.
In the cultures we grew up in — even when there was very little else in common (Shia versus Sunni, Arab versus Persian, Religious versus Atheist, Theocrat versus Monarchist, et cetera) — Jew-hatred is omnipresent. We were born with it, we grew up with it, we were indoctrinated in it. It is in our bone marrow.
In my late teens I, like so many other teenagers, was infatuated with Marxism, which only served to fuel my antisemitism. I suddenly belonged to two tribes hating the most persecuted people in history, and where my fellow “svartskallar” only expressed a visceral, sadistic hatred of Jews, my comrades took a more diplomatic approach.
Many of the arguments were the same — “Jews control everything,” “Jews have all the capital,” “Jews are committing genocide in Palestine” — but the Marxists at least had sense enough to differentiate between Zionists and Jews, even though behind closed doors, the two were used interchangeably.
I tell you this to ensure you that my antisemitism credentials were solid. I not only know all the arguments, but I have vociferously expressed them loudly and proudly.
So, what happened? How did I go from despising and reviling every Jew, to today defending Israel every way I can, and idolizing the Jewish People?
Like most other metamorphoses, it was a process. It started with popular thought leader Sam Harris’ outstanding blog post, “Why I don’t criticize Israel.” Although I “fought back” (translation: I tweeted disapprovingly at Sam Harris — see below), the seeds of moral vivification had been sown.
Harris had posed a challenge that I simply could not counter, and which I have been going back to ever since. Its brilliance is in its simplicity:
“What would the Jews do to the Palestinians if they could do anything they wanted? Well, we know the answer to that question, because they can do more or less anything they want. The Israeli army could kill everyone in Gaza tomorrow. So what does that mean?”
“Well, it means that, when they drop a bomb on a beach and kill four Palestinian children, as happened last week, this is almost certainly an accident. They’re not targeting children. They could target as many children as they want. Every time a Palestinian child dies, Israel edges ever closer to becoming an international pariah. So the Israelis take great pains not to kill children and other noncombatants.”
“What do we know of the Palestinians? What would the Palestinians do to the Jews in Israel if the power imbalance were reversed? Well, they have told us what they would do. For some reason, Israel’s critics just don’t want to believe the worst about a group like Hamas, even when it declares the worst of itself.”
“We’ve already had a Holocaust and several other genocides in the 20th century. People are capable of committing genocide. When they tell us they intend to commit genocide, we should listen. There is every reason to believe that the Palestinians would kill all the Jews in Israel if they could.”
Those two paragraphs, regardless of how much I tried, were insurmountable. And it led me down a path of confronting my bigotry and hatred.
Here, I will share the facts and arguments which once persuaded me to change trajectory, in the hope that they can do the same for some people else.
Saved by Facts
Was Israel actually committing genocide?
No, the Palestinian population has grown with over 500 percent since the 1973 Yom Kippur War alone.
Is Israel an apartheid state? Well, there are more than two million Arabs living in Israel. They have every right the Jewish population has, without some of the obligation (e.g. mandatory conscription). They are represented in every single strata of the Israeli society — they are business owners, politicians, artists, entrepreneurs, athletes, and judges.
When Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, was sentenced to six years in prison for bribery, it was Judge Salim Joubran, an Arab, who convicted him. They are in the Knesset (where they have two parties, or one more than the Arabs in Gaza) and in the Israel Defense Forces.
They are the freest, most prosperous general Arab population anywhere on Earth — the antithesis to apartheid.
But of course, Israel’s critics do not care one bit about the Arab population in Israel when they make such claims, as the only Arabs who matter to them are the people in Gaza and the West Bank.
It should be noted, however, that even here, their arguments (as far as they can be described as such, as opposed to mere smears) fall flat. Israel left Gaza in 2005 unilaterally. What does that word — unilaterally — mean, in this context?
It means that they removed every single Jew in Gaza, at times by force, and even dug up the graves of long-dead Israelis, to hand the land over to the Arabs. No other nation on Earth has gone to such lengths as Israel did, to facilitate something akin to a peace offering.
Since then, Gaza has received more aid per capita than any nation in history, from the UN, U.S., Egypt, and Qatar (not to mention all the funds pumped into Hamas and Hezbollah by Iran). Where has this money gone? To build energy and water plants, investment in agriculture, infrastructure, schools, and hospitals?
Of course not. The money has been confiscated by Hamas, who narrowly won the election in 2006, and proceeded to murder all their political opponents in the purge of 2007, and who have been in power ever since without any further elections.
It has been used on rockets, which they have deployed in attacking Israel on an almost yearly basis, and to build vast, sophisticated tunnel systems which only serve one purpose: to enable their terrorist attacks on Israel, the Jewish state.
This, right here, should emphasize the phenomenological difference between the two entities: One built the most powerful, thriving, diverse and free society in the Middle East on a wasteland. The other, a genocidal, millennial cult whose raison d’être is the annihilation of a people for the crime of existing as Jews.
So, why was I on the side of the barbarians?
Why was it that, as someone who had many gay friends, I sided with people who threw homosexuals off rooftops or tied them with ropes to the back of motorbikes and dragged them around in public to set an example, instead of the only country in the Middle East that celebrates gay pride?
Why did I, who vehemently endorsed doctrines of liberty, aligned myself with people whose worldview is antithetical to every single freedom imaginable? What was this bizarre cognitive dissonance?
It was the cancer of antisemitism.
Hatred of Jews is unlike any other form of bigotry, as it is not primarily racial or religious, but ontological. It is the existence of “The Jew” that cannot be tolerated. Jews are hated for being successful, and hated for not being successful. They are hated for living in other countries, and hated for having their own country. They are hated for being dumb, and hated for being smart.
They could share every value I regarded as sacred, and I would still, instinctively, hate them.
It was never about Palestinians, or Muslims. Far more Muslims have been killed by Assad, by Saddam, in Pakistan and Yemen and China, than have in Israel. And I — like all the Leftists and Muslims in Western streets protesting against Israel — could not care less. They are just an instrument to sanitize our antisemitism with.
Anti-Zionism is antisemitic.
For what is anti-Zionism, in its essence? It is the notion that one singular people — “The Jews” — have no right to a land, even when that land is the size of New Jersey (or Wales, for non-North American readers).
It is the idea that, in order to protect one group of people — Muslims, who are majority population in more than 50 countries, 20 of which speak the same language as the Palestinians — Jews (the world’s most persecuted, oppressed population in history) should be denied a homeland.
After more than 54 percent of the Jewish population was wiped out by Hitler’s war machine, anti-Zionism maintains that Jews should be the one people without a country to call home.
When Russian-American author and philosopher Ayn Rand was asked of her views on Israel and “Palestine” in 1979, she said one should side with the Israelis, as they are an advanced, technological society compared to “almost totally primitive savages, who have not changed for years, who are racists and who hate Israel because it’s building industry, intelligence, and modern technology.”
It was undoubtedly derogatory — but was it inaccurate?
There are approximately two billion Muslims worldwide, constituting more than 20 percent (one-fifth) of the global population, yet the Islamic world has only ever produced seven Nobel Prize winners (three in Chemistry, three in Literature, one in Physics, and zero in Economics, Physiology, and Medicine).
In contrast, look at the percentages of Jewish Nobel Prize winners (from Wikipedia):
Chemistry: 36 (19 percent of total)
Economics: 38 (41 percent of total)
Literature: 16 (13 percent of total)
Physics: 56 (25 percent of total)
Physiology and Medicine: 59 (26 percent of total)
This despite the fact that Jews make up 0.76 percent of the Muslim-only world, and 0.19 percent of the global population.
So, why hate Jews? When proportionally, they have gifted the world with more riches in science, literature, and economics than the rest of the human civilization combined?
Because they are Jews.
During COVID, I remember reading how Israel initiated operations to provide Palestinian frontline workers with 5,000 doses of the vaccine.1 Think about that for a moment longer. Israel voluntarily, and at great costs as well as risks to itself, chose to help people committed to its annihilation. Name another society in history that would do something like that.
It is a well-known fact that Israel does everything in its power to prevent civilian casualties. But few know the extent to which they go to do so. Before attacking selected targets, Israel drops thousands of leaflets, as well as calls civilians in the vicinity, to encourage evacuations. Compare that to Hamas’ savagery on October 7th.
Or just think of the restrictions Israel has imposed on the Temple Mount, Jews’ holy esplanade, which is also sacred for Muslims as Al-Aqsa, located in Jerusalem. Despite its importance for the Jewish People (as well as the Christians), Israel has made it illegal for anyone but Muslims to pray at the wall. Again, name one other society on Earth which would do that.
And then, of course, are Israel’s numerous attempts to achieve a two-state solution (always a quixotic aspiration). Since 1948, Israel has offered the Arabs more and more land for peace. After the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel humiliated the Arab armies of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, Israel took control of Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, as well as the Gaza Strip. What did Israel do?
Debate over whether to return West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace, or give it to the region’s Arabs. This is unheard of in aftermaths of wars, but Israel is unlike other nations. It is morally superior.
Yet every offer was rejected, after the Arab nations held an Arab League summit in Sudan and announced the famous three No’s:
No recognition of Israel
No peace with Israel
No negotiations with Israel
This stance persisted in 2000 and again in 2008.
So, why hate the Jews?
Because they exist.
Closing Remarks
I was an antisemite.
I would have marched together with the ignorant, the hateful, and the fanatics who have been hijacking the streets of London, Manchester, Berlin, Stockholm, and Paris.
But I was lucky. Lucky enough that my defense system eventually crumbled in the face of facts and arguments.
I was never a Muslim — and have always been anti-Islam, as far back as I can remember. My antisemitism was never because of a religious bias, and neither has my conversion been influenced by my disdain for Islam, even though that is the accusation always leveled at me.
My antisemitism was bone deep, omnipresent going back to my first ever notion of “The Jews.” As a socialist, I had to sanitize it by cowering behind “anti-Zionism,” but it was always the same thing, just as it is for the people marching on our streets “in defense of Palestinians.”
Thanks to Sam Harris, however, a kernel of doubt was planted. A curiosity led me down a path, where nothing — and I mean nothing — aligned with my preconceptions. I was wrong about everything.
Resist as I tried, I was eventually helpless towards the truth. I could have chosen to continue holding onto an irrational hatred based on lies, or try to live by truth.
All I hope is that more antisemites do the same.
“Israel to give 5,000 coronavirus vaccines to Palestinian doctors.” NBC News.
 | A guest post by
|
This is an excellent article and Amir Pars, the writer, exhibits what is so dearly lacking in academia and the media -- a sense of history, proportion and effective critical thinking. Just one error: he wrote that Jews are forbidden from praying at the Wall. The wall is where Jews pray; they are restricted and forbidden from praying atop the Temple Mount.
This is one of the most profoundly enlightening essays you have published so far, Josh. Hopefully the author is sharing his story far and wide on social media (to anti-Semitic sites in particular), on YouTube and elsewhere. His answer to the reasons for anti-Semitism is the most accurate one I have ever heard: It's because Jews exist.