I saw the face of antisemitism

As a kid growing up I never understood the Holocaust. I didn’t understand how anyone could hate a group of people so much that they would want to annihilate them. Attending a Catholic elementary school, I remember thinking “Hey, wait, wasn’t Jesus a Jew? So why do people hate Jews again…?” Nazi Germany’s evils seemed so complete to me that just the sight of the spine of the jacket cover of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in our family library instantaneously filled me with disgust. (The book is a must read – it gives a ringside seat to the emergence of humanity’s most heinous ideology.) Throughout my life I thought, or preferred to think, that hard-kristallnacht-antisemitism was a thing of the past, harboured only in strange and powerless corners. But I did listen closely to my Jewish colleagues in physics and mathematics who warned, in quiet conversation, that hatred of Jews lurks under the surface in well-to-do, mostly “progressive” society. Without Israel, at least as the last point of refuge, Jews will always be in jeopardy.

In the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel last month, here in Ottawa I have seen those warnings from my colleagues play out in full. I find it incredible that massive groups of people took to the streets in our capital city chanting antisemitic slogans – a scene repeated around the world. Instead of steadfast opposition to Hamas and everything it stands for, trendy progressives truck with terrorists who call for the literal extermination of Jews. In just three weeks, antisemitism has become a new way to show your “nuance” and signal your “sophistication”. It’s disgusting.

The leadership in Gaza has had nearly two decades to start building a Singapore of the Middle East. Instead, they spent and continue to spend resources on rockets, tunnels, and antisemitic indoctrination. Instead of setting the conditions for prosperity, tolerance, and peace – with a world and an Israel who wants them to succeed – Gaza leadership doubles down on hatred, propaganda, and war. Even if we accept that Hamas hoodwinked Palestinians in the 2006 election, where are all the mass uprisings to overthrow Hamas today? The truth is, Hamas has a deep core of support in Gaza, even if mostly passive. Of course the Israeli Defense Force wants to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties. But given Hamas tactics and their terrorist aims, Israel’s self defence will lead to unavoidable deaths in crossfire. The world needs to point the finger squarely at Hamas for Palestinian suffering.

Years ago, a New York Jewish community leader asked Thomas Sowell, “What can Jews themselves do in order to minimize the hostility they face?” Sowell responded, “Fail. Because as long as you succeed you are going to be hated.” Jews have so often risen from the bottom, in conditions of grinding poverty and rank discrimination, and yet passed so many other groups in achievement. In that regard, almost all people fail to grasp the staggering loss from the Holocaust. Sure, the inhumanity and industrial cruelness represents a singular blot on the human race, but more than that, the Nazis destroyed the Jewish intellectual and cultural conditions of central and eastern Europe that just produced Einstein, Szilard, Bohr, Ulam, Born, Meitner, Wigner, Pauli, von Neumann, Haber, Hausdorff, Tarski, Erdös, and Noether, and with it, one of the roots of our modern technological age. These men and women were my heroes in young adulthood. Fortunately for the Allies, Jewish refugees and American Jewish physicists played an outsized role on the Manhattan Project. To humanity’s benefit, the Jewish intellectual tradition survives – look at the lists of Nobel Laureates, Field Medallists, Oscars, and virtually any creative discipline on Earth since WWII. Never in history has such a small group of people contributed so much, despite the millennia of hostility.

To all those “progressives” on my street: The world needs Israel; Hamas we can do without.