Deborah Lipstadt Quotes

Hearing this, I was reminded of Hajo’s comment the previous summer. “People like David Irving do not throw firebombs. They throw the words that can cause others to throw those firebombs.

Freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want. What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it. Not all opinions are equal. And some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive.

To try to defeat an irrational supposition—especially when it is firmly held by its proponents—with a rational explanation is virtually impossible.

Deniers build their pseudo-arguments on traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes and imagery. They contend that Jews created the myth of the Holocaust in order to bilk the Germans out of billions of dollars and ensure the establishment of Israel. Once again the devious Jews have harmed innocent multitudes—Germans and Palestinians in particular—for the sake of their own financial and political ends. To someone nurtured by the soil of anti-Semitism, this makes perfect sense. -- The Eichmann Trial, page xx

The clueless antisemite is an otherwise nice and well-meaning person who is completely unaware that she has internalized antisemitic stereotypes and is perpetuating them. The only proper response, however hard it may be for you, is to politely tell this person that what she said comes under the category of an insidious and insulting ethnic stereotype.

political, or ethnic narrative is ipso facto false. Social scientists have described such theories as having a “self-sealing quality” that makes them “particularly immune to challenge.

There are ways of disagreeing with the policies of the Israeli government without sounding antisemitic. And blaming all Jews for something wrong that Israel has done—that’s antisemitic.

Struck by the complete lack of logic in any of their claims, I initially dismissed the Holocaust deniers and their theories out of hand. Then two respected historians suggested that I take a closer, more systematic look.

Ultimately, Hausner’s efforts regarding the murder were thwarted when questions posed by both Servatius and the judges proved that Avraham Gordon, whom Hausner called as the witness to the murder, could not have observed it. -- The Eichmann Trial, page 99

Despite its veneer of impartial scholarship, Butz’s book is replete with the same expressions of traditional anti-Semitism, philo-Germanism and conspiracy theory as the Holocaust denial pamphlets printed by the most scurrilous neo-Nazi groups. -- Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, page 126

In an Internet age it is, at first glance, democratic to say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That is surely true. It is however a fatal step to then claim that all opinions are equal. Some opinions are backed by fact. Others are not. And those which are not backed by fact are worth considerably less than those which are.

The judges’ primary objective was to conduct a scrupulously fair legal proceeding that would win the respect of the world. Hausner’s goal was to tell the story of the Holocaust in all its detail, and in so doing, to capture the imagination not just of Israel’s youth and world Jewry, but of the entire world . -- The Eichmann Trial, page 121

We recognize and abhor the extremists. There is no ambiguity about who they are and what they believe. Most people (with an emphasis on the word “most”) respond to them with visceral disgust. But our focus on them can sometimes distort the landscape because they’re not the only ones poised to do harm. In the wake of the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler has become the template for the archetypal antisemite. When someone does not present as an out-and-out Nazi, observers often fail to recognize him or her as an antisemite. But to be an antisemite one need not be a Hitler or Nazi equivalent. You need not even be prone to violence. There are many antisemites who would never dream of even using offensive rhetoric.

It soon became apparent to me that deniers were a new type of neo-Nazi. Unlike previous generations of neo-Nazis—people who celebrated Hitler’s birthday, sported SS-like uniforms, and hung swastikas at meetings where they would give the Sieg Heil salute—this group eschewed all that.5 They were wolves in sheep’s clothing. They didn’t bother with the physical trappings of Nazism—salutes, songs, and banners—but proclaimed themselves “revisionists”—serious scholars who simply wished to revise “mistakes” in the historical record, to which end they established an impressive-sounding organization—the Institute for Historical Review—and created a benign-sounding publication—the Journal for Historical Review.6 Nothing in these names suggested the revisionists’ real agenda. They held conferences that, at first blush, seemed to be the most mundane academic confabs. But a close inspection of their publications and conference programs revealed the same extremism, adulation of the Third Reich, antisemitism, and racism as the swastika-waving neo-Nazis. This was extremism posing as rational discourse.

To defeat your adversary and bury him is one thing. To dress him in a jester’s costume and have him perform for you is another, more crushing blow. He survives to give witness to his own powerlessness.”16 This is what both Chaplin and Brooks did to Hitler.

It is doubtful that Corbyn deliberately seeks out antisemites to associate with and to support. But it seems that when he encounters them, their Jew-hatred is irrelevant as long as their other positions—on class, race, capitalism, the role of the state, and Israel/Palestine—are to his liking.

Shortly before Corbyn became head of the party in 2015, Scottish columnist Stephen Daisley, who does not think Corbyn is an antisemite, observed, “How much easier it would make things” if he were. One could then simply attribute political developments in the Labour Party to the prejudices of one man. But, he continued, “this isn’t about Jeremy Corbyn; he’s just a symptom and a symbol. The Left, and not just the fringes, has an antisemitism problem.

The difficulty Corbyn and his associates have in recognizing and acknowledging antisemitism on the left seems to be rooted in their foundational claim that because being a progressive means being opposed to any form of racism, oppression, or group hate—including antisemitism—therefore, by definition, a true progressive cannot be an antisemite. Their claim runs into trouble when they are confronted by progressive compatriots who include blanket statements about Jews in their excoriation of wealthy capitalists who oppress and exploit the poor, who imply that Jews exert undue influence on the media, who deny that Jews can be the victims of race-based hatred in the same way that people of color are, and who include offensive, hate-filled Jewish stereotyping in their criticism of Israeli government policies regarding the Palestinians.

Like Trump, Corbyn has emboldened and enabled antisemites, but from the other end of the political spectrum. Trump’s antisemitic followers believe that his dog whistles give them free rein to openly acknowledge their contempt for racial minorities, Muslims, homosexuals, and Jews. They are convinced, not without reason, that they have had a direct impact on government policy and on various politicians’ stance on a range of issues. Their access and potential influence has never been greater. Corbyn’s followers believe that his support of them legitimizes their trafficking in the worst antisemitic stereotypes while at the same time vigorously denying that they are antisemitic

I’ll close by referring to a comment I made at the outset of this exchange, when I expressed the hope that my answers would leave both those on the right and the left discomforted. That discomfort should be caused by an acknowledgment on everyone’s part that extremism and antisemitism are found not only among people on the other side of the political spectrum. As long as we are blind to it in our midst, our fight against it will be futile.

Calling a prejudice “polite” does not in any way lessen its significance. In fact, in some respects the polite form of prejudice—irrespective of whom it is directed at—is more insidious than the overt, unapologetic, easily identifiable kind. Polite antisemitism is easily camouflaged; it’s subtle and allusive. And when it’s exposed for what it is, people who are not clued in to these types of slurs may be appeased by the polite antisemite’s very polite—and, more often than not, highly unsatisfactory—“apology.

There are of course also Jews who—intentionally or unintentionally—traffic in antisemitic stereotypes. When this seeps into the larger culture, it signals that it’s okay for non-Jews to do likewise.

When groups that have been subjected to discrimination and prejudice denigrate themselves, they do more than internalize a negative self-perception. They give license to others to do likewise. This is not harmless humor. It belittles Jews and women. The fact that it has its roots among Jews makes it no less debilitating.5 Whether coming from Jews or non-Jews, this manifestation of latent antisemitism spreads hateful and hurtful tropes and ideas.

Well, that’s quite a taxonomy we’ve assembled: the extremist, the enabler, the dinner party, and the clueless antisemite. Sometimes the categories blend into one another. We’ve also seen that sometimes the most harm can be done, not by the violent, in-your-face, self-professed Jew-hater, but by ordinary people who have acquired these views almost through cultural osmosis.

With the 2018 law, PiS intended to satisfy its rural and nationalist electoral base and to demonstrate to them “that Poland has risen from its knees and won’t be humiliated.”8 While this may have been the intent, the law did something else as well: It helped dredge up antisemitic sentiment. Suddenly, antisemitism seemed to be everywhere: throughout social media, on television, and in the press that supported the government. The PiS-controlled media contended that outside forces—“Jews in particular—want to prevent Poland from telling the truth about its own history.

Regrettably, the Trump administration missed an opportunity to confront the Polish government about this new law. When President Trump visited Warsaw in July 2017, the law was under discussion but had not yet been enacted into law. He gave a vigorously nationalistic speech at Warsaw’s war memorial, calling for protection of borders and urging Poles to join Americans in fighting forces, “whether they come from inside or out,” that threaten the shared “values…of culture, faith and tradition.”11 Many in Poland saw this as a clear expression of support for PiS’s nationalistic tendencies. The Polish government was delighted with Trump’s speech, and he neither publicly nor privately said anything about the then pending legislation.

In Hungary there has been a consistent effort by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to diminish, if not deny, the role of Hungarians in the murder of the Jews during the war. As Germany’s wartime ally, the Hungarian government persecuted its Jews severely but resisted German attempts to deport them. In March 1944, upon discovering that the Hungarian government was considering armistice negotiations with Britain and the United States, the German army invaded Hungary and established a puppet government. Most Hungarian government officials remained in place and enthusiastically carried out German orders. That spelled the end for Hungarian Jews.

Western Europe is not immune to this type of historical reconfiguration. On April 9, 2017, Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front (a far-right political party in France) and a member of France’s National Assembly, contended that France bore no responsibility for the notorious Vél d’Hiv roundup of more than thirteen thousand Jews (including approximately four thousand children) in July 1942. Jews were held at a stadium near the Eiffel Tower in Paris for five days in searing heat and horrific conditions—little food, water, or facilities—until they were deported to death camps and murdered.13 This roundup was planned by the Gestapo and members of France’s collaborationist government, conducted by French police, and supervised by French officials.

A recent careful and well conducted study in Great Britain found that only 2.4 percent of the British public “open[ly] dislike[d] Jews.” These people had a set of “developed negative ideas” about Jews and their characteristics. They “readily and confidently” express antisemitic views. Another 3 percent hold multiple antisemitic attitudes, though they are less pronounced about them. While this total of 5.4 percent is quite small, approximately 30 percent subscribed to or agreed with a few stereotypical antisemitic ideas. Though the members of this larger group are not “committed political antisemites,” they do disseminate antisemitic ideas into the broader public sphere.6 More than the extremists, they keep antisemitism alive and flourishing, and pass it on to future generations.

Jews, together with other religious and ethnic minorities, have always thrived in societies where freedom of speech and religion have been highly valued. They have blossomed in societies that welcome an array of cultures and beliefs.

It is axiomatic that if Jews are being targeted with hateful rhetoric and prejudice, other minorities should not feel immune; this is not likely to end with Jews. And, conversely, if other minority groups are being targeted with hatred and prejudice, Jews should not feel immune; this is not likely to end with these groups, either. Antisemitism flourishes in a society that is intolerant of others, be they immigrants or racial and religious minorities. When expressions of contempt for one group become normative, it is virtually inevitable that similar hatred will be directed at other groups.

Like a fire set by an arsonist, passionate hatred and conspiratorial worldviews reach well beyond their intended target. They are not rationally contained. But even if the antisemites were to confine their venom to Jews, the existence of Jew-hatred within a society is an indication that something about the entire society is amiss. No healthy society harbors extensive antisemitism—or any other form of hatred.

As horrific as the Holocaust was, it is firmly in the past. When I write about it, I am writing about what was. Though I remain horrified by what happened, it is history. Contemporary antisemitism is not. It is about the present. It is what many people are doing, saying, and facing now.

An accurate accounting of the uptick in antisemitic incidents is important because it does provide necessary empirical evidence. Nonetheless, numbers should not be what drive us. What should alarm us is that human beings continue to believe in a conspiracy that demonizes Jews and sees them as responsible for evil. Antisemites continue to give life to this particular brand of age-old hatred. They justify it and the acts committed in its name. The historical consequences of this nefarious passion have been so disastrous that to ignore its contemporary manifestations would be irresponsible.

Another reason numbers should not drive us is that antisemitism is a worldview, a conspiracy theory. It therefore cannot simply be measured by the number of recorded antisemitic acts or by the number of people being categorized as antisemites.

Since antisemitism affects Jews, some readers may be inclined to think that only Jews should be concerned. That would be a mistake. Jews, as the intended target of the antisemite, may indeed be more sensitive to it. Such is the case with any expression of particular hatred and prejudice.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s descriptor, which has now been adopted by the European Parliament, identifies it as: A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

A persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collectivity manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore, and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews.

the pseudoscience of the eugenics movement posited that Jews were inferior in their genetic makeup. Some of those who subscribed to this pseudoscientific claim simultaneously argued that Jews possessed not just these inferior traits but superior ones as well. Jews were maliciously intelligent, and because they were able to easily mix with non-Jews, they used those traits to wreak havoc with non-Jews’ lives. That this was a contradiction in terms—simultaneously superior and inferior—presented no problem for the antisemite.

This toxic brew of race, religion, politics, and pseudoscience became the cornerstone of Nazi antisemitism and is today a cornerstone of the white power movement and white supremacist antisemitism.

The structure of antisemitism means that it’s not just a bunch of haphazard ideas, but it can result in, as Fein notes, “actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization…and collective or state violence.” It also has an internal coherence.

Irrespective of whether the antisemitic manifestations were religious, political, social, racial, or some amalgam of them all, the same themes or tropes remain embedded in them. We know them well: Jews may be small in number, but they have the ability to compel far more powerful entities to do their bidding. That bidding invariably involves aiding Jews at the expense of non-Jews. Jews, over the course of millennia, irrespective of whether they lived in close proximity to one another or were separated by continents, have honed a cosmopolitan alliance that facilitates their evil deeds.

According to Christian doctrine as it was taught for millennia, Jesus was crucified because, among other things, he threatened Jews’ power and financial well-being.

the declaration by Paul that Christianity is the one true faith and therefore supersedes or replaces Judaism, both in belief and in deed—became an essential tenet of the new faith.

This formulation rendered Judaism more than just a competing religion. It became a source of evil.

Antisemitism is not simply the hatred of something “foreign,” but the hatred of a perpetual evil in the world. Jews are not an enemy but the ultimate enemy.

It’s important for you to understand that antisemitism, as is the case with any prejudice, exists independently of any action by Jews. Sometimes, an accusation against a particular Jew, or even a group of Jews, may be correct. There are some Jews who are obsessed with money or who mistreat their employees. But the same can be said about certain non-Jews. Saying that “of course X is obsessed with money; he’s a Jew, isn’t he?” is antisemitic.

Antisemitism is not the hatred of people who happen to be Jews. It is hatred of them because they are Jews.

Given the absurdity of antisemitic accusations, why do they gain any traction? One explanation may be that, having been embedded in society for millennia, they have gained a staying power that is hard to eradicate. Antisemitism also became a means of explaining otherwise inexplicable situations.

Antisemites must be fought, especially if there is a chance that their passion or ideology stands a chance of becoming part of a national policy, but they are people of no consequence.

But whatever form it takes, we must always insist that antisemitism has never made sense and never will. Fight it. But don’t elevate it or its purveyors in importance.

as a Semitic people, when in fact there is not. The word “Semitic” was coined in 1781 by a German historian to describe a group of languages that originated in the Middle East and that have some linguistic similarities; they include Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, ancient Akkadian, and Ugaritic. There’s nothing that binds the speakers of these different languages together as a people.

The word “Semitic” was coined in 1781 by a German historian to describe a group of languages that originated in the Middle East and that have some linguistic similarities; they include Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, ancient Akkadian, and Ugaritic. There’s nothing that binds the speakers of these different languages together as a people.

with prejudice, but that’s another conversation.) Second, even if one were to posit that there is such a cultural or ethnic entity as Semites, this argument assumes that members of a group cannot be prejudiced against their own. In fact, one of prejudice’s most debilitating legacies is how the people targeted come to believe that the negative stereotypes thrown at them are true.

There are racist African Americans, sexist women, and antisemitic Jews.

Finally, arguing that antisemitism means exhibiting hostility toward all “Semitic” peoples obscures the meaning that has been ascribed to it for virtually all its history. Wilhelm Marr, a German journalist who was a Jew-hater, popularized the term in the late nineteenth century. He contended that Jews, including those who had converted to Christianity, were incapable of assimilating. Once a Jew, always a Jew. According to Marr, Jews were dangerous because their goal was “to harm Germanic identity” and to destroy “the Germanic.” Nothing could alter their foreign-ness, including changing their religion.

(In one of those bitter ironies, at the end of his life Marr recanted his antisemitic accusations and, in a final essay entitled “Testament of an Antisemite,” acknowledged that the faults he attributed to the Jews were, in fact, the result of the Industrial Revolution and the political debates of the times.2 His remorse notwithstanding, the damage had already been done.)

Finally, am I making any sort of statement by going with the lowercase “antisemite” as opposed to the uppercase “Antisemite”? Yes, I am. It’s my small way—and I am certainly not alone in this—of validating Sartre’s and Julius’s contention that antisemitism is an illogical, delusional passion full of self-contradictions and absurd contentions. It doesn’t deserve the dignity of capitalization, which in English is reserved for proper names.

Blood and soil” may sound benign, but, as Abigail knows from our class, it’s a German slogan (Blut und Boden) that was central to Nazi ideology. It idealizes a racially defined nation, and its subtext is that only those people with “pure” or “white” bloodlines can be true citizens of the nation. Only they are rooted to the soil. Jews, on the other hand, are “cosmopolitans,” not nationalists, and as such are interlopers and threats to the well-being of the nation. The demonstrators paraded with the Confederate flag, which symbolized far more than a link to a statue of Robert E. Lee. It represents a cultural and political position that melds white power with opposition to liberalism and multiculturalism.

While these chants were chilling, something else scared me even more. It wasn’t what was there that frightened me, but what wasn’t there. No KKK robes, Nazi-inspired uniforms, or white supremacist paraphernalia were evident. No T-shirts with neo-Nazi slogans were to be seen. Most of the marchers wore neatly pressed khaki pants and smart-looking shirts. Had they not carried flags with swastika-like and white supremacist symbols or the Confederate “stars and bars” and raised their arms in a Nazi-like salute, they might have looked as though they had just walked out of a J.Crew or Brooks Brothers catalog.

appear “crazed or ugly or victims or just stupid.”4 Let’s step back for a moment from Charlottesville and try to figure out who these marchers are and what they represent. The ideologies motivating them are white power and white supremacy, ideologies that include a foundational belief in the evil nature of the Jews, Muslims, and people of color. According to the supremacists, these minorities are intent on harming “regular Americans.” They find one another at white power gatherings. They visit websites that promote neo-Nazism, white nationalism, and antisemitism.5 Many of them adhere to Christian Identity, a racist interpretation of Christianity that posits that there were two creations—one that failed, which explains the existence of people of color, and one that produced Adam and Eve.

Among the groups at the Charlottesville rally was the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which is probably the largest American neo-Nazi group. It reveres Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

Also present in Charlottesville was Vanguard America, a group with increasingly strong ties to neo-Nazis. Its members believe that the United States is exclusively for white Americans and not for non-Christians, Jews, Muslims, or people of color. The car used to murder the counterdemonstrator sported a Vanguard America decal.

Charlottesville did not come out of the blue. We saw these extremists at work during the 2016 presidential campaign. They took particular aim at those Jewish journalists who they believed were either opposed to Trump or insufficiently supportive of him. During the primaries, Bethany Mandel, a self-described political conservative who has written for, among other publications, the Federalist and Commentary, tweeted what she described as “an offhand remark” about Donald Trump’s “legions of antisemitic fans.” She described the responses she received as “unlike anything [she had] seen before on Twitter.

Though one may not find an overtly racist or Nazi symbol among the clean-cut and well-dressed adherents of these new groups, their views are just as extremist as those of the most committed member of the KKK. They advocate a race-based white supremacism. For them, an American citizen is someone who is white and Christian.

What is different about the alt-right and similar groups is the way they package their ideas, as they try to project a decidedly “normal” image—not as neo-Nazis or Jew-haters, but as “white nationalists” who simply (and, by their way of explaining, rather benignly) believe that white people are being marginalized in society by other racial and ethnic groups.

including those in high-level government positions. President Trump and some of his associates have retweeted and reposted videos, cartoons, memes, and comments on various social media platforms that come from the alt-right and those affiliated with them. The retweeters give license to people who share these sentiments to engage in racist, antisemitic, and extremist rhetoric. And the more this kind of invective is repeated, the more it has a way of bleeding beyond its original borders and becoming part of the national discourse. As that happens, ideas that were once considered to be outside the pale of civil conversation become mainstreamed.

President Trump and some of his associates have retweeted and reposted videos, cartoons, memes, and comments on various social media platforms that come from the alt-right and those affiliated with them. The retweeters give license to people who share these sentiments to engage in racist, antisemitic, and extremist rhetoric. And the more this kind of invective is repeated, the more it has a way of bleeding beyond its original borders and becoming part of the national discourse. As that happens, ideas that were once considered to be outside the pale of civil conversation become mainstreamed.

In February 2018, Oskar Deutsch, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Austria, observed that the Vienna-based Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal used to receive antisemitic threats all the time. But those letters were anonymous and there was little means of tracing the writers. Today, Deutsch says, “these threats clearly state exactly who they come from. That is the problem—antisemitic statements are becoming ever more normal.

When our children fear there is danger in openly identifying as a Jew, it is indeed something that should concern us all.

Even though there is no evidence of a direct relationship between Trump and these extremist groups, Fortune magazine assessed the impact of the interactions between them. Using social media analytics software, it tracked the campaign’s connections to white supremacists. Locating the white supremacists who were considered social media “influencers,” Fortune discovered that a significant number of Trump campaign workers followed the leading #WhiteGenocide influencers. The study concluded that “the data shows…that Donald Trump and his campaign have used social media to court support within the white supremacist community, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The simple fact is that Donald Trump was, and still seems to be, unwilling to castigate, much less mildly criticize, actions by the white supremacists, racists, and antisemites who voted for him and who continue to support him. Rather than be outraged by what they say and do, he enables and emboldens them because it serves his political purposes. While Trump is probably not an antisemite, enabling antisemites is itself an antisemitic act that causes as much damage as something that comes from an ideological antisemite. When challenged, antisemitic enablers will often cite their personal relations with Jews. But the rationalization that “some of my best friends/relatives are Jewish/black/gay so therefore the antisemitic/racist/homophobic things that I say cannot possibly be antisemitic/racist/homophobic” is both ridiculous and deplorable.

We all reflexively fall back on education as an antidote. Education will certainly work in many instances. But, I must sadly acknowledge, education will be of limited value for committed antisemites. Their contempt for the Jew is not the result of a “cognitive error.”1 It’s not that we simply need to rationally show them that Jews do not in fact control the banks or the media, or shape the foreign policy of whichever country they live in. Their view of Jews is, unfortunately, refracted through a preestablished prism of hatred. That’s why these irrational and absurd charges make sense to them.

Thanks to the civil rights movement, overt religious, racial, and ethnic discrimination has become illegal. Covert discrimination persists of course. But prejudice is a hard thing to root out, and racial minorities continue to be subject to overt acts of discrimination. This, however, doesn’t mean that Jews are no longer subject to antisemitism.

Long thought to have been eradicated from American society, antisemitism is back when Jewish college students are reluctant to affiliate with Jewish student organizations because they don’t want to spend their university years fighting Israel-bashing or confronting Jew-hatred.8 Whether it comes from those on the political left or political right, from Christians or, as is the case in many European countries, from Muslims, it is antisemitism when Jews are attacked—verbally or physically—because they are Jews. Antisemitism exists when parents are afraid to enroll their children in a Jewish preschool because they fear for their safety. Is this fear on the same level as that of the African American mother who sends her teenage son off to school in the morning and wonders if he will come back that afternoon? No, but why does this have to be some sort of macabre competition? Why can’t they both be considered terrible by-products of senseless hatred?

Antisemitic events have been on the rise—particularly in Europe—since the beginning of the 2000s, with the outbreak of the Second Intifada and collapse of Middle East peace talks. France’s Jewish Community Security Service estimates that the annual incidence of antisemitic acts in the 2000s was seven times higher than in the 1990s. A number of these incidents resulted in serious injuries and even death.

When I bring my children to their Jewish school and see the guards with submachine guns, I feel relieved. Then I wonder, Why am I sending my children to a school where they have to be protected by armed guards? But if I send them to a ‘French’ school, they are harassed, particularly by the Muslim students.

No one who offers the “yes, but” rationalization actually engages in racist violence or even thinks that they are condoning it. But they are virtually guaranteeing that it will continue because what they are doing is facilitating it.

At last, some recognition that terrorist acts may at first be directed at Jews, but they never end with Jews.

We will in the future continue to witness instances of soft-core denial. On some level, this is much harder to fight than the hard-core deniers, but fight it we must.

Of course, according to the deniers, the answer to this question is quite simple: German officials were forced into a false admission of guilt by “the Jews,” who threatened to prevent Germany’s reentry into the family of nations. But this, too, makes little sense. German leaders had to know that admitting to a genocide of such proportions would impose upon the nation a horrific legacy that would become an integral part of its national identity. Why would a country take on such a historical burden if it were innocent? Moreover, seventy years after the end of the war, with Germany now a global political and economic leader, it could have proclaimed that “it’s not true; the Jews made us say this back in 1945.” Instead, the German government created a massive memorial in Berlin to the murdered Jews.

The boycott in the academic world today against Israelis has its roots, in some measure, in the 2001 United Nations–sponsored Durban World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. There were actually two gatherings in Durban—the official United Nations conference and one sponsored by a group of about three thousand nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The discussion about Israel at both meetings was vituperative and overshadowed all other issues on the meetings’ agendas. The final declaration adopted by the NGO forum laid the groundwork for the BDS movement by equating Zionism with racism and calling for a boycott of Israel.

A central tenet of academic freedom is that a scholar’s academic work and politics are separate and distinct from each other.

How ironic it is that leftist BDS supporters have adopted the tactics of right-wing McCarthyites.

Among the leading purveyors of Holocaust denial arguments are far-right, neo-Nazi, and white power groups. Their adulation of Nazi ideology, “Aryan” superiority, and, above all, Adolf Hitler make them perfect candidates for denial. They are masters of inconsistency. They argue that murdering the Jews would have been entirely justified but that it never happened. I suppose you could call this the “no, but” argument: “No, it didn’t happen. But it should have.

British sociologist David Hirsh rightly observes that “much of the important communication between Palestinians and Israelis has been conducted via academic engagement.” If one wants to resolve this political situation, efforts should be made to “facilitate communication, not exclusion, [to] listen, not close down voices.

In Poland, the newly elected far-right nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) has attempted to rewrite Poland’s World War II historical record. Any person or institution that casts aspersions on Poland’s wartime record of battling the Nazis is attacked. Museum curators who have tried to present an accurate portrait of Poland’s behavior during the war have been fired.3 Exhibits at various government-sponsored museums have been reconfigured to stress Polish battlefield heroics and erase any evidence of complicity with the Germans.

In 2015 the American Jewish pop star Matisyahu was disinvited from appearing at Rototom Sunsplash, an annual international reggae music festival held in Spain that was, ironically, devoted to “the promotion of peace, equality, human rights and social justice.”12 He was told by festival organizers that the pressure to disinvite him came from BDS members, and that if he made a public statement in support of Palestinian statehood and against Israeli “war crimes,” he would be able to perform.13 When he refused to do so, his performance was canceled and Rototom Sunsplash issued the following statement: Rototom Sunsplash, after having repeatedly sought dialogue in the face of the artist’s unavailability to give a clear statement against war and on the right of the Palestinian people to their own state, has decided to cancel [his] concert. Even though Rototom Sunsplash’s other goals included examining the “rise in Islamophobia in Western countries, as well as the situation of the prisoners in Guantánamo,” no European performers were required to denounce expressions of Islamophobia in their countries, and American performers were not required to share their views on the United States policy toward prisoners in Guantánamo. After an international outcry at the festival’s assertion that an American Jewish musician was answerable for Israeli government policy, the invitation was reinstated.

In 2016, protesters at London’s King’s College disrupted a talk by Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s version of our FBI. Students from a pro-Palestinian group chanted, threw chairs, smashed windows, and repeatedly set off the fire alarm in the room where Ayalon was speaking about the two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine situation, which is something he strongly supports.

These tactics are not new. They have been used against Israeli speakers in the past and are part of the broader effort known as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS. Founded in 2005 by Palestinian organizations, it advocates for the following: (1) boycotting Israeli-made products and services, as well as public events in which Israelis participate; (2) the divestment by governments and private institutions of investments in Israeli companies; and (3) the establishment of international sanctions against Israel. Its goal is to punish Israel for what it terms Israel’s “apartheid” policies toward Israeli and Palestinian Arabs.

A particularly cruel irony inherent in the targeting of Israeli academics, artists, and intellectuals is that a disproportionate number of them publicly oppose many of Israel’s settlement policies. Instead of encouraging their efforts, BDS lumps them in with the very people and policies that they oppose. All this does is bar Israeli advocates for change from participating in the larger conversation with like-minded Palestinian individuals, and instead empower extremists on both sides.

Ultimately, it’s hard to gauge whether deniers have increased in number or are just good at using social media to make themselves seem more numerous than they actually are. While either alternative is disturbing, the deniers clearly feel more emboldened than ever before.

That same year Moshe Halbertal, a distinguished Israeli law professor and world-renowned philosopher, was scheduled to speak at the University of Minnesota on the moral challenge an army faces when it is engaged in fighting “asymmetric wars,” which are defined as conflicts between professional armies and resistance or insurgent movements. Halbertal is known for his position that the army must always “err on the side of protecting” civilian insurgents, even if this threatens its soldiers’ well-being. As his lecture began, protesters stood up and began to shout him down. When the police finally ejected them from the room, they situated themselves outside the building in a place where their chanting could be heard, making it difficult for those in the hall to listen to the lecture.

In 2002, Mona Baker, a professor of translation studies at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and the publisher of two scholarly journals—Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts—dismissed Gideon Toury, a professor at Tel Aviv University, from the advisory board of Translator. She also dismissed Miriam Shlesinger, a lecturer in translation studies at Bar-Ilan University, from the advisory board of Translation Studies Abstracts. Ironically, both Toury and Shlesinger oppose the Israeli government’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

The Holocaust has the dubious distinction of being the best documented genocide in the world. For deniers to be right, all survivors would have to be wrong.

you compliment me for consistently confronting deniers. While I have spent time exposing their lies and inconsistencies, I have not entered into debate with them. They will tell you that I am afraid to. The truth is that they are liars, and one cannot debate a liar. It is akin to trying to nail a blob of jelly to the wall. Generally speaking, people differentiate between facts and opinions—you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts. But in the case of deniers, there are facts, opinions, and lies.

It should be obvious that Holocaust denial is, quite plainly, a form of antisemitism. It’s not about history. It’s about attacking, discrediting, and demonizing Jews. The claims of the deniers—that the Jews planted evidence, got German prisoners of war to admit to crimes they did not commit, and forced Germany to shoulder a tremendous financial and moral burden when the war ended—are predicated on the notion of the mythical power of the Jews, which, they firmly believe, was extensive enough to realize this vast conspiracy. Unconcerned about how their actions would affect millions of people and with only their own political and financial benefit in mind, the Jews created the myth of the Holocaust in order to obtain a state of their own and extract vast amounts of money from Germany. Then, according to this so-called “theory,” they proceeded to displace another people from their land in order to gain sovereignty for themselves. These assertions rely on classic antisemitic tropes, the same ones found throughout two thousand years of antisemitic accusations. Just as the Jews persuaded the Roman Empire, then the rulers of Palestine and much of the rest of the world, to do their bidding and crucify Jesus, so, too, they persuaded the Allies to create evidence of a genocide for their own financial and political gain.

Deniers have learned to use social media to their advantage. On Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2017, a survivor was interviewed on a BBC radio program. The producers were “shocked” by the “staggering” number of “brazen” Holocaust denial and antisemitic phone calls and social media posts they received. Though they had previously broadcast programs on the Holocaust and had received some antisemitic and denial comments, this response, one producer told me, was “unprecedented…unlike anything we have seen before.” They were so deeply unsettled that they invited me to appear on a subsequent program that addressed Holocaust denial.7 But denial is not something engaged in only by the Far Right. In many segments of the Muslim community, including among European Muslims, there is also an inclination to deny this historical reality. There are schools in Europe where teachers find it difficult to teach about the Holocaust because the students insist that it never happened, and the material the teachers present is dismissed by the students as false.

A boycott strikes at the free exchange of ideas, which is why the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) firmly opposes it.

How can deniers explain that in not one war-crimes trial since the end of World War II has a perpetrator of any nationality denied that these events occurred? They may have said, “I was forced to kill,” but not one asserted that the killing did not happen. Finally, why has Germany shouldered the enormous moral and financial responsibility for the crimes committed in the Holocaust, if it did not happen?