Antisemitism, Then and Now: A Guide for the Perplexed | The Nation

President Biden’s remarks at the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance betrayed a total misunderstanding of what antisemitism actually is—and how it must be resisted.

Judeophobia, now commonly referred to as antisemitism, has a long and vile history. Jews were singled out in the pagan world because of their insistence on worshipping only one God, and for their self-identification as a chosen people. They were also a rebellious, independent people.

Under Greek rule, Jewish elites were increasingly Hellenized, but as tradition has it, in 166 BCE, the Maccabees rebelled against foreign rule, clearing the Temple of what they perceived as gentile filth. The Roman takeover of Judea brought it under the rule of the most powerful political and military entity of the ancient world—a vast empire that tolerated the different ways of its numerous provinces if they accepted Rome’s rule. Yet instead of accommodating to the Romans, the Jews again rebelled. This was a fatal move for Jewish existence in Judea.

The Great Jewish Revolt in 66–73 CE ended up with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and the eventual fall of Masada. It was here that the Zealots—as the rebels on that isolated hilltop called themselves—made their last stand against the empire. The Zealots had no interest in politics or compromise. For them the only alternatives were victory or death. When fighting the Romans, the choice was clear, and they met their inevitable death by their own hands as the Romans breached their defenses. At least this is what we are told by the Hellenized Jewish general turned Roman collaborator and historian Josephus Flavius—a story that remained suppressed and forgotten for many centuries, only to be revived by the Zionists as the epitome of Jewish nationalism and martyrdom. As for autonomous Jewish life in Judea, that came to an end following the disastrous failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132–136 CE.

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