(Jewish Group) Meet the new antisemitism, same as the old antisemitism

(This is the JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!)

Did you know that Michel Hazanavicius, the French director whose film The Artist won the Academy Award for best film in 2011, was Jewish? Not only did I not know this, but in a sense Hazanavicius did not know it either. In a recent essay in Le Monde, he writes that, though he is Jewish, he never thought much about it. But, of late, he wonders why he has “the impression to be more and more obliged to be Jewish? To react as a Jew, to think as a Jew, in short, to be Jewish above else?”

Hazanavicius is not alone. Since last October, I too have found that being Jewish borders on being a full-time occupation. It is an odd turn of events. While I had always considered Jewishness to be part of my identity, I never considered that it defined my identity any more than being from Jersey, being a Mets fan, or being nearly 70 does (I know: I don’t look it).

Yet something has changed since Oct. 7, 2023, so that being Jewish has become our default being. The events on and since that day have been seismic and tragic for the peoples of Israel and Gaza. But the aftershocks have reverberated far and wide. For Jews here and elsewhere, one of the most disturbing aftershocks has been the great spasm of antisemitism, one which, it bears repeating, began before the catastrophic consequences of Israel’s military invasion of Gaza became nightly news.

The latest in a long line of surveys has just been issued by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Though released last month, it was conducted before the October massacre by Hamas (it contains more recent responses, as well). Among the survey’s many depressing trends, we learn that 80% of respondents feel that antisemitism has increased in their country over the past five years, 56% experienced offline antisemitism from people they know, 37% have been harassed by antisemites once over the past year, and many of these same individuals have been victims of multiple expressions of antisemitism. In textbook bureaucratese, the agency’s director notes that this explosion of hatred “severely limits Jewish people’s ability to live in safety and with dignity” and concludes with the inevitable plea for tolerance.

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