"We must separate the Jews into two categories, Zionists and supporters of assimilation," wrote Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Holocaust, in 1935. "The Zionists profess a strictly racial concept and, through emigration to Palestine, are helping to build their own Jewish state. . . . We wish them well and they have our official favor."
In Heydrich's framework, the creation of the state of Israel represented the triumph of Zionism over assimilationism. But it also complicated the traditional anti-Semitic perception of Jews as a rootless people. This was Martin Heidegger's position when he called in 1939 to examine the "Jewish predisposition to planetary crime":
"With their marked gift for calculation, the Jews 'live' by the principle of race, and indeed have been so for an extremely long time, which is why they themselves most strongly resist its unrestrained application. The setting of racial procreation springs not from 'life' itself, but from the enhancement of life by machination (Machenschaft). Such planning leads to the complete rootlessness of the people by harnessing them to a uniformly constructed and optimized setup of all entities. Together with rootlessness goes the self-alienation of the people - the loss of history - that is, the area of decision-making for being as such (Seyn)."
At the base of those words is a philosophical opposition between a full life in the concrete world and the denial of such spiritual-historical roots where all "external reality" is viewed only as something that is manipulated and exploited. But what happens when a supposedly cosmopolitan rootless race begins to take root? With Zionism, French philosopher Alain Finkelcrot wrote in 2015, "Jews today have chosen the path of rooting."
It is easy to discern in this statement an echo of Heidegger's belief that all essential and great things require a homeland of the "blood and soil" type. The irony is that anti-Semitic clichés about rootlessness are invoked to legitimize Zionism. While anti-Semitism reproaches the Jews for having no roots, Zionism attempts to correct this alleged failure. It's no wonder that many conservative anti-Semites still vehemently support Israel's expansion to this day. The problem, of course, is that expansion, under the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now means settling and annexing the West Bank - seeking roots in a place inhabited by other peoples for centuries.
We encounter a similar problem with the different interpretations of the traditional Jewish saying "next year in Jerusalem", which is said at the end of the Seder (the ritual meal that marks the beginning of the Passover holiday). As it was once described, "many Jews who firmly believe in the importance of the Jewish state believe that 'next year in Jerusalem' is an expression of the need to protect Jerusalem and Israel as they exist today." Others think that the 'Jerusalem' mentioned at the Seder is more of an ideal of what Jerusalem and Israel could be - for them 'next year in Jerusalem' is a prayer for Israel to come closer to that ideal. Or 'Jerusalem' could be a general symbol of utopia, and 'next year in Jerusalem' could be a personal decision that in the coming year there will be peace on Earth."
Those versions reproduce the duality of the transcendental and the empirical. "Jerusalem" is either an abstract spiritual place of deliverance or a real city with real people, buildings and religious monuments. Not surprisingly, some Muslim fundamentalists are quite sympathetic to "transcendentalists" who consider glorification of the real city blasphemous. In the mid-2000s, when then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad organized a conference calling for the destruction of the state of Israel, he hosted several friendly "transcendental" rabbis. It was an inversion of Heydrich's point of view: it is okay to have Jews in our midst; the Jewish state is what is unacceptable.
But there is a third, extremely dangerous version of the "next year in Jerusalem" message that offers a synthesis of these two interpretations. Those who support it say: "Since we now have Jerusalem, we can use the next year to demolish Palestinian buildings and rebuild the biblical Temple where the Al-Aqsa Mosque now stands." The fight for Jerusalem thus becomes a holy undertaking. Even if a crime is committed, the perpetrators will bear no blame (in their own eyes) because they are establishing a new legitimate order. It sounds like an old joke in which the locals boast that there are no cannibals: "Yesterday we ate the last one."
But let's be clear about what's really going on. By using Jewish victims to justify an expansionist agenda, Israelis who support annexation cynically exploit the memory of the Holocaust. Those who offer unconditional support to Israel in this way also support the current Israeli government against the liberal opposition that opposes settlements and expansion. Nevertheless, this expansionism is the leading source of anti-Semitism in the modern world.
Among the countries that fully support Israel is Germany, where many on the right warn of "imported antisemitism" (importierter Antisemitismus). The implication is that any new wave of anti-Semitism in Germany is not a German phenomenon, but rather the result of Muslim immigration. But why then did so many young leftists in the west also refuse to express solidarity with Israel after the Hamas attack on October 7? Why are young Americans sharing Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America" on TikTok?
It is too easy to say that they simply have sympathy for Hamas. In fact, many of the participants in the pro-Palestinian protests are united by a more general view that the foreign policies and military apparatuses of the United States and its Western allies are beholden to big capital and its exploitation of the rest of the world. Sometimes there is a very fine line separating genuine discontent with capitalism from the kind of "anti-capitalist" populism that can be found in Bin Laden's letter.
Many liberals have expressed their support for Israel while simultaneously expressing concern over the number of civilians - especially children - killed in Gaza. There is growing sympathy for the Palestinians as victims, with recognition of their right to resist expansionist attacks. But how can they resist without becoming anti-Semitic? So far we have only received silence and shame on that question.
(Project Syndicate; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
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