Overview:
When you denounce your enemies as allies of the Devil, it excuses you from the necessity of treating them as human beings with rights. That murderous logic has been used by Christians against Jews through the centuries, and now it's arising to justify Israel's war on Gaza.
[Previous: Netanyahu speaks the language of genocide]
Everyone wants to be on God’s side.
Theists believe God is the source of all morality and goodness in the world. Naturally, that’s the team you’d want to be on. However, there’s a dark side to this aspiration. If you’re on God’s side, what about the people who disagree with you?
That’s the dark implication lurking underneath this column by American playwright David Mamet about the Israel-Hamas war and the cause of antisemitism.
“That’s why we have armies”
Mamet says that Jewish people are wasting their time by trying to assimilate, or by touting the achievements of prominent Jews, or by voting for liberal and tolerant politicians. According to him, gentiles will always be hateful and prejudiced, no matter what Jews do to seek their approval:
The assimilated Jewish worship of Good Works and Right Thinking has been requited, for 2,000 years, by our slaughter. Implicit in our murderers’ worldview was the belief that “you can fool yourselves, but you can’t fool us”. For the Jew Haters were and are neither interested in our “accomplishments” nor outraged by our supposed misdeeds—but only interested in killing us.
“The self-delusion of secular Jews.” David Mamet, Unherd, 7 December 2023.
The worst error Jewish people can commit, according to Mamet, is to be secular. He dismisses this as lethal self-delusion. Even Reform Judaism isn’t good enough for him. Instead, Jews’ only hope of survival is to be aggressively religious, conservative, and nationalistic.
Why? Because, he says, secular Jews have no good explanation for the persistence of antisemitism. The real reason, according to him, is a religious one:
Christians often ask me why the Jews are so hated. The traditional Western Jewish answers are, however, a finessed attempt at exculpation. They describe various antisemitisms as the result, however misguided, of our enemies’ human reason and aspiration. But the true, horrific, Biblical answer is that they are the work of the Devil.
We are told, in the Torah, that Amalek—the ineradicable force of Evil—is with us in every generation.
This is the same explanation given by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to justify his assault on Gaza. According to the Hebrew Bible, Amalek was a pagan nation that attacked the Jews by surprise during their escape from Egypt. This crime was so awful, it justifies Israel waging a genocidal war on the Amalekites—four hundred years later—and wiping them out down to the last man, woman and child.
Judaism typically doesn’t believe in the Devil in the same way that Christianity does. However, Mamet believes something equivalent. He says that this force of evil is inhuman and ineradicable. This means that the only answer to groups like the Palestinians is to kill them. We don’t have to be fair to them (“Jews were not instructed to worship fairness”), but to use whatever force is necessary to put them down (“that’s why we have armies”).
Why antisemitism persists
Antisemitism through the ages is a collection of hateful prejudices untainted by fact. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t reasons why it arose.
At the root of these is a theological rivalry. Both Christianity and Islam present themselves as the fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures, as new covenants which replace the old. The continued existence of Jewish people is problematic for this, because if these newer religions can’t convince the original recipients of the covenant, it casts doubt on their legitimacy. Small wonder that both Christian and Muslim states have persecuted Jews and even sought to kill them when they refused to convert.
There are also political dimensions to antisemitism. When Christianity was a young new religion struggling for survival, Christians couldn’t go around proclaiming that their founder had been executed by the Roman authorities as a criminal. That would have been a surefire way to get the Romans to stomp them out. Instead, they put the blame on fractious, rebellious Jews who demanded Jesus’ death despite Roman reluctance.
READ: The anti-semitism of the New Testament
This scapegoating continued down to the Middle Ages. Theocratic Christian kingdoms banned Jews from owning land, assuming this would keep them poor and powerless. Instead, they took up moneylending, and they turned out to be to be good at it.
They thrived in spite of a Christian world that wanted them to fail. What’s more, they were the only way for Christian rulers to get cash they desperately needed. (Christians couldn’t make loans to each other, because of a religious belief against lending at interest.) This uncomfortable cognitive dissonance—Christians both depended on the Jews, and also resented them for it—is a powerful accelerant for hatred.
This historical context doesn’t justify or excuse antisemitism, but it does explain it. People believe what they believe for reasons. It’s easier to communicate with them and, perhaps, talk them out of it if you know what those reasons are.
Of course, assembling these explanations takes work. It takes research, an objective study of history. And, possibly the biggest hurdle of all, it requires an effort to imagine the viewpoint of people you find detestable. Literally, you have to humanize them—to think of them as fellow human beings with wishes and hopes like yours.
Most people recoil from that. It’s distressing and unpleasant to put yourself in the shoes of people you hate. Much easier just to blame the Devil.
(No) sympathy for the Devil
In Western religions, the Devil is a malevolent force that can’t be reasoned with. His only goal is to create evil in the world. He doesn’t deserve our compassion or our mercy. The only thing we should do is battle him whenever and wherever we encounter him.
Therefore, the same is true for anyone who follows the Devil. Labeling your enemies as servants of Satan excuses you from the messy necessity of treating them as human beings. You don’t have to understand them, empathize with them or ask what they want. You can’t—and shouldn’t—negotiate with them, seek common ground, or find a compromise. The only thing you can do is kill them.
That’s the black-and-white logic of crusades, witch hunts, and yes, pogroms throughout history. The irony of Mamet’s column is that the bloody reasoning he advocates has so often been used against Jews. They’re “the synagogue of Satan”, as the New Testament puts it (Revelation 2:9), so they don’t deserve rights or fair treatment. Whatever persecution we, the righteous Christian majority, dish out to them is justified for their crime of rejecting God.
No matter who’s using it, attributing the other side’s misdeeds to the Devil is pure moral laziness. It’s a way to ignore your own culpability, to overlook any grievances your enemies hold. You don’t even have to ask if they have any reasonable demands. You can dehumanize them to your heart’s content and indulge your most violent impulses when dealing with them. It’s an excuse for people who don’t want to go to the trouble of thinking.