I Hate You Because You’re…

Recently, Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, backed a Super Bowl campaign through the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. One of the adverts featured Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg throwing hate-filled lines at each other: not because either had done anything wrong, but because that is how hatred often works. It is handed down, copied, absorbed.

“I hate you because you’re different.”

“I hate you because my friends hate you.”

“I hate you because I’ve been told to hate you.”

The message was clear: hate is taught.

It ended with a line that landed like a brick through a window,

“I hate that things have become so bad that we needed to make a commercial about it.”

It was powerful.

The reality

For Jews living openly in Britain and across much of the diaspora, the reality is darker, uglier and far less cinematic.

Because if I stood on a street corner and screamed abuse at black people, gay people, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants or pretty much any other minority, I would expect someone to intervene.

And rightly so.

I would expect outrage. Condemnation. Consequences. Arrest.

But scream “I hate Jews”, “go back to the gas chambers”, “death to Israel”, “death to the IDF” or “globalise the intifada” anywhere in the UK, even in a heavily Jewish area and too often the reaction is a shrug wrapped in a hi-vis police jacket.

Tumbleweeds. Silence. A look. A yawn. A pause. Then nothing.

Not a damn thing.

And if Jews dare object, if we challenge the abuse, if we refuse to stand there smiling politely while people chant for our death, we are often treated as the problem. We are told not to inflame the situation. Not to antagonise. Not to make things worse.

In other words: the people hurling racist bile get indulged and the people receiving it get managed.

That is not law and order. That is moral cowardice with a radio clipped to its shoulder.

The final insult

When we say, plainly and correctly, that what just happened was antisemitic, we are told it was not. Usually by somebody outside the community. Somebody who does not know our history, our trauma, our language, our symbols, our fears or the thousand-year ache behind certain words. Somebody who would not recognise antisemitism if it arrived gift-wrapped in a swastika and dripping in blood.

Since when did Jews become the only people on earth who are not allowed to define hatred directed at them? Since when do outsiders get to explain our own persecution back to us?

The internationally recognised IHRA working definition of antisemitism describes antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” and adds that its “rhetorical and physical manifestations can be directed at Jews, their property, their institutions, and religious facilities.” IHRA also provides examples precisely because this hatred mutates. It changes costumes. It learns new slogans. It swaps boots for hashtags and torches for placards, but the engine underneath is the same. 

That definition does not belong to a random activist on social media. It does not belong to an ill-informed commentator, a student mob, a celebrity revolutionary in a keffiyeh, or a well-meaning police officer who thinks context is optional when Jews are involved.

And it certainly does not belong to politicians or public figures who suddenly become scholars of Jewish suffering the moment a Jew says, “That was antisemitic.”

No. On this, we do not need permission slips from anyone.

We know what antisemitism sounds like. We know what it looks like. We know what it feels like when it enters a crowd and the air changes. We know the vocabulary. We know the code. We know the old lies reheated in modern packaging. We know when “Zionist” is being used as a fig leaf for “Jew”. We know when “resistance” means murdering Jews. We know when “criticism of Israel” crosses the line into something much older, much fouler and much more familiar.

Our people have had 3,500 years of practice spotting the wolf, even when it turns up wearing humanitarian aftershave.

History shows what happens when Jew-hatred is minimised, rationalised, intellectualised or left conveniently undefined. It never stays in the realm of words. It never politely keeps to the campus quad or the protest route. It spills. It grows teeth. And right now, across the UK, Europe, America and Australia, the steady drumbeat of antisemitic incidents shows that this is not theoretical and it is not over there. It is here. Now. In daylight. On our streets. Outside our schools. Our synagogues. Our ambulances. Across our screens. 

So those of us in the diaspora need to stop apologising for noticing.

We need to stop shrinking ourselves to make antisemites feel less awkward. We need to stop accepting lectures on “tension” from people who would never tell any other minority to quietly absorb public chants calling for their death.

We need to hold our heads up. We need to reclaim our narrative. We need to insist, without flinching, that Jewish fear matters, that Jewish safety matters, that Jewish voices matter and that Jewish people have every right to define the hatred aimed at us.

And yes, we have the right to defend ourselves, our families, our schools, our synagogues, our way of life and our communities.

Those lucky enough to live in Israel understand this differently. There, antisemitism is not some academic parlour game with footnotes and panel discussions. It arrives armed. It arrives committed. It arrives without ambiguity. Israelis know exactly what Jew-hatred sounds like because they have heard it screamed across borders, in tunnels, on radios, in propaganda and in the celebration of Jewish death. In Israel, we are strong because we have had to be. Because we are home and because home is worth defending.

Outside Israel, we are smaller. More exposed. More vulnerable. We are scattered sparks in countries that like to boast about tolerance while asking Jews to ignore crowds chanting for our destruction. And worst of all, we are often denied the dignity of naming what is happening to us.

That has to end.

Because if the world gets to decide that antisemitism is only antisemitism when it is neat, obvious, old-fashioned and wearing jackboots, then Jews will always be one massacre behind the definition.

And we know, better than anyone, where that road leads.