Self-Hating Jews

There is a vocal minority among diaspora Jews who are quick to criticize Israel. They marched with protesters after October 7th in solidarity with Palestinains. They took to twitter and other social media platforms to “contextualize” the worst mass shooting in history, the worst terror attack (proportionally) in history, and the biggest massacre of Jews since the holocaust. Jews who would not have sympathized with the 9/11 attackers, who would not have called for a ceasefire in the months following that horrific act of terrorism, were breathlessly defending the communities holding Americans and Israelis hostage after 10/7. At every turn they have denounced Israel’s effort to defeat Hamas. This raises the question:  Why do some Jews have more sympathy for our attackers than for the victims in their own community?

There have always been “self-hating Jews.” That term gained currency with the publication of Der jüdische Selbsthaß (lit. 'Jewish Self-Hatred') by German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing in 1930. But the phenomenon certainly predates that. It is also not unique to the Jewish community. Similar epithets have been used in other minority communities to denote members who turn on their own. For example, the African American community has the ‘Uncle Tom' figure, a black person who is eager to curry favor with whites at the expense of blacks. During the Holocaust, some prisoners were given positions of power in exchange for benefits such as extra food. These ‘Kapos’ were often criminals and were encouraged to abuse the other prisoners. The term is now used to signify a self-hating Jew who betrays his people to curry favor with gentiles. It is fair to say that Jonathan Glazer fits into this category. 

While other minority groups have disloyal elements, they do not seem to have organized groups within them that are explicitly dedicated to undermining the goals and interests of the majority. Founded in 1996 by Noam Chomsky and others, Jewish Voices For Peace (JVFP) is a group that is avowedly anti-Zionist. Zionism has become a derogatory term in these quarters, but among most Jews it is simply their national liberation movement. Anti-Zionist Jews gladly offer themselves as tokens to undermine the Jewish indigenous rights project. Their basis for doing so does not exist in the Jewish faith, history or in the interests of their community. Jews have always referred to themselves as a nation, not merely a religion. To deny Jewish nationalism is to deny a core tenet of Judaism itself. 

JVFP and their ilk commonly begin their condemnations of Israel with the phrase, “As a Jew…” This reminds one of racists who preface their bigotry by stating that they have black friends. Jews who use this phrase only seem to invoke their Jewishness when condemning the Jewish state. For the most part, they don’t embrace their Jewish identity in any other context. As we have seen, being a Jew does not prevent one from being an antisemite.

In order to understand the mentality of the self-hating Jew it is helpful to examine its opposite. The opposite of the self-hating Jew is the proud Jew. There are many examples of the proud Jew, but the most iconic and relevant for this discussion is Menachem Begin. On June 22, 1982, then Senator Joe Biden attempted to strongarm Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony. Biden threatened to withhold US funding. Begin courageously responded:

"Don't threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your support." 

With the image of the proud Jew in mind, let’s contrast that with the self-hating Jew. The most iconic and recent example on display at the Oscar Ceremony last month, when the director Jonathan Glazer prostrated himself before the world to “refute” his “Jewishness”. Both his word choice and his body language are significant in understanding the psychology at play. Glazer didn’t lift his gaze from the paper he read from during his remarks. This suggests his word choice was deliberate and that he was not speaking extemporaneously. What is interesting is that he publicly renounced his religion and ethnicity on the basis of the actions of Israel, rather than simply condemning the Jewish state. This self-flagellation shows that he hates a fundamental aspect of himself and wants to rid himself of the taint of being Jewish. Glazer is the definition of a self-hating Jew. 

Let’s turn to his body language. Glazer sheepishly averted his gaze as he renounced his Jewishness. He appeared visibly uncomfortable and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. He did not appear confident at all. On the contrary, he was the picture of the meek “Jew with trembling knees” that Menachem Begin distinguished himself from. Glazer seemed to grovel for the approval of the self-important attendees and the gentile audience worldwide. Predictably, the renunciation of his Jewishness was met with rousing applause, which Glazer welcomed like an extra piece of bread at Buchenwald. The world loves a timid, self-effacing Jew. 

What explains this pathetic behavior? In The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege, Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor Kenneth Levin argues that chronically besieged populations such as Jews will produce individuals who seek salvation through self-effacement. He diagnoses this mentality as a kind of Stockholm Syndrome in which the victim develops an affinity for their abuser and rejects the community that renders them subject to it. A member of a beleaguered minority may attempt to renounce their membership in the persecuted group and jettison their identity. By bleaching his skin, Michael Jackson physically demonstrated this tendency. Jonathan Glazer’s public renunciation of his Jewishness was a verbal act that accomplished the same thing Jackson achieved: stripping away the part of himself that he hates so he can be seen by the world free from the stigma of his minority identity.

In addition, social psychologists have demonstrated through many different studies that minorities can internalize negative views about themselves from the wider culture. There are many different terms for the same phenomenon: “internalized racism,” “self-stigmatization” and “false consciousness” all refer to the process of adopting negative views of one’s own group from the majority culture. Jews are not impervious to this. In fact, there is no group that has a longer and more consistent history of imbibing negative views about themselves from their surrounding culture. From charges of deicide by the Catholic Church, to the blood libels of Medieval Europe, to second-class citizenship under Arab and Muslim rule, Shakespeare’s Shylock, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Nuremberg Laws, Jews have been demonized and dehumanized for millenia. It would be surprising if some Jews did not internalize this Jew-hatred. It is as understandable as it is lamentable that some Jews would want to shed this false stigma. 

There is also an ideological conflict at play in the Jewish worldview that can hinder if not preclude support for Israel. Jews are both overwhelmingly Zionists and Liberals. On the surface there is a tension between these two ideologies because Liberalism and nationalism are at odds. Tribalism is antithetical to Liberalism, and basing a state on tribal affiliations is therefore hard to reconcile with a commitment to Liberalism. However, Israel is a Liberal democracy. It grants equal rights to the Arabs who comprise 20% of its population and it affords freedom of religion and expression to all of its citizens. Moreover, basing a state on a common set of values is not inherently illiberal. There is no contradiction or logical inconsistency between Zionism and Liberalism. Jewish values are liberal values. 

While self-hating Jews such as Jonathan Glazer are deserving of derision for finding common cause with our enemies, they are also deserving of pity. They view their Jewishness as something to apologize for, rather than something to be proud of. In rejecting what they are, they demonstrate a complete lack of self-respect. That’s sad. There is so much to be proud of as a Jew. Despite millenia of oppression, Jews have had an outsize contribution to human flourishing. Jews are .2% of the human population and have received over 20% of Nobel Prize awards. If someone like Glazer wants to “refute” his Jewishness, that’s his loss.