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the Holocaust was born. Sixty years after the word came the deed.Today we are living through the fourth mutation. Unlike its predecessors, the new antisemitism focuses not on Judaism as a religion, nor on Jews as a race, but on Jews as a nation. It consists of three propositions. First, alone of the 192 nations making up the United Nations, Jews are not entitled to a state of their own. As Amos Oz noted: in the 1930s, antisemites declared, %u2018Jews to Palestine%u2019. Today they shout, %u2018Jews out of Palestine%u2019. He said: they don%u2019t want us to be there; they don%u2019t want us to be here; they don%u2019t want us to be.The second is that Jews or the State of Israel (the terms are often used interchangeably) are responsible for the evils of the world, from AIDS to global warming. All the old antisemitic myths have been recycled, from the Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, still a best-seller in many parts of the world. The third is that all Jews are Zionists and therefore legitimate objects of attack. The bomb attacks on synagogues in Istanbul and Djerba, the arson attacks on Jewish schools in Europe, and the almost fatal stabbing of a young yeshiva student on a bus in North London in October 2000, were on Jewish targets, not Israeli ones. The new antisemitism is an attack on Jews as a nation seeking to exist as a nation like every other on the face of the earth, with rights of self-governance and self-defense.How did it penetrate the most sophisticated immune system ever constructed %u2013 the entire panoply of international measures designed to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust would ever happen again? The answer lies in the mode of self-justification. Most people at most times feel a residual guilt at hating the innocent. Therefore antisemitism has always had to find legitimation in the most prestigious source of authority at any given time.In the first centuries of the Common Era, and again in the Middle Ages, this was religion. That is why Judeophobia took the form of religious doctrine. In the nineteenth century, religion had lost prestige, and the supreme authority was now science. Racial antisemitism was duly based on two pseudo-sciences, social Darwinism and the so-called scientific study of race. By the late twentieth century, science had lost its prestige, having given us the power to destroy life on earth. Today the supreme source of legitimacy is human rights. That is why Jews (or the Jewish state) are accused of the five primal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and crimes against humanity.How then shall we respond? There are three key messages, the first to Jews, the second to antisemites, and the third to our fellow human beings. As Jews we must understand that we cannot fight antisemitism alone. The victim cannot cure the crime. The hated cannot cure the hate. Jews cannot defeat antisemitism. Only the cultures that give rise to it can do so.European Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth century made one of the most tragic mistakes in history. They said: Jews cause antisemitism, therefore they can cure it. They did everything possible. They said, %u2018People hate us because we are different. So we will stop being different.%u2019 They integrated, they assimilated, they married out, they hid their identity. This failed to diminish antisemitism by one iota. All it did was to debilitate and demoralize Jews.The most important thing Jews can do to fight antisemitism is never, ever to internalize it. That is what is wrong in making the history of persecution the basis of Jewish identity. For three thousand years Jews defined themselves as a people loved by G-d. Only in the nineteenth century did they begin to define themselves as the people hated by gentiles. There is no sane future along that road. The best psychological defense against antisemitism is the saying of Rav Nachman of Bratslav: %u201cThe whole world is a very narrow bridge; the main thing is never to be afraid.%u201dTo antisemites we must be candid. Hate destroys the hated, but it also destroys the hater. It is no accident that antisemitism is the weapon of choice of tyrants and totalitarian regimes. It deflects internal criticism away by projecting it onto an external scapegoat. It is deployed in country after country to direct attention away from real internal problems of poverty, unemployment and underachievement. Antisemitism is used to sustain regimes without human rights, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press, liberty of association or accountable government. One truth resounds through the pages of history: To be free you have to let go of hate. Those driven by hate are enemies of freedom. There is no exception.Finally, to all of us together, we must say: Jews have been hated throughout history because they were different. To be sure, everyone is different; but Jews more than most fought for the right to be different. Under a succession of empires, and centuries of dispersion, Jews were the only people who for more than two thousand years refused to convert to the dominant religion or assimilate into the dominant culture. That is why antisemitism is a threat not just to Jews but to humanity.For we are all different. After Babel there is no single culture. Instead there is a multiplicity of languages and identities, each one of which is precious. Judaism is the world%u2019s most sustained protest against empires, because imperialism is the attempt to impose a single truth, culture or faith on a plural world. G-d, said the Rabbis, makes everyone in His image, yet He makes everyone different to teach us to respect difference. And since difference is constitutive of humanity, a world that has no space for difference has no space for humanity. That is why a resurgence of antisemitism has always been an early warning of an assault on freedom itself. It is so today. We must find allies in the fight against hate. For though it begins with Jews, ultimately it threatens us all.%uf06cThis excerpt from Future Tense was published in The Jewish Chronicle on November 1, 2007.The Rabbi Sacks Legacyperpetuates the timeless and universal wisdom of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as a teacher of Torah, a leader of leaders and a moral voice. Explore the digital archive, containing much of Rabbi Sacks%u2019 writings, broadcasts and speeches, at www.rabbisacks.org, and follow The Rabbi Sacks Legacy on social media @RabbiSacks. | 41