No one is antisemitic if you ask them. Not at all!

Certainly not John Galliano, even though you can hear him admiring Hitler in this video. Not Charlie Sheen and not Mel Gibson. These guys were just drunk or stoned and plus, some of their best friends are Jews.

Here is my feeling: Anyone who separates people into Jews and Everyone Else is antisemitic. It is frustrating to argue this point. I tried in another post, when a film reviewer praised an actress for not “trying to mask her Jewishness.” Everyone claimed to be bewildered by the premise that this is clearly antisemitic.

If you tell me about your Jewish friends, you are antisemitic, to my ears. The fact that you distinguish some people as Jews – unless they are orthodox Jews whose lifestyle is defined by religion – then you have a problem.

Me, I’m an atheist but I’m a Jew because my parents and their parents were Jews. The world will always define me as different because the world is nuts. Why the world is nuts about Jews, I don’t know. I’ve been reading about it but I’m not a historian. I don’t need to be a historian to know that most of the world hates Jews.

That’s their problem, though, I’m not going to boycott Galliano because he’s antisemitic. I love his designs and I don’t care about his personal problems. Hating Jews is like hating blacks but more insidious: It’s just ignorance and the need to feel superior. It’s stupid, but evidently we can’t cure stupidity.

Last night I watched a great movie called “The Believer” which caused such an uproar when it was previewed to Jewish leaders that it was released under the radar and disappeared quickly. It’s the true story of a self-hating Jewish student in New York who becomes a neo-Nazi.

Ryan Gosling is the anti-hero. His speech to a group of would-be fascists is so maniacal that it has stayed with me over the years. Each time I see the movie and hear the speech, I laugh out loud at its audacity and absurdity – and because its true. Here it is, copied from the script:

               DANNY
          How many of you think of yourselves
          as anti-Semites?
              (All the hands go up.)
          Good. Actually, the term is a bit
          imprecise since technically Jews are
          only one of the Semitic peoples....
          In fact, Arabs are Semites, as are
          the Eritreans, the Ethiopians, and so
          on.... But for our purposes an anti-
          Semite is someone who hates or is
          against Jews.... Now, why do we hate
          them?

He looks around. The room is silent.

                    DANNY
          Let me put it another way. Do we hate
          them because they push their way in
          where they don't belong? Or because
          they're clannish and keep to themselves?

Murmurs of "Yeah. Both." But some are confused by this.

                    DANNY
          ...Because they're tight with money,
          or because they flash it around?
          Because they're Bolsheviks or because
          they're capitalists? Because they
          have the highest IQs, or because they
          have the most active sex lives?

The audience, confused...

                    DANNY
          Do you want to know the real reason
          we hate them?...

                    DANNY
          ...Because we hate them.
              (as people exchange
               puzzled looks)
          Because they exist. Because it is an
          axiom of civilization that just as
          man longs for woman, loves his
          children and fears death, he hates
          the Jews.
              (smiles)
          There is no reason. If there were,
          some smart-ass kike would give us an
          argument, try to prove we were wrong.
          And of course that would only make us
          hate them more. In fact we have all
          the reasons we need in three simple
          letters: J-E-W. Jew. Say it a million
          times. It is the only word that never
          loses its meaning: Jew Jew Jew Jew
          Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew....