When I wrote my book, Jews Don’t Count, there were certain points I wasn’t sure about including, as they seemed obvious to me. Perhaps the No 1 on this list was the idea that anti-Semitism is racism. Key to understanding this — but again, in my mind, obvious — is that anti-Semitism is not, in the modern age, religious intolerance. This is clear because, as I’ve said many times, I’m an atheist, but the Gestapo would shoot me tomorrow.
My great-uncle Arno who died either in the Warsaw Ghetto or Treblinka — not all murdered Jews had their murders logged — was not an observant Jew. And the white supremacists at Charlottesville in 2017 holding flaming torches chanting “the Jews will not replace us” would not, I think, stop to ask a Jew whether he or she kept kosher before choosing to set light to their house. For the Nazis, for all anti-Semites, Jewishness is marked in the blood, not in faith.
