How Antisemitism morphed into anti-Zionism

(From a Twitter thread yesterday)

A quick lesson on psychology, anti-Zionism and antisemitism:

It has been known for quite a long time that people tend to make decisions based on emotion and only afterwards back up their decisions with what passes for logic. 

Studies have consistently shown that people will trust facts that confirm their biases and reject those that prove them wrong.

Antisemitism has been around forever, but since the Holocaust it has been socially unacceptable to be publicly antisemitic. But the Holocaust didn't change people's natures; it just made it shameful to be on the same side as Hitler.

Israel became a convenient target for antisemitism. And an entire industry has sprouted up to justify this hate of Israel as somehow being supported by facts - after the fact.

By any measure, the amount of time and effort made by people to demonize Israel is far, far out of proportion to any real or imagined human rights crimes it is guilty of. Israel is shown to fall short of moral standards that no other nation is expected to reach. 

But because so many people still have antisemitic attitudes, and need to justify their hate, Israel is the target they choose. The "facts" are justifications for their hate, not the reasons for it.

The hate we see, the double standards, the creation of "international law" that is only applied to Israel, it is all an ex post facto justification for the Jew-hatred in people's hearts.

Antisemitism never went away. It just morphed, as it always has, to make Jews the collective target for everything people hate. A country full of Jews is an irresistible proxy for the Jewish collective that has been the world's scapegoat for centuries. 

---

---