Why Jews Can Never Be Victims
The Anti-Semitic Zeitgeist Explored
Antisemitism has become an integral feature of the contemporary western zeitgeist. Blaming Jews for the ills of human existence, making jokes at their expenses and justifying violence directed on them on the ground that after Gaza they had coming has become a regular occurrence.
The casual almost taken-for-granted pathologisation of Jewishness was recently. clearly illustrated in The Crown Pub in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire on 4 May 2026. Just a few days after two Jewish men were stabbed in London in Golders Green, a team calling itself ‘Golders Green should be Golders Greed’ entered and won the quiz at the Crown[i].
No doubt members of the anti-Jewish quiz team thought that exposing the innate greedy character of the people who inhabit Golders Green was worth a laugh at their expense. And it likely that the team members like most casual antisemites took the view that the violence directed at Jews in Golders Green was justified on the ground of what Israel did in Gaza.
What is particularly chilling about the event that occurred during the pub quiz at the Crown is that neither the staff nor those in attendance raised any objection to the presence of an antisemitic team. We don’t know what went on in their head. Maybe some of them though that the renaming of Golders Green was worth a laugh. Probably most of the regulars were not much bothered about it because they thought that there was nothing objectionable about making fun of Jews. No doubt there were some who were bothered by the team’s exercise of Jew hatred but were too embarrassed to raise their voice.
We now know that the whole event would have gone unnoticed if one of those in attendance had not mentioned the incident to a family member. Thankfully this family member rose to the occasion and complained about what happened during the quiz.[ii] This individual stated that he/she was ‘ashamed to call The Crown my local’ after the staff failed to object to the name of the winning quiz team
This person indicated that what occurred was ‘both insensitive and racist towards innocent British Jews’ and added that ‘for your information – I am not Jewish, and I have no connections. But I am a decent person’.
After being outed the pub’s manager apologized, stating it was ‘reviewing the incident with the quiz team and staff to ensure greater care is taken over team names and language used during future events’. Typically, these after-the-event apologies deflect attention from the crude display of antisemitism. Its reassurance that ‘greater care’ will be taken over monitoring team names and language used avoids acknowledging that what was at stake in this incident was not the absence of polite language but the racist mocking of an entire people.
That no one objected to the behaviour of the quiz team indicates that the explicit mocking of Jewish people has become acceptable not just to the regulars at The Crown but to a significant section of British society.
In a roundabout way the reference to Golders Greed highlights the return of traditional antisemitic tropes in respectable society. Until recently antisemitism masqueraded as anti-Zionism. Gaza served to displace responsibility for violent attacks on Jews on the streets of the western world. Some still hide behind Gaza to explain away – and implicitly justify – instances of explicit anti-Jewish violence on the streets of Britain. However, increasingly growing number of antisemitic activists no longer pretend that their hatred for Jews has anything to do with the Middle East.
Take the example of Sesame Street post on X honouring American Jews provoked an intense wave of anti-Jewish hate[iii]. The social media post marking Jewish American Heritage Month unleashed hateful comments accusing this children’s show of promoting ‘Jewish supremacy’ and ‘propaganda’. ‘No one wants any more of this Jewish supremacy nonsense’, wrote the antisemitic influencer Dan Bilzerian in response to the post. Another antisemite posted ‘Great, a whole month just for Jews…like we don’t hear about their victimhood every day of every month’.
Antisemitic outbursts about being fed up with hearing ‘about their victimhood every day of every month’ are important because they express the objective of undermining or negating the moral significance of the Holocaust. Detaching the real Holocaust from historical memory is a central feature of the antisemitic zeitgeist because for over a half a century it made it difficult to be explicitly and publicly anti-Jewish. Erasing the memory of the victimization of Jews in the Nazi deathcamps is essential for depriving contemporary Jewish people of any claim to victimhood.
One of the ways that the victimization of Jewish people is being erased by antisemitic propagandists is by turning the Holocaust against its historical victims. After Hamas’s pogrom on 7 October 2023, ‘pro-Palestine’ protesters quickly characterised Israel’s self-defence as Nazi-like aggression. On their marches, they waved placards featuring a Star of David inside a swastika. They compared Israel’s siege of Gaza to Nazi concentration camps. They cast Israeli soldiers fighting to defend their nation as Nazi stormtroopers. In the most grotesque inversion of all, they cast the Hamas terrorists responsible for the atrocities of 7 October in the role of the Holocaust’s Jewish victims.
The project of framing Hamas terrorist as the victims of Nazified Zionist stormtroopers has influenced a significant section of Western society Consequently for many people influenced by anti-Zionist propaganda the Hamas perpetrated atrocities did not happen. From this perspective what ever happened on 7 October the Jews had it coming.
The most distinct and important accomplishment of contemporary antisemitism is to gain a degree of public acceptance for the claim that a Jew can never be a victim. Whether this claim is justified on the ground that ‘you had it coming because of Gaza’ or because ‘you are the illegitimate beneficiary of Golders Greed’ does not matter. Depriving Jewish suffering of any moral significance is central to the narrative promoted through the current antisemitic zeitgeist.
Once Jews acquire the status of the anti-victim it is only a small step to becoming the eternal victimizer of the classical antisemitic imagination. Fighting back against this designation and challenging the perpetrators of antisemitic propaganda is one of the most important challenge for our time.
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[i] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/11/pub-apologises-quiz-teams-anti-semitic-golders-green-jibe/
[ii] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/11/pub-apologises-quiz-teams-anti-semitic-golders-green-jibe/
[iii] https://www.timesofisrael.com/sesame-street-post-honoring-us-jews-draws intense-wave-of-antisemitic-hate-comments/
I suspect jew hating has always been there in British and European people, but the presence of so many Muslims has brought it to he surface and the fact that Israel is a successful country.