A Point of View: Financial crisis brings out the anti-semites

It never fails. Whenever there is a financial crisis or trading scandal in the stock markets, the anti-Semites come out of the woodwork.  The classic stereotype of the Jewish Shylock out to have his Christian pound of flesh dies very hard, if at all.  The Jew as economic opportunist sucking the financial life-blood out of a nation or of the whole world is continually reborn.

So the crude anti-Semitic postings at extremist or financial websites and comment boards, and at Internet blogs available for viewing over the past couple of weeks, should not come as a total surprise. Still, I have to admit being dismayed to see these lasting age-old canards about Jews and money finding fresh outlet. Some examples of the language being used, with no correction for spelling or punctuation:

• What is a GS Jew? Goldman Sachs? Jews are greedy, rotten slime balls.
• ...the same Jewish bankers have been robbing us in this same manner for nearly an entire century now.
• They [Jews] love money nothing else, no faith or religion can be so heartless to their victims.
• jews helping jews when do we Amaricans stand up?

The good news is that service providers are increasingly responsive to these hate messages, as are the moderators of message boards, and in most cases the offensive messages have been quickly removed. But the scope of the problem does not remain either local or national, as we've witnessed with the recent statement by a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhum, who blamed what he called a "Jewish lobby" for the global financial crisis and which "controls the US elections and defines the foreign policy of any new administration in a manner that allows it to retain control of the American government and economy."

We have to remind ourselves to see this phenomenon for what it is. There is an absolute through-line of caricature and bias that runs from the image of the Medieval Jewish money-lender to Shakespeare's Shylock to the picture of the international Jewish banker pulling the levers of worldwide political power. And like all stereotypes, people predisposed to believe in them seek out only the examples that support their bias, completely disregarding counter-examples. The nefarious banker is always a Rothschild, never a JP Morgan or a Rockefeller. So when a long-established and well-respected Wall Street firm like Lehman Bros. fails and the financial markets quake, the anti-Semite pounces and latent anti-Semitism awakens: Aha! A Jewish firm! It's always the Jews! 

Never mind that Wall Street was once the fortress of Anglo-Saxon Protestant America that has over recent decades accepted into its ranks a widely diverse population of financial go-getters at all levels, including American Jews, African-Americans, Irish and Italian Americans, Latino-Americans and, in vastly increased numbers, women.

We know from modern history that whenever there is a downturn in the global economy, there will be an increase in expressions of anti-Semitism and bigotry. That's what we are seeing now. It seems practically impossible to disabuse a certain percentage of non-Jews of their entrenched ideas that associate Jews - and Jews only -- with financial savvy and success, so-called sharp dealing, and financial conspiracies from which Jews - and Jews only - emerge victorious. To have to point out that many a corporate titan or Wall Street gambler who profited handily during the recent bubble was not Jewish is to find oneself both stating the obvious and engaging in a childish exercise. Nor does it seem to impress the committed anti-Semite who perhaps learns in childhood, at ground level, the truly odious use of the word Jew as a verb, as in "The shopkeeper 'jewed' me down."
 
That many American Jews also now fear for their pension funds or the possibility of foreclosure on their homes escapes the anti-Semitic imagination. That Jewish social services agencies that feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted, or aid the sick will also feel the tightening of credit or the limits of largesse in an economic downturn is, again, something unimagined by those who simply assume that all Jews walk away from economic panics with golden parachutes or are forever cushioned from the financial stresses of everyday life.

It is my job, ADL's job, and unfortunately the job of Jews worldwide, to remind our fellow citizens that when the markets quake, the ground shakes underneath us as well.