THE TWO GREATEST HATREDS: This interview appears in Covenant, a new quarterly journal edited and published by Professor Barry Rubin, and Judith Roumani. It is available free via email and online.

The Two Greatest Hatreds
By Barry Rubin

As the twentieth century began, Theodor Herzl recorded an amazing fact. Despite advances in technology, transportation, and communication, one thing remained as it was when the Turks conquered Byzantium, Columbus set sail, and oxcarts were the main means of travel.

That one thing was antisemitism. Indeed, Herzl mournfully pointed out, "After a short breathing space...bad times have come again...not only in the backward countries...but also in those that are called civilized."

Now, here we are at the onset of the twenty-first century and the cycle is being repeated.

But there is another phenomenon of which the same can be said. It is not so old as antisemitism, but it does date back to the time when men wore powdered wigs, people wrote with quill pens, and no railroad existed. That is anti-Americanism.

Today, the two most widely hated peoples in the world today are the Americans and the Jews or, in national terms, the United States and Israel. Moreover, these two unreasoning hatreds are closely linked. Apologists for this fact, or well-meaning souls who know no better, attribute this tragic situation to the narrowest and most immediate historical context, as if it is the result of the nasty personalities or latest deeds of President George W. Bush or former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, or to bad--or at least controversial--policies.

Yet there are far wider and deeper reasons for the flourishing of this sole permissible prejudice in an era which boasts of its record-high tolerance in human history, factors that make it far harder to combat or change the situation. Attributing hatred exclusively either to policy--what the United States and Israel does--or values--a dislike for what these countries stand for--misses the point. It is not merely a matter of better behavior or more effective public relations' techniques. Those who misunderstand and hate will not be so easily persuaded that they are wrong.

While some reasons for hatred are as fresh as the latest newspaper headlines, many of the themes bringing together contemporary antisemitism and anti-Americanism are a century or two old. To understand this better, let's look at five factors: claims that America and the Jews represent the same thing, that Jews control America, the manipulation of hatred for political advantage, the systematic misrepresentation of policy, and the structural problems of the United States and Israel as democracies facing enemies who are dictatorships.

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