Antisemitism, paradoxical accusations and the human heart

For many Jewish people in Britain today, antisemitism no longer feels like a shadow from history.

Since 7 October 2023, many Jewish communities have spoken of increased fear, hostility, and insecurity. Synagogues have strengthened security. Jewish students have described feeling more vulnerable on university campuses. Ordinary Jewish families are not quietly asking, “Why are we hated?” but, with weary resignation, saying, “We are hated.”

Antisemitism and history

Antisemitism is often described as “the oldest hatred”, and history gives some reason for that description.

It has appeared under empires, monarchies, religious societies, secular societies, and modern political movements.

It has survived changes in geography, culture, and ideology.

What makes antisemitism especially difficult to explain is that its accusations rarely remain consistent.

Jewish people have been blamed for being poor and for being wealthy. For assimilating and for refusing to assimilate. For being too religious and for being too secular. At different points in history, Jews have been accused of being weak and accused of controlling the world.

How can opposite accusations coexist?

Perhaps because antisemitism does not ultimately reveal something unique about Jewish people, but something deeply human about us.

What does the Bible say?

Scripture consistently points beyond external differences and into the human heart. Jealousy. Fear. Pride. Suspicion.

The desire to find someone to blame.

The temptation to divide the world into “us” and “them”.

Historically, Jewish communities have remained visibly distinct in many places through language, customs, worship, and covenant identity. Scripture itself presents Israel as a people set apart for God’s purposes – entrusted with His promises and through whom blessing would come to the nations.

But distinctiveness does not create hatred. Difference may become visible, but hatred grows elsewhere.

Again and again throughout history, societies experiencing uncertainty, humiliation, change, or fear have searched for someone to carry blame. Jewish people have often become that target.

This should make Christians pause – because antisemitism is not merely a Jewish problem. It exposes something universal. The tendency to fear what we do not understand. To reduce people into categories. To justify ourselves by condemning others.

Of course, disputes over land, politics, identity, and history bring real suffering in many places across the world, including the Middle East. These matters should not be dismissed lightly. But hostility toward Jewish people cannot be explained simply through politics or current events.

Scripture leads us deeper.

Jesus taught that what defiles a person comes from within – from the heart. Human division is not ultimately solved by borders, ideology, ethnicity, or power. The deeper problem is sin.

And if the problem reaches into every human heart, then every one of us must ask difficult questions:

• Where do I nurture resentment?
• Who do I instinctively blame?
• Whose suffering do I minimise?
• Who have I quietly stopped seeing as fully human?

The gospel does not call us to tribal loyalty or selective compassion. It calls us to repentance, truth, humility, and sacrificial love.

Christians should reject antisemitism not simply because it is irrational or unjust, but because it contradicts the God who made every person in His image and the Messiah who gave Himself for enemies.

There remains no nation, ethnicity, or political movement that can finally heal the human heart.

But there is hope. The answer to hatred is found in the one Jewish man who entered our world, bore our hostility, and reconciles sinners to God and to one another. What began in Israel 2,000 years ago remains good news for every nation.

And perhaps moments like these should move us not only to speak against hatred, but to seek the redemption that all of us need while it may still be found.