I had dinner the other night at one of my favorite restaurants in Florence, Italy. Our dinner party of nine people (all Italian except me), bemoaned the current status of world affairs, from the conflict in the Middle East to the rise of nativism and prejudice around the world, including the political emasculation of the United States, the rise and empowerment of non-Democratic regimes, starvation in parts of the Middle East and Africa, and the general agita all of us felt.
As a Jew who is particularly devastated by the current killings in Gaza and the West Bank, and the horror inflicted by Hamas on October 7, the subject of possible, but mostly impossible, current solutions was discussed and the proposals were mostly discarded because of the current mutual hatred on both sides. All of us wanted the killing to stop, especially since the military operation now undertaken by Netanyahu’s government will do nothing to bring about a peaceful settlement and security to both Israel and the Palestinians.
My dinner companions were a sophisticated bunch, art dealers, curators, professors, and successful business men and women. Like most Florentines, they were on the left to middle of the political spectrum, but not dogmatic or not open to different ideas. Some actually expressed admiration for Melonie, the current prime minister who comes from a neo-fascist background but has been constrained to govern from the middle.
While discussing the Middle East, there were comments made about how powerful Jews were in world affairs, particularly in promulgating U.S. foreign policy. This political and economic antisemitism always startles me, especially from friends whom I know well, and whom I also know have no prejudices towards any religion or ethnic group.
Over my many years of visiting, living, and working in Italy, I have been astonished that many of my Italian and other European friends and associates believe that Jews as a bloc are powerful movers and shakers in world affairs, operating openly and behind the scenes as puppet-masters manipulating governments, markets, and currencies for their benefit. Coupled with this conspiratorial nonsense is the incredible lack of knowledge of the actual size of the Jewish population in the world. All of the people at dinner last night believed there were at least 500,000 to 2 million Jews in Italy, and there were at least 40 million or more Jews in the United States.
When you explain that Jews have a right, like anyone else in the United States, to involve themselves in politics, and that there is certainly a Jewish lobby in the country which supports Israel, that does not indicate support for the current Netanyahu government and its operations in Gaza and denial of a two-state solution which would establish a Palestinian state. In fact, on December 14, 2023, 27 of the major U.S. Jewish organizations wrote to President Biden supporting such a two-state solution. Some signatories included AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest Political Action Committee for Israel in the U.S.), the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Jewish Federation of North America, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Since many seem blind to the fact that Jews do not surreptitiously control the world, a brief geo-political, demographic lesson, particularly for my Italian friends, may be in order. There are approximately 27,000 self-identified Jews in Italy, this in a population of 59,000,000. There are 15.7 million self-identified Jews in the world, approximately 0.2 percent of the world’s population of 8 billion people. Most of the Jewish population live in Israel (7.2 million) and the United States (6.3 million). If we control the world, we must get up very early to work on it before we go to our regular day jobs.
According to a large Anti Defamation League study in 2009, 31 percent of Europeans blamed Jews for the 2008 economic crises. This economic antisemitism is certainly based (at least partially) on the misapprehension of the amount of Jews in Europe and the world and on the 2,000 years of antisemitism which has been promulgated by other religions and political entities for their own purposes. The 1903 publication of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a fabricated, antisemitic screed about the supposed Jewish plot for world domination is still a best seller in the Muslin world, even after it was completely debunked after Henry Ford tried to convince Americans of its authenticity in the early 1920s. The “Blood Libel” is still believed by many, and the sales of “Mein Kampf” continue even after it was removed from Amazon in 2020 after its republication in 2017.
Today, with the advent of electronic communication and the proliferation of political and racial propaganda, it is even harder to make sure your news sources are real. AI-generated false images, “facts,” and hate-filled false news create new dangers of stigmatization never dreamed of by Hitler and Himmler. The world is going through a rough patch; we all have an obligation to ferret out truth from fiction so we can form real opinions based on reality rather than myth, superstition, and bigotry.
