Rich Lowry asks the obvious question and gives some answers.
I like Thomas Sowell’s answer to the question: “what can Jews do to be more popular.”. His one-word answer: “Fail”. Which is to say, why people are “obsessed”, why they hate on Jews, is… Envy. The Green Monster.
It is true that everywhere over all time Jews have been disproportionately successful.
The small number of Jews in the world? 12 - 15 million. Reason: big part is Judaism is alone amongst the three Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — in being NOT proselytising. They make it super hard for non Jews to convert to Judaism.
I know. I’ve tried it. Me, a Major Philosemite, an Atheist Zionist, tried twice to convert to Judaism. Both times I failed at the first hurdle. Which is that you must profess a belief in God. That I can’t do. And the Rabbis quizzing me; they care about it. By contrast if you want to become a Muslim you just have to repeat the Shahada, two sentences, and bingo! you’re a Muslim. They don’t care if you do or don’t believe in Allah. But if you try to leave?.... Whoops. Apostates are not treated well.
Net result: Global Judaism: ~15 million. Christianity and Islam: ~ 4 BILLION. For every Jew in the world there are ~350 Christians and Muslims.
Ollie Anisfeld talks to historian Trudy Gold about related issues. Very interesting talk. Jew-hatred is mainly in Christian and Islamic countries. Not so much, or not at all in the East. It’s just not a thing in secular China. In multi-religious, non-Abrahamic India. Or Buddhist Korea. Or Shinto Japan.
