A Letter to Anti-Semites

By Walter E. Block (February 2025)

First, what is an Anti-Semite? Is it the same as disapproving of some of the actions of the Israeli government? No. I condemn of some policies of this nation (it is far too socialist; it is overly concerned with the welfare of enemy civilians; too willing to shed IDF blood to protect them; it does not defend itself against its enemies forcefully enough) and I’m certainly no Anti-Semite.

No, an Anti-Semite is a person who believes that Hitler made a good start, but did not go far enough; that of all present nations, Israel alone, does not deserve to continue in existence; that Jews are vermin, and should be treated as such. No Jewish state should be allowed to continue in operation.

Why do Anti-Semites believe in these perspectives? There are the usual reasons: we killed Christ (no, it was the Romans, but there is no Anti-Romanist counterpart to Anti-Semitism, for some strange reason). We run Hollywood, the banks, the universities, the media (roughly true, but that is only because we took the initiative to make important contributions to all such institutions). We are known as money-lenders (what is wrong with money-lending per se; someone has to do this; in any case, for centuries, we were precluded from virtually all other industries; what do you expect? Us to do absolutely nothing?)

But I would like to mention, in addition, a reason a bit of the beaten path:

We are like the smartest kid in the class, other kids hate him, he is a 90 pound weakling, wears thick glasses, sports pens in his pocket protector. It is just plain good old fun to beat him up, tease him, humiliate him. Until 1948 this was roughly the international role we played. But apart from the most powerful nation in the Middle East and elsewhere too, we are still 90 pound weaklings; just ask Jewish students at Columbia, Harvard, Stanford and many other prestigious universities. They are too busy cowering to take any other point of view.

You Anti-Semites are making a mistake, a big one. And this for two reasons. First of all, you ungrateful snots, consider what we have done for you, and are thus likely to do for you in the future. Thanks to us, polio is a thing of the past, at least in most of the world (tragically, it is making a comeback in Gaza, but that is the fault of Hamas, not of us Yidden). Economics is important; the two best dismal scientists were among the Chosen People: Murray N. Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises. Then there is aspirin, Novocaine, Albert Einstein may fairly be described as one of the fathers of physics, without which there would be no nuclear power today. Then there are these accomplishments: wrestling Haemophilus influenza to the ground; stopping blindness in infants due to oxygen therapy; genetic engineering; halting Cholera and supplying bubonic vaccination; Google, video games; stainless steel; heart defibrillators and pacemakers; drip irrigation; even the ballpoint pen. These are only the tip of a very large iceberg.

Jews, representing far less than 1% of the world’s population, have won 22% of Nobel Prizes, many in the hard sciences, economics, medicine, etc.

Here’s a far out reason for reconsidering your position: You’ll need us if and when the aliens attack. Jewish technology might well be the only thing standing in their way. Do you want your children to have to learn to speak Martian, and/or serve as meals for these interlopers?

That is the carrot part of the equation? What is the stick? The stick is that some of us, many of us, are getting entirely sick and tired of how you treat us. To paraphrase a plaintive cry from the movie, Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Whenever an advanced civilization comes into conflict with a relatively backward one, things do not go all that well for the latter. It took only a handful of conquistadors to settle the hash of thousands of natives in the New World. In similar manner, Argentina was no match for the British over the Falkland Islands, nor were Gandhi and the Indians able to withstand their armed might a century before that.

According to some calculations, the IDF is the fourth most powerful army on the face of the earth. But when it comes to high tech, inventiveness, ability to take the next step in terms of military technology, one may reasonably claim that Israel has no peer. So, be careful, Anti-Semites; look over your shoulders; be afraid; be very afraid. Some say that “Black power is gonna get your mama.” A more realistic assessment is that Jew power will settle your hash if you continue in your Anti-Semitic ways. Exploding pagers, walkie-talkies, and other such electronic devices, atomic and hydrogen bombs, are only a small part of the list of such accomplishments. Is any other nation sufficiently technologically advanced so as to accomplish this task?

At present, there are first, second and third world countries. The first consists of the US, Canada, most of the European nations, and former British Colonies such as Australia and New Zealand. The second, Russia, China and other former and present communist states. The third are the underdeveloped political entities in the rest of the world. On the basis of inventions, innovations, technology, contributions to world well-being, I would like to propose an alternative scenario. Israel would be the only First World country (if the US joined in this category, it would be due to its large Jewish population), and everyone else moves down a notch. This, I think, would be a more accurate depiction of reality.

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Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics, College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. He earned his PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1972. He has taught at Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, Baruch CUNY, Holy Cross and the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of more than 600 refereed articles in professional journals, three dozen books, and thousands of op eds (including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and numerous others). He lectures widely on college campuses, delivers seminars around the world and appears regularly on television and radio shows. He is the Schlarbaum Laureate, Mises Institute, 2011; and has won the Loyola University Research Award (2005, 2008) and the Mises Institute’s Rothbard Medal of Freedom, 2005; and the Dux Academicus award, Loyola University, 2007. Prof. Block counts among his friends Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. He was converted to libertarianism by Ayn Rand. Block is old enough to have played chess with Friedrich Hayek and once met Ludwig von Mises, and shook his hand. Block has never washed that hand since. So, if you shake his hand (it’s pretty dirty, but what the heck) you channel Mises.

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