What if Antisemitism became our greatest Asset?

Rabbi Ramon Widmonte
Jul 2
6 min read

Updated: Aug 14

Why was Iran so unprepared for a direct confrontation with Israel?

In a recent article for the Jerusalem Post https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-857912, journalist and analyst Seth Frantzman posed a crucial and timely question: Why was Tehran so poorly prepared for a confrontation with Israel? In the wake of decades of escalating hostilities, including cyber-attacks, espionage, assassinations, Iranian drone attacks, retaliatory strikes, and sabotage operations, Frantzman surveyed Iran’s strategic vulnerability and asked why a country that had so long postured as a military threat to Israel appeared so caught off guard. But there are virtually no foundational answers on offer – there is conjecture that perhaps they were too arrogant, they thought their ballistic arsenal would act as a deterrent, they misunderstood the modern battlefield. These are hard to accept for an adversary which has been preparing for this day for almost half a century – this was no surprise to the Iranians.

There is, however, a more uncomfortable possible response here — one rooted not in tactics or logistics but in ideology and world-outlook: Antisemitism.

This is counter-intuitive, after all, Antisemitism is supposed to work against Jews, not help them. Yet history shows that deeply held Antisemitic beliefs have, at certain key points, worked in our favor.

Lessons from the Balfour Declaration: How Antisemitism can become an asset

To understand this phenomenon, we must go back to 1917. In The Balfour Declaration, historian Jonathan Schneer examines why Britain chose to endorse the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. On the face of it, this decision flew in the face of any simple realpolitik – the British had already cut a deal with the Arabs (the Sharif of Mecca) who had actually assembled a small army for them (recall Lawrence of Arabia) which had engaged in combat; why would they possibly endanger this alliance? Schneer’s startling conclusion: Antisemitism may have helped the Jews.

British leaders like Mark Sykes believed in the myth of international Jewish manipulative influence. They imagined that Jews secretly controlled both American finance and Russian Bolshevism — and that offering them Palestine would win Jewish influence for the Allied cause in World War I. They also believed that Jews were all overt or covert Zionists and presented as a monolithic bloc. Sykes and his cohorts weren’t rewarding the Jews out of sympathy; they were trying to manipulate a global conspiracy they wrongly assumed existed and controlled much of the root causes of world affairs.

This grotesque logic had real geopolitical consequences: it helped birth the modern Zionist movement.

Now, more than a century later, a similar “error” might have worked its magic.

The “Collusion Myth” in the Arab world and the Denial of Jewish Capability

Since 1948, there is a significant, related, documented, Antisemitic myth which Arab leaders and the Arab street has circulated: that Jews could never have achieved all they have in Israel; others – nations or volunteers – are the real reason for Israel’s success and actually did the real work and any fighting necessary.

Like all lies, this one also bears a smattering of truth: much of Israel’s army (and definitely its air force) was built by Machal volunteers from outside Israel in 1948 and many nations have overtly and covertly assisted Israel both before and after its founding. But this conspiracy theory is birthed on the knees of a foundational view of Jews: that we are physically weak and cowardly – but also smart and manipulative, so that therefore the only way we succeed is by inducing others to bleed for us.

After the 1967 Six-Day War, in the light of Israel’s lightning victory, Arab regimes quickly advanced this “Collusion Myth” — the claim that Israel could only have triumphed with direct U.S. and British military assistance – the US 6^th fleet and British bombers supposedly played a critical role. Professor Elie Podeh, in an article in the Middle East Quarterly https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/the-lie-that-wont-die-collusion-1967 cites a 1999 Egyptian school textbook’s explanation of the 1967 Israeli victory: “Israel was not [fighting] on its own in the [1967] war. Hundreds of volunteers, pilots, and military officers with American scientific spying equipment of the most advanced type photographed the Egyptian posts for it [Israel], jammed the Egyptian defense equipment, and transmitted to it the orders of the Egyptian command.” This line was taken by Egyptian media from the very first day of the war and Michael Oren, in his Six Days of War, posits that the goal was to draw in the USSR’s assistance on the side of the Arabs, to counter the ostensible active participation of the West. Nevertheless, regardless of the original aims, the myth stuck, because it fit an underlying Antisemitic framework.

The same themes appeared beforehand in 1948 and later in 1973. In every case, Antisemitic tropes provided an explanatory shortcut: Israel didn’t win because it was prepared, brave, innovative, desperate, courageous or skilled. It won because it manipulated the West into fighting its battles. On one level, this may have been a face-saving narrative for Arab leaders on the losing side, but on another level, perhaps, many believed, deep down, in the myth of Jewish manipulative influence — but not in the reality of Jewish strength, courage and power.

If this is true, it raises a bitter irony. The same Antisemitic worldview that seeks to destroy the Jewish state may, in critical moments, aid it. Just as British leaders once believed that Jews secretly controlled America and Russia, and thus offered them Palestine as a diplomatic sop, so too Iran’s leaders may well believe that Jews are only powerful through subterfuge – not courage, strategy, or resilience. In this belief, they misread Israeli capabilities, overestimated American constraints, and fatally underestimated the Jewish people.

Iran’s Strategic Blind Spot and Trump

What do the leaders of the Islamic Republic believe? Listen carefully to their rhetoric over the past decades: the obsession with “Zionist control” of the world, their Holocaust-denying fantasies, their insistence that Israel never acts alone — all these echo similar Antisemitic tropes that misled the British and was then purveyed after 1948, only now deeply underpinning their own strategies.

What if Iran’s failure to prepare adequately wasn't due to ignorance or arrogance, but to ideology – an ideology based so thoroughly on Antisemitic myths that it warps the very perception of reality? What if, in the deepest corridors of its strategic thought, the Iranian regime truly believes that Jews can only win wars by manipulation, not by direct action? That Israel’s strength lies not in its soldiers or its technology, but in its supposed ability to pull strings in Washington and elsewhere so that others (read the US) do the dirty work?

In this worldview, Jews are never strong on their own – they are cunning, manipulative, and operate through proxies only. Perhaps not so ironically, this is exactly the global strategy which Iran adopted for itself – the creation of a host of third-party proxies (the Houthis, Hezbollah and others) spread throughout the region (and the globe) who act on Iran’s behalf, whilst retaining plausible deniability. The only difference is in their belief that the Iranians can also take action; whilst Jews can’t.

This theory explains much of what mystified us all and which Seth Frantzman raised in his article.

Consider the Iranian miscalculation under the Trump administration. President Trump was perhaps the least likely figure to launch new wars or to support one. He has repeatedly emphasized restraint, withdrawn from conflicts, and even publicly humiliated ostensible allies like Zelensky, blaming them for being warmongers. Based on the views above, Iran may have assumed that Israel would only act by finding a US leader malleable enough to go to war on her behalf. With Trump unlikely to do so (and the MAGA brand virtually built on American-centric eschewing of such forever wars), there seemed to be little cause for real concern. If Jews, as per the myth, do not fight their own battles, then the threat was neither imminent nor existential.

That’s not a strategic oversight. That’s ideology blinding strategy.

Reading the wrong newspaper

There’s an old Jewish joke about a Jew in 1930s Berlin who is seen reading Der Stürmer, the vile antisemitic Nazi tabloid. His friend is horrified and confronts him, “Why are you reading that trash?”

The man replies, “In the Jewish papers, I read about Jewish victims of pogroms and discrimination. In Der Stürmer, I learn we control the banks, the media, and the world. Honestly, it cheers me up.”

Perhaps we, too, need to read our enemies’ papers — not for encouragement, but to understand how their delusions may shape their approach. Frantzman asked why Iran wasn’t ready. Part of the deeper answer may be this: Iran wasn’t prepared because its leaders believed their own Antisemitic lies of Jewish conspiratorial cunning; but not Jewish heroism and strength. As David, persecuted and hunted, said (Shmuel I 24:14), “From the wicked comes forth wickedness…” – the self-same wickedness which is his own undoing. And in this ironic twist, Antisemitism may have become Israel’s unexpected asset.