Science Quote by Jack Schwartz

Schwartz’s line is a cold splash of realism aimed at a comforting illusion: that anti-Semitism is merely a reaction to Israel, and therefore solvable by removing Israel. The phrasing is deliberately clinical - “disappearance” repeated like a controlled variable - which fits a scientist’s temperament and doubles as a rhetorical trap. If you accept the premise that Israel could vanish, he says, you still don’t get the moral relief you’re buying. The hate doesn’t evaporate; it relocates.

The intent reads as both warning and accusation. Warning, because it rejects the lazy causal story that folds a millennia-old prejudice into a post-1948 political dispute. Accusation, because it implicitly challenges certain “anti-Zionist” arguments that treat Israel as the explanatory center of Jewish vulnerability. By separating the Jewish state from anti-Semitism, Schwartz insists the animating force is older, more elastic, and more opportunistic than any single government’s policies.

The subtext is about scapegoats and the way modern politics launders old animus through new vocabulary. People who want a single, tidy fix - dismantle the state, end the conflict, cleanse the public square - are being told their analysis is too convenient. Anti-Semitism has historically survived regime changes, border redraws, and ideological makeovers because it functions less as a critique of power than as a conspiracy framework: a ready-made story for explaining anxiety, decline, and resentment.

Contextually, the quote sits in the long argument over whether Israel causes anti-Semitism or merely concentrates attention on it. Schwartz’s wager is blunt: remove the symbol, and the prejudice will simply find another target, another pretext, another name.