In Parshas Mattos, HaShem tells Moshe, “achieve vengeance for the Children of Israel from the Midianites,” but Moshe turns to Israel and tells them “to deliver the vengeance of G-d in Midyan” [Num. 31:2-3]. G-d says it is the vengeance of the Children of Israel, and Moshe says it is the vengeance of Hashem! How can Moshe tell Israel something so different than what he was told?

The Medrash itself asks this question. And the Medrash Rabbah reminds us that after Balak of Mo’av convinced Bila’am the Midianite to come curse the Jews, and HaShem prevented him from doing so, Bila’am went home and advised the Midianites to get the Jews to sin through immorality, causing Divine punishment. That that was the way, he said, that the Jews could be harmed—get them to sin, and invoke Divine rebuke. And as we know, the scheme worked, until Pinchas stopped the Jews from sinning.

So the Medrash says that when HaShem told Moshe to take vengeance from the Midianites on behalf of Israel, Moshe argued back. HaShem said that to fight the Midianites “is only for your own justice, for they caused Me to harm you.” Moshe responded, “Master of the Universe! If we were uncircumcised, if we worshiped idols or denied the Commandments, they would not hate us, and they would not pursue after us. Rather, it is because of Torah and the Commandments that You gave us. Therefore the vengeance is yours, to “deliver the vengeance of G-d in Midyan.”

Anti-Semitism is truly bizarre. It defies logic and reason. You don’t need to look into history, either: just look at the common claim that Jewish refugees, chased from their homes across the Arab world after the formation of the modern State of Israel in 1948, are the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is as insane as it is evil, and yet it is voiced constantly.

Someone recently challenged others in a discussion, dismissing the idea that what we are being told about Israel is “lies, lies, and lies.” So I asked a few pointed questions:

1. Can you name another situation in which one side took innocents hostage, and the other was accused of genocide while trying to retrieve them? Is that a rational position, or is it based on the false notion that Jews are a threat?

2. Can you name another genocide in which the supposedly targeted population doubled in 20 years? So again, is there any basis other than the notion that Jews are a threat?

3. Can you name another situation in which only one country in a region permits both Jews and Arabs in its government, universities, hospitals etc, and that one country is accused of apartheid—against the very people ethnically cleansed from former homes in those other countries, by the very people who expelled them? Is that a rational position, or is it based on the false notion of Jewish supremacy?

4. Can you name another situation in which one side repeatedly, over a period of decades, starts each and every war and refuses every peace offer put on the table, and the other side is accused of wanting war? Is that based on reality, or the false notion that Jews are a threat?

5. Can you name another situation in which an indigenous population returns to its Homeland, a claim authenticated in the world’s most published Book, land from which they were expelled by force yet permitted to return to by peaceful agreement, yet are called occupiers? Is that reality, or based on the trope that all Jewish property is acquired through deceit and theft?

6. Is there another situation in which colonialist occupiers insisted upon renaming a territory, and when the indigenous discarded that colonialist name, a group of invaders claimed the name for themselves, pretended falsely that they were always the people who lived there under that name, and that the actual indigenous are the colonialists?

The core anti-Semitic tropes remain precisely as they were — and this Medrash, which explains the actual root of the problem, predates modern Anti-Semitic expression by millenia… yet understands it perfectly.

The Jews are not hated for what they do wrong. The Jews are hated for what they do right. And as the Midyanites knew, the more the Jews are attached to G-d and His Commandments, the greater His protection. So anti-Semitism should never make a person want to be less of a Jew: on the contrary, it requires us to strengthen our connection to Mitzvos, to doing good and bringing blessing and light into the world. The Mitzvos attach us to G-d Who gave them, and Who has protected us throughout history.