(RNS) — Over the millennia, alleged reasons for hating and attacking Jews have included fantasized Passover blood harvesting, equally imaginary well-poisoning and host-desecrating, and accusations of controlling governments and fomenting of various wars.

And so, today, instead of shouting “Christ-killers” as they had in the past, Jew haters shout “baby killers” – as if the Hasid walking down the American, British, French, German or Australian street has somehow managed to moonlight in Gaza. Still, it’s a reason — or at least an unreasonable facsimile of one — for justifying hatred of Jews.

Jews have been hated and persecuted for being communists and for being nationalists, for being globalists and being cliquish. Not to mention for being wealthy and for wallowing in poverty; for belonging to sophisticated elite circles and for being low-class and crude. Leaving aside their often-contradictory nature, the sheer number of justifications all point to the transcendent truth: First comes the hatred, then the fantasies to justify it.

Excuses for hating Jews are always available because Jews are and always have been prominent in society and leaders on different sides of many issues. If one despises communism, there are Marx and Trotsky to blame. If capitalism is the enemy, then Larry Ellison and Michael Bloomberg are great targets for one’s dartboard. For pacifists, there are the Jewish “neocons” to attack. For hawks, liberal Jewish peaceniks are ready to be bullseyes.

And today, it’s open season on Jews with any connection (or no connection) to the historical Jewish homeland or the contemporary state established upon it. 

Whatever anyone may think about the current Israeli government’s approach to defang a movement pledged to the country’s destruction, a movement that has murdered thousands of Israeli civilians, Jews and Arabs alike, what does it have to do with the American fellow with the kippah walking down the street, to merit him a beating? Or with a French synagogue, to justify setting it aflame? Or with Hanukkah celebrants, to have them mowed down with gunfire on an Australian beach?

Nothing, of course, if logic is what counts. But the unintended casualties born of Israel’s effort to eradicate a well-armed murderous mob — casualties that tragically happen in every war — is a good enough peg on which to hang one’s hate.

In the end, though, the attacks, the vandalizing of Jewish institutions and the loud, vulgar denunciations of Israel don’t really have their roots in Israel’s actions but rather in the attackers’ pre-existing psychological obsession with their hatred of Jews. Today’s Jew hatred, like the Jew hatred that runs in a bloody thread throughout recorded history, is nothing short of a mental affliction. And all the excuses invoked by the afflicted are just excuses.

One doesn’t find committed Zionists, or Jews generally, targeting Arabs on the street on the assumption that they back Hamas. That is because there is no psychopathy afflicting Jews that propels them to attack Arabs. Psychologically healthy human beings don’t nurture irrational hatred for others and seek excuses to vent their animus.

But the world harbors millions of deluded and dangerous Jew haters. And they’re always on the prowl, looking for reasons.

(Rabbi Avi Shafran writes widely in Jewish and general media and has a Substack here. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)