Some of my best friends are Jewish

This article is primarily addressed to our non-Jewish readership, some of whom have sought clarificaton on this theme

It is quite common to hear certain non Jewish people, when accused of anti-semitism, defend themselves saying "Some of my best friends are Jewish". This doesn't go down well with Jews. I want to explain from a Jewish perspective how hollow and false such a defence sounds.

By the way, the issue is not confined to Jews and anti-semitism: As a child I remember hearing someone claim: "I'm not prejudiced against negroes, I absolutely love Louis Armstrong and I have all of Paul Robeson's LPs". These kinds of claims fell on deaf ears to my parents and to me as a child.

There are many variations of the theme:  For example, "I have business dealings with Jews", "I love visiting synagogues when I go overseas",  "I am profoundly interested in Jewish culture". Recently we saw an innovative application of the theme in "I named my son Shimon after Shimon Peres".

Are you starting to get the drift? In all of these phoney defences the suspect bigot is explaining how he BENEFITS from the group against which he's suspected of bigotry. And in his mind our bigot constructs the fantasy that the group is benefiting from him,  ie "I bought Paul Robeson's records, therefore African Americans should be grateful to me". Unfortunately it just doesn't wash. You bought his records for your own benefit. You paid the money because you had to. That's OK, just don't lay on me that I should be grateful in ways that you would not expect from others.