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A Jewish college student recently visited a local food court with some fellow students whom he believed were his friends. He had previously confided his grandmother’s history as a prisoner in Auschwitz to one of the other boys. He also had indicated his support for Israel. While the group was seated at the table with their food, one of the boys suddenly decided to advise his Jewish “friend” to “go bake in a gas chamber.” Immediately, the others began to spew antisemitic epithets while throwing food and other objects at their Jewish companion. There were many witnesses, but the people in the mall confined themselves to videotaping the spectacle. No one intervened on behalf of the Jewish student. Thus, the Jewish boy experienced the sudden and surprise transformation of his companions from so-called friends to undisguised enemies in the presence of an amused audience. In the end, he responded by pouring a carton of juice over the head of the perceived ringleader for which the Jewish student received an immediate suspension from his college.
The attack on him and the swift punishment from the school constituted a painful wakeup call. He had been the victim of a calculated and well-coordinated ambush.
If he could have anticipated it far in advance, would he have been more circumspect about his Jewish identity? Would he have kept quiet about his Holocaust survivor grandmother? Would he have hidden his support for Israel? In short, would he have sought a way to avoid the pain, the humiliation, the rejection before any of it could have occurred? After the fact, was he weakened in his Jewish identity, or did he become more determined to uphold it? It would be understandable if he had decided to jump ship and join the majority. In this case, he did not.
But, if he had, he would not have been alone. Jewish history is replete with accounts of Jews who chose to join forces with their oppressors in the vain hope that they, as individuals, would be spared our common destiny.
Today, if a Jew declares his opposition to Israel and everything it stands for—namely, the Jewish people, he will be rewarded by Jew-haters with acceptance, friendship, good grades, and upward mobility because, regrettably, they, the Jew-haters, belong to an increasing majority. Clearly, the promise of false comfort, phony acceptance, and provisional safety awaits him in the arms of Israel’s many accusers. Their kind are as old as time. They have pursued us throughout history and shown no mercy.
From the Biblical Exodus to the Greek and Roman conquests, the Crusades, the various Inquisitions, to every pogrom and expulsion, to the Holocaust and to the never-ending Arab war against Israel, we have had little respite. Our enemies are in no short supply, do not conceal their objectives, and, in every generation, appear to be on the winning team.
Clearly, Jewish life presents an insoluble existential dilemma for every Jew. Moreover, it offers only three choices: should we keep our head down to avoid attention, do we stand firm in our identity, or do we jump ship and join forces with those who seek to destroy us? Those are the options. None affords the promise of freedom from persecution, ostracism, and all the other more lethal torments that are the logical and desired outcome of antisemitism.
What does all of this say about the reliability of relationships? This young man thought that the other boys were his friends. Indeed, they must have liked him initially. Unfortunately, the Jewish aspect of his identity was the deal-breaker.
The treatment of this young man is not unique. Though the harassment takes many forms, it is widespread on college and high school campuses, to say nothing about what happens out in the general public, as well as in the professional and virtual worlds. When one expresses support for Israel, one’s ostracism at the hands of one’s peers, teachers, professors, and co-workers is increasingly assured.
Thus, in an era of rising and pervasive antisemitism, Jews today are learning the bitter lessons endured by our forefathers. They are learning how it feels to be the object of scorn. They are learning that to be a Jew is to know that one’s place in society is tenuous and insecure, impermanent, and subject to the whims of a capricious mob, easily manipulated with false tales of Jewish perfidy, supposedly endemic to our very nature.
Antisemites sense our insecurity. In the words of former President, Richard Nixon, “What it is, it’s the insecurity. It’s the latent insecurity. Most Jewish people are insecure. And that’s why they have to prove things.”
However malevolent his intentions, Nixon was right about that. Whether we sense it deep in our heart or experience it first-hand under unfortunate circumstances, as did the student described above, our insecurity is real. We all know it, or at least we should. But, what is it that we must prove? It’s simple. We must prove that we are not evil. However, the presumption of Jewish evil is far bigger than the individual. We must also worry about collective guilt. The supposed guilt of one Jew is generally imputed to the rest of us because it is our intrinsic nature—whatever that may be–that is condemned over and above any act committed, real or imaginary.
How do we respond to the presumptions ingrained in the countless majorities who believe that we are inherently evil? The presumption of Jewish evil is deeply rooted in both Christian and Islamic theology, and firmly implanted in the hearts and minds of all-too-many Christians and Muslims the world over. They believe that we are Christ killers and slayers of prophets. What could be more indicative of evil than that? And what could be more daunting than the realization that no amount of Jewish philanthropy, kindness and generosity has succeeded in overcoming these utterly false characterizations?
The lower-case version of the word, judas, is a synonym for a one-way peephole in a door. It obviously connotes, as well as denotes, the supreme and treacherous backstabber of all time, essential to Christian theology, and emblematic in the minds and hearts of Christians worldwide. The designation of Judas as the synonym for evil should inform every Jew exactly where we stand, as a collective, in Christian hearts and minds. Let us pray that the merciful among them someday realize that there is a theological problem with a religion that posits its authenticity on the demonization of an entire people, past, present and future.
To his credit, Nixon referred to Jews as people. Islam, on the other hand, does not even see us as human. It declares that we are the descendants of apes and pigs. Indeed, such designations are commonplace, emanating from renowned Muslim pulpits worldwide.
“…in a weekly sermon in April 2002, Al-Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the highest-ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world, called the Jews ‘the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.
“In one of his sermons, Saudi sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, imam and preacher at the Al-Haraam mosque—the most important mosque in Mecca—beseeched Allah to annihilate the Jews. He also urged the Arabs to give up peace initiatives with them because they are ‘the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.’
“’Read history,’ called Al-Sudayyis in another sermon, ‘and you will understand that the Jew [sic] of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jew of today, who are evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others’] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers…the scum of the human race ‘whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs…’ These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption…’”
Thus, reminiscent of Nazism, we are seen as unfit for common interaction with humanity—of which, accordingly, we are not considered a part.
A typical anti-Jewish bromide, indicating Jewish evil at its heart, was enunciated by Albert Faleski, an internet personality known as AnOmaly. Contributing to the rising star of the antisemitic podcaster, by consenting to an interview, was no less of a luminary than presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy. Perhaps Ramaswamy was unaware of the podcaster’s prior statements, such as the following:
“As someone who has zero ethnic hate in my heart for others—it’s easy for me to identify this truth & say it aloud. That’s the entire scheme. A group of people who statistically own almost everything convincing the world they are the #1 victim & punching down on other races.”
Those who own everything, yet punch down on other races, while claiming victimhood for themselves, sound like greedy, power hungry, manipulative, racist, deceitful, and treacherous people. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Faleski means to say that this “group” is evil. Is there any doubt that he is referring to the Jews?
The State of Israel is the stand-in for the Jew at the international level. On July 18, 1994, a suicide attack was perpetrated on the Argentinian Jewish Mutual Agency in Buenos Aires (AMHIA) that killed 85 people and maimed 157. Reporters and politicians typically described the non-Jewish victims as innocent without bestowing the presumption of innocence on the Jews who were maimed and killed: “‘Many Jews and innocent victims had died’ in the bombing, it was said—by television personality Marcelo Tonelli and others—as if the Jews had been guilty of something. There has been a tendency to identify Argentinian Jews so closely with Israel as to put into question their status as Argentinians. In the week after the AMHIA bombing, many newspaper and magazine reports used ‘Israeli’ and ‘Jewish’ interchangeably. The government news agency Telem referred to the AMHIA building as ‘the seat of the Israelite Mutual Association,’ omitting the word ‘Argentinian’ and making it sound like a foreign entity. President [Carlos] Menem contributed to the confusion when he expressed his condolences for the casualties to [then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin—as if the victims were citizens of Israel, not Argentina. As a prominent professor of philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires, Ezekiel de Olasa, noted at the time, ‘When a father loses a son, he does not send condolences…. he receives them. The fact that Menem hurried to give his condolences is a serious symptom. It’s a way of saying, these dead people are not ours.” https://momentmag.com/scapegoats-to-pariahs/
Jews living in Europe, America or anywhere outside Israel are far too often blamed for the alleged misdeeds of the Israeli government. The punishment can range from mild harassment and insults to murder. It can take place in the city streets, in one’s home, in the marketplace, in the restaurant, or in the classroom.
Palestinian Authority dictator and president, Mahmoud Abbas, who is also a celebrated Holocaust denier, was recently recorded saying that Hitler fought the Jews for “their usury and money dealings.” In other words, the Jews had it coming because they were…bankers!
The assumption that the Jews had it coming mitigates the responsibility of the perpetrator. How else can we explain the suspension of the Jewish student while his attackers went unpunished? Germany and France stand among countries that advise their Jewish citizens to conceal their Jewish identity in public so as not to encourage, by their mere physical presence alone, retribution for all the crimes–that they did not commit!
The following quote from Sha’i ben Tekoa’s amazing book, Phantom Nation, Inventing the “Palestinians” as the Obstacle to Peace, says it all:
“Generation in and generation out, the massacre of Jews has always been a righteous act in the eyes of their murderers, and Arab, Muslim and other terrorists in our time are no different.
“Rarely in history have Jews been massacred for ‘no good reason.’ They have always been seen in the eyes of their tormentors as guilty of some enormous evil that justified slaughtering them.”
Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, the Six Day War of 1967, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 were each initiated by Israel’s Arab neighbors, in all out, but failed attempts, to destroy her in one fell swoop. These humiliating debacles for Israel’s enemies caused them to realize that her crushing demise could never be achieved in a decisive military adventure. Therefore, her enemies have resorted to a strategy best characterized as “death by a thousand cuts.” Each “cut” is an attack on Israel’s basic legitimacy as a nation and is deliberately targeted to undermine her in all spheres of activity: politically, diplomatically, economically, militarily, and culturally. These attacks over many years have been so calculated, so deliberate, and so strategic that Israel’s diplomatic, political, legal, and economic isolation in the so-called “international community” is not only the desired outcome, but practically a foregone conclusion that parallels the increasing insecurity of Jewish life outside of Israel.
The challenge to Israel’s legitimacy is based on the same presumption of evil that has justified the persecution of the Jewish people for the last 2,000 years by Christians and Muslims. Moreover, Israel is seen as the manifestation of Jewish evil for which every Jew worldwide must pay the ultimate price. This is not hyperbole.
The United Nations is in the process of criminalizing support for Israel worldwide. This includes support on the part of states, political bodies, corporations, nonprofits, and individuals. The United Nations has falsely declared that Israel is an apartheid nation that has displaced the “indigenous Palestinian people” who toil under a brutal military occupation that is guilty of extermination, thus denying Jewish historical claims to the land of Israel. In short, the so-called international community has slated Israel for destruction and has created a legal process to bring it about.
It is understandable that Israel’s enemies resort to any means, no matter how ruthless, murderous, mendacious, and defamatory to achieve their goal of Israel’s ultimate destruction. What is less understandable is the participation of many Jews in the pursuit of Israel’s “death by a thousand cuts.” Israel’s Jewish detractors come in many stripes. However, they all mistake false and defamatory accusations against Israel for legitimate criticism. The biggest lie is the acceptance of the myth of “Palestinian” peoplehood, coincidentally originating from the very place the Jews claim as their ancient Biblical homeland.
For 400 years until 1917, the Ottoman Empire ruled over a vast region of North Africa and the Middle East that also included contemporary Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. The Turks never, ever mentioned a “Palestine,” nor a “Palestinian people” in any official or non-official documents. If “Palestinians” had been there, no Turk had ever heard of them. Ancient “Palestine” existed only in the imagination of historians who knew that the Romans had invented that term to humiliate the vanquished Jews 2,000 years ago. “Palestine” was a reference, by the Romans, to the extinct Philistines mentioned in the Hebrew Bible to add insult to injury after what the Romans believed was the final destruction of the Jewish people. When the British took control of the Jewish Biblical heartland in 1917, due to their victory in World War I, people of at least 50 different nationalities resided there—none of whom were listed as “Palestinians.” The British renamed the region The Palestine Mandate as a reference to the ancient Roman conquest–again, no relationship to the current so-called “Palestinians.”
In short, the word “Palestinian” has nothing to do with the Arabs living in Israel today. There was never, at any time in history, a “Palestinian” polity, language, culture, nor king. The “Palestinians” speak Arabic, the language that emerged from the Arabian Peninsula, because they are Arabs. They did not and do not speak “Palestinian.” Moreover, the overwhelming majority of “Palestinians” living in Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria are descendants of Arabs who immigrated from surrounding areas in the 1930’s and 1940’s when the British opened the floodgates to Arabs and closed them to Jews, thereby condemning the latter to certain death in Europe. As for the “brutal occupation,” the majority of the so-called “Palestinians” live under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority dictatorship whose brutality is renowned. Israel does not “occupy” them.
In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, falsely declaring that “Zionism is Racism.” Thus, Resolution 3379 denied the Jewish state its raison d’etre. In a scathing reaction, then US ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan stated that “The United Nations is about to make antisemitism international law…A great evil has been loosed upon the world.”
The United Nations defamed the Jewish people in its entirety as evil racists while favoring Zionist imposters who falsely call themselves “Palestinians” and whose aims, tactics and strategies are not only racist, but genocidal. The following is from the Jerusalem Post:
“Calling someone a Zionist is an epithet for a Jew. In the Middle East, a Jew is a shorthand for Israeli. Israelis and supporters of Israel are Zionists. Zionism is Apartheid, and to be a Zionist means you are racist. Just visit any American college campus during the annual Jew-hating apartheid week in the spring semester. As American historian Gil Troy explained ‘The Zionist settler in Palestine was transferred into an analogue of white settlers in Africa…Palestinian propagandists were resurrecting parts of Nazi ideology…negating Jewish nationalism and peoplehood.’ In other words, Zionism is racism—which means antisemitism.”
A “Palestinian” who sells land to a Jew in the Jewish heartland can pay for the transaction with his life under Palestinian Authority law. Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority pays out life- time pensions for anyone who kills a Jew. If this is not racism, what is?
United Nations Resolution 3379 was revoked by the General Assembly in 1991. Nevertheless, the word Zionism, meaning the national movement for a Jewish state in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people, is now charted for ignominy in the university. Thus, the relentless determination to smear Israel and Jews is accelerating and achieving a whole new level of defamatory propaganda described as follows:
“It seems like each day brings a new wrinkle in the oldest hatred. The antisemites are innovating, finding novel ways to fuel enmity against Israel and the Jewish people. The latest is a rehabilitation of the Soviet anti-Zionist playbook in the form of ‘Critical Zionist Studies.’
“The newly created Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism ‘aims to support the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies, and to reclaim academia and public discourse for the study of Zionism as a political, ideological and racial and gendered knowledge project, intersecting with Palestine and decolonial studies, critical terrorism studies, settler colonial studies, and related scholarship and activism.”
This witches’ brew of intersectionality flows from the same foundational lie of Israel’s “original sin” in displacing the “Palestinian people.” Jews must confront the lie and redirect the guilt onto the lie’s unscrupulous purveyors lest we become the final victims of it.
But, in the words of someone who “has zero ethnic hate,” podcaster, Albert Faleski, Zionism’s victim is America:
“Everyone is entitled to a world view. But, in America the Republican Party is serving Zionism over America, the Constitution & the constituents. They’re passing speech laws in America & no right wing media will report it because they serve Zionism over America.”
So, Faleski believes that Zionism is the invisible power undermining America and all for which it stands. Faleski is a minor figure in the grand scheme of things, at least, for now, but his anti-Jewish sentiments reflect a knee-jerk, almost instinctual habit of reaching for spiritual sustenance from the same filthy swamp as the most notorious and powerful of antisemites. He wrote:
“Have you ever read the State Department’s ‘Defining Anti-Semitism’ page? They say it’s hate speech to say Jews killed Jesus, have more loyalty to Israel than other countries & saying they control large sectors of society.”
Over the millennia, false and lethal accusations against the Jewish people at the hands of Christians and Muslims have resulted in an unrelenting stream of unjust condemnations followed by punishment engineered to isolate us, dispossess us, expel us, forcibly convert us, torture, maim and massacre us. Alleged Jewish evil is always the justification for these crimes. Miraculously, despite the unimaginable hardship, and the drastic reduction in our numbers, generation after generation of Jews somehow managed to survive into each succeeding century.
So, we are here today thanks to the heroism, courage, sacrifice and relentless determination of our ancestors. However, the insecurity persists and justifiably so.
Every Jew has a vested self-interest in not being massacred as the supposed emissary of evil, and, thus, the repository of irremediable guilt in the world. Though, frankly, it is exhausting and terrible to live with this burden. Can we, nonetheless, reject unwarranted guilt, fortify ourselves in the truth of history, and determine to survive into the next generation as Jews secure in our identity despite our permanent, eternal, and existential insecurity in the non-Jewish world?
Oh boy! Vanessa got a problem with Christians, lumping them all into the antisemite category. Talk about bigotry.
And here I thought this was a Judeo-Christian, conservative, brotherly love website, whatever that means.
Yes… true…
However… no where is it written that Christians are required to kill non-christians…
The only thing that is said… is for Christians to share the Gospel of Salvation… letting others know that the Son of God, Christ Jesus died for their sins…
Sadly murderous leaders of the past have hid themselves behind the mask of Christianity… not understanding what exactly it is to be a Christian…
And unfortunately… in today’s world… many Christians don’t know themselves…
It is simply a website that you are trying to turn into an anti-Semitic, anti-Christian forum to suit your own political agenda. Maybe you should try Stormfront.
Fortunately, like all religious bigots, atheists and fanatics who espouse hatred and ignorance, you are failing.
I think the overriding issue here is not that the writer thinks all non Jews are Jew haters, which is of course nonsense, but that she herself seems to have a serious problem dealing with her own Jewish identity. Enough. No Jew needs to bow his head. No Jew should be afraid to be a proud Jew. We have nothing to hide and much to celebrate.
Vanessa seems to forget that Christians killed, persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, burned at the stake, waged war, against other Christians for centuries on end up until the 19th century, a mere 250 years ago. And the intense bigotry between Catholic and Protestant, and Protestant and Protestant, continued into the 20th century. Think Northern Ireland.
Muslims still do the same to other Muslims because Islam is still in its pure, medieval, form. Islam never went through the Aristotelian Renaissance or the Aristotelian Age of Enlightenment. Islam is still the Islam of the Dark Ages.
Jews have persecuted ang killed Jews over heresy, blasphemy, and orthodoxy. The Maccabees killed their fellow Jews who wanted to assimilate to Greek Hellenistic culture. Today the Ultra-Orthodox Jews excommunicate and banish their very own children if they question and doubt the faith.
Don’t be myopic Vanessa, look at the big picture, the big picture of centuries and millennia, of the violence, bigotry, and intolerance that SERIOUS belief in religion and mysticism creates.
“I have said that faith and force are corollaries, and that mysticism will always lead to the rule of brutality. The cause of it is contained in the very nature of mysticism. Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible. Why do we kill wild animals in the jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind—a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence. And more: no man or mystical elite can hold a whole society subjugated to their arbitrary assertions, edicts and whims, without the use of force. Anyone who resorts to the formula: “It’s so, because I say so,” will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later. Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same.” – Ayn Rand
“ Anyone who resorts to the formula: “It’s so, because I say so,” will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later”
History proves this truism time after time.
Even objectivists will have to reach for the gun sooner or later, because you say so.
There is nothing particularly special or unique about your approach. It follows the same pattern as all ideologies. Especially when that 50-100 year limit has been reached that Peikoff and you endlessly warn us about.
Religion can be rational except for those willing to use violence to enforce “their way”. Belief in a Creator we call God is entirely rational- in fact demonstrable mathematically and the Torah has lessons in it which if ignored lead us to our own destruction. The Torah mandates the defeat of evil in the world. All morality and ethics are based from the Torah it is the source of objective truth. Without it,
objecting to murder or kidnapping, for example are just opinions.
… said the Ayn Rand Cult member, in an obvious attempt to stir up old contentious issues and animosities with sweeping and fiery rhetoric and generalizations worthy of “rational” leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot,, et al.
Facts: Jesus never condemned war. “Shalom” doesn’t mean the absence of war. It means peace within.
Ayn Rand thought it was rational / reasonable to cuckold her husband. *grin*
“Today the Ultra-Orthodox Jews excommunicate and banish their very own children if they question and doubt the faith.”
Rubbish. I have a son who is “off the derech”, as we say, or off the path that we are supposed to travel. He will always be my son and I will always love him, and he has done more than question, he has stopped his religious beliefs and observances.
The author states:
‘The presumption of Jewish evil is deeply rooted in… Christian… theology, and firmly implanted in the hearts and minds of all-too-many Christians… the world over. They believe that we are Christ killers and slayers of prophets. What could be more indicative of evil than that? And what could be more daunting than the realization that no amount of Jewish philanthropy, kindness and generosity has succeeded in overcoming these utterly false characterizations?’
False accusations?
‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.’ (Matthew 23:29-32)
‘When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.’ (Matthew 27:24-25)
‘The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.’ (Acts 3:13-15)
It has been so! They have since suffered as aliens from God, without prophet, priest, sin- offerings or Atonement Days.
So, who should we believe, this author, or the Lord Jesus Christ and his Jewish disciples?
Nevertheless:
‘For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob…’ (Romans 11:25-26)
Thanks for exposing the Jew hatred in Christian texts. Why, by the way, would the hostile Jews present at Jesus’s trial (as per your New Testament) seemingly condemn themselves by wishing his blood be upon them and their children? What a crock of bullshit. Wanna buy a bridge? Yeah, as a Jew, I own one. Actually, several. I’ll let you in on a secret. All the bridges in America are owned by Jews. We get rich from the tolls we charge. We’re greedy and money grabbing. We can’t help ripping off you goyim – it’s in our nature. But after all, what else do you expect from a tribe of Christ-killers?
I reject your premise that this detail in the Gospel of Matthew is an actual recorded event – the Gospel of Matthew was not written down until about 70-75 A.D., about forty years after Jesus was crucified. The oral tradition, which was the source of this event, realistically cannot be deemed reliable (except by believers), as forty years was more than enough time for distortions, elaborations, and outright fabrications to enter into the narrative. This is true of any era, not just of late antiquity. And you have not addressed why Jews would curse and condemn themselves and their descendants. Their being a “frenzied mob” does not provide a satisfactory explanation, but it certainly provides a perfect excuse for Jew hatred.
Oral history is a funny thing. When a bunch of savages in some god forsaken place have an oral history, it is more accurate than all of Western history combined. Yet where the foundation Western culture is the issue all of a sudden oral history is totally unreliable.
Unfortunately, ‘commonsense’, my lengthy reply to one of your previous comments has not yet been posted (after a second attempt – it may appear later). If it is the case that I cannot respond fairly to other replies, then I’ll probably cease to respond at all (probably the desired effect of the censors).
2 of the 4 gospel writers were Apostles: Matthew & John. Matthew was an ear/eyewitness.
Jews didn’t kill the Christ. Technically the Romans did, but actually the fall as described in Genesis required a blood sacrifice. Jesus gave his life, no one took it.
Christians are not taught that “the Jews killed Jesus.” We are taught that “the world killed Jesus.”
Thanks for exposing your ignorance of Christian beliefs/doctrines. The world killed Jesus, not the Jews or Romans.
I sincerely hope that your readers, including Peter, understand that you are being sarcastic.
Your entire premise is self-negating and serves to bolster the author’s essay.
Nice try, though.
The Jews of Europe have no ancestral or genetic ties to Israel. They are white Europeans who adopted a Middle Eastern religion. So, blood wouldn’t be on their children.
No part of Scripture supports hatred, persecution, derision, or prejudice against Israel on account of these events. Matthew records a painfully careless remark shouted by a frenzied mob—this has never been any sort of mandate for future generations to follow.
Are you talking about the ‘let his blood be upon us and our children’ Matthew 27:25? I understand that the mob, the crowd spoke for humanity not just the Jews.
That is correct. The world killed Jesus – not God, not the Jews, and not the Romans.
Anti Semitism knows no political or ethnic boundaries
Genocide defines Jewish history. It has been thus since Exodus. It is not that hatred of the Jew is greater than hatred of any other vulnerable group. Indeed, every other Biblical enemy of the Jew has long since been wiped out or assimilated into great nations.
But Jews just emerge as stronger from the genocides against them. Just as the ancient kingdom of Israel emerged out of Egyptian genocide, the modern nation of Israel emerged out of European holocaust.
The world hates God, and Gods chosen are the only target that bleeds.
As long as God exists, his promise to his chosen exists, and as long as his chosen exist, there will be genocide..
Yahweh ain’t a God for pussies, that’s for sure.
Antisemitism has no social or regional boundaries, some of the most pro Israel, pro Jewish Churches might just be in my beloved, but much maligned poorer South.
Opposition to Zionism in the early 20th century was not a form of antisemitism. Orthodox Jews considered it heretical and sacrilegious, arguing that a return to Eretz Israel could only be hastened by divine rather than human will. Local Palestinian Jews and Arab Jews felt alienated from white European Jews, and it had nothing to do with antisemitism.
Whether there was such a thing as a “Palestinian” is one of the most common yet irrelevant debates regarding the origins of the conflict. It doesn’t matter what you called Arabs living in Palestine during the late 19th century, whether you called them Ottoman’s, Syrians, Jordanians, Muslims, a tribe, or Palestinians. They lived in and had a profound historical, religious, cultural and sentimental ties to a region called Palestine for millennium. They didn’t fall out of the sky and land in that area.
No. They were Arabs, mostly nomadic, with no historical ties to the land. More moved into Jewish Palestine because as more Jews settled there, work became available . I suggest you look up how much archaeological research has revealed in Israel about the deep roots of the Jewish people in that area. Your premise that European Jews are have no connection to Israel is utter rubbish and serves to show either the depth of your ignorance or the depth of your hatred.
Who’s ‘clueless’? More than half of Israel’s Jewish population came from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Not Europe. Take your own advice about self-education.
So many falsehoods and half truths in your comment. What became Mandatory Palestine was a depopulated, neglected Syrian backwater when Mark Twain visited there in 1867. Only about 60,000 people lived there, with most of the Jews living in Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias. Jews were often persecuted by the local Muslim Arabs, as was witnessed by a British government official visiting Tiberias in the 1840s.*
Your assertion that European Jews have no genetic or ancestral ties to Israel is simply false. There were over a million Jews in the Roman Empire before the advent of Christianity (cf. TheJews in the Roman World, by Michael Grant). There were some converts, but the original Jews came from Judea and nearby Biblical areas and numbered in the hundreds of thousands. They dispersed into Europe and elsewhere, retaining their Jewish identity and religious orthodoxy for the most part. The British government itself would have strongly disagreed with your absurd assertion, affirming the Jewish historical and religious ties to Mandatory Palestine after the defeat of the Ottomans.
You cite opposition to Zionism by “,Arab Jews.” There are and were no “Arab Jews.” Perhaps you mean Jews who spoke Arabic. But what distinguishes them from “Palestinian Jews?” Who are/ were they?
I’ve run out of time and patience. I’ll stop here.
*Narrative to the United States’s Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, by W.F. Lynch, U.S.N., Commander of the Expedition
Lea and Blanchard, 1849
No, as the author states, their grandparents migrated, primarily from Egypt and Syria. In fact several common “Palestinian” names denote their national origins. These people were not there for millennia; the Jews were. Do you realize that there are many indigenous Israeli Jews whose ancestors never left when the rest were seized by the Romans in or about the year 70 AD and dragged off to European slavery? Did you ever question how Jews got to Europe in the first place? And did you know that the majority of Jews are not pale, blue-eyed, and red haired (though some certainly are) but are middle eastern, north African, African, or from points east, like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and China? No, I guess you didn’t know that. But look at a crowd in Israel and you won’t see so many of your redheads.
My parents were Jews. I was raised Jewish and all my life I was told, and under the impression, we are descended from the Middle East, Levant, Israel. Then several years ago I took a DNA test. When the results came back I was taken aback. It showed 98% European and 0% Middle Eastern DNA. I went a step further and a paper trail followed my ancestors back hundreds of years ago. It showed Polish and Lithuanian ancestry.
I saw many Jews who wrote in to DNA companies to question how they show 0% Middle Eastern DNA? All those posts were taken down! Jewish groups have tried to coerce DNA companies to falsely put down Middle Eastern in their profile. One DNA company had Israel as a European country! Jumping through hoops to perpetuate the lie.
I’ve come to learn the vast majority of Jews are indeed a European people. Many fled Europe do to antisemitism, which was the genesis of Zionism. We do not have ancestral ties to Palestine or Israel. Some? Yes. Most, including myself, do not. We were lied to. To add insult to injury I have a friend who is an Italian-American who showed 10-12% Middle Eastern.
A lot of southern Italians share DNA with European Jews, because Jews were brought to Rome from Israel after Romans defeated them.
Most DNA studies show connections between European, Spanish and Middle Eastern Jews.l.
Where is the serious study you claim proves otherwise?
Sebastian, If we go back to when “G-d told Abram to go to a land I will show you…” That land, Canaan, was given to Abraham and his descendants as an eternal inheritance. The land belongs to Israel and all 12 tribes. Joshua crossed the Jordan to lead the Israelites into the land to take charge of the territories. The Assyrians came in and took captive the 10 northern tribes and inhabited the land, but where are the Assyrians today? The Babylonians came in and took Judah and Benjamin, the two southern tribes into captivity, but eventually, King Cyrus recognized the land belonged to Israel and let the southern tribes return to what the Persian King recognized was the Tribe of Judah’s right to its ancestral homeland. Yes, the Ottoman’s came in, etc. etc. etc. However, even Mark Twain, during his travels to “Ottoman” Palestine saw nothing but desolation. He documented at one point during his travels that he had not seen a single soul doe ten miles. He did however, mention a couple of Bedouin tribes, but not much else. To suggest that there were throngs of people in Palestine for millennia in your statement, “They lived in and had a profound historical, religious, cultural and sentimental ties to a region called Palestine for millennium”, is to misrepresent the facts and history.
Does anyone know at what college or university the incident described in the essay’s opening paragraph, occurred? Thank you.
You mean the one where the Jewish student responded to words with assault?
“Friends of Israel” is a Christian organization, Through the Bible (ttb.org) always preaches against antisemitism. I’m gobsmacked by such ignorance, I thought FrontPage would do better.
Really, Vanessa! Judas! That’s as good as it gets? My support for Israel and Jewish people should exclude you, but it won’t cause I’m better than you.
Right. She won’t even consider that there might have been an actual guy named Judas.
Look up Polish for Circle. It tells you a lot that one of the most well known slurs comes from an antipathy towards Christ, so much so that an X was not used for signatures.
Methinks the Lady doth protest too much.
God is ultimately responsible for the death of Christ. Arguing about who killed Christ is a red herring. The murder of the Christ was foretold in Scripture. It is fitting that the Jews were prominent in rejecting their Messiah, just as they rejected God from being their King. See 1 Samuel 8:7.
Jewish rejection of their Messiah caused the knowledge of God to spread throughout the world. God told the Jews he would make them jealous with the salvation of gentiles (Deut. 32:21; Isa. 60:3; Ezekiel 47:22-23; Jeremiah 16:19-21; Psalm 22:27; Hosea 2:23 and many others).
Jesus died for His people, the Jews AND for the whole world in fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham to bless all nations through him. Jesus said NO ONE takes His life from Him. He had power both to lay it down AND take it up again. Who but God has this power? So God alone is ultimately responsible for the death of Christ. See John 10:18.
God remains Israel’s King, though rejected by her. His eternal throne is occupied by the Son of David, just as He promised. What mortal man could possible sit upon the eternal throne? Who does King David call “Lord” in Psalm 110:1?
Jesus Christ willing submitted himself to do the will of God the Father (Jehovah). God, who can ‘declare the end from the beginning’ (Isaiah 46:10), foreknew what would happen in relation to his creation of man, and their fall, etc.. The fact of the matter is that the Word became flesh, willingly – knowing that his life would be taken through an act of murder.
However, this does not mean that God is the *cause* of Christ’s death (God did not make anyone, against their freewill, execute Christ). Knowing how the Jews and Romans would respond to the appearance and message of Jesus Christ, the Father was easily able to design circumstances in such a way as to have His will done without interfering with the free will of His creatures.
Thus, those who participated in the execution of Christ are still **GUILTY** for the crime they committed – despite the fact that Christ, knowing he was going to be taken an executed, suffered in Gethsemane and **allowed** himself to be taken and offered up as a ransom for *all*. The fact that Christ willing laid down his life – allowed himself to fall into the hands of his killers – in no way means that those who took him and executed him are free from blame.
So, it was the Romans? I guess that’s why their empire fell apart not so long after that.
You are perfectly correct.
Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). It was God’s will to punish Christ for our sins as we deserve but He did not. He Who knew no sin BECAME sin that we might become the righteousness of God.
But ultimately, it was God who lay down His life for us, using the means of wicked men to accomplish His purpose. We humans were His tools to accomplish His purposes. We have always been and will remain thus, our “free will” intact.
The world killed Jesus, not God, not the Jews, and not the Romans.
The JEWS killed the Messiah, JESUS CHRIST.
Goodbye!
The Jews are God’s people. They always shall be. God gave them the Covenant of the Law, which is a ministry of death because NO ONE can live in perfection. The Covenant of Grace through Christ also belongs to and is promised to Israel AND the gentiles.
It is fitting that Christ is of the Jews, came first to Israel through the Law of Moses, and died at their hands. Jesus preached only to Israel. Paul the Apostle always went first to Israelites before going to the gentiles. All Israel will be all be redeemed, according to God’s promise, when the “time of the gentiles” is fulfilled (Daniel 2: 31-45 and Luke 21:24).
“Progressives” know they’re lying every time they emit the trite refrain, “We’re not antisemitic, we’re ‘Anti-Zionist’!” Consider the fact that over 50% of religiously based hate crimes target Jews, who make up less than 2% of the United States population, and a much smaller proportion in European countries. In New York City 67% of ALL hate crimes target Jews (not Muslims, transgender people or “people of color”). And despite what De Blasio and Biden say, attributing antisemitism to “right wing white nationalism”, only 3% of the perpetrators ion antisemitic hate crimes are non hispanic whites, and “white nationalists” are about as common in Brooklyn or Manhattan as Hassidic Jews are in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. A perpetrator of Jew hating is much more likely to resemble Al Sharpton (who has blood on his hands from the Crown Heights Pogrom and Freddy’s in Harlem), Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Linda Sarsour or Lemrick Nelson.
im a gentile and a zionist . ah yes , the voices of armchair sunday school certificate theologians is alive and well on this site . space doesn’t permit refutation of the biblical ignorance which most comments contain . if as the bible states that humanity is dead in trespass and sin , and you are not redeemed by gods grace then your opinion is dictated by being spiritually dead . we all know what a dead person can contribute to biblical truth . being obedient to the gospel of christ elevates you from death to life both from this life and the next . time to repent from lawlessness while you can still draw breath .
I have read nearly every comment, and would like for you to give me names, so I can go back a re-read the comments of the armchair theologians. We are all ambassadors for Christ sorry if some of us are not up to your intellectual standard.
I looked up the author Vanessa Jones, and if I googled the correct Vanessa Jones, the one I found claims to be a witch. So she claims to be a witch and a defender of all things Jewish. As the old saying goes consider the source.
She must belong to the Endor branch of Judaism?
God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that those who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Faithful Christians know that God’s plan required Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross to atone for man’s sin. Faithful Christians know that those responsible for the crucifixion were doing God’s will. Only the ignorant call the Children of Israel “Christ killers.”
Sin is strong in our world and has been since the snake tempted Eve. The lazy, the incompetent, the greedy, and the weak all hate and covet the success of those who work and succeed. God’s chosen people have, since Adam’s fall, been the objects of envy and resentment, even among their own. Cain slew Abel. The price of virtue is resentment. It was ever so.
This student may have suffered rejection – better now than later – but certainly not humiliation, That these ignoramus, uncivilized punks behaved the way they did only shows trey were never his unconditional friends. He on the other hand has a very poor friends’ selection skill. Being a Jews must be carried with pride and anyone who does not like you as a Jew, simply avoid them and tell them:: “I am a proud Jew and will always be. I respect my fellow students and expect the same respect from them. If not, we are socially unmatched..” This op-ed supposed to help these circumstances, I suggest use better approach…humiliation?! Not at all!
This student may have suffered rejection – better now than later – but certainly not humiliation, That these ignoramus, uncivilized punks behaved the way they did only shows try were never his unconditional friends. He, on the other hand, has a very poor friends’ selection skill. Being a Jews must be carried with pride and anyone who does not like you as a Jew, simply avoid them and tell them: “I am a proud Jew and will always be. I respect my fellow students and expect the same respect from them. If not, we are socially unmatched.” This op-ed supposed to help these circumstances, I suggest use better approach…humiliation?! Not at all!
A great overview of Jew-hatred, and the complicity of insecure Jews who think they can escape by joining the haters.
But the author didn’t mention what all Jew-bashing incidents have in common: waiting until Jews are alone or outnumbered, and then surrounding them with a hostile group, assuming that no one on the outside will intervene.
Less publicized are the incidents where someone DID intervene to stop the Jew-bashing.
The two strangers in Paris who rescued a 12-year-old Jewish boy from a beating.
The passerby in Berlin who cut short a beating of a 70-year-old Jewish man.
Asma Shuweikh (a London Muslim), and Chris Atkins (a London Christian), who teamed up to save two kids from a Jew-hater on the Tube.
The Brooklyn bystander who chased away a knife-wielding gang attacking a lone kippa-wearing man.
They are special because they had to overcome “the bystander effect” of self-protection. In some cases, they were also attacked for standing with the Jew. But the attack stopped.
The same is true for Israel. That’s why we value the UN support of tiny friends like Micronesia and Palau. That’s why we maintain an “Avenue of Righteous Gentiles” at our Holocaust museum, where every single person who saved Jews is honored by name.. That’s why we welcome Zionist Christians — and Zionist atheists — and Zionist Muslims — who speak on our behalf.
Every single non-Jewish person who stands by our side can change the equation.