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Hasn’t Mankind Already Killed Enough Jews?
On the few occasions when Iran has taken a break from chanting “Death To America,” it tells the world it is going to drive all Israelis into the sea and eliminate the State of Israel.
This morning, Hamas, one of Iran’s many puppet terrorist organizations, launched 28 mortar shells from Gaza into Israel, several striking a kindergarten in southern Israel. If Iran develops a deliverable nuclear warhead, there is no doubt the mullahs will test it in the olive groves between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
In 1973, Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act. We protect from extinction the lesser long-nosed bat, the Salt Creek tiger beetle, the Leon Springs pupfish, and myriad other mammals, fish, and reptiles.
It’s past time for the civilized world to establish an Endangered Humans Act, and place Jews at the top of the list.
The world has witnessed many systematic anti-Semitic massacres and diasporas. In 1290, King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, banishing Jews from England. In Spain, the anti-Jewish riots of 1391 and the Alhambra Decree of 1492 resulted in the death, exile, or conversion to Catholicism of over 60 percent of the thriving Jewish population in the Iberian Peninsula. In Russian and Eastern Europe, pogroms in the late 19th and 20th centuries wiped out millions of Jews. In the Holocaust death camps, Hitler’s “final solution” killed 6 million Jews, more than half of which lives and deaths have been documented at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. A day in Yad Vashem puts the lie to Holocaust deniers like former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Anti-Semitism is again on the rise all over Western Europe, particularly in France.
With no small amount of effort and hatred, the world has whittled Jews down to a total population of approximately 14 or 15 million — in the entire world — depending on how “Jew” is defined. There are about 6 million Jews in the US and another 6 million or so in Israel, together constituting 80 percent of the world’s Jewish population. Most of the remaining 20 percent are in France, the UK, Canada, and Argentina.
With the current estimate of world population at 7.6 billion, the 15 million Jews make up less than two-tenths of one percent. Sixteen cities in the world have more than 15 million people — giving each such city a greater population than worldwide Jewry.
A recent international survey revealed that one-fourth of the planet’s population holds anti-Semitic beliefs. Based on current population estimates, that means 1.9 billion people hate 15 million Jews. Stated another way, each Jew has 126 people spread throughout the world who detest him or her.
What is the cause of this hatred of a population? No one knows. Some scholars attribute it to racism. Others blame the need of demagogues for a “greedy” scapegoat for societal woes. Some say it was Jews engaged in money lending in the Middle Ages when Christians considered it usury and therefore immoral. And there’s not enough room here to discuss Muslims’ irrational hatred arising from Israel’s control of Jerusalem, where Jews prospered millennia before Mohammed lived.
After Hitler’s atrocities against the Jews, the Allies gave Israel a tiny sliver of land on the southeast shore of the Mediterranean, which land their ancestors had inhabited for thousands of years before. The gift had strings attached, so the Jews actually had to revolt against the Brits for independence, then hold off invading Arab countries in 1948. Arabs tried to conquer Israel again in the Six Day War in 1967, in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and in numerous insurgencies and intifadas since. No doubt Israel made mistakes in dealing with the Palestinians along the way, but when you’re fighting for your life, not every decision will be perfect.
Even though Jews in Israel turned the desert into a thriving, self-sufficient democracy, the tiny nation remains under constant existential threats. And Jews in every country are subjected to attacks from a variety of haters.
Jewish scientists, scholars, and artists have added greatly to the world’s knowledge, improving our lives. Placing this planet’s 15 million Jews on an Endangered Humans list and trying to prevent their extinction is the least the world can do.
Published in History
Reason says it’s likely. But then, maybe not. Severe consequences if they do. Very severe.
Thanks for writing a very well-written and heartfelt post, @michaelhenry.
In answer to your title question, no, they have not. It’s never enough–and there’s always a “new” reason, one which the anti-Semites can use to “prove” that it isn’t just the same old hatred. Which it is.
I would guess at least 99.9999% likely. probably more.
Hillel Neuer Takes on the United Nations Human Rights Council (2007), after which the speech was banned from the United Nations. It’s also very hard to obtain over YouTube, but I have it in my history listing:
Thank G-d no children were in the yard of the kindergarten at the time. It could have been much worse. (Just filling in this detail for readers. I wanted to know. :-) )
I keep thinking we’re going to get a big influx of European Jewish refugees here in the U.S. if it keeps up. Good for America not so good for France, Germany, the UK. How very strange it would be, if Europe traded in its assimilated, decent, law-abiding, tolerant Jewish citizens for unassimilated, indecent, scofflaw intolerant and too-often violent immigrants…
They’re more than that — they are the models for other citizens, at the top of every field from science to the arts to academia to media. They are way over-represented (this is a good thing) in Nobel prizes and number of doctors and on and on. (Kate, I know this isn’t news to you — I just wanted to emphasize the contrast you are drawing.)
I take your point. Still, I’d hesitate to say that, Larry, just because it makes it sound like a standard that an ordinary French Jew would have to meet in order to be welcome in the US. It’s not. Plain old peaceful decency is plenty. (I’d have no particular objection to the Muslim immigrants if they weren’t bringing violence, homophobia, misogyny, anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism with them.)
Wait. The term “mankind” is rather broad. It includes me for one thing, and everyone else!
I object to this title.
I’ll take a guess, and I base it on something some wise old Jews write down so we would all remember: the story of Cain and Abel.
Jewish culture embraces traditions and priorities that have real world effects of peace and prosperity. (Abel was prosperous.) When a man is struggling for his own peace and prosperity (Cain), he can react to his more successful brother in one of two ways: with admiration and emulation, or with resentment and hatred. (Cain murders Abel.) The tragic thing about us humans is resentment and hatred come easier to us.
Well, okay. Hence the commandment. “Don’t murder people.” Pretty simple, yes?
Amen, @michaelhenry! And, once we put Jews at the top, we can extend it to preborn children, perhaps?
South African whites and European Jews are welcome. I am also curious about letting Christian Arabs and Yazidis in.
Sufis, post-loner muslims And Achmadaya muslims are also cool with me if their kids don’t become crazy Muslims. Smoking pot and reading poetry in Washington and or Colorado with Sufis sounds great. I’ll buy the lamb gyros. But it seems like Islam brings in a lot of negative stuff.
Gee, I wonder if we’ll let them in this time…..
Simple in formulation, yes, KB. Not so much in practice, as mankind’s shameful history of brutalizing the Jewish people shows.
But there are those who’d adopt your views
And put Jews in
And – if memory serves,
You can do a lot of harm based on resentment and hatred before you ever have to resort to murder though.
Careful, MichaelHenry, lest some caring European proposes barbed wire Jew Preserves where they will be safe and happy being concentrated among their own kind.
This is Hillel Neuer’s 2017 response to the charges of Israeli “apartheid”:
Dear @michaelhenry
Thank you for writing the article on the loss of Jewish life.
Snubbing of a human life is the most agonizing experience for me to recall, whether or not the person killed is a Jew. You have fleetingly identified the following:
When we look at the ongoing violence against Israel, as well as her response towards those who commit such violence, the consistent outcome is incessant loss of human life. Not just as individuals, even as nations we make mistakes and imperfect decisions. It seems to me, it is our obligation to go back and right the wrongs. Dignity, justice and fairness means the same thing to each human being whether he is a friend or a foe. Whether it is us or them, we are in this together. I just pray that we will not loose our capacity to see and respect the humanity of those who are not us. I try hard not to be knee-jerk defensive, “but we are fighting for our life.”
Hi @franco
I know you are serious, when you objected to the title, for using the term, ‘mankind.’
I was also thinking similarly, I am human so I would be included in mankind as well. Never in my life have I killed another human-being or have any desire of doing so. So why should I be made to feel guilty? I rolled with the thought a little bit. Suppose we had used a different term for example Hitler, Germans or even Muslims. What would it do for me? Maybe personally it will make me feel better, but does it address the issue? It will give me some relief that it it not my problem; it is someone else’s problem. So I am not going to feel concerned about finding a solution. When Holocaust happened the whole “mankind” responded to it. Then it became our problem, and we responded to it whether or not we were involved in causing harm to the Jews. And we pledged “Never Again.” Then the Rwandan genocide happened, and you know I stayed out of it. I was neither a Tutsi nor a Hutu, so it was not my problem. The world forgot, the pledge of “Never Again.” They did not want to own the label of ‘Mankind.” We let the genocide happen.
It is for this reason, I would argue each one of us must own the label “mankind.” If one human being whether he is a friend or a foe, alien or a stranger, good, bad or a criminal, when one on them them is killed one of my “kind” is killed. I am “mankind.”