The Fight Over Jew-Hatred

 

Believe the Bible or not, it was prescient in its prophecy that God would bless those who bless the Jews and curse those who curse them.

Societies like the good and great United States that embrace Jews have thrived. Societies that turn on their Jews fare poorly.

But while there is wide agreement among Americans that Jew-hatred is bad, there is disagreement about what Jew-hatred is.

One view is that Jew-hatred is just one form of tribal hatred. In this view:

  • The Jew is just an example of the powerless other.
  • It’s not Jew-hatred if you hate Jews who are powerful or exceptionalist. Real fighters of Jew-haters stand with those Jews oppress.
  • Jews whom Louis Farrakhan and Linda Sarsour hate are not really Jews. They are termites, not Semites. True haters of Jew-hatred are intersectionalists who hate fake Jews like those who are Zionist, rich, or Republican.

This view eliminates the Jew from the concept of Jew-hatred. Proponents of this view often stand with actual Jew-haters against actual Jews, all in the name of fighting Jew-hatred and its equivalents.

There’s another view of Jew-hatred.

It says that Jew-hatred centers on the Jews, and specifically:

  • Jews’ claim to be the people chosen by the one true God to remain separate and to spread His word.
  • Jews’ rejection of others’ ideas, values and gods.
  • Jews’ insistence that Jews are different and special.

Jews’ who hold the first view often really hate Jews who hold the second.

The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson Tweeted yesterday about “the bizarre nexus between Israel and white nationalism” which were both forms of evil “ethno-nationalism” as “extreme right Zionists and anti-Semitic white nationalists have the same core beliefs.”

Davidson apologized for his Tweet being “unclearly written” and deleted it, and then went on to clarify that he meant exactly what we all thought he did. Davidson was not alone.

Fiction writers are taught “Capture the individual and you capture the type. Capture the type and you capture — nothing.”

This is helpful for understanding Jew-hatred. We must first understand the uniqueness of Jew-hatred and the Jew before applying its lessons to other hatreds.

The de-Judaizers see any form of recognizing differences as the equivalent of Jew-hatred. They think you’re a Jew-hater or its equivalent if you would close a border or deny same-sex marriage.

Those with a Jew-centric view of Jew-hatred see these quite differently. They’re more likely to see the equivalent of Jew-hatred in those attacking the Christian baker or the Little Sisters of the Poor. The baker and the nuns just want to be left alone to live by their understanding of the word of God, without hurting anybody else.

Those with a Jew-centric view of Jew-hatred stand with America when she is demonized for standing as a nation apart. They respect Americans’ insistence on deciding for themselves who can join their nation and how.

This rarely articulated difference in outlook splits the Jewish community.

Many Jews just want Jews to be like everybody else (though perhaps with a victim card). They find the ideas of a powerful group being separatists and exceptionalists to be repulsive, worth fighting, and the equivalent of Jew-hatred. They find it especially repugnant coming from the Jews.

On the other side, we have Jews who believe their mission is to remain a separate group that can spread the word and values of the one true God. These people think that Jews must be able to defend themselves and to live according to their beliefs. And they believe other groups, such as Americans and Christians, deserve the same rights. These views are more common among Israelis and Orthodox Jews than among non-Orthodox American Jews.

This split is central to how many Jews think and vote. For many Jews their top issue isn’t abortion, gun control, taxes or health care. It’s where do you stand on Jew-hatred and its equivalents. This may help explain why so many of the most visceral Trump-haters, including most prominent NeverTrumpers, are Jews. They see Trump as a spreader of the equivalent of Jew-hatred, regardless of Trump’s personal views of Jews specifically.

On the other side are people like Dennis Prager. Prager’s classic Why the Jews: The Reason for Antisemitism, the Most Accurate Predictor for Human Evil provides many of the ideas I stole for this piece. His view of the centrality and exceptionalism of Jews and Jew-hatred lead him to view Trump as a man who stands with the Jews against those who would destroy them.

The Tree of Life murders brought this all to a boil and showed the asymmetry. Many of the de-Judaizers of Jew-hatred hated many of the Jews who were coming to stand with them. But those who subscribe to the Jewish-exceptionalist view of Jews and Jew-hatred saw Jews murdered for being Jews, and stood with them in tears, despite the efforts of the misguided Jewish haters.

Jew-hatred is an ancient and eternal hatred. United Nations votes are just one more indication of how Jew-hatred seems to unite the world, other than the one great nation that stands with Israel. Jews and Israel are safer and stronger than they’ve been in at least two thousand years. One evil man in Pittsburgh and some false statistics spread by people trying to demonize America and her president do not change that. We will fight the Jew-haters. We will thank those who stand with us. And we will strive to fulfill our exceptional mission.

Published in Religion & Philosophy
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 25 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Gil Reich: On the other side we have Jews who believe their mission is to remain a separate group that can spread the word and values of the one true God

    Jews don’t proselytize, do they?

    • #1
  2. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Thanks, Gil. Only the Leftist Jews could make these issues so complicated. It’s mind-boggling. You lay out the issues very well, though; I thank you for that. And it breaks my heart.

    • #2
  3. Kay of MT Inactive
    Kay of MT
    @KayofMT

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Gil Reich: On the other side we have Jews who believe their mission is to remain a separate group that can spread the word and values of the one true God

    Jews don’t proselytize, do they?

    No, they don’t and even try to talk a possible convert not to do so.

    • #3
  4. Gil Reich Member
    Gil Reich
    @GilReich

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Gil Reich: On the other side we have Jews who believe their mission is to remain a separate group that can spread the word and values of the one true God

    Jews don’t proselytize, do they?

    No, they don’t and even try to talk a possible convert not to do so.

    Right. We welcome converts who show sufficient desire and commitment to live as Jews, but we don’t seek them. We do wish to influence people and to help them live better lives. But there’s no reason that has to be as members of our nation, unless that’s what they want.

    • #4
  5. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Gil Reich (View Comment):

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Gil Reich: On the other side we have Jews who believe their mission is to remain a separate group that can spread the word and values of the one true God

    Jews don’t proselytize, do they?

    No, they don’t and even try to talk a possible convert not to do so.

    Right. We welcome converts who show sufficient desire and commitment to live as Jews, but we don’t seek them. We do wish to influence people and to help them live better lives. But there’s no reason that has to be as members of our nation, unless that’s what they want.

    This is part of a larger phenomenon. @gilreich wrote

    Gil Reich:

    • Jews’ claim to be the people chosen by the one true God to remain separate and to spread His word.
    • Jews’ rejection of others’ ideas, values and gods.
    • Jews’ insistence that Jews are different and special.

    To that, perhaps we should add:

    • Jews’ connection to Eretz Yisrael
    • Jews’ belief in a future redemption coupled with insistence that the road to that is the practice of quotidian virtues rather than revolutionary violence

    I’d like to propose a working model:

    • People and groups which have over the years laid claim to be the chosen people (Christian replacement theologies – including claims to be the New Israel, German National Socialism)

    • People and groups which have thought it was a good idea to immanentize the eschaton by any and all means

    • People and groups which reject Jewish nationhood and the Jewish claim to Eretz Yisrael

    • People who themselves or their ancestors left the constraints of traditional Judaism and follow (or, like Marx, found) secular messianic belief systems which do proselytize,

    generally wind up overtly or tacitly antisemitic themselves, and their followers generally even more so.

    This was certainly the case for the Frankfurt School (virtually the entire Frankfurt School was Jewish or of Jewish descent; they or their ancestors left the constraints of traditional Judaism) which has had a generally malign influence on today’s world; much of the progressive antisemitism of the day stems directly from these thinkers or those influenced by them.

    • #5
  6. Gil Reich Member
    Gil Reich
    @GilReich

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    Gil Reich (View Comment):

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Gil Reich: On the other side we have Jews who believe their mission is to remain a separate group that can spread the word and values of the one true God

    Jews don’t proselytize, do they?

    No, they don’t and even try to talk a possible convert not to do so.

    Right. We welcome converts who show sufficient desire and commitment to live as Jews, but we don’t seek them. We do wish to influence people and to help them live better lives. But there’s no reason that has to be as members of our nation, unless that’s what they want.

    This is part of a larger phenomenon. @gilreich wrote

    Gil Reich:

    • Jews’ claim to be the people chosen by the one true God to remain separate and to spread His word.
    • Jews’ rejection of others’ ideas, values and gods.
    • Jews’ insistence that Jews are different and special.

    To that, perhaps we should add:

    • Jews’ connection to Eretz Yisrael
    • Jews’ belief in a future redemption coupled with insistence that the road to that is the practice of quotidian virtues rather than revolutionary violence

    I’d like to propose a working model:

    • People and groups which have over the years laid claim to be the chosen people (Christian replacement theologies – including claims to be the New Israel, German National Socialism)

    • People and groups which have thought it was a good idea to immanentize the eschaton by any and all means

    • People and groups which reject Jewish nationhood and the Jewish claim to Eretz Yisrael

    • People who themselves or their ancestors left the constraints of traditional Judaism and follow (or, like Marx, found) secular messianic belief systems which do proselytize,

    generally wind up overtly or tacitly antisemitic themselves, and their followers generally even more so.

    This was certainly the case for the Frankfurt School (virtually the entire Frankfurt School was Jewish or of Jewish descent; they or their ancestors left the constraints of traditional Judaism) which has had a generally malign influence on today’s world; much of the progressive antisemitism of the day stems directly from these thinkers or those influenced by them.

    Excellent 

    • #6
  7. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Ruth Wisse, referring to antisemitism in today’s (behind the paywall) Wall Street Journal as “a politics of misdirected blame” concludes:

    …The incursion of fanatical anti-Israel politics into the American campus and the Democratic Party is a threat not to the Jews alone but to what they represent in liberal democracy.

    Even as we try to comfort the mourners and suggest better security measures, we must stop the scourge before a full-fledged anti-Semitic politics emerges in America under the unifying banner of “intersectionality.” Anti-Semitism is the only ideology that can unite the far left and far right. Its success would signify America’s failure.

    She did a podcast on the subject earlier this year.

    • #7
  8. Suspira Member
    Suspira
    @Suspira

    I’m more confused than when I started reading.

    • #8
  9. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Even as we try to comfort the mourners and suggest better security measures, we must stop the scourge before a full-fledged anti-Semitic politics emerges in America under the unifying banner of “intersectionality.” Anti-Semitism is the only ideology that can unite the far left and far right. Its success would signify America’s failure.

    I read her piece, too, @ontheleftcoast, but I realize now that I’m not sure I understand what she’s saying. Maybe that’s what @suspira is saying. What would that uniting around anti-Semitism look like? Both sides see us as the ones to “blame”–for whatever?

    • #9
  10. Sash Member
    Sash
    @Sash

    This topic makes me very sad.

    • #10
  11. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Gil Reich: This split is central to how many Jews think and vote. For many Jews their top issue isn’t abortion, gun control, taxes or health care. It’s where do you stand on Jew-hatred and its equivalents. This may help explain why so many of the most visceral Trump-haters, including most prominent NeverTrumpers, are Jews. They see Trump as a spreader of the equivalent of Jew-hatred, regardless of Trump’s personal views of Jews specifically.

    I think this goes along with my theory that many Republicans that hate Trump really don’t get how centralized power has gotten dysfunctional in this country and they just need it to work for their gig or their lifestyle or something no matter what. It’s like they are Rockefeller Republicans or something. 

    For example Jonah Goldberg is truly for smaller government, he gets that centralization is bad, and that it’s screwing people. People understandably want their cut of this garbage or they want it fixed. All of those guys on that Niskenen Center Republican list, not so much. Tom Nichols makes a great big deal out  of the fact that he’s a conservative, but he explicitly says he’s for “strict gun control”.

    This isn’t a great day for me to think about this stuff, but I wanted to throw it out there. 

     

    • #11
  12. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    One other thing. I just saw a screen capture of a tweet of the President of the Niskenen Center praising George Soros. What a loony bin. 

    • #12
  13. Misthiocracy, Joke Pending Member
    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending
    @Misthiocracy

    I’ve always assumed that Jew-hatred stems from their disproportionate representation in the banking industry.  Governments that want to default on their debts need to make sure that nobody minds if the secret police round up all the government’s creditors and put bullets in their heads.

    • #13
  14. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    I’ve always assumed that Jew-hatred stems from their disproportionate representation in the banking industry. Governments that want to default on their debts need to make sure that nobody minds if the secret police round up all the government’s creditors and put bullets in their heads.

    It antedates the banking industry and firearms. More like dominant cultures that appropriated Abraham and then feel the need to dispossess the main branch of the family, but it then has attached itself to other “root causes.” It seems to be the sole known example of perpetual motion.

    • #14
  15. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    I’ve always assumed that Jew-hatred stems from their disproportionate representation in the banking industry. Governments that want to default on their debts need to make sure that nobody minds if the secret police round up all the government’s creditors and put bullets in their heads.

    In the age of corporations, shooting the individual bankers is only going to complicate your next loan application.

    • #15
  16. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Even as we try to comfort the mourners and suggest better security measures, we must stop the scourge before a full-fledged anti-Semitic politics emerges in America under the unifying banner of “intersectionality.” Anti-Semitism is the only ideology that can unite the far left and far right. Its success would signify America’s failure.

    I read her piece, too, @ontheleftcoast, but I realize now that I’m not sure I understand what she’s saying. Maybe that’s what @suspira is saying. What would that uniting around anti-Semitism look like? Both sides see us as the ones to “blame”–for whatever?

    I think you need to take a couple of things into account when reading Wisse: For a comp lit professor she’s down to earth, but… she was a Harvard comp lit professor.

    And she centers her understanding on “misdirected blame” which isn’t a sufficient explanation. Come to think of it, “misdirected blame” sounds like a literary analysis, doesn’t it?

    Misdirected blame may be an aspect of the following, but it’s not the whole thing:

    A Breitbart News investigation published today documented that until last year, Gillum worked at the George Soros-financed People for the American Way, where he served as Director of Youth Leadership Programs from 2005 until January 13, 2017, and oversaw a radical training outfit calling itself Young People For, or YP4.

    Even while he was a Tallahassee city commissioner and later the city’s mayor, Gillum was heavily involved in the controversial YP4 youth leadership program as youth director, announcing multiple hires and headlining fundraising and group events.

    In his position of youth leadership director at PFAW, Gillum was in charge of both YP4, the organization’s youth training program, and the organization’s Young Elected Officials (YEO) Network, which he founded and which describes itself as “the first national program singularly-focused on providing a network of support to young progressive state and local elected officials.”

    At a PFAW dinner in 2011, Gillum said that even though he served as vice-mayor of Tallahassee at the time, his “best job” was actually his position as the organization’s youth director, where, he explained, he led YP4. He said his job there was to counter “the radical right,” singling out Ann Coulter and Karl Rove as individuals who needed to be opposed.

    Gillum’s ideas include abolishing “predatory capitalism” and prisons. His organizations are ground troops in his gubernatorial campaign.

    Israel is an obstacle to the progress of competing messianic agendas; the Left has always been violent to one degree or another in advancing its vision and looks to be in the process of completing its assimilation of the Democrat Party.

    • #16
  17. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    UPDATE: Gillum thinks that the attitude revealed here will get him elected:

    We’ll know next week. One of the comments at Conservative Treehouse’s thread  thinks it might work. He was responding to a commenter that thinks Project Veritas’ exposé will help the Republicans win:

    gustafus21 says: November 1, 2018 at 9:42 am

    I think you are dreaming. My 33 yr old daughter and husband live in a mixed neighborhood in Denver…. not low rent, but mixed. Their next door neighbors are Mexican and black… the kids play sometimes, and each side plays the “good neighbor”.

    THAT SAID… the Mexican wife had a few drinks the other night, and told my son in law that all white men were demons .. they should die. THIS was a casual exchange in the yard, because of something in the news.

    My son in law laughed, and told her she had too much to drink… and said goodnight.

    My daughter was stunned but said, hey, she gives the dog his shots if we go out of town, so she’s going to let it slide. [diabetic dog]

    This live and let live attitude toward people who WANT US TO DIE – should we hear their inner most thoughts … is not going to end well.

    • #17
  18. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    The ZMan blog, which is sorta kinda white nationalist is on the money today. In a post entitled The Cancer of Fanaticism which takes Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer as his starting point, he writes:

    That is, of course, what lies beneath the great ideological struggles of the Western world since the French Revolution. They may not be explicit, but that is what lies beneath all of them. Communists of various stripes thought they could create the worker’s paradise in the industrial age. The radicalism of Robespierre became a secular religion, in which men were gods. The fascists were a utopian reaction to the utopian radicals of their age. They simply had a different vision of paradise, which is why they embraced the same methods.

    We see this today with the America Left, which has, in fits and starts, become increasingly radical and increasingly untethered from reality. Into the 20th century, it still carried with it the Christian restraint of accepting that paradise, if it exists at all, is in the next life. That’s all gone now and the believers are filled with the passion of the zealot. All that matters to them is the next step on the path. Whoever is the most pious, the furthest along on the journey, is the standard until someone else can prove to be pious, further along the path.

    That is the great challenge of the post-Christian era. The limiting principle of Christianity, that grace was for the next life, is gone. That means all of the lunatics are off the leash and society has no intellectual framework for putting them back on the leash. As a result, the West is afflicted with a metastasizing cancer in the form of increasingly deranged true believers, determined to extend their quest for self-abnegation to the whole of society in order to bring about the end times. Either the cancer is removed, or the host will die.

    Today’s Daily Dose from Chabad seems apt:

    The sages say that all is in the hands of heaven except for the awe of heaven.

    Which puts all the power in your hands.

    Because if heaven commands no awe, heaven owns nothing—not you, not your world, not anything at all.

    Without the awe of heaven, heaven is bankrupt.

    If so, the greatest power you have is your ability to surrender the delusion that you have any power at all, to shift from serving yourself to serving heaven. To experience awe.

    The heavens are utterly under your command.

    • #18
  19. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    I’ve always assumed that Jew-hatred stems from their disproportionate representation in the banking industry. Governments that want to default on their debts need to make sure that nobody minds if the secret police round up all the government’s creditors and put bullets in their heads.

    In all my years of business I only encountered one Jewish banker. It just so happens he was also the best to deal with.

    • #19
  20. Misthiocracy, Joke Pending Member
    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending
    @Misthiocracy

    PHCheese (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    I’ve always assumed that Jew-hatred stems from their disproportionate representation in the banking industry. Governments that want to default on their debts need to make sure that nobody minds if the secret police round up all the government’s creditors and put bullets in their heads.

    In all my years of business I only encountered one Jewish banker. It just so happens he was also the best to deal with.

    Well, in America Jews have always been allowed to own property, so they didn’t have to go into banking like they did in Europe.

    • #20
  21. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Thanks, Gil. Only the Leftist Jews could make these issues so complicated. It’s mind-boggling. You lay out the issues very well, though; I thank you for that. And it breaks my heart.

    This must be at least part of what makes this whole issue beyond my understanding. I’m not sure I want to spend my remaining days trying to reach an understanding of complicated hatred schemes.

    • #21
  22. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    I have a stupid question. Isn’t part of what’s going on the fact that the Jews had a more civilized and constructive society centuries before everyone else? Dennis Prager had a guest on about this. They got rid of multiple wives and a bunch of barbaric stuff. So then what happened was their human capital compounded like crazy. I know somebody very close to me who is very smart and she was a very strong believer in epigenetics. I think everyone just got jealous of them, and it never let up. I mean they were the only ones the could do certain things well in some societies, for a long time.

    • #22
  23. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    I mean they were the only ones the could do certain things well in some societies, for a long time.

    From Thomas Sowell’s essay Are Jews Generic:

    IN ANY GIVEN COUNTRY, A PARTICULAR MINORITY may be hated for any of a number of reasons peculiar to that country or that group. However, in a worldwide perspective, the most hated kinds of minorities are often not defined by race, color, religion, or national origin. Often they are generically “middleman minorities,” who can be of any racial or ethnic background, and in fact are of many. Many of the historic outbreaks of inter-ethnic mob violence on a massive scale have been against the Jews in Europe, the Chinese minorities in various Southeast Asian countries, against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Ibos in Nigeria, and against other middleman minorities in other times and places.

    Other kinds of minorities have of course also suffered violence, but the scale of lethal mass violence against middleman minorities has been unequalled…. Partly the resentments and animosities against these groups have derived from the economic role they play, a role that has been widely misunderstood and widely resented—in very disparate societies, over a period of many centuries—even when this economic role has been played by people not ethnically different from those around them. Differences of race, religion or ethnicity, added to the resentments arising from the economic role itself, have produced explosive mixtures in many times and places.

    Sowell, Thomas. Black Rednecks & White Liberals (pp. 65-66). Encounter Books. Kindle Edition.

    It has been precisely where middleman minorities have been most needed economically that they have been most hated, while places that have been not nearly as dependent on them have been places where they have found their greatest acceptance.This does not present a very reassuring picture of human reasonableness, but neither does the history of most middleman minorities.

    Sowell, Thomas. Black Rednecks & White Liberals (p. 104). Encounter Books. Kindle Edition.

    In Eric Hoffer’s account of a mass movement’s need for unifying elements, he classified hatred as one of those elements. He quoted Hitler as saying that if there were no such thing as a Jew, “We should then have to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.” Hoffer added: F.A.Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied:“It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.” The tragic history of middleman minorities around the world shows that often there are many substitutes for Jews in the role of scapegoats, as well as in their economic functions.

    (p. 109)

    • #23
  24. Gil Reich Member
    Gil Reich
    @GilReich

    Great stuff about the middleman minorities.

    Also good comments about hatred from people who saw their religions as sequels to Judaism.

    And about Jew-hatred being a rebellion against the idea that we can and must make this world better through limited, incremental changes.

    Ben Shapiro focuses on Jew-hatred as a form of seeing a sinister conspiracy at the root of all our problems.

    There are many, many reasons people have hated Jews. Because they’re powerless or powerful, Communists or capitalists, globalists or nationalists, assimilationists or separatists, radical revolutionaries or defenders of the status quo, misers or bleeding-hearts, etc.

    And there’s a lot to all of these things.

    These are all facets or manifestations of a deeper hatred. Jew-hatred is eternal. It started long before Christianity. And Jew-hatred is powerful and consequential. It is more true to say that Hitler carried out a world war in order to exterminate the Jews than to say he murdered Jews while fighting his war.

    Believe the Bible or not, it gives some examples of early Jew-hatred that seem to eerily forecast later Jew-hatred.

    In the Persian Empire, which included 127 separate nations, Haman singled out the Jews for annihilation stating “there is one nation, both scattered and separate.. and their beliefs are different from everyone else’s and they do not comply with commands of the king.” The Jews spread everywhere but remain separate, and they live by their own views and values.

    Pharaoh, the all-powerful tyrant of the world’s lone superpower, justified killing Jewish slave babies by saying that the nascent Nation of Israel was stronger than Egypt. Hitler would later explain that the Germans were ” in danger of being oppressed or even exterminated” by the Jews and that the “instinct of self-preservation on the part of the oppressed (the Germans) will always justify, to the highest degree, the employment of all possible resources (against the Jews).” The idea that you can declare yourself oppressed and then justify any form of evil against Jews and others has long been a central pillar of Jew haters (and Jews who support this rhetoric when used by SJWs against white Christians are doing something both evil and stupid).

    The Bible also prophecizes (Deuteronomy 28) that Jews will wander from nation to nation, abused at every stop, until God allows them back home. This doesn’t explain why Jew haters hate, but it establishes that Jew-hatred will be a constant so long as Jews are in exile and not serving God. Note: Bible believers should not interpret this as excusing the Jew-haters, as God clearly establishes in Genesis 15:14 “and I will judge that nation (the nation that hurts Israel) too.”

    • #24
  25. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    There may be one speial case. Shalom Spiegel’s The Last Trial, (about the binding of Isaac) brings an Arab “midrash” to the effect that it wasn’t Isaac on the altar, it was Ishmael, and Isaac was waiting at the bottom of the mountain. WhenI read ir decades ago my first thought was “that’s not something you can negotiate a compromise on.”

    • #25
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.