Posted on 02/20/2006 10:53:50 PM PST by goldstategop
On Jan. 21 in Paris, a gang of Muslims intent on kidnapping Jews kidnapped 23-year-old Ilan Halimi. Reciting verses from the Koran in phone conversations demanding money from the family, they ultimately rejected the money and tortured Halimi to death. They kept him naked for weeks while they cut him up and finally poured flammable liquid over his skin and burned him alive. When Jews read this story, they see themselves as Halimi and think that such a thing could happen to them somewhere in the world today and somewhere in the world at any time in the past.
If you want to understand how Jews think and behave, you must first understand how large antisemitism and the Holocaust loom in the psyche, emotions and minds of the vast majority of Jews.
It could not be otherwise.
While ethnic, racial, religious and national hatreds are as old as mankind, none has been as universal and as deep as hatred of Jews.
Jew-hatred was given the name "anti-Semitism" only in 1879 by a German anti-Semite named Wilhelm Marr. The term is entirely misleading since it has nothing to do with "Semites." Jews may be Semites, but so are Arabs, and antisemitism never meant hatred of Arabs, only of Jews. That is why many contemporary writers, including my coauthor (Rabbi Joseph Telushkin) and I in our book "Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism," do not spell the word "anti-Semite," but rather as one word without a hyphen -- "antisemite."
Jew-hatred or antisemitism has been so deep that tens of millions of people have equated the Jews with the devil and many more have desired that the Jews be erased from the Earth. Such an attempt was made only one generation ago in what is called the Holocaust (or Shoah, the Hebrew term). This was the German Nazi attempt to murder every Jewish man, woman and child, which resulted in the murder of two out of every three Jews in Europe.
To give an idea of how many Jews have been murdered for being Jews, all one needs to do is look at population statistics. Scholars estimate the population of the Roman Empire at about 60 million at the time of Jesus. According to the dean of Jewish historians, Professor Salo Baron, at that time Jews comprised about 10 percent of the population. That means that 2,000 years ago there were about 6 million Jews. It is also estimated that at that time, the world's population was about 200 million.
Today the world's population is over 6 billion. While the world's population is about 30 times larger than 2,000 years ago, the Jewish population has barely doubled. Had Jews been left alone to procreate at the same rate as others, there would be about 180 million Jews in the world today. Moreover, even the 6 million number for the Roman empire represented a huge loss of population due to extensive killing of Jews in the 12 centuries from their inception.
It is true that Jewish population losses have been also due to assimilation, but this assimilation was itself overwhelmingly a result of persecution -- forced conversions, desire to lead a far safer life as part of the majority culture, etc. In fact, because of the Holocaust, there are fewer Jews today than there were 100 years ago.
One can now understand why the Passover Haggadah -- the special prayer book for the Passover Seder meal, first written about 2,000 years ago -- contains this famous statement: "In every generation there are those who rise against us to annihilate us . . . "
As a result, Jews are probably the most insecure group in the world. This may come as a surprise to most non-Jews since Jews are widely regarded as particularly powerful. But Jews' power and Jews' insecurity are not mutually contradictory. In fact, Jews' power derives in large measure from their insecurity. The stronger the Jews' influence, Jews believe, the less likely they are to be hurt again.
Fear of being hurt again is the major reason most identifying Jews are so protective of Israel. First, they fear that without Israel, Jews are far more vulnerable to another outburst of antisemitic violence. And this has been true. Israel, for example, was Soviet Jewry's great defender (along with America and Diaspora Jewry) and the place to escape to. Only a very strong Israel, Jews believe, can prevent another Holocaust. Second, Jews believe that Arabs and other Muslims want to do to Israel and its Jewish inhabitants what the Nazis did to the Jews. And given the Palestinians' desire to destroy Israel, the Iranian regime's repeated calls for the annihilation of Israel, and the number of Muslims who chant, "Death to Israel," this fear is entirely warranted.
Fear of being persecuted and even murdered solely for being a Jew resides in just about every Jew's psyche. It helps to explain Jews' preoccupation with Israel; Jews' preoccupation with teaching the world about the Holocaust; Jews' fear of Christianity -- most Jews are taught about European Christian antisemitism at a very young age and link Christianity to the Holocaust; and even Jews' near-religious commitment to liberalism, which most Jews see as the best guarantor against antisemitism. An increasing number of Jews are rethinking the latter two conclusions as a result of Christian treatment of Jews in America and Christian support for Israel and because of the lack of such support on the Left. But whatever one's position on these matters, the fact remains that fear of pogroms, torture, expulsions and mass murder shapes most Jews' psyches and politics.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
There is some shaky logic in this article, and this is among the shakiest.
The photo shows why Dennis Prager's involved explanation is really superfluous. A generation after the Holocaust there are people yes, who still want to erase Jews completely from the earth.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Let's hope so.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
bump
Some Jews assimilated to avoid persecution.
I am not as knowledgeable about other parts of the world, but in Spain when Ferdinand and Isabela (around 1492) finally drove the Moors out of Spain, they insisted the Jews had to convert to Catholicism or also be expelled from the country. Both Moors and Jews left in large quantities which seriously hampered Spains intellectual development. Jews who stayed were labeled Conversos and not trusted. This was the time of the Spanish Inquisition, when large numbers of "heretics" were tried and burned at the stake.
On this day, I feel you are incorrect. Jews are the ultimate pc people. It is easy to be pc when nobody is trying to nuke you, as in white America in general. It is another matter, as in the Jews who know that islam wants to nuke them, yet the majority seem unable to formulate a correct response, so they go pc. This not facing reality will indeed lay the foundation for another situation that I think we all would rather not see happen to the Jewish people. If Jews are targeted again, they can really thank their leftist American brethern. Thats how I see it.
Sampson option. There won't be much left of the mideast.
Some people ask "If Christianity were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" I wonder: if Judaism had been a crime in the sense that one got a trial for it, how many victims of the Holocaust could have been convicted? To name one, Anne Frank could not, at least on the evidence of her diary.
bttt
"Let's try this --> And that's why I expect any Israeli preemptive strike to be spectacular, massive, and deadly."
I'm hoping for that too. Israel should take the attitude of,"We'll get them before they can get us".
"but in Spain when Ferdinand and Isabela (around 1492) finally drove the Moors out of Spain, they insisted the Jews had to convert to Catholicism or also be expelled from the country."
Later, in Portugal, it was convert or die.
I understand the feeling (I grew up in Brooklyn), but I don't believe it.
The Jews of Israel are in mortal danger. Gathering millions of Jews together in a small space, surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, with technology capable of killing most of them in minutes abroad in the world is amazingly risky.
Whaat stands in the way of another Holocaust is the existence of the United States and the relocation of a large fraction of the surviving Ashkenazi population to it.
Making aliyah is admirable from a faith perspective, but it's also a little nutty.
And, BTW, many people I knew in Brooklyn were always looking for the next Hitler in Nixon, or Ford, or Reagan. A lot of them, I gather, are still spinning the gragger at the mention of Bush and Cheney.
Talk about stuck on stupid!
> Only Israel stands in the way of another Holocaust, which is why the vast majority of Jews identify with and are so protective of the Jewish State.
I question this statement. It seems to me that a large percentage of American Jews vote for people who want to destroy Israel (or at least turn the other way while others destroy Israel). I have not figured out why this is so.
I used to think they were primarily communists since a large percentage of them came from Russia, but most of those came here before communism was established (the number of German Jews who came here -- or were allowed to come here -- is small compared to the number of Russian Jews). Now I think their religion is "liberal" rather than Jewish. I just don't know why. Many of my relatives are east coast Jews and I just don't understand them.
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