Scapegoating of Jews back in vogue again

Less than 70 years ago, a madman named Adolf Hitler set out to convince the world that people with any amount of Jewish blood posed a threat to the human race and had to be exterminated for the sake of all mankind. His twisted vision set into motion a chain of events that even today leaves us breathless in consideration of its viciousness and scope. On Nov. 9, we commemorated the first of these pre-World War II pogroms, Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of the end for European Jews.

Last week, a survey released by the European Union reported that EU residents view Israel, a tiny Middle Eastern nation comprising 5.4 million Jews -- representing 0.00008 of the world's population --as the No. 1 threat to world peace. The United States, Israel's fellow democracy, whose sons and daughters are fighting despotism, terrorism and slavery across the globe, ranked as the No. 2 threat to peace.

What's wrong with this picture? I believe two elements are at work . One is the willingness -- no, delight -- in taking out one's own misery on a scapegoat. Are things tough in the Muslim world? Don't figure out how to make it better, just blame the Jews. Are the markets slipping in Western Europe? If we can convince ourselves that a handful of cheating, scheming Jews sit atop the world's financial structure, then perhaps our disappointments will become easier to bear. After World War II, the rallying cry throughout the world's Jewish community became: Never Again! Today, I am afraid that we are on the precipice of Again -- that ''anti-Israelism'' is the masked expression of age-old anti-Semitism.

Second, hatred and blame against Jews are raging through Muslim and Arab countries, its cheerleaders inevitably being those trying to deflect widespread anger and resentment against their own tyrannical regimes. And then come the liberal nations of Western Europe, whose citizens inexplicably cannot distinguish between legitimate political aspirations and the deliberate murder of children.

But I refuse to believe that Jews are alone in their battle for Israel's survival. As I write, I am in Germany (where the EU reports that 74 percent of those polled deem Israel the top threat to world peace), meeting with evangelical Christian leaders and grass-roots supporters of Israel. I have met with similar leaders and groups in other European countries including Holland (74 percent) and in Latin America. On each occasion, I've been greeted warmly by thousands of Christians, and my message on behalf of a besieged and terrorized Jewish state has engendered tremendous political and financial support.

This support comes in the form of public rallies defending the Jewish state and protesting anti-Semitism; visits to Israel at a time when most Jews are deferring their own travel plans, and the contribution of millions of dollars each year in humanitarian aid to Israeli children, elderly and victims of terror.

This positive and encouraging response jibes with the numbers produced by our own poll a year ago when Stand for Israel, a project of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, engaged the Tarrance Group to gauge support for Israel among subgroups of the U.S. population. Briefly, we learned that two-thirds of evangelical Christians supported Israel and its actions against Palestinian terrorism and that the majority of those Christians supported Israel because of our shared democratic values, not for theological or eschatological reasons. Whereas much of the world today entertains fantasies about Israeli aggression against innocents, these American Christians clearly recognize Israel as a freedom-loving partner, a nation allied with the United States in the war against worldwide terrorism, and as a safe haven for persecuted Jews from around the globe. In turn, Jews increasingly view evangelical Christians as vital and trustworthy allies in the battle for Jewish survival around the globe.

Am I terrified by the vicious, mindless spread of anti-Semitism, most significantly in countries that are completely without Jews? I am, indeed, frightened and also disappointed that so soon have we let go the lessons of our recent history. But I am nonetheless encouraged by the ties of friendship and trust we have created between Israel and the growing movement of evangelical Christians around the world, ties that did not exist 60 or 70 years ago -- or even 10 or 20 years ago -- but which form a solid base of support to which Israel gratefully clings at a time when it is treated as a pariah among the world of nations.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is president and CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

Most Catholics support Israel too, I believe. Israel's chief enemies are secular leftists, the folks who control our schools and universities.

Most American Catholics do support Israel. However, throughout much of the rest of the world Catholics are still anti-Semitic. I am almost afraid to post this because it's by Alan Dershowitz, who is most certainly leftist. OTOH, his defense of Israel is always eloquent and his enumeration of problems within the Catholic church is sadly accurate.

Read the editorial, which originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post back in July, carefully. It is not an indictment of Catholocism, but rather some elements within the church, especially one important cardinal.

Would-be pope crosses the line into anti-Semitism

Alan Dershowitz

When does anti-Zionism cross the line into anti-Semitism? That is a question roiling college and university campuses across the world.

Harvard's President Lawrence Summers helped to stimulate constructive debate about this issue when he urged students and professors to "vigorously" challenge Israeli policies with which they disagree, but he condemned as "anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent" calls to single out only Israel for such extreme sanctions as divestment and boycott.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman joined this debate by writing that "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest." I too have joined this debate in my new book, "The Case for Israel," in which I argue that "it is important to understand that although criticism of Israel is not by itself anti-Semitism, there are certain kinds of criticism of Israel that are clearly anti-Semitic, even if the word Jew is never mentioned.

"An obvious instance is Amiri Baraka claiming in his poem that Israel and Ariel Sharon knew about the attack on the World Trade Center before it happened and warned 4,000 Israelis to stay away. Can anyone doubt that this variation on the blood libel is anti-Semitic to the core?"

Now a new blood libel against the Jews has been issued by a cardinal of the Catholic Church who, according to Boston Grlobe reporter James Carroll, is "one of a small number of likely candidates to succeed Pope John Paul II."

Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Meridiaga, who is the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, has been telling anyone who is willing to listen that "the Jews" are to blame for the scandal surrounding the sexual misconduct of priests toward young parishioners!

The Jews? How did Rodriguez ever come up with this ridiculous idea? Here is his "logic." He begins by asserting that the Vatican is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. It follows, therefore, that "the Jews" had to get even with the Catholic Church, while at the same time deflecting attention away from Israeli injustices against the Palestinians.

The Jews managed to do this by arranging for the media -- which they, of course, control -- to give disproportionate attention to the Vatican sex scandal. Listen to Rodriguez's own words:

"It certainly makes me think that in a moment in which all the attention of the mass media was focused on the Middle East, all the many injustices done against the Palestinian people, the print media and the TV in the United States became obsessed with sexual scandals that happened 40 years ago, 30 years ago.

Why? I think it's also for these motives: What is the church that has received Yasser Arafat the most times and has most often confirmed the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state? What is the church that does not accept that Jerusalem should be the indivisible capital of the state of Israel, but that it should be the capital of the three great monotheistic religions?"

odriguez then goes on to compare the Jewish-controlled media with Hitler, because they are "protagonists of what I do not hesitate to define as a persecution against the Church." When asked whether he wanted to reconsider his attack, Rodriguez replied: "I don't repent. Sometimes it is necessary to shake things up."

The prime media culprit is The Boston Globe, which has won numerous journalistic awards for its exposure of the sex scandal and cover-up. The Globe is owned by The New York Times, which is controlled by the Sulzberger family. Hence the Jewish conspiracy.

The problem with this cockamamie theory is that the Jewish community of Boston was very close to, and admiring of, Cardinal Bernard Law, who presided over the archdiocese during the scandal. Law had built bridges between the Catholic and Jewish communities of Boston, and when the scandal was exposed by the very un-Jewish Boston Globe, the Jewish community remained largely supportive of Law.

None of the leading media critics, lawyers or politicians who railed against the church was Jewish. Most were Catholic. But that didn't matter to the bigoted cardinal, who along with other classic anti-Semites believes that if there is a problem "the Jews" must be to blame for it.

As Carroll, himself a Catholic, has characterized Rodriguez's "crackpot" mindset: "When the church has a problem --here is the oldest move of all -- blame the Jews." Nor is Rodriguez the only current cardinal afflicted with such bigotry.

Cardinal Joseph Glemp, the primate of Poland, has blamed the Jews for Polish communism, alcoholism and collaboration with Hitler. He also accused Jews of trying to kill nuns. Other high-ranking priests, especially in Central America and Poland, have leveled similar anti-Semitic accusations against the Jews and Israel.

These blood libels demonstrate that the Vatican still has a problem with anti-Semitism at the top levels of its hierarchy, even after Vatican II declared anti-Semitism to be "a sin." How can serial sinners like Cardinals Rodriguez and Glemp retain their statures as princes of the Church while continuing to preach blood libels against the Jews?

Would a cardinal who advocated gay marriage or abortion not be defrocked? Why not defrock those cardinals who themselves commit the sin of anti-Semitism? This age-old problem will not go away unless the Vatican takes action to enforce its parchment protest against anti-Semitism.

Are Cardinal Rodriguez and Cardinal Glemp unique in the church? Sadly, no.

I have not read that Cardinal's words, but I -suspect- his views are being misrepresented. Note that in all the quotes provided, he never mentions "The Jews".

Most of the sentiments that are attributed to him about "the Jews" are actually the sentiments that many Catholics feel about Marxists/Communists. I am agnostic, but I actually agree with them. Communism, with great reason, has always been an archnemesis of the Church, and vice versa. Communists have always stated that for their goals to be accomplished, the Church must be utterly discredited - this is heavily documented in their own words. I very strongly agree that they have attempted to infiltrate that Church, that the sex scandal was deliberately created or at least manipulated to do maximum damage, that they also do side with the Palestinians, etc. etc. It seems to me very likely that it is -this- group that he is challenging.

If you read the actual quotes, they could certainly come out of an essay that was addressing it from that point of view.

The question then becomes - how can Communism be related to Judaism? Well, as a religion, Judaism really can't. Communism is as opposed to the Jewish -religion- as it is to Catholicism, because Communism as an ideology overrides all religion. The link some -do- make is between Communism and the -secular- Jews. There are enough facts around that make this not an entirely ridiculous position - five of the original nine members of the Soviet Politburo were secular Jews, for example. That that movement may have had organized support from a secular Jewish community, while requiring a bit of a tin foil hat, is not the same as RACIAL anti-Semitism.

I think the way many people interpret it is that a segment of Jews developed a deep hatred toward the religious aspect of their history as a result of so many centuries of being persecuted. That segment of the Jews embraced communism as a secular philosophy capable of wiping out religion, which along with family represent the only threats both to Extreme Secularism and to Communism itself (since the perfect Worker cannot have any allegiance higher than the State).

I think most people who hold this view are hardly anti-Semitic - in fact, you will find that they often -support- Israel. Sometimes they don't. It depends on who they think is running things in Israel. It's not a matter of "The Jews" being in charge that bothers them though - it's a matter of WHICH Jews. If it's the religious, orthodox Jews, they don't just not have a problem with them, they actively support them. If it's the ultra-secularist Marxist Jews, yes, they have a big problem with them. It's more a problem with the philosophy of a subsection of those who self-describe as Jews than the race.

When Mel Gibson said that he felt the Secular Jews were attacking the Catholic Church, everyone jumped on the second part of that sentence as if the "secular" aspect was not any kind of a modifier. Of course it modifies it. It actually makes it non-racist. You can't say THE Jews like it means all Jews when you're only talking about non-religious Jews allied with Marxism. It's hardly a racist statement - it has more to do with the political orientation of the people they're attacking than their race.

Communists know how this can be twisted though, so they prefer to self-identify as Jews (and Christians for that matter) because it gives them the two-fer of being able to cause all kinds of damage to the Church while simultaneously letting all the blame for that mischief fall on their targets. It's always about infiltration with them.

Do I agree with this interpretation? Well, I'm an anti-secularist agnostic. I agree insofar as I despise all secularism/communism, I don't care what race or creed they originate from. I agree that secularists who self-identify as Jews are highly overrepresented in Marxist circles (just as they are overrepresented at high levels in comparison to their numbers in the population in many other ways - that's a measure of success as a culture though, no more suspicious of a "conspiracy" than asian-americans who do well in academics)

Do I think it's particularly wise to differentiate between secular Jews and secularists in general? Yeah. But if they're being racist, it's not criminally so. Any Jew who doesn't subscribe to the Marxist/ultra-Secularist philosophy is not just not an enemy, they're an ally. It's far more about philosophy than race.

Is this Cardinal anti-Semitic? Perhaps, but I doubt to the extent that that article tries to make him out to be. He may have drawn links between secular Jews and Marxism/Communism, which if you analyze the history is actually very difficult to disprove. The Cardinal may well have gone on to make many complaints about Marxists that, with the aid of the previous link, led this reviewer to make every word that he uttered be one about "The Jews", ignoring any distinction made between Orthodox Jews and Secular Jews.

Sorry I went on so long, but the point is, don't take this guy's interpretation at it's word. I suspect there was a fair amount of misrepresentation, and when you're opposing Marxism and Communism, you can BET that your words will be twisted to divert all criticism away from the intended target. Depending on what the guy actually said, his main mistake may have just been to make it easy for such a misrepresentation to be made, but if that were true, then I think the "money quotes" of that hit piece on him would have included the word "Jew" at least once.

Qwinn

I'm as anti-Dershowitz as they come, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. It is all too true that American Catholics stand almost alone in the Church in supporting Israel (and it's mostly the laypeople rather than the religious, I think).

The thing is, these liberal newspapers that these kookie cardinals think are doing the Jews' bidding in attacking the Church are the very ones that attack Israel and support the PLO. What kind of crackpot thinks support of a "palestinian state" and receiving the homosexual Communist Yasser Arafat is "conservative?" Has Charley Reese been made a cardinal recently?

However, once again I must point out Dershowitz's own hypocrisy in this paragraph:

First, liberal clergy who support these things are not being defrocked and probably would not be, as Dershowitz very well knows. Secondly, he himself would probably scream bloody murder if sinful clergy were defrocked. By denying the sinfulness of anything other than anti-Semitism, Dershowitz's hypocrisy once again serves to discredit the Jewish and Zionist cause. He's a flippin' idiot whose ideas are as mutually contradictory as are those of Pat Buchanan or Joe Sobran.

Are Cardinal Rodriguez and Cardinal Glemp unique in the church? Sadly, no.

Unfortunately, that is true. Americans tend to assume people in other countries are like them, but Catholics in other countries are a very different animal from American Catholics. And I don't mean to endorse "Amchurch" liberalism, either!

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