Jews: Canaries in the coal mine? Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on prophetic nature of anti-Semitic violence

In both the World War II and the current global war on terror, the attacks on the Jews were precursors to broader attacks that were in the planning stages on a truly massive scale.

Hitler was oppressing Jews back in 1933. But the world was pretty accustomed to anti-Semitism, wasn't all that outraged by it, and so, amid all the signs that this guy was a monster, decided to give Hitler a pass. Hitler took advantage of the time allotted him, built up his army, and ended up killing millions of Russians, British and Americans ... in addition to half the world's Jews.

It is clear that the same thing has now transpired with global, Islamic terrorism. When Arab terrorists first started killing Israeli schoolchildren back in the 60's and 70's, the world turned a blind eye and dismissed it as a regional conflict. Dead Jews were not big news. The world, which had already absorbed the idea of 6 million more dead Jews, didn't take terrorism seriously. The reaction of the world community was to view the Arab attacks as legitimate skirmishes with Israelis – an outrageous notion, to be sure, given the fact that the Arabs were directly targeting civilians and non-combatants.

A truly outrageous case in point was the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games of 1972. So casually was this tragedy taken that, amazingly, the games continued the very next day. Unbelievably, the German government released the three captured hijackers a few weeks later, and they promptly returned to a hero's welcome. One must seriously wonder what would have happened had the dead athletes been American, German or British. Would their deaths have been treated so cavalierly? Would these governments have allowed the games to continue before the victims were even buried?

The legacy of the Munich Olympics was not even one of sympathy for Israel, but of a heightened awareness of the Palestinian cause. In this respect, the Munich massacre was a watershed in the history of terror because it taught the terrorists that they actually further their cause – with publicity and public sympathy – by killing innocent civilians.

The same was true of the horrific murder of wheelchair-bound passenger Leon Klinghoffer aboard the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1983. Here, the world barely reacted to a truly gruesome murder involving an invalid being shot in his wheelchair in front of his wife, and then pushed overboard into the ocean. Shockingly, the Italian government later released the terrorists who perpetrated this unspeakable crime. And through all this, the world largely remained silent.

That is, until the terrorists stopped killing only Jews and began killing people on the streets of New York, Bali, Madrid and Moscow. Now everyone recognizes that terrorism is an evil that threatens the entire world, not just Jews.

I do not believe Jews are more intelligent than other people. Less so do I believe Jews possess any physical superiority over any other nation. I do, however, believe Jews are God's chosen people, responsible for imparting to the world the message of God's law. It is therefore no coincidence that those who hate God hate the Jews as well. In this respect, the Jews have served as an almost infallible early-warning system, alerting the world's leaders to the next great evil that will stalk the earth. If the world would just learn to be sensitive to Jewish life, it would save its own behind as well.

Even if we ignore the idea of the Jews as the chosen people, the fact is the Jews have, unfortunately, served as an effective early-warning system precisely because thugs, bullies and murderers usually attack the most vulnerable targets first. People who crave unbridled power always start with the weak. Jews have been easy targets. They are a tiny nation whose refusal to adopt the religious mores of their neighbors have branded them as outsiders. They have therefore been attacked and scapegoated by evil regimes throughout the generations, and had the world simply looked at who was picking on the Jews, they might have easily identified the next great threat to their own security.

The Cold War is another modern case in point. The Soviet Union presented the Western powers with the possibility of a war of annihilation through nuclear holocaust. We are fortunate that the Soviet Union today is no more. But again, the world could easily have been alerted to the danger posed by Stalin had it simply studied how he treated the Jews. For Stalin had a plan – not completely dissimilar to Hitler's – to exile and then exterminate his Jews. So, while so many leading Western intellectuals were enthralled with Stalin, praising him as a visionary socialist leader, all that had to be done was to study his treatment of the Jews to discern his true nature.

America today faces the growing evil of Islamic terrorism. But it is an evil that could have been averted. Successive American presidents bear responsibility for not responding to terrorist attacks on Jews.

Jimmy Carter, who still to this day remains one of Israel's biggest critics, viewed Israel as the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East. He didn't see the rise of Islamic fundamentalism coming in Iran or act effectively.

Ronald Reagan, for all his considerable achievements as president, especially his victory in the Cold War, didn't get it either. When 250 American Marines were killed in a dastardly terror attack in Lebanon in 1983, he withdrew the troops, thus giving the terrorists a substantial victory. They learned that America could be cowed.

Reagan also sold AIWAC radar aircraft to Saudi Arabia, even as that country poured out incessant bile against Israel and promised its destruction. But Reagan's biggest blunder with regard to Islamic terrorists was thinking he could gain the release of hostages by selling the terrorists arms. And with regard to Saddam Hussein, the Reagan administration went so far as to vote to condemn Israel after it attacked the Osirak reactor. Again, had the United States studied Saddam's hatred of Israel, it could have easily served as a warning of the danger he posed to his entire region and the world.

President Bush Sr. also didn't get it with regard to Saudi Arabia, the nation that supplied the 13 men who perpetrated the greatest civilian massacre against America in its history. He became too friendly to a regime that positively loathed the only democracy in the Middle East, simply because it was Jewish. That kind of anti-Semitism should never have been rewarded with a presidential friendship.

But for me, it is especially Bill Clinton who will forever be remembered as the president who blew it in the war on terror. He treated Israel and Yassir Arafat as if they shared a moral equivalence and invited Arafat to the White House more than any other world leader – a truly nauseating fact and one that rewarded terror against Jews in particular. Not many years later, the Palestinians – represented by Arafat – would be dancing in the streets as Americans were jumping from 110-story buildings.

Clinton also ran from Somalia and lobbed a couple of missiles in the direction of al-Qaida after the bombings of our African embassies and the USS Cole, all of which contributed to a culture of not seeing terror for the danger it was. (Republicans in Congress only made matters worse by opposing even Clinton's tepid response).

Obviously, at this point, we don't need Jews as the canaries in the coal mine. We've been attacked ourselves, and more and more nations understand the evils of terror. Jewish life is being valued again. Suicide bombings in Israel are being deplored for what they are – wholesale slaughter, not the natural outcome of an "occupation." The beheadings of Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg are recognized as barbaric crimes against humanity. The tragedy is that if the world had valued Jewish life more all along, it would have faced terrorism more forthrightly and we wouldn't be in this horrible situation today.

I never heard of this fellow (Boteach) until he started writing a bunch of hateful stuff against Mel Gibson, The Passion and the Christian Gospels. A lot bile in those anti-Passion columns. Pretty disgusting. The implicit subtext is that Christians should not depict their faith on film, because it is an obnoxiouis and deceitful faith. Consequently, I'm not reading anything else by "Bo" (just as I wouldn't read anybody who wrote such smears against Judaism; anti-Christian rants and anti-Semitism are both wrong, in my book).

The big five losers from 'The Passion', SHMULEY BOTEACH Jerrusalem Post Mar. 10, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rather than being a wild triumph for Christianity, The Passion of the Christ has created a long list of losers. Here are the top five: 1. Christian conservatives whose ability to protest violence in Hollywood films has now been severely compromised. The Christian community in the US earned my abiding respect for serving as the foremost guardians of the morality of the American nation. There are literally hundreds of Christian organizations in the US devoted to enforcing standards of decency in Hollywood, strengthening marriage, and teaching young teens to abstain from sex rather than use a condom. But the Christian community's enthusiasm for The Passion has dealt a catastrophic blow to its credibility in condemning violence in films and squalid video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Gibson's movie is one of the most brutal and bloody in the history of film and rivals The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for sheer gore. No doubt my Christian brethren would argue that the violence in The Passion is warranted, given the fact that the subject matter is religiously inspiring. But I predict that Hollywood directors famous for gratuitous violence, such as Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone, will now find convincing arguments that violence in their films also serves an important social purpose. 2. Mel Gibson, who emerges as a talented fanatic at best and a full-blown loon at worst. Yes, I know, every commentator has painted Mel as the big winner in this brouhaha since his Aramaic movie defied all expectations and so far earned him a cool $200 million. But money is not everything, and Mel must now contend with his new reputation as a violence-obsessed religious fanatic who said that all Protestants, including his own wife, are destined for hell, who claimed that the Holy Ghost helped him direct his film, and who has a Holocaust-denying anti-Semitic dad to boot. Mel's violent streak has also been much in evidence. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes, "If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines 'on a stick' and he wants to kill your dog – such was his fatwa against me in September – not only is there nothing personal about it but it's an act of love." When the hoopla is over and Mel is searching for a new project, he'll be hard-pressed to find another controversial biblical story that guarantees controversy and profit. After all, you really can't much improve on the charge that the Jews killed God. 3. Jewish conservatives, many of whom now feel alienated from their Christian colleagues and are wondering who are their authentic allies. The Passion has forced upon politically conservative Jews like myself a horrible choice: either betray Jewish interests by pretending that a movie making the charge of deicide is no big deal and playing sycophant to the much larger Christian market by praising the film – a choice all too many high-profile Jewish conservatives have made; or be told that you are endangering Israel by undermining Christian support for the Jewish state. But I reject the choice between the interests of the Jewish people versus the interests of the Jewish state. Any Christian friend whose support can so quickly evaporate when we object to being falsely portrayed as god-killers in a movie is hardly an ally. PASSIONATE ADMIRERS of the Christian community, like myself, now feel distant from and disillusioned by our Christian counterparts. Where is Christian sensitivity to an allegation that has led to the death of millions of Jews throughout the ages? I have been attacked by Franklin Graham on US television for opposing this film. His father Billy, one of America's finest sons and its foremost evangelist, has – for all his greatness – labeled Jews "devilish" in a secretly taped conversation with Richard Nixon. If such an educated man can develop a negative view of Jews based on the gospel's depiction of Jewish culpability for the death of Christ, what conclusions will the less educated draw as they are shocked by the bloody images of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus? 4. Jews for Jesus. I have thrice debated leading Jewish-Christian missionary Dr. Michael Brown on the messiahship and death of Jesus. People like my friend Mike must now defend a deeply anti-Semitic film that portrays his own people as devilish murderers who crucified the Creator, thus giving the lie to Jewish-Christian's central argument that believing in Jesus is not a betrayal of the Jewish people. 5. The Christian faith. The biggest loser of all, tragically, is the Christian religion, which is now portrayed as a religion of blood, gore, and death rather than of blessing, love, and life. Judaism and its daughter religion, Christianity, were a radical departure from the pagan world's earlier cults of death. Both emphasized the idea of righteous action on this earth and both were based on the Hebrew scriptures' demand for moral excellence and the need to perfect the world in God's name. Even in the New Testament, the passion of Christ occupies at most a chapter or two in each of the gospels, while the life of Jesus is spelled out more than 10 times that number. But Mel Gibson, in his wearisome, monotonous, and numbing depiction of endless blood and gore, utterly ignores things like Jesus's beautiful ethical teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, focusing entirely on the horrors of the crucifixion. Gibson tells us that what made Jesus special was not that he lived righteously but that he died bloodily. Mel Gibson – who told interviewers that he contemplated suicide before making this film – is clearly obsessed with violence and death. The Passion is an evangelical tool. Is that really Christianity's central message – not that Jesus lived an inspirational life by which the faithful should be roused but that he died a horrible death for which the sinners should feel responsible? Indeed, the only winners emerging from The Passion are Islamic extremists who will no doubt take pleasure in seeing Jews and Christians squabbling at a time of considerable danger to both Israel and the United States. But rather than blame the Jews for simply defending themselves against Mel Gibson's attack, let's place the blame squarely where it belongs – on Mel Gibson, who could easily have made an inspirational movie about the life and death of Christ without blaming the Jews for Jesus's death and without mixing in enough blood to fill the Jordan River. Instead, he decided to protect his investment by courting controversy and has made hundreds of millions of dollars. Will he put some of that money toward educating Jews and Christians about their common heritage and kinship? Only time will tell. And in that telling, we will better be able to gauge Mel's motives and sincerity. The writer is a nationally syndicated talk radio host in the US and author of 14 books.

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