The new anti-Semitism

Want to make yourself really, really unpopular if you’re a Jew? Try saying that the world is witnessing a terrifying firestorm of hatred directed at Israel and the Jewish people, in which the British and Europeans are deeply implicated.

Since it is now a given in many circles that Israel is a threat to the world equal to North Korea, and that Ariel Sharon is a cross between Martin Bormann and Hendrik Verwoerd, you will find yourself accused of using the Holocaust to avoid any criticism of Israel’s behaviour. Because, well, you know, you Jews always stick together and are mighty quick to deal that persecution card.

Anyone who holds that view may as well skip what follows. More objective and fair-minded souls, however, might be deeply alarmed to learn of the evidence provided at a recent conference on anti-Semitism and the media at the Vidal Sassoon Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem.

This was scarcely a gathering of the Ariel Sharon fan club. Among academics and journalists from Israel, Europe, Britain and America were several left-wingers and liberals who were deeply hostile to Israel’s Likud government, believed that the settlements should be dismantled, and were troubled by the behaviour of some of Israel’s military. ‘There’s no doubt that Israel is committing human-rights violations on the West Bank,’ said Professor Yehuda Bauer, the distinguished Holocaust expert.

But there was equally no doubt, from what he and others said, that anti-Zionism is now being used to cloak a terrifying nexus between genocidal Arab and Islamist hatred of the Jews and deep-seated European prejudices.

Anti-Semitism is protean, mutating over the centuries into new forms. Now it has changed again, into a shape which requires a new way of thinking and a new vocabulary. The new anti-Semitism does not discriminate against Jews as individuals on account of their race. Instead, it is centred on Israel, and the denial to the Jewish people alone of the right of self-determination.

This is nothing to do with the settlements or the West Bank. Indeed, the language being used exposes as a cruel delusion the common belief that the Middle East crisis would be solved by the creation of a Palestinian state.

The key motif is a kind of Holocaust inversion, with the Israelis being demonised as Nazis and the Palestinians being regarded as the new Jews. Israel and the Jews are being systematically delegitimised and dehumanised — a necessary prelude to their destruction — with both Islamists and the Western media using anti-Zionism as a fig-leaf for prejudices rooted in both mediaeval Christian and Nazi demonology.

This has produced an Orwellian situation in which hatred of the Jews now marches behind the Left’s banner of anti-racism and human rights, giving rise not merely to distortions, fabrications and slander about Israel in the media but also to mainstream articles discussing the malign power of the Jews over American and world policy.

The Jerusalem conference heard chilling presentations about a phenomenon barely discussed in Britain: the virulent Arab and Muslim hatred of the Jews. This goes far beyond even the desire to finish off Israel as a Jewish state. Anti-Jewish hatred plays a crucial role in the fanatical jihadism that now threatens all of us in the West, pouring out in television programmes, newspapers and religious sermons throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and amounting to a new warrant for genocide.

The dominant message is that Jewish power amounts to a conspiracy to destroy Islam and take over the whole world. Truly mad theories circulate on Islamist Internet sites which have now convinced untold numbers of Arabs and Muslims that the Jews were behind both 9/11 and the Columbia space-shuttle disaster. Egyptian television transmitted a 41-part series which presented the notorious Tsarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — which purported to be a Jewish plot to control the world — as the truth. (This has prompted some Arab intellectuals to condemn such propaganda as both untrue and a tactical error, but these dissidents remain a small minority.) Meanwhile, Saudi media and religious sermons incite the murder of Jews.

According to the Arabic scholar Professor Menachem Milsom, this Arab and Islamist propaganda persistently dehumanised Jews by representing them as apes and pigs. A preacher at the totemic Haram mosque in Mecca said the Jews were ‘evil offspring’, the ‘destroyers of God’s word’, ‘priest murderers’ and the ‘scum of the human race’. The mediaeval Christian blood libel — the claim that the Jews kill children and drink their blood — has surfaced time and again in prestigious Arab newspapers.

And Zionism was equated with Nazism; just as the Nazis believed in the superiority of the ‘Aryan’ race, so Zionists (sic) believed they were the chosen people, which justified their own military expansion. This equation was not confined to a marginal few. Abu Mazen, said Milsom, the Palestinian Authority intellectual who is being talked about as Yasser Arafat’s prime minister in a ‘reformed’ administration, wrote as much in his doctoral thesis — in which he also said that the Zionists gave the Nazis permission to treat the Jews as they wished so long as this guaranteed their immigration to Palestine.

These sick outpourings are not so much religious or even fundamentalist doctrines as rooted in a fanatical totalitarian ideology. As Professor Bauer observed, the driving aim is the Islamic dictatorship of the world. Realisation of this utopia necessitates the destruction of the foundation creeds of Western culture, Judaism and Christianity — and especially Israel, the supposed personification of Western global power-lust, which was planted as an incubus on Arab soil as a result of the Holocaust.

Holocaust denial is therefore central to Arab anti-Semitism, the prejudice which such historical falsehood has helped to forge a strategic alliance with Europe. For it absolves Europe of its guilt over the Jews, and replaces it with European guilt towards Arabs displaced as a result of the Holocaust.

Europe has waited for more than half a century for a way to blame the Jews for their own destruction. So instead of sounding the alarm over genocidal Islamist Jew-hatred, Europeans have eagerly embraced the Nazification of the Jews, a process which really got under way with Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982. This marked the beginning of the media’s systematic inversion of Israeli self-defence as aggression, along with double-standards and malicious fabrications, which have nothing to do with legitimate (and necessary) criticism of Israel and everything to do with delegitimising the Jewish state altogether in readiness for its dismantling.

So the conference heard about German accusations that Israel was using Nazi methods and (repeating a claim by Hamas) that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a Jewish conspiracy against Bill Clinton. It heard of the Nazification of Israel in Sweden, where there were charges that the Israelis were exterminating the Palestinians, that the media were controlled by Jewish interests to suppress criticism of Israel, and that influential Jewish lobby groups were ‘spraying journalists with poison’.

It heard that in France Jews were vilified and excluded from public debate if they challenged the lies being told about Israel. It was shown a devastating French film Décryptage (Decoding) — which has been playing to packed houses in Paris — about the obsessive malevolence towards Israel displayed by the French media. It was told about the way the British media described Israel’s ‘death squads’, ‘killing fields’ and ‘executioners’ while sanitising Palestinian human bombs as ‘gentle’, ‘religious’ and ‘kind’. It heard about the cartoon in the Italian newspaper La Stampa during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, depicting an Israeli tank pointing a gun at the baby Jesus who is saying, ‘Surely they are not going to kill me again.’

And of course there was Jenin, the so-called ‘massacre’ or ‘genocide’ reported as such by virtually the entire media, where in fact 52 Palestinians died, of whom more than half were terrorists, while Israel sustained (for it) the huge loss of 45 of its soldiers. This astonishing media distortion was conceded at the conference by the (extraordinarily brave) Palestinian politics professor Mohammad Dajani, who also observed that a distraught Palestinian public was — on this and other occasions — whipped up by biased and emotional Palestinian reporting which showed little concern for the truth. But the big lie of the Jenin massacre is now believed as fact, contributing to the belief that Israel is a criminal state.

Europeans have thus made themselves accomplices to an explicitly genocidal programme. But an even more striking feature is that, while the old anti-Semitism still festers away among neo-Nazis, the new anti-Semitism is a phenomenon of their sworn enemies on the political Left. So, as the Canadian law professor Irwin Cotler observed, we now have the mind-twisting situation where anti-Jewish hatred is harnessed to the cause of anti-racism and human rights, with Israel being compared to both Nazism and apartheid by those who define themselves against these ideologies. Such a travesty of the facts involves, of course, the implicit denial of the truth of those terrible regimes, quite apart from the prelude to annihilation created by such a lethal defamation of Israel. And even more counterintuitively, many Jews and Israelis on the Left also subscribe to this analysis — and even to the demonology of Israeli Nazism and apartheid — handing an effective weapon to those who dismiss the claim of a new anti-Semitism as Jewish paranoia or Islamophobia.

So what is the explanation for the Left’s position? Partly, it’s the old anti-imperialist and anti-West prejudice. Partly, it’s the view that only the powerless can be victims; so Third World people can never be murderers, and any self-defence by Western societies such as Israel must instead be aggression. Partly, it’s the post-modern destruction of objectivity and truth, which has ushered in the hegemony of lies. And partly, as the Left takes an axe to morality and self-restraint, it’s a golden opportunity to pulverise the very people who invented the damn rules in the first place.

A left-wing Polish journalist at the conference, Konstanty Gebert, got the real point. The Left, he said, could not face the fact that they had totally misconstrued the Middle East because this would undermine their whole philosophy. This was founded on the premise that reason could reconcile all differences; all that was needed in Israel was an enlightened government for reason to prevail. The evidence that we are facing a phenomenon which is not susceptible to reason would destroy that world view. It would also give credibility to the hated Sharon, whose demonisation is absolutely vital to the Left as a protection against the implosion of its whole ideological position.

So the evidence is being denied, and truth is being stood on its head. The result is the defamation of a people, the greater prospect of its destruction, and the disastrous failure of the populations of Britain and Europe to understand properly the threat that all free peoples now face.

Hello, dennisw.

Let me lay my cards on the table first: I am a believing, practicing and loyal Roman Catholic.

I also believe that the State of Israel is showing remarkable restraint toards the enemies that are trying to destroy it. I believe that the Palestinians have no legitimate grievances of any kind against either the State of Israel or against individual Jews. I believe that there should be no Palestinian state in the land of Israel.

But I take issue with the demonization of Christianity for two reasons: (1) it is grossly exaggerated and (2) it serves no tactical purpose.

The blood libel was invented as a slander against the Jews in ancient Egypt by the pagan priest Manetho before Christianity was ever heard of - and the blood libel exists nowhere in early Christian literature. It only became current in Europe after Europeans returned from the Crusades in the Middle East.

The Europe from which the Jews were driven was certainly not a Europe which still practiced Christianity as a daily faith - one-half of the voting population of 1930s Europe was affiliated with militant atheism of either the Communist, Syndicalist or Socialist variety.

Fascism was an openly pagan movement, with Mussolini calling for the restoration of the ancient Roman Empire and Hitler extolling the virtues of a nature religion reminiscent of the ancient Canaanites.

Did millions of Christians fail in their moral responsibilities toward their Jewish neighbors? Undoubtedly. My great uncle did not - he died at the Nazi camp in Gusen for hiding undesirables in his rectory.

But the fact today is clear: the vast majority of devout, practicing Christians support the State of Israel and the struggle of the Jewish people for self-determination.

Badmouthing Christians and Christianity serves absolutely no purpose.

I thank you.

What can I say but that in 1938 Europe was considered a Christian continent with a Jewish minority. The Middle East was considered Muslim turf (territory) with a minority of Christians and Jews. People took their religions more seriously back then. Religions permeated the social and cultural life more so than today. There wasn't TV, video games, computers etc. to clutter one's mind with images, distractions. Yes, the nazis were pagans and so were many (but far from all) of their followers.

The Europe of June 1945 found 60%-65% of European Jews killed or having fled. 60%-65% is my quick estimate based on numbers below. The 3 URLs below give Jewish population estimates. Percentage killed by Nazis in WW2.

http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/HolocaustAppendices.html

http://www.nizkor.org/qar-complete.cgi

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/36quest1.html#5

How many Jews were murdered in each country and what percentage of the pre-war Jewish population did they constitute?

Answer: (Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust)
Austria 50,000 -- 27.0%
Italy 7,680 -- 17.3%
Belgium 28,900 -- 44.0%
Latvia 71,500 -- 78.1%
Bohemia/Moravia 78,150 -- 66.1%
Lithuania 143,000 -- 85.1%
Bulgaria 0 -- 0.0%
Luxembourg 1,950 -- 55.7%
Denmark 60 -- 0.7%
Netherlands 100,000 -- 71.4%
Estonia 2,000 -- 44.4%
Norway 762 -- 44.8%
Finland 7 -- 0.3%
Poland 3,000,000 -- 90.9%
France 77,320 -- 22.1%
Romania 287,000 -- 47.1%
Germany 141,500 -- 25.0%
Slovakia 71,000 -- 79.8%
Greece 67,000 -- 86.6%
Soviet Union 1,100,000 -- 36.4%
Hungary 569,000 -- 69.0%
Yugoslavia 63,300 -- 81.2%

"Your post implies that you have an extremly immature worldview, don't know very much about history or the Catholic Church and that you have absolutely no courtesy or respect for others."

LOL, LOL... you'd better stop reading "revised" history and get your bible out.

LOVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Every one seems to forget God's little known promise to Israel...
"I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee;" Genesis 12:3

At one time, Egypt was the envy of the world! No nation could touch her for wealth, military power, agriculture or science. In architecture, Egypt had no rivals. She was the most powerful nation on earth. But Egypt made a fatal mistake. The slaves she used to build her empire belonged to someone else. And their rightful owner watched the Egyptians mistreat His people for 400 years...The rest of the story is in your bible, Pharoah, the plagues, the exodus...
Today, Egyptian tour guides can only boast about her glorious past. Egypt is now a backward nation, full of memories, relying on others for her aid. Egypt is STILL ISRAELS ENEMY!

Remember Rome? When mighty Rome ruled the world, the Jews were mistreated under her iron fist. Where is the Roman empire today? Throughout history, many empires sent forth their armies to capture Jerusalem. The Jews suffered under
each one...and EACH EMPIRE CRUMBLED!

In 1933, Catholic Germany, serving the Vatican, launched a 20th century inquisition, murdering 6 million Jews. Hitler said that the Jews were subhuman parasites that must be destroyed. Instead, GOD destoyed Hitler...and his dream! Israel's deadliest enemy is the Vatican. Israel will regret any agreements with Rome. God will destroy the Vatican just before the second coming of the Messiah. (Rev.18)
(Hitler worked closely with the Jesuits, see "Secret History of the Jesuits" by Paris.
God promised both Abraham and his grandson, Jacob: "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee." Genesis 12:3 and Genesis 27:29.
LOVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE!

At the beginning of World War I, the English boasted that the sun never set on the British empire. Now her empire is gone. London governs only a few isolated islands and small colonies. What happened?

Here's another example! God blessed England because of Queen Victoria 1819-1901. (She was a God-fearing ruler who read her Bible for guidance.) Great Britain grew in power until 1918. But because England forgot about God's little-known promise to Israel..."I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee:" Genesis 12:3.
God has now cursed England. She is finished as a major power...because she crossed the Jews!
That same curse is still in effect today.
Niger
Chad
Ethiopia
Nigeria
Upper Volta
Senegal
Mali
All these African nations have two things in common:
1. They ALL broke off diplomatic relationships with Israel.
2. They ALL suffered in the terrible famine and drought caused by the expanding Sahara desert.
During World War I, the British naval guns were running short of gunpowder. The situation was desparate. Sir William Churchhill, the first Lord of the Admiralty, contacted a brilliant Jewish chemist named Chaim Weizmann for help. Could he produce 30,000 tons of synthetic acetone so the British could manufacture cordite gunpowder? He did and became a national hero. When asked what he wanted for his services, he said "I want a national home for my people." His wish was granted. The Balfour Declaration, issued in Nov. 1917, was Britain's promise to the Jews of a homeland in Israel. The land of Israel, then Palestine, formerly belonging to Turkey, was placed under British control in 1923.
Here's where the trouble starts...

To find favor with the Arabs, British politicians divided Palestine, giving the Arabs the best land. ( The Fall and Rise of Israel, by Hull, pg.137). Jewish immigration was cut to a trickle and eventually stopped.
As Hitlers blood bath started in 1938, Jews begged the British for permission to enter Palestine. But their cries fell on deaf ears. They were turned back to Europe and ended up in Nazi ovens. (The Rise and Fall of Israel pg.198-200). When Israel became a nation on May 14, 1948, Great Britian ignored God's promise to Israel. She...
Opposed the Jewish State.
Backed the Arabs.
Disarmed the Jews.
Staffed the Transjordan Arab Legion with British officers.
Today England is in deep trouble.

Russia was the enemy of Israel...and look at the mess she's in today!
And in the future, the Bible says Russia will be destroyed when she moves against Israel. (Ezekiel 38, Magog-ancient name for Russia).
That will be World War III, a one day fire war. One-fourth of the world's population will die. (Revelation 6:8). Interesting note, Israel will survive this war.
God has always blessed the U.S. for not persecuting the Jews and for supporting Israel.
But now the whole picture has changed. America has armed Israel's enemies, and anti-semetism is on the rise. As a result, America, now deeply in debt, is becoming a mere puppet to the U.N. and the World Court. ALL BECAUSE OF OIL! The U.S. has put herself in jeopardy.

In the end times, Israel will play a vital role in Bible prophecy. Satan's man (The Beast) will arise out of Rome as the world leader. His ultimate goal will be to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. The Beast will order all armies of the world (U.N.) to converge on Israel to destroy her. This will be the Battle of Armageddon.
When all seems lost, Israel's Messiah will burst through the clouds and save her. He will destroy the invading armies(U.N.)...take over all governments...and Judge ALL nations that opposed Israel!
WHO IS ISRAEL'S MESSIAH?
Genesis 1:26 His pre-existence
Genesis 3:15 Born of the seed of a women
Genesis 12:3 Of the seed of Abraham
Genesis 49:10 From the trible of Judah
Isaiah 9:6-7 Heir to the throne of David
Micah 5:2 Born in Bethlehem
Daniel 9:25 At the appointed time
Isaiah 7:14 Born of a virgin
Psalm 2:7 Declared to be the Son of God
Deut. 18:15 Would be a prophet
Isaiah 53:3 Rejected by his own
Zechariah 9:9 He entered Jerusalem as a king riding on an ass
Zechariah 11:12 Sold for 30 pieces of silver
Psalm 35:11 Accused by false witnesses
Isaiah 53:7 Silent to accusations
Isaiah 50:6 Spat upon and smitten
Psalm 35:19 Hated without a cause
Isaiah 53:5 The sacrificial lamb
Isaish 53:12 Crucified with criminals
Zechariah 12:10 Pierced through hands, feet and side
Psalm 69:21 Given vinigar and gall
Psalm 22:18 Soldiers gambled for his coat
Psalm 34:20 No bones broken
Isaiah 53:9 Buried with the rich
Psalm 16:10; 49:15 Resurrected from the dead
Psalm 68:18 Ascended to right hand of God
Malachi 3:2-3 His coming glory
The ONLY person...past, present or future...who could fulfill all these prophecies is Jesus (Yeshua the Messiah).

The Messiah came to earth and shed his precious blood to take away the sin of the world. He arose from the dead and was seen by over 500 witnesses (I Cor.15:6).
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
"He came unto his own, and his own received him not." (John 1:11)

Are those enough "REFERENCES" for you???

It's your contention that Christians in the Europe of 1938 took their religion seriously.

I think two important historical phenomena disprove that: (1) the Holocaust, (2) the almost complete and utter dominance of openly anti-Christian and anticlerical Socialist and Communist parties in every major European country except Spain.

The fact that the largest cohort of Jews in Europe lived in Catholic Poland for centuries with minimal social friction, and then the fact that after barely three years of Nazi rule more than 3 million Polish Jews were murdered shows the difference.

Two groups were systematic targets of the Nazi persecution in Poland: first and foremost the Jewish people in general (men, women and children) and secondarily, the Catholic clergy.

If Christians were truly allies or architects of anti-Semitic persecution then one would expect the Polish clergy to have occupied a place of honor among the Nazi conquerors. Instead, they were almost eliminated. 7,000 of them were killed, including 1,500 at Auschwitz. About one-third of the Polish clergy were killed, about one-third were imprisoned and about one-third went into hiding.

I don't cite these stats as a comparison, since nothing can compare to the suffering of Polish Jewry - but as an illustration of the fact that Nazism had very little to do ideologically with Christianity.

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