By Sarah Pascal Belzer, Contributor / The American Rant
Judeophobia
“Jew-hating often serves as a form of scape-goating drug.”
— Richard Landes, Historian, Author, Professor, Boston University, Dept. of History
The history books teach us about a people who, wherever they go, thrive. They create. Science, technology, literature, industry and everything in-between. And the communities they live in thrive too. When Jews are thrown out of town—as soon as they unpack their bags (what's left of them) in a new land, they do it again. They are doers and makers and life seekers and God lovers. Less than one-half of one percent of the world’s population, yet the Jew’s contribution to humanity continues to be a tsunami of all things good.
We can agree that there exists in people the desire to have what our neighbor has, and that we sometimes even harbor a propensity to justify taking what our neighbor has. But like anything unearned, its lifespan is short-lived, because one cannot have what one has not earned. It is one of the laws of nature. And certainly, one cannot reproduce the thing they have stolen. And so, if we take from the haves and give to the have-nots – nobody has nothin’ for long.
Why is the world at-large so entrenched in a paradigm that allows it to so expertly cover its ears and eyes and ignore this global “death to the Jew” battle cry? Perhaps as long as the Jew exists, mankind is reminded of his nature. It can be a bitter pill to swallow. Better to make a scapegoat of the Jew, than to live with the memory of the atrocities perpetuated against this people since time immemorial.
Isn’t it time we question the people who want other people dead (and sometimes, in medieval fashion)?
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer,German Lutheran pastor, theologian, author, anti-Nazi dissident, concentration camp victim.
This obsession the world has with the Jew, this inability to let go of blaming the Jew, bullying the Jew, stalking the Jew, hating the Jew, wanting the Jew dead—is born from crimes imagined and a steadfast refusal to acknowledge the injustices exhibited upon the Jew. In other words, when we just can’t let go of something, chances are, it’s not what we imagine has been done to us, but our own actions we are unwilling to acknowledge. One doesn’t have to march in a parade, write an editorial, or tweet anti-sematic slurs to be guilty. Sitting quietly on the sidelines can be infraction enough to cause a level of cognitive dissonance to seed the guilt that ignites this death spiral.
What Gives?
“When we hear somebody say Kill the Jews, we have to realize they probably mean it.”
—Alvin Rosenfeld, PhD, Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti Semitism, Indiana.
When we look at communities with high Jewish populations, we’re certain to find things that resemble peace, low crime, high culture, philanthropy and freedom (choice, thought, religion, you name it). Imagine this world without the Jewish contribution. I’m not just talking great musicals or even the advancements in science and technology, but, and herein lies the rub, our humanity. Our core values. The foundation of our ethics, our law, our codes of conduct. Life’s rulebook. The makers, the givers, the upholders of the law—given to the world, by the Jew.
Ever roll up your windows or lock your car doors because you’re driving through a Jewish neighborhood? Ever hear of a Jewish “Day of Rage”, or a Jew say he wants to wipe an entire nation off the map, push a people into the ocean, cleanse a race, decapitate a non-believer? No.
Where can the Jew set up camp without the fear of persecution? Throughout the pages of the Bible, we can find no other land but Israel that has been given to a specific people—the Jews. Jerusalem alone is mentioned 669 times in the Torah (the Old Testament.) Zero in any other religious text. And though the Jews would gladly work to, and has worked to, co-exist with others. It is not a two-way street. Give Israel the Atom bomb, there is peace. Give Israel’s enemies the bomb, Israel is gone in a nano-second.
Though the Jews entered an arid, nearly inhospitable wasteland when they returned to their homeland, Israel, the world today will look at the lush and irrigated land, the thriving industry, the state-of-the art hospitals, the cutting-edge technology, the world’s best universities, the rich culture in the arts—music, literature, theatre… and say it was stolen from another people. Yet Israel as it is today was built by one people, the Jews. And it is surrounded by enemies who have perpetually attacked it and threatened to annihilate it. Israel is the Jewish nation’s last bastion of hope. The hope of living in peace, without fear of enslavement and extermination, as they have been in every other country they have attempted to live in.
Jews are lovers of all manner of freedom, of life and peace and law and western values, democracy, human rights, women’s rights, and religious tolerance, for starters. Israel is holding the fort in that fiery region, that sliver of land on the edge of a world surrounded by legions and legions of a people more in love with death than they are with life. Yet, where’s the global outcry?
The capacity for the mind to lie to itself is infinite.
“Since 1945 I was not as afraid as I am now”.
— Elie Weisel, PhD, Professor, Author, Nobel Laureate, Political Activist, Concentration Camp Survivor (Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald).
To know someone’s intentions, we need only look at their actions, not their reasoning for them. If we’re going to face reality square, we have to acknowledge that at the end of the day, people do what they want and then justify why they did it. The saint and the axe murderer both have dismal childhoods, but it is in their free will alone, driven by an innate goodness or evil, that drives their actions.
When we choose good, we take responsibility and hold ourselves accountable. When we choose evil, we take neither responsibility nor accountability. Too easily do we justify the crime, no matter how horrific. And more often than not, the axe murderer receives a healthy dose of compassion. We have to ask ourselves, is it really what happens to us, or is it what we do with what happens to us? When we hear someone rattle off ten reasons why they want to do something that defies reason, such as destroy a people and its nation, well then perhaps it’s time to stop listening and time to start asking questions, beginning with: What’s the right thing to do here? Otherwise, the waters get muddied. Bloodied.
Je Suis Charlie
“The evidence suggests that the Jews, while often the first victim, are rarely the last. What starts with the Jews does not end with them. Once the machinery of persecution of Jews gets set in motion, its manipulators readily move to other targets.”
— Richard Landes, Historian, Author, Professor, Boston University, Dept. of History
Like an infection run rampant, thick with media bias to perpetuate it, there seems no hazmat suit impenetrable. We see planes fly into buildings, reporters beheaded with dull kitchen knives, cartoonists shot, children kidnapped, girls raped—but the outcry we hear is flipped on its head. Against the victim, not the perpetrator. The world's hatred for the Jew is so deep that it has made itself tone deaf to better suffer the never-ending atrocities perpetrated against God's Chosen. Not even a thought to the aftermath and what that looks like. For now, the world incites through its soundbites and protest and winces, doubling down on an incurred guilt too deep to face and square.
Hat’s off to the French, who after twelve people were killed at the offices of a French satirical weekly newspaper, came up with the slogan: "Je suis Charlie" in support of freedom of speech. But more than this – it was a resistance to armed threats. In layman’s terms – these brave souls took a stand against religious fanatics who kill people violently with no cause, or perverted cause. The world community joined in. Music.
However stealth a cry, to the Jew it was more than an anti-terrorist cry, it was the long-overdue “I’ve got your back” chant.
When we hesitate to share a news story or voice our opinion or speak out against the terrorism we witness, are we being terrorized into silence? When will we be less afraid of the Jew, a misplaced emotion for our guilt and our shame—and more appropriately, afraid of the people with murder on their agenda? Raise your hand if your voice has been hushed because of that insidious fear that someone might show up on your doorstep or your child’s playground if you dare to speak your mind.
Third-Worlding of the Western World
“Anti Semitism is not solely an attack against the Jewish people, or the State of Israel. It’s an attack against human rights, democratic principles, basic notions of citizenship and human dignity – which is a threat to civilization as a whole.”
— Charles Small, PhD, Director for the Study of Global Anti Semitism and Policy
After the Jew—comes the rest of the world. We know this, don’t we. We need only look at history to get a glimpse into what’s next on the agenda. We’ve seen the economic and cultural downfall that follows the vacuum created by the persecution of the Jewish people, and we’ve seen (conversely) the economic and cultural upswing that follows them to new lands.
Has anyone done the math? How many people and how long does it take to infiltrate a country, terrorize its neighborhoods, bleed its social welfare resources dry, and bully its schools and corporations and government into submission—economically and culturally.
Ask Europe. Rome is burning.
Terms
Jew Hate, anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism, Judeophobia, anti-Semitism (See link here for more on these terms.)