The claim that Jews have been persecuted throughout history because down the ages they have been easy scapegoats is just about the most commonly heard explanation going, no doubt most of us first heard it from our history teachers when studying the rise of Nazis or similar. And most of us soon dismissed this view just as soon as we had read on enough to suspect that the matter is far more complex than that. Yet at the same time, whether we’ve found a more satisfactory explanation or not, isn’t it simply the case that the Jews always have been and always do get blamed? Indeed if we look at the international political scene in our own time the Jews really are still occupying that same blame position they always seem to have.
From being blamed for killing Christ to being accused of polluting the racial purity of European blood, or from being blamed for causing the black death by poisoning wells to being accused of inciting internal communism and revolution, or from being blamed for keeping the poor poor as money lenders to being accused of starting world wars and then specifically ensuring Germany lost them, or from being blamed for causing economic crisis through their control of the money markets to being accused of derogating wholesome Christian culture through their control of entertainment and mass media. The list is extensive as societies throughout history have rushed to blame the Jews for which ever particular crisis of the moment it happens to be. And this is still not yet a habit that the world has kicked.
In just the last few decades we have seen western politicians, journalists and academics accuse the Jews and their state (Israel) of antagonising and radicalising Islamic terrorism both world wide and in their own countries, the claim being that brutal Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people has fanned the flames of fundamentalist hate against the west. The latest strain of this particular trend of Jew blaming is being championed and lead by the American President who in recent weeks has essentially argued that it is Israel’s Jewish communities in its disputed territories that are pushing Iran to nuclear armament.
Most reasonable people don’t have much trouble dismissing the many illogical accusations historically made against Jews as outlined in the paragraph above, yet when it comes to Israeli settlements and Iranian nukes they seem to abandon logic just as rapidly as the blood libellers and Aryan racial theorists did before them. What after all do a few small Jewish villages on hilltops set in the heart of the Jewish peoples spiritual and historical homeland have to do with Iran needing nuclear weapons? Just what a false issue created by Israel’s opponents this is becomes clear when it’s considered that barely sixty thousand Jews live on the other side of Israel’s security fence, hardly enough to alter the demographic there, unlike the Palestinian Authorities insistence that several million Arabs must be transferred into the Jewish state before they think about making peace with it. And yet the American President insists that only once Israel has resolved its conflict, specifically by ethnically cleansing all Jews from those areas of the greatest importance to Israel historically, militarily and religiously, only then will Iran abandon its pursuit for nuclear weapons.
Such a claim barely holds little more logic than arguing that Jews should light fewer candles at Chanukah because they cause global warming.
And so given the record it’s probably only a matter of time before the Jews are blamed for the melting of the polar icecaps. But the scapegoating that is observable throughout history is actually the opposite of what it is usually presented as. That is to say usually the argument goes that people need someone to blame and the Jews are an easy target. However what is really the case is that people need to blame the Jews and so find something to pin on them, usually whatever they see as the worst and most serious problem of their times. And so if hatred of the Jews isn’t motivated by the mistaken belief that they are behind which ever particular calamity is closest at hand then the only conclusion can be that the Jews are not hated for what people arbitrarily decide they have done but for who they are on the most fundamental inescapable level, that is the values they stand for and the truths and the notions that they have brought to the world.
However my purpose here is not to carry out a detailed or indepth exploration of Judeophobia and its causes but rather to demonstrate that westerners are repeating the very same prejudices against the Jews that they always have done in the past, however much they claim this isn’t about Jews but about bringing in a new era of harmonious world peace; just as so many 19th century theorists believed that if only they could remove the deviant influence Jews were having over gentiles then a new glorious Christendom would blossom.
‘The horrifying threat of a nuclear Iran could be avoided if only Israel would back down a little’ becomes ‘All our problems would be over if the Jews were gone’.
From being blamed for killing Christ to being accused of polluting the racial purity of European blood, or from being blamed for causing the black death by poisoning wells to being accused of inciting internal communism and revolution, or from being blamed for keeping the poor poor as money lenders to being accused of starting world wars and then specifically ensuring Germany lost them, or from being blamed for causing economic crisis through their control of the money markets to being accused of derogating wholesome Christian culture through their control of entertainment and mass media. The list is extensive as societies throughout history have rushed to blame the Jews for which ever particular crisis of the moment it happens to be. And this is still not yet a habit that the world has kicked.
In just the last few decades we have seen western politicians, journalists and academics accuse the Jews and their state (Israel) of antagonising and radicalising Islamic terrorism both world wide and in their own countries, the claim being that brutal Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people has fanned the flames of fundamentalist hate against the west. The latest strain of this particular trend of Jew blaming is being championed and lead by the American President who in recent weeks has essentially argued that it is Israel’s Jewish communities in its disputed territories that are pushing Iran to nuclear armament.
Most reasonable people don’t have much trouble dismissing the many illogical accusations historically made against Jews as outlined in the paragraph above, yet when it comes to Israeli settlements and Iranian nukes they seem to abandon logic just as rapidly as the blood libellers and Aryan racial theorists did before them. What after all do a few small Jewish villages on hilltops set in the heart of the Jewish peoples spiritual and historical homeland have to do with Iran needing nuclear weapons? Just what a false issue created by Israel’s opponents this is becomes clear when it’s considered that barely sixty thousand Jews live on the other side of Israel’s security fence, hardly enough to alter the demographic there, unlike the Palestinian Authorities insistence that several million Arabs must be transferred into the Jewish state before they think about making peace with it. And yet the American President insists that only once Israel has resolved its conflict, specifically by ethnically cleansing all Jews from those areas of the greatest importance to Israel historically, militarily and religiously, only then will Iran abandon its pursuit for nuclear weapons.
Such a claim barely holds little more logic than arguing that Jews should light fewer candles at Chanukah because they cause global warming.
And so given the record it’s probably only a matter of time before the Jews are blamed for the melting of the polar icecaps. But the scapegoating that is observable throughout history is actually the opposite of what it is usually presented as. That is to say usually the argument goes that people need someone to blame and the Jews are an easy target. However what is really the case is that people need to blame the Jews and so find something to pin on them, usually whatever they see as the worst and most serious problem of their times. And so if hatred of the Jews isn’t motivated by the mistaken belief that they are behind which ever particular calamity is closest at hand then the only conclusion can be that the Jews are not hated for what people arbitrarily decide they have done but for who they are on the most fundamental inescapable level, that is the values they stand for and the truths and the notions that they have brought to the world.
However my purpose here is not to carry out a detailed or indepth exploration of Judeophobia and its causes but rather to demonstrate that westerners are repeating the very same prejudices against the Jews that they always have done in the past, however much they claim this isn’t about Jews but about bringing in a new era of harmonious world peace; just as so many 19th century theorists believed that if only they could remove the deviant influence Jews were having over gentiles then a new glorious Christendom would blossom.
‘The horrifying threat of a nuclear Iran could be avoided if only Israel would back down a little’ becomes ‘All our problems would be over if the Jews were gone’.
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