Points to Ponder Number 31 23rd February, 2015
Is it possible that Jews are so hated because they are unique? Unique in that despite all that has befallen them over three and a half thousand years of expulsion, persecution and genocide, the Jewish people have persevered and are returning from the four corners of the earth to the land of their forefathers, reading from the same Torah, practicing the same religion and speaking the same almost forgotten language?
Could it be that this enigma, and the resultant fear of the inexplicable and somewhat mysterious, is one of the causes of anti-Semitism? Or is it that : “It was Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world … and willingly or not … the Jew carries the burden of God in history and for this has never been forgiven“. (Reverend Edward Flannery, “The Anguish of the Jews”)
Many of the people I have guided over the years are puzzled by the fact that the words “Israeli” and “Jewish” are not interchangeable. Every citizen of Israel is an Israeli, whether Jewish, Moslem or Christian and twenty percent of the population of Israel is not Jewish.
“Who, and what, is a Jew?” is much more difficult to define. According to the Halacha (Talmudic law), for the last two thousand years at least, a Jew is anyone born to a Jewish mother although Nazi doctrine defined a Jew as one who had one Jewish grand-parent even if the next generation had assimilated or even converted.
DNA seems to confirm that most Jews throughout the world, the Jewish people, are indeed descended from our matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, contrary to the Moslem belief that we are descended from pigs and apes.
This people-hood has nothing to do with race as we have Jews who are blond and light skinned, brunette and olive-skinned, dark and black-skinned, some with large noses, some with petite noses. Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, there are none with horns.
Being Jewish is also being part of a religion, one of the oldest in the world, if not the oldest, still following the laws and guidelines dictated to Moses over three thousand years ago, faithfully and accurately preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, and expounded in the Talmud.
Since the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948 and the ingathering of the exiles, Jews are once again a Nation. Jews are therefore uniquely a people, a religion and a nation. Has the fear of this inexplicable and somewhat mysterious quirk of history given rise to hatred and with it the need to invent more tangible reasons for that hatred?
Among them: Jews are capitalists but at the same time they are socialists; they are Communists but at the same time they are fascists; they never had a Temple in Jerusalem although the New Testament, the Koran and archaeological excavations say they did; the Holocaust is a Jewish invention (Mahmoud Abbas, PA president) which never happened or the number of Jewish deaths during the Holocaust is exaggerated or the Israelis are behaving the way the Nazis did during the Holocaust which never happened. You can take your pick but be sure to ignore all the evidence to the contrary.
The claim that a Jewish/Israeli conspiracy controls/manipulates/influences the international media, the banks and worldwide finances, democratic governments, Hollywood and now even in the Moslem conflicts between Sunni and Shiite, ISIS and el Qaida has been repeated so often (Nazi propaganda style) that even thinking people say to themselves: “where there’s smoke there must be a fire”.
Really! Fourteen million Jews, 0.22% of the world population can do all that? Of whom about six million are in Israel.
These ludicrous claims rationalize the fact that Jews throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the UK, and lately even in the US and Canada, can be sworn at, attacked and slaughtered at a Jewish-Kosher supermarket, at a synagogue, at a community center or simply walking in the street. They justify the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, the vandalism of synagogues, the spray painting of Jewish homes and defacing of the dormitories of Jewish students at universities and colleges.
And incredibly, these preposterous claims are used to validate the demonization and deligitimisation of the State of Israel.
Any thinking person cannot but ask himself: Is it perhaps the conspiracy of 1.8 billion Moslems (25% of the world population of 7.2 billion) which has bullied, coerced and terrorized the world to try to accomplish now what the Germans and an acquiescent Europe failed to do during WWII and the combined Arab armies failed to do in 1948, in 1967 and in 1973. To put it bluntly – the eradication of all Jews.
Contrary to common belief Jews are not a homogenous group as Ben Shapiro makes clear in his short clip tackling another question many puzzled people I have guided over the years have asked: why do American Jews vote for the anti-Israel Left?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5IqH7oJ9h4&feature=youtu.be
For my article on “Why the Jews?” by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, and other articles on the same subject, please follow the link to
http://www.ratzer-holyland.com/articles/ant-semitism-why-the-jews/
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Further to my previous Points to Ponder, one of my readers drew my attention to the fact that very few Americans are aware of the fact that over two hundred years ago the United States had declared war on Islam and Thomas Jefferson led the charge! Follow the link to learn more.
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/j/Jefferson-vs-Muslims.htm#.VOtuoFL9nIU
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