I expect the anti-Semitism to be ratcheted up in our world. I've been expecting it for a long time. Much of the left is mentally ill, and anti-Semitism is part of that illness. No one on the left has done anything to combat the illness, so it has just gotten worse.
Really, I think much of this anti-Semitism comes from fear.
How?
Well, it is fear of confronting evil. When the rational world presents you with a great and powerful evil, the rational thing to do is to confront it, to fight against it, and to eliminate it. Confronting evil is something you are compelled to do if you live in the rational world.
If you are afraid to confront the evil - because it appears to be too powerful, or because you think there is too much to lose - then you must find a way of living with the evil, a way of explaining the evil, so that it is tolerable. In short, you must retreat into the irrational.
You must find someone else to blame for the evil which you would prefer to live with, rather than confront.
For whatever reason, the Jews have been the scapegoats of history. They have been blamed for Germany's failings, for the Great Depression, for the Black Plague, for the death of Jesus Christ, etc. etc. etc.
And, now they are being blamed for the problems in the Middle East.
Never mind that there is not a single country in the world with a large Muslim population, that does not have trouble with Muslim violence. Never mind that there is Muslim violence in Malaysia, East Timor, Indonesia, India, the Philipines, Somalia, the Sudan, Paraguay, the Balkans, Chechneya, China, all places that do not have an appreciable Jewish population.
Still the irrational among us - those who fear having to confront this evil - tell us that if we could just solve the Israel problem, then the Muslim beast would be tamed.
As we stand perched on the verge of World War III, do me a favor, do yourselves a favor, do the world a favor, and do God a favor, do not succumb to fear, do not succumb to the irrational, do not succumb to appeasing evil and sacrificing your hold on the good.
The history of anti-Jewish sentiment is a history of terrible, malevolent evil. It is the history of death and destruction. It is not a future history you would want to contribute to. It is not something you would want your name associated with. It is not the legacy you want for yourself, you family, or your nation.
Choices will be hard, and will become harder in the coming days. Confronting evil is frightening. We may not win. We may lose our lives, our loved ones, our civilization. But, to do nothing in the face of evil is to ensure that evil will win. Let us make the hard choices. Let us live in the rational world, and reinforce the rational world, so that it will have a chance of living on into the future. Let us fight to give our children a rational world to live in, a world which has been rid of the evils we must now confront.
2 comments:
That's a good point, DS. About the fear starting inside people. If we analyze that, maybe then we could figure out the real origen of anti-Semitism, and irrationality in general.
One fears the sacred (or its divine guarantor); one resents one's rival who one feels is closer to the sacred than oneself, or who is unduly appropriating what is at the sacred centre of attention. Thus, fear of the Jew is really fear of the sacred that is not recognized for what it is.
More often, antisemitism is resentment rather than fear. The root of antisemitism is that the Jews were the first to discover/create monotheism; and those who follow later monotheist revelations can't be sure they have anything better than the first guys have because the first guys often don't give up their faith to sign on to the later revelations.
Furthermore, the first guys can combine national particularity - God's chosen people, Israel - with religious particularity, while later nations must combine their national particularity with a universalizing revelation, e.g. English Christianity. This difference becomes a basis for rivalry.
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