Editorial:  For many decades after World War II, Eastern Europe was completely Judenrein, a Nazi term meaning free of – actually rid of – Jews.  Small wonder, given that the region’s concentration camps and crematoria – Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Ravensbruck, et al.– had incinerated millions of Jews in the Nazi’s reign of terror.  But even in the utter absence of Jews, anti-Semitism flourished!

And let’s not forget that even after the Holocaust, this intractable hatred persisted – in France, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, the list goes on and on.  Even today, this age-old venom thrives and in many places has grown to monstrous proportions.  The same can be said of countless places on earth where no Jews have ever lived and no inhabitants of those places have ever met a Jew.

 When it comes to anti-Semitism, no first-hand experience is necessary.  All that is required is the need to vent an existential rage that seems to reside in the hearts and minds of those who desperately need a handy scapegoat for whatever pathology ails them – rationality, facts, logic and compassion be damned.  Jew hatred is a virus of unknown origin that has mutated over time into a contagious, malignant and incurable pathology, reaching its apotheosis during the Holocaust but still alive and pernicious as ever to this day.

Why is this?  Why, through millennia of worldwide crises and conflicts, has the microscopic population of Jews always been the bête-noire of public opinion?  Why, for instance, are the 1.3-billion Muslims who inhabit every continent in huge numbers so threatened by a mere 13-million Jews who live in small numbers primarily in tiny Israel and the United States?

Theories abound – this is the short list:
*  The Jews killed Christ (who even Jew-haters acknowledge was a Jewish rabbi), a canard removed from the canons of the Vatican (…not “guilty of deicide”) through the initiation of Pope John Paul XXIII in the early 1960s. But this fails to explain why so many millions of Christians are today among the most passionate friends and supporters of both Israel and the Jewish people.
*  The Jews “stole” the land of Israel from the so-called Palestinians, a “people” invented in the late 1960s by the terrorist Yasir Arafat. But this fails to explain the virulent Jew-hatred that existed in every century that preceded the twentieth.
*  The shame factor Jew haters feel that they are less resilient, less intelligent, less productive than their Semitic counterparts, and can’t explain why the vast number of Islamists – 20 percent of the world’s population – have won only seven Nobel Prizes, while the infinitesimal Jewish population – 0.02 percent – has won 129 Nobel Prizes. But this fails to explain the spectacular accomplishments of every ethnic group that has contributed to the betterment of mankind..
*  The refusal of Jews to worship any God but their own, the God that gave the world the Ten Commandments and a Code of Ethics that, to this day, all civilized nations subscribe to.
*  Both rage and envy at the notion, expressed in the Bible, that the Jews are God’s “Chosen People,” even though it fails to explain the competing claim of Muslims that Allah’s people are the chosen ones.

In her article, “Hating the Jews,” Kyle-Anne Shiver finds this last reason irresistibly compelling: “What if that tale spun in the Bible is actually true?” she asks.  “What if this one God, creator of all that is seen and all that is unseen, took it upon Himself, unbidden by humanity, to pick a people, call them His own, and then set about to reveal His own nature to them little by little, over centuries, through dire punishments and heavenly rewards and provident manna…what if these people this One God picked were the Jews?”

Shiver says what she loves about her Christian faith is that it gives her “the advantage of seeing through tangled webs of deceit, woven through many centuries and seemingly different ideologies.  My faith tells me simply that there is only one reasonable assumption on the matter of Jew hate.  It stems from God-hate…because as long as there is God, there will be Jew hatred.”

WHO HATES THE JEWS?

Among them are the many Jews who are also on the Jew-hatred bandwagon.  Without discussing self-loathing Jews like Noam Chomsky,  Norman Finkelstein, George Soros and legions of others, how to explain those other American, mostly liberal, Jews?

These are the appeasers of anti-Semites who believe – as Winston Churchill said about all appeasers – that “the crocodile will eat them last.”  While these Jews once supported Israel, their conversion from Judaism to their new religion of Liberalism – with its inflexible commitment to perceived victims – has made them look at Israel in the same negative way they look at America.

Strength is bad, these anti-establishment, anti-war leftovers from the ‘60s believe, as do older leftists.  If people suffer, it’s the fault of the establishment. If the establishment is attacked, the attackers are always right.  After all, it’s not “fair” that some people are stronger than others, even if the stronger people strive for democracy and their opponents strive for a draconian theocracy.

Having embraced not only multiculturalism and political correctness but also a perverse egalitarianism, it’s impossible for this ilk to make a value judgment about who is right or wrong, good or bad.  To them, people who seek to spread freedom and democracy and benefit the entire world by developing life-saving medicines and displaying unparalleled generosity are equal to those who strap shrapnel-laden belts on their children and burn the flags of foreign nations.  “Who are we to judge?” they bleat.

Of course, not all liberals are Jewish.  A worldwide media, comprised of non-Jews of every race, religion, and political affiliation from left to right, almost invariably militate – in their exquisitely non-objective way – against Israel, no matter the circumstances or history that compels the beleaguered state to defend itself.  Although the same media embraced the straggling remnants of the Holocaust when they landed, half dead, in the land of their ancestors and Israel became a state in 1948, their support was short-lived.

Indeed, the support from the Victims-R-Us media steadily diminished as Israel turned barren deserts into flourishing orchards, constructed gleaming cities featuring the world’s most dazzling universities and research, art and medical centers, and built a military capable of fending off – and defeating – the relentless aggression waged by Arabs in the wars of 1948-49, 1956,  1967, 1973-74, and 1982. And that is not to omit the two intifadas – in 1987-1993 and 2000 to the present – in which terrorists from Hamas and Hezbollah have sent multi-thousands of rockets and mortars into civilian centers, and also refined the art of suicide bombing.

SAME OLD – SAME OLD

In Israel’s latest defensive action against Hamas – after the terrorist group launched upwards of 10,000 rockets and mortars into Israel’s southern, civilian-populated towns and cities –  we see the same predictable scenario playing out on the world’s stage.

*  Once again, Israel accommodates her enemies by giving up land in the name of peace, as it did in 2005 by unilaterally withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and uprooting 8,000 of its residents.
*  Once again, instead of using the houses, physical-fitness facilities, fish farms, nurseries, orchards, and factories the Israelis left behind, the Arabs destroy them, showing the utter contempt they have for their own citizens.
*  Once again, instead of honoring their agreement to live in peace, the Arabs break their word and launch unprovoked acts of aggression.
*  Once again, Israel withstands years of terror before striking back.
*  Once again, Israel targets terrorist havens, underground tunnels used for smuggling deadly weapons, and military targets.
*  Once again, the craven cowards who run the terrorist organization hide among their women, children, and hospitalized patients, guaranteeing that civilians – whose lives, to them, are meaningless and dispensable – will die.
*  Once again, the terrorists use their useful idiots in the media to capitalize on what Professor Alan Dershowitz has described as their immoral “dead baby strategy.”
*  Once again, the media invoke their “proportionality” mantra – not once about the 10,000 rockets that have targeted Israel, but relentlessly about Israel’s response.
*  Once again, the Islamic bloc and the other thugs that comprise the 47-member United Nations Security Council adopt a resolution that “condemns” Israel and accuses her of “aggression” but omits any mention of – surprise, surprise! – Hamas!
*  Once again, the worldwide media pretend to be “outraged” on behalf of the “victims,” having studiously ignored the real victims in Israel who have been under assault for years.
*  Once again, other “outraged” anti-Semites throughout the world join protest marches to rally against…who? Why Israel, of course, and the United States. But most of all against the Jews!

Make no mistake about it. The outrage, protests, U.N. resolutions and biased media coverage are not about the latest Israeli-Arab conflict. Rather, they are symptoms of the greatest pandemic of hatred the world has ever known – plain, old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

SELECTIVE “VICTIM” WORSHIP

As writer and author Victor Sharpe has noted, the media and the protestors “ignore horrors when Israel can’t be blamed.”

Where, he asks, was their outrage when Arab Islamist governments killed 400,000 people in Darfur and Sudan, and drove two-million from their homes?  When 75,000 Hindus and Buddhists died in the Sri Lanka war?  When nearly four-million people died in the war in the Republic of Congo?  And where was the outrage in the “Second Chechen war with up to 90,000 dead, the Islamic insurgency in the Philippines with 160,000 casualties, an ethnic conflict in Nagaland with the loss of 43,000 lives, the Turkish- Kurdish struggle with 37,000 dead and wounded and…the Islamic insurgency in Kashmir with another 60,000 lives lost?”

“Can you remember seeing street demonstrations or lurid pictures flashed across your TV screen?” Sharpe asks. “The answer is no because they are not Palestinians. As soon as Israel could no longer bear the Palestinian provocations and finally retaliated, the world strangely woke up and ended its deafening silence.”

Sharpe attributes “much of the world’s hypocrisy [and] pro-Palestinian bias” to the fact that “the world hated the stateless Jews and now hates the State of the Jews.”

WHITHER THIS HATRED?

Whether Jew haters learned their animus through mother’s milk, personal mentors, or religious teachings, they all believe that somehow – magically, even – their lives would be better if Jews were not among them – if Jews, in fact, were dead, and Israel wiped off the map.

According to Itamar Marcus and Barbara, Cook of PalestinianMediaWatch.org, “Hamas considers itself an Islamic supremacist movement” and its Charter dictates that Jews be exterminated. The Charter also states: "Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." Then there is the Hamas poster that says, “Kill a Jew, Go to Heaven.”

But the virulence of the Islamic agenda – toward Jews, Christians, the United States, Israel, and all of Western Civilization – is well-known to media people and others who continue to vilify only the Jews. Some try to hide their bias, but increasing numbers don’t, as evidenced by the savagely anti-Semitic slogans and chants that “protestors” displayed against Israel and on behalf of Hamas in suspiciously well-organized and well-financed demonstrations in Toronto, London, New York City, Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Germany, the list goes on. 

Of course, our politically correct culture dictates that anti-Semites talk in code:
*  The word “proportionality” is reserved solely for Jews when they are triumphing over their enemies.
*  The rationale about liking Israel but not liking Zionism is code for anti-Jewish feeling
*  The word “realist” that describes the “policies” of U.S. Cabinet appointees, presidential advisors, and foreign-policy “experts” in our State Department is code for preferring Arab oil to Israeli democracy.
*  The accusation that Israelis are racists is, without exception, the rant of anti-Semites who project their own rabid racism onto Jews.

JEW HATRED FOR DUMMIES

Make no mistake about it – we Jews are onto you Jew haters.

We see, with crystal-clear clarity, the media pretend to present “the news” but unable to conceal their anti-Semitism – their racism.

We hear DNA anti-Semites like the liberal racist Bill Moyers – on the taxpayer-funded Public Broadcasting System – say that the “Israeli violence” in Gaza is a consequence of "genetic encoding."

We witness the so-called diplomats at the U.N. extort multimillions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers every year to spread their anti-American, anti-Semitic agenda and to support third-world dictatorships that are, above all things, dedicated to annihilating the Jews.

We watch, with 20-20 vision, the choices of Cabinet members and advisors that our own American presidents have made and we invariably detect the rank odor of systemic Jew hatred.

And we know, as surely as night follows day, that the premier subject that obsesses the entire world is the Jews, Stupid!

Here’s a heads-up to all you Jew haters!  We Jews are here to stay.  The Bible has told us so, and to this date – 5.000 years later – it’s never been wrong!  Get used to it.  We’re not going away, your toxic racism notwithstanding!

Deal with it!

About the author:
Joan Swirsky (http://www.joanswirsky.com/) is a New York- based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.