The Holy Land and anti-Semitism

Hard to square

The war between Israel and Hamas continues to roil the international community as Israel perpetuates its efforts to eradicate the terrorist movement while much of the global community showers Jerusalem with increasing condemnation over the dire conditions in Gaza. Humanitarian concerns highlight to lack of food, water, shelter, and healthcare as the conflict drags towards its seventh month since zhamas brutally attacked Israel on 7 October. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s war cabinet collapsed last week, ostensibly because two key members accused the Israeli leader of lacking a vision for war termination and governance of the post-conflict Palestinian Territories. Israelis continue clinging to the shreds of hope that hostage releases, as occurred earlier this month, can liberate those held by Hamas for the better part of a year.all in all, the status quo recent months persists with no evidence of change, except the danger of expanded conflict to involve the always fragile Lebanon to the north with its vast Hezbollah presence.

Tensions between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Biden remain high and rather public, hardly surprising since the former has done nothing to hide his strong preference for Biden’s opponents in 2024. the growing MAGA connection to Israel, built on Christian nationalists seeing anything going on in the Holy Land as the fulfillment of biblical tenets. Put another way, many Christian nationalists fear for Israel, the Holy Land, as part of the struggle leading to Armageddon and the Second Coming. Affinity for Netanyahu thus becomes a crucial given, as evidenced by his invitation to speak before Congress next month. It is hard to imagine too many other countries in June 2024 who would invite him to speak at their legislatures at the time of common reprimand for his policies—and some of his remaining cabinet member advocate for stronger measures against Palestinians.

All of this leads to asking why the United States has so many Christians worried about Israel’s future while anti-Semitism, the very rational for that state’s creation in 1948, is exploding here and across the globe?

The BLUF (bottom line up front for non-government readers) is that I don’t know for certain. I can offer a couple of thoughts but don’t pretend to explain it all. I most heavily welcome yours as well.

Anti-Semitism is as old as virtually any movement around the world. It has motivated attacks on Jews for millennia. Those attacks result in tragedy but they create other painful reactions as well. Jews were exiled from the Holy Land following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 Common Era, a major (but not exclusive) cause for the Diaspora, or dispersion of Jews around the world. Jews had already suffered under other local leaders as the Bible and Jewish history are replete with tales of mistreatment, such as Passover. The Second Temple itself is reminder of the prior temple destroyed more than 500 years earlier that led to an exile. Israel has been living evidence for almost eighty years that Jews, secular or observant, could thrive in a safe place without facing a never-ending itinerant life or threat of annihilation. This is why the 7 October attacks hit the core of the nation so hard, disproving this long-held assumption.

Jewish law made people live somewhat separately from others. In contemporary America, we forget the utter centrality that religion has played for most of history. Jews had a different Sabbath than Christians or Muslims; this set them apart. Jewish dietary restrictions, divorcing dairy from the allowed flesh of animals or fish among others, additionally highlighted the differences rather similarities among peoples. This became a central draw for anti-Semites aiming to subjugate all to a single vision of a society, if not the world.

Western European kingdoms one by one rejected Jews over the centuries, increasingly driving them to live in what we used to call Eastern Europe in the Pale of Settlement. Britain in 1290 and Spain in 1492 were only two proclamations of Jewish exclusion. Jews had served as vital links to other parts of the world during the Middle Ages but ultimately became too much of a threat to the dominant Catholic faith determined to control emerging nations as empires expanded and the Enlightenment challenged the prevailing dogma of life. The Low Countries provided a resting spot for many Jews towards the end of the Middle Ages until the massive Spanish-Hapsburg empire, spawned of Europe’s habit of dynastic marriage for state expansion, became too Catholic to accept the outsiders. Anti-Semitism reigned instead.

Worldwide tropes of Jews as being greedy money-lenders became one of the more common bases to anti-Semitism. Jews were bankers to countless rulers because the religious texts did not condemn the activity while other religions hypocritically denied the validity of the needed service to virtually every government needing wealth. Jews this became an easy target for those not sharing in the loans.

Jews also did not adopt the basic texts and associated values of other predominant religions around the world. This meant that Jews were often prone to question orthodoxy of whatever type existed in a society; the rise of Israel’s religious right today is disproving this tendency within the Jewish state, ironically. The willingness to question has historically inflicted doubts for non-Jews about many Jews’s commitments to the societies where they live even though pluralism of ideas is one of the most fundamentally essential functions of a democratic society in the modern era.

Anti-semitism exploded as nationalism itself became a trend. Scottish, German, Turkish, Sri Lankan, or Brazilian self-identification are relatively new phenomena as nation-states at most date to 1648 or much more recently. But those are self-identifications based on a shared sense of characteristics, often including religious preference. Jews had a different religion, along with the other habits I noted. More noteworthy—and apparently scary—was the reality that Jews often spoke multiple languages because of their cross-cultural family and religious ties as well as a more fundamental appreciation of the transcience of populations. This was a profoundly disturbing danger to many nationalists who rejected Jews as different yet expected them to accept the local definitions and preferences as their own.

In the past hundred and twenty-five years, change around the world has been astonishing. Many emerging societies struggling with the integration of ideas and populations while addressing income divergences and alternate views on the best path forward. In an era of greater education and technological modernisation, too many people are taking refuge in simplistic and misinformed generalizations that harken back to a prior world because it is easier and simpler. Intellectual laziness and hate substitute for the power of analysis the education provides, hence devaluing the education many have undergone. Those generalizations often blame Jews yet again for a nation’s problems. Jews become the target for accusations they work for someone else or they seek to undermine supposed superior values. Religious slurs become a shorthand for rejecting ‘others’ for so many reasons, almost all of which somehow have a link to Jews even as the advocates for these heinous words profess a desire to protect Israel itself.

Within the United States, as education increasingly devolves from a public function to schools segregated by religion to assure purity of thought, how can this tendency not accelerate?

The revealing of anti-Semitism anew around the world over the past twenty years perversely should surprise no one as the hideous phenomenon never disappeared but went underground. The global turmoil over climate, economic models, trade, technology, women, challenges to orthodoxy of all sorts, and the new ‘norm-ing’ of racism has allowed anti-semitism back into polite company. Even the violence is hardly new, though attacks on the agree of Life Synagogue in a Pittsburgh and other attacks are sickening. Jews are vigilant, fearful, and yet know things are better here now than most of the rest of the world: will that be true a decade from now?

The Israeli determination to eliminate some of its major enemies, ironically, provided fuel for a newer form of anti-Semitism, a focus on anti-Zionism. I am not saying everyone who opposed Israel’s actions is anti-Semitic but it is hard to miss the coincidence of anti-Semitic attacks, such as the rape of a girl in France, with the condemnations of Netanyahu’s actions on Gaza.

In short, it seems a gathering of strains of thought or overt prejudices are culminating in significant rise in anti-Semitic words and deeds. The foci in far too many quarters on victimization of multiple forms is dangerous to institutions as well as individuals. Too often Jews are the most convenient but hardly sole scapegoats for that victimization.

Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to believe the Christian nationalists are manageable. I doubt that because the rhetoric, demands, and blame are so high. Jewish Israel does not equate to what it appears the Christian nationalism movement advocates. But, perhaps I misunderstand it.

Time will tell, rarely with a straight line. The blame is multi-faceted and truly generations in the making rather than any single event or person as a cause. Actions plural create consequences.

Comments? Thoughts? Rebuttals? I welcome each and every one of you to respond.

Thank you for reading this column today or any day.if you find my thoughts of value, please feel free to circulate but I know it is one woman’s views. Thank you to those who subscribe as your support keeps me going daily.

The ducks evidently don’t think they need stay indoors with the heat. Spa Creek was busy this morning.

Stay cool. I don’t use that as a throw away, either, as it remains brutal. Be well and safe. FIN