The last book of the Jewish Bible, Deuteronomy, is both a recap of the origin story of Jews and a lesson plan for the Jewish nation as they readied to return to their promised land.
Chapters 27 and 28 of Deuteronomy lay out the positive blessings that God will ensure to the Jews if they listen to His commandments, and the curses should they abandon Him. Deuteronomy 28:25 speaks of a particular curse:
יִתֶּנְךָ֨ יְהֹוָ֥ה ׀ נִגָּף֮ לִפְנֵ֣י אֹיְבֶ֒יךָ֒ בְּדֶ֤רֶךְ אֶחָד֙ תֵּצֵ֣א אֵלָ֔יו וּבְשִׁבְעָ֥ה דְרָכִ֖ים תָּנ֣וּס לְפָנָ֑יו וְהָיִ֣יתָ לְזַֽעֲוָ֔ה לְכֹ֖ל מַמְלְכ֥וֹת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
יהוה will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads; and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
This is the foundation of a cursed diaspora. While Jews had been slaves in Egypt and wandered the desert for hundreds of years, that situation was circumstantial. The Jewish forefathers of Jacob and his sons came to Egypt to avoid a famine and became trapped – together – in the land. As they were ending their time away from their promised land, God warned that they could be banished from the land of Israel, scattered and hated around the world, if they abandoned His charge.
This happened over thousands of years. While Jews had initially established their sovereignty and self-determination in the holy land, over time, invaders came and took the Jews to far away lands. As described in the Bible, they were often hated and persecuted in those lands, with many antisemites validating their persecution with verses from the Old Testament.
The middle of the 20th century brought change.
The Holocaust forced the Catholic Church to revisit their dogma. The horrors inflicted on European Jews with tacit or active support of many, caused the church to rewrite its rulings on the hated wandering Jews in the Second Vatican Council. Twenty years after the Holocaust, on October 28, 1965, the Church issued Nostra Aetate in which it reexamined its relationships with non-Christian faiths.
As it related to Jews, the declaration stated its “rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone…. The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion.”
The Church abandoned the inflamed zeal which served as a driving force against non-Christians in the Crusades and Inquisition – and front row spectator in the Holocaust – and replaced it with a foundation of love for people of other faiths. The Holocaust – the “horror to all the kingdoms of the earth” as described in Deuteronomy – compelled the largest faith group in the world to reverse course and begin anew with an attitude of love towards all people.
The Church was able to do this by focusing on the texts of the Old and New Testaments and facts of history. It did not rewrite history that Jesus and the apostles weren’t Jews. It did not pretend that the Holocaust did not happen. It did not deny that the land of Israel is that exact piece of land that God promised to the Jewish people.
The Catholic Church considered facts and extracted new meaning, especially in light of Jews returning to their homeland after nearly 2,000 years, inspired and directed by love and peace.
Alas, as the years 1936 to 1967 which brought the horrors of the Holocaust, the rebirth of the Jewish State, the Second Vatican Council and the reunification of Jerusalem under Jewish control, directed the Islamic world to turn to noxious antisemitism.
While Nazi Germany gained power from 1936 to 1939, the Muslim Arabs in Palestine waged a war against Jews. They killed hundreds and successfully petitioned the British who were administering Palestine to block the entry of Jews back to their homeland, just as hundreds of thousands were fleeing the Holocaust.
During World War II, Palestinian leaders conspired with the Nazis as they had a “shared recognition of the enemy,” as Heinrich Himmler wrote to the Palestinian Grand Mufti in Jerusalem about the Jews. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, Arab Muslims from Palestine and the surrounding countries invaded the new Jewish State in the hopes of a second Holocaust, to destroy the country and wipe out the Jews.
Palestinian Arabs are the most antisemitic people in the world according to polls. They are the center of Muslim antisemitism as noted in the same ADL poll that “while Muslims are more likely to hold antisemitic views than members of any other religion (49% Index Score), geography makes a big difference in their views. Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa (75% Index Score) are much more likely to harbor antisemitic attitudes than Muslims in Asia (37% Index Score), Western Europe (29% Index Score), Eastern Europe (20% Index Score), and Sub-Saharan Africa (18% Index Score).”
While Christians looked at the text of the Old Testament and saw the rebirth of the Jewish State as an affirmation of Jews being good and blessed by God’s love, Muslims were compelled to cast the Jews as evil and unworthy of the land and God’s love.
The conclusion of the Jewish Bible has stories of blessings and curses for Jews as it relates to their behavior and presence in the land of Israel. Over the last few decades, Christian Zionists have come to view the Jews as good and worthy of the promised land, while Muslims attempt to portray Jews as irredeemably evil and unworthy of of the holy land. Muslim Arabs then also fabricate stories that Jews don’t even have history in the land to further undermine any potential Jewish claim.
Muslim vilification of Jews is not simply antisemitism; it is a tool for ethnic cleansing.
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