Can Jews Be Antisemitic? | Antisemitism, Explained | Unpacked

September 2, 2021 | 3 Comments »

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  1. The author’s main points are absolutely true. He could have cited many more people of “pure” Jewish descent, not just people with a small amount of Jewish ancestry, as anti-Semites. Full-fledged “halakhic Jews. For example, “Professor” Finkelstein, (can’t remember his first name), who claims that Jews have exploited the Holocaust to extort money from Europeans and Americans and to rob the Arabs of their land. Then there is the Israeli professor at Tel Aviv University of Italian Jewish birth, the son of Italy’s chief rabbi no less, who published a book alleging that the Jews of medieval times did indeed consume the blood of Christian children in their Passover matzot. Like the notorious anti-Semitic Nazi journalist Julius Striecher, he based his accusations on “confessions” of medieval Jews extorted by torture. Streicher was hanged, but this Israeli Jewish professor wasn’t charged with any crime. When he was criticized for this, many of his fellow Israeli Jewish colleagues defended him and said they found they found his arguments for the blood libel to be credible.

    Not long ago, a Jewish columnist for the Guardian (UK) published a book with the title, “How noot tobe Jewish,” based on her columns. At one time it was being sold at the United Nations bookstore, until American Jewish groups protested to the UN.

    Going back in time, the author could also have cited many other examples of antisemitic Jews. For example, there was one “Paulo Christiani,” who was purely of Jewish descent, and who challenged the great Jewish rabbi Nachmanides to a “disputation” about the Talmud. Nachmanides defended the Talmud so brilliantly that King Alphonso the Wise,” a genuinely wise and good man as well as a pious Roman Catholic, declared Nachmanides the winner and even awarded him cash prize. Later, however, the church forced the king to exile Nachmanides for “blasphemy. Nachmanides fled to Israel-Palestine, where he opened the first Jewish synagogue in the city in over 100 years.

    In England in the twelfth century a Jew who had become a Christian monk was the first individual to invent the “blood libel” that the Jews consumed Christian blood in their Passover matzot. He also originated the claim that their was a vast international conspiracy to gain control of Christendom. This conspiracy yeory is very much alive today.

    There were even some Christians of Jewish descent among the priests who carried out the Inquisition.

    The list of Jewish antisemites past and present could go on and on.

  2. Want it simple?
    Jews,& may be Indians,are 2 main groups that are both an ethnic group & a religious group.
    The Indians(mostly) are Hindus & Jews are mostly followers of Judaism.
    But there are many born as ethnic Jews that hate Judaism.
    That’s the major part of the problem.
    The Judaic Jews came to modern Israel after WW2 glad to return home.
    The ethnic only Jews want to be Europeans & feel that they were sent into modern Israel as exiles from Europe
    They are like 2 different peoples with the same nationalities & very different life styles who need to put up with each other!
    The ethnic only Jews want to be fashionably European while the Judaic Jews are happy to be unfashionably Jewish.