This is the third year in a row that such attacks have increased, FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics report shows • 7,175 hate crimes reported in 2017, up from 6,121 in 2016 • Attorney general: Hate crimes are “despicable violations” of American values.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
The data was compiled from reports voluntarily submitted by 16,149 law enforcement agencies
Hate crimes in the United States jumped 17% in 2017, with a huge 37% spike in antisemitic attacks, marking the third year in a row that such attacks have increased, according to FBI data released on Tuesday.
The release of the data comes just weeks after a gunman burst into a Pittsburgh synagogue and shot dead 11 worshippers while shouting, “All Jews must die.”
According to the FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics report, a total of 7,175 hate crimes were reported by law enforcement agencies in 2017, up from 6,121 incidents in 2016. The agency did not offer a reason for the increase.
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said in a statement that hate crimes were “despicable violations” of American values.
“I am particularly troubled by the increase in antisemitic hate crimes,” Whitaker said.
The report showed a 37% jump in antisemitic incidents, from 684 in 2016 to 938 in 2017.
Critics say U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has fomented a surge in right-wing extremism. The Trump administration has rejected any notion that he has encouraged white nationalists and neo-Nazis who have embraced him, insisting the president’s true aim is to unify America.
“This report provides further evidence that more must be done to address the divisive climate of hate in America,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, said in a statement. “That begins with leaders from all walks of life and from all sectors of society forcefully condemning anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hate whenever it occurs.”
Nearly 16% of the 4,131 incidents in 2017 involving race or ethnicity were fueled by anti-black or African-American bias, increasing to 2,013 from 1,739 in 2016, the FBI said.
Of the 6,370 known offenders in the report, 50.7% were white, while 21.3% were Black or African-American.
The 2017 data was compiled from reports voluntarily submitted by 16,149 law enforcement agencies.
FBI officials said the agency will provide training next year for law enforcement officers on how to identify bias-motivated incidents and report that data to federal authorities.
@ Michael S:
Of course Michael this is where we differ tremendously. I am sceptical of “prophecy” and am much more logically inclined to believe that whilst there “may” have been some actual ordinary event, for reasons unknown to us but obvious to a psychologist over time a series of accretions transformed it into a “miracle”. For instance, massive forgeries have been shown to abound in the new Testament, piously referred to as
“interpolation”. Others referred to it as “pious fraud”….
The Revised Standard version in it’s foreword, says there are over 4000 identifiable “errors” in the King James- can’t recall if both New and Old are meant but it shows that scholarship has increased in.over 300 years, as well as probity Poor old mad Bishop Ussher must be “rolling in his tomb”…(our Dublin business began right next door to his former Palace, converted about 1820 into the Mendicity Institution) .
A major interpolator was the Church Historian Eusebius to whom goes the honour of manufacturing the “Testmonium Flavianum”…….first “discovered” by him, having “escaped the notice” of all previous Churchmen from the time of the Apostolic Fathers until Eusebius. .Many or all were acquainted with Josephus’ writings but NOT ONE mentioned the “Testimonum”…. which would leap out to the eye of any devout Christians, always busy scouring for “proofs” of their beliefs.
And we have nearly half of “Paul’s Letters” which have been proven to be fakes.
It could also have occurred in the Torah, but to a far lesser extent, because they were not frantically trying to “prove” anything, but to relate to it and understand it’s real meaning……
I know we’ll agree to differ amicably on this……
@ Edgar G.:
Hi, Edgar
I imagine you’re talking about the reviews of Jewish history by the likes of Adam Dalgleish, Yamit and me. For my part, what I know comes from some intensive research into my own genealogy, supplemented by a general interest in history. I often look things up on the Internet, to make sure I get the details right — as well as a matter of continuing research. My books are not in storage, but I haven’t read 99% of them in the past year. Most are pretty dog-eared, though, from past reading.
I just scanned what you read to Adam, mentioning me, on the subject of prophecy. Here are some of my own observations about the subject:
1. Did the Bible prophets make it all up? Someone might be led to guess this, and many have. Much of the “stuff” of prophecy — the imagery, etc. — could come from individual genius; more likely, it comes from our species-wide pool of shared information, transmitted by the Bible and other books, and from oral tradition. All or nearly all of the imagery in the Book of Revelation, for instance, has a direct parallel in Tanakh. In a sense, we are all individuals; but in another sense, we are all something like the “Borg” of “Startrek”, or, more familiarly, like a colony of ants, bees or mushrooms.
These things are all true. It’s also true that human activity moves in cycles, resembling the motions of the heavenly bodies. This is no coincidence, because our activities as a civilization are synchronized with agricultural activity, and its dependence on seasonal cycles. If we have had a steady, steep rise in the stock market, for instance, it doesn’t take a genius to predict that a collapse will come. The key information, of course, is “when” and “how much”.
2. The Bible is full of stories about astrologers, magicians and professional “prophets”. The prophet Michaiah was greatly outnumbered by other court prophets, who prophesided victory for Ahab. Most of Moses’ miracles were likewise duplicated by Pharaoh’s magicians. The upshot of all this, is that God has always given people the opportunity to doubt His prophets; because faith is the currency of life; and faith in the Creator is like investment in the Bank of the Universe.
There is one thing that I always keep in mind, when studying Biblical prophecy; that is a knowledge that God truly WANTS to reveal Himself to us! He is not trying to hide Himself, but to reveal. When people (including, often, myself) fail to “see” what He’s saying, it’s because something is keeping their faith in this basic goodness of God from surfacing. That “something” is usually called “sin”. At other times, sin is not at fault; it just isn’t the right time: we don’t have enough information at hand to understand what it is that God is getting at.
@ adamdalgliesh:
About “Prophecy” …..during the High Middle Ages it was already known amongst some scholars that events generally repeated in a cycle lasting roughly 400 years. There were also cycles of less than 200 years. Perhaps Biblical prophets didn’t know this, but many prophecies were made in very obscure language which even today are still a mystery, although there have been innumerable speculations and even positive opinions written.
Isaiah’s prophecies are generally very close to the time, often imminent, much of which is to do with kings and courts. He showed he was also a very astute political observer, and may have been an adviser to the court….He being a nephew of King Amaziah (according to the Rabbonim) would most often be present, on the spot.
A perfect example is Isaiah 7. …verse 14 ( obviously referring to a young woman that he could see was very pregnant, so shortly afterwards a son was born-he made a lucky guess there-it could have been a daughter…alternately the prophecy was written after the fact)
There is also the opinion of forensic historians, that the traditional dates of Biblical prophecies, due to a multitude of redactions are not exact, and could easily have been written “later”.
I myself am skeptical of prophecies, as my fierce disputes with Michael have shown and it has often been said, that due to the many contradictory statements in the Bible, because of different writers, and at different times, (shown by anachronisms and styles), a person can prove anything, either pro or con on the same matter. ..
Poor old Nostradamus was scuppered by that cyclical repetition, which researchers say, he knew of……
@ Michael S:
I sometimes feel that those who reel off mountains of history, must have 2 computers… one which shows the subject article on the Internet, and the other to post the paraphrased information as if from the writer’s own thoughts or knowledge.
Alternately, there are likely computer manipulations….. If such is the case, all it’s doing is saving lazy minds from the trouble of looking it up themselves….
I could be completely wrong, then those history buffs certainly know their stuff……
I myself have a tendency on occasion to do the same, but I have the books which are about the matters I’m posting .Having them,all of which I’ve read some several times, can be a great help to project myself as being erudite, which may not be the case at all. It’s true that haven’t seen my books for at least 20 or more years they being in storage. but my memory T.G. s excellent. “Undiscovered geniuses” abound everywhere.
I may be throwing the cat amongst the “pigeons”…which is not my intention, just really interested to know how or where such reams of knowledge was acquired because to me it’s admirable..
@ yamit82: The Book of Esther is certainly prophetic as to the future course of Jew-hatred through the centuries, and its rationale. So are the narrative parts of the Book of Daniel. However, even if the word “antisemitism” is a misnomer, since it means hatred of Jews, not “Semites,” it is too well established now to be changed.
@ Bear Klein:
“The Jewish peoples success has been the rebirth of Israel. The Jewish people will ultimately prosper or not as the State of Israel goes.”
I agree, Bear. As Edgar pointed out, and Yamit can confirm, life in Israel is not a bowl of cherries; but is the only country in the world where Judaism is the paramount religion, and the language is unmistakably Jewish.
Even in Israel, I think the greatest enemy of the Jews is the ideal of a “New World Order”, promoted by George Soros, Jean-Claude Juncker, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton and the whole lot on the left. It is a seductive doctrine, because it strives toward a “Messianic Age” without a Jewish Messiah. But it will not bring a Messianic Age, it will not bring peace on earth, it will not bring prosperity and it certainly will not raise the dead. It will bring disaster to all it touches.
@ yamit82: Again, Yamit, many thanks for providing us with this important historical information about the Holocaust era.
Just one correction: You completely fail to mention the heroic resistance put up by the Zionist Revisionist movement in the Warsaw Ghetto. Most accounts of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising were written by Israeli leftists with an axe to grind against the Revisionists, and so they left them out of their accounts. It is only very recently that an Israeli historian (can’t recall his name) published a major study that documented the Revisionists major contribution to the revolt.
I also believe that several Jewish historians have wildly exaggerated the participation of Poles in the Holocaust, because they have axes to grind against the Polish governments of the post World War II period, and were forced to emigrate from Poland by one or the other of them (mainly the Gomulka government after the Six Day War). The Polish Home Army in Lublin, which was the first seat of the pro-Soviet Polish Communist government in Poland, might have killed the Jewish partisan leader whom you mentioned not simply because he was a Jew, but because they thought he was a soldier with the Polish Communist army with whom they were then fighting a civil war for control of postwar Poland.. And indeed, given his partisan background, it is possible that he was a soldier or officer in that army.
@ yamit82: Yamit, the “Hashishayeen” operated mainly in Iraq and Iran, not the Arabian” peninsula. If there really were Jews who fought under their leadership in Iran, they would most likely have been Iranian “mountain Jews,” not Arabian Jews
@ yamit82: Yamit, you have also left out of your account the terrible destruction of several thousand synogogues (and as many churches) by the “mad” Egyptian sultan Hakim, in 1015 A.D. It took the Jews of Egypt and Syria generations to rebuild after this disaster. The Jewish community in the Land of Israel never fully recovered. The appalling conditions inflicted on the Jews of Yemen, as described by Maimonides in the late eleventh century, and the persecution and forced conversions of Jews in sixteenth century Iran, are also left out of your account. In fact, Jews have remained subject to persecution and discrimination in Iran more or less continuously from the sixteenth century to the present, with the reign of Shah Muhammed Pahlavi (1943 to 1978) being a rare exception to this pattern. But even Pahlavi held antisemitic views.
@ yamit82: Thank you, Yamit, for providing us with all of this information about the life of Jews in Islamic countries. Most of this is new to me.
However, your account is a bit on the overly rosy side. You omit the terrible pogrom in Grenada in 1066, when a mob organized by Muslim clerics slaughtered about 7,000 Jews. The Muslim clergy were enraged that the Muslim princes of Grenada had appointed Jewish viziers, and they took their revenge. This was well before the era of the Almohades.
Jews in any land other than Israel are always the other or a minority. In most of history since they were expelled by the Romans 2000 years ago they were a powerless minority wherever they lived. They were driven out or murdered in various locals. They were allowed to live in the Muslim world as Dhimmis (second class residents). They have tried assimilation but that has not been a successful long term strategy as exhibited by the murder of assimilated German Jews in Nazi Germany.
Herzl started the modern Zionist Movement in the late 1900s after realizing that assimilation was not a viable concept for Jewish life. In the USA now Jews except for the Orthodox have been assimilating in such a rapid fashion that their numbers rapidly dwindling, yet there is still antiSemitism even if less so than in Europe.
The Jewish peoples success has been the rebirth of Israel. The Jewish people will ultimately prosper or not as the State of Israel goes. Yes, just like with other peoples there will be Jews living in other locals but Israel is the center of the Jewish Universe and as it goes so do the Jewish people.
Jewish warriors and warrior leaders are crucial to the long term success and survival of the Jewish State.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Who Is Haman?
The central theme which is the first presentation of anti-Semitic theory and practice.is found in the Book of Esther (Purim story).Thousands of anti-Semitic books have been written since them in every country and every language, which are all nothing but a repetition and amplification of the same basic theme stated by Haman: “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that is not to the king’s advantage to tolerate them.” (Esther 3:8)
No clearer, more succinct definition of anti-Semitism has been formulated since. All the three elements are there: Desire for domination, particularism, disloyalty. But Haman was not only the first anti-Semite theoretician, he was also a man of action who submitted to his king, and to all the kings and rulers throughout the ages, the model plan for the FINAL SOLUTION — this time not in Berlin and not at the Kremlin, but at Shushan: “To destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, and plunder their goods” ( Esther 3:13).
There are those that for years have been rightfully denouncing the use of the term “anti-Semitism” on the grounds that there are ultra-Semites who are among the worst enemies of the Jews. and the ultra-Aryans who are the friends of the semitic Arabs who provided they help them get rid of the Jews. The alternative term is HAMANISM, after the father of the anti-Jewish doctrine and of the final solution. Legend has it that Waisata, the last of Haman’s ten sons, managed to tear himself away from the scaffold and escape. It was created to account for the fact that despite the hanging of the original Haman and his sons his descendants keep cropping up again time after time, in every country and in every age.
@ yamit82:
Many Jews fought back in World War II, and not just in the Warsaw Ghetto but from Italy to Lithuania to the Ukraine.
Interestingly, most of the Jews who chose to fight — particularly the leaders — had been prepared to fight back long before they began in the Resistance. For example, Tuvia Bielski (who led over 1,200 Jews in Byelorussia) had been a sharpshooter in the Polish Army. The escapees from the Novaky labor camp who formed an independent Jewish brigade were members of Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist organization, and had conducted uniformed drills in the camp prior to the 1944 Slovak uprising that gave them their chance to escape. The leaders of both Jewish partisan groups in the forests outside Sobibor (Samuel Gruber and Yechiel Greenshpan, a.k.a. Mietek and Chil) had been corporals in the Polish army. The Warsaw Ghetto fighters had two groups, one started by the Young Zionists and one by Jewish members of the Polish Workers (i.e. Communist) Party. And Harry Burger, who fought in the mountains of Italy, had been a Boy Scout and a skier.
Contrary to popular myth, many of those fought survived to tell their stories. Indeed, when you track the Jewish partisan groups, you discover that the survival rates of those who fought back, despite the odds against them, was significantly greater than the survival rates of those who passively accepted going to the camps or cooperated with the Germans. In Slovakia, for example, the general Jewish survival rate was 7.8% (7.2% after post-liberation trauma casualties), while the survival rate among the Jewish partisans was approximately 85%. And of the dozen-plus Sobibor escapees who reached the Mietek/Chil partisan group, all but one survived until liberation.
This is particularly impressive because Jewish partisans often had to fight their ostensible allies, not just the Germans. Over and over again Jews were betrayed by the local populace or attacked by non-Jewish partisans the resulting deaths far exceeding those from normal combat — and in Poland the killing of Jews went on even after the war ended. For example, Leon Feldhendler, one of the two leaders of the breakout from the Sobibor death camp, was killed in Lubin by Polish National Army troops who were actively hunting Jews. Furthermore the Soviets, who were the primary suppliers for most partisan units, opposed and regularly eliminated units with loyalties other than to the Soviet Union. Thus the Jewish Novaky brigade was not defeated by German weaponry but disbanded by Soviet order.
It is also interesting to note that there were quite a few Jewish women who fought among the partisans. The first person to fight in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and unfortunately, the first Jew to die in it was Emily Landau, a 17-year-old girl. While hard numbers are difficult to come by, women with guns often appear in the pictures and in survivors’ descriptions.
@ yamit82:
Almohade oppression ranged from stringent religion-based restrictions in some regions to forced conversion elsewhere (thus, to the benefit of Yemen’s and Egypt’s Jews, the family of Maimonades left Spain under the threat of forced conversion to Islam).
As a result, in Seville, in 1248, the Jews welcomed the Castilian, Christian, navy with open arms and joy, presenting Ferdinand III with the key to the city. Though Jewish taxes under the Christians were heavy, nevertheless life was preferable to Almohade rule and the Jewish community prospered for at least the next hundred years. However, as the Christians of Seville became more secure, the help of the Jews was no longer appreciated. As a result of anti-Jewish agitation by archdeacon Martinez, the confessor to the king’s mother, Seville’s Jewish community was nearly destroyed in 1391, and the synagogues were converted to churches. Seville was the first site of an Inquisition Tribunal in 1481, and the Jews were finally exiled in 1483.
There were few places where enlightened Muslim governments were able to regain control from the Almohades. One of these, and the last Muslim kingdom in Spain was Granada. There, the Naserite dynasty took control in 1232 and ruled until Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the city in 1491.
March 31, 1492, was the end of Jewry in Spain, when Ferdinand and Isabella signed the edict of expulsion in “Granada of the Jews.”
The most renowned Jewish Warrior in Spain was born in 993 – Samuel HaLevi, the son of Joseph. In Arabic, he was known as Ismail ibn Nagrel’a, and became known to the Jews as Samuel Ha’Nagid (the ruler).
As a youth in a privileged family in Cordoba, Samuel received a thorough education in Jewish law, religion, and culture, as well as the Koran, Muslim culture and Arabic calligraphy.
When the Berbers sacked Cordova in 1012, Samuel escaped to Malaga, in the kingdom of Granada, where he opened a spice shop. The shop was situated near the home of Abu alKasim ibn al-Arif, the vizier to king Habbus son of Maksan, of Granada. A servant of the vizier hired Samuel to write letters to the vizier, who was away at the capital for some time. The vizier was so impressed with Samuel’s writing that, upon coming back to Malaga, he hired Samuel as a personal secretary.
A biographer of Samuel Ha’Nagid reports “After some time the vizier… became mortally ill, and King Habbus, who came to visit him, said to him: ‘What shall I do? Who will advise me in the wars which encompass me?’ ‘I have never advised you,’ he answered him, ‘out of my own mind, but at the suggestion of this Jew, my secretary. Take care of him, and he will be as a father and a minister to you. Do whatever he advises you, and God will help you.'”. Whatever the reality of this exchange, Samuel Ha-Levi indeed became vizier to the king of Granada by approximately 1020.
Samuel’s wisdom in Jewish matters earned him the position of Nagid (ruler) of the Jewish community in 1027. He wrote poetry and composed an important religious work called “Hilchot Ha’Nagid”. Throughout his life he worked tirelessly on behalf of Jewish communities in Spain, in Northern Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Babylon, and Jerusalem – donating money and books to schools and individuals engaged in Jewish study.
When the king died in 1038, Samuel survived a power struggle between the king’s sons and retained his position as king’s vizier. By many reports, the new king, Badis, indulged only his own pleasures and left the government of the kingdom of Granada to Samuel Ha’Nagid.
Samuel skillfully steered Granada through eighteen years of virtually continuous warfare, personally leading the important campaigns. He died in battle in 1055 or 1056 CE.
@ yamit82:
Jewish warriors were then charged with defending the newly liberated areas. For example, in Seville, in 712 CE, a Jewish militia had the sole responsibility of city defense. Elsewhere, the garrisons and city militias had a substantial Jewish presence.
Under the rule of enlightened Muslim kings, the Jewish communities prospered and, in turn, contributed greatly to the prosperity of Spain. Unfortunately, between the mid twelfth and early thirteenth century (1140ies through the 1240ies CE), the Almohades, a fundamentalist Muslim force from North Africa, overran the Muslim and Christian kingdoms of Spain.
@ adamdalgliesh:
A few years after Islam overran North Africa and the Middle East, in the later seventh century, the Berber Jewish Warriors of North Africa learned of the oppression of the Jews in the Visigoth Christian kingdoms of Spain. In an attempt to rescue them, a Berber Jewish army invaded Spain in approximately 694 CE. The invasion was unsuccessful. Instead, a Moorish, Muslim army defeated the Visigoths in Spain a few years later (711 – 715 CE). Under Moorish rule, the Jews of Spain were liberated and returned to their rightful position in Spanish society.
Long after the death of Mohamed, after Islam had become a world religion, during the upheavals of the Crusades, Jewish mountain warriors in Arabia continued as valuable allies. Benjamin of Tudela, traveling in the 12th century wrote about the Hashishim (the Arab warriors feared by the Crusaders):
[They] live on high mountains, and worship the Old Man of the land of the Hashishim. And among them there are four communities of Israel who go forth with them in war time. They are not under the rule of the king of Persia, but reside in the high mountains… and none can overcome them.”
@ Michael S:
Niceness has become the major Jewish value; nice Jewish boy, nice Jewish girl, nice behavior. The nice Jews are unobtrusive, downplay their Jewishness, and avoid confrontations with Gentiles, Arabs, or the Israeli government. Niceness pays, and allows the Jews to become well-paid professionals, if empty souls.
The nice Jews celebrate some very un-nice holidays: Pesach, when we robbed the Egyptians and raged on our enemies in Sinai; Purim, when we massively killed the Iranians; Hanukkah, when we the fundamentalists exterminated Jewish liberals. Nice Jews are ok with barbarism. Their heads are comfortably in the sand: crumbling Israel or the vanishing Jewish community in America doesn’t concern them. It is not nice to defend one’s values, let alone Jewish values.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Is it not offensive that Christian tourists with crosses on their necks come here (to Israel) specifically to deny our religion? We detest anti-Zionists like Jimmy Carter coming to Israel, but those tourists reject the foundation of Zionism: Jewish faith. They go to Golgotha where their deity was executed—and all of them believe he was executed by us, and that we Jews shouted, “Let his blood be on us and our children.”
More Jews were murdered in the name of Jesus than on the orders of Hitler—who was approved by Christian clerics. The Germans only carried the Christian ideas to their logical conclusion. Up to then, royal defenders of Christianity only expelled us, but murder is more logical. It does not matter whether Jesus was a good Jew or the founder of the worst anti-Semitic movement ever. We detest Wagner’s music not on its merits (and it is very bad), but because Hitler loved it. Christianity is not a theoretical discourse to be judged on its merits, but a deadly practical weapon against Jews.
adamdalgliesh Said:
LOOKS LIKE THE TORAH IS CORRECT 🙂
Hinduism’s Message to the Jewish People
@ Michael S:
@ adamdalgliesh:
Thank you both for honouring Israpundit with your erudite comments.
Can each of you post a short bio of your background?
Thanks, Michael, for this review of some important events in history that impacted Jews.
A few corrections: The Holocaust did not kill one-third of European Jews, but one-third or more of all
@ adamdalgliesh:
Adam,
Thank you for filling the readers in on Jewish history. For the Galician Jews, from the Khmelnytsky Uprising until the early 1800s, it was my family history as well.
What we are talking about is tactics. During the Maccabees Revolt, God blessed Jewish efforts at overthrowing their Hellenist masters. Then they started fighting one another, and God did not bless this: ultimately, one of the factions brought in the Romans. They revolted against the Romans, but ended up killing more of their fellow Jews than enemy soldiers in inter-sectarian fighting. After this, there followed centuries of dhimmi status.
There were times, during the Middle Ages, when Jews rose to local prominence in places like Yemen, Iraq and Spain. In those days, the Jewish population was overwhelmingly Sephardic. The great Jewish scholar Rabbi Maimonidees, for instance, wrote his treatises in Arabic.
Then, as the Sephardic Jews suffered great losses from expulsions and assimilation, the Kingdom of Poland opened up as a safe haven for Jews in 1025. The Jews suffered severe reversals there under the Ukrainian revolt, led by the Khmelnytsky Cossacks in 1648. During that event, the Jews were allied with the Poles against the rebels. This corresponded with the end of the Christian-against-Christian Thirty Years War, which decimated half of Germany. Jews then poured into Poland from largely German-speaking areas, repopulating devastated areas like Galicia. The center of Diaspora Jewry then shifted from Turkey and the Mediterranean to the Yiddish Shtetl culture of Poland and Hungary.
In the late 1700s, Poland was partitioned: Belarus and eastern Ukraine went to the Russians; Silesia and Pomerania went to the Germans and Galicia went to the Austrians. These were the years of the Deist and Atheist “Enlightenment”, during which Galician and Polish Jews began to gain civic freedoms. During this time, my own ancestors were able to travel from Galicia to Slovenia, and become Christian servants and farm laborers.
Just before and during the Napoleanic Wars around 1800, there was social upheaval across Europe. At the Congress of Vienna, which ended the wars, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed the “Holy Alliance” to minimize wars amongst themselves, and also to oppress the freedom of their subjects. Revolts broke out in 1830, 1848 and 1860, in which some Jews participated. Among them were assimilated Jews such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who published the Communist Manifesto in 1948. Then came the pogroms in Russia, starting in 1880.
This was the setting of the Movie “Fiddler on the Roof”, which highlighted the divisions among Jews. The shtetl system was falling apart, which had insulated Jews from many dealings (and troubles) with the neighboring goiim for hundreds of years. One path was armed insurrection, followed by prominent revolutionaries like Leon Trotsky. Another path was emigration, especially to North America, which was a huge success for Jews. A third path was accomodation and assimilation in Europe, which ended in the Holocaust.
A third of Europe’s Jews died in the Holocaust. This was a horrible event; but not a complete disaster, because a third of the Jews had already escaped to freedom in America, and another third lived in places like Poland, Romania, Morocco, Libya and the Middle East, to people Israel during the War of Independence in 1948-51.
The upshot of this all, is that many different tactics have been employed by Jews through the ages, to ensure communal survival. Some worked for a time, and others didn’t. As Solomon said,
Qoh.3:
[1] To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
In our day, Jews live in one of two circumstances:
1. In Israel, where they are surrounded and continually harrassed by enemies, and
2. the West, mainly the US, where they face rising antisemitism.
In my opinion, Israel is where their destiny lies, while their place in the Galut is increasingly imperiled as the years roll by. During the late Twentieth Century, there was a “Golden Age” for Jews in the US. This is ending, and no amount of protests will keep it from doing so.
I know, I’m painting the Jews “between a rock and a hard place”. If it’s any consolation, the Goiim ae also headed for such a place; and it looks as though the end of the matter will be a thermonuclear exchange. After that, circumstances will be different.
@ Edgar G.: Thanks for the information, Edgar. I will get the book!
@ Edgar G.:
Sorry I missed this comment of yours earlier, Edgar. Also, your follow-up comment about how this book is available now at a reasonable price. Many thanks for the tip. No, I didn’t know about this Jewish ideological resistance. But if it was written in Hebrew, it was probably intended only to stiffen Jews’ resitance to conversion efforts, not to persuade humane Gentiles to take a less hateful view of Judaism.
@ Michael S: Michael, while God certainly ordered Jews to obey his commands and follow his teachings, he also ordered us to fight for the land he promised us, and punished us when we failed to do so. Once we were settled in the land, he commanded us to form an army and fight our enemies. And he promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that their descendants would be “without number, as numerous as the sands of the sea and all the stars of heaven.” As for an Israel with 250 million inhabitants , a huge GDP, and world power status, yes, I think that that would be a good thing, and fully in accord with Biblical prophecy. Why do you think it would be a bad thing?
@ Michael S: I apologize, Michael, for being sarcastic. Never a good idea. And yes, on further thought, there were many humanly understandible motives for Jewish passivity through the ages. The terrible repressions and loss of life that Jews suffered during their revolts of 70, 110, 135, 351, and 610-14 certainly put a damper on any thought of revolt against the oppressions imposed on Jews subsequently. Jews were in many places forbidden to bear arms or even ride horses (then a key military weapon), and were usually banned from military service. Forcibly resisting the well-trained, well-armed Christian and Muslim knights of the period in the service of the kings and nobles would have been extremely difficult. Even publishing books and pamphlets, or writing letters to literate Christian leaders denouncing and refuting the libels against the Jews, which would have been a form of non-violent resistance, would have been dangerous for Jews, since on the rare occassions when they attempted this, they were sometimes charged with “blasphemy” against Christianity or Islam, or attempting to prosyletize for Judaism, both of which were considered crimes.
However, it is still true that Jews suffered massive loss of life during the thirteen centuries when most of them submitted peacefully to violence and oppression–ultimately, when you figure in the losses suffered during the Holocaust, even more deaths than during the Roman repressions that led to passivity.
In the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at least in Europe, conditions did improve for Jewish resistance to tyranny. There was some increase in freedom of the press. The power of the Church began to wane, some Christians began to question the fairness of anti-Semitism, and/or were themselves more interested in rebelling against tyrannical rule themselves than they were in persecuting Jews. The mass production of firearms made weapons more available to “ordinary” people than they had been before, even Jews. But, while some Jews did become rebels in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nearly all of these rebels rejected Judaism and the their own Jewishness, instead fighting for the “proletariat,” category that excluded most Jews, while doing little or nothing to combat antisemitism. As for traditional, religious Jews, most remained passive when circumstances no longer required them to do so. Both groups of Jews were tragically wrong in their response to the antisemitism of these periods.
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar,
I will try to be objective here. The Jews have survived as a people, after 1900 years of continuous exile. No other people in the world can boast that. I call that a “smashing” success.
Did you want Israel to be a nation of 250 million people? If God wanted this to happen, it certainly would have happened. Let’s pretend you could fit them all in the Levant. If so, Israel would be as populous as Iran, Turkey and Egypt put together. If it had the same per-capita GDP as Medinat Israel today, it would be a superpower on the order of the US, China and the EU.
Would that be a “success”? I don’t think so.
Deuteronomy 7:
[7] The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:
[8] But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
[9] Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;
[10] And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.
God purposed to allow Israel to become needy, so they would cry out to Him and HE would be glorified in them. Otherwise, God would not have purposed for them to suffer for hundreds of years under Pharaoh.
If you want to judge Israel’s greatness, by the power of its enemies, Israel is the greatest nation in the history of the earth. That is suffieient.
ADAM- Just by chance saw copies of that book at two extreme end prices. But the one I want to mention is at Abe books for $5.95. (see box at right) I was astonished. But the shipping is exorbitant …$15,95. Maybe it could just by posted by normal mail.. Just suggestions because know you’ll want it and I’m sure it will open your eyes.
Also saw somewhere that t could be downloaded free.
Just some info about Medieval Jewish “passivity”….So I’ll butt out now….
@ Michael S:
But Adam has successfully shown that passivity was NOT a massive success. There were most likely far more Jews slaughtered during those horrible times total than exist today.
And what about their never born progeny and descendants….We should be a nation of 250 mllions at least…today…..in the San Remo Palestine.
@ Laura:
I agree, Laura. Whatever is driving US Jews to vote Democrat, it is not logic.
@ Edgar G.:
“Excuse me for butting in. I don’t understand Michael’s equating the Holocaust and Israel defending itself successfully,”
I did not equate the two. The Holocaust was an example of passivity massively backfiring after centuries of success. Jabotinsky had the proper idea, but the Jews largely ignored him.
@ adamdalgliesh:
The Germans eventually overran the Roman Empire, so of course Tacitus praised them. This world praises winners.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Adam,
You’re being sarcastic, and completely missing the point. If the Jews had been belligerent instead of passive, they would have been completely wiped out by 135 AD. What they did, kept them alive as a people until today.
Ilhan Omar’s Election Shows Democrats Aren’t Interested In Confronting Anti-Semitism
http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/14/ilhan-omars-election-suggests-democrats-arent-interested-in-confronting-anti-semitism/?fbclid=IwAR31px8FSCQh0_WieZ46SKSXZDU9UYpBbs0I9E7TwvDPQIU6GVNvYU_LHL0
@ adamdalgliesh:
Excuse me for butting in. I don’t understand Michael’s equating the Holocaust and Israel defending itself successfully, I think it was in his first or second post. He marked them 1) and 2). Also during the exile in Babylon, Jewish life and learning flourished as never before. The great Babylonian Talmud mentioned, was began and mostly compiled there and it has precedence over the Jerusalem Talmud. Their Rabbinic Schools existed there for many centuries and the conclusions of their scholars are quoted regularly in Talmudic discussions.
But what REALLY wanted to say to you Adam is that their really IS strong evidence that Middle Ages Jews, against the massive strength and persecution of their enemies defended themselves-even verbally……. . There is a wonderful book entitled “The Nizzahon Vetus” Compiled and edited by Rabbi David Berger in which the polemical attacks on Christianity are very strong. The unknown writers mercilessly hit away at all the fallacies of Christianity, in terms of definitely non political correctness…They mock and jeer at it….They showed bravery beyond ordinary, in very blunt terms….considering the times.. .
I’ve mentioned it before in this blog.
Look it up…It may be for sale on Amazon or Ebay or available in say a University library. You’ll be glad you did. bought it from the Jewish Publication Society, my most expensive book ever, about $27.50, but today…if you can find it, likely over $100. So a Library is best. If they haven’t got it, they may buy it, …say that you need it for your thesis or something. I’ve had libraries buy books for me before in the distant past. They don’t like to get a request that they can’t supply….It’s a librarian “honour” thing believe.
Berger writes an excellent foreword; and as it is in Hebrew, translates it as it goes along.
@ Michael S: The “religion-based” struggles were overwhelmingly waged by Christians and Muslims against Jews, not vice-versa. Jewish resistance to these faiths, while heavily emphasized of course in Christian and Muslim traditions, was actually minimal, if you look at the evidence objectively. Christians preached inumerable sermons and wrote many lengthy books denouncing Judaism; Jewish critiques of Christianity occupied only a few widely scatteered paragraphs in the Talmud–some of which were obligingly removed by Jewish printers and copyists after Christians critized them. THe Muslims launched unprovoked attacks on the Jews of Mecca and Kaibar in 7th century Arabia. There was no Jewish resistance to Muslim rule after that, but persecution and discrimination against Jews in the Muslim world has persisted for fourteen centuries.
Yes, Jewish resistance to Greek and then Roman oppression made us enemies. But it is interesting that the Germans successfully rebelled against Roman rule, and never experienced the hatred of the Romans. Tacitus actually praised them, who defeated Rome, in the same book in which he denounced the Jews, whom the Romans defeated. Apparently, winning wars is the best way to avoid being hated, while losing them is the best way to insure one is hated. This is because bigots are always cowards and bullies who persecute those whom they know cannot or will not defend themselves.
Yeah, passivity enabled the Jews to prevent the massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland (before the Crusaders even reached the Holy Land), tthe massacre of the Jews in Spain and France in 1392, the repeated expulsion of the Jews in France during the 14th century, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the Chmeilnitzky massacre in 17th century Ukraine, the pogroms and blood libel trials in 18th century Poland, numerous underreported and little-known (in the West) pogroms that were never perpetrated in the Islamic world, such as the Grenada massacre of 1066 and the one in Cairo in the early eighteenth century, the Russian pogroms of 1182 and 1903-06– all of which of course never happened, since they were prevented by Jewish passivity. It only “backfired completely” in the Holocaust of 1939-45, when after all, only six million Jews were killed–an exceptional event that only proves the rule that passivity in the face of hatred and violence usually works to save Jewish lives. And of course, actively fighting for liberty and human rights has always failed when Jews have attempted it–as it did when the American Jews fought for American independence and donated their fortunes to the success of the American cause. That war, of course, resulted in defeat for the American patriots, and terrible reprisals by the British against the American and English Jews for supporting the colonists’ rebellion.
@ Michael S:
One other point:
Antisemitism is rooted in ancient struggles of the Jewish people: oppression under Pharaoh, exile in Babylon, conflict with the Romans and finally religion-based struggles against Muslims and Christians. Anti-Zionism, on the other hand, is framed in more modern terms; and in this framing, Israel is portrayed as something of a “Siamese twin” of the US. That may play against the Jews in places like Europe; but in the US, it’s to their great advantage — especially among Evangelicals, who are still a powerful group in much of the country.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Adam,
Ignoring antisemitism actually HAS worked rather well for Jews for the past 1900 years, as evidenced by the fact that the Jewish people have survived for 1900 years precisely because of their passivity.
The great exceptions, of course are (1) The Holocaust, where the policy completely backfired on them, and (2) The modern State of Israel, which Jews have rightly stood with, sometimes against great odds.
There were some occasions, where Jews fought their Christian abusers to their own hurt. One was when they Joined the Muslims in fighting the Franks in Spain, and another was when they joined the Muslim defenders of Jerusalem against the Crusaders.
I think Jews are fighting an uphill battle against antisemitism nowadays, because (1) the most dangerous form of antisemitism, namely, anti-Zionism, has been so cleverly packaged (as a form of anti-Colonialism, etc.), and (2) because some of the worst anti-Zionists (and hence, antisemites) are actually Jews!
Some other points: First of all, the Jews struggled for some 1800 years as exiles, with their very national existence in peril, without a clear mandated from God about what to do about it. Passively adapting Judaism to fit the new reality was about the best they could come up with. With the creation of the modern State of Israel, however, the Jewish people have a clear mandate FROM THE BIBLE! about what to do — namely, aliya and the physical defense of the Jewish homeland. That is so powerful a remedy to the problem of Jewish isolation, it makes efforts at protecting the galut pale by comparison.
It is always good to engage and oppose antisemites in calm, rational discussion. Israel advocates like Ted Belman and Daniel Pipes, and many more, have done an excellent job of this; and having an Israel advocate like Donald Trump in the White House certainly helps the Jewish cause. The key, though, as I see it, is not to focus on “antisemitism”, which is easily dodged and denied, but to focus on support for Israel.
@ Michael S: Michael, ignoring anti-Semitism has been tried by Jews as a strtegy for the past nineteen hundred years. But it hasnever worked. In general, ignoring a problem is never a solution to that problem. “All that is necessary for evil to truimph is for good men to do nothing.”–famous quote from Edmund Burke.
One reason overt displays of antisemitism more or less ended in Milwaukee, as well as Skokie, Coeur D’alene (in Idaho) and dozens of other places in the United States, is that large numbers of Jews united to demonstrate against it.
An example in today’s Arutz Sheva news:
@ adamdalgliesh:
HI, Adam
Ignoring them might actually be the best way to go. In the current atmosphere in the US, many people are getting agitated, and some are striking out — sometimes against close friends and family. Atheists are attacking Christians, Christians are attacking Jews and Hindus, Muslims are attacking everyone, and Country Music fans are attacking other Country Music fans. The only common thread seems to be that the attackers seem to be psychopaths. Even those might not have turned to murder, if the social atmosphere here were not so highly charged.
I know that true antisemitism exists in the US. A few years ago, I ran the camera for a local access TV station, and had the sickeningly unpleasant opportunity to see some real Jew-haters at work. So refined-sounding, so dapper, so downright creepy! You would never catch them throwing rocks at synagogues; but they have probably helped egg others on to doing it.
I was in a quandary then, not knowing beforehand where those people were coming from. I wanted to help out the station, because I myself benefited from them. I continued filming through the whole episode, but never ran a camera there again.
In the 1970s, I lived in Milwaukee, WI. At one time, there was much press given to the seeming outing of a great “Neo-Nazi” movement. For several days, the local newspaper was emblazoned with headlines about demonstrations drawing thousands of people. Then, one day, as I was driving to work, I saw a flat bed truck with no more than a dozen brownshirts in the back — all neat and pretty, in uniform and regalia, all doing stiff-arm Nazi salutes. I thought it was some sort of Halloween masquerade, when it dawned on me that this was the ENTIRE Neo-Nazi movement in Milwaukee! The “thousands of demonstrators”, it turns out, were all counter-protestors, many of them Jews. That was the first and the last that I ever saw of the whole matter. It stopped selling newspapers, and everyone went back to their ordinary lives.
I would be concerned, if the government, or a major political party, were genuinely promoting antisemitism. I get very concerned, when Hollywood actors and politicians (like Corbyn in the UK) let their tongues freely flap against ISRAEL. Very seldom will they be caught admitting that it isn’t the Israeli government they hate, but the fact that the Jews have the audacity to want and keep their own homeland. THAT is a major problem — much worse, in my eyes, than occasional attacks by psychopaths and drunken hooligans.
It’s not very safe to be Jewish nowadays, nor to be pro-Israel nor pro-Trump. In the neighborhood where I live, it’s more socially acceptable, even chic, to be Jewish than the latter two. The tack that my wife and I follow, is to try to be pleasant to everyone.
If all of these meseares to discourage hate crimes are useless, Michael, what do you propose in their stead? Just ignoring the situation?
“FBI officials said the agency will provide training next year for law enforcement officers on how to identify bias-motivated incidents and report that data to federal authorities.”
Pardon my skepticism, but I don’t think this training will reduce the number of violent attacks, whether against Jews or anyone else. It ranks right up there with “gun control” and “climate change”, as an effective remedy.
If the authorities are successful in getting rid of hate by outlawing it, then carefully collecting data on it, they ought to move next, to outlaw forest fires. Then they can outlaw, corruption, selfishness, and every social ill; and peace and happiness will break out everywhere! Bambi the deer will dance in the street with Sheer Khan the tiger, and babies will snuggle up to anacondas in their cribs!