Almost 300 parliamentarians, academicians, human rights activists and Jewish leaders from all corners of the globe are participating in the Global Forum against Anti Semitism, held under the auspices of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs. More importantly, at least 45 governments are represented and have pledged meaningful cooperation with Israel to combat the world’s oldest hatred.
This commitment, combined with the record number of high-caliber participants, reflects a growing concern about a mushrooming of Judeophobia which would have been deemed inconceivable just over a decade ago, when anti-Semites were considered an almost extinct species. Today the intensity of the hatred has become so fierce that it is ominously reminiscent of previous occasions when demonization preceded Jewish catastrophes.
Paradoxically, setting aside the Arab world, this anti-Semitic tsunami is taking place at a time when Jews have achieved a unique level of equality, freedom and affluence, and annual Holocaust memorials have been institutionalized and elevated to unprecedented status.
Yet it should also be noted that in the post-Holocaust era, overt anti-Semitism tended to rise and decline in tandem with perceptions of strength or weakness on the part of Israel. Anti-Semitism sank to its lowest levels in the wake of the Six Day War, and experienced an exponential increase after the Second Lebanon War, when Israel was perceived as weak.
CONTEMPORARY anti-Semitism differs from the traditional hatred Jews encountered throughout the millennia. But the venom emanating from the Islamic world is no less lethal than the most obscene Nazi variety, even incorporating the notorious medieval blood libel. Islamic Judeophobia combines demonic religious xenophobia and racism; depicts Jews and Israelis as vampires or descendants of apes and pigs; as evil creatures who disseminate AIDS; as conspirators seeking to enslave mankind; and as the real masterminds behind the 9/11 attacks.
In a word, Jews are again being portrayed as the source of all the woes of mankind and presented as cancers that must be excised from humanity.
The electronic age is a boon to these hate-mongers, who, unlike their Nazi predecessors, are today able to globally disseminate their satanic defamation of Jews through the Internet, instantly and effectively.
In the West, Arab Judeophobia has been refined and integrated with the long-standing religious, cultural and racial prejudice which, due to Holocaust reverberations, had been suppressed for over half a century. The newly resurrected blend of anti-Semitism is thus no longer directed primarily against individual Jews. Israel, the “Jew amongst the nations,” has become the new vehicle for demonizing Jews.
The symbolic turning point was the cartoon displaying Ariel Sharon as a monster devouring Palestinian children which was awarded the prize for the best cartoon in the UK a few years ago. This approach and other calumnies, especially employing Holocaust inversion by linking Israeli behavior with Nazi crimes, have become staple features of much of the Western media.
The new anti-Semitism depicts Israel as evil incarnate. Even after a rogue state like Iran threatens to wipe Israel off the map and may well unleash a global nuclear catastrophe, most Europeans still regard the Jewish state as the greatest threat to world peace.
MEANWHILE, LEADING human rights groups have been hijacked by anti-Israel bigots shamelessly applying double standards against the Jewish state. Likewise, many traditional liberals and social democrats, formerly allies of the Jewish people, now parade under banners such as “We are all Hizbullah,” making a mockery of their purported concern for human rights.
The United Nations Human Rights Council, the World Conference on Racism and any number of NGOs ignore barbaric regimes which deny basic human rights to their citizens and direct their venom against Israel. Whether these hate fests are motivated by anti-Semitism or simply dedicated to delegitimizing the Jewish state is irrelevant.
Not surprisingly, European Jews in particular feel besieged. Some are in denial or lie low, hoping the hatred will decline of its own accord; most are deeply pessimistic about the future for their children in the continent which only 60 years ago was soaked in the blood of their forbears. The most severe repercussions are visible at European universities, which have been transformed into centers of Israelphobia. To a lesser extent this is now also emerging on campuses in the United States.
OVER THE past few years, the phenomenon of marginal Jews demonizing the Jewish state has increasingly come to the fore. Jews defaming their people is not a new experience and can be traced back to early antiquity, to Jewish converts to Christianity in the Middle Ages, and to universalists like Karl Marx, who made no effort to conceal loathing for his people. More recently, Jews who embraced Stalinism or became fellow travelers were applauding the murder of their kinsmen and defending the repressive anti-Semitic Soviet regime.
Today, under the guise of promoting human rights, their successors are publicly supporting the most rabid enemies of Israel. Some even have the hutzpa to claim that Jewish moral values impel them to promote the delegitimization of the Jewish state and defend murderers and suicide bombers who target civilians.
Not surprisingly, the jihadists and their allies enthusiastically exploit these people. Whenever challenged, Jewish Israel-bashers complain that they are victims of Zionist McCarthyism and insist they are merely indulging in legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.
This underlines the need to reiterate the distinction between legitimate criticism, as opposed to demonization or delegitimization of the Jewish state, frequently a camouflage for outright anti-Semitism. Some progress has been achieved and bodies like the European Union now publicly caution that anti-Zionism may be employed as a vehicle to promote anti-Semitism.
The reality is that far from being shielded from criticism, the Israel government undergoes more disapproval and criticism from its own people and Jews generally, than any other regime.
[A woodcut showing Jews…]
A woodcut showing Jews performing a ritual to extract a Christian child’s blood. These prints were popular in Germany and the Netherlands in the 15th Century.
Photo: Courtesy
IN THE context of confronting Islamic Jew-hatred, the time has come to repudiate the politically correct mantra that, as currently manifested, Islam is a religion of peace. This is arrant nonsense. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share scriptures and sacred texts which incorporate themes implicitly endorsing violence. But, equally, they provide scope for interpretations promoting tolerance and respect for outsiders.
Today, under the influence of Wahhabi teachings from Saudi Arabia, it cannot be denied that the dominant Islamic bodies, as well as many secular Arabs, if not actively endorsing violence, at best tend to remain silent. To expose this in no way contradicts or inhibits simultaneously reaching out and endeavoring to build bridges with moderate Islamic groups courageous enough to condemn the jihadists.
FINALLY, it is a fact that since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Jewish state has failed to effectively make its case in the international arena. For political reasons, the government has also tended to understate the criminal anti-Semitic incitement and culture of death and martyrdom that to this day prevails in the areas administered by our purportedly moderate Palestinian peace partner.
In order to create “the right atmosphere” for promoting the peace process, there has been an inclination to understate the fact that kindergartens, mosques, media and all levels of society under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority continue breeding future killers of Jews and sanctifying martyrdom.
The object of the Global Forum is to review these issues and consider policies designed to reverse the tide. My hope is that it will create a standing body to conduct ongoing activities in conjunction with the Israeli government until the next meeting convenes.
The presence of prominent non-Jewish parliamentarians and personalities representing a broad political spectrum suggests that efforts to expand alliances with political and NGO groups genuinely promoting human rights are beginning to bear fruit. Above all, the presence of 45 governments that have pledged to cooperate with the Israeli government to overcome this evil should be interpreted as a signal that the tide may be turning.
Nor should we underestimate the benefit of the extraordinary support Israel now receives from vast numbers of evangelical Christians, whose important contribution many of us are only now beginning to fully appreciate.
CLEARLY the struggle of the Jewish people against the world’s oldest hatred will be ongoing. But we have overcome far worse situations. We must now employ our global assets in the most effective manner and join with others to expose, shame and discredit the bigots and barbarians who promote Judeophobia and racism and threaten to pollute the social hygiene of democracies.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
Interesting parallel Ted.
I grew up into my late teens in a small town in Saskatchewan of about 5,000 people of which there were about 10 Jewish families. Together with other Jewish families in surrounding smaller centres or farms, our small synagogue B’Nai Abram managed to pretty well fill up on High Holidays.
Unlike you however, I experienced considerable antisemitism growing up which often led to my having to fight back. Like you, my battling antisemitism in that small town over quite a number of years with my words and my fists when I had to, contributed to both my Jewish and overall sense of identity.
The Jewish Task Force stands for strength against ALL enemies of Israel and Jews worldwide.
JTF also stands for justice, righteousness and integrity. We fight also for unity with our dear friends of the Jewish people: the heroic righteous Serbian Gentiles!!
Watch this superb Jewish Task Force video on YouTube entitled:
New U.S. President Will Be Anti-Serb, So We Must Fight Back!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYxLJTpEquY
I grew up in a town in Canada which had a population of 15,000 of which 18 families were Jewish. There wasn’t much antisemitism though I was called such names and had occasion to fight. I was very aware that Jews were separated from the rest. That gave me my identity. I was proud of it.
Bill Narvey,
I HAVE VERY MIXED FEELINGS ON THIS, ALL MY INSTINCTS TELL ME TO TRUST NO ONE OTHER THAN OTHER JEWS, ESPECIALLY WHEN WE ARE SPEAKING OF JEWISH SURVIVAL AND THE SURVIVAL OF ISRAEL. TRUST OR RELIANCE ON THE GENTILE MIGHT MEAN WE WILL NOT DO THAT WHICH WE MIGHT WITHOUT THEIR SUPPORT! RELIANCE ON THE GENTILE MIGH CAUSE US TO DEPEND ON THOSE THAT WILL NOT BE THERE WHEN WE NEED THEM. False security and false hope! THEY HAVE YET TO BE REALLY TESTED AND I REALLY HOPE THEY NEVER WILL HAVE TO BE!
Jewish leaders like Anti Defemation League head Abe Foxman have challenged the wisdom of Jews aligning with the Christian right solely because of its strong support of Israel.
Christian Zionists see the existence of modern Israel as a precondition for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which they believe will be marked by the violent death of millions, including the ingathered Jews. Those who survive the Apocolypse will embrace Jesus.
Jewish defenders of the Christian Zionists say Christian support for Israel outweighs any concerns about end-time theology. But critics point to support for groups like Messianic Jews as proof that these groups pose a threat to Jewish continuity.
“It’s kind of like they have placards that say ‘Israel – yes’ on one side, but ‘Judaism – maybe’ or ‘no’ on the other,” Rabbi A. James Rudin, inter-religious affairs adviser for the American Jewish Committee, told the Associated Press.
The Rev. Mike Bickle of Kansas City, Mo., spoke about end-of-times predictions about Israel; in a passing comment, he used the phrase, “unsaved Jews,” and said a Satan-like leader, “will be required to exterminate the Jewish race.”
Messianic Jews complain about being harassed in Israel for their beliefs and facing immigration problems over Israel’s right-of-return law for Diaspora Jews. When asked about this, Israeli politician Natan Sharansky said, “If you change your religion, you don’t have a right to become a citizen by law of return … the change of religion means change of nationality.”
Bill and ED,’ A reminder just for perspective sake:
Kishinev 1903: The Birth of a Century.
Reconsidering the 49 Deaths That Galvanized a Generation and Changed Jewish History.
by: J.J. Goldberg
The Forward, April 4, 2003
One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1903, the Jewish community of Kishinev in what was then czarist Russia suffered two days of mob violence that shocked the world and changed the course of Jewish history.
Provoked by a medieval blood libel, flashed around the globe by modern communications, Kishinev was the last pogrom of the Middle Ages and the first atrocity of the 20th century. The event, and the worldwide wave of Jewish outrage that it evoked, laid the foundations of modern Israel, gave birth to contemporary American-Jewish activism and helped bring about the downfall of the czarist regime.
Much of that, curiously, resulted from a misreading of events at the time.
Kishinev, the capital of the czarist province of Bessarabia, today’s Republic of Moldova, was a town of some 125,000 residents, nearly half of them Jewish. Ethnic tensions were running high that spring, thanks to a noisy, months-long campaign of antisemitic incitement by local nationalists.
The rioting began on Easter Sunday, after rumors spread through town that a Christian had been killed by Jews in a ritual murder. Mobs rampaged through Jewish neighborhoods for two days, burning, smashing, raping and killing. When it was over, 49 Jews were dead and 500 wounded, 1,300 homes and businesses were looted and destroyed and 2,000 families were left homeless.
The brutality sent shock waves across Russia and around the world. Leo Tolstoy spoke out. Mass rallies were held in Paris, London and New York. Western governments protested the apparent complicity of the czar’s police, who had refused repeated pleas to intervene. The Forward reported the news with a banner headline: “Rivers of Jewish Blood in Kishinev.”
From nearby Odessa, the great center of Russian Jewish culture, the young Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik was sent to Kishinev by the Jewish communal commission to interview survivors and report firsthand on the bloodbath. Before returning home he composed one of his most powerful poems, “On the Slaughter,” with its unforgettable cry that Satan himself could not forgive the death of a child. A year later Bialik would publish his epic masterwork, “The City of Slaughter,” a searing condemnation of Jewish passivity, from which the following is taken.
Descend then, to the cellars of the town,
There where the virginal daughters of thy folk were fouled,
Where seven heathen flung a woman down,
The daughter in the presence of her mother,
The mother in the presence of her daughter,
Before slaughter, during slaughter, and after slaughter!
Touch with thy hand the cushion stained; touch
The pillow incarnadined:
This is the place the wild ones of the wood, the beasts of the field
With bloody axes in their paws compelled thy daughters yield:
Beasted and swined!
Note also, do not fail to note,
In that dark corner, and behind that cask
Crouched husbands, bridegrooms, brothers, peering from the cracks,
Watching the sacred bodies struggling underneath
The bestial breath,
Stifled in filth, and swallowing their blood!
Watching from the darkness and its mesh
The lecherous rabble portioning for booty
Their kindred and their flesh!
Crushed in their shame, they saw it all;
They did not stir nor move;
They did not pluck their eyes out; they
Beat not their brains against the wall!
Perhaps, perhaps each watcher had it in his heart to pray:
A miracle, O Lord — and spare my skin this day!
Bialik’s poem fell on ready ears. Young Jews across Russia, electrified by the events, took the poem as a call to arms and organized themselves into self-defense units, most led by fledgling socialist or Zionist parties. Thousands threw themselves into revolutionary movements, determined to bring down the murderous czarist regime. Their rage and energy gave new momentum to the revolutionary movement and led directly to the abortive Russian revolution of 1905, which in turn set the stage for the cataclysm of 1917.
Others, despairing of any Jewish future in Russia, began making their way to the land of Israel in a wave of immigration that would come to be known as the Second Aliya. Influenced by socialism, led by young radicals such as David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the pioneers set about remaking the Zionist settlement in Palestine on a foundation of Jewish labor and Jewish self-defense. Driven by visions of Kishinev and the shame of Jewish passivity, they created the kibbutzim, the towns and factories, the militias and political parties that were the cornerstone of modern Israel.
In fact, the image of Jewish passivity was largely untrue. Eyewitness accounts of the pogrom tell a very different story. Here is a front-page report from the Forward of April 24:
Armed with knives and machetes, the murderers broke into Jewish homes, where they began stabbing and killing, chopping off heads and stomping frail women and small children. If such a vicious, enraged mob would have attacked a Jewish town somewhere in Volin or Lithuania, thousands of Jews would have been killed in an hour’s time. But Kishinev Jews are tough, healthy, strong as iron and fearless. When the murderous pogromists began their horrible slaughter, Jewish boys and men came running and fought like lions to protect their weaker and older brothers and sisters. Even young girls exhibited amazing heroism. They defended their honor with supernatural strength…. The Jews, however, fought with their bare hands and the murderers, armed with machetes and knives, were primed to annihilate and decimate all the Jewish townspeople.
How did Bialik get it so wrong? Like many young Russian Jews, Bialik was ready to believe in the shame of Jewish passivity even before he got to Kishinev. Zionist essayists had been hammering the theme home for decades, none more powerfully than the Kishçnev-born physician Leon Pinsker, whose 1882 essay “Autoemancipation” is still regarded widely as the founding manifesto of Russian Zionism.
Pinsker’s essay was on Bialik’s mind when word of the bloodbath reached Odessa on the second day of the rioting, April 7. Bialik appears to have spent the evening at a meeting of the city’s Jewish literary circle, the Beseda (“Conversation”) Club, which included such luminaries as the historian Simon Dubnow, the Hebrew essayist Ahad Ha’am and editor-publisher Yehoshua Ravnitzky. The circle’s April 7 meeting was devoted to a lecture by a little-known journalist named Vladimir Jabotinsky, age 23. His theme for the lecture, his first major public appearance, was “Autoemancipation.”
Here is how the historian Dubnow recalled the evening in his memoirs:
It was the night of April 7, 1903. Because of Russian Easter, the newspapers had not been issued for the previous two days so that we remained without any news from the rest of the world. That night the Jewish audience assembled in the Beseda Club, to listen to the talk of a young Zionist, the Odessa “wunderkind” V. Jabotinsky [….] The young agitator had great success with his audience. In a particularly moving manner, he drew on Pinsker’s parable of the Jew as a shadow wandering through space and developed it further. As for my own impression, this one-sided treatment of our historical problem depressed me: Did he not scarcely stop short of inducing fear in our unstable Jewish youth of their own national shadow?… During the break, while pacing up and down in the neighboring room, I noticed sudden unrest in the audience: the news spread that fugitives had arrived in Odessa from nearby Kishinev and had reported of a bloody pogrom in progress there.
When Bialik set out for Kishinev later in the week his mission was to collect the facts, but it could be that his narrative was formulated in advance, etched in his mind by Jabotinsky.
Most of Russia’s Jews, to be sure, wanted nothing more than to flee the czar’s charnel house. Emigration to America, already a flood tide, more than doubled by the end of the year. In America, Jews scrambled to cope with the human tidal wave, leading to an explosive growth of Jewish philanthropy and social service agencies. When Russia launched its ill-fated war against Japan the next year, America’s leading Jewish philanthropist, investment banker Jacob Schiff, volunteered to underwrite Japan’s war bonds and personally financed Russia’s defeat. Schiff and other prominent Jewish business figures entered a series of negotiations that led three years later to the formation of the American Jewish Committee, arguably the world’s first modern human-rights lobby. President Theodore Roosevelt greeted the committee’s formation by inviting its best known figure, the former diplomat Oscar Straus, to become his secretary of commerce and labor, the first Jew to serve in an American cabinet. And not a word about color-blind meritocracy: “I want to show Russia and some other countries,” Roosevelt wrote to Straus, “what we think of the Jews in this country.”
For all that, the enduring image of Kishinev is Bialik’s.
The historian Rufus Learsi once wrote that the 1903 Kishinev pogrom must be seen as “a dress rehearsal” for the far bloodier wave of antisemitic violence two years later, following the 1905 revolution, which left some 3,000 Jews dead. But that violence was only a rehearsal for the genocidal fury of the 1918 Russian civil war, in which Ukrainian militias under Simon Petlura massacred as many as 200,000 Jews. And that, of course, was just a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.
Like Kishinev in its time, the Holocaust was taken by survivors and heirs to be an object lesson in the human capacity for evil and the Jewish duty to stand up and fight. But for all the earnest lessons, whether at Kishinev or at Auschwitz, the atrocities of the 20th century seem to be little more than forerunners one for the next, descending not as warnings but as dress rehearsals for new and greater horrors. In Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and now Liberia and Congo, neighbors continue to slaughter neighbors while the world is busy elsewhere. Only the technologies improve. The mold was set in Kishinev.
ED, I too came from similar environment but in Upstate NY larger town actually small city of 120,000 and except for KKK sounds like my childhood and youth!
Narvey:
Sounds logical but I put no trust in my ultimate survival other than another Jew. I hope we will not be asked to pay a price that we cannot or will not pay before the Tribulation and the Rapture, they believe we are the instruments for the advancements of those beliefs. The other point is that in relying on any other forces other than Jews gives many a false sense of security and may to our peril not do for ourselves all that e might or need do to that end. I have very mixed feelings re: this!
ED: and Bill this piece is especially for you! afterwards think about it!
Yamit, Your comment reminds me of myself as a child growing up in a small town in Texas. There were only four Jewish families in a population of 13,000 in an era that was still in the grasp of the KKK. On many occasions, I was called a Kike, Jew baby, Christ killers and I was assaulted on occassions when I was very young; however, I learned that if I cried, begged or any other sign of weaknessm, matters became worse. I started fighting back and by bulking up my body, I began winning those fights. I became a very good athlete in High School and by taking on all anti-Jewish components, I gained the respect and admiration of the people in my town.
You are completely correct in saying that weakness of Jews, anywhere in this world, creats contempt.
Yamit, I agree with your concluding sentiment which essentially is that Jewish salvation will only be found in Jewish strength.
I disagree with you however in your warning Jews to stand against Christians who support a strong Israel, because they have or have an ulterior motive in that support given, which ulterior motive will lead to Israel’s ultimate insecurity.
The ulterior motive you speak of is that many evangelical Christians see the Jews return to Zion as one of the signs that foretells the second coming Christ when Jews and other non Christians will abandon their own faiths and accept Jesus as their savior and Christianity as their religion.
I have pointed out before that if and when the second coming happens is in much doubt. If it never happens, Jews will remain Jews and people of other faiths will keep their own faiths.
If however the second coming does happen, the fulfillment of Christian prophecy will doubtless win the Jews and indeed the whole the world over.
Just because Christians have a faith based belief in a future that may or may not be realized, is no reason to turn down the support of Christians who want Jews to return to all the lands of biblical Israel.
There is an interesting contrast between Christianity and Islam in this.
Whereas Christians believe the world will eventually be won over to Jesus and Christianity through a miracle of love and salvation bound up in the second coming, Islam seeks to win the world over to Islam through Islamic conquest.
If I were forced to choose between the two, I certainly would opt for the religion of love and salvation over a religion of domination and subjugation of all aspects of my being.
Until the second coming happens, Jews need all the support they can get to aid them in finding their own salvation through their own strength of identity, purpose and faith.
Sacrificial lamb
Many Christians scribe to: “A simple, inexpensive solution: pulverize Jerusalem. Think of the problems that would solve.” After a few seconds of shock, I realized the suggestion as the quintessence of messianic attitude toward Israel. Christians exterminated the Jews for fifteen centuries, and neither mentality nor Christian religion has changed. Most Christians don’t care about the Jews and would rather see the nasty nation disappear. Survival of the Jesus’ murderers challenges Christian doctrine; if Judaism is right then Christianity is wrong. Jews try to understand why the good American or British Christians refused to bomb Nazi death camps. The answer is simple: Nazis did the thing natural to Christians. Germans viewed the extermination similarly: many detested the gruesome rumors about the death factories, but most Germans recognized that they have to do the aesthetically unpleasant thing and finally solve the Jewish problem. American newspapers dwelt on unaesthetic aspects of the genocide. Little attention was paid to annihilation of Jewish culture.
Messianic churches don’t want a secure and prosperous Israel. Many rational leaders and compassionate Christians side with the Jews, but the core attitude to Israel views her as a springboard for the eventual triumph of Christianity. To that end, Israel should not be secure. Israel that fits messianic description must suffer, shrink, fall into (leftist) idolatry, and eventually be annihilated. Few Christians subscribe to the alternate concept that Messiah comes on the wave of peace and prosperity. Christianity wants a specific Israel – the lamb of Isaiah.
It pays to be brave
The Jewish sense of superiority plays a major role in provoking anti-Semitism. But the British, the French, and the Japanese are similarly arrogant, yet experience nothing like the hatred directed against the Jews. The major force behind anti-Semitism is weakness. Respect is generally a function of power, sometimes of moral power. No one respects weaklings. Compassion applies to two classes of weak people: doubtless members of one’s kin and pets. Beggars near churches exemplify the first category, remote powerless and submissive Blacks starving in Africa – the second. Homeless pets fall into the last category. Jews are pronouncedly different and are not accorded compassion. Jewish weakness bears the “kick me” stigma: the superiority of one’s values and ego is most easily established by insulting those who challenge them. The very existence of the Jews challenges the traditional understanding of Christian values. The superiority of one’s clan is most easily established by beating the other clan’s members, thus the repeated beatings of the clannish Jews. Centuries under Christian and Muslim rule established the Jews as institutionally weak; the Gentiles could act against them with impunity. The Bible, astonishingly, pictures the Jews as weak, both morally (e.g., the Hebrews of the Exodus wanted to return to Egypt) and physically (commonly losing wars). Sometimes, the Jews overcame their inherent weakness and fought bravely. In recent times, the 1967 victory sharply diminished anti-Semitism while the protracted scuffle with the insignificant Palestinians and Lebanese has caused anti-Semitism to surge.
Minuscule Israel among the sea of Muslims parallels the Jewish ghetto in European cities. The lessons of European anti-Semitism fully apply to Israel’s coexistence with the Muslims. Even the Gentiles sympathetic to Jews switch to pitiful contempt over Israel whining about Palestinian attacks.
Weakness wins the Jews no friends; strength makes our detractors respect us!