Anti-Semitism - Your Christian Heritage

In these week of Passover (no, I'm not Jewish. No, I'm not celebrating it.), these thoughts have been nagging at me.

Now, Passover is a celebration of the Exodus from Egypt, a seminal event in their annals, one that we the educated know never happened.

Of all the peoples of the world, I doubt there is one group that is more hated, more reviled, more spat upon and more mistreated than the Jews.

I think this is well past its shelf life. It should've expired by now. But to this day, Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites seem to abound on both sides of the polarized political sphere. More on the left side than the right.

Michael Shermer, in his excellent book Why People Believe Weird Things, that Holocaust deniers tend to focus a great deal on the doings of the Jews.

So, for the nutshell version:

They left Israel, and wandered for centuries. They have dwelled in almost every country on earth. And in doing so, have been discriminated against, slaughtered at the whimsy of local populaces, and otherwise been the scape goat of each of those respective societies. From Luther to Hitler, there's been centuries of horror perpetrated against them. When the Final Solution was enacted, it was apparently the last straw. Zionism (a lackluster movement until then) picked up the banner, and the push for a safe haven for the Jews became more of a shove.

Can we blame that old whore Christianity for it? The bastard child of Judaism, the chameleon of many colors, that borrowed heavily from an epistemology not its own? Of course we can.

Matthew 27:

20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.

21 The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.

22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.

23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.

24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.

This then, is the root of xenophobic hatred. There's more to be found here, all of it revolting. There's even a table of comparison showing  canonical law juxtaposed to the Nazi anti-Jew laws. The correlation is chilling.

That the concept of the scapegoat originated with the Jews is an irony not lost upon me.

I am not intimating in the slightest that Israel is above approach. That country should be criticized like any other, a level playing field. Nor am I elevating the Jews to another plateau on the concept of reparation. I have (on more than one occasion) mocked their superstitions acerbically.

Presently, most on the left are carrying on about Israel accepting faith-based money ("Hey, y'all live in the Promised Land. The Ah-pock-oh-lips is a-comin'!"). So let me trot out a little analogy for ya:

If a Christian (or even a Scientologist! HORRORS!) were to rescue me from, say, a gang out for a wilding, or throw me a lifejacket while I was drowning, or offer me a hand up as I hung off a cliff, well, I'd be some kind of jackass to refuse on principle. (Of course, were the Xenuphiliac to know that I'm an SP, chances are good that s/he'd be more likely to pry my fingers off the rock.)

I am pointing out that when someone begins to lather at the mouth about the Zionist movement, the ridiculous blatherings about 'apartheid' or 'ethnic cleansing' (there's been one incident, the Palistinean Exodus, which Israel was clearly guilty of, in 1948), or genocide (compare the population figures from 1948 to that of today, and get back to me on that), that person should stop and think.

I might even suggest that this is a meme passed on for many generations. I might hint that this is an old, old legacy carried on for generations by Christians. I might propose that you should carefully examine the epistemology of the opinion you opine upon (say that three times fast, I dare ya): you may very well be carrying on an old religious tradition unwittingly.

A tradition better served by a funeral pyre, upon which we scrap the useless memes and traditions of superstitions and xenophobia.

So think, and clearly.

L'chaim.