Where Illegitimacy began, and where it ends
When the political culture of the West joins the religion-based culture of Middle East Islam to attack Israel, the resulting condemnations signal how complete is the West’s moral collapse. It is not a coincidence that the West’s refusal to stand up for a Westernized but Jewish sovereign state’s right to exist appears simultaneously with the rising influence of the International political Left. This modern Left, with deep roots in Marxism, Humanism and Hellenism is perfectly comfortable with a global demonization of Israel and all matters Jewish. The Left’s Humanist-Hellenist ideology seeks to replace G-d with man, the minority with majority, and ‘justice’ with a man-made morality. The Humanist Left feeds itself on a globalist world-uniting vision that is based in part on a Hellenist faith that it is man (and only man) who can best shape the universe.
From our point of view, the Hellenist influence on the West’s moral collapse begins with arrogance and ends with denigrating the Jew: Hellenists considered themselves more intellectually sophisticated than others and, by comparison, aristocratic, while the rest of the world was barbaric (ibid, p. 205); only they were civilized and only they had the answers. They were—as today’s Left—intolerant, cruel and full of contempt for those who were ‘other’. In addition, their attitudes toward Jews was to remove the Jew from the ‘nations’ of the world, by isolating the Jew as unsocial, impious and hostile (Hecataeus, 300 BCE, in Judeophobia: attitudes toward the Jews in the ancient world, Peter Schafer, Harvard University Press paperback, pp. 15-16, and 23); indeed, the Jews’ insularity and supposed hostility to ‘foreigners’ was explicitly associated with their strange and perhaps ‘improper’ belief in a non- human god who had no physical form (ibid, 17 and 22-23). Less politely (Manetheo, app 250 BCE, ibid, p. 18), Jews were portrayed as cruel. Worse, Jews were said to create laws to assure that the world’s ‘normal’ gods were not worshipped. Jewish law, in this view, was exclusionary to the point that Jews required their women to have intercourse only with those within their own confederacy (ibid, p.18)—something which, apparently, bothered non-Jewish observers. By first century BCE Hellenists, Jews are portrayed as having adopted a hatred of humankind as their permanent tradition (Diodorus, ibid, p. 23). Later (Tacitus, early second century CE), Jews become ‘hateful to the gods’, practicing customs (the Sabbath, fasts, abstinence from pork) that were abominable ( ibid 31-2); some at that time spoke of Judaism with disgust (32). Curiously, Jews again seem particularly offensive because they abstain from intercourse with foreign women while among themselves, it is suggested, nothing lustful is unlawful (p. 33), a criticism that surely says more about the accuser than the accusee. Ultimately, the fact that Jews did not make images of their god meant that they were in fact godless (ibid, 36). You can see where this is going: the creation of anti-Semitism, a focused, unified attitude where the Jew becomes both hostile and repulsive, blasphemous, godless and hypocritical—foreign, untrustworthy, suspicious. The Jew, in other words, becomes the one who obstructs amity and trust.
In the modern world, Nazi Germany refined this anti-Semitism; they built upon ancient and accepted attitudes to create a uniquely horrific Jewish ‘solution’—the complete removal of Jews from the world’s population map. Today, as the Arab seeks to remove Israel from the Middle East map, the politically Left Humanist speaks of the power of human capability above all else, and is disdainful of G-d. To the Humanist, compassion and sympathy towards others is not paramount, the minority must yield to the majority, and peace in the Middle East comes only when the Jew yields to the Muslim.
The Left (the Humanist’s natural home) along with Arab media and Mosque, seem now to have inherited the Nazi and Hellenist views of the Jewish people. Anti-Semitism fits their world-view. One can see this in the Arab use of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda, and in the Left’s support for the modern version of the big lie (the Arab claim of a Palestinian people forcibly ejected from their ancestral homes by murdering Jews in 1948, who now cry for the justice they deserve), in order to demonize an Israel they identify as a cruel, repulsive and arrogantly abusive minority. British Leftist Jenny Tonge sums it up well when she suggests (Jerusalem Post, November 14, 2010) that the very existence of Israel creates terrorism-- the inference being that the political pursuit of a Humanistic world peace would be much enhanced with the terror-creating, obstructionist Israel removed from the world map. The Arab and the Hellenist Left appear to have formed a symbiotic partnership, where, working together for peace, the one would disdain and demonize as the other would destroy and/or kill. These haters of the Jewish people have a long and sneering (and by now) blood-stained legacy.
In their own way, some Christians back away from this hatred. It is too extreme. Christians may have their own ideas about Jews, but this unholy alliance goes too far: the Left and the Arab pursue their modern anti-Israel, anti-G-d agenda with a fervor that seems too intense—indeed, altogether too, well, religious. For some Christians, this hatred suggests a religion of Evil; suddenly, perhaps surprisingly, the Jew must be defended because once the Jew is destroyed, they will be next; and if they wait until the Jew is destroyed, it will be too late; the enemy, this Evil, will have become too powerful.
We must not be distracted by events or individuals. The G-d of Israel remains the Living G-d of the Jewish nation, who has promised both punishment and Redemption for his Chosen. We might wish to note this Christian battle against Evil, but we should read our own Tanach and remember what our G-d has said to us. In comments on the poetic lines that follow the words, “They called me dirty and repulsive, worse than all my peers,” Rabbi Soloveitchik tells us, “In effect, G-d says to the Jewish people, ‘I will bring you back to the land of Israel…and restore you to your former glory, for one reason—not because you are deserving, but because My name has been desecrated”(ibid, 200).
The Jewish people may not be deserving—there is, unfortunately, some evidence of this; but there is also evidence that Left-leaning politicians of the world actively desecrate both the name of Israel and the name of G-d in order to promote a Humanist, majority-focused and man-made ‘justice’ that has nothing to do with G-dliness or Holiness. Right now, the nations of the world (and the political Left) seem to work too fervently and too diligently to isolate us as a repulsive, cruel and vile nation. But the Jewish tradition is clear: more than a 1,000 years ago, we were reminded that the enemies of Israel are the enemies of G-d. You may have to re-read parts of this essay (or do some additional reading) in order to think it through, but this association holds true. To hate Israel is to hate G-d. The Christians may see something else in today’s events—deeds and words that strike at the heart of their own religion-- but our truth is found and then repeated throughout history: G-d and Israel are as one; to hate the one is, in fact and deed, to hate the other. To desecrate the one is to desecrate the other. Remember that as you watch September 2011 at the UN and note how eagerly do the nations work against Israel, how gladly do they support wrong over right and desecration over Deity.
Do not tremble if you see sneering hate. Do not worry if the media shows us nations seeking to foist a Humanist ‘justice’ upon us. Do not fear if the Jewish nation becomes dirty and repulsive, worse than all her peers at the United Nations, for the G-d of Israel watches. As September unfolds, we would be wise to read our Tanach and remember what our G-d has told us.
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