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WHY DO PEOPLE HATE JEWS

Flyers such as this from a Republican
State Senate candidate in Connecticut,
JerusalemOnline
Amb. Dore Gold -
November 1, 2018

Matt Lesser, a Democrat state Senate candidate in Connecticut, has reportedly become the target of a smear campaign launched by his Republican rival, Ed Charamut, which allegedly invoked anti-Semitic stereotypes.

The leaflet features a manipulated image of Lesser, grinning and clutching a bunch of hundred-dollar bills in his hands, “under text saying that he opposes lowering some taxes,” according to Haaretz.

As Lesser himself explained to the Hartford Courant, a local newspaper, he became aware of this development on Monday when people told him they received “an anti-Semitic flier.”

“I did not believe them, I thought there was a mistake,” Lesser said. “Someone showed it to me and I think it would be a gross understatement to say I was surprised.”

At the same time, Charamut has rejected claims that the flier featured anti-Semitic imagery.

“I reject hate speech in all its forms. The mailer draws a stark contrast between myself and Matt Lesser. Do you want to protect your wallets, or do you want to make Matt Lesser your new state senator?” Charamut stated.

LESSER WINS 9TH SENATE DISTRICT IN RACE
THAT GAINED NATIONAL ATTENTION FOR ANTI-SEMITISM CHARGES

WHY DO PEOPLE HATE JEWS AND JUDAISM?
Benjamin Blech | Religion News Service, May 21, 2015
(Rabbi Benjamin Blech is Professor of Talmud
at Yeshiva University in New York.)
Washington Post

NEW YORK — As Jews around the world prepare to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot commemorating the acceptance of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, we are profoundly disturbed by the resurgence of global anti-Semitism. What seems not sufficiently understood is the deep connection between these two, Sinai and anti-Semitism.

The link between the two can allow us to resolve one of the most perplexing questions surrounding the history of the Jewish people.

Seven decades after the Holocaust, the hatred of Jews and Judaism has reappeared with a vengeance in the major capitals of Europe. In the contemporary disguise of anti-Zionism, once again it made its way around the world. Jews as a people and Israel as their land are once more the scapegoats responsible for all the world’s ills and the cause of all of its wrongs.

For the longest time, scholars have attempted to understand what is it about Jews that made them the focus of this obsessive animosity. As fewer than one quarter of 1 percent of the world’s population, what could possibly have turned them into the supreme villains of mankind? And how did countries with not even a single Jew become rabid anti-Semites?

The question is so perplexing that many have simply given up trying to come up with an answer. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, concluded that the endurance of anti-Semitism remains a mystery; he described anti-Semitism as an “irrational disease.” The unsolvable puzzle, he said, is that “the world has changed in the last 2,000 years, and only anti-Semitism has remained. . The only disease that has not found its cure is anti-Semitism.”

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, expressed the fear that “we currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s — if not a greater one,” but he could find no better explanation for its persistent presence other than calling it “a spiritual and psychological illness.”

True, reasons for anti-Semitism have often been offered. Their obvious error invariably was the inherent contradiction of their explanations. Jews were despised because they were too liberal — and also because they were too conservative. They were too cheap and of course they were also too spendthrift; too passive and too pushy; too charitable and too selfish; too religious and too secular.

Pick any characteristic and Jews have been blamed either for possessing too much of it or not having it at all. Jews have been the scapegoats for the sins of every political system. Max Nordau, the great Zionist leader, had it right: “The Jews are not hated because they have evil qualities; evil qualities are sought for in them because they are hated.”

Still, that begs the question: Why?

A little over a century ago, with the beginning of the Zionist movement, Jews thought they at last had found the answer. Theodore Herzl fervently believed that it was all because the Jews had no land of their own. Stateless, they were natural victims. Only their abnormal political reality caused them to become international pariahs. No longer homeless, with Israel Jews would find acceptance and universal respect.

Yet the state of Israel has disabused Jews of Hertzl’s response to anti-Semitism. If anything, Jews with a state of their own have become far more vulnerable to the world’s hostility. Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only member of the United Nations whose right to exist is regularly challenged and whose elimination from the world map is the aim of other U.N. member states.

What then is the answer to the reason for anti-Semitism?

The rabbis of the Talmud saw it in the very name of the mountain on which the Ten Commandments were given. “Sinai” in Hebrew is similar to the word “sinah” — hatred. It was the Jews’ acceptance of a higher law of morality and ethics that was responsible for the world’s enmity.

Jews were the first to preach the message of the Ten Commandments, that worship of God includes the second tablet of respect for fellow mankind. As the mother religion of both Christianity and Islam, Judaism pioneered the ideal of the holy and the human need for acting in accord with divine law. But anti-Semitism stands in opposition to the very idea of civilization. It detests Jews because it acknowledges that Jews are the conscience of humanity and the lawgivers of ethical and moral behavior.

Amazingly enough, Adolf Hitler dared to verbalize it as justification for his plan for genocide of the Jewish people: “Conscience is a Jewish invention like circumcision. My task is to free men from the dirty and degrading ideas of conscience and morality.”

As Jews prepare to celebrate the reception of the Ten Commandments, anti-Semitism ought to be viewed as a badge of honor. Jews are hated not because they are bad but because they persist in reminding the world of what it means to be good. Anti-Semitism is nothing less than a visceral reaction to the cry of a guilty conscience.

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE HATE JEWS?
London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS)

Before answering this, it is important to remember that not EVERYBODY hates the Jews. Sometimes when we hear the news, or we learn about the unhappy parts of our history, it is easy to become very sad and frightened and feel everyone hates us. This is not true at all.

But, at certain times in history, in certain places in the world, there has been anti-semitism, which is the word meaning “being against Jews.” There are a number of reasons for this.

One is that Jews have always been different. Because we have laws about so many aspects of our lives: how we eat, where we pray, our festivals etc., it makes us stand out. Many people did not, and still do not, understand us. This has led to fear or even hatred. This has happened to Jews over thousands of years.

Also, the Jews have often been blamed for things that were not their fault. In ancient times they were blamed for killing Jesus, which they did not do. Christians believe that Jesus was God on Earth so his death made them hate us. But this has change now. Modern Christian leaders no longer blame the Jews.

Jews have had to move around a lot and have often been the “new arrivals” in countries where people did not always welcome them. Because Jews were forbidden to work in many jobs in Europe hundreds of years ago, they were forced to work as moneylenders which made them very unpopular too.

Another strange but true fact is that the very fact that Jews have survived so long and have often been successful, that people have sometimes been jealous of that too!

Finally, the very fact that Jews have survived so long and have often been successful means that some people have been jealous and resentful.

Anti-semitism is a terrible thing. Any hatred of a whole nation, colour, or religion is wrong. The Torah tells us to, “love you neighbour as yourself,” (Leviticus 18:19), and the Jews have suffered badly from people who have ignored that.

So there is no single answer to the question, but often a complicated mix of “reasons” none of which are true.

WHY DO PEOPLE HATE THE JEWS
Simple to Remember

It has been said that the history of almost all Jewish holidays can be summed up as: "They wanted to kill us; we won. Let's eat." Why has antisemitism been so pervasive in so many countries, in so many time periods and for so many reasons? (One begins to wonder. Perhaps there is something wrong with the Jews and Judaism? After all, there is an old Yiddish saying -- "If one person calls you a donkey, ignore him; if two people call you a donkey, buy a saddle.")

Between 250 CE and 1948 CE - a period of 1,700 years - Jews experienced more than eighty expulsions from different European countries - an average of nearly one expulsion every twenty-one years. Jews were expelled from England, France, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Bohemia, Moravia and seventy-one other countries.

Historians have classified six explanations as to why people hate the Jews:

Economic -- "We hate Jews because they possess too much wealth and power."

Chosen People -- "We hate Jews because they arrogantly claim that they are the chosen people."

Scapegoat -- "Jews are a convenient group to single out and blame for our troubles."

Deicide -- "We hate Jews because they killed Jesus."

Outsiders, -- "We hate Jews because they are different to us." (The dislike of the unlike.)

Racial Theory -- "We hate Jews because they are an inferior race."

As we examine the explanations, we must ask -- are they the causes of antisemitism or excuses for antisemitism? The difference? If one takes away the cause, then antisemitism should no longer exist. If one can show a contradiction to the explanation, it demonstrates that the "cause" is not a reason, it is just an excuse. Let's look at some contradictions:

Economic -- The Jews of 17th - 20th century Poland and Russia were very poor, had no influence and yet they were hated.

Chosen People -- a) In the late 19th century, the Jews of Germany denied "Choseness." and then they worked on assimilation. Yet, the holocaust started there.

b) Christians and Moslems profess to being the "Chosen people," yet, the world and the anti-Semites tolerate them.

Scapegoat -- Any group must already be hated to be an effective scapegoat. The Scapegoat Theory does not then cause antisemitism. Rather, antisemitism is what makes the Jews a convenient scapegoat target. Hitler's ranting and ravings would not have been taken seriously if he had said, "It's the bicycle riders and the midgets who are destroying our society."

Yahoo Answers Under the laws of Moses, the ancient ritual once observed on the Hebrew Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) actually involved two goats. One, known as "the Lord's goat," was sacrificed during the rites. The other goat, over whose head the high priest had confessed the sins of his people, was then taken into the wilderness and allowed to escape, symbolically taking all the sins with him and giving everyone a fresh start, sin-wise. This lucky goat was known as the "escape goat," or "scapegoat."

There's a bit more to this story of the origin of "scapegoat," however. The Hebrew word for the goat set free in the original Biblical text was "Azazel." Translators of the Bible into English interpreted "Azazel" as a variant on the Hebrew phrase for "goat that departs," and thus came up with "escape goat." But it's possible that they were mistaken. "Azazel" was, some authorities believe, the name of a powerful demon who was believed to rule the wilderness. The "escape goat," goes this theory, was designated "Azazel's goat" in the ritual, and the priest was actually loading all the sins onto the demon's goat and then booting it out the door.

In any case, "scapegoat" entered the English language with Tyndale's translation of the Bible in 1530, and by the early 19th century was being used in a secular sense to describe anyone who is blamed for the sins or faults of another. The irony here is that in the original ceremony the "scapegoat" was set free without punishment, while modern "scapegoats" endure all the punishment deserved by others.

Deicide -- a) the Christian Bible says the Romans killed Jesus, though Jews are mentioned as accomplices (claims that Jews killed Jesus came several hundred years later). Why have the (claimed) accomplices been persecuted while there has never been an anti-Roman movement throughout history? b) Jesus himself said, "Forgive them (i.e., the Jews), for they know not what they do." The Second Vatican Council in 1963 officially exonerated the Jews as the killers of Jesus. Neither statement of Christian belief lessened antisemitism.

Outsiders -- With the Enlightenment in the late 18th century, many Jews rushed to assimilate and antisemitism should have stopped. Instead, for example, with the Nazis came the cry, in essence: "We hate you, not because you're different, but because you're trying to become like us! We cannot allow you to infect the Aryan race with your inferior genes."

Racial Theory -- The problem with this theory is that it is self-contradictory: Jews are not a race. Anyone can become a Jew - and members of every race, creed and color in the world have become Jews at one time or another.

Every other hated group is hated for a relatively defined reason. We Jews, however, are hated in paradoxes: Jews are hated for being a lazy and inferior race - but also for dominating the economy and taking over the world. We are hated for stubbornly maintaining our separateness - and, when we do assimilate - for posing a threat to racial purity through intermarriages. We are seen as pacifists and as warmongers; as capitalist exploiters and as revolutionary communists; possessed of a Chosen-People mentality, as well as of an inferiority complex. It seems that we just can't win.

QUOTES:

   “Of all the extreme fanaticism which plays havoc in man’s nature, there is not one as irrational as antisemitism. … If the Jews are rich [these fanatics] are victims of theft. If they are poor, they are victims of ridicule. If they take sides in a war, it is because they wish to take advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it is because they are scared by their natures or traitors. If the Jew dwells in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to his own land, he is prevented from doing so.”

- Lloyd George, 1923

   "The uniqueness of antisemitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality, at the same time they're a people of the book. They're accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a Chosen people, and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of christianity."

On the Irrationality of Antisemitism
Professor Michael Curtis, Rutgers University, 1987

THE NAZI HATRED OF THE JEWS
WW2history.com

LAURENCE REES: Why did the Nazis hate the Jews so much?

DAVID CESARANI: The Nazis weren’t the only people who hated Jews during the 20th Century, but they hated Jews in a different way to most other people. There’s a long history of conflict between Judaism and Christianity, a millennia of conflict. There’s also a long history of conflict between Jews and non-Jews because of the social and economic relations between Jews wherever there have been substantial communities of the Jewish population and non-Jews around them. But those historic conflicts were contained within religious understandings - a conflict between Christianity and Judaism, and they were social, economic and sometimes political conflicts. What made the Nazis’ hatred of the Jews so unusual is that it was racial and it was biological. They believed that the Jews were not just the followers of an abhorrent religious doctrine, or that the Jews had grabbed too much economic influence, or even that they were too intrusive in politics or culture: what made the Nazis hatred of the Jews so different is that they believed that the Jews were biologically and racially distinct and that there was a kind of biological struggle for dominance over the entire human race between the Jews and everybody else.

This wasn’t something that could be solved through religious debate and argument, the conversion of the Jews, for example, wouldn’t do. The Nazis hated assimilated and converted Jews as much as they hated orthodox Jews. This was a struggle that was almost zoological, from the animal world. This was a struggle for survival between the human race and this Jewish species that the core group of the Nazis invested with almost a kind of supernatural demonic power, which was absolutely unprecedented.

LAURENCE REES: How and why did people take that seriously?

DAVID CESARANI: One of the peculiar developments in the middle of the 20th Century which makes Nazi anti-Semitism so powerful and ultimately so lethal is not that the Nazis were able to spread their poisonous fantasies through everybody else’s minds, it’s that there was a sufficient overlap between a traditional dislike of Jews and the Nazis own very radical, cosmological, biological hatred of the Jews. It wasn’t until too late in the day that people who disliked Jews for religious, social or political reasons, that were very traditional and actually rather conservative, realised that what the Nazis had in mind in their dealing with the Jews was something very different indeed. Let’s take the Catholic Church, for example. The Catholic Church was very happy to convert Jews. Catholics believed that Christ would return when all the Jews were converted and this was a fundamental element of Christian doctrine, more exaggerated in certain Protestant sects but nevertheless present amongst the Catholics.

Catholics, therefore, saw the Jews as a bit of a problem. Certainly if they were radical Jews, Bolsheviks Jews, but if these Jews would see the truth, see the light, would convert to Christianity and become good Catholics, then the problem of the Jews would disappear. They didn’t want to kill Jews.

And when they realised that the Nazis' solution to the so-called Jewish question was murder, the vast majority of Catholics were appalled by this and many of them, as we know, risked their lives to save Jews; they believed that Catholicism required them to save the lives of Jews because all human life was sacred. Now, what separated Nazi anti-Semitism from other anti-Semitism is the Nazis did not believe that all human life was sacred. They certainly didn’t believe that the lives of Jews were sacred, on the contrary they believed that every Jewish life, even a child, was a threat to the fatherland, the German Volk, and the human race, and had to be exterminated. That kind of biological, racial hatred was something quite unprecedented in human history. The Nazis were able to wrap it up in traditional hatred of Judaism, they used traditional stereotypes, and it wasn’t until too late in the day that people realised that what the Nazis had in mind was very different to what most anti-Semites had believed and had practised for centuries beforehand.

LAURENCE REES: How important was the feeling a number of non-Jewish Germans had about the Jewish role in the First World War?

DAVID CESARANI: Another thing that separates the Nazis apart from other people who dislike Jews is that the Nazis believed that the Jews had acquired vast power, and that they had used this power in a malign way. It was the power of the Jews that had led to the Bolshevik revolution, it was the power of the Jews that had led to revolution in Germany, had stabbed the German Army in the back and had brought down Imperial Germany. In the Nazis’ world vision not only were the Jews a force for evil, a Manichean, demonic force for evil, but they had vast power, they had their hands on the levers of power. They had to be eliminated, they had to be deprived of that power, they had to be broken and then destroyed. To the Nazis the entire course of world history vindicated that interpretation of Jewish power.

What happened in 1918 was simply one more example of the power of the Jews, and the level and power of the Jews. One reason that Hitler was keen to see the Jews segregated in Nazi Germany and subjected to increasingly harsh measures once the Second World War began, and why he wanted Jews segregated and eventually destroyed throughout the Nazi sphere of influence while the Nazis were fighting the war, was that he believed that if Jews were allowed to exist freely, to hold what he believed was economic and political power while Germany was at war, if they were within the German sphere of influence, they would do what they did in November 1918; they would stab Germany in the back.

So in Hitler’s eyes you had to destroy Jewish community after Jewish community wherever the Germans conquered, the countries they occupied, even the Jewish communities that were their allies - those Jewish communities had to be destroyed otherwise they would subvert the war effort and stab Germany in the back. That was a lesson that he had learned from 1918 but it was something that he believed could be seen throughout the workings of history: the malign power of the Jew.

LAURENCE REES: But there is no real evidence that anyone can point to of any reality behind any of this?

DAVID CESARANI: Hitler’s not unique in believing that there are mysterious and malign forces at work behind the scenes of history. Wherever life is complicated, and life is usually complicated, wherever political developments or the relations between states begin to unfold in a way that is difficult to comprehend, certainly difficult for ordinary people to comprehend, there is a temptation to see the hidden hand at work; hidden forces that cannot be identified. The only way that many people can explain what is happening to them is as the result of a conspiracy of hidden forces, and that fantasy has enormous appeal, and there are ruthless, cynical people who are willing to exploit that. Now, Hitler actually believed in this paranoid view of world history. There were others who went along with that because they knew it was a way of mobilising public opinion, getting voters into the polls to vote for them.

LAURENCE REES: And there’s this profound sense of illogicality, because they’re believing that the Jews are behind Capitalism in America and they’re also behind Bolshevism, the opposite ideology, in the Soviet Union. So how are they holding those two things together?

DAVID CESARANI: It’s nonsensical in one way but it’s also very sensible in another way. In this country, in Britain in the 20th Century, you find many donors to political parties who will donate money to the Conservatives and to the Labour Party just in case one wins and the other loses. People always try and back both sides against the middle. It is not inconceivable to believe that there are certain political forces in the modern world in the 21st Century. It’s very common for corporations to embody this, who are behind all political parties of the left or the right, and you make sure that whoever is on top’s interests come through. So what appears to be a nonsensical belief that the Jews could be behind Capitalism and Communism at the same time is not that unusual, and in fact the great corporations during the 20th Century did have economic relations with the Capitalist countries and with the Communist countries. Fiat in Italy had jolly good relations with the Communist parties as well as being a backer of fascism.

LAURENCE REES: But surely there's more to it than that. What this view of the Jews relies upon, is the belief that the Jews are operating without any core beliefs at all - other than crude self-interest. And the people who believe the Jews are like this, are thus, themselves, operating with a massive level of cynicism about how the world is structured?

DAVID CESARANI: We think of Hitler alone and we think of the great leaders as alone, but usually they are surrounded by a core or a clique, and there can be different world views or different ways of seeing politics amongst these groups. With Hitler you have absolute certainty and a measure of cynicism, but in a character like Goering you have absolute cynicism and not much absolutism. Hitler was quite unusual in that he did have a very rigid world view and a set of policies that he pursued. He was willing to trim at certain times, but he was fairly relentless. Other Nazis were much more flexible in their beliefs and extremely cynical in appearing to be absolutist. Himmler is one of the most notorious examples of this. You would have thought that Himmler was actually rigid in his beliefs, but at crucial moments Himmler was willing and able to be very, very flexible. And I think what makes the Nazi political machine and certainly its political leadership so dangerous is that it combined elements of absolute certainty with other elements of incredible cynicism and flexibility. That’s a very unusual combination. It enabled them to take power, to hold power and it almost led to them winning the Second World War.

It is difficult to pinpoint one single trigger for Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) antisemitism, but three key reasons can be identified: the anti-Jewish climate in pre-war Vienna, Germany’s defeat in the First World War and Hitler’s belief that some races were superior and others inferior.

WHY DID HITLER HATE JEWS?
HISTORY ON THE NET

WHY DID HITLER HATE JEWS? FACTORS THAT MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED

Religious Conflict –  Conflicts between Christianity and Judaism have existed for years, which partly helped create an atmosphere of anti-semitism in Europe.

Anti-semitism in Vienna – Hitler spent a part of his youth in Vienna, Austria, where anti-semitism was very prevalent and highly advocated. He may have been influenced by some of the ideological ideas of that environment.

Jewish Economic Power – At the time when World War 1 broke out, a majority of financial institutions, banks and large companies were controlled by Jewish people. Hitler blamed the loss of the war, the economic downfall of Germany and the bad decisions of the Weimar Republic on Jewish capitalism.

Conspiracy theory – Hitler believed that the Jewish had some conspiracy to control the world and that they would stab Germans in the back whenever it would suit them.

Biological differences – Hitler and many Nazis believed in the superiority of the Aryan (German) race and that Jews were inferior to such an extent that they were almost non-human in his eyes. He felt that he would be doing the world a favor by wiping out the Jewish race.

But fundamentally, why did Hitler hate Jews? These factors are only explain part of the answer to the question. For more information on this topic, we recommend listening to an interview with European History Richard Weikart, who discusses the religious beliefs of Adolph Hitler. A cursory look at Hitler’s value system goes a long way toward explaining why he thought it was in the best interest of the German people to murder millions of its own fellow citizens.

WHY DID ADOLF HITLER HATE THE JEWS?
Although much of Adolf Hitler's political manifesto, 'Mein Kampf,' was devoted to explaining that hatred, researchers have looked for a more personal explanation.
Haaretz, David B Green, August 11 2016

One can’t consider the Holocaust without wondering about the source of Adolf Hitler’s hatred for the Jews. Although much of his political manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” was devoted to explaining that hatred, which was clearly shared by an enthusiastic German nation, the actions taken against Europe’s Jews were so monstrous in both nature and scale that it was inevitable that researchers would look for a more personal explanation. It’s natural that scholars and others would scrutinize every piece of available evidence for proof of some deeply personal psychological injury that will explain Hitler.

ILLEGITIMATE FATHER

Even before Hitler came to power, there were rumors that he was of Jewish descent, a detail of personal history that would be highly damaging, even humiliating to him, and which he went to lengths to quash. The idea derived from the fact – not a secret – that his father, Alois Hitler, was illegitimate. Although Hitler’s paternal grandmother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, eventually married Johann Georg Hiedler and took his surname, Alois was already aged five when she did so, and she never did reveal, if indeed she knew, who his father was.

Naturally, there was much speculation about the identity of Hitler’s grandfather – most of it centered on Johann Georg Hiedler himself and his brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, who was the stepfather of Alois, and who left him part of his estate when he died.

The Jewish angle to the speculation, however, concerned a third candidate, a Jew named Leopold Frankenberg,” who according to Hitler’s personal lawyer, Hans Frank, was the young-adult son of a couple who employed Maria Schicklgruber as a cook at the time she became pregnant with Alois. According to testimony given by Hans Frank at the Nuremberg Trials, in 1945-46, he had heard from Hitler himself in 1930 about this Jewish ancestry. Nevertheless, no evidence has ever been found to support this claim, nor is there any proof that Leopold Frankenberger even existed.

In any event, the connection between having an embarrassing ancestor in one’s family tree to possessing a pathological hatred of that ancestor’s ethnic group is far from obvious.

THE PHYSICIAN

Another well-known theory concerns the Jewish physician, Eduard Bloch, who cared for Hitler’s beloved mother, Klara Hitler, before her death from breast cancer, in 1907, at age 47. By the time Klara’s condition was diagnosed, it was incurable, but Dr. Bloch, at her son’s insistence, treated her for more than a month with a quasi-experimental medication called iodoform. The medication caused her excruciating pain, but did not extend her life.

Could the Holocaust have been Hitler’s revenge on Dr. Bloch for his inability to save Klara’s life?

Certainly at the conscious level, Hitler did not hold Bloch responsible for his mother’s suffering. After her death, he actually wrote to Dr. Bloch thanking him for his devoted care. Three decades later, in post-Anschluss Austria in 1938, when Bloch wrote to the chancellor asking for help, Hitler arranged for him to be spared the harsh measures being taken against Jews until he could make arrangements to emigrate to the United States, where he died in 1945.

MUFTI'S IDEA?

Last fall, Israel’s prime minister suggested that Hitler got the idea for the Holocaust from the Palestinian political and religious leader Amin al-Husseini, who was the grand mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1937. According to Benjamin Netanyahu, Hitler would have sufficed with expelling the Jews from Germany, but Husseini complained that if he did that, they would just come to Palestine. When Hitler asked Husseini what he recommended, said Netanyahu, the Arab counseled him to “burn them.”

Netanyahu’s theory was not widely embraced, to put it mildly, and he himself soon backtracked on it, conceding that, “responsibility of Hitler and the Nazis for the extermination of 6 million Jews is clear to fair-minded people.”

TRUTH BE TOLD

In “Mein Kampf,” published in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926, Hitler himself explains that he had no special feelings about Jews before he moved to Vienna, in 1908, and that even then, initially, he thought favorably of them. He saw the light only after Germany’s loss in World War I, for which he held the Jews responsible.

During the second half of the 19th century, as the Jews’ emancipation throughout most of Europe led to their increasing integration into society and into the modern economy, it elicited a backlash. Anti-Semitism, some of it murderous, rose across the continent, including in Germany. When the Jews were kept apart in the ghetto, and limited to certain professions, it was possible to accuse them of clannishness, and resent the interest they charged on loans. But when they emerged from the ghetto, and became captains of industry and finance, and socially and intellectually prominent, there was a whole new set of reasons to hate them. The success of the emancipated Jews was perhaps even more galling than the poverty and degradation of disenfranchised Jews – and it gave rise to racial theories that posited an essential biological difference in them.

When imperial Germany went down to defeat in 1918, and Kaiser Wilhelm, the German emperor, was forced to abdicate, a popular theory that Germany had been “stabbed in the back” by the Jews took hold. Jews’ role, on the one hand, in the socialist and Communist movements that led revolutions in both Germany and Russia, and their prominence in international finance, on the other, led to dark theories about Jews’ lack of national loyalty, their treachery, and their degeneracy.

In Hitler’s mind, all the groups that he saw as foiling Germany – Bolsheviks, socialists, social democrats – became identified with Jews, because indeed, Jews were so prominently represented among each of them. His political theories blended with increasingly technical racial theories that imagined the Jews, along with other groups like Slavs and Gypsies, as biologically inferior to Aryans, the white northern European race that pure Germans were presumed to belong to.

However perverted his thinking and outrageous his theories, though, and whatever personal experiences he did have that may have turned him against Jews, Hitler was supported at every level of German society by people who were ready to see their country return to the greatness they felt had been denied it, and to believe that it was the Jews who were responsible for that fall from grace.

WHY MIDDLE EAST MUSLIMS ARE TAUGHT TO HATE JEWS

For far too long the pervasive Middle Eastern qualification of Jews as murderers and bloodsuckers was dismissed in the West as an extreme view of radical fringe groups. But it is not. It is time for the region's secular movements to start a counter-education in tolerance.

The Christian Science Monitor, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, January 24, 2013

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Egypt’s newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was caught on tape about three years ago urging his followers to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists. Not long after, the then-leader of the Muslim Brotherhood described Zionists as “bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians,” “warmongers,” and “descendants of apes and pigs.”

These remarks are disgusting, but they are neither shocking nor new. As a child growing up in a Muslim family, I constantly heard my mother, other relatives, and neighbors wish for the death of Jews, who were considered our darkest enemy. Our religious tutors and the preachers in our mosques set aside extra time to pray for the destruction of Jews.

For far too long the pervasive Middle Eastern qualification of Jews as murderers and bloodsuckers was dismissed in the West as an extreme view expressed by radical fringe groups. But it is not.

All over the Middle East, hatred for Jews and Zionists can be found in textbooks for children as young as 3, complete with illustrations of Jews with monster-like qualities. Mainstream educational television programs are consistently anti-Semitic. In songs, books, newspaper articles, and blogs, Jews are variously compared to pigs, donkeys, rats, and cockroaches, and also to vampires and a host of other imaginary creatures.

Consider this infamous dialogue between a 3-year-old and a television presenter, eight years before Mr. Morsi’s remarks.

Presenter: “Do you like Jews?”

3-year-old: “No.”

“Why don’t you like them?”

“Jews are apes and pigs.”

“Who said this?”

“Our God.”

“Where did he say this?”

“In the Koran.”

The presenter responds approvingly: “No [parents] could wish for Allah to give them a more believing girl than she ... May Allah bless her, her father, and mother.”

This conversation was not caught on hidden camera or taped by propagandists. It was featured on a prominent program called “Muslim Woman Magazine” and broadcast by Iqraa, the popular Saudi-owned satellite channel.

It is a major step forward for a sitting US administration and leading American newspapers to unequivocally condemn Morsi’s words. But condemnation is just the first move.

Here is an opportunity to acknowledge the breadth and depth of the attitude toward Jews in the Middle East, and how that affects the much desired but elusive peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

So many explanations have been offered for the failure of successive US administrations to achieve that peace, but the answer is in Morsi’s words. Why would one make peace with bloodsuckers and descendants of apes and monkeys?

Millions of Muslims have been conditioned to regard Jews not only as the enemies of Palestine but as the enemies of all Muslims, of God, and of all humanity. Arab leaders far more prominent and influential than Morsi have been tireless in “educating” or “nursing” generations to believe that Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.” (These are the words of the Saudi sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, imam at the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca.)

In 2011, a Pew survey found that in Turkey, just 4 percent of those surveyed held a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” view of Jews; in Indonesia, 10 percent; in Pakistan, 2 percent. In addition, 95 percent of Jordanians, 94 percent of Egyptians, and 95 percent of Lebanese hold a “very unfavorable” view of Jews.

In recent decades Israeli and American administrations negotiated with unelected Arab despots, who played a double game. They honored the formal peace treaties by not conducting military attacks against Israel. But they condoned the Islamists’ dissemination of hatred against Israel, Zionism, and Jews.

As the Islamists spread their influence through civil institutions, young people were nursed on hatred.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, as the people take a chance on democracy, they and their new leadership want to see their ideals turned into policy.

For too many of those who fought for their own liberation, one of those ideals is the end of peace with Israel. The United States must make clear to Morsi that this is not an option.

This is also a crucial opportunity for the region’s secular movements, which must speak out against the clergy’s incitement of young minds to hatred. It is time for these secular movements to start a counter-education in tolerance.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, and author of the books “Infidel” and “Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations.”

© 2013 Global Viewpoint Network/Tribune Media Services. Hosted online by The Christian Science Monitor.

LINKS

‘WHY DO THEY HATE US?’ DOCUMENTARY PROBES FRANCE’S ANTI-SEMITISM   
Times of Israel Frankie Taggart, 27 April 2017

ANTISEMITISM
IT DIDN’T JUST START WITH HITLER

THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

WHY DO PEOPLE HATE THE JEWS?

WHY DO PEOPLE HATE
THE JEWS?
Mr. Beat  2018 (15.24)

BORN TO HATE JEWS
PragerU 2016 (4.44)
How do devout Muslims born in the West feel about Jews? How do they feel about Western values in general? Kasim Hafeez, who was raised a devout Muslim in England, explains.

HATRED OF JEWS IS UNIQUE,
SAYS DENNIS PRAGER AT PROCLAIM 18
NRB 2018 (11.59)
Radio talk show host Dennis Prager, a Jew and cofounder of Prager University, says hatred of Jews is unique. “I wish Jew hatred and Israel hatred were just another bigotry. It isn’t,” he said. “All Jew hatred is exterminationist hatred. That’s the difference. … In every generation, someone rises to annihilate us.” Prager was among the speakers at a special session celebrating the 70th anniversary of the modern state of Israel March 1, 2018, at Proclaim 18, the National Religious Broadcasters’ (NRB) International Christian Media Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.
Read more here:http://nrb.org/news-room/articles/nrb...

Go to
ANTISEMITISM

MEASURING HATE:
ANTISEMITISM IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA

The Pittsburgh Tragedy

KABBALAH EXPLAINS
WHY PEOPLE HATE JEWS  
Kabbalah Explains the World
Kabbalahinfo 2019 (17.27)
How could it be that in the 21st century, anti-Semitism is not just resurging, but is actually spreading and intensifying globally?

ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE
DW Documentary 2018 (42.25)
Has antisemitism returned to Europe?
Our documentary asks: what is it like to be a Jew in Germany, Poland and France today?

Fear has returned to Europe. Jewish people are afraid of attacks in the street and their children report bullying at school. Cemeteries have been desecrated and hate slogans chanted at parades. Reporters Andreas Morell and Johanna Hasse set out to investigate Europe’s reawakened nationalism and find rising anti-Semitism, especially in Poland. Why does anti-Semitism still exist in society? Why are some prejudices apparently impossible to eradicate? France has even witnessed violent attacks against Jews in recent years, which has led to an increase in emigration of French Jews to Israel. The finger of blame for this new anti-Semitism is usually pointed at Muslims. Morell and Hasse talk to historians and philosophers such as Georges Bensoussan and Elisabeth Badinter, as well as with Rabbi Michel Serfaty, who has tried to mediate between the religions for many years. But when they return to Germany, they realize the same problems exist here too. Perhaps Germany has been too preoccupied with finding solutions and dealing with the idea that anti-Semitism is an immutable problem instead of a social challenge to be confronted.
The documentary is an inventory of anti-Semitism in Europe,
a film about people caught between despair and hope, and resignation and resistance.

DISPATCHES - (UK TV C4)
UNDERCOVER MOSQUE:
THE RETURN - REAL STORIES
Real Stories  2016 (48.38)
After the first 'Dispatches: Undercover Mosque' witnessed the rise of extremist Wahhabism within UK mosques, 'Undercover Mosque: The Return' explores further the terrifying beliefs of a rising ideology within the UK.