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"The Jewish people constitute only a fraction of the human family, yet we cannot recount the history of civiliza­tion without coming face to face with what the Jews have thought and felt and written and done.This is the story of a small people with a large place in the destiny of mankind."

(Abba Eban ‘Heritage, Civilization and the Jews’, 1984)

ON THE JEWS

"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race.  It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way.  Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of.  He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.

His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.  He has made a marvellous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it.  The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind.  All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains.  What is the secret of his immortality? "

- September 1897
(Quoted in The National Jewish Post & Observer, June 6, 1984)

Judaism has 4,000 years of history.  This was brilliantly analysed by a Christian historian, Paul Johnson, in his History of the Jewish People .  His Prologue explains why he wrote it and his Epilogue what he discovered.

In his Prologue he asks “Why have I written a history of the Jews?

There are four reasons.

The first is sheer curiosity.

My second reason was the excitement I found in the sheer span of Jewish history. From the time of Abraham up to the present covers the best part of four millennia. That is more than three-quarters of the entire history of civilized humanity.

My third reason was that Jewish history covers not only vast tracts of time but huge areas. The Jews have penetrated many societies and left their mark on all of them. Writing a history of the Jews is almost like writing a history of the world, but from a highly peculiar angle vision.

Finally the book gave me the chance to reconsider objectively, in light of a study covering nearly 4,000 years, the most intractable of human questions: what are we on earth for? Is history merely a series of events whose sum is meaningless? Is there no fundamental moral difference between the history of the human race and the history, say of ants? Or is there a providential plan of which we are, however humbly, the agents? “

In his Epilogue he asks “What have I discovered?

“One way of summing up 4,000 years of Jewish history is to ask ourselves what would have happened to the human race if Abraham had not been a man of great sagacity, or if he had stayed in Ur and kept his higher notions to himself, and no specific Jewish people had come into being. Certainly the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might eventually have stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure.

Above all, the Jews taught us how to rationalize the unknown

The Jews were the emblem of homeless and vulnerable humanity. But is not the whole earth no more than a temporary transit-camp? The Jews were fierce idealists striving for perfection, and at the same time fragile men and women yearning for flesh-pots and safety. They wanted to obey God's impossible law and they wanted to stay alive too. Therein lay the dilemma of, the Jewish commonwealths in antiquity, trying to combine the moral excellence of a theocracy with the practical demands of a state capable of defending itself. The dilemma has been recreated in our own time in the shape of Israel, founded to realize a humanitarian ideal discovering in practice that it must be ruthless simply to survive in a hostile world. But is not this a recurrent problem which affects all human societies?

If the earliest Jews were  able to survey, with us, the history of their progeny, they would find nothing surprising in it. They always knew that Jewish society was appointed to be a pilot-project for the entire human race. That Jewish dilemmas, dramas and catastrophes should be exemplary, larger than life,  would seem only natural to them. That Jews should over the millennia attract such unparalleled, indeed inexplicable, hatred would be regrettable but only to be expected. Above all, that the Jews should still survive, when all those other ancient people were transmuted or vanished into the oubliettes of history, was wholly predictable. How could it be otherwise? Providence decreed it and the Jews obeyed.”

_________________________________________________

 WHY DO PEOPLE HATE JEWS
from
Simple to Remember

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

Editors Note
from Antisemitism and Misinformation)

As the examples below show, misinformation has been with us for a long time.  The introduction of the internet has shown the ease and effect of spreading it globally virtually instantaneously.  This in its turn has given rise to the introduction of new terms such as ‘Fake News’  (fake news: false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared online for the purpose of generating ad revenue via web traffic or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc)  

The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as ‘false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke:’  

An early example was
blood libel

which is an old antisemitic trope that claims that Jews use the blood of Christian (or, sometimes, Muslim) children to make their Passover matzo. While generally discarded in modern times in favor of "Jews rule the world" conspiracy theories, the blood libel is still propagated in some Islamic countries and is occasionally still believed even by Western anti-Semites. The consequence of the blood libel myth could be in fact bloody for Jewish populations, as they could result in a pogrom.

A second example example is
‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russian: Протоколы сионских мудрецов) or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax, which was shown to be plagiarized from several earlier sources, some not antisemitic in nature, was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. According to the claims made by some of its publishers, the Protocols are the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting where Jewish leaders discussed their goal of global Jewish hegemony by subverting the morals of Gentiles, and by controlling the press
and the world's economies.

Henry Ford funded printing of 500,000 copiesthat were distributed throughout the United States in the 1920s. The Nazis sometimes used the Protocols as propaganda against Jews; it was assigned by some German teachers, as if factual, to be read by German schoolchildren after the Nazis came to power in 1933, despite having been exposed as fraudulent by The Times of London in 1921. It is still widely available today in numerous languages, in print and on the Internet (editor including Amazon in 2020, and continues to be presented by
some proponents as a genuine document.

A third example is the
Denial That the Jewish Holocaust Happened

The Nazi regime attempted to establish a system of rule based upon race. The National Socialists (Nazis) saw themselves as a revolutionary movement and their goal as a radical reshaping of existing society   The Jews were the chief enemy to be eliminated.   The Holocaust was the systematic murder of six million Jews only brought to an end with their defeat by the Allies
at the end of Second World War in  May 1945.

Today a group known as the Deniers has tried to prove that either it never happened or wasn’t as bad as it has gone down in history.  They have become famous
in a libel court case from which a fiflm has been made.

The Future

The past two thousand years have seen the spread of antisemitism against Jews as a result of misdirected verbal/written communication.

The internet and new technology have brought speed and ease of new communication,
the repeat of old communication  
and the generation of new visual communication that may be false.

THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

THE MYSTERY OF THE JEWS
Simpletoremember  2015 (20.52)
Who are the Jews? What impact have the Jews had on the world? A powerful short film that reveals the real story behind "The Mystery of the Jews". With remarkable insights by renowned historians, world leaders and perceptive authors. "
The Mystery of the Jews" challenges the normative conception of human  history.

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOK
FAITH, FRATRICIDE
AND THE POWER OF TEXTS
UK Emiritus Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
The National Library of Israel
June 9, 2015,  (1.00:42)

| FULL ADDRESS AND Q&A |
Oxford Union
UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis
2016 (58.42)

PPLEADING
FOR MY LAND ISRAEL - Herbert Pagani 1976
Samuel Loy 2012 (6.12)

Herbert Pagani performed this outstanding speech about Zionism and Israel on a French TV show in 1976, after the UN passed a resolution equating zionism to racism. I did not find any translation in english on internet. So I decided to do it myself!

The UN abandoned the resolution in 1991 after the fall of USSR and the first invasion in Irak.

This wonderful speech remains topical as things did not changed in the Middle East and in the international community.

Please  share with your friend.

Please  share with your friend.
This is an anthem to Israel and Zionism.

THE RETURN
OF THE VIOLIN
1hr.04min
Czestochwa, Poland,
where 40,000 Jews were killed
 by the Nazis.
Sigmund Rolat tells the story of a Stradivarius violin belonging
to the great Bromislow Huberman.
It is a story that connects the great violinist
Joshua Bell, Huberman,
the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich,
the creation
of the Israel Symphony Orchestra,
Toscanini and a Conneticut jail.

The story is accompanied by Joshua Bell
playing heavenly music
by Johannes Brahms
as though it had been written for this film
Director - Haim Hecht   
Producer - Public Mandel