Anti-Christian Bigotry and the Charge of "Anti-Semitism"
(The New American) -- by Jack Kerwick, Ph.D --
I recently received an email from a Jewish reader charging me with “anti-Semitism.” Since, being a mere Christian, I lack those unique insights into the dark recesses of the Gentile psyche with which many Jews are apparently gifted, I can only speculate as to what it was I said that compelled my critic to arrive at his verdict concerning my feelings.
Since my article had nothing at all to do with Judaism, I suspect that it was my proclivity for the name “Old Testament” to describe the better part of the Christian Bible that revealed my “anti-Semitism.” The reader was clear and to the point: “The correct term,” he insisted, “is the Hebrew Bible.” To make sure that his diagnosis of my “anti-Semitism” wasn’t lost upon me, he concluded his perceptive analysis by telling me to send my regards to “your good friend, Mel Gibson.”
This episode got me to thinking about “anti-Semitism.”
First of all, like “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” and every other transgression in the catalogue of “Politically-Correct” sins, “anti-Semitism” is a term mired in ambiguity. In fact, it may very well even be meaningless. After all, when someone like myself, a Christian with the audacity to actually refer to the first part of my tradition’s Sacred Scriptures as the “Old Testament,” is branded with the same pejorative term as are the architects of the Holocaust, it should be obvious to anyone with the slightest familiarity with either rudimentary logic or moral sensibility that this is a term that, at a minimum, warrants inspection.
Second, if, for argument’s sake, we are just going to accept that the “anti-Semite” is one who dislikes Jews, what is supposed to follow from this? Three observations are here in order.
(1) Feelings are not action-specifying. Hatred and love, indifference and partiality, anger and calm, belief in a group’s superiority and belief in that group’s inferiority can all lead to one and the same kinds of action. The Humanitarian no less (and usually more often) than the misanthrope has resorted to murder and genocide.
(2) Feelings are irrelevant to whether the propositions from which they arise are true or not. For example, for as ridiculous as I believe it is, let us just assume for the moment that Mel Gibson hated with every fiber of his being every Jew who rejects Christ. Whether his depiction of the passion of Christ is historically or biblically accurate, or whether it is an aesthetic masterpiece, or even whether it inspires or reinforces an animus toward Jews are questions that can and should be addressed independently of whether he personally dislikes Jews.
(3) The charge of “anti-Semitism,” like the charge that one is “racist,” should be the beginning, not the end, of a conversation. As it currently stands, it is a conversation-stopper. That one dislikes this person or group invites an inquiry into the reasons behind the feelings that one has. Outside of these Politically-Correct thought crimes, we seem to instinctively know this. If you invite me to a party at so-and-so’s house and I refuse because I dislike that person, chances are your curiosity will be piqued as to why I feel as I do. If we are close enough to one another, you may even indulge your curiosity by questioning me. And when it comes to the issue of the animus that members of non-white groups have toward whites, the search for “root causes” is given top priority...
Finally, the ease and frequency with which Christians are branded as “anti-Semites” leads me to conclude two things about the charge. First, given its proven capacity to ruin reputations and professional lives, it is a weapon wielded to intimidate and suppress. Second, it is for the most part a smokescreen intended to disguise what fundamentally amounts to the anti-Christian hostilities of the anti-“anti-Semite.”...MORE...LINK
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Kerwick: ...when it comes to the issue of the animus that members of non-white groups have toward whites, the search for “root causes” is given top priority.
Chris Moore comments:
This is an important point. If it’s absolutely essential to examine Jewish grievances against Christians or Whites, or Black grievances against Whites, why doesn’t the reverse apply? Why isn’t it essential to also examine White and Christian grievances against Jews (e.g. the holocaust against Whites and Christians committed by the Jewish Bolsheviks, or the Jewish neocons’ role in lying America into Mideast wars), or White grievances against Blacks (e.g. the Black criminal element in America whose crimes have resulted in so many White casualties) ?
There must be some sort of reciprocation in the name of fairness, particularly as the alleged White crimes against these groups fades into history. Indeed, why should generations of contemporary Whites be held accountable for, say, Western colonialism, or the Holocaust, or for slavery?
Furthermore, when examining the context of the historical events listed above more closely, some clarity emerges on exactly who was responsible for perpetrating each, and who benefited from each.
Let’s take, for example, French colonialism.
Peter Stuyvesant writes:
Although colonialism has been an ongoing source of guilt and reparations for the European powers, the complicity of Jews in colonialism is seldom mentioned. However, the reality is that, as so often in Jewish history, Jews came to play the role of middlemen between oppressive alien elites and the native population...Jews played a similar middle man/beneficiary role in the Black slave trade, as well, so how is it that all Whites ended up with all of the political baggage for slavery, and the Jews have largely skated?
In 1830 the French occupied most of the coastal plains of modern day Algeria and gradually began to root their colonial occupation into local communities. Indigenous tribes supplied soldiers for auxiliary colonial troops called Harkis and the Jews were recruited as local officials. From 1845 rabbis from the French mainland were sent to local Jewish communities “to inculcate unconditional obedience to the laws, loyalty to France, and the obligation to defend it.” The French government granted Algerian Jews French citizenship in 1870, putting them on a par with the French colonists from the mainland.
During the 19th century most Jews in North Africa discarded local customs and clothing in favor of the French language, culture and dress. Their affiliation with French culture and power also brought Jews protection, as in Tunisia after 1855. After a legal dispute with the local Arab Prince about blasphemy, the French emperor Napoleon III intervened with a naval force in favor of the Jews. Jews were subsequently granted equal religious rights but more legal rights than locals: Jewish assessors were attached to criminal courts to provide input on the sentences incurred by Jews charged with crimes in order to safeguard a fair trial.
Jewish collusion with the French in the occupation of North Africa, ultimately encompassing Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, had also negative side-effects in regions which were not firmly in French control. In Morocco, which remained independent until the beginning of the 20th century, Jews were always targeted by the public when the French launched military campaigns against Morocco or other local powers defying French expansion. Jews were seen as traitors by the local population, which were deprived of the right to vote and were economically deprived in favor of French settlers and their Jewish henchmen.
Indeed, it never was the common or average White who benefited from colonialism or slavery, but rather a narrow subset of White elites who, just as they are today, were involved in alliances and partnerships with factions of Jewry (similar to the Jewish-Gentile network of elites that instigated the Iraq war) -- Jewish factions that somehow always manage to wiggle out of accountability for their complicity, and often actually end up pointing fingers at ALL Whites in a process of scapegoating.
Am I suggesting a class analysis of history, with Jews being merely a subset of a treacherous, upper class elite that is the true guilty party in so many historical atrocities? Partially, but not wholly, because one common characteristic of these treacherous colonialists and slavers was their money-hungry, Judeo-ethic, possible garnered and validated from their selective reading of the Old Testament...er, excuse me...the Hebrew Bible.
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