"Why does the world hate the Jews?" Article

Why does the world hate the Jews?

By Michael Medved
Wednesday, August 9, 2006


Many of the bitter controversies in every corner of the globe inevitably raise the same ancient question: why does the world hate the Jews?

Whether it’s the angry international reaction to Israel’s efforts to defend itself in Lebanon, or Mel Gibson’s drunken rant in Malibu, the age-old specter of anti-Semitism refuses to disappear. With only 13 million Jews in the world – less than one fourth of one percent of the earth’s population – why does this tiny group inspire such bitter, widespread and often violent animosity?

The answer is obvious to anyone who monitors anti-Semitic propaganda from all its multifarious sources. People who express hatred, resentment or fear regarding the Jews almost always focus on charges of Jewish arrogance, elitism, aggressiveness and lust for power. According to the classic logic of anti-Semites everywhere, Jews deserve harsher treatment than anyone else because they work harder than anyone else to enshrine their own superior status. This argument suggests that the only way to answer constant Jewish demands for special treatment and privilege is to impose special limitations and restrictions on their instinctive will to dominate. According to such logic, the rest of the world must work together to cut Jews down to size; only then will they function on the same plane as everyone else. As Hutton Gibson (Holocaust-denying father of the scandal-tarnished star, Mel) revealingly declared to interviewer Steve Feuerstein: “I don’t know what the Jewish agenda is except that it’s all about control. They’re after one world religion and one world government.”

This central, primeval charge that arrogant Jews seek global dominance originates from three distinct historical factors:

1- The emphasis on the “Chosen People” concept in the Bible

2- The prominence and prosperity of Jews in most nations in which they’ve established significant communities, and

3- The startling successes of the State of Israel in the mere 60 years of its existence.

These circumstances sometimes perplex even people of good will and therefore deserve deeper consideration and explanation.

I. CHOSEN PEOPLE CONCEPT

While it’s true that the Bible speaks repeatedly of a special relationship between God and the Jews, anti-Semitic agitators have always misunderstood or distorted the essential nature of that connection. According to Scripture, the Jews have been chosen for distinct responsibilities, not for unique privileges: we accept special obligations, rather than claiming special power. In Jewish tradition, non-Jews are expected to follow just seven commandments—the Noahide laws of basic morality. According to mainstream Torah teaching, gentiles who follow these rules (don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t commit gross sexual immorality, and so forth) should be judged as righteous and assumed to earn their share in the World to Come (the afterlife). God, however, expects his covenantal people to apply far more numerous and stringent commandments to their behavior – 613 commandments, to be exact – regarding everything from food, to business ethics, marital relations, and Sabbath observance.

The concept of chosen-ness, in other words, involves a significant burden rather than privileged status —a burden reflected in the common phrase, “Ohl Malchus Shamayim” or “The Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven,” to describe the commitment of every Jew who accepts the covenant of Abraham. Moreover, Jews remain more a “choosing people” than a “chosen people” because so many non-Jews over the centuries (and particularly in recent years) have selected Jewish identity and converted to our faith. In the US, nearly 10% of today’s Jewish population of 5.2 million counts as converts to Judaism. Though we don’t emphasize proselytizing efforts in the style of Evangelical Christians, many of the leaders of the Jewish people (including hugely significant rabbis in nearly every era for the last 2000 years) have been “Jews by Choice” --- those who weren’t born Jewish, but chose to join our people through an ancient, well-established process of conversion.

Finally, the whole idea of the “Chosen People” has never brought the assumption that God selected us for unusual political, military or even economic authority. The Bible suggests that the Jews will be “a nation of priests and a holy nation” --- not some sort of all-conquering superpower within the Middle East or the world at large. Our tradition has always defined Jewish power as spiritual, rather than practical and worldly. No Jewish leader, going all the way back to Moses and Abraham, has ever suggested that our people should dominate the world and control other nations. The Bible specifies relatively modest borders for the Holy Land, and repeatedly mentions the much larger, far more formidable empires to the south (Egypt) and to the East (Babylonia, Assyria, Persia). Even during the glory days of ancient Israel under David and Solomon the Jewish state never achieved full control of that promised territory—let alone a world-girdling empire. At that time, as with Israel today, the Jewish people sought only to live unmolested within the confines of their own cherished land, each man “beneath his own vine and own fig tree.”

II. JEWISH PROMINENCE AND SUCCESS IN THE LANDS OF THE DIASPORA

No one can deny that Jews in the United States and in many other nations recently have achieved surprising levels of prosperity and influence but any talk of Jewish “dominance” or “control” in those societies remains the province of neo-Nazi propagandists. There is no significant industry or arena of endeavor – no, not one--in any nation in the world (outside of Israel) in which Jews outnumber or rule over non-Jews. Even the famous Jewish command of Hollywood is an ignorant myth concerning an increasingly international industry in which the prominence of influential Jews has actually decreased in the last seventy years. Most of the pioneering movie studios founded and owned by immigrant Jewish families have either gone out of the movie production business altogether (M-G-M) or else sold out to strikingly non-Jewish corporations (Columbia to the Japanese Sony Corporation, and 20th Century Fox to an Australian descendant of Presbyterian clergy, Rupert Murdoch). The two largest entertainment conglomerates in the world boast board chairmen who are African-American (Richard Parsons at Time Warner) and Arab American (George Mitchell at Disney) neither of whom are remotely Jewish. The yearly lists of Hollywood’s most influential power players, as identified by Premiere Magazine and other sources, regularly show that close to one-fourth of the movers-and-shakers are Jews—a disproportionate showing, to be sure, but hardly an indication of Jewish dominance. Similarly, the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest corporations features a top ten ranking that includes three oil companies with strong Arab ties and no affection whatever for Israel, as well as a car company (Ford) founded by one of history’s most outspoken anti-Semites, and a retailer run by conservative Christians from Arkansas (Wal-Mart)—but not a single corporation that was founded, run, or owned by Jews. Among the top 100, at most six (including Home Depot, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers) could classify in any way as “Jewish companies.” With these incontrovertible facts easy to verify for anyone with access to the internet or a library, it becomes even more difficult to explain the persistent, pernicious and utterly false belief that Jews “own” or “control” most of the world’s banks, newspapers, media companies and other important instiutions. Part of the confusion involves appalling lies and misinformation: many callers to my radio show somehow believe that the Rockefellers are Jewish (they were actually German Christians who arrived in Philadelphia in 1723) or that the Rothschild family—a favorite target of anti-Semites for more than 200 years-- still dominates world banking (the family’s power actually peaked in the Napoleonic era and their influence on the global economy today is either invisible or non-existent).

There is also a tendency on the part of paranoid anti-Semites to search out a few Jewish names even in areas in which Jews play minor roles in order to triumphantly affirm the myth of “Jewish control.” Consider the case of the Bush administration and the frequent, laughably absurd charge that it’s somehow dominated by Jewish “neo-conservatives” who forced the President to make war on Iraq for the sake of Israel. In truth, Jews remained conspicuously absent from positions of authority during the first Bush term: for the first time in more than 65 years (since the Presidency of FDR!) the President’s Cabinet (15 department heads in all) included not a single Jew. The true believers in a Neo-Con cabal invariably cite just two names who held sub-cabinet posts (Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy) and a single civilian advisor to the Defense Department (Richard Perle, of the Defense Policy Board) who doesn’t even count as an administration employee. The anti-Semites focus on these names not because of their importance (anyone who believes that Wolfowitz and Feith secretly controlled their imperious, tough-as-nails boss, Don Rumsfeld, knows nothing about Rummy) but because they happen to be Jewish. Similarly, conspiracists like to blame Jews in the Senate for pushing us into war with Iraq, while ignoring the fact that a bare majority of the eleven Jewish Senators at the time (including such fierce anti-war advocates as Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer) actually voted against the resolution authorizing war –at a time when nearly 80% of their gentile colleagues lined up on the other side to support the President in deposing Saddam Hussein.

To me, one of the most mystifying aspects of the stubborn belief in Jewish influence and power is the notion that our fractious, deeply divided, largely disaffiliated people somehow manages to get together to exert that authority. I’m a Jewish radio talk show host, and so is the appalling (and unfunny) Al Franken of Air America. We agree on nothing, and we’ve both managed to survive several very angry, bitter, public confrontations. Do Jew-haters believe that behind the scenes we receive the same secret memos from Jewish Conspiracy Central, or else get together in dank, shadowy rooms to study the one-hundred-year-old hoax, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”? Less than half of the U.S. Jewish population (alas!) gives to any Jewish charity, or holds membership in any synagogue, Temple, pro-Israel lobbying group, B’nai B’rith lodge, or other Jewish organization.

In this context, the almost mystical, profoundly illogical belief in “Jewish power” based on our over-representation among accountants and dentists amounts to more than a delusion; it is, in fact, a sickness.

III: ISRAEL’S SUCCESS – AND ALLEGEDLY “EXPANSIONIST” AND “IMPERIALIST” NATURE

In order to credit Islamist denunciations of an “Israeli Empire,” or worry that the perennially embattled Jewish state might indeed count as uniquely aggressive and power hungry, one must remain incurably ignorant not only of contemporary history but of rudimentary geography. The merest glance at a map reveals the incontrovertible fact that Israel remains, in every sense, a tiny nation. Egypt alone – representing only one of Israel’s twenty hostile Arab neighbors—is more than 48 times the land area of Israel. Adding together only the various Arab nations (without including other vast Islamic homelands like Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan), the Arabs control well over 300 times the area of the New Jersey-sized Jewish state. In other words, even before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran succeeds (God forbid) in his plan to “wipe Israel from the map,” 99.7% of the Arab lands are already free of Jews.

Moreover, for nearly thirty years, Israel has been shrinking and retreating – not expanding – hardly the behavior of an aggressive empire bent on world domination. After capturing the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza and the West Bank in a defensive war in 1967, Israel returned the vast Sinai to Egypt in 1978, agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian State on most of the West Bank and Gaza in 1993, vacated its security zone in Lebanon in 2000, abandoned Gaza entirely in 2005 and, under the current Prime Minister, committed to moving out of nearly all territory in the West Bank in the near future. In retrospect, some of these moves look like horrible policy mistakes, but they unequivocally indicate that there is no basis at all to suggest that Israeli aggression accounts for contemporary anti-Semitism.

The establishment of the modern Jewish state wasn’t a cause of Jew hatred, but a response to Jew hatred—not only in Europe, but throughout the Islamic world where some 800,000 Middle Eastern and North African Jews were driven from their ancient communities and found new homes in Israel. None of Israel’s eight major wars has been about a Jewish lust for new territory. All of them have been about a beleaguered nation’s ceaseless attempts to make its citizens secure from murderous attack in the distinctly limited area of their ancestral homeland. Every Arab child in Lebanon, in Gaza, and in the West Bank could sleep sweet, undisturbed slumber as soon as tomorrow night if the adults once-and-for-all gave up their long-standing project of driving the Jews out of the Middle East.

Contrary to anti-Semitic presumptions, Israel has never demanded special privileges of any kind, but yearns (and bleeds) only for the same rights other nations enjoy: to live undisturbed beside its neighbors without unceasing attack by terrorists, militias and, occasionally, major armies. Montenegro, the newest member of the family of nations after a referendum this year, won independence and worldwide recognition despite the fact that more than 45% of the electorate opposed bringing the nation into existence, and only a bare majority claims Montenegran (as opposed to Serbian) nationality. More than 80% of the residents of Israel are Jewish, and they have fought tenaciously for their nationhood for nearly sixty years. The desire for peaceful borders and acceptance from fanatical neighbors hardly amounts to an Israeli demand of privileged status, but the refusal to grant that recognition reflects the classical attitude of the anti-Semite: that Jews indeed deserve different treatment from all other nations on earth but in a negative, hostile and, ultimately murderous sense.

In conclusion, none of the three obsessive fears of Jew haters—the “Chosen People” concept, Jewish prosperity in the Diaspora, and Israel’s success (so far) in nation-building and self-defense –demonstrates in any way a push for world conquest or superior standing for the children of Abraham. How, then, can we understand the imperishable belief that Jews function as an arrogant, imperious, overbearing people? In a few words, that resentment stems in truth from the age-old Jewish refusal to abandon our separate identity, our irreducible distinctiveness through the millennia. My friends Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin provide the most compelling exposition on this dynamic in their invaluable book, Why the Jews?, recently reissued.

In any event, the logic becomes most accessible when considered in personal, intimate terms. If a small group among your neighbors refuses invitations to worship in your churches and mosques, to eat the food you prepare in your homes, to marry your daughters, to embrace your nationalisms, or to share your enthusiasm for the ultimate, universally applicable perfection of your Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Catholic, Islamic, Nazi or Communist worldview, then it’s all but certain you will resent the members of that stubborn group – and assume that they exclude themselves from elements of your society due to an innate, obnoxious sense of superiority.

For Jews who try to remain faithful to the old covenant, there’s no choice about the unyielding refusal to assimilate and disappear—and no surprise at the angry reaction in much of the world. After all, the Bible repeatedly predicts that response. This realization doesn’t make it any easier to cope with anti-Semitism, but it does make the eternal hatred comprehensible. No matter how inconvenient or unpopular, we get our marching orders from the commandments--including the crucial and celebrated injunction to choose life, for ourselves and our people.

*End*

My response (specific to this article):

I don't hate anyone.
However, if someone lives in my nation, but refuses to integrate; and worse things everyone around them are "the flesh of an ass" but them.
It is perfectly reasonable, acceptable, and in your best interest to do what you can to get them to leave in the most humane way you can. Because, when war, famine, any tragedy comes, they are not going to have helped your nation/community prepare and, therefore, do not deserve to partake of what will help them survive along with everyone else. And they will not have the same sense of loyalty and priorities to the rest of the community as everyone else and cannot be trusted.
I could give a fuck if it is based on religion or their just being stuck-up assholes in general.
It is not hate, it is just smart.
That has nothing to do with killing or genocide or any other aspect of atrocity... laws must be obeyed. I am talking about do you do business with those who think of you as a thing or not?
The answer is no.
I have Jewish friends that are family to me.
I know Jewish people who believe that tenant and they are the same to me as a Klansman.

He said it best.

If a small group among your neighbors refuses invitations to worship in your churches and mosques, to eat the food you prepare in your homes, to marry your daughters, to embrace your nationalisms, or to share your enthusiasm for the ultimate, universally applicable perfection of your Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Catholic, Islamic, Nazi or Communist worldview, then it’s all but certain you will resent the members of that stubborn group – and assume that they exclude themselves from elements of your society due to an innate, obnoxious sense of superiority.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

My response (specific to this article):

I don't hate anyone.
However, if someone lives in my nation, but refuses to integrate; and worse things everyone around them are "the flesh of an ass" but them.
It is perfectly reasonable, acceptable, and in your best interest to do what you can to get them to leave in the most humane way you can. Because, when war, famine, any tragedy comes, they are not going to have helped your nation/community prepare and, therefore, do not deserve to partake of what will help them survive along with everyone else. And they will not have the same sense of loyalty and priorities to the rest of the community as everyone else and cannot be trusted.
I could give a fuck if it is based on religion or their just being stuck-up assholes in general.
It is not hate, it is just smart.
That has nothing to do with killing or genocide or any other aspect of atrocity... laws must be obeyed. I am talking about do you do business with those who think of you as a thing or not?
The answer is no.
I have Jewish friends that are family to me.
I know Jewish people who believe that tenant and they are the same to me as a Klansman.

He said it best.

I have a hard time understanding your posts sometimes rkz. I just want to make sure I'm getting this right, because it's not clear what is quoted, and what are your thoughts.

Are you saying that some/all Jews living in the US are outsiders living in your country, and that they contribute nothing to the community so they deserve nothing in return in case of emergency? Is the idea that the country isn't theirs, but that it's ours/yours? And that we should try to encourage them out of the country by not buying anything from them? But you don't hate them and don't wish them any harm? Is that what you are saying?

I understand that you say you have Jewish friends and you don't hate Jews, but I just wanted to make sure I read your post right.

Only in the case where that group feels as if, and behaves as if, they are outsiders and that they are of the persuasion that they are superior to all others (who are just animals).
It is like saying one is being unfair if they do not shop at a Nazi, white supremacist, black panther or Hamas grocery store that uses all profits for only those types of activities... taking your money while looking at you as something to be despised while doing it.
I have first-hand experience with these hard-line fundamental types. They are not your normal, just-like-you-&-me Jewish neighbors.

Just because you don't agree with everything, all in a group does, does not mean you are against the whole of the group.
One does not have to be a hard-core Zionist to love Jewish people. For some reason, in the US, this has become confused. There are many Jews who are not Zionists at all.
I have no stance at all, BTW. I don't think their religion has squat to do with their politics anymore.
I only care what an individual has in their heart and what their actions are.
This is all hypothetical. I have never boycotted a business nor do I think there are any worth doing so to, at least that I know of.

BTW... within this thread, I am only speaking the language of the article.
I think the perceived problem with those who have "issues" with Jews who have not known many/any is too little information, but just enough to cause negative emotions/thoughts.
The doctrine of the non-Jew as an ass is a fact, no one likes to be thought of that way, I sure don't.
Some who segregate themselves and practice a great deal of nepotism is also... but so is it with just as many other people's. I have no idea why people are not extremely suspicious of the Amish or others based on this, but I don't think that is the only reason. (any more are these traits of common Jews, just the occasional community)
I think it is the money thing... many have fear of Mormons, they have lots of money too (they have been the richest corporation in the US if religious corps. were included in those stats). Same thing... power and not sharing it... ooooohhhh, "They" got something bad going on!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

snip~ I have no idea why people are not extremely suspicious of the Amish thing ~snip

Many of their neighbors are, and some downright hate the Amish/mennonites.

[richlevy]

In truth, Jews remained conspicuously absent from positions of authority during the first Bush term: for the first time in more than 65 years (since the Presidency of FDR!) the President’s Cabinet (15 department heads in all) included not a single Jew.

And look where that got us.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Many of their neighbors are, and some downright hate the Amish/mennonites.

What the hell do they based that on... their possible hay/preserves-based death ray?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

What the hell do they based that on... their possible hay/preserves-based death ray?

From what I can deduce, it's resentment of their standoffish attitude/nature and their wealth.

Basically envy? I would never admit to that. To each their own, I guess.

[xoxoxoBruce]

They don't admit to it....hense, deduced.

I get that... but making such statements without something to back them up is an admission.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You lost me ....what statements?

My Swiss-GERMAN mother, raised in the 20's and 30's, bitterly hated the Jews. I really don't know why. She could tell by a person's last name if they were Jewish or not - and I don't mean obvious names like Goldberg or something. Then after she divorced my Dad, she married a Jew! HUH? This man himself seemed to hate Jews. He was an odd man, yet crazy like a fox. Sometimes, I think he said he hated Jews,to win my Mom over - but why try to win over someone with such unreasoning prejudice?

My Mother also had a Christian German friend who had been born in Germany and gone thru WWII there and the whole 9 yards. I would hear this woman talking with my Mom and she'd say "The Jews! They are no good. They'd come pushing a wheelbarrow into town like Gypsies. Before you knew what happened, they'd taken over everything!" Sounds like jealousy to me.

BTW, in pre-war Europe, the Jews were really NOT allowed to integrate with the community in many areas. But this was different in the big cities. I remember once reading something by a Jewish man raised in pre-war Berlin. In effect, he wrote, "I never thought of myself as Jewish first and German second. In fact, religion mattered little to me. I thought of myself as a German just like the rest of my countrymen. It felt unreal when my own country began to turn against me and the rest of the German Jews."

I'll be honest here and give you the words that come to my mind when someone says, "Jew": Intelligent, clannish, highly interested in making and saving money, exotic (as in "other"). Some seem very compassionate. Some don't. I realize these are stereotypes that I probably learned from my Mom and have no real over-all validity.

The only Jew I have known well is my Jewish step father. His family escaped Armenia with the classic ploy of gold coins sewn into their clothes. They came to L.A. and prospered. My ex-step father's father was a pharmicist and invented the hyperdermic needle or something. My ex step father and ALL his brothers became doctors. The family was one huge dysfunctional mess, and it was atrocious what my ex step father did to both me and my mother at the end of their marriage.

But that's just a single individual. My ex step father could have been Norwegian and acted just like that.

I think the prejudice against the Jews is just xenophobia, pure and simple. I do my best to take people for what they are, not who they are.

[Trilby]

I've had three Jewish boyfriends--one was a practicing Jew, the other two were not. All three were intelligent, kind, compassionate and thoughtful.

The mother of boyfriend #1 hated me because I went to a Catholic high school and she wanted her son to date Jewish girls.
She was vaklempt at my non-Jewishness.

the last Jewish boyfriend I had was a NYC Jew who didn't practice. He seemed very exotic to me more because of his NYC background than his Jewish background.