Thousands of years of Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism

Matan Peleg | 01/05/2019

https://en.mida.org.il/2019/05/01/thousands-of-years-of-anti-judaism/

The Jewish Ethical monotheistic ideology eventually defeated the ancient cultures: Rome
converted to Christianity, and Islam was created. But it only fueled the nations’ need to
delegitimize Judaism and to cast blame on the Jews.

Centuries of Anti-Semitism. (Credit photos: Wikicommons)

Sometimes I ask myself: what is the origin of the old and new Anti-Semitism? The origins of this
timeworn obsession, is a question in itself. In order to start giving some answers – and although
Passover is right behind us – we should return to the story of the Jewish People’s Exodus from
Egypt.

The story of the Exodus is one of mankind’s greatest stories, and certainly a revolutionary” story
in Human culture. It is an unfolding process that resulted in the creation of a nation who has
self-awareness and an unprecedented Ethics and morals, different from anything previously
known: Instead of a life whose only meaning depended on the whims of dozens of gods, most
enshrined as idols, endlessly fighting each other (and certainly not caring at all about humans);
Moses carved his own rock. His, was not a rock to be worshipped as a deity. He brought to the
world, the great and earth changing message that both the life of the nation and that of its
individuals are sacred.

Moses’ message was not only revolutionary. It was profoundly disconcerting, throwing over, as
it did, all the existing assumptions and attitudes about the importance of the individual. It is
perhaps no wonder that in those days many attempts were made to disparage and denigrate
the nation that brought these values into the world. Countless efforts were made to cast doubt
and aspersions on Moses and the people of Israel. As early as 300 BCE, we find the first written
effort at de-legitimization of the Jewish people: “The Leper’s Plot”. Written by a Greek
philosopher named Hecataeus of Abdera, the manifest presents the Jews as a band of impious
lepers who defiled Egypt until they were finally expelled from it.

Though, perhaps the greatest impetus to cast doubt upon and to denigrate the founding ethos of
the Jewish people, arose after the Torah was translated into Greek, in the third century BCE
(“The Septuagint.”) Suddenly, more and more sages and philosophers from very different
horizons and cultures were exposed to the ideas of Moses and the Israelites – therefore, such
exposure created among some of them the need for counter narratives, stories and worldviews.

The first to act upon it was probably the Hellenistic priest, Manetho, who lived in Egypt at the
time of the Torah’s translation. Manetho not only reiterated the story of the ancient lepers, but
also pointed out that the Israelites invaded Egypt since they were not permitted to settle in
Egypt. He also distorted the story, and claimed that they’ve stayed there until the Egyptians
managed to defeat and expel them.
In the second century BCE, the Egyptian writer, Lichimus, wrote his own version of the leper’s
plot: he explained that it was only when the Jewish people were in the desert that Moses offered
to invade and conquer the land [of Israel] and kick out its inhabitants.

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, also rewrote and paraphrased the leprosy’s story of
Hecataeus of Abdera. Apion, an Hellenized Egyptian also wrote an expanded version of this
story. He claimed that the lepers were not the only ones expelled from Egypt. He claimed that
thousands of blind people, sick and infected people with other diseases were also expelled.
Apion also claimed that Jews did human sacrifices and worshiped donkeys’ heads. Seneca, a
Roman philosopher, called the Jews “a cursed people” and Tacitus, an historian and senator of
the Roman Empire, vehemently denounced the “cult” that Moses had created and claimed that
“The Jewish cult contradicted everything known to mankind”.

At first glance, the intensity of their obsession to cast a doubt on the story of the Exodus from
Egypt is incomprehensible. But, the more you consider the impact of the Exodus story, the more
their motives become understandable. The ethos of the Bnei Yisroel is simply more attractive
and the Ethics and Morals of the Torah of Israel threatened all the cultures around. Not with the
sword, but with an ideology, a vision. Indeed, the Jewish Ethical monotheistic ideology
eventually defeated its competitors. Rome converted to Christianity, meaning that they adopted
a more contemporary Judaism and made their own adaptations accordingly. The same
happened to the Orient nations of the world: they have somehow “judaized” and based on the
Torah, they added new texts that altogether created what is known today as Islam.

Of course, the nations’ respective adoptions and transformations of Judaism did not end their
need to try and delegitimize Judaism and to cast blame on the Jews – quite the contrary. Jews
had to be found “unworthy” of the Torah, in order to justify these new religions.

Thus, a new concept was born: “anti-Semitism.”

The Greek Lepers’ plot was replaced with the accusation of the Jews being the responsible for
the murder of Jesus (in the 4th century), and later on, with the crazy plot that the Jews were
preparing matzah from Christian children’s blood. (England 1149). After that, it was said that the
Jews were poisoning wells (Switzerland 1348), then that the Jews were planning to take over
the world (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Russia, early 20th century) etc… Some of
these tales appear again are even in our modern days as if nothing had changed. After all, there
is no fundamental difference between the “Matzah- blood” plot of the 12th century, and the claim
made by the Swedish newspaper “Aftonbladet” in 2009, which claimed that IDF soldiers harvest
Palestinians’ organs for commercial purposes. We can almost not differ between the plot of
poisoning the wells of Switzerland in the 14th century, and the allegedly “poisoning of
Palestinian water” that activists of “Breaking the Silence” like to tell to European tourists. As I
like to say: there is nothing new under the sun!

There is no question that it is of a great importance to tell and represent Israel’s truth against the
lies that the Europeans and their aides propagate. On the other hand, it is worth remembering
that these murderous lies are thousands of years old. It started with Moses – and it’s not going
to end any time soon.

Matan Peleg, is the CEO of “Im-Tirzu”.

(Translated to English by Avinoam Ben Dor. Adaptation: Rachel Touitou)

Martin Luther on the Jews and their Lies

Another anti-Semitic treatise written in 1543 by the German Reformation leader Martin Luther.
Luther's attitude toward the Jews took different forms during his lifetime. In his earlier period,
until 1537 or not much earlier, he wanted to convert Jews to Lutheranism, but failed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies

From Charles Joseph

Voltaire was a vile racist anti-Semite of the lowest order. He believed the Jews to be
unchangeably, intrinsically nasty by race. He invented the genre of race based Jew hatred and
opened the doors to extremenist theory and the murder of two thirds of Europe’s Jews. Truly a
great thinker, inspiration for revolutions, and deeply bigoted, not a man of his time, but in
contradistinction to men of his time that worked successfully against Voltaire against racism. He
did not like Black people either. From the NYT : “Two citations will suffice. In his ''Letter of
Memmius to Cicero'' (1771), Voltaire, in the pose of an ancient Roman reporting on the Jews,
wrote: ''They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and
the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people
would not someday become deadly to the human race.'' In the next year, writing the essay ''One
Must Take Sides'' - introduced as ''the last word by Voltaire on metaphysics'' - he ridiculed each
of the major religions, but he was meanest to the Jews: ''You have surpassed all nations in
impertinent fables, in bad conduct and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your
destiny.'' This is hardly the rhetoric of a man who thinks that Jews are just another people
waiting to be enlightened. It is the talk of a ''noble Roman,'' his favorite self-definition, who has
no patience with inferior people such as Jews and, for that matter, blacks.” All I have written
here is taken from this article: Voltaire and the Jews.

Fichte and the Jews by Shahar Ozeri

https://pervegalit.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/fichte-and-the-jews/

Very often I find reading Fichte annoying because his rhetorical strategies are often somewhat
obnoxious (see Science of Knowledge, for one, but on the upshot it’s often amusing at the same
time). This morning I came across this comment by Fichte in his essay “A State within a State:”

…the Jewish nation excluded itself…from the German nation by the most binding element of
mankind—religion…It (the Jewish nation) separates itself from all others in its duties and rights,
from here until eternity.

Here comes the part that caused me to raise my eyebrows slightly, but very dramatically:
I see absolutely no way of giving them [the Jews] civic rights, except perhaps if one chops off all
of their heads and replaces them with new ones, in which there would not be one single Jewish
idea.

While I think it’s fairly well known that Fichte denied that Judaism had any moral value and for
the most part, harbored a traditional, run of the mill anti-Semitic attitude, I think this is a pretty
nice straw man: portray Jewish religion as fundamentally inflexible in order to pave the way for
political forms of anti-Semitism. Enter Wagner?

French socialist Alphonse Toussenel’s Les Juifs, rois de l’époque and places his hostility toward
Jews on the spectrum of varieties of anti-Semitism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hep-Hep_riots

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276830212_A_Socialist_Drumont_Alphonse_Toussen
el_and_the_Jews

Édouard Adolphe Drumont was a French journalist and writer. He initiated the Antisemitic
League of France in 1889, and was the founder and editor of the newspaper La Libre Parole.
After spending years of research, he synthesized three major types of anti-Semitism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Drumont

Eugen Dühring (1833-1921) was one of the most significant of the early socialist theoreticians,
economists, and positivist philosophers who opposed the hijacking of original socialist thought
by what Dühring called "Jewish agitators and intriguers" such as Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl
Marx. Dühring's treatise on the Jews was the first major work to identify the Jewish Question not
as a religious and cultural problem but, rather, as one based on the inherent and unchangeable
character of the Jewish people. One important feature of Dühring's anti-Semitism is his clear
distinction between the Jews and other Semites, and his consideration of the former as "the
most vicious minting of the entire Semitic race." The Jewish religion, Dühring said, has no truly
religious character but, instead, a markedly economic-political one which aims to dominate and
exploit non-Jews. Indeed, the Jewish god Jehovah is nothing but an embodiment of the Jewish
self-interest and represents the opposite of the Indo-European natural pantheon. Dühring was
also firmly against the Marxist doctrine of class-warfare since he considered this to be a
subversive strategy that furthered the opposition between the powerful warrior nobilities of the
past and powerless social groups - to the advantage of the Jews. As a solution to the Jewish
problem Dühring demanded the complete expulsion of Jews from western society. Dühring's
radical realist and anti-religious worldview thus served as the philosophical backdrop to the
emergence of Hitlerian anti-Semitism and marked a turning point in world history.

The International Jew is a four-volume set of anti-Semitic booklets or pamphlets

published and distributed in the early 1920s by Henry Ford.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned
Elders of Zion is a fabricated anti-Semitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global
domination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion

Anti Zionism by Melanie Phillips

"Anti-Zionism has weaponized anti-Semitism. The unique characteristics of anti-Semitism are

replicated in anti-Zionism because anti-Zionism is the modern mutation of anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is an obsessional hatred based entirely on lies; it accuses the Jews of crimes of
which they are not only innocent but the victims; it holds them to standards expected of no one
else; it depicts them as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power.

Anti-Zionism has exactly the same characteristics. It singles out the Jewish people alone as
having no right to their own ancient homeland and, based on the big lie that the Jews stole the
land, writes the Jews uniquely out of their own history.

The associated Israel-bashing demonizes, dehumanizes and delegitimizes Israel in order to

bring about its destruction. It does this through a narrative of lies.

Anti-Zionism is intrinsically anti-Jew because it singles out the Jews alone as a people who
have no right of self-determination in their own country. It does this on the basis of the big lie
that uniquely writes the Jews out of their own history as the only people for whom the land of
Israel was ever their national kingdom.

This discourse of anti-Zionism and loathing of Israel has exactly the same unique characteristics
as Jew-hatred through the ages. It singles out Israel for obsessive falsehoods; it reverses victim
and oppressor in this particular conflict; it holds Israel responsible for a global conspiracy of evil;
and it seeks not just to deprive the Jewish people uniquely of their right to self-determination,
but to remove from them the country in which they alone are the indigenous people of the land."

The problems in Eurabia are not the Jews, they are the people of that continent who have been
inoculated with a vile anti-Semitic virus for over 2 millennium without searching for a cure.

On the other side, the Jews have not learned anything from History if they still hope to live and
assimilate on the blood soaked soils of this forsaken continent.

https://www.capitolhilloutsider.com/the-rise-of-anti-semitism/

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/a_new_and_growing_strain_of_antisemitism.ht
ml

https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-at-anti-israel-rally-activist-calls-to-kill-90-of-the-
jews/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=US+Embassy+Move+to+Jerus
alem+Pays+Off%3B+Festival+of+Fire+Tonight+_+Live+from+Israel%21+At+Canada+Rally%2C
+Activist+Says+Kill+90_+of+Jews%3B+Night+of+Rocking+Parties%21&utm_campaign=201905
22_m151827140_US+Embassy+Move+to+Jerusalem+Pays+Off%3B+Festival+of+Fire+Tonight
+_+Live+from+Israel%21+At+Canada+Rally%2C+Activist+Says+Kill+90_+of+Jews%3B+Night+
of+Rocking+Parties%21&utm_term=WATCH_3A+At+Rally+in+Canada_2C+Activist+Calls+to+K
ill+90_25+of+the+Jews

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsions_and_exoduses_of_Jews

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/topics/holocaust/anti-semitism

"Make no mistake, those who foster anti-Semitism, who build their careers and foreign policy on
a foundation of hatred, will be judged harshly by history. When you demonize the Jewish state,
it is a reflection of your moral bankruptcy, nothing more,” CUFI’s Kasim Hafeez told the UN
body.

An example of blind hate:

http://david-collier.com/zionist-friend/

https://israelbehindthenews.com/enough-
already/18684/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ibn-today

BDS http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-gersten-f03.htm

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/06/23/how-the-israeli-left-lost-
it/?utm_content=blog1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source=internal/

In relation to the Jews, the Brits were and are no better than the rest of Europe. Please read:

Trials of the Diaspora by Anthony Julius

Anti - Judaism by David Nirenberg

http://www.yashanet.com/library/antisem.htm

Constantine stated in his letter after the First Council of Nicaea (which had already decided
the matter):

"... it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow
the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are,
therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul ... Let us then have nothing in common with
the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way."[2]

Eusebius, Life of Constantine Vol. III Ch. XVIII Life of Constantine (Book III)

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-dangerous-drive-to-correlate-islamophobia-with-anti-semitism/

Modern Anti-Semitism and degradation of Jewish human rights.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/05/when-human-rights-become-acceptable-collateral-
damage/?utm_content=opinion1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source
=internal/

Contemporary American and British Anti-Semitism

https://youtu.be/F7eEQMyzLeo

https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-ilhan-omar-overcome-her-prejudice-
11562970265?utm_source=ZOA&utm_campaign=ef5251fa9e-
EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_11_08_29_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_57a3d
ee48d-ef5251fa9e-183916093

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-lefts-metaphorical-holocaust-
denial.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+FromNyToIsr
aelSultanRevealsTheStoriesBehindTheNews+(from+NY+to+Israel+Sultan+Reveals+The+Storie
s+Behind+the+News)&m=1

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/17/how-anti-zionists-legitimize-
antisemitism/?utm_content=blog1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_sourc
e=internal/

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/26/the-far-right-is-antisemitic-and-so-is-the-radical-
left/?utm_content=opinion1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source=inte
rnal/

https://www.melaniephillips.com/walking-guns-proposing-anti-zionism-antisemitism/

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/08/06/is-the-new-testament-
antisemitic/?utm_content=blog1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source
=internal/

"During the Dark Ages when the Church ruled, anti-Semitism reigned, and Jews lived in
constant terror.

Anyone who has read the Christian Bible will no doubt be alarmed by the demonization of the
Jewish people that served for many centuries to enforce anti-Semitic acts and attitudes
practiced throughout Christendom. Historically, the countless Christian massacres and
persecutions and the omnipresent anti-Semitic attitudes purveyed by preachers and popes alike
were defended as following naturally from Christian scripture, which above all else blamed the
Jews for murdering Jesus.

The Acts of the Apostles. Jews are referred to as vipers and poisonous snakes, hard-hearted
and hypocrites, thieves and robbers, and the blind guiding the blind. We are told that they reject
the commandments, reject God’s purpose, and plotted on multiple occasions to kill Jesus and
eventually did. The Gospel According to John makes these assertions: God’s word and God’s
love are not with the Jews; none of the Jews do what is written in the Torah; they know neither
Jesus nor the father; and they are descendants of their own father, who is not God but Satan.
Whenever unnamed Jews appear, they do so almost always as villains. When unnamed
Gentiles appear, they almost always heed the words of the gospels and say random things like
“Truly this was the son of God!” as one Roman centurion exclaims at the crucifixion as Jewish
crowds revel in Jesus’ pain. Romans, known by historians for their unfettered willingness to kill,
are shown repeatedly in the New Testament as trying to save Jesus and his followers, notably
Paul. Even in cases where the gentiles ignore the apostles or try to kill them, as occurs in
Iconium and Antioch, we are told on both occasions that the Jews had first “stirred up the other
Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.”

The Jews in Christian scripture represent, in reality and in metaphor, the shadows in the
contrast of good and evil. The righteousness of Jesus and his followers is held against the
backdrop of Jews who seek to stifle his message and kill him if need be. In the words of Jonah
Daniel Goldhagen, in his book A Moral Reckoning, “The anti-Semitism of the Christian Bible is
not incidental to it but constitutive of its story. … The Christian Bible presents its Christian
faithful with a relentless and withering assault on Jews and Judaism … presented as the
ontological enemy of Jesus and therefore of goodness.” The scholar William Nicholls put it more
plainly: “No uncritical reader of the New Testament could easily come away with any but the
most negative opinion of Jews.”

Just about all of the Gospels directly or indirectly accuse the Jews of actually killing God, which
would seem ridiculous if it hadn’t visited so much actual death and persecution on Jewish
communities across Europe over the past 2,000 years. Mark depicts Jesus being condemned
before the Jewish supreme court, the Sanhedrin, on the night of the Seder — though they would
never convene for a capital case on a night or on a holiday — before being sentenced to death
for blasphemy and handed over to the Romans. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate tries
repeatedly to have Jesus spared, but the Jewish crowds beg for his execution. Matthew adds
that Pilate, whom historians tell us was a monster recalled to Rome for murdering unarmed
Samaritan demonstrators, tried to save Jesus’ life and physically washed his hands of Jesus
blood as the braying Jewish crowds screamed for the Messiah’s innocent blood to “be upon our
heads and upon our children’s.” Luke does away with both the Jewish and Roman trials entirely
— mentioning no crime, witnesses, or formal condemnation — which, Nicholls points out,
converts the Roman Crucifixion into a Jewish lynching of Jesus.

Worse than killing God once, the Jews are accused of being something like serial killers, but for
prophets. Jesus repeatedly refers to the historical Jewish crimes of killing divine messengers,
such as Zachariah; and Luke, Matthew, and John each mention a separate Jewish attempt on
Jesus’ life even before the crucifixion. The most damning target of the Jewish prophet-killing
obsession isn’t even Jesus, it’s Paul. While the Jews try to kill Jesus no more than four times,
they try to kill Paul no less than nine — in Damascus, Jerusalem, Iconium, Lystra, Thessalonika,
Corinth, twice again in Jerusalem, and on the road from Caesarea (the Romans, of course,
were there to save him.) Those aside, the New Testament depicts the Jews killing Stephen,
approving Herod’s killing of James, and instigating plots to kill Lazarus and Peter.

As bad as what the New Testament has to say about Jews is what it has to say about Judaism,
which is depicted throughout as old and defunct and in need of replacement. Jesus, in Matthew,
tells the Jews that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you [Jews] and given to a
people that will produce its fruit [the Christians].” John takes the metaphor terrifyingly further,
calling the Jewish people a fruitless tree waiting to be axed, “cut down and thrown into the fire.”

http://www.jcrelations.net/Removing_Anti-
Jewish_Polemic_from_our_Christian_Lectionaries__A_Proposal.2179.0.html?id=720&L=3&sear
chText=beck&searchFilter=*

Modern Anti-Semitism

Word Crimes:

Reclaiming the Language of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

by Donna Robinson Divine

Source: Israel Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, Word Crimes; Reclaiming The Language of the

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Summer 2019), pp. 1-16

Published by: Indiana University Press

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.24.2.01

"The Jewish state, today, stands accused of practicing apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing,
and of sustaining itself as a remnant of an outdated and thoroughly delegitimized colonial order.
The Jewish state has not simply been re-branded; it has essentially been re-named. Once
thought distinctive, Israel’s singularity is now presented as an example of horrific bigotry if not
savagery."

“Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”

As an example:

"A controversial resolution promoting an academic boycott of Israel was narrowly voted down at
a prestigious social science academic association over the weekend.

The resolution, which was co-authored by Melissa Weiner, an associate professor of sociology
at the College of Holy Cross, and Johnny E. Williams, a professor of sociology at Trinity
College, called on the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) to “promote divestment
and disinvestment from Israel by academic institutions,

Williams, one of the sponsors of the BDS resolution, retweeted a video titled, “Don’t drink the
blood of the Palestinians,” which recalled medieval blood libels."

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/08/12/major-academic-association-votes-down-bds-
resolution/

It that's not anti-Semitic libels than what is?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/13/rise-anti-semitism-left/?noredirect=on

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/singling_out_israel.html

https://israelforever.org/interact/blog/antisemitism-every-
day/?utm_content=Link+458365&utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_source=In+the+News+Every
day%3A+Balancing+Hope+and+Concern&utm_medium=Email

http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/04/04/irwin-cotler-laundering-antisemitism-corrupts-our-
common-humanity/

https://www.stopantisemitism.org/anti-semite-of-the-week

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/10/23/why-anti-zionism-is-worse-than-
antisemitism/?utm_content=blog1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_sourc
e=internal/

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/antisemitism-western-culture/

https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-three-reasons-why-anti-zionism-is-anti-semitism/?utm_source

http://rabbisacks.org/mutating-virus-understanding-
antisemitism/?fbclid=IwAR1TVf8YdZxeFQteMOTzQ32vZEsu1nPuLXDey4anV7_PCisUioolNf71
vbA