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Columns and Articles by Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

October 11, 2019

Anti-Semitism?s New Supporters


The most blatant hatred of Jews comes from the resurgent White Nationalists, as we witnessed when they marched in Charlottesville carrying Nazi-style torches, chanting: "Jews Will Not Replace Us." They have grown so bold that they no longer see the need to mask their faces. Even more distressing are the events at which such rabble give the Nazi salute and "Hail Trump."

These mobs are on a continuum from 1098 when the first Crusaders began their assaults by storming the Rhine River region, murdering as many Jews as they could find. The chants then were: "Jews Killed Christ" or "Jews use the blood of Christian babies to flavor their breads." This latter one is known as the ancient "blood libel," a conspiracy theory still popular in the Muslim world.

Jews had to endure endless attacks from the Middle Ages and on to today from radicalized peasants and cynical religious leaders (Catholic, Protestant, Russian Orthodox, and Muslim clerics). Leaders deflected rage from their abused subjects by finding a handy target for them.

The old anti-Semitism did not pretend to be intellectually based. It depended on ignorant mob action. But late in the 19th century, a much more sophisticated conspiracy campaign was devised by the Russian secret service: a fake book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a purported secret document that identified a global plot by a handful of powerful Jews to rule the world. This ridiculous fraud was unmasked by journalists in the 1920s, but it lived on nevertheless when Henry Ford published and disseminated thousands of copies to the world. Hitler picked it up, and used it for his murderous plan to wipe out the world?s Jews. Even more unmasking of this fraudulent document after World War II did not deter the Muslim World from promoting it. Egypt, long the intellectual heartland of the Arab Muslim world, has continued to publish and promote this rubbish.

Now intellectuals, who should know better, those on the far left, have joined the campaign to promote Jew hatred. University activists have promoted programs of boycotting Israel, claiming that "attacking Israel is not anti-Semitism." This is not at all convincing. What it represents is the far-left?s program of supporting the underdog. Palestinians are the classic underdogs, who have become favorite tools of the rest of the Muslim world to make Israel the one common target they can all hate. That they scorn and take advantage of the Palestinians doesn?t make the news. Israel hatred is just the new Jew Hatred wearing a new cloak.

American and European universities have led the new campaign of barely disguised Jew hatred, a strange thing to see when so many of their brightest professors and students are Jewish. And now, the campaign has reached down to the public schools. California, always a leader, is designing the first ethnic studies program intended for high school use. While ethnic studies should be a part of history and social studies classes, it should not be a stand-alone discipline, particularly if it is more propaganda than history.

Jewish lawmakers complain that the proposed lessons are anti-Semitic, and conservative critics add the complaint that capitalism is a "form of power and oppression." Neither of these positions intellectually valid.

As a professor teaching World History, Western Civilization, and a Critical Thinking writing course for undergraduates at Golden Gate University, I had an approach other than brainwashing. Each student would choose a single ethnicity not their own, and provide the class with an oral briefing that identified the immigrants, their initial hostile reception, how long before they were accepted, and their contributions to their new homeland. For a Chinese student to learn about the Irish, for example, he could see that the Irish were treated as badly as the Chinese when they arrived, but after some time, were not only accepted but flourished, as have the Chinese.

Jewish immigration falls into three categories: 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The connection between the Holocaust and birth of Israel should be studied. None of this is in the California Ethnic Studies plan, obsessed only with Muslim "underdogs."

685 words

Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.






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