Analyzing Anti-Semitism

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Analyzing Anti-Semitism

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Don't underestimate the virulence of anti-Semitic lanquage you hear today, whether it comes from an Arab nation in the Middle East or from an out of control Hollywood actor under the influence of alchohol.

When you see it acknowledge it for the direct expression of God-hatred that it is. It goes deeper than the Jews, it is part of man's inability to acknowledge the true God and His laws as a higher authority in life.

Columnist Michael Medved has a cogent analysis in this column. He skewers the main myths put forth about the Jews. His money paragraph is at the end:
 

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.


This coincides with what Thomas Cahill wrote, which I  quoted in this WNP article on anti-Semitism.  Here is the critical quote:
 

Author Thomas Cahill, in his book The Gifts of the Jews, probably comes closest of anyone to uncovering the central problem behind the ancient and modern problem of anti-Semitism. Cahill tells of Israel's experience with God at Mt. Sinai where the Ten Commandments were given. God is pictured as giving a strict and unyielding moral code out of the thunder and lightning atop the mountain. Cahill shows how this one-dimensional image of God was historically transferred to Jews, depicting them as "stiff-necked," unyielding and always seeking their "pound of flesh."

"It is this supposedly 'Jewish' quality that will serve as a fundamental justification for the anti-Jewish attitudes that so infected the Middle Ages-right up to the late modern period...

"What is ghoulishly fascinating about the history of Christian depictions of Jews...is that the people being excoriated are presumed to exhibit the unyielding qualities of God himself-the same God whom Christians claimed to worship and whose sacred scriptures they revered. A good case can be made that medieval anti-Hebraism and its modern offspring anti-Semitism are both forms of God-hatred, masquerading as self-justifying intolerance. The hatred of Christians for Jews may have its ultimate source in hatred of God, a hatred that the hater must carefully keep himself from knowing about. Why would one hate God? To find the answer we probably need look no further than the stark, unyielding Ten" (1998, pp. 152-153).