January 14, 2024

Ironically, Hamas’s gruesome attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, instead of unleashing a flood of criticism of jihadist Muslims, has turned up the fire under the apparently ever-simmering cauldron of anti-Semitism.

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Everyone seems focused on the Jews — even obsessed with them.  But the loudest voices are those raised in condemnation of the Israelis, their supporters, and worldwide Jewry.

There are a number of tropes that Jew-haters dredge up on such occasions: the debunked but widely disseminated Soviet psy-op pamphlet The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the Jews as Christ-killers; the popular trope that the Jews “own the banks”; claims they’re out to control the world as “Greater Israel”; claims they’re Satanists; and the old blood libel, that they make Passover matzahs from the blood of Gentile children.

I’ll return to the “Christ-killer” charge shortly, but first let’s consider a few things one can reasonably blame the Jews for: one being Monotheism, another being the Bible — both the Old Testament and the New. Another being the moral code established in the Ten Commandments that has served as the cornerstone of Western Civilization.

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Said another way, without those selfsame Jews so roundly denounced, hated, and not infrequently massacred throughout history, there would be no Bible, no Judaism, no Jesus, no Christianity, and no Western Civilization.

There’s a reason we have the phrase “the Judeo-Christian tradition.”  It’s the foundation of the West and all the first-world nations, including the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States.  Especially in America, we have the Jews and the Bible to thank for our experimental government based on what Thomas Jefferson inscribed in the Declaration of Independence as our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  And these rights are “endowed by their Creator” — i.e. God, as revealed in the Bible — not Gaia, not Buddha, and most emphatically, not Allah.

Returning to the “Christ-killers” accusation: In fact, it was the Romans — with their barbarously excruciating and deadly punishment of crucifixion — who killed Jesus.  But yes, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leadership at that time, did seek it.  So let’s parse that.

First and foremost, the Sanhedrin didn’t speak for all the Jews.  We know this for a fact from the New Testament and other historical records of the time.  Christ’s disciples were…wait for it…Jews!  And they clearly disagreed with the Sanhedrin’s charges against Christ.

So when anyone accuses “the Jews” of being “Christ-killers,” he means the Jewish government and leadership of the day.

Let me ask you a question: how many of us in America today agree with all of our government’s decisions?  How many oppose much of what our government decrees?  So why isn’t the charge against the Jews in the first century made factually: “The Jewish leadership condemned Jesus by charging him with blasphemy, and of claiming to be King of the Jews,” rather than “the Jews killed Christ”?