How They Do It– 'The Persecution of Christians (by Islam) is a Jewish problem'

ed note–Just when you think they can’t sink any lower, they do.

It’s something that should not need repeating and recollecting, but we’ll do it anyway–

There are no ‘shared values’ between Judaism and Christianity, never were, never will be. Judaism despises Christianity, it’s founder and its followers with a 2,000 year old hatred that becomes more lethal by the minute. Within Judaism, Jesus is referred to as a sex freak, a sorcerer who was singularly responsible for 2,000 years of ‘anti-Shemitism’. His holy mother Mary is depicted as a prostitute who mated with Roman soldiers. 

Islam on the other hand holds Jesus in the highest esteem and reverence and there is nothing more blasphemous in Islam than to ascribe to Jesus the attributes ascribed to him by Jews. Muslims aren’t the ones attacking Christian morals with their non-existent control of the Western media, aren’t the ones dong stand up schtick where they say they’d ‘crucify Jesus all over again’ as Sarah Silverman does. 

The sad part of this is that doubtless, this coming Easter Sunday, where Christians all across the world remember the events as described in the gospels where Judaism and its followers did what they do best and consigned someone deemed an enemy of Judea to a mafia hit via false witness, deception, bribery, and mob violence, nevertheless, this deceptive piece of propaganda meant to lure even stupider Christian minds into thinking that the wolves have somehow come to love the sheep will be read aloud from the pulpits of a shockingly-high number of Christian churches in America and thus as a result, the honey poison dripped into the ears of its recipients will result in them continuing to forfeit their money, safety and the blood of their children to fighting the wars which Judea, Inc has conjured up for the sole purpose of completing those events which began on Crucifixion Friday, 33 A.D. and which today remain unfinished business. 

Times of Israel

Growing up in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s, my most profound memories are of Jewish collective identity. The Holocaust remembrance events and rallies on behalf of Soviet Jewry that my brothers and I attended with my parents and community instilled in us the most basic axiom of our identity as Jews when facing anti-Semitism. An attack on one Jew is an attack on all Jews. As I write this statement I am struck by how trite it seems. That the discriminatory targeting of any individual based on religious or ethnic group is an attack on the entire group is obvious. Negative as it may be, there is scarcely a better indication of identification with a group than feeling the sting when another member is attacked.

The logic behind this sentiment is simple. When any Jew is attacked for being Jewish every one of us knows full well that “If I were there it could have been — would have been — me.” It would have been me because the victim was attacked not as an individual but as a representative of all Jews. The Jewish people was attacked.

Of course, this is not unique to Jews. Whenever someone else who shares my identity or beliefs is attacked and I can honestly say that had I been there it would have been me, I am the victim as well. This is the litmus test of collective victimhood.

Which brings us to the horrific events of this past year. A few months ago, it was widely reported that, as per the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 2016 was the bloodiest year for Christians on record. An estimated 90,000 Christians worldwide were murdered this past year because of their faith. In fact, recent history shows that while the numbers were somewhat higher than in the past, 2016 was not a significant outlier. The CSGC report approximates the same number of deaths for each year of the past decade. As Pope Francis has noted, in terms of numbers of martyrs, Christians are by far the most persecuted religious group in the world.

While most of the deaths occurred in the war zones of Africa and the Middle East, Christian martyrdom is not confined to those regions. The most recent example is, of course, last Friday’s horrific bombings at churches in Egypt killing scores of worshipers on Good Friday. The recent ISIS terrorist attack in Istanbul intended to target Christians celebrating “their pagan feast”, the slitting of the throat of an elderly French priest, and the Easter bombing in Pakistan are only a few examples of attacks on Christians going global.

While the scope of Christian martyrdom is shocking, the overall suffering of Christians worldwide is not confined to the mounting number of deaths. Discriminatory anti-Christian policies as well as outright or unofficial yet sanctioned persecution are commonplace in too many countries to name.

And this is a Jewish problem.

If the measure of collective victimhood in the face of attack is, “Had I been there, it would have been me” then the conclusion is inescapable. In today’s world, an attack on Christians is an attack on Jews. Is there any doubt that those who have murdered Christians for their faith in Iraq, France, or Pakistan would kill any Jew they could get their hands on? In the 21st century, are there any enemies of Christianity who are not at least as passionately enemies of the Jews?

I do not mean merely that we as Jews who know the meaning of suffering and discrimination must stand up for others who are under attack. While this is correct, regarding the issue of persecution of Christians it does not go far enough. According the collective victimhood test, attacks on Christians are — quite literally — attacks on Jews. This may be difficult for many Jews to accept considering the history of Christian treatment of our people.

We dare not allow the dark past of the Church’s treatment of Jews to cloud our vision in the present. Christians no longer persecute Jews anywhere in the world. Christian doctrines regarding the Jews and Judaism have been inching — and in some cases charging — forward towards greater acceptance and reconciliation in most denominations of Christianity. Closer to home, our greatest hope for peaceful coexistence with any non-Jewish population in Israel is to be found in the Christian community. Israel has rapidly become the only country in the Middle East in which Christians have no reason to fear for being Christian. History, it turns out, makes strange bedfellows.

The Tanakh — the Jewish Bible — is sacred scripture for both Christians and Jews. The basic values contained therein – the Biblical definitions of good and evil, of sacred and profane, of life and death – are the shared underlying principles on which our worlds are built.

It must be clearly stated. Neither these scriptures nor the values contained in them are sacred to those who attack and persecute Christians. If those who murder Christians would kill Jews too it is because they hate all that we share; all that Jews and Christians together represent.

We are currently in the Passover season when Jews the world over will engage in the millennia old rituals of remembrance and identification with the slavery and Exodus from Egypt. As they were about to enter the Promised Land over 3000 years ago the People of Israel were commanded to “love the outsider for you were outsiders in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19) In our times, as well, the People of Israel are once again a free and strong nation that has returned to its homeland. And once again the historical memory of Jewish suffering is meant to instill within us the empathic concern for those who are not of our own nation — the others among us who are in need of support and rescue from oppression. This is the lesson of the suffering of Egypt in biblical times and it is the message of modern anti-Semitism — and anti Judeo-Christianism in our times as well.

The timing of the mass murder of Christians in Egypt on the eve of Passover only serves to bring this message into clearer focus. We were strangers in the land of Egypt. We were a minority. We were powerless and persecuted. Today, the Christian minority in the Middle East has taken our place.

So yes, in the twenty-first century, an attack on one Christian is an attack on all Jews.