Anonymous Asks (319)

“Where is the increase in anti-Jewish sentiment coming from, and how should Christians respond to it?”

It should be evident from the long history of worldwide antisemitism that there is no single, definitive answer to this question. “The Gazacaust”, as critics labeled the IDF’s siege of Palestine in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, is just one more in a long line of excuses for virulent Jew-hate. Plenty of others exist. If they didn’t, dedicated enemies of Israel would simply make them up.

A Long Line of Excuses

Here are just a few:

1/ Apples and Oranges

Appropriating the infamous suffix (“-caust”) is truly cynical when you consider that even if the Oxfam high-end figure of 250 per day is a reasonable approximation of the current death toll in Gaza, 85,000 dead Palestinians comes to less than 2% of the most conservative estimates of Holocaust totals. (Wikipedia currently lists Palestinian fatalities at 37,000, much lower than the Oxfam calculations.) Comparing the two “genocides” is apples and oranges.* Provided the current attrition rate in Gaza can be sustained for another 59 years, Palestinian losses may begin to approximate Holocaust numbers, which seems highly unlikely given the current pressure on the Israelis to cease and desist, and the evident inability or unwillingness of the US to provide substantive assistance.

Still, it’s a higher death rate than any other major 21st century conflict, and it’s not surprising many people would like to see it end, even if it means the ultimate destruction of Israel. I am already seeing Christians estimating online that Israel will cease to exist as a nation by 2075 at latest as a sort of reverse-Aliyah disperses Jews all over the world once again. (Needless to say, these prognosticators are not premillennial in their eschatology.)

But forgive me for asking the obvious question: With all the anti-Jewish sentiment, where exactly are Israelis supposed to go?

2/ False Positives and the Passage of Time

There is also a sense in which what we are calling an “increase in anti-Jewish sentiment” is really more like a decrease in pro-Jewish sentiment in countries that (briefly) viewed Jews more favorably. There are several reasons for this. Anti-Jewish sentiment is nothing new. It certainly existed in the US prior to WWII, when a coalition of rabbis, Catholic priests and pastors deliberately popularized the term “Judeo-Christian” in order to defuse American opposition to Jewish immigration. The uncharacteristic increase in goodwill toward Jews and Israelis these efforts generated among evangelicals and the general population has largely run its course by now. Moreover, WWII is eighty years in our rear-view mirror. The words “Never again” mean little or nothing to the present generation, which is largely historically illiterate.

The passage of time dulls even the tenderest consciences.

3/ Broader Perspective

Men are truly evil beings. If there is anything uniquely awful about the Holocaust, it is the diabolical efficiency of that genocide rather than its actual body count. Estimates are that Hitler wiped out almost 2/3 of European Jews in a six-year period.

But even if we could recall the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust to the forefront of public consciousness, it might be difficult to reignite the outrage its imagery once inspired. Scholars now view it in perspective, comparing it to Mao’s Great Leap Forward, which killed 45,000,000 of his own countrymen in a mere four years, and Stalin’s starvation of the Ukraine in 1932-33, which ended the lives of up to 7,000,000.

The Holocaust was horrific, but for almost everyone but Jews today it is just one genocide among many in the last century. That may not seem fair, but it’s reality.

4/ Muslim Immigration

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world with adherents numbering around 1.8 billion. Jewish population estimates vary, but do not generally exceed 20 million. In 2024, there are 4.5 million Muslims in the US, compared to 5.7 million Jews. If present immigration rates continue, US Muslims will surpass Jews in the next five years, and we all know which side of that equation has the edge in birthrates. In Canada, there are currently 1.8 million Muslims to 393,000 Jews, almost a million of the former in Ontario. Nevertheless, it seems the Canadian government is far more concerned with stamping out “Islamophobia” than fighting antisemitism.

Islamic hostility toward Jews and the nation of Israel is legendary. In a pluralistic society importing hard-core antisemites by the millions, we should not be the least bit surprised at the hatred expressed against Jews and Israel on college campuses all over the US and Canada over the last year.

5/ “America’s Greatest Ally”

If the metrics by which alliance may be measured are military assistance, foreign aid and so on, then the argument is easily made that the friendship of the US and Israel is pretty much a one-way street. This rosy view of Israel as a major asset to the US is perpetuated by strong support for Israel among evangelicals and a wildly disproportionate over-representation of Jewish interests within American media and politics (Jews made up 20% of President Biden’s cabinet at one point) when compared to the actual size of America’s Jewish community (2% of the US population).

Let’s be honest: the view that Israel is America’s greatest ally, particularly in the Middle East, is being challenged from all sides these days. The question “What has Israel ever done for us?” from the average non-evangelical American has no obvious answer, and the increase in popularity of Replacement Theology (the belief that the Bible teaches no future national restoration for Israel) among Reformed US evangelicals means this trend is only likely to increase over time.

6/ Warmongering

Millennials see catastrophic war as a real likelihood in their lifetime and have no interest in participating. Military-aged Americans worry about the possibility of being drafted into a war against Russia or Iran in which they have no emotional or personal investment. Millennials also have the least confidence of any demographic that the war in Ukraine can be won.

Meanwhile, like it or not, the perception among American youth is that US Jews are the foremost proponents of an aggressive foreign policy of which they want no part. Another conspiracy theory? Maybe, maybe not. It does not help that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, all influential in President Biden’s cabinet and all on record as vigorously promoting the war in Ukraine, are also … all Jews. Difficult to convincingly rebut that one when you read what they’ve written about the war in their own words.

Ultimately, US decision-makers at the highest levels are responsible for the wars they initiate and the wars they support. Notwithstanding the worst-case scenarios you find on Reddit, most of these decisions are probably not taken with Israeli or Jewish interests foregrounded. Nevertheless, there are solid reasons growing numbers of Americans believe Jews in positions of political influence are dragging the US into wars in which they want no part. To the extent this perception contributes to antisemitism, it should be no surprise.

A Christian Perspective

Time and space keep us from exploring all the reasons for growing anti-Jewish sentiment. What is important from the Christian perspective is that we recognize that behind all these perfectly logical religious, political and even practical reasons Jews are under fire lie the burning hatred of the enemies of God and the malevolent machinations of the prince of this world.

Not all criticism of individual Jews or the government of Israel is anti-Jewish or hateful, and some of it is quite legitimate. Nevertheless, to the extent anti-Jewish sentiment is on the increase in the West, it furthers the objectives of Satan in this world. Over the course of history, the powers of darkness have pitted Egyptians, Amalekites, Canaanites, Philistines, Agagites, Edomites, Moabites, Syrians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Russians, Germans, Iranians, Arabs, and numerous other nations against the children of Israel, all without finishing them off and in many cases prospering them. One day, I have no doubt, Satan will succeed in pitting Americans and Canadians against Israel in large numbers, or at least intimidating our leaders into standing aside as he musters the nations of the Middle East against Jerusalem.

Satanic Opposition

What we need to remember is this: God is using their hatred, both reasoning and unreasoning, to set up a situation that will only be resolved by the glorious return of his Son to the Mount of Olives to shatter the power of his enemies once for all. The cross is the quintessential historical example of this superlatively effective divine jiu-jitsu, Christ’s apparent defeat leading to his most devastating victory.

Christians should never promote racial hatred, period. Simultaneously, we need to recognize that even the worst anti-Jewish sentiment is inadvertently accomplishing God’s will in our world, driving history to its climax and bringing on the New Jerusalem for all eternity.

If you can get your head around that apparent paradox, I think you’ll have the right perspective on our current situation.

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* This distinction by orders of magnitude is not lost on Bing AI, which would absolutely NOT allow me to generate a picture of Hitler wearing a yarmulke to go with this post, even satirically. They obviously need to catch up to Louay Fatoohi.