The Jews of Poland: Joseph Polak's July 28, 2007 editorial "The Silence Lifts on Poland's Jews" lauding formal acknowledgment by Polish leadership of its country's long held anti-Semitism and its attendant murder of Jews, I wax thoughtful about a phenomenon that has been called the world's longest hatred. After reading this article I did not know whether to shout bravo or shake my head in utter disbelief as to why, after so long, it is still necessary that the acknowledgment of a pervasive, rancid and unyielding Jewish hatred still needs to be acknowledged and an apology rendered by those who throughout the centuries were the perpetrators.
The hatred of the Jew is certainly not unique to Poland or to its past. It has been and still is a world wide pandemic with no permanent vaccine in sight. It has existed and still does in nearly every land, on every continent, among most all the world and there is no end in view. Where anti-Semitism allegedly no longer exists it rises from the dead. In countries which have no Jews the age old caustic canards of Jewish hatred can be heard. You don't even need Jews to have anti-Semitism.
A hatred born of early Christianity and certain New Testament texts progresses to the modern age and dogs the Jewish people nearly everywhere. The Middle East, an explosive tinderbox, uses anti-Semitism as one excuse to perpetrate its horrors. Jews there are threatened with yet another extinction. When will the malignancy end? When will these acknowledgments not be necessary? A tiny fraction of the world's population, the Jewish people have suffered far beyond what their small numbers might dictate. Anti-Semitism is a plague. I am waiting patiently for a cure.
About Me
- Natalie Rosen
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- I love man's capacity for reason and I question everything. There are many things which interest me and there is so much to learn. I am interested in things political, consider myself definitely left of center and believe in the Constitutional separation clause. I am interested in belief systems and the nature of man. I am an agnostic but admittedly more probably an atheist. I worship science as a way to explain the nature of life on earth. I value intellect more than money. If I had the choice to be rich or gifted I would choose gifted. I love learning and reason above all else.
Followers
4 comments:
"The hatred of the Jew is certainly not unique to Poland." It is interesting that anti-semitism is found in Asia, Africa and South America. Perhaps we can learn something from Indonesia (and Malaysia, Thailand etc), where it is the Chinese who are often disliked by the indigenous population. The Chinese-Indonesians, for a variety of reasons, have ended up controlling most of the major businesses in Indonesia. The Chinese-Indonesians are said to be generally better educated and much tougher than the indigenous population. Some of the indigenous Indonesians accuse some of the Chinese of being the people who run the brothels, the gambling and various other rackets. Some Chinese-Indonesians defend themselves by saying they simply work very hard and that is why they end up as doctors, lawyers or business owners. I suspect it is a small minority of Chinese-Indonesians who sometimes give their race a bad name.
So just WHAT are you saying in your simile? That a small minority of Jews gives the Jewish people a bad name? I do not know about Indonesian politics and Chinese control but there is absolutely no comparison to the Jewish experience in that at all. The Jews...ALL the Jews in every land, in every corner of the earth where, because of historical circumstance, they were in order to survive, were guilty of ABSOLUTELY nothing. Get it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Don't give me that tripe that Jews are guilty of something. Jews are guilty of what? Guilty of loving education, excelling academically, trying to make a living the best way they knew how facing incredible discrmination and isolation? Are they guilty of using whatever talents they had to try to gain some parity and to try to develop a power base? Jews saw what having NO power meant. No power nearly annihilated them. Perhaps, Molly Berg said it best. "The Jews do not want to control the world they just want to LIVE IN IT!!
I nearly expunged your comment because I thought it very subliminally used to propound that age old crap about a small amount of Jews spoiling the whole and being a small cabal controlling the world. But I decided it's free speech time and I will publish my retort.
If there is a small cabal of Jews spoiling things for the poor powerless non-Jews and that these Jews control everything, shame on the rest of humanity for not having the intelligence to open the curtain and expose them. Why don't they? Because they can't and this Jew will NEVER NEVER NEVER allow those insipid loathsome inferences to go unchallenged. Those who would make them are full of crap! The Jews are guilty of NOTHING except that they choose to live a better life, thrive and be left alone. Go propound your anti-Semitic vitriolic junk to another blog. You are lucky I let it appear.
You completely went off the
deep end over the comment
of aangirfan in his post about
Chinese-Indonesians.
Perhaps he should have
balanced his remarks by
pointing out the obvious
fact that non Chinese
Indonesians can also
give their people a bad name .
but I thought his remarks
were pretty inocuous.
The point is, we're all
from the same human race.
We'll all capable of doing
good and we're all capable
of doing evil .
Good or
evil is not a respector
of any one ethnic group, race,
religion, creed, political
creed or sex. Whether you
are a Jew or a Gentile,
you are going to sin. Do
you agree with this ?
We're all sinners in need
of salvation, in my opinion.
An honest evaluation of history
will tell you this .
A short response to Anonymous. To be honest I had to review my comment and aangrifan's response to it because I did not even remember it as I have posted so many opinions.
Having read it over perhaps you are right that I was a wee bit too vituperative in my response. Having said that, I still do believe, Jews do not behave in a way that casts any disparagement to other Jews or that any Jew can give us or me a bad name. If a Jew behaves badly then it is on him and not on other Jews.
Generally speaking I will always believe Jews have done NOTHING to warrant the extermination of nearly six million and there is no other nation or people on earth which compares to the two thousand year onslaught against the Jews. It continues, as I write this, to this day except the baton has been given in our historical era to a new generation of Islamic fundamentalists instead of Christians which wield their wrath against the Jews.
I am NOT religious and do not buy into all men are sinners blah blah blah. Any sentient being realizes that man has the capacity to do the greatest good and commit the greatest atrocity. I believe it is in our DNA. We share much with the so called "lower" animals. The only thing we do not share is man's ability to understand and acknowledge all of it. Perhaps, that is the evolutionary rationale behind our existence. I don't know. Whatever the purpose to our existence and even if there is no purpose, I would hope man would choose to act humanely to other men. It is surely in our best evolutionary interest to do so.
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