The Hundred Years War Against the Jews and Liberty

                                   By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

It is conventional wisdom that the War Against the Jews in the Twentieth Century ended with the defeat of Germany and Nazism in 1945. However, that is only true regarding what is termed the Holocaust, the specific plan by the Nazis to exterminate European Jewry and accomplished by concentration camps and through the first ever wholesale industrialization of death. But the defeat of German Nazism after the Holocaust of European Jewry did not end the Twentieth Century War against the Jews. It simply moved into its next phase and to a different region of the world, to where Jews had been spared what transpired just a couple of years before on the European continent. Almost immediately after the demise of European Jewry, the Jews of the Moslem/Arab world found themselves victims of the same ideology and plans for destruction. What had happened to Ashkenazic Jewry was now planned for Sephardic Jewry, minus concentration camps.

Between 1945 and 1968, Jews in Moslem areas—places where they had lived prior to those lands being conquered by Islam – were systematically targeted by Nuremburg type laws segregating and ghettoizing them,  forcing their wearing of Jewish identification tags, denial of basic human rights, confiscation of businesses and property, orchestrated pogroms and Crystal-nacht type activities, racial laws and beatings, and eventual ethnic cleansing culminating in the expulsion of nearly a million Jews (850,000) from these lands. Not only were the edicts and plans against the Jews taken from the Nazi hand book, but, also, the demonization of Jews as a race was lifted from the Nazi dogma of just a few years before.

This Nazification of the Islamic world against the Jews was a continuation and extension of Twentieth century European Nazism and began in WW II with the alliance between Hitler and the Grand Mufti (Imam) of Jerusalem and, later, through the importation of many European Nazis that had escaped Europe and found a welcoming home for their ideology in Islamic lands .Most think of Nazism as a strictly European or Aryan phenomenon. In fact, Nazism is just as comfortable and alive in Islamic countries and among races that are Arab, Black and non-European. For at the heart of Nazism is the targeting of Jews for expulsion and extermination – beginning with sanctioned second class, despised status -- and a receptive audience eager to do so. It is an ideology, one that has survived by moving to a new location: Arabia.

It is precisely this element of Twentieth Century Islamo-Nazism that separates it from other periods of Arab anti-Jewishness. Jews had lived in Iraq(Babylon) and Egypt for 2500 years and in Syria for 1900 years and though, as in Europe, experienced some very difficult and oppressive times, were not emptied out of their lands until, like in Europe, the ideology of Nazism took root.

The one Moslem country where Jews had been spared Islamo-Nazism was Iran, where its Persian culture still dominated and where the Shah outlawed the Nazi-like designs found in most post- WWII Islamic countries. But by 1979, with the Shah’s orchestrated fall (endorsed by Jimmy Carter) and the ascension of Ayatollah Khomeini, hatred of Israel and “Zionism” (the euphemism used by anti-Semites to free them of the charge of racism), 80% of Iranian Jewry found ways to emigrate and escape what they knew would be an official demonization of them as Jews. Some were killed. Though having lived with ups and downs in Persia/Iran for 2500 years, they knew that something was terribly different this time and anticipated the Islamism which would formally call for the destruction of the Jewish State and its six million Jews and any Jew it deemed “Zionist”, in other words, any Jew who believes and acts as a Jew should.

European Nazism was, by 1945, victorious in emptying Europe of most of its Jews (Poland, for example, has 99% less today than prior to WW II) and by 1962 Islamo-Nazism had been successful at expelling Jews from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt (Egypt once had 125,000 Jews and now has but a handful). By 1980, most of Iran’s Jews had been forced out.

The one existing place in the region where Jews remain is Israel, their ancient homeland that pre-dates Islam by 2,000 years. In the continuing War Against the Jews, we now have Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, PLO, Iran, Al Queda, and virtually all of the Moslem/Arab-Spring world, calling for the destruction of every Jew in Israel and Jews everywhere in the world, since every Jew alive is one who can help Israel and because, moreover, today’s Islamism has inculcated and endorsed the racial dogma of Nazism that calls for the extermination of Jews as Jews. Every day, from 1980 until 2011, these military groups have tried to kill Jews in Israel, not to mention how from 1948 thru 1973 Arab armies have waged war on Israel and called for her destruction.

Like the German Nazis, they propagandize and are daily indoctrinating their population against Jews and, through the use of cartoons and comic books, teaching their children to hate and kill Jews. Everyday Moslem emissaries around the world are fomenting Goebbels-like anti-Jewish rhetoric demonizing Jews. More dangerous than the German Nazis, Islamo-Nazism is trying to make the case in the U.N. and among certain European diplomatic enclaves justifying, before the event, its genocidal plans and Holocaust against Israel and its Jewish population, so that the world will stand by in acquiescence when Islam has the power to begin their goal of Israel/Jewish extermination.

This organized war against the Jews, begun in Germany in 1932, is now 80 years old. It is engulfing a wider swath of humanity – hundreds of millions of Moslems/Arabs – and beginning to spread and return to large chunks of Europe. The Nazism imported into Arabia from Europe is being exported back to Europe via its large and vociferous Moslem populations, and its calls for demolishing Israel, the largest and most symbolic presence of Jews and Judaism, is being cheered on by many in Europe who never really shed their centuries-old anti-Semitism.

In truth, the Twentieth Century war against the Jews dates back to the era of the Communist Revolution in Russia, especially with the rise of Stalin. Though communism wished to erase all national loyalties, religion and indigenous cultures, Stalinism zealously targeted the Jewish religion and culture, and Jews, in a specific and singular fashion and to a degree far more injurious and devastating than he did other religions and peoples. Other people within the Soviet bloc could speak their native tongue, whereas Jews were singularly forbidden to speak Hebrew and if caught praying or observing any of its religious rituals or exhibiting mere cultural proclivities were banished and imprisoned more often and speedier than other groups. Indeed, Jews were not hired and, unlike other groups, had to hide their ethnic identity and were imprisoned for the specific crime of “Zionism”, while the country of Israel was, by Khrushchev’s time, singled out and symbolized for unique opprobrium. Jews as Jews, and Judaism, had to deny itself more than any other group and was cast as the epitome of counter-revolutionarism.  Thus, the war against the Jews, Judaism, and its symbols of sovereignty is a century old, by now a Hundred Years War.

But each specific war against the Jews during this century has had ramifications for the world. As is aptly said, the Jews are the canary in the mine. The canary is the first to feel the effects of the poisonous gas entering the mine and her death signals the upcoming tragedy and death to the miners inhabiting the same mine. Nazism first focused on and targeted Jews, but it ended up destroying everyone else – all those who thought that Nazism was a concern for Jews but not them. Stalin had specific animus toward the Jews but ended up killing millions others who had looked away or enjoyed Jewish suffering. Islambia used the 1940s, 50s and 60s to expel Jews, which was a harbinger for its later killing of Christians, burning its churches and routing them out of their regions – be they Maronites in Lebanon, Copts in Egypt, Armenian Orthodox by Turks, the Assyrians in Syria or Chaldeans in Iraq.  

Europe relishes indicting Israel, is indifferent to Islam’s spilling of Jewish blood and the maiming of Israeli children, and even cheers-on the poisonous rhetoric of Islam when directed against Israel and Jews. But Europe should be mindful: it is becoming the next victim of Islam, and is already crumbling and ceding itself, a mere museum of what once was. The Europe that wishes to erase the Jewish character of the Jewish State will find its national character whittled away by its own Islamic populations and, unlike Israel, may not have the inner fortitude and national pride to fight for its culture. They will become serfs to Islam.

To be sure, one doesn’t have to like all Jews, nor any particular individual Jew.  I’m never concerned whether someone likes me as a Jew. Real anti-Semitism, and the one that endangers the world, is that of disliking Jews as a national entity, as a sovereign people, in the inability to accept Jews as a people equal to all other people and as a nation entitled as all other nations. Historically, one can ascertain those who dislike the notion of Jewish peoplehood in witnessing how they befriend and make alliance with whoever is the current enemy of the Jews. Neville Chamberlain not only appeased and made a rapprochement with Hitler but was the one that overturned the Balfour Declaration calling for a Jewish state and replaced it with the infamous White Paper disinclined to a Jewish state. Jimmy Carter’s hostility toward Israel is well known and it was he who helped push out the Shah, a friend of Israel and Iranian Jews, and ushered in the Ayatollah and the regime hostile to Israel and now calling for its destruction. On the surface it does appear that “the-inner” Obama is quite uncomfortable with a strong Israel and a Jewish Jerusalem and has energetically embraced Islam’s agenda and is strengthening the Moslem Brotherhood.

Each threat to the West during the last hundred years has come from Isms who, during their moment of ascendancy and threat, had their gun-sights on the Jews: Nazism, Communism and, now, Islamism. Each of these freedom-hating, dictatorial dogmas shares a loathing of liberty, independence, creativity, energy, and progress. Each of these Isms, and those that identify with them, see something in the national Jewish character that embodies these traits. Sadly, there are an alarming amount of Jews on the political Left that are betraying the Jewish people and have joined the chorus to weaken and ultimately destroy the Jewish State and ideologically belong at a Wahhabi-sponsored Islamic Studies Dept. or within the anti-Israel/anti-Jewish cocktail set of Europe. They care little about Jewish national survival and have separated themselves from their people and have moved over to the side of the enemy, their hollow claims of Jewishness and values notwithstanding. Beyond doubt, they lack personal character and have miserably skewed mindsets.

The fall of Russian communism, the Soviet Union, did not happen until a decade after the Jewish Refusnik movement took root. The Soviet Union did not collapse until the repressed Jews of Russia, such as Natan Sharansky, began to successfully assert the right of Jews to no longer be singled out as the State’s primary enemy. The rebirth of proud and unafraid Jewishness was the first crack in the Russian demolition. It was history’s poetic justice. The American victory over the Nazis happened only after the concentration camps stopped killing Jews. And the war of Islam against the West, America and Israel will not be won until the West stops its unholy alliance and support of the Arab/Moslem entities hell-bent on a piece-by-piece shrinking of Israel into oblivion.

I have faith in America, especially if it removes Obama and replaces him with a Republican. I have far less hope for Europe, since its historic anti-Semitism and concomitant anti-Israelism will make it do Islam’s bidding and result in its own cultural and national suicide. Our future lies in the successful partnership, as it always has, of America’s righteous non-Jews and the half of American Jewry, the Saving Remnant, who are not on the Left and remain loyal to America, Israel, and its Judeo-Christian values.