The True But Rarely Mentioned Cause of Anti-Semitism
Not only in Israel, but all over the world, Jews today are subject to an escalating global threat of violence and death, merely for identifying as Jews. While many people lament this alarming rise in anti-Semitism, few seek to explore its origins. Even the ADL, which meticulously describes, chronicles and quantifies the hate, fails to even attempt to identify the true cause of this ancient malady. Political correctness, a misguided effort to promote interfaith harmony by ignoring the pernicious influence of religion on anti-Semitism, and the overriding desire to appease their allies and funding sources, which consist primarily of liberal and interfaith groups, prevent the close connection between religion and anti-Semitism from even being discussed.
Whereas the rallying cry against hate and violence is “See something, say something”, when it comes to anti-Semitism, the approach is typically to see and say nothing; ignoring the obvious role of religion, even when the perpetrators of anti-Semitism such as Israel’s enemies and both synagogue shooters quote the Koran and Christian Scripture as the source and motivation for their hate. This sin of silence regarding the true cause of this ancient disease of the mind explains why anti-Semitism appears intractable, while in fact, its true cause and thus, its cure could not be more obvious. In this way, the watchdogs of hate have become the lapdogs of religious fanaticism.
The time has come for the world to wake up to the fact that the source and driving force of anti-Semitism is religion and can easily be traced to the Scriptures of the three Abrahamic faiths. While many people hold the Bible above reproach and may even consider it the infallible word of God, as Christopher Hitchens famously said, “If God wrote the Bible, let’s just hope he was having a bad day.” Just a small sample of the intolerant, divisive and lethal passages from all three Bibles leave no doubt that “holy” Scripture is “wholly” responsible for the original existence and the continued persistence of Jew hatred in the world, as quoted chapter and verse at the end of this article.
It is no coincidence that anti-Semitism has run rampant wherever Islam or Christianity has spread, but is virtually unheard of in Hindu, Buddhist, and other non-Abrahamic lands. After the Holocaust, when 1/3 of the Jewish population was rounded up, gassed, shot, humiliated, and slaughtered, while the world passively watched and collectively yawned, there has never been a serious effort to try to understand why the Jews were such easy targets for Hitler and the Nazis. Even the United States, which sent Jews on the St. Louis back to Europe to die, rather than allow them to enter our shores and to breathe the air of freedom, has failed to engage in a reckoning of how this could have happened here.
Nor has the world sought to explain its complicity of silence, cooperation and at times, gleeful participation in the orgy of death known as the Holocaust. As has often been said, “Those who fail to understand the past are condemned to repeat it,” and today we see the same forces of evil rear their ugly head while “Never again” becomes a cruel hoax, and “ever again” more accurately describes the world’s lack of courage and candor to try to understand, explain, and thus prevent the hatred of Jews.
For a brief moment in time, the world felt some slight remorse for what happened to the Jews and thus, the United Nations created the state of Israel alongside an Arab Palestinian state shortly after the Holocaust. The Jews accepted their partitioned homeland and welcomed their neighbors with open arms, but their neighbors took up arms against Israel, in their own words, to finish the job begun by the Nazis, the former allies of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini. This leader of the Palestinian Arabs conspired with Hitler and Mussolini to oppose the formation of a Jewish state and smiled approvingly when given a tour of a concentration camp by his Nazi friends.
Despite this clear conflict between right and wrong, only three years after the Holocaust, the world once again ignored the threat to exterminate Jews, when America, with all its surplus tanks, planes and weapons from WWII, issued an arms embargo against Israel to make sure it did not have the means to defend herself when she was invaded by all of her neighbors.
After the vicious attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, the world once again felt sorry for the Jews for a day or two, but once Israel started to defend herself against Hamas, who hides among its civilian population, the world began to lose its sympathy for the Jews, and even among the so-called intelligentsia of the college campus, anti-Semites began to climb out from the rocks from where they hid, to spew their hate and rally support for the brutal and barbaric Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and death to all Jews.
When America struck back against Al Qaeda after the attack of 9-11 and the Japanese after their sneak attack against Pearl Harbor, few people faulted America for defending herself against unprovoked aggression. Nor did they tally up the number of people who died in the initial attack, compared to the number of civilians who perished in America’s effort to defeat the enemy as is the case with Israel, even when America used the most lethal weapon known to mankind, the atomic bomb, which killed approximately 200,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Although the existence of the United States was not threatened by the Japanese, most people sympathized with America’s decision to use the bomb to save innocent American lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan. However, when Israel uses far less lethal force to protect its very existence from armed killers who seek her destruction and death to all Jews, we see the obscene spectacle of college students supporting the genocidal Hamas, and some university Presidents equivocating, excusing and/or remaining silent. Sadly, on many college campuses and around the world, Jews no longer feel safe and are beginning to remove the mezuzah from their door, the Jewish star from their jewelry and have even changed their names to hid their Jewish identity.
Despite the observation of Dr. Martin Luther King equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, many of today’s progressives falsely call Israel colonialist, apartheid and genocidal, which are the worst epithets in the liberal world view. There is no colonialism as the Jews are the original inhabitants of the land of Israel, maintained a continuous presence there for 4000 years, are the only people in the world to call this land their homeland with a national government, coinage, culture and capital, Jerusalem, which has now been hijacked by Islam as their capital, even though it is not named anywhere in the Koran. Thus, the actions of Israel is not the reason for the hatred of Jews. Rather, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism dressed up in political garb. Criticizing what Israel does is not anti-Zionism, as most Israelis do that, anti-Zionism is criticizing what Israel is, i.e. a Jewish homeland.
Anti-Semites not only blame Israel for its existence, they also falsely accuse the Jewish state of apartheid, racism and genocide. Such vitriol has spread to the United Nations which targets the only freedom-loving democracy in the Middle East with an obsessive number of phony human rights abuses, while remaining silent about Israel’s neighbors who stone gays, murder women who show their hair or ankles and execute or imprison those who dare to criticize Islam or the government.
Israel’s detractors have no qualms about accusing Israel of committing apartheid against the Palestinians even while the Palestinian population has increased over five times since the founding of Israel. If Israel is trying to eradicate the Palestinians, they are failing miserably, since few populations on Earth have increased so quickly in half a century. And why would Israel provide food, medical care and fuel to the people of Gaza if the goal was to exterminate them? Sadly, truth, evidence and rational thinking have nothing to do with anti-Semitism, which is based on hate, not facts.
Anti-Semites also accuse Israel of creating an apartheid, racist state. This too makes no sense since Arabs in Israel, unlike Arabs in the surrounding countries, are the only ones who enjoy the freedom to vote, worship as they please, criticize the government and enjoy equality under the law. The true apartheid is in Gaza, the ancestral land of the Jews, where Jews are not allowed to live. After Israel turned this land over to the Palestinians, this region has been converted into a launching pad for terrorism, war and Hamas’ insane desire to wipe Israel off the map, which they chant incessantly and can even be heard on college campuses across America. “Free Palestine” is a good slogan, but they always leave off the rest which should be “Free Palestine from Hamas”.
Even before its founding, Jews have sought peace in Israel. Peace is among the greatest ideals of the Jewish people. We use the Hebrew word for peace when we say hello (Shalom), good-bye (Shalom) or how are you (Mah Sh’lom’chah). But without a peace partner, conflict is inevitable, and thus from even before its founding, Israel has been mired in war.
Sadly, we recently saw such horrors in gruesome, grisly, gratuitous, grotesque detail on October 7 carried out by Hamas. Anti-Semites are quick to blame Israel for the violence and the taking of innocent hostages They view the mere existence of Israel as a provocation which they claim is responsible for the barbaric attack by Hamas against peaceful concert goers, kibbutz dwellers, peace activists, and innocent children, parents and grandparents who were dragged out of their homes and subjected to treatment so horrific and barbaric that even the media won’t show it.
To understand anti-Semitism, the western world must finally confront the causes for 2000 years of European anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, for which there has never been a true reckoning. If you speak to the victims of that orgy of death, who somehow managed to survive the horror, you will hear the most common reason given by their tormentors for their barbaric treatment of Jews was that this was just punishment for killing Jesus. As told in the holy books of Christianity, the Jewish mob shouted in unison to Pontius Pilate, “Crucify him, crucify him and may his blood be upon us and upon our children.” Thus, the synagogue shooters in Pittsburgh and Poway had the words of Chrisitan Scripture on their lips and in their social media posts as the motivation for their crimes, fulfilling what they believed to be the request of the Jews who killed Jesus, and of God, just as the perpetrators of the Holocaust were trying to obey these same Scriptures. The entire narrative which places responsibility for the death of Jesus on the Jews is a lie.
Historians and religious scholars know that there never was a custom for the Romans to release a Jewish prisoner at Passover, and thus the narrative that the Jews chose Barabbas (son of the fathers) to be released rather than Jesus, is made of pure cloth, just as phony as the shroud of Turin. Even if such a custom had existed among the barbaric Romans, Pontius Pilate, who was so cruel that he was recalled from Judea by Rome, would never have pleaded with the Jews three times to permit him to release Jesus and would not have literally washed his hands of this crime. Such a scenario is as likely as Adolph Hitler pleading with the Jews of Holland to free Ann Frank, while her fellow Jews repeatedly screamed to send her to the gas chambers, asking that they be held responsible for her death for all time, with Hitler reluctantly complying with their blood thirsty request.
Scholars know that this fable was concocted to get Rome off the back of the early Christians, who the Romans viewed as a mere offshoot of Jewish troublemakers and insurrectionists. At the time the Gospels were written, the Romans took great pleasure in throwing Christians to the lions, using them for sport in the arena, burning them alive as human torches, and scapegoating them, just as they did other Jews, for the fires in Rome and all their other problems. While the Gospel stories about Jesus are fiction, they do reveal the true background of that time when the Romans brutally suppressed any efforts by the Jews at the dawn of the Common Era, to rally behind those who sought to overthrow Roman rule with Messianic fervor, and to replace the reign of Caesar with the Kingdom of God as they had done under Greek rule when the Hasmoneans overthrew the Greeks, which is celebrated today with the holiday of Chanukah. Thus, the Gospels place the words “King of the Jews” upon the cross of Jesus, force him to wear a crown of thorns and a purple robe and mock his claim to be the Messiah, just as they discouraged all true insurrections against Roman rule.
In their effort to exonerate themselves and convince the Romans that Jesus and his followers were not their enemies, they claimed this story was the “Gospel truth”, authored by God, whose veracity could not be questioned. Tragically, this ancient literature, which historians and scholars know to be false goes unchallenged and continues to be responsible for the death of millions of Jews over long centuries of persecution and exile. Even today, this original blood libel remains as lethal as ever, and with its divine imprimatur, is placed above all rational inquiry, while in truth, Christians owe their entire religion to the Jews, and have elevated a Jewish man to the Godhead.
This is not to say that all Christians are anti-Semitic. They may choose to ignore these passages or find a way to reconcile them with their desire to live in peace with everyone or may even recognize their debt to Judaism. But like a bacillus, this disease always lurks hidden beneath the surface, waiting for the opportunity to transform itself from dormant to active at the behest of the next dictator or demagogue, who will use this human vulnerability to stoke ancient hatreds and rally people to their side to seize power.
Christian Scripture graphically proclaims the original conspiracy theory with the Jews, conspiring with the greatest earthly power of all time, the Roman Empire, as well as the most evil power of the underworld, the devil, referred to in the Gospels as the father of the Jews, to perpetrate the most heinous crime in world history, i.e. deicide, the murder of God’s son Jesus. The fact that his death was the fictional part of God’s design, makes no difference, just as all the lies told about Jews ever since then are untethered to the facts. This blood libel, anti-Semitic trope and conspiracy theory is as integral to Christian theology as the flying buttress is to the structure of the Catholic church according to scholars such as Bishop Shelby Spong, who denounced Christian anti-Semitism and urged his co-religionists to revise their doctrine and to remove hate from their dogma.
Many other Christian scholars, such as James Carroll who wrote Constantine's Sword, meticulously chronicle and analyze the nearly 2000-year history of Christian anti-Semitism, since its beginning, but their observations go mostly unnoticed and unheard of due to political correctness and religious incorrectness. Today, Pastor Fritz Aufdencamp is one of the courageous Christian leaders who observes that an apartheid afterlife leads to religious apartheid in this world and helped to bring about the Holocaust, where Jews would burn in this world to carry out God’s will for the next one. For his efforts, he has been ostracized and accused of heresy by his denomination.
Most rabbis and Jewish scholars are unfamiliar with Christian teachings, or if they are aware of the connection between Christian replacement theology and anti-Semitism remain silent in a vain effort to promote understanding and not exacerbate historic persecution. However, understanding is never aided by hiding the truth, and history has repeatedly shown and the best and the brightest have repeatedly warned that the sin of silence leads to great harm as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Albert Einstein and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel all of whom escaped Nazi persecution, repeatedly warned.
These lethal passages and teachings are made real to an entire new generation of Christian children with the showing of the Passion of the Christ in churches across America, the Mel Gibson anti-Semitic screed that brainwashes children with hateful lies about the Jews, which he claims reflects the truth with a “capital T”, as it is taken directly from Christian Scripture, and uses graphic imagery of the evil Jews gloating while Jesus is sadistically tortured.
Shockingly, no one seems to be alarmed about this training film for a new breed of potential synagogue shooters, who in America are not only well armed with assault weapons but also with an ideology which assaults their intelligence and their ability to distinguish right from wrong. The movie charges the Jews with ancient tropes and uses religious propaganda to make more future synagogue shootings, with even greater lethality, are not only more likely, but almost inevitable. The efforts by the ADL, Congress and law enforcement to combat this threat with the posting of armed guards at every synagogue, may provide some comfort to the Jewish community and will reduce the violence, but they alone will not succeed in preventing future carnage and death, until the root cause, not just the symptoms of anti-Semitism are addressed. This requires an honest evaluation of the danger of irrational faith, which our society views as a good thing, even though history clearly shows that if a person or a group follows an illogical path, they become pathological.
Many people are unaware of the connection between Christianity and the Holocaust, but historians and scholars have no doubt about this unholy alliance. The Catholic Church was the first to recognize the Nazi regime as the legitimate rulers of Germany and entered a treaty with them. The Church turned over its archival records of births and marriage to facilitate the Nazis’ identification and extermination of Jews. The Church never excommunicated Hitler and his cohorts for their despicable acts, but did excommunicate Joseph Goebbels, not for his role in the Holocaust, but for marrying a Protestant. Even after the atrocities of the Holocaust were revealed for all to see, the Catholic Church helped to hide Nazis and shield them from punishment in South America and elsewhere when the war ended. The Church never retracted its charge that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. The closest it came was at Vatican II when the pope urged Catholics not to condemn all Jews for this crime but did not refute the fiction that the Jews of any time played any role in decide.
Not to be outdone, the Protestants used their founder, Martin Luther's 1543 anti-Semitic screed, “On the Jews and Their Lies” as a blueprint for Kristallnacht, which was the launching pad and trial run for the Holocaust. Leading member of the Nazi German Christians and bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, Martin Saase, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after Kristallnacht in which he "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and noted, "On 10 November 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." He urged the German people to heed the words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time”, the warner of his people against the Jews, Martin Luther.
Islam borrows much from Judaism and ever since its founding has engaged in a deadly ideological and physical battle against its elder sibling, for whom they display a celestial sibling rivalry, and jealous towards their imaginary father in the sky, who is also the object of prayer for traditional Jews, their closest theological allies. To overcome their self-perceived inferior status, they insist that their prophet, Mohamed, an illiterate tradesman, wrote the last and final revelation of God’s word and forbids any further effort to communicate with God, upon pain of death.
The idea of an intolerant monster in the sky, who orders his followers to kill the non-believer can be traced back to Jewish Scripture. The Torah proclaims that the Jews are God’s chosen ones who are commanded by God to wipe out the seven heathen nations that are in the holy land to keep the land pure for the worship of God. While the Bible of all three Abrahamic faiths have many beautiful, loving ideals, thes Chosen People concept is not one of them and should be repudiated and rejected by any thinking person. Sadly, traditionalists among these three faiths double down on this notion due to a “folie a trois”, their blind faith in a supernatural God and their idolatry towards their own Bible as the repository of his infallible word.
The Torah’s command to kill non-believers in the holy land, metastasized in Christian and Muslim Scripture to oppress and kill non-believers wherever they are found, with the newly conceived abodes of heaven for believers and hell, i.e. an eternal lake of fire for infidels who dare to think for themselves. In these iterations, the new chosen ones are urged to act in a “godlike” manner by burning and killing non-believers without mercy. Ironically, guided by this theology, Jews are the ultimate “other” who were God’s firstborn, but who, under the influence of the devil, willingly chose and continue to choose to ignore God’s will and stubbornly align with the devil.
By these lights Jewish success is not due to their education, morality, work ethic, family values or religion; rather it must be due to the power of the devil, who allows Jewish success to mock true believers and to lure others to apostasy. The Catholic Church, Martin Luther and the founding fathers of Christianity, urge good Christians to restore the natural order by putting Jews in their place by isolating them in ghettoes, and subjecting them to oppression, torture and at times, murder. Thus, Jews were accused of drinking the blood of Christian children at Passover and working with the devil to bring about the black plague and other inexplicable disasters to explain why the accursed Jews were less susceptible to plague than their believing neighbors, when rational explanations of Jews’ superior hygiene and health practices, and the germ theory of disease, were unknown.
These ancient tropes and blood libels are so entrenched in the human psyche, that even the United Nations believes that the Jewish homeland, which is a bastion of democracy and human rights, is
guilty of more human rights violations than its neighbors who traffic in human rights abuses.
The current wave of anti-abortion laws brands Jews as baby killers, just as they were described in medieval times. The pro-life (pro-lie?) view that the Bible states that
life begins at conception is a misconception and there is a pregnant silence about abortion in all three Bibles. Yet, this unfounded Biblical distortion, fueled by today’s Christian theocratic
nationalists, misuses religion to control women, vilify their opponents and criminalize Judaism. Jewish authorities hesitate to speak this truth for fear of antagonizing their interfaith and
liberal partners and overlords.
To ignore the religious influence upon anti-Semitism would be like ignoring the influence of cigarettes in a discussion of lung cancer, yet this is the sad state of affairs in the politically correct world of today. When our watch dogs become lap dogs to religious leaders and political ideologies, we can never get to the true causes of anti-Semitism and will always be left with so-called experts claiming that we can never understand or truly combat anti-Semitism, when in fact, the underlying causes and reasons for hatred of the Jews could not be more clear and were literally on the lips of the killers of 9-11, Pittsburgh and Poway in their manifestos explaining the reason for their hateful deeds.
Once we can begin to understand the causes, we must have the courage and candor to denounce anti-Semitism even when found in our own political party, nation, or religion. We see anti-Semitism in the extremes of both political parties, yet the moderates are reluctant to call it out and weed it out of their party. Instead, we all too often see the antithesis as anti-Semitism is ignored in our group, and used as a cudgel to bash other parties, religions, and groups that we don’t like. Such bias divides families and friends and allows the hate to persist.
One way to combat anti-Semitism is to defend not only the Jewish state, but the Jewish state of mind, which means that Christians and Muslims should stop their effort to demean, undermine and delegitimize Judaism as a false religion, whose prayers God does not hear, by adopting a rational approach to religion, which replaces blind faith in a supernatural God with an evidenced based belief that the natural is super. Humanity must come to understand that the concept of a supernatural God who chooses favorites among his children is pure myth, and those who believe it are “myth”guided, “myth”led, “myth”ogynisic, and “myth’taken, not only about Jews, but also the greatest truths ever discovered, such as humanity’s true origins as revealed through evolution and natural selection and the location of our planet not at the center of the universe, but rather on the insignificant arm of an insignificant solar system in an insignificant galaxy in a wondrously vast cosmos.
This Jewish state of mind, undistorted by mythology, views all humanity as one family, born in a divine image of purity and goodness, gregarious and playful, whose highest ideals include love, peace, justice, truth and a sense of wonder, awe and reverence for Creation.
Think about it, have you ever seen or heard of anti-Semitism among people or nations that are predominantly Buddhist, Hindu, Bahai, Unitarian, or pagan? Why are Christian and Muslim nations and people most susceptible to this illness? Is it just a coincidence that in their holy books, which they claim is inerrant and the word of God, the Jews are of the devil and are the leading protagonists among the non-believers? Is it just a coincidence that Christianity and Islam emerged from Judaism and that both groups now claim that God’s eternal covenant with the Jews has been abrogated by God for heinous sins committed by the Jews, and that the Christians and the Muslims respectively have now become God’s “chosen people”?
Such political correctness is also the reason why there has been no candid reflection on the reason for the attack of 9-11 against America, or the reason why we lost thousands of lives and spent trillions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting on the field of battle, but never bothering to fight on the battlefield of ideas. Thus, we have learned nothing and gained not one iota from these wars.
Seeking to forget that they worship a Jew as part of the godhead, Christians have gone to great lengths to commit posthumous identity theft against Jesus, replacing his Hebrew name with a Latin one, which would have been used by his enemies, not his family or friends, changing their Sabbath from Saturday as observed by Jesus, to Sunday in violation of the fourth commandment, and removing all traces of Judaism from this religious rabbi. This was essential to establish the foundations of Christianity and its replacement theory regarding the Jews.
The Christian Bible adopts the entire Jewish Scriptures and appends additional books about Jesus. Since Christianity is based on the Torah, which asserts as its central tenet that the Jews are God’s chosen people for all time, early Christians and their modern counterparts had to explain how an eternal covenant with God, the ultimate lawgiver, could be abrogated. Clearly the Jews must have done something awful to warrant God’s eternal covenant with the Jews being replaced by a pact with Christians and then Muslims. This replacement theory, which lies at the heart of the two main religions in the western world and east Asia, provides the basis for the deep-rooted, persistent global anti-Semitism we see in much of the world today. That is why the nation of South Korea, which was never dominated by Christianity or Islam holds Jews and the Talmud in very high regard, and many Koreans look to the Jews as role models for living a successful and virtuous life, while the deeply religious Poland had the largest percentage of its Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust, even exceeding the less religious Germany, where the oppression began.
Those who committed the unspeakable atrocities of October 7, 2023, were not born evil, like everyone else, they were born with the potential for good and bad. As the song from South Pacific says, “it has to be carefully taught to hate and fear”. Judaism teaches that each person is born with a Yetzer Ha-Rah (evil inclination) and a Yetzer Ha-Tov (a good inclination), and that the good inclination is our true nature, and a stronger impulse than the bad. Created in the image of God, no matter how far we have strayed, our faith teaches us that we have the potential to return to the good, which is the goal of religion and the observance of Shabbat and the High Holy Days.
Science confirms this spiritual hypothesis but explains the Yetzer Ha-Rah as the testosterone driven urge to fight, defend, kill for self-defense or food, to procreate, and at times, to act aggressively to spread our DNA. Testosterone is not the only source of such tendencies, but there is no denying that males are far more responsible than females for aggression and violence in our species. Science also reveals that humans have an inborn ability, potential and tendency to cooperate, to communicate, to love and for compassion. These traits have also been naturally selected by evolution to help our species survive. Those members of our species who possess a high level of these qualities, including the search for truth and meaning, are highly regarded in the Jewish faith and tend to leave more offspring in the survival of the Yiddish.
Christians and Muslims have adopted many of these Jewish ideals and today’s religious problems do not stem from a conflict between Islam and the west, or Judaism verses other faiths, the true conflict is between rational and irrational religion. Jews who take the Torah literally, such as the Orthodox, blindly worship a God who commanded their ancestors to commit genocide against non-believers and believe that this wrathful God chose the Jews as his people take us back to ignorance and conflict. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims believe likewise but cast themselves as the new chosen ones and characterize the Jews as “the other” who are condemned by God. Since their holy books teach that God will burn “the other” in hell in the next world, to act in a godly manner here on Earth requires them to oppress and at times, to kill or burn the Jews. (the literal meaning of Holocaust is to burn entirely). For rational thinkers it is hard to fathom how anyone could think this way, but once we can put ourselves into the mindset of the true believer, such hostility is easy to understand.
Many churches and mosques in America are warm, welcoming, havens of interfaith harmony and love whose parishioners perform many good deeds. However, there is a soft underbelly of intolerance in their Scriptures and history. If the price we must pay for interfaith harmony is to turn a blind eye to the truth and the fatal flaws of religion, then the price is too high, and our interfaith gatherings will be as effective in combatting hate as bloodletting is for a corpse.
For those not familiar with the Abrahamic holy books, I quote for you chapter and verse just a few of the voluminous passages which shed light on the intolerance of the Bible and how toxic these verses become if read as the infallible word of God, beginning with the Torah and metastasizing in the Gospels and the Koran.
Biblical Roots of Anti-Semitism
Deuteronomy 7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction.[a] You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
12 “And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. 13 He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. And you shall consume all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
18 You shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, 19 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. So will the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20 The Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. 24 And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 25
If your brother, the son of your father or mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to secretly seduce you, saying “Let us go and serve other gods,” unknown to you or your ancestors, before you, gods of the peoples surrounding you, whether near you or far away, anywhere throughout the world, you must not consent, you must not listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt, No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God. Deuteronomy 13:7-11
If you hear it said, of one of the towns that the Lord your God is giving you to dwell in, that some scoundrels from among you have gone and subverted the inhabitants of their town, saying “Come let us worship other gods” whom you have not experienced, you shall investigate and inquire and interrogate thoroughly. If it is true, the fact is established, that abhorrent thing was perpetrated in your midst, put the inhabitants of that town to the sword and put its cattle to the sword. Doom it and all that is in it to destruction. Gather all its spoil into the open square and burn the town and all its spoil as a burnt offering to the Lord your God. And it shall be an everlasting ruin, never to be rebuilt. Deuteronomy 13:12-16
The Torah commands killing adulterers, Sabbath violators, disrespectful children, women who are not virgins on their wedding day, those who worship the wrong God in the holy land or Jews who worship the right God but in the wrong way and many other innocuous “sins”.
Koran: Torah’s genocide against 7 nations is metastasized in the Koran to all non-believers
"And kill them wherever you find them and turn them out from where they have turned you out.” (Koran 2:191-193)
"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them" (Koran 8:12)
"So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them."
(Koran 9:5)
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have grievous chastisement” (Koran 5:33)
"Then fight in the cause of Allah, and know that Allah heareth and knoweth all things."
(Koran 2:244)
"Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, and ye know not.” (Koran 2:216)
But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks." (Koran 4:89)
Quran (3:151) - "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority
Quran (4:74) - "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward."
Quran (4:76) - "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah…"
"Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home).” (Koran 4:95)
Quran (4:104) - "And be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they (too) suffer pain as you suffer pain..."
Quran (8:15) - "O ye who believe! When ye meet those who disbelieve in battle, turn not your backs to them. Whoso on that day turneth his back to them, unless maneuvering for battle or intent to join a company, he truly hath incurred wrath from Allah, and his habitation will be hell, a hapless journey's end."
Quran (8:39) - "And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion should be only for Allah
Quran (8:57) - "If thou comest on them in the war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, that haply they may remember."
Quran (8:59-60) - "And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip (Allah's purpose). Lo! they cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy."
Quran (8:65) - "O Prophet, exhort the believers to fight..."
Quran (9:14) - "Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace..."
Quran (9:20) - "Those who believe and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah's way are of much greater worth in Allah's sight. These are they who are triumphant."
Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
Christian Scripture (The Gospels) also condemns non-believers, especially the Jews
Jews are children of the devil falsely accused of deicide. (Repeated by Pittsburgh killer)
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is G-d himself.” Jesus said to them, “If G-d were your father, you would love me, for I came from G-d and now I am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:41
The Pharisees and teachers are viciously condemned.
Woe to you teachers of the law, and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Matthew 23:13, 23, 25
The Gospels falsely accuse Jews of deicide and being of the devil. To whitewash Rome, who was slaughtering Christians, they blame Jews for the death of Jesus. The Gospels invented a Roman custom of releasing a Jewish prisoner on Passover. They portray the vicious Pontius Pilate as a saint, who innocently asks “the Jews” why they want to crucify Jesus. Seeking to release Jesus, the Jews cry out “Crucify him, crucify him and may his blood be upon us and upon our children.”
Scholars and historians know this custom never existed and that Pontius Pilate crucified thousands of Jews without pity. The Jews were the victims of crucifixion, not the perpetrators.
The Jews are from below and cannot go where Jesus is going, and are stupid.
Once more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come. This made the Jews ask, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, “Where I go you cannot come?” But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above.” John 8:21-23
Woe to you teachers of the law, and Pharisees, you hypocrites…. So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers! You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; (the Jews will crucify them?) others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel (how are the Pharisees responsible for the blood of Abel?) to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, (all the Pharisees and teachers of the law murdered Berekiah?)whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.” (the whole generation is condemned?) Matthew 23:33-36
The Jews killed Jesus, are contrary to all men and are hated by G-d
For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.
1 Thessalonians 2:14
The Jews killed Jesus for breaking the Sabbath and claiming to be son of G-d
So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said to them, “My father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason, the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling G-d his own father, making himself equal with G-d. John 5:16
The Jews want Jesus dead because he violated Jewish law by claiming to be the son of G-d, yet in John the Jews say G-d is the father of all Jews so what’s the problem?
The Jews insisted, “We have a law, and according to the law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of G-d.” John 19:7
Concerning the Jewish nation(Ryrie Bible)G-d kills the Jews for killing Jesus
A man planted a vineyard and rented it to tenants. Each time he sends someone to collect rent they get beat up or killed. Finally he sends his own son and they kill him in order to obtain the inheritance. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Then they looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. Mark 12:1
Jews are more responsible for the death of Jesus than the Romans and Pilate
Jesus to Pilate: “The one who delivered me to you has the greater sin.” John 19:11
All Jews wanted to kill Jesus
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. John 7:1
But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the Jews. John 7:13
The Jews orchestrated the murder of Jesus John 18:28-39
Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor.
Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” “But we have no right to execute anyone,” the Jews objected.
“It is your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it that you have done?”
“What is truth”, Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him. But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release “the King of the Jews”?
Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” … As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify, Crucify”.
With one voice they cried out, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us! Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.’ But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will. No mention of a Passover custom about releasing a prisoner. Luke 23:18
Whose custom was it to release a prisoner?
Now it was the Governor’s custom at the feast to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. Matthew 27:15
But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover.
John 18:39
No mention of any custom at all Luke 23:18
The Jews are ignorant and cannot go where Jesus is going, i.e. Heaven
You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come. The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we cannot find him? Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? What did he mean when he said, “You will look for me, but you will not find me, and “Where I am, you cannot come?” John 7:34-36
Jesus speaks in riddles so that most people will not understand and go to hell
Parables are not told to make a point, they’re told to hide the truth from the masses (Jews)
Jesus is a man who repeats what he heard from G-d and the Jews want him dead.
“Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did. As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from G-d.” John 8:39-40
All this harsh condemnation from one who says “Judge not lest ye be judged, condemn not lest ye be condemned.” (By contrast, Moses tells God to kill him not the people, when they sinned)
The name of the betrayer is Judas i.e. The Jew
Judas is an invented character who dies in 3 different ways in the Gospels.
Pretend to be kind to others so you can send them to hell. Romans 12:17-20
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, but leave room for G-d’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay” says the Lord. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink. In doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Jesus sends people to hell if they think freely and sends the “sheep” to heaven
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left (Matthew 25:31-33).
In this parable, the King separates the sheep from the goats. Unlike sheep, goats are known for being headstrong, self-reliant, and independent. For the purposes of Jesus’s story, they contrast perfectly with sheep.
Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:34-40).
Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”
They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”
He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
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