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Judaism

The reason is that Judaism itself has a benign (indeed very impressive) history, but other religions have an appalling history of inexplicable violence towards Jews. This page is really about those other religions.

• Judaism
  • opposing views
  • non-theistic Jews

• Criticism v. Hatred
  • Criticising religion is an important right. But what is the difference between criticism and hatred?
  • What is the difference between criticising Judaism as yet another supernatural meme and simple anti-semitism? Or criticising Catholicism and hatred of Catholics? Or criticising Islam and hatred of Muslims?
  • See some discussion on this.

• The Bible

• The Bible in its Own Words
  • The Old Testament

• The Tanach is the Old Testament.
  • The Torah is the first 5 books of the Old Testament.

• The Talmud is a collection of ancient rabbinic discussions.

• The Hebrew date seems to imply that something special happened around 3750 BC. The origin of the earth? No. The origin of humanity? No.

• Moses was evil. Otherwise "evil" has no meaning.
  • Moses was a mass murderer of men, women and little children and babies.
  • Moses was a rapist of captured women, after killing their families.
  • The fact is that Moses would have had Jesus executed as a heretic. I'm sure he would have approved of the crucifixion.

• Passover - The Jews smear blood on their doorposts and God does not kill their first born. But he kills the first born in all the other houses that do not do this. And people would worship a God that does this?? Such a God is clearly evil.

• circumcision
  • male circumcision
  • Religious circumcision of male infants, while not the end of the world, does display astonishing arrogance on the part of the religion, that it is willing to permanently "brand" the bodies of people too young to know what is happening to them.
  • Ban all circumcision, male and female

• The Kosher food rules, from the crackpot Book of Leviticus.
  • Kosher animal slaughter v. Animal rights
  • Why Animal Rights Activists Love Halal (and Kosher) by Tony Allwright - The hypocrisy of Animal Rights Activists at not campaigning to ban Kosher slaughter.

• The Jews (and Romans) murdered the preacher Jesus in the 1st century. This noble martyrdom for his beliefs is rather spoilt by the fact that his followers have murdered millions of innocent Jewish men, women and little children in revenge - centuries of European anti-semitic killings culminating in the bloodlust of the mid-20th century. Now granted, Jesus could hardly have known this was going to happen. But it still makes it hard to admire him - or see his life as a simple tale of suffering and martyrdom.
• For over a thousand years, Christians burnt alive anyone claiming to be the Son of God, not noticing the irony that this is just how Jesus was treated.

Old anti-semitism (Christian, Nazi)

• Killings for Christianity

• Anti-Semitism (and here)
• Christianity and anti-Semitism
• History of anti-Semitism

• In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council, under Pope Innocent III (the Butcher of the Cathars) first forced the Jews to wear yellow badges. This idea was later taken up again by the Nazis.

• It was believed in medieval Christianity that disease and epidemics were caused maliciously - by imaginary "witches", or by Jews, and the burning of Jewish men, women and children was a typical response to epidemics.
• The burning of Jews for "causing" the Black Death
• The killing of Jews in the "dancing mania" of the 14th century.

• Blood libel against Jews

• The church canonised many "saints" who were supposedly "martyred" by the Jews in "ritual murder" (to obtain Christian blood for their cakes, or something). Huge numbers of innocent Jewish men, women and little children were killed in response, often by being burnt alive. Embarrassingly, the church has since discovered that these supposed "ritual murders" never happened.
  • William of Norwich, the supposed victim of a "ritual murder" by Jews in 1144.
  • St. Dominguito del Val, the supposed victim of a "ritual murder" by Jews, c.1250. All the Jews of Saragossa were hanged (presumably including children).
  • Little St. Hugh of Lincoln, the supposed victim of a "ritual murder" by Jews in 1255. 18 Jews were hanged.
  • St. Simon of Trent, the supposed victim of a "ritual murder" by Jews in 1475. 15 Jews were burned alive.
  • The Holy Child of La Guardia, the supposed victim of a "ritual murder" by Jews in 1491. All the Jews of Spain were ethnically cleansed.

• Decanonized saints - If the church can actually name a saint, and get it wrong, how can it possibly claim to be guided by God?

• The Reformation may have been a great step forward to the modern secular world, but Martin Luther was a vile anti-semite.
  • Luther and anti-Semitism
  • Martin Luther and the Jews
  • On the Jews and Their Lies (1543)
  • About the Jews, Luther urged: "First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them ... Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed"

• John Calvin was a killer too of course. He burnt the thinker Servetus alive in 1553 because his ideas differed with Calvin's own superstitious beliefs. Calvin said: "Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their crime and guilty as they are."

• In the 16th century, Pope Paul IV first forced the Jews of Rome to live in a ghetto.

• The New Anti-Semitism, Bernard Lewis - on the history of anti-semitism from medieval Christianity to the Nazis to the Islamists.
  • Lewis, not one to whitewash Islam, does say that medieval Islam was more tolerant of religious diversity than medieval Christianity. Not that medieval Islam was tolerant by modern standards. Just that medieval Christianity was so bad.
  • "one has to remember that in the confrontation between Christendom and Islam, the movement of refugees, of those who, in Lenin's famous phrase, "voted with their feet," was overwhelmingly from west to east not from east to west." The Ottoman sultans admitted many Jewish refugees from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and elsewhere.
  • "This was tolerance and no more than that. ... but it is a lot better than intolerance as such, and the limited but substantial tolerance accorded to Jews and other non-Muslim communities in the Muslim states until early modern times was certainly vastly better than anything that was available in Christendom."

• 19th-20th century Christian anti-semitism

• There is of course a direct line traceable from the medieval Jew burning through to the modern Holocaust. In no way can we say that the Holocaust can be entirely divorced and separated from Christianity.

• Fascism
  • Christianity and the Holocaust

• Anti-semitism in the modern church
• The modern church tends to be sympathetic to anti-Jewish tyrants and terrorists and critical of the Jewish democracy of Israel.

Modern anti-semitism (Islamic, left-wing)

Islamic anti-semitism

• Killings for Islam

• Islamic fascism

• Islamic anti-semitism
• Arab anti-semitism
• Anti-Semitism in the Arab World

• National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World, Matthias Küntzel, Jewish Political Studies Review, Spring 2005. - "Anti-Semitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda."

• The Palestinians supported Nazi Germany in WW2, and even assisted in the Holocaust

• MEMRI - Extracts from the Arab press translated into English. Read their appalling ideas for yourself - their hatred of the Jews, their support for the killing of Israeli and Western civilians, their fundamental immorality, their ignorance, their conspiracy theories, their hatred of western human rights and human freedom.

• Why they deny the Holocaust, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, December 16, 2006 - "On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn't even heard of it." Ayaan Hirsi Ali herself never even heard of it until she was age 24 and got asylum in Holland. "As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust."
• As she points out about the sick freak show of the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust in Iran, "What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?" Again, as before, as always, "moderate" Muslims are silent.

The UN's anti-semitism

• The UN

• Israel and the United Nations
• The United Nations' War Against Israel by David Harsanyi - The UN's long shameful record on Israel
• Statistics of UN votes against Israel
• Terror Stings Its Pal, the U.N. by Alan Dershowitz - The UN's long support for and tolerance of Islamist terror.
• The U.N.'s record vis a vis Israel, 1946-89 - full statistics.

• The UN actually has permanent divisions devoted to its anti-Israel agenda!
  • The UN "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People"
  • The UN "Division for Palestinian Rights"
  • The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
  • The UN "International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People"
  • Richard Falk, UN "Human Rights" Council "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories", is a 9/11 Truther. He wrote the forward for the 9/11 conspiracy theory book The New Pearl Harbor. More here and here and here.

• At UN, Israel-bashing is always the first priority by Anne Bayefsky, Mar 30, 2003.
• The UN and the Jews by Anne Bayefsky, February 2004, notes that over the past 40 years, almost 30 percent of the resolutions passed by the UN Commission on Human Rights to condemn specific states have been directed at Israel. No resolution has ever been directed at the non-democracies of China, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan or Zimbabwe.

• Ranking of countries criticised by the UN. The Axis of Good ranks high in the UN's enemies:
  • No.1 Israel - Israel is the most criticised country!
  • No.6 USA
  • No.19 UK

• The Jewish Virtual Library
  • anti-semitism
  • Israel and the UN
    • Anti-Semitism in the United Nations
    • Israel is the only country that cannot serve on the UN Security Council.

Leftist anti-semitism

• The Arab world is openly anti-semitic, and is not ashamed of it. Europe hates Israel too, but claims that this is different.
  • Anti-semitism in Christian history

  • Christianity and the Holocaust

• Europe has always been anti-semitic. It is Europe's oldest prejudice. Europe claims that since WW2 it is no longer so. But claims are not enough. I don't believe it. Europe has the arrogance to think that no one could accuse it of being anti-semitic. But I do. I don't believe it has changed as much as it thinks it has. Pious words about the Holocaust are not enough - anyone can say those. Modern leftists in Europe can even condemn the Nazis, and then call for the killing of Jews. Words are not enough. Europe has to prove that it has grown up, that its shameful past is behind it. I would rather take my moral lead from America, a country that does not have to prove it is grown up. A country that did not in living memory round up Jews for extermination like France and Germany.
  • The modern left

  • The modern left's support for Islamic fascism

  • The modern left's support for Palestinian Islamofascism

  • The Irish left's support for Palestinian Islamofascism

"Hallucinatory" anti-semitism

• Daniel Jonah Goldhagen expresses well the point that anti-semitism has always been "hallucinatory". It is not about what the Jews do. It is about imaginary things. Hitler's fantastical complaints about the Jews were no more based on reality than the medieval complaints about the Jews "causing" the Black Death.

• Almost all complaints about Israel today are of the same hallucinatory quality. What Israel does and does not do is simply irrelevant to the lives of almost everyone in the Arab world. And yet it consumes so much of their attention, as if Israel and the Jews are to blame for the fact that they are poor, unfree and backward. The entire Arab world is in the grip of a hallucinatory anti-semitism that achieves nothing. The best thing Arabs can do is simply forget about Israel.
• The Editor-in-Chief of the enemy TV station Al-Jazeera illustrates this hallucinatory hatred of Israel. He claims that the Jews are the cause of all of the Arab world's problems (even in countries with no Jews):
  • Q. "Do you mean to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, that the public clinics in Jordan would function better?"
  • A. "I think so."
  • He's not joking. He really believes this.

• The Globalization of Antisemitism by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (see also Hate turns from Shylock to Rambo)
• And in Europe, Israel, rather than money-lending or Christ-killing, is now the main "reason" given for European anti-semitism, and the left is now the centre of Jew-hating, rather than the right.

• The Paradox of Cruelty: The greater the hatred, the less the reason

• Anti-semitism's equally hallucinatory sister hatred, anti-Americanism.

Hatred of Israel is the new anti-semitism

• Alan M. Dershowitz - One can criticise Israel (or America) - "But to single out the Jewish state of Israel, as if it were the worst human rights offender, is bigotry pure and simple."
• How to tell if criticism of Israel is anti-semitic
• Yes, of course one can criticise Israel without being anti-semitic. As many Israelis do - there is a vibrant democracy with furious internal debate. But among non-Jews, I would say that more than 95 percent of criticism of Israel is anti-semitic.

• Anti-Zionism is the ancient anti-semitism - article by Jack Schwartz.
• Martin Luther King said: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism."
  • Note that - even though he would have agreed with the content - the "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend" (also here) is, bizarrely, a hoax.
  • Ironically, Martin Luther King Jr. is named ultimately after Martin Luther, the vicious anti-semite.

• Put it this way. If you're a westerner, and Israel is one of the main countries you criticise, then you're an anti-semite. As a westerner, your main targets should be places like Sudan and North Korea.
• If Israel is just one of at least 60 states that you criticise, and your worst criticism is of non-democracies, then you may not be an anti-semite, and your criticisms may even make some sense.

• The Paradox of the Fisks: The most criticised societies in the world will be the least criminal societies

The left and Israel

• The new anti-Semitism (also here) by Melanie Phillips - "hostility to Jews is strongest among those on the Left who claim to be fighting racism" - She notes the deep need Europe has to get over its guilt about the Holocaust: "Europe has waited for more than half a century for a way to blame the Jews for their own destruction. So instead of sounding the alarm over genocidal Islamist Jew-hatred, Europeans have eagerly embraced the Nazification of the Jews"

• Why Israel is not like apartheid South Africa (and here and part 2). Israel is like any normal civilized western country would be, if it was surrounded by millions of enemies who want to destroy it.
• As the above says, the Palestinian Authority is the apartheid state: "When talking about apartheid and the Middle East, here is the question: How many Jews would be allowed to live in a Palestinian state? The answer is none."

• Why Does the Left Hate Israel? by Richard Baehr
• Why The Left Hates Israel by Bruce Thornton
• Why Europeans won't support Israel
• Muslim and left-wing anti-semitism in France
• Hating Israel is part of campus culture
• Growing Leftist and Middle Eastern Hatred by Jonathan Burack
• The Left's Anti-Semitic Chic by George F. Will - "The appallingly brief eclipse of anti-Semitism after Auschwitz demonstrates how beguiling is the simplicity of pure stupidity."

• Academics: Sign the petition against the boycott of Israel.

Left-wing Holocaust denial: Comparing free societies to the Nazis. Comparing trivial things to the Nazis.

• Comparing a western democratic government to the Nazis, or their police to the Nazis, or your teachers to the Nazis, is a form of Holocaust denial. It says that killing millions of innocent women and children by shooting them in pits or putting them in ovens is "just like" telling some spoilt young person that he can't stay up late, or demonstrate on certain streets.
• "Bush equals Hitler" adds up to holocaust denial by Jonah Goldberg - "If your son is murdered and I claim that it never happened, I am denying the existence of a crime. But if your son is murdered and I compare that tragedy to losing your car keys, that is a form of denial, too."
• "Bush=Hitler" by Jonah Goldberg

• It is not just moronic youth that engage in this left-wing trivialisation of the Holocaust. It is a firmly established part of left-wing politics and demonstrations to compare free countries like America and Britain - and, most unforgivably, Israel - to Nazi Germany.
• bush hitler search on Google Images.
• The Gallery of "Bush = Hitler" Allusions - America-Nazi comparisons by various leftist morons.
• Bigotry outside Faneuil Hall by Alan Dershowitz, on leftist anti-semites screaming that he is just like Hitler. See call for protest. "The sin that, in the opinion of the screamers, warranted this comparison between me and the man who murdered dozens of my family members was my support for Israel."

The media

The media is wrong on Israel

• The media on Israel
  • How the Western Media Smear Israel by Tal Sadeh
  • The massacre of Jenin has one, strong, lasting lesson - that one should not trust the European media on Israel.

• honestreporting.com - monitoring media anti-Israel bias.

• Classic example of media bias on Israel, 1 Sept 2007. Pure propaganda from "Al-Reuters".
  • Instead of the simple, true headline: "Hamas shoot Palestinian protesters, killing one", Reuters title their story: "Palestinian youth killed in protest at Gaza border". Why? We all know why.
  • Reuters say the dead protester "was accidentally hit by a bullet fired by Hamas Executive Force officers trying to keep the crowd under control." Accidentally? As Charles Johnson says: "When was the last time you saw Reuters give Israel the presumption of innocence like this?"

• The media on Iraq

The BBC on Israel

• The BBC

• Anti-semitism at the BBC by Douglas Davis (and mirror)
• The BBC's pro-Arab bias in the Arab-Israeli conflict
• Living in a Bubble: The BBC's very own Mideast foreign policy by Tom Gross
• The BBC: Lord Haw-Haw at Bush House by Hugh Fitzgerald
• The BBC's West Bank correspondent Barbara Plett actually wept for the butcher of Jews Yasser Arafat: "when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry ... without warning."

• Study of BBC headlines on Israel, January 2008:
  • "In 63% of the stories about Israeli operations, Israel or the IDF were named directly. Typical headlines were: 'Israelis kill militants in Gaza', ... and 'Israeli strike kills four in Gaza.'"
  • "On the other hand, of the 7 stories concerning Palestinian attacks, none were written in the same style. The headlines took the responsibility for the attacks away from those who instigated them. ... typical headlines such as: 'Rocket injures dozens in Israel,' 'Gaza explosion kills two children', ... 'Two killed in clash in Gaza Strip,' and 'West Bank clash leaves three dead.' ... Since terrorist groups took responsibility for the attacks, why weren't they named in the headline?"

Israel (separate page)

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict (separate page)

The problem - What is wrong with the Islamic world? (separate page)

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