Posted on 01/31/2014 4:57:52 PM PST by Kaslin
When the White House scribblers were putting the finishing touches on the State of the Union address, President Obama took a moment to commemorate memory. Monday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the most notorious of Hitler's death camps. "Each year on this day," he said, "the world comes together to commemorate a barbaric crime unique in human history."
But not quite the whole world. Anti-Semitism thrives in the Middle East, where certain politicians vie to see who can say the ugliest things about Jews, and such sentiment is surging in Europe. Bloody pig's heads were sent to the Israeli embassy, the Jewish Museum and a synagogue in Rome on the Saturday before the commemoration. Several thousand Frenchmen gathered on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Paris, chanting "Jew go home," and gave the "quenelle salute" -- a variation of the Nazi heil created by a popular French comedian who has many imitators on the street and on the Internet.
Even Holocaust Remembrance Day has its critics, who argue that the expression of easy sentiments does little to reduce the rising tide of anti-Semitism and may, in fact, dumb down memory. Since the United Nations established International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005, anti-Semitic incidents have grown across Europe and the Middle East.
Nevertheless, important voices were raised this year in commemoration. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the purpose of the grim anniversary: "The United Nations was founded to prevent any such horrors happening again." Catherine Ashton, the foreign affairs chief of the European Union, said the occasion reminds everyone "to continue fighting prejudice and racism in our own time."
Lawmakers from the United States, Israel and Europe toured Auschwitz testifying to the cry, "Never again." Others died in the Holocaust, too, including homosexuals, gypsies and the racially "impure." But the commemoration reminded the world, killing 6 million men, women and children simply for being born a Jew was an attempt to extinguish a race.
Many victims of the Holocaust remain nameless today, and the text of a new commemorative book of 1,250 pages consists of one word, "Jew," repeated 6 million times. "That's how the Nazis viewed their victims," Phil Chernofsky, the book's creator, told the New York Times. "These are not individuals; these are not people. They are just 'a mass we have to exterminate.'" No one would have believed what happened to them (and some still don't) if there hadn't been liberating soldiers to see for themselves and survivors to speak of the atrocities after the Third Reich was dispatched to the trash bin of history. We remember for their sake -- and for our own.
One grim memory was retrieved with the recent discovery of the unpublished letters of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, offering another footnote on the "banality of evil," in Hannah Arendt's descriptive phrase. In a letter to his wife, Himmler juxtaposes his visit to a death camp with a commonplace acknowledgement for her: "I am traveling to Auschwitz," he wrote. "Kisses, your Heini." Her affection was returned in an ironic characterization of their love: "I am so lucky to have such an evil good man, who loves his evil wife as much as she loves him."
It's another reminder of how glibly evil can be trivialized. Layers of the horror of the Holocaust continue to unfold as dedicated researchers discover new killing sites. Auschwitz remains the best-known symbol of the Nazi evil, having seen over a million deaths by the gassing of men, women and children. But historians have now documented that more than a third of the 6 million Jews were slain in their homes, forests, city streets, country roads and hidden quarries. Most of these murders took place behind the Iron Curtain, where even after the war, it was more difficult to speak up than in the West. As survivors age, these fading memories become a compelling source of history.
Anti-Semitism is an ancient hatred that seeks to camouflage its shame by calling itself "anti-Zionism." It's a transparent deception. The state of Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948 to enable Jews to return to a homeland as protection against the anti-Semitism that persisted in Europe through the 1930s.
Millions are still exposed daily to rants and raves that blame Israel for all the world's ills. David Nirenberg, in "Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition," which describes the problem, suggests that such prejudice, if harnessed to military power, could be as deadly for the Jews as it ever was in the 1930s. Iran, which boasts that it will destroy Israel, now enjoys an easier yoke of sanctions and continues to pursue nuclear weapons. "Never again!" sounds as much a prayer as a cry of defiance.
You make no sense what-so-ever....not even in the slightest.
Since the whole purpose of Jesus Christ was to teach and then offer himself up for our sins, we should be giving all our thanks and rich rewards to whomever we think may have helped him do it. “Blaming” anybody just shows an appalling lack of knowledge about the most fundamental teaching of Christianity — or a profound hatred of it. Either way, we pray for such poor souls that they see the light and get the message ASAP.
Yes, but nothing like the databases we have today.
The government knows too much to be trusted.
Baths and ovens? Baaaah, old tech. Flash incineration
and the ashes mixed with asphault to pave the streets
in party neighborhoods.
You confuse macro and micro politics.
Pilate could do what ever he wanted. He made a political decision to placate the Jewish power structure and execute their political and religious rival. They had no legal or extralegal means or power to do so.
Jesus was neither a threat nor an asset to the Romans represented by Pilate.
Google is your friend!
The Romans had control and nothing happened without Roman approval.
God will keep his promise to the Jews during the Tribulation with the 144,000 Evangelical Messianic Jews who will bring many Jewish people to Jesus. The scale will fall from their eyes and they will recognize the Messiah. God is good.
Anti-semitism is simply demonic and satanic. There’s no other explanation as to why this ancient sin keeps re-arising.
Jew hatred is a more complicated question than can usually be addressed in our hypersensitive world, so I’m going to take a stab at it. By “Jews” does one mean the talented and industrious Orthodox and Conservative (and a few Reform types who were raised right ;)) folks, does one mean the ethnically-identified-but-religiously-more-like-agnostics Jews who make up such a disproportionate part of the leadership of what we call The Left (media, trial lawyers, academicians, activists, activists, activists, etc...), or does one mean the golden-calf-worshiping Sodomites/Nihilists that (yes) control (!) so much of Hollywood, or do we mean the people of Israel? Those general groups don’t really have all that much in common, some are not exclusive to Jews, and they certainly leave out huge numbers of people. This is not surprising, given the Old Testament, which is a pretty good guide to all sorts of things. If anyone is going to violently disagree with some Jews, it’s probably some other Jews, and somebody is usually right. “We’re the People’s Front of Judea!” (Monty Python reference alert!)
Jews are a religious and ethnic group unlike any other. Taken as a whole they have probably done more good and more harm in modern times than any other identifiable group, almost always through the force of ideas. Albert Einstein and Milton Friedman were Jews (that don’t fit neatly into my groups listed above), but so were Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx (who do fit neatly into my groups listed above, unless I undershot the evil). What do Harvey Weinstein and Benjamin Netanyahu really have in common? Saul Alinsky vs. Ayn Rand? Leon Trotsky vs. Friedrich Hayek? Benjamin Shapiro vs. Jon Stewart? Julian Edelman vs. ... some other Jewish football player that I don’t like, assuming there is one. Paul Krugman vs. Murray Rothbard. The New York Times vs. Any Jew that isn’t a commie. Barbara Boxer vs. ...... I don’t know, anyone at all? Nat Hentoff? I could go on for hours.
Having grown up with an oddly large number of Jewish friends for a kid in the South, I have to admit that my feelings about Jews tend to be extreme, almost to the point that their “Jewishness” becomes irrelevant. So many are such Leftist idiots, wasting good minds on causes that are horrific, and yet some of the most talented people on our side are Jews. I imagine that being a conservative or right wing Jew must be something like being a conservative black. but not as bad. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong on that.
It is a confusing subject for somebody seeking the truth. Are an awful lot of people identified as “Jews” pushing Cultural Marxism? Yes, without question. Is this due to something inherent in their “Jewishness”? If so, it doesn’t stop a good number of others from pushing back. Eric Cantor should try it sometime. I do know this much: The Constitution of the United States of America is the best thing to happen to the Jewish people since the Ten Commandments, and that includes the founding of the State of Israel. Those two things are easily the Top Two since Moses descended Mt. Sinai the second time, and Jewish liberals display their self-hatred by their lack of recognition of that fact. Of course the liberals don’t believe any of that anyway.
Excellently said.
Wouldn’t it be funny if bert was Mel Gibson’s screen-name? :P
Don’t forget..., at the demand of the Jews. Barabbas was set free rather than Christ.
I’m not trying to make points off of it, but it’s true.
Bar Refaeli
I’m going to explain this: when it came time to convert heathen pagans, especially Roman pagans, Christians did not blame the Roman officials. The bad guys became the Jews. After all, they were gone.
Hey! If you want to convert Romans then you don’t tell them the truth. The truth is the Romans had control of Judea and all the area around it. They made the decisions when it came to law.
By the time of the end of the First Century AD, Judea as a nation was gone. Most of the Jews exiled. What we think of as ‘the Gospels’ were letters and papers handed about between groups of Christians living in various communities. Literacy was far from being common and these ‘letters’ were read aloud to interested groups.
St. Paul moved among these groups.
The earliest manuscripts of the Gospels were written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. The Greek converts didn’t like those manuscripts and rewrote them, and many more of them survive. Which leads to an interesting mystery: why are they different when translated?
I am an art historian who specialized in calligraphy and the illuminations of early Christian missals.
Okay, I appreciate the response and why you have reason to feel like you know what you are talking about. And you probably do.
Is it your contention then that the Jews when given the chance to free either Christ or Barabbas were not responsible for their actions?
Barabbas was a murderer. He deserved death, and yet he was freed and Christ was chosen to die in his place.
Do you disagree with the accounting that states the Jews made this decision? Is it your contention that the Jewish high priests were also guilty of nothing?
I’m not coming at this from a position of holding Jews or Israel accountable because I think they have something coming to them for their part in all this. I merely see it as an accurate historic truth.
Do you have reason to disagree with this?
I neither agree nor disagree with your position. What we seem to be overlooking here is that Jesus wanted to die. It was necessary for him to be a sacrifice for all sinners.
If you look at where we are today, where a murderer can be let go and a person who has committed a lesser crime serves a life sentence, we are observing the lack of justice in our own system. I believe it was the same in Jesus’s lifetime, in fact, I know justice was rarely served in the Roman Empire.
Pontius Pilate appears to have been reluctant to crucify Jesus, as he, Pilate, did not believe a crime had been committed. The Sanhedrin accused Jesus of violating Mosaic Law, and the crowds may have been hired by the Sanhedrin to push for Jesus’s crucifixion.
Politics stunk then just as much as it does now.
I am going to add here that I suspect the Jews were hated during ancient times because they valued reading and writing. They have been known throughout history as the People of the Book.
The Muslims have been particularly filled with animosity towards Jews. During the Ottoman Empire, there was one particular period in which Jews were not allowed to hold any employment other than as slavers. They traveled into eastern Europe to round up slaves and send them to Istanbul. No wonder the peoples of eastern Europe came to hate Jews so much.
You fail history, religion and logic.
Recall if you will that Jesus was the King of the Jews One of many claimants. And that is why the Romans killed him.
Palm Sunday was a political event that scared the crap out of them
The Romans and Jewish collaborators were on edge every Passover, as this is when violence often erupted. In fact it was during PAssover that the Great Revolt of 66 CE began after the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Caesarea.
I don’t mind failing your class. It’s all bs anyway.
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