For most Israelis the phrase “Never Again” is understood to relate to the Holocaust, and does not usually carry the meaning that the Holocaust would never happen again, but rather that if it did, we would not behave passively as we did last time. We would stand up and fight with great determination. In a speech at the Auschwitz- Birkenau death camp marking International Holocaust Memorial Day in 2010 Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, “I promise, as head of the Jewish state, that never again will we allow the hand of evil to sever the life of our people and our state.” Elie Weisel, the Nobel laureate, wrote in 2012, “‘Never again’ becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow … never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence.”
In Israel these days there is much awareness of the rising tide of antisemitism world wide. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center report on antisemitism, “Seventy five years after the end of the Holocaust, fueled by social media and an increasingly raw and divisive political discourse, nourished by extreme nationalism and radical religion, antisemitism has become a critical issue in today’s world.
In Europe, where the Holocaust decimated what was once a center of Jewish life, the communities that have survived and struggled to rebuild are now facing such acute risk that even non-Jewish political leaders are have publicly expressed concern about the possible (sic) of end of thousands of years of European Jewish life.
Violent antisemitism has permeated Europe, with Jews facing physical threats in countries like France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany and others, while antisemitism has been legitimized as political discourse in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland, Hungary and throughout the continent” (1).
Far right groups, such as the Neo-Nazis, are becoming bolder and more physically violent, and antisemitic expression more socially acceptable in many countries. Jews have been physically attacked in a number of countries, simply because they are Jews. In some countries such as the UK, Sweden, Poland and Hungary antisemitism has been legitimized through political discussion and rhetoric. There have also been many instances of extreme expressions of antisemitism emanating from the left side of the political spectrum. This often takes the form of rabidly biased and twisted anti-Israel expressions of hatred. According to a survey conducted by the Fundamental Rights Agency’s second survey of European Jews released in November 2018, ” over 90% of Europe’s Jewish population surveyed feel that antisemitism is growing in their countries, and most feel that little or no effort is being made to fight it” (1).
It is not only in Europe where antisemitism is on the rise. In the USA in 2018 (the last year for which figures are available) there were 1016 hate crimes committed against Jews, according to FBI statistics. Eleven Jews were killed in the USA in 2018 simply because they were Jews (1).
It has come to the point that many Jews in Europe and the USA no longer feel safe in their synagogues, on the streets or even in their homes. Perhaps this is the fulfillment of the second part of the prophecy of Jeremiah below. The fishers have fished and brought many people back to Israel, but perhaps the time of the hunters is upon us. Already we are seeing an upsurge of immigration from countries where Jews are being persecuted, and I think we will see more in the coming years.
“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that it shall no more be said, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.’ For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers.
“Behold, I will send for many fishermen,” says the Lord, “and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.
Jeremiah 16:14-16
Earlier this month the Jerusalem Post newspaper here in Israel carried an article (2) calling upon all Christians to take an “active place in the fight against this dark, creeping hatred of Jews “. To do this first we must deeply examine our own hearts. Every one of us has been nourished by our culture and affected by our history. We may well harbor secret antisemitic attitudes which are not righteous before God. We may not even realize that many of our ideas and attitudes are in fact antisemitic. Have we bought into, or even promulgated, the stereotyping of Jews (grasping Jew, etc), the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories (Jews run the world), or the anti-Israel bias and blatant lies of the news media? If so we need to repent. I believe too the church needs to repent deeply of its history of hatred towards the Jews and all the antisemitic acts carried out in the name of Christ. It has done terrible harm to the Jewish people and in so doing has turned them away from Yeshua (Jesus) and so denied them salvation. To many Jews today Christianity is synonymous with Nazism. We have also been guilty by omission. When did you last hear a sermon on Romans 9-11?
If you love God it follows that you must love the Jews, because God does, and because Jesus was and is still a Jew. And if you love the Jews you must also love their nation, Israel. That is not to say you have to support everything Israel does, but what it means is that you must constantly pray and act to promote its welfare and salvation, for that is the will of God. The article referenced above (2) in the Jerusalem Post concluded with these words: ” The rejection of antisemitism must become a deep and organic reality for Christians, something more than just “the right thing to do.” When rejecting antisemitism also becomes also (sic) a matter of protecting of the actual heart, the core of Christianity – that is when truly it will be impossible, as Pope Francis has said, to be a Christian and an antisemite. “
It is not however enough to examine our own hearts and repent of our own antisemitism, we need also to be willing to speak out against it in our own society and take action when appropriate. The famous quote attributed to Edmund Burke, goes something like this ” All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. ” It was true in 1930’s Germany and it is true today.
Kirt Schneider, host of the TV show “Discovering the Jewish Jesus” which is broadcast in 200 nations, has put out a call for all his followers to wear Jewish symbols as an act of solidarity with the Jewish people(4). This is the kind of action which will confuse and hopefully give the antisemitic activists pause for thought.
Over the next few days an impressive assemblage of ” Kings, princes, presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers will converge on Jerusalem… for the Fifth World Holocaust Forum commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.” (3). The Forum will take place on Thursday, 23 January, at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum) and Israeli President Rivlin will host 40 of the world’s top leaders for a dinner at his residence. Here is a list of the leaders who will attend:
US Vice President Mike Pence
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
President of France Emmanuel Macron
President of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen
Governor-General of Canada Julie Payette
Governor-General of Australia David Hurley
President of Russia Vladimir Putin
Prince Charles of Britain
King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander
King Felipe VI of Spain
President of Italy Sergio Mattarella
President of Slovenia Borut Pahor
President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier
President of Hungary János Áder
President of Greece Prokopis Pavlopoulos
Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven
President of Iceland Guðni Th. Jóhannesson
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zolenskyy
President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades
President of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda
Crown Prince Haakon of Norway
Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen
President of Finland Sauli Niinistö
President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev
President of Romania Klaus Iohannis
President of Slovakia Zuzana Čaputová
Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Andrej Babiš
President of Albania Ilir Meta
President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian
President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili
Speaker of the Latvian Parliament Ināra Mūrniece
President of Moldova Igor Dodon
Minister of State of Monaco Serge Telle
Chairman of the House of Representatives of Belarus
President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović
President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić
President of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željko Komšić
Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg
President of Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski
President of Montenegro Milo Đukanović
President of the European Council Charles Michel
President of the European Parliament David Sassoli
Vatican Representative Kurt Koch
Is your nation represented? If not, why not?
Needless to say, such a venerable assemblage of dignitaries is a massive security nightmare and will create a great deal of traffic chaos in our city over the next week. However please pray for the safety of all these people and that they will each go back to their home nations changed, carrying a powerful message and a determination to fight antisemitism wherever it raises its ugly head.
On another note, this week has also seen a return of nightly border demonstrations in Gaza, rocket attacks on the town of Sderot, and the renewal of strikes by balloons carrying explosive devices. Today one such device exploded over a home in Sderot. Earlier in the week the four rockets fired at Sderot either landed in open areas or were shot down by our Iron Dome defenses. It is thought they were fired by a wing of the Islamic Jihad group but, returning to its former policy of holding Hamas responsible for everything happening in its territory, Israel attacked a number of Hamas sites in retaliation. Israel also attacked a Hamas position today in retaliation for the balloon incursion today. This latest escalation is just the latest in what seems like and endless round of such events.
We have also seen a return of knifing attacks this week with attacks in both Jerusalem and Hevron, leaving one man moderately injured.
Last week I wrote about the flooding in several of Israel’s coastal communities that occurred as a result of two storm systems over the last two weeks. Five people were killed and there was extensive damage to private and public property and infrastructure. The cost of damage caused by these storms is estimated to be in the billions of dollars (5). Even some of Israel’s fighter jets were swamped by flood waters on a base in the Negev, and the repair bill for them alone will be in the millions(6).
Now it is raining again and the rain is expected to continue for the next few days. Already there are reports of flooding coming in, this time in the city of Ashkelon where an underground parking garage has been submerged for the second time swamping over 50 cars. It is again snowing in the north and there are warnings the snow may spread to the central hills and Jerusalem in the coming days. All of this precipitation is filling our reservoirs and aquifers and the Sea of Galilee is now only 1.8m below its ‘full’ level and rising several centimeters every day. This is the highest it has been for many years.
We rejoice in all the rain but please pray it will not cause any further flooding and damage.
On that note I will close with God’s promise to Israel:
The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. 13 And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
Deuteronomy 28: 12-14
References:
- https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Religion/Submissions/SimonWiesenthalCenter.pdf
- https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Jews-today-and-Jesuss-Jewish-body-A-meditation-on-January-1-613100
- http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/274740
- https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/Messianic-Jewish-leader-encourages-millions-of-followers-to-support-Jews-613897
- https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rkupZUOgI
- https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rJ7XF1KxI