Listen carefully for the echoes of anti-Semitism
By Peter Houston, Mail & Guardian (South Africa). (Editor’s note: this clear analysis is an indictment of church leaders who turn a blind eye to the reality of a resurgent and rampant anti-semitism)
Throughout history, prominent church leaders have been the incarnation of the anti-Semitism of that age, preaching it in the Middle Ages, theologising away Jesus’s Jewishness under Nazism and ignoring Hamas in their liberation struggle narratives while also remaining silent about the rise of blatant anti-Semitism around the world.
In the words of a former president of South Africa, “Listen carefully!”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (of blessed memory) recognised the new face of anti-Semitism years ago. In a speech to the EU parliament in 2016 he said:
“Anti-Semitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. It takes different forms in different ages. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and early 20th century they were hated because of their race.
“Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel. It takes different forms but it remains the same thing: the view that Jews have no right to exist as free and equal human beings.”
He likened anti-Semitism to a mutating virus, and this was before the 2020 Covid pandemic that made us all armchair experts overnight. Sacks said:
“Throughout history, when people have sought to justify anti-Semitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority available within the culture. In the Middle Ages, it was religion. So we had religious anti-Judaism.
“In post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. So we had the twin foundations of Nazi ideology, Social Darwinism and the so-called Scientific Study of Race.
“Today the highest source of authority worldwide is human rights. That is why Israel — the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary — is regularly accused of the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.”
The recent massacre of Jews by Hamas in Israel has revealed to us the face of this anti-Semitism in our government leaders and many church leaders, both in what they have said, justifying the actions of Hamas as a liberation struggle, and by what has been left unsaid, the silences.
This was to be expected from a ruling government who themselves supported an armed liberation struggle that targeted not only security forces but also ended up killing civilians. According to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission report published in 2003, “the majority of casualties of MK operations were civilians”.
But what about the response of church leaders?
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