Olivier Melnick

October 12, 2019 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

New Training Grounds for the Next Generation of Anti-Semites!

If you have been following my writing for the last two decades, you are already aware that “the oldest hatred” has been morphing from the taboo racial antisemitism of the 30s and 40s to a social justice struggle. Incidentally, another word for struggle is jihad! Antisemitism being the irrational hatred of the Jewish people characterized by thoughts, deeds or words against them, it now can come from any perspective, and it does!

When something is irrational, you can expect two things: First, it can materialize in any way under the sun, and second, it will be widely accepted by the masses even though it makes no sense at all. That is why we have been seeing people like liberals and progressives join forces with radical Islamists against Israel. They meet nowhere on the ideological spectrum on any topic except the annihilation of all Jews and the eradication of Israel from the map of the Middle East.

One place where antisemitism runs rampant and almost always completely unchecked is the Ameican university campus. This is the place where young people fresh out of high school come to learn and hopefully become equipped for life and career. These young minds are very malleable and usually very open to change their philosophical, social, political and/ or spiritual position. That is if they already had such a position before entering college. Many enter the campus with a belief in God and by the time they graduate, they have become atheists or agnostics at best. A university campus is a place of indoctrination like no other. This cannot be more evident than when it pertains to Jewish things.

The new antisemites have known that fact for quite a while now, and the educational platform has been used and abused to demonize, ostracize and even verbally and physically abuse the Jewish people. The American university campus has become the new training ground for the next generation of antisemites! Consider these staggering statistics from The AMCHA Initiative, which according to their own website is “a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating, documenting, educating about, and combating antisemitism at institutions of higher education in America.” These statistics are for the last year.

• Classical antisemitic incidents have decreased by 42%, but Israel-related incidents significantly increased by 70% in both number and intensity.
• Demonizing and delegitimizing Israel have increased by 32%.
• Expressions used to demonize Israel have increased from 22% to 147%.
• Promoting or condoning terrorism against Israel has increased by 67%.
• Promoting academic BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) has more than doubled.
• Academic BDS-compliant behavior was linked to 86% of Israel-related acts of antisemitic harassment.
• The promotion of BDS-related activity has more than quadrupled.
• The number of events sponsored by school faculty and encouraging the demonization or delegitimization of Israel increased by 85%.

As AMCHA concluded‘ “our results suggest that academic BDS is itself simply a tool, albeit the primary tool on college campuses today, for carrying out the eliminationist goals of anti-Zionism. They also highlight the fact that attempts to promote or carry out anti-Zionism’s eliminationist goals can’t help but inflict direct and substantive harm on Israel’s on-campus supporters, particularly Jewish and pro-Israel students.”

These resulted in various behaviors including discrimination, attacks on freedom of speech, bullying, genocidal behavior, destruction of property and even physical abuse. Students don’t even have to be Jewish anymore, they simply need to be perceived as pro-Israel and they are at risk.

The American university campus has become the new training ground for the next generation of antisemites because this new generation is vastly illiterate when it comes to world history or even American history for that matter. When you don’t know who Stalin was or what Hitler did, you are more prone to judge history and current events, based on your own set of preconceived notions about social justice. As a result, you end-up believing in any narrative that paints victims and perpetrators as in the case of the Middle East crisis.

American college campuses are quickly becoming the most dangerous places when it comes to raising a generation of Jew /Israel haters. The indoctrination comes from academic sources and school faculty, which is even scarier because they should know better. So, it is often a case of educated people indoctrinating unaware, gullible students. One group is guilty of antisemitism by commission and the other one out of ignorance. In the meantime, Israel and the Jews are caught in the middle and suffer greatly. I don’t dare project when this generation will enter the workforce, ill-equipped to handle life, yet passionate about destroying Israel!

September 27, 2019 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Is Antisemitism becoming Mainstream in America?

Only days after the UN special rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed, released a report to denounce antisemitism titled “Combating Antisemitism to Eliminate Discrimination and Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief“, one would tend to be a bit hopeful for the Jewish people. The report was described by many as “unprecedented.” Considering the United Nation’s apparent obsession with faulting Israel over any other country in the world, it was indeed unprecedented. The rapporteur understands that antisemitism is often unreported or under-reported. The report delineates the global distribution of almost 15 million Jews and then continues to identify the age-old diatribes against the Jews such as the murder of Jesus (deicide), the blood libel, ritual murder and control of the world.

He continued to expose the lies against the Jews and wrote, “Many of these negative stereotypes were promulgated in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a discredited forgery widely disseminated in the Middle East alleging a secret Jewish plan for world domination, written in the late nineteenth century.” He also denounced Holocaust denial and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement. He went on to list global violence and online antisemitism as part of the problem.

Furthermore, Mr. Ahmed Shaheed, spent some time reiterating the definition of antisemitism and what constituted acts of Jew-hatred. He also listed the few countries that are said to have taken action against the perpetrators of acts of antisemitism, but very vaguely, if at all, described what the punitive actions were. Finally, he gave some good recommendations such as, “States should enact and enforce hate crime legislation that recognizes antisemitism as a prohibited bias motivation and that is clear, concrete and easy to understand. States should impose systems, routines and training in place to ensure that relevant officials recognize antisemitic hate crimes and record them as such.” But frankly, as good as they might be, I fear that they will go no further than the written report.

My reason for not being so hopeful is simply because I have noticed the lack of interest from the main public. People are often apathetic when it comes to antisemitism sometimes they might even be favorable. The issue is not helped by the fact that we have people in the US Congress such as Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and AOC. Their blatant antisemitic stance assures that the anti-Zionist and anti-Israel agendas are being pushed forward and normalized. Antisemitism is rapidly becoming mainstream. When we see Jewish men in Brooklyn being hit on the street at random, swastikas and other antisemitic symbols being written in various places around the globe with almost no reaction from the public, I worry! Not to mention the Pittsburg and San Diego synagogue shootings.

A very good test to determine if we are indeed going in the tragic direction of mainstreaming antisemitism is the 3D test created years ago by Natan Sharansky. The three Ds are Demonization, Delegitimization and Double-standards. Sharansky explains, “There is always place for criticism of Israel, as there is for criticism of any other free society. But it must not cross the line of anti-Semitism. When people talk about Israel, we have to identify whether these three elements of delegitimization, demonization and double standards apply to judge whether that criticism is tainted with anti-Semitism.”

I agree with him that criticism of Israel doesn’t necessarily need to be always seen as antisemitism. Unfortunately, the BDS movement–as one example– was never intended to bring balance to the Middle East by pressuring Israel with various boycotts. They are not even hiding their agenda anymore when for example, we hear from US university professor As-ad Abukhalil who claims that, “the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel … that should be stated as an unambiguous goal… Justice and Freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel.“

The level of creativity or I should say craziness to which Israel haters will go to, never ceases to amaze me. Just when I thought that they reached their apex, antisemites joined a conference called ” Global Climate Strike” to accuse Israel of “Climate Apartheid.” For obvious reasons of exposure to the world, the conference took place at the same time as the United Nations General Assembly in New York from September 20-27, 2019. It was geared to motivate young people to speak up on the issue of climate change. What in the world is “climate apartheid against Palestinians” anyway?

This is part of what is being stated by the conference organizers,” been engineered by complicit corporations and governments that put profit before people and planet. The least powerful are the most affected by the climate crisis. With no control over their land or natural resources, indigenous Palestinians under Israel’s repressive regime endure climate apartheid. Multinational corporations invest in fossil fuels and in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, pillage of Palestinian natural resources, and exploitation of Palestinian land.” Nobody is questioning the usage of the words “indigenous Palestinians.” Why? because it is an accepted fact-unprovable culturally, historically or archeologically, but accepted nonetheless.

This “climate apartheid against Palestinians” is coming from people demonizing Israel and completely ignoring the health hazard created by the thousands of tires burned almost daily by Palestinians all along the Gaza border. It is the epitome of hypocrisy. If that is not Double-standard, I don’t know what is!

The enemies of Israel will never cease to invent new plots to delegitimize the Jewish state, and as antisemitism progressively becomes more mainstream, people won’t care, won’t speak up and pretty soon won’t even notice. When Jew-hatred becomes the new normal, who will stand up for my people?

September 5, 2019 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Is There Such a Thing as Christian Anti-Semitism?

There is a recurring accusation, especially within Jewish circles, that the New Testament is antisemitic. The justification for such an accusation is found in 2,000 years of Jewish history that have been punctuated by a myriad of antisemitic acts–many of them apparently rooted in Christianity and its teachings. So the question bears asking, how Christian is Christian antisemitism? Furthermore, is the New Testament antisemitic?

It is really unfortunate that our Bible (Old and New Testaments) would be divided into two parts. Things would be a lot simpler if we looked at the whole counsel of God from Genesis to Revelation but separated by what is known as “the 400 silent years”, we have the Jewish Scriptures (written in Hebrew) and the Greek Scriptures (written in Greek and Aramaic), thus started the chasm between the two. Words and concepts are not completely transferable from Hebrew to Greek, and the two different cultures added further challenges to God’s message through the ages.

Nobody can deny that the coming of Yeshua onto the scene changed everything. The Jewish leadership of His days felt threatened, intimidated and at times humiliated. The guardians of the Mosaic Law were being challenged by one who came to fulfill that Law, and yet never broke one of its commandments. Additionally, even though He first came for His own according to the flesh, He included Gentiles. It wasn’t long before the very Gentiles who had been excluded but were now grafted in started to take over and slowly forced the erosion of Jewish traditions within Christianity. By AD 325 at the council of Nicaea, much of the Jewishness of Christianity had disappeared or was being further diluted into a faith that couldn’t relate to its own roots any longer.

Early Church Fathers had started to deviate from a literal, historical/grammatical approach to the Bible. Their allegorical interpretations slowly led them to see Israel as a demonized people who had been replaced by the Church. The uneducated masses gladly followed suit and the Jews started to become a burden and a deadweight wherever they could be found. It would take until the Holocaust to have a people group attempt to radically and systematically eradicate European Jewry. Jews had become vermin or a sub-human race, and as such, total annihilation was the only solution. It was “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question” as Nazi Germany expressed euphemistically. All or most of it, when you ask Jewish people, was done by Christians. But was it? An honest approach to the issue would prove otherwise:

• The New Testament is a very Jewish Book:
From the very first words of the first book in the New Testament, everything is Jewish as it records the genealogy of the Jewish Messiah, ” The record of the genealogy of Yeshua the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.” (Matthew 1:1-2). The audience is Jewish, the writers are Jewish (Luke being the exception.) The context is Jewish, and much of the geography is Jewish. As a matter of fact, it is nearly impossible to fully understand the richness of the New Testament without reading it in its Jewish context. Most believers spend their whole life reading the Bible in “Black and White” until they look at the Jewish perspective and all of a sudden the same story appears in “color and HD.”

• The New Testament Uses Strong Language:
How do we reconcile words like “the synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9, 3:9) or “your father the devil” (John 8:44)? They are indeed very strong words directed at Jewish people. Those accusatory words were definitely used in the New Testament to describe the hypocrisy and sin of some of the Jewish leaders contemporary of Yeshua. They were accurate words to be used, but what has been missed and has led to so much damage is the fact that they were used to denounce people who happened to be disobedient sinners first and Jewish second. Their ethnicity didn’t really play a role in their guilt. This is what we could call the “Great Christian Departure.” The Church started to attach the non-related Jewishness to the sins of the early [Jewish] believers and before long, being Jewish was a crime.

• The Old Testament Also Uses Strong Language:
Why is it that when similar language is used to describe the disobedience of Israel in the Jewish Law and the Prophets, that nobody–especially in the Jewish community–has a problem with it? In Deuteronomy 9:7, Moses calls the Jewish people “rebellious”. Is he antisemitic? In Deuteronomy 9:13, God calls them “stubborn” and wants to kill them all. Is God antisemitic? Nonsense! Ezekiel calls Israel “stubborn and obstinate” (Ezekiel 3:7). The descriptions are perfectly in line with the actions of the children of Israel described all throughout the Tenach, and they are no different than those of the New Testament, except that they come from the Jewish Scriptures, prior to Yeshua’s first coming, and somehow, that makes them acceptable. Is there a double-standard here?

• The Jews Didn’t Kill the Messiah:
The most common accusation against the Jewish people that continues to this day, is that of deicide (the killing of God.) Jews the world around continue to be called “Christ Killers” by Christians and non-Christians alike. There are two problems with that accusation. First, even if some Jewish people were guilty of the crucifixion of Yeshua (and they are not), it would never make sense to paint with broad strokes and render all Jews of all times guilty of the same crime. By the same logic, all Germans would be Nazis and all Muslims would-be terrorists. This is ludicrous! But more importantly, Yeshua gave His own life in obedience to the Father as we read in John 10:17-18, “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.” So, in reality, we are all sharing the guilt without exception.

• Context is Everything
The very fact that many early Christians took the Scriptures out of context and allegorized much of them doesn’t make the New Testament antisemitic, it simply makes it misinterpreted and misapplied. Can Christians be antisemitic? I think that history speaks clearly on that matter, yes, they can! But are they antisemitic because they follow the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth? absolutely not! 2,000 years of Scripture twisting to accommodate and justify human behavior against the Jews have left a bloody stain of mankind in general and the Church in particular. But it is not based on anything taught in the Bible.

So, it is fair to say that Christian antisemitism is not Christian at all. If one takes the Bible literally, all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23.) “All” means Jews and non-Jews alike with no exceptions. Christian antisemitism is simply antisemitism committed by Christians who read their Bible improperly and use it as an excuse to ostracize and demonize the Jewish people. The Christians who paint–with broad strokes– the Jewish people as a sub-human group are mistaken as the Jewish people who paint–with broad strokes– that all Christians are antisemitic. The New Testament is not antisemitic, but it does expose human nature and universal sin for all people Gentiles and Jews alike. It is time to keep things in context and approach God’s word with humility and sincerity.

August 19, 2019 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Omar, Tlaib and Israel: A lose/Lose Situation No Matter What!

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar recently prepared for a trip to Israel. Technically, no member of the US Congress should be banned from visiting Israel. As a matter of fact, the best way to get a balanced understanding of the Middle East crisis is to visit Israel and look at both sides of the conflict. If such a visit could be accomplished without any preconceived notions of who is at fault, much progress could be made towards peace.

When Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar announced their decision to visit Israel, it was first agreed that they could go, but there is a law in Israel that prevents people from entering the country if they support the boycott of Israel. It is known as “Amendment No. 28 to the Entry Into Israel Law (No. 5712-1952).” It is an amendment to a 1952 Law giving Israel’s government the right to refuse entry to any foreigner with or without a visa. The 2017 amendment was passed (46-28) specifically to bar BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) supporters and promoters from entering Israel.
I am having a hard time understanding why Ms. Tlaib and Ms. Omar were surprised when they were stopped from entering Israel. Consider their positions on Israel’s right to exist and their promoting of the BDS movement.

Rashida Tlaib is not shy about her support of BDS. In 2018, she said, “I personally support the BDS movement. Economic boycotts are a way to bring attention to issues like racism and the international human right violations by Israel right now.” Ilhan Omar follows suit when she states, ” “Israel has hypnotized the world, may allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” or “I believe and support the BDS movement and have fought to make sure people’s right to support it isn’t criminalized.” Both Congresswomen are what we could call “eliminationists.” They promote the boycott of Israel not for justice but for the eventual elimination of Israel. So, let me get this right, “Israel has no right to exist” but they still want to visit?

Some would say that we should let them in and see for themselves. Assuming that they were interested in truth, I would agree, but as it appears, they are not. For starters, their trip’s itinerary was titled “Delegation to Palestine“, hardly an unbiased title for a trip to Israel! Additionally, Their trip was planned by an organization known as Miftah, led by Palestinian lawmaker and negotiator Hanan Ashrawi.

This is an organization that is far from being fair and has a reputation for being anti-Israel if not anti-Semitic. Using Miftah to organize a visit to Israel is far from being a neutral decision. Then, when Israel decided to allow Ms. Tlaib entry to the Palestinian Territories on a humanitarian basis to be able to visit her aging grandmother, she quickly turned it down and politicized the whole move. Does she hate Israel more than she loves her grandmother?

This attempt to visit Israel seems to be a farce. Tlaib and Omar have already made up their minds about the region and have dispensed plenty of antisemitic venom in and out of the US Congress to show their true colors. This will become a huge opportunity for the two congresswomen to do more bashing of the Trump administration and of Israel. It doesn’t matter if they went or not because in both cases they would have found grounds for pointing the finger in the same direction.

If they had gone, they would have visited only Palestinian sites and met with pro-Palestinian people, and then return to make a case for how bad things are in the region. By not going, they can spin the story into a racist, colonialist, apartheid decision “proving their point about Israel.”

They were quick to state (and some news outlet as well) that they were banned from entry because they are Muslim. The reason had nothing to do with their religion but with their anti-Israel position. Yes, they happen to be two Muslim women, and yes, there might be a connection with that and their hatred of Israel and the Jewish people, but this is not part of the reason why they were turned down, especially if you understand Israel’s acceptance of Muslims even to the point of having Muslim members of the Knesset.

This failed attempt at coming to Israel will, unfortunately, serve their purpose as much as a visit would have. They are set in their ways and the only way to make sure that things don’t get worse is to vote them out next time we have a chance. They were elected legally and are part of our government, like it or not. It is pretty much a guarantee that they will continue their war on Israel and the Jewish people, and they will pick up momentum and more supporters in the process. Again, to put a stop to it, we simply have the power to not re-elect them. For the time being, we expose their lies. We also pray that they would have a change of heart. This too is possible because of the God we serve!

August 8, 2019 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Can We Really Co-Exist Today?

Many people have been exposed to the bumper sticker that says COEXIST using symbols of various world religions and worldviews to spell out the word. The letter “c” is a crescent moon representing Islam. The letter “o” is the peace symbol. The letter “e” is a male/female symbol. The letter “x” is the Star of David representing Judaism. The letter “i” is a pagan/Wiccan symbol. The letter “s” is a Chinese yin-yang symbol, and the letter “t” is a cross representing Christianity. The implied message is that no matter what or who we believe in or even if we don’t believe in anything, we should be able to co-exist. Philosophically, it has merit and as humans, we ought to be able to co-exist on our shared planet. In a sense, we are co-existing by virtue of existing and sharing the real estate that earth provides for us. But maybe our co-existing stops at that level, and maybe, just maybe, this is not such a bad idea!

Co-existence requires tolerance, respect and compassion from all parties. These virtues are very biblical, even when people failed to make that connection. Outside of defending ourselves from our enemies, the Bible teaches us to respect our fellow men. The very fact that over the centuries people have twisted the Scriptures to justify their actions doesn’t make the biblical record into a manifesto justifying a destructive agenda.

Scripture tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second one is to love one another, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Yeshua even took it one step higher, saying that we are even to love our enemies. In Yeshua, we see the example of obeying the authorities, overcoming evil with good and standing for justice and healing for the helpless. These strong ethics have long been a strong foundation for Western civilization, even though the freedoms they have rested on have more recently been eroding.

Now, it seems that the group that is targeted the most is the Jewish people. To a degree, we are targeted by all the letters of the Coexist acronym; radical Islamists, liberals, LGBTQ, atheists and even some Christians. While each of these groups can and have displayed anti-Jewish sentiment, the most lethal is from Islam. People continue to be scared of saying it like it is, but the vast majority of the recent deaths in the Jewish communities of the world are from people who at the very least call themselves Muslims.

How do we co-exist when one party worships death and the other party values and respects life? It is literally impossible unless the meaning of co-existence becomes redefined, which is exactly what radical Islam is trying to do. If tolerance becomes a one-way street, we are then forced into tolerating an ideology that is foreign to western values. In essence, we are tolerating the intolerant, and that leads nowhere but down the spiral of civilizational demise. So, no, I don’t believe we can co-exist unless we share similar values.

When I moved to the United States from France in the mid-1980s, I was looking forward to integrating into the American way of life and American culture and customs. I eventually became an American citizen, even though in the privacy of my own home, I enjoy French food, music, movies, literature, customs and language. I can c0-exist in America as a French expat, even though I am legally American now. My co-existence is based on the respect of others and the price I place on human life and dignity (all of them biblical values by the way.)

When I say that we cannot co-exist, some will quickly succumb to the temptation of labeling me a racist. That’s inevitable, but that is also inaccurate. The only group that I believe we can not co-exist with is radical Islam, and they have proved over and over that they don’t play well with others. But, please don’t call an Islamophobe a racist, because ISLAM IS NOT A RACE! Islam is an ideology that includes a religion among other things. There are Muslims all over the world, and their ethnic origins have nothing to do with their indoctrination or lack of. I also do not want my statement to be seen as an invitation to exclude, expel or exterminate. This was done to my people in the 1930s and 1940s, and we know it didn’t end well. We just need to be more careful about what we allow people to get away with.

I am greatly concerned about the lack of discernment that our world is showing. I am not even speaking of biblical discernment here, but simply of the ability to detect if people mean what they say and say what they mean. If Islam is indeed the religion of peace, where are the millions of “moderate’ Muslims when a voice needs to be heard to fight anti-Semitism? Radical Islam has given other Muslims a bad rep, but that could easily be rectified if the “other Muslims” would speak up against the abusers. I just don’t see it happening except in a very few cases, and I mean a handful!

To quote a Russian proverb that was made famous in English by Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify!” I want to play well with others and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Forgive me for checking their intentions. I want to co-exist, but I am not sure we really can anymore, at least not in the pure sense of the term.

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