Christianity

May 28, 2020 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Trump, Ford and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion!

A few days ago, President Trump made a very uncomfortable comment as he was visiting a Ford factory in Michigan. As he was addressing executives about the founder of Ford Motors, Henry Ford, he said, “The company was founded by a man named Henry Ford, good bloodlines, good bloodlines. If you believe in that stuff, you got good blood.”

That statement was awkward at best and appeared possibly antisemitic. I say possibly because I am not convinced that President Trump is actually anti-Semitic. I don’t say this simply because he has Jewish family members, that would be too simplistic. Rather, Donald Trump has been a friend of Israel for a while and has shown great boldness in the last three years when it comes to proving his loyalty to the Jewish state.

Under his administration, the United States finally moved its embassy to Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem. Under his leadership, Nikki Haley, ambassador to the U.N., was one of the strongest advocates for Israel. He was instrumental in helping reverse policy on Jewish settlements, to name just a few of his accomplishments as they pertain to Israel and the Jewish people.

Trump knows a lot, but he is not omniscient. Is it possible that he doesn’t know some of the darkest details of history that have loomed over Henry Ford’s head and have severely tainted his legacy? Sure, it is! Frankly, unless you are looking for it, that information is not advertised. Today, Ford Motor Company is far removed from its original, founder and his xenophobic ideology. Today’s Ford is not yesterday’s Ford by a long shot, but a trip back to the 1920s is necessary to explain why President Trump’s comments ruffled many feathers in the Jewish community.

In the early 1900s, a Russian man, Sergei Nilus (1862-1929), wrote a pamphlet titled “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” Sergei Nilus, a blatant anti-Semite, actually claimed that the book had been read secretly at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897. The Protocols are the best know example of a forgery, as well as one of the earliest examples of “Conspiracy Theory.” They are filled with clichés, platitudes and ugly stereotypes on how to take over the world, while never containing any details or specifics. In the pamphlet, you could read what was appeared to be the minutes of a Jewish cabal trying to take over the world. The Protocols were a compilation of antisemitic tropes that, for a while, fueled the fires of antisemites around the world. It was quickly exposed as a hoax in 1921 and subsequently debunked. This didn’t prevent people from continuing to promote The Protocols. Henry Ford was one of them in a very strong way.

Ford was also the publisher of a newspaper known as the “Dearborn Independent.” He used that medium to reprint The Protocols between 1920 and 1927. The newspaper published The Protocols, at the same time as The Times in London discredited the pamphlet, but this did not stop Henry Ford, who was quoted saying: “The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on.” Ford continued to promote them for 6 years and also was responsible for the financing and distribution of 500,000 copies of The Protocols. Many of the articles published in the Dearborn Independent were reprinted in a later volume, known as The International Jew.

Hitler himself relied heavily on The Protocols and even quoted them in Mein Kampf, praising and validating them: “To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic. What many Jews may do unconsciously is here consciously exposed. And that is what matters. It is completely indifferent from what Jewish brain these disclosures originate; the important thing is that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims.”

As Hitler was influenced by The Protocols, it greatly helped him to rationalize the destruction of European Jewry. In many ways, The Protocols were a catalyst for the Holocaust as they became part of “The Solution to the Jewish Question.” In the twenty-first century, The Protocols continue to be published and distributed by neo-Nazi fringe groups and radical Islamist groups around the world. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are classified under “controversial knowledge” and are even available today on Amazon.

Henry Ford didn’t care that the pamphlet was a forgery because it served his agenda of hatred. Incidentally, on his 75th birthday, Henry Ford received the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, which was the highest honor that Nazi Germany could give to a foreign person. Hitler had great admiration for Henry Ford and even mentioned him in Mein Kampf.

Ford’s antisemitism is indelibly printed in the chronicles of history. It cannot be denied, it shouldn’t be minimized and will not be forgotten. To this day, some Jewish people refuse to buy a Ford automobile, just like my own Holocaust-surviving mother refused to step foot on German soil for the rest of her life because of the day she saw her father taken in front of her eyes by the Gestapo in her Paris home. Let me reiterate that the Ford Motor Company of 2020 IS NOT the Ford Motor Company of 1920. Likewise, just because Martin Luther wrote a very caustic book against the Jewish people at the end of his life doesn’t negate his invaluable contribution as the father of the Reformation. So, we cannot hold today’s Ford Corporation responsible for the sins of its founder.

This being said, we must tread very lightly when it comes to praising Henry Ford. The proper choice of words is going to be critical. By now, most people have realized that regardless of his accomplishments, President Trump not only doesn’t mince words, but he also isn’t the most tactful person. Using a statement such as, “The company was founded by a man named Henry Ford, good bloodlines, good bloodlines. If you believe in that stuff, you got good blood” was a very poor choice of words. It definitely can be seen as antisemitic.

I do not believe that President Trump was promoting Eugenics or racial superiority in the way that Henry Ford did. Unfortunately, unless he apologizes for a very poor choice of words–and he probably won’t– his statement will be used against him by his enemies and also by those who espouse such a view, linking President Trump to a group of fringe antisemites that already are believed by some to support him.

I am reminded of some very good advice from the Bible, warning us all about misusing the tongue in James 3:8-10, “But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.”

April 3, 2020 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

We Are Handling Three Viruses, Not Just One!

The whole planet is in total panic mode over the Coronavirus pandemic. Countries and states are struggling to mitigate and are working around the clock to develop a vaccine. We will eventually flatten the curve and manufacture a vaccine, bringing us back to normal, whatever the new normal is going to be, not to mention what it will do to our global economy. In the meantime, we are practicing social distancing, wearing masks and gloves when getting groceries and disinfecting just about anything coming into contact with our persons or homes. This is not the first virus plaguing humanity and it won’t be the last.

This being said, there are still quite a few inconsistencies with this pandemic, one of them being the sudden drop to almost no cases and no death in China (home to 1.4 billion people) for the last three weeks. There are also some very troubling reports about hot zones and hospitals being empty and deserted as opposed to being at full capacity. It is hard to know who to believe anymore, but the virus is real, lethal and very contagious…that we can all agree on. That’s the first virus!

Viruses infect people. They alter the normalcy of daily life and force people into making drastic changes to protect themselves until they find a cure if they find one. It can be argued that antisemitism is the longest-running virus in the history of mankind. It was started by Satan who chose to fight God by fighting and seeking to destroy the ones He [God] loved. The great enemy of God still wants to destroy the chosen people of God (Zechariah 2:8) but God promised otherwise (Jeremiah 31:35-37.) Nevertheless, he continues to infect the hearts and minds of men in ways that drive them virulently against Israel and the Jewish people.

The latest example being Rick Wiles, who recently claimed that the Coronavirus was killing Jews because they rejected Jesus. This man who claims to be a Christian pastor does not represent biblical Christianity and will have to account to the God of Israel for hating His people. This is wrong on so many levels! First, when Yeshua (Jesus) came, He was rejected by both Jews and Gentiles who happened to equally be falling short of God’s glory. He actually gave his own life for Jews and Gentiles (John 10:18.) Additionally, saying that the Jews are being punished is ignoring all the other people around the world, representing many other religions including Christians, who are also getting infected and dying from COVID-19.

The sad part about the virus of antisemitism is that we as a civilization have had a cure for it since its inception. Those who continue to spread that virus are willfully ignoring the existence of the cure because they want the virus to infect as many Jews as it can, and recently it has started to peak again. We are far from flattening the curve of antisemitism, and yet we could do it, through teaching biblical truth about Israel and the Jewish people and by promoting love and compassion instead of hatred.

Those who don’t see the Jews as being punished by COVID-19, might see them as being behind it. They see a conspiracy theory. This is nothing new. We were and continue to be accused of world takeover in a pamphlet published in the early 1900s and quickly uncovered as a hoax, known as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Additionally, we were also accused of being behind the black plague of the Middle Ages, simply because far less Jewish people died than the rest of the world. That’s the second virus, more pervasive than the first!

But even before the virus of antisemitism was born, mankind was under the curse of a spiritual virus for which there is also a cure. This virus goes back to the Fall of man in Genesis 3. As we pressed forward, we, as a race continued to be born in sin and live in sin. To be sure, sin is not just breaking one of the Ten Commandments, but it is falling short of obeying God’s commands who by the way, gave 613 commandments to the Jewish people, not just ten. As a result, we are all infected by this spiritual virus and it always leads to death, as in “separation from God for all eternity in a state of perpetual torment.”

Yet, for this one, there is also a cure and it is received freely as a gift from God who gave His only son to take away the sins of the world (John 3:16). That is the third virus and it is the most lethal because it is not transmitted by body fluids, by contact or even airborne. It is carried in our DNA, and only God can alter our DNA through the atoning blood of His ultimate Passover lamb (Isaiah 52:13-53-12.)

Humanity through science, creativity, and resilience will conquer and survive the first virus, we can also conquer the second one through education and activism. As to the third, the most lethal one, it is actually the easiest one to cure, because all we need to do is believe that Yeshua is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world who gave His own life as the ultimate cure for this spiritual virus.

We will survive COVID-19, we can survive antisemitism, but will you survive the spiritual virus of the Fall of man? I pray that you do!

February 11, 2020 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Could it be “Open Season” on the Jewish People?

The treatment of Jewish people around the world is now making the news almost daily. It is obvious that antisemitism is running rampant. The question has changed over the last two decades. First, it was, “What will we do IF it happens again?”, then it became, “What will we do WHEN it happens again?” Now we have to ask the question “What are we doing NOW that it is here?” Yet, the majority of the world is still in denial or willful ignorance about the crisis of antisemitism that is plaguing us all.

We can have a propensity to measure the danger of a conflict taking place in the world by its proximity to where we live. If a war raging across the planet is far enough, then we don’t have to worry about it and chances are, it won’t disturb our lives too much. This sounds very selfish, but deep down, most people don’t really feel affected. To some degree, antisemitism can be viewed through a similar set of filters. People who live in areas where there a very few Jewish people or in some cases none, do not feel that concerned. “Sure, it looks bad in Brooklyn, Paris or Israel…But that’s not my problem, I don’t live there…” some will think.

Antisemitism IS a war, but a non-conventional one. If it was somewhat geographically contained during the Second World War, it no longer is today. In December 2019, a series of attacks against orthodox Jews took place in Brooklyn. We still remember the terrorist attacks at the synagogues in San Diego and Pittsburgh. This is real, this is global and this happening almost on a daily basis. But the recent tragedy that we should pay attention to took place in Paris, and it could create a terrifying precedent.

On April 4, 2017, in Paris, Sarah Halimi, a 66-year-old Jewish woman, was thrown from her third-floor window. Her body landed on the pavement. It remains uncertain if she was thrown alive or already dead from being tortured. What the police found out was that the perpetrator was Kobili Traoré, her Muslim neighbor, who screamed “Allahu Akbar” and “I have killed Satan” as he recited verses from the Qur’an that according to him ordered him to kill Jews. That is such a tragedy, and yet it is only part of the story. How can it possibly get worse?

Kobili Traoré was found under the influence of marijuana and was placed in a mental institution. The whole incident took place during a presidential election year in France–not a good time to make public the murder of a Jew by a Muslim. It took months for the family of Mrs. Halimi to get the French authorities to admit that it was indeed a murder AND that it was an antisemitic hate crime. That is another tragedy because if it had been a person from any other ethnic group thrown out of a window after being tortured, nobody would have questioned the nature of the crime.

The court eventually declared that Traoré had indeed murdered Sarah Halimi willingly, but because he was under the influence of marijuana, he was irresponsible and couldn’t be prosecuted. The whole thing was thrown out of court and Mr. Traoré was ordered to go into rehab.

One of the lawyers for the Halimi family, Francis Szpiner, declared: “Sarah Halimi jurisprudence” has been created: “anyone who suffers from a delusional puff because of the use of illicit and dangerous substances will be exempt from criminal responsibility”, and that is the real danger. I am terrified at the idea that someone can smoke a joint or get drunk, go on a killing rampage to get a few Jews, and then plead intoxication, walk free, go to rehab for 30 days, and plan their next murder. In essence, this is exactly what precedent this case is making.

No punishment for killing Jews is truly making it open season on the Jewish people wherever they are not wanted–which is just about anywhere but Israel. Journalist Céline Pina of French paper Le Figaro wrote: “When one kills in the name of Allah, the excuse of mental imbalance does not hold. If there is one thing in common in all of this blood that keeps flowing, it is the implantation of Islamists on our soil, their network of mosques, their propaganda through books, satellite dishes, their speeches which permeate many districts and territories, their shows of strength…. the situation is not under control.”

She is right, and I believe that the situation is spinning further out of control. We are approaching–if we are not already there–the time when “Righteous Gentiles” will have to step up to the plate and help their Jewish friends. It is very serious. Christians are coming to an important crossroads. This is eerily reminiscent of what Yeshua said in Matthew 25:40: “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’” While this is an event that is contextually taking place during the Great Tribulation and after the Rapture, the principle remains. The world is desperately in need of a new generation of “Righteous Among the Nations.”

January 20, 2020 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Do we really need to talk so much about the Holocaust?

The further we move away from an event, the harder it is to remember it, its details and even its outcome. Any event enters the annals of history the minute they take place, and there is nothing man can do to erase that event from our collective memories. Nothing can take it away unless it is an event that the vast majority of people wish to forget or even tell the rest of the world it never happened. There are four types of people in any event of history: the victims, the helpers, the perpetrators and the bystanders. As it pertains to the Holocaust, they all need to be remembered.

Not only do we run the risk of forgetting an event, but we also run the risk of allowing history to repeat itself. When it comes to the Holocaust, it would be tragic on both levels. In January 2020, we remember the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau (1/25), and we also commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day (1/27). As Forty heads of states and key representatives gather to pay tribute to the victims and the helpers (Righteous Among the Nations), the rest of the world is invited to post a photo of themselves with the hashtag #WeRemember.

The beauty of a hashtag is that it inserts itself into the worldwide web to never disappear or be changed, and that has power in and of itself. Once composed and posted, a hashtag serves as a beacon bringing people to a particular topic, where all similar hashtags congregate. It can be very helpful. The downside of a hashtag is that too many people use them as gimmicks to satisfy their own conscience. Can someone post #WeRemember or #FightAntisemitism and feel satisfied that they have done their good deed to speak up against the Holocaust and antisemitism? Sure they can, but does it really help?

Hashtags alone only serve to point to the gravity of the Holocaust and the danger of the new antisemitism, as much as a repeated word can. Hashtags will not defeat Holocaust deniers, historical revisionists and antisemites. Hashtags are the bumper stickers of the twenty-first century, they make a statement in passing as they move to their eternal abode in cyberspace.

They don’t speak up, they don’t sign petitions, they don’t march on the street in protest, they can’t teach history, ethics or morality. We need people for all that. Create all the hashtags you want, they might tug on the strings of our hearts, but until we move into action, nothing will change.

We can do so much more:
• Visit one of the numerous US-based (30 states) Holocaust memorial/museums like the one in Washington DC or even Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. If you cannot visit a museum, get online to their sites and learn from their extensive databases and research tools.
• Read on the topic. Start with the autobiographical short book “Night” by Elie Wiesel. Move on to “The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 by Lucy Dawidowicz. Then in an effort to understand how the Holocaust further affected Jewish/Christian relations, read “The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz” by Jakob Jocz.
• Please, share your knowledge with the next generation. Two-thirds of millennials do not know what Auschwitz was. Additionally, 22% of Americans have never heard of the Holocaust.
• Attend marches and/or protests in your city or near you if they take place to show your support to the Jewish community and your disagreement with the enemies of Israel.
• Be ready to even go further by helping Jewish people in dire need. We can be proactive in 2020 instead of reactive in the 1930s and 40s. Things might get worse before they get better.

The African American communities should not stop telling their people about slavery and segregation, just like the Native American communities should not stop educating their young ones about the poor treatment and fate of their forefathers. So, why should we stop speaking of the Holocaust and why should we let those who deny it, get away with it?

Remembering a happy and positive moment requires no action but simply bring pleasure as we reminisce. When we are called to remember a somber moment on mankind’s timeline, remembering the event is just the tip of the iceberg. Sharing our memories, past experiences and teaching others about those events is key. Very soon, all the survivors of the Holocaust will be gone and the task of continuing to honor their memory will fall on those of us who still believe that the Holocaust happened and it could happen again. So, YES, we need to continue talking about the Holocaust, today more than ever!

January 2, 2020 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Antisemitism is now a Pandemic, but it must not become the New Normal!

Each new year brings the hope of a new start including new resolutions–some that we will keep and some that will quickly fade away into oblivion. One such resolution that is well worth keeping is that of standing strong against this new tidal wave of antisemitism in America and most of the world. This renewed and re-invented brand of antisemitism is indeed a fast-spreading disease s. So, why is it that in many cases, people treat it as the new normal? What would happen if typhus, cholera or malaria would have been treated as the new way of life when they started to plague our planet? I wouldn’t be here to speak of it and neither would you to read me. What will it take for people to care enough and react to this exponential eroding of our Judeo-Christian values? During the 1930s and 1940s, many people removed themselves from the crisis by justifying that they were not Jewish or had no Jewish relatives or friends. Six million Jews later, the world woke -up…or did it?

If all the acts of antisemitism that have occurred globally in the last few months were to be reported properly, it is almost certain that we could document the hatred of the Jews as a daily occurrence. The last week of December 2019 in New York was an example of the momentum the beast has gained. Almost every single day during the celebration of the Feats of Hanukkah, the Jewish community was hit. We are not talking about graffiti or insult– bad enough in-and-of-themselves–we are talking about physical injuries and death if the perpetrators had had their ways. Jewish people were threatened, slapped, hit, pushed and even stabbed with a machete, and that is just one week in New York. Europe had its share as well, not to mention all the under-reported or not reported incidents. While I feel that it is necessary to focus on the Jewish people, I am very aware and greatly concerned about what is taking place against Christians as well.

When looking at the history of classic antisemitism, we can see a trend developing from the closing of the biblical record to the Middle Ages and the Reformation, culminating in the Holocaust. I believe that a similar trend can also be seen with the advent of the New antisemitism and End-Times antisemitism. While the original trend was following a growing chasm between Christians and Jews, the renewed trend follows a chasm between people in general (including Christians) and Jews.

First, what developed can be called theological anti-Judaism. Early Christians felt that the Jews were different and didn’t really fit theologically. Differences of opinion started to drive a wedge in a community where theological lines had been blurred for the first few hundred years during the infancy of Christianity. These differences were mostly verbal or written in some early works but not intended to lead to ostracism, demonization, violence or death, and yet, the wheel was already turning. Many Church Fathers took an allegorical approach to parts of the Scriptures that led to them seeing a transfer of God’s blessings and promises to the Church and away from ethnic Isreal. It was the little crack in biblical theology that created the seismic fault known to this day as Replacement Theology. But it could have remained a theological difference, so what made it go further?

During Christianity’s early years, only the spiritual leaders were educated and had access to manuscripts. The printing press wouldn’t come until 1450. The masses, if interested in spiritual matters, would have to fully rely on what they heard from the pulpits of their respective communities. They couldn’t check the veracity of the messages, they could only take what their leaders told them at face value. When they were told that the Church had replaced Israel and the Jews were “Christ-killers”, “lustful”, “rapacious”, “greedy” or even “possessed by the devil”, they believed it. The next move was obvious, if the Jews were so bad, we must protect our Christian communities from them, and so the crack went a bit deeper. Laws started to be passed to separate Christians from Jews, and then to further ostracize and eventually demonize the Jews. By now, we are in the Middle Ages (500-1500) and people continued to believe lies about the Jews and even started to fabricate some. The unwanted Jew was expelled from one European country after the other. Things progressively got worse for the Jews, but nobody really cared to check the facts. What started as a theological difference became a European epidemic that decimated six million Jews during the Nazi regime.

A similar process has been taking place for the last few decades. It started in the Middle East with the rise of Yasir Arafat (Chairman of the PLO from 1969 to 2004), the great defender of the Palestinian right for self-determination. The Palestinian narrative about victimization, oppression and occupation started as propaganda to reverse the tide, and make the perpetrators into the victims and vice-versa. It took a while to take root, and at first, it was challenged by some, but today, it is believed by many around the globe and the Jews are painted as the new Nazis of the Middle East. Arafat has been dead for sixteen years but his legacy of lies and hatred lives on, and it is pushed forward by uneducated people, not interested in checking the facts. Back in the days, the people were illiterate, today they are uneducated about the truth of the Middle East crisis. So they listen to whoever comes up with the most likely scenario faulting the Jews. The result is equally lethal, and with the advent of the Internet and the social networks, it has become far worse. It has now become a pandemic, but many are treating it as the new normal.

Antisemitism like any other form of xenophobia, including racism against blacks, Arabs, Hispanics or any other ethnic community goes against everything the United States was founded upon. What happened to “Judeo/Christian” ethics? A few people pay lip service to the cause by denouncing the longest hatred, but they seem toothless. We need laws, they need to be enforced, and sentences need to be heavy. Antisemitism is akin to domestic terrorism, and terrorism affects all of us…Well at least it should.

If hitting Jews and trying to kill them almost daily has become the new normal, then we are not getting close to the atmosphere of the 1930s and 1940s…WE ARE THERE, and if we are not doing anything, we have become the new bystanders. Somebody, please prove me wrong and I will gladly and humbly stand corrected!

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