Islamo-Fascism

April 21, 2022 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Meet Deborah Lipstadt: The New US Antisemitism Envoy!

Most Americans might not know who Deborah Lipstadt is, and yet, her new appointment as the US antisemitism envoy by President Biden shouldn’t be ignored. First, let us look at Ms. Lipstadt’s background and credentials. She is an American historian of Jewish descent and an expert on Holocaust history and antisemitism. In her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, she exposed the views of historical revisionist David Irving who claims that the Holocaust never happened. David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for libel, and in 2000, Lipstadt won the case. Incidentally, a great movie telling that story and titled Denial, was made in 2006.

Deborah Lipstadt wrote several other books on the topic of antisemitism and also has been a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1994 she was appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bill Clinton. In 2021, President Biden nominated her for the position of United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating anti-Semitism, and on March 30, 2022, after a long delay, the US Senate confirmed her unanimously.

The position was created in 2004 and had several people at its head since. There is no doubt that from the standpoint of understanding antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt is qualified for the task, and it is a very difficult task requiring some hard decisions to be made. In her recent book Antisemitism Here and Now, she defines antisemitism as: “Antisemitism is not the hatred of people who happen to be Jews. It is hatred of them because they are Jews.”

She has a point. I agree that antisemitism is the hatred of Jews because they are Jews, and as a form of xenophobia, it is quite unique. The challenge for Lipstadt and others trying to define, expose and teach against antisemitism, is to define it properly. Make the definition too narrow and real acts of antisemitism will fall through the crack but make it too wide almost to the point of saying that any criticism of Jewish people and/or Israel is antisemitism, and when real antisemitism occurs, people won’t pay attention. Defining antisemitism requires a delicate balance between overreaction and nonchalance. My best attempt at crafting a definition is as follows: “Antisemitism is the irrational and demonic hatred of Jewish people and Israel characterized by thoughts, words and/or deeds against them.” Even my definition probably falls short of properly defining antisemitism, but I believe that it is critical to accept the fact that antisemitism is irrational and demonic. Once we understand that only Satan can make the irrational look and sound rational, it all fits!

As I have said before, any definition of antisemitism that doesn’t include a spiritual component will always fall short. It is truly impossible to understand antisemitism without including Satan’s hatred for the “apple of God’s eye”. He [Satan] is obsessed with destroying all the Jews so that not one will be left when it is time to say Baruch Haba Bashem Adonai (Zechariah 12:10)–the single event that will usher in the Second Coming of Messiah AND pronounce the demise of Satan.

I am not sure that Deborah Lipstadt includes the demonic criteria in her definition, nevertheless, the task that she has been entrusted with is so critical at this time in our history. She has become the spokesperson on the subject, and there is no doubt that the expectations will be very high as to how she will denounce, expose and fight the oldest hatred.

I wish I could be excited and hopeful about this appointment, but I am concerned about some statements she has made. I honestly don’t care if she is a liberal or conservative, as long as she is competent in her field. Unfortunately, I must disagree with her statement about Holocaust denial. In the aftermath of the lawsuit that David Irving brought on her and Penguin Books, she was quoted saying, “Generally, I don’t think Holocaust denial should be a crime. I am a free speech person; I am against censorship.” I couldn’t disagree more. Denying the existence of the organized, methodical genocide that was the Holocaust SHOULD constitute a crime! I too am in favor of free speech and I too am against censorship, but we must have moral boundaries and by making that statement, Ms. Lipstadt might have committed another–albeit different–sin of denial.

Holocaust denial is willful blindness to the facts of history. It is unfounded historical revisionism and should absolutely be punished as a crime. I understand that Ms. Lipstadt might be academically and scholarly competent to teach on the Holocaust and antisemitism, but she might also be blinded by liberal political correctness, and that would really be a shame!

April 11, 2022 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

The Arab Christian who saved Jews!

Anyone following what happens in Israel is aware that several terrorist attacks took place all over the country in the last couple of weeks: four to be exact. Asa result, thirteen Israelis have died, which is the most death by terrorism in several years, and many have been wounded. What you might not hear on the mainstream news is how many attacks were averted by the Israeli authorities. This is all happening in conjunction with the start of the month of Ramadan for Muslims. Some might say that the timing was carefully planned, but that is hard to prove.

Israel has pretty much been at war with its Arab neighbors since May 14, 1948. Terrorism is almost an expectation in the Israeli psyche, but that never prevents Israelis from conducting business as usual, day in, day out. Nothing will really stop Israel from its daily routine, not BDS, not terrorism, or even antisemitism. The accusations flow daily, “Israel is an apartheid state”, “The Jews are stealing Palestinian land”, “Israel is committing ethnic cleansing”, or even” the Jews are the new Nazis of the Middle East.” In reality, Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East.

It is only in Israel that you can find Arabs members of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) or even Arab triage nurses in Jewish hospitals. Israel is probably the country with the most freedoms given to Arabs in all of the Arab world. Israel truly is a melting pot where several world religions converge, especially in Jerusalem. The old city of Jerusalem is divided into four quarters: The Jewish Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Muslim Quarter and the Armenian Quarter. For the most part, different faiths coexist peacefully within the walls of the old city and even beyond its borders. Once in a while, an incident is reported, but soon after, life resumes.

Arabs, Christians and Jews coexist, but this doesn’t mean that they share the same values or practice the same customs and traditions. Most of the time, Arabs, Christians and Jews simply tolerate each other and respectfully stay away from each other, unless something out of the ordinary occurs like what happened on March 29 in Bnei Brak.

The area known as Bnei Brak is found east of Tel Aviv and is the home of the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.) Bnei Brak has a population of over 200,000 and is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The reality is that there are never that many Arabs in Bnei Brak. Not because it is unsafe, but simply because this is not where their community resides.

On March 29, 2022, the Bnei Brak community was attacked by a terrorist. The Arab gunman killed five Israelis before he was shot. The victims were 4 civilians and 1 officer. Since then, a fourth attack took place in central Tel Aviv, taking the lives of four more people and wounding a dozen more. This resurgence of apparently random terrorist attacks all over Israel could be the start of a third Intifada (uprising). There will probably be more, and most of the “civilized” world will either ignore, downplay or flip the narrative to paint the Palestinians as victims defending themselves.

In the midst of all this terror in Israel, is a story that also got very little coverage on mainstream media. The Bnei Brak terrorist could have claimed a lot more lives, but the terrorist was shot to prevent that. One police officer, Amir Khoury, an Arab Christian, rushed to the scene with another police officer on their motorcycles. They caught up with the terrorist and shot him. Unfortunately, before the terrorist was stopped, he shot and killed Amir Khoury. Mr. Khoury gave his life up as a hero, to protect others. It was a selfless act that cost him his life, but it prevented the loss of other lives. CBN reported, “Khoury, 32, was called to the scene of a terror attack on Tuesday in the Orthodox Israeli city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv. He and another cop directly engaged with the Palestinian gunman and he was mortally wounded, making him one of the five victims who were killed in Tuesday’s attack. Israeli officials say his action prevented more deaths.”

It is ironic that an Arab Christian saved Jewish people, but that is exactly what he did, and as a result, myriads of Orthodox Jews came to his funeral. They truly saw him as a hero.

It is not often that we witness Arabs and Jews getting along, although–and this is sad to say– there are always better opportunities for them to coexist, get along and even have respect for each other, in Israel, more than in the disputed territories. But Mr. Khouri was different. He was an Arab Christian. He was an Arab who might have been indoctrinated by family and/or schoolteachers against Israel and the Jewish people, but he was different. He was different because he had placed his trust by faith in the Jewish Messiah Yeshua (Jesus). Only when we are reborn in Yeshua as it was advised to Rabbi Nicodemus in John 3:1-15 by Yeshua, can we see people from a different perspective.

When we commit our life to the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world, we truly understand and are able to apply in our own life the difficult verse spoken by Yeshua in Matthew 5:43-44, You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Yeshua understood what it meant to sacrifice oneself for others. He was the epitome of self-sacrifice unto death. He gave us the model for Christian living, a model that Mr. Khoury understood and was willing to accept all the way as his actions showed us recently. 1 John 3:16 is clear, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

Mr. Khoury wasn’t just a hero to his community, but he was a reborn creature who set aside any differences he might have had in the flesh, to serve God as one of his children. I look forward to seeing my brother Amir Khoury in heaven and in the meantime, I express my gratitude to his mourning family.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! – Psalm 133:1

January 21, 2022 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Are We Learning Anything from Pittsburgh, Poway or Colleyville?

80 years ago this week, a handful of high-ranking Nazi officials gathered in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee for a conference during which they discussed the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. This was the Nazi euphemism used to privately describe the systematic and deliberate attempt at destroying all European Jews. The various officials represented all the government agencies that were called to work together towards the nefarious goal that almost succeeded.

The conference was not the start of the annihilation of the European Jews. Most of its participants were aware of Nazi Germany’s efforts to mass murder Jews. The Einsatzgruppen had been working for about a year, but they were not efficient enough. Shooting Jews into mass graves that they had dug themselves was too slow for Hitler even though about a third of all the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were killed by mass shootings. The conference only lasted 90 minutes and out of it, a list of 11 million European Jews was drafted. There are very few surviving copies of the protocol document documenting the Conference.

Today, very few people remember, let alone know about the Wannsee Conference and the official implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” Ignorance, apathy or pure disdain are no excuses. If we continue to ignore the dark markers of history, eventually, they will disappear, and the next generation will think that they were just myths or propaganda with no factual truth. We cannot afford that, especially at a time when the weed of antisemitism is starting to regrow and thus choke our historical accuracy and make Jews into monsters again. We are always only one anti-Semite away from another tragedy. This was made clear in Colleyville, Texas, even if the outcome was a good one for all four hostages.

On Saturday, January 15, 2022, a hostage situation unraveled in Colleyville, Texas near Fort Worth. Pakistani UK citizen, Malik Faisal Akram entered Congregation Beth Israel during a live-streamed Shabbat service and took the Rabbi and three congregants hostage. The man claimed to be the brother of extremely dangerous terrorist Aalia Siddiqui, serving an 86-year sentence in a nearby Fort Worth prison. He repeatedly requested her immediate release. It turned out that they were not related after all. By the end of the day after one of the hostages was first released, the Rabbi who had received FBI training helped the other two hostages escape shortly before the FBI raided the facility and shot Malik Faisal Akram.

This is one hostage story that ended well for all, and we ought to praise God for how swiftly the SWAT team intervened. Unfortunately, these do not always end well. Many will remember the 2015 “I Am Charlie” terrorist attack on French soil, culminating in the death of four Jewish hostages at the Paris Kosher Supermarket. Closer to home, we remember the 2018 deadly Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting that killed eleven and wounded six (the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in America). Then there was the Poway Chabad Synagogue in Southern California in 2019. One person was killed and three were injured.

It is important to look back and learn from the past, but as we all look forward, the questions remain. Can these tragedies happen again, and if yes, can anything be done to prevent them from happening?

Let me reiterate that we are just one antisemitic person away from the next tragedy. So, yes, we will most likely experience more of the same in the future, but this should not deter us from being involved in the fight against antisemitism. Three aspects of this fight need to be discussed: education, prayer and involvement.

Most news outlets, commentators and even scholars, usually comment on antisemitism from a secular viewpoint. The Jewish hatred is approached from different vantage points that are too often crippled by political correctness. Why was it so hard for the FBI representative in Colleyville to admit that a hostage situation in a Synagogue on Shabbat, to free antisemitic terrorist Aalia Siddiqui, was indeed an act of antisemitism? He was quoted saying “the issue was not specifically related to the Jewish community”. Regarding the same act of antisemitism, CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) was quick to whitewash the incident and refocus the public’s attention towards Aalia Siddiqui, painted as a martyr/victim. I can appreciate their desire to protect the Muslim community from backlash because of what one man –who happened to be a Muslim–did, but we must be careful not to overcompensate. Eventually, the FBI had to back-pedal and admit that this was a clear case of antisemitism. The FBI Director finally admitted that it was “an act of terrorism targeting the Jewish community”.

Proper education is key here. Anytime we are swayed towards a biased narrative, our judgment becomes blurred, and our decisions are no longer based on facts, but on either the culture or a certain political agenda. That is dangerous. The fact that the Colleyville incident was not immediately labeled as an act of antisemitism, shows that, as a society, our values are shifting. For Christians, it should be clear that the culture should never dictate the Gospel, but rather the Gospel should punctuate the culture while being contextualized, but without compromise.

Jewish people, today more than ever, need to know that Christians have their backs. 2,000 years of antisemitism, many times by people whom the Jewish community believed to be Christians, is a lot of baggage for evangelicals today. Unfortunately, this is baggage that cannot be ignored or minimized, even though it might not be yours personally. If you are a Christian, it has been connected to you by the Jewish community. This baggage must be studied and understood if we want to be able to relate to our Jewish friends and earn the right to speak. Only then can we tell them what it means to be a Bible-believing follower of the Jewish Messiah.

Alongside education comes prayer. Truly, prayer needs to be at the foundation of all that we do as believers. Praying for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6) is important, but this ought not be the only prayer for Israel and the Jewish people. We need to remember to pray for the safety of our Jewish friends and families, but also for their salvation (Romans 10:1). Additionally, as believers, we are even challenged to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44).

We must also remember that the hatred for Israel and the Jewish people is not politically, geographically, culturally or even economically driven. It is a spiritual battle against Satan and those he chooses to use to hurt God by hurting the apple of His eye (Psalm 83:5; Zechariah 2:8b). Satan is the creator of antisemitism and we should never underestimate his drive to destroy the Jews.

So, we learn, we pray and then we speak up, and not necessarily always in that order. Learning is a continual thing; prayer is always necessary and speaking up occurs whenever there is a reason to voice our support. Speaking up will go a long way in rebuilding bridges between Christians and Jews that have been burned over the last 2,000 years.

A simple phone call or email to your local synagogue or Jewish community center to voice your support to the Jewish people will mean a lot in times of trouble. Christians might even consider volunteering to repair or clean up damages on Jewish property because of acts of antisemitic vandalism. The Jewish community might decline the offer, but the offer will never go unnoticed.

For churches that have an outside marquee, it is very easy and quite effective to show support for the Jewish community relating to a tragedy such as a hostage situation or even a killing.

Even outside of a reaction to a tragedy, churches can always display a “Happy New Year to our Jewish friends” or “Happy Passover” or “Happy Hanukkah” at the appropriate time. This too, as simple as you think it is, will go a long way. If the Jewish community organizes a rally in support of Israel or to fight antisemitism, now is the time for Christians to participate and show their support.

Education, prayer, and involvement are not that complicated, but they take time, the right attitude of the heart and a desire to make a difference for God’s kingdom. Once we earn the trust of our Jewish friends, we have also earned the right to speak and the Gospel can move forward.

Let’s not wait for the next Pittsburg, Poway or Colleyville to react. Rather, let’s be proactive and educate ourselves, pray and speak today! Antisemitism might never completely disappear on this side of eternity, but that should not discourage any of us from getting involved in fighting it. Because when it comes to loving Israel and the Jewish people, we are on God’s side!

January 13, 2022 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

The United Nations Against My People!

In 1920, only a couple of years after World War One, the League of Nations, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, was founded following the Paris Peace Conference. It operated for 26 years to keep the peace between nations and promote unity. As is delineated in its covenant: “The High Contracting parties, to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.”

At its peak, the League of Nations had 58 members/countries. At the onset of World War Two, it was clear that the League had failed its purpose and remained inactive throughout the war and was completely dissolved in 1946, soon to be replaced by the United Nations headquartered in New York. Within a year of its inception, the United Nations voted for the partitioning of British Mandate Palestine on November 29, 1947. Within eleven minutes of Israel declaring its independence on May 14, 1948, President Truman was the first world leader to congratulate David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the newly formed country. Even though not all countries voted in favor of the partitioning of British Mandate Palestine, those were the good years of the United Nations. How quickly did things change!

One factor that we shouldn’t ignore is that several of the current countries represented at the United Nations (193 today from 51 at its foundation) are antagonistic towards the Jewish State and the Jewish people – and those nations have become very influential in the drafting and passing of UN resolutions over the years. Looking at 2021 only, we inevitably notice an incredible bias against Israel with an unjustifiable imbalance in the number of resolutions passed against the Jewish State. Seriously, if aliens would land on earth and look at the records of the United Nations resolutions for the past several decades, those aliens, concluding Israel to be the worst country on the planet, would solely be basing that assumption on those resolutions passed to serve an agenda – the demonization of the State of Israel!

According to UNWatch, 14 resolutions were passed against Israel (population 9.5 MM) in 2021, while five were passed against the rest of the world (population 7.9B), which shows the bias against Israel! Israel represents only .012% of the world population. There was three times more resolution against a country the size of New Jersey than against the rest of the entire world. This happened during the 76th session of the UN General Assembly for 2021-2022.

The five countries against whom resolutions were passed for human rights violations were–and rightfully so–Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, and Crimea. What about China, Russia, Sudan and so many more countries that abuse human rights, kill their own and rule with an iron fist? What about the Palestinian Hamas leadership, for that matter? They use their own civilians as human shields, and nobody says anything. It would be one thing if the resolutions against Israel were justified. We could argue that Israel’s foul play has led the UN to pass justified resolutions against the Jewish state, but that would be if Israel were guilty of foul play. Let’s consider some of these resolutions:

November 2021: Senegal and Yemen drafted a resolution titled “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine”. In it, paragraph after paragraph, under the umbrella of the General Assembly, Israel was demonized. It was requested that Israel’s borders be brought back to pre-1967, which has become known as the “Auschwitz borders”, leaving Israel indefensible with only a nine-mile width at its narrowest point. It also asked for “The realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent State“. This demand for the self-determination of the Palestinian people in their independent state would be honorable if the Palestinians were a real people group, but they are not. There is no question that Palestinians are real people and that from 1948 on they have been dealt with unfairly, but not by Israel. The people called “Palestinians” today descend from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and other neighboring countries that exist around Israel. Most of these people were not allowed back into their countries of origin after Israel became a state. They were forced – by their respective governments – to stay in Israel and become “refugees” so that the “Palestinian narrative” could have a leg to stand on. Seventy years later, not only the narrative has a leg to stand on, but it has kicked the truth out of the equation altogether. Israel has become the “unlawful occupier” of a country created out of thin air. Incidentally, there is only one short line on page two of the resolution as follows,“Condemning the firing of rockets against Israeli civilian area“. The rest of the five pages are all anti-Israel rhetoric.

December 2, 2021: UN erases all Jewish connections to the Jewish most holy site at the location of the Temple Mount/Western Wall. The UN declared: “the Council called, for the exercise of restraint, refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric and upholding unchanged the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif – in word and in practice, as well as for full respect for international law, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law, as may be applicable in Jerusalem“. The Haram al-Sharif is the Muslim name for the Temple Mount, but it is historically, biblically and archeologically well documented that it has been the site of the first Temple and subsequent ones since King Solomon who reigned from 970-931 BCE in the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah.

These are just two of the fourteen resolutions against Israel for 2021. If we were to go back a few years, we would see that the UN bias is very consistent. In 2017, the UN passed 20 resolutions against Israel and only 3 against the rest of the world. In 2018 21/6, in 2019, 18/7 and in 2020, 17/7. They all ignore entirely the terrorist actions of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah. So, this is wrong on at least two levels. First, the accusations made against Israel are based on lies and a fabricated antisemitic narrative. Second, much of the real issues are ignored or whitewashed. There has never been so much antagonism against one country in the entire history of mankind. One has to wonder what the driving force behind all this is. From a human perspective, it is impossible to comprehend such hatred against Israel and the Jewish people. It is not until we look at this through a biblical lens that we understand that this is not a political battle, a geographical disagreement or even economic strife. No, it is 100% a spiritual battle between Satan and Israel.

God’s program recognizes the existence and activities of Satan as well as the existence and covenantal relationship that Israel has with her God. Satan is jealous and power-hungry and he hates what God loves. The United Nations has long departed from their original noble cause of world peace. Many within the organization are being manipulated by Satan to believe that the victim has become the perpetrator, and in turn, they present these lies as facts to the masses. The United Nations’ charter implies they are to unite all people in peace. Certainly, they are united – but mostly against my Jewish people!

November 8, 2021 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

The Lethal Downward Spiral of Antisemitism!

As antisemitism continues to grow worldwide, we need to clearly understand how it operates if we want to fight it successfully. The first thing that we must do is to look at a definition of antisemitism, and there are plenty of them from brief to lengthy, from detailed to too vague. For a while, I have favored the one definition penned by Edward Flannery in his seminal work, The Anguish of the Jews. In his extremely well-researched book, he defines it as follows: “Antisemitism is attitudes, words, or actions that embody hatred or contempt of the Jewish people as such.” Over the years, I have come to adjust his definition to come up with my own as follows, “Antisemitism is the irrational hatred of the Jewish people and Israel characterized by thoughts, words and/or deeds against them.”

They might appear to be almost identical, but a few details need to be made clear. First, we must understand that antisemitism is irrational. It doesn’t follow logic, never has and never will! What started simply as theological anti-Judaism without malice, slowly morphed into pure hatred over the centuries. The Jew was theologically different from the Christian and continues to be. The differences went from theological to cultural to racial, leading people to want to rid the planet of all Jewish people. I cover that progression in detail in End-Times Antisemitism, where I chronicle 2,000 years of antisemitism. Jewish history can definitely be studied by connecting the awful acts of antisemitism committed by Christians and non-Christians alike. I would venture to say that it is punctuated by these acts.

The irrationality of antisemitism makes it very unique on the despicable list of racism and xenophobia. Not that racism should ever be justified, but in many cases, it is based on cultural, social, historical and or geographical differences leading to unfortunate misunderstandings. In the case of antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people is never based on facts and in some cases, there are people around the globe who hate the Jewish people with a passion, and yet, have never met one Jewish person in their life. This qualifies as highly irrational. It doesn’t follow logic at all. Additionally, antisemitism rallies people on the absolute opposite side of the ideological spectrum. Where else can you find radical Islamists and liberal leftists making a concerted effort to hurt Israel and the Jewish people? Antisemitism exists all across the political spectrum, from Left to Right. The Jewish people are the only people group in history to have been equally accused of being communists and being capitalists.

Next in the definition, is the fact that antisemitism targets both the Jewish people as a people group as well as Israel as a country. No other form of racism or xenophobia includes people and country. If someone–God forbid–has a hatred of African people, they don’t usually call for the complete destruction of Africa or any other countries within that continent. Only anti-Semites seek to harm both the people and the land. This is often due to their acceptance of the “occupation” and “colonizing” narrative painting the “Palestinian” people as displaced people whose land was stolen by the “Zionist occupiers”. This is a narrative that is based on the false premise that the Palestinian people used to live in the Land of Palestine before Israel stole it. It cannot be validated historically, archaeologically or culturally.

The hatred spewed by antisemitism can be manifested in a variety of ways that go from thoughts and attitudes to words and finally to actions. There seems to be a progressive move from thoughts to words to deeds in many cases. People will often think negatively of Jewish people or Israel, but it seldom stops there. It usually moves to words at some point. A recent example took place in Texas in the city of Austin. On October 24, 2021, a few people claiming to belong to the neo-Nazi group “Goyim Defense League” displayed a banner from a freeway bridge reading “Vax the Jews”, (as in “kill the Jews” ) right around the corner from the West Austin Jewish Community Center, “Shalom Austin.” It is unclear if it was related to graffiti of a swastika found on the grounds of an Austin high school the day before. A week later, also in Austin, a fire was started outside a synagogue. It also remains unclear if it was a case of antisemitism and if the two were connected. The next day, a man in Brooklyn threw a Molotov cocktail inside a Jewish Deli. I could continue with a long list.

These are just a few acts of antisemitism. What is important to understand is that these acts don’t have to be committed by the same person or group to be dangerous. Each act of antisemitism emboldens other Jew-haters to commit their own crimes against Jewish people in their own communities, being in words or deeds or both. A nasty statement in one place or on the Internet will encourage other slurs somewhere else and might become the spark for the destruction of property or human lives. Remember that antisemitism is very irrational. The point is that antisemitism almost never remains a negative or nasty thought about the Jews. It will grow into words–easily spread across the globe in the age of the Internet–and the words run the risk of leading to actions. It is a downward spiral of hatred that should concern all of us.

The third phase of antisemitism is bad enough when it involves defacing or destruction of property such as synagogues, cemeteries or community centers, but it doesn’t stop there anymore. I have documented that since 2012, Jews are being killed again. Ilan Halimi, Mireille Knoll, Sarah Halimi (not related to Ilan), the Toulouse Jewish day school massacre of one rabbi and three students, the Paris kosher supermarket death of four shoppers, the Pittsburgh Synagogue, the San Diego attack. The last decade has seen the death of over twenty Jewish people around the world. Twenty lives may not seem like a large number. When we see murders in our large cities over a weekend number that and more almost every weekend, this hardly seems to garner attention. However, in the day in which we live when one life is taken by police and the national and international outcry that is heard is LOUD, where is the outcry for these lives? Antisemitism is going unreported and unnoticed. Who is going to stand up and be counted?

The lethal downward spiral of antisemitism is going to continue and possibly increase in numbers and intensity. Its irrational nature appears very rational to those who commit antisemitic crimes because they are led by Satan, the ultimate enemy of God – and therefore, the ultimate enemy of His chosen people, the Jewish people. If we hear a joke about the Jewish people or see something in print that can appear harmless at first, it is our duty to speak up and expose the lies. It starts with a joke, it becomes graffiti and before you know it, someone dies. That is a slippery slope that we all should keep people from at any cost!

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