RABBI JONATHAN SACKS: THE HATE THAT STARTS WITH JEWS NEVER ENDS THERE….SEE NOTE PLEASE
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=2a91b54e856e0e4ee78b585d2&id=4efce2d3d9&e=1e92c42c9d
THE GOOD ENGLISH RABBI HAS BEEN “KNIGHTED” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT AND IS CALLED “RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS”….A TITLE THAT I FIND ANNOYING….RSK
As antisemitism rises, leaders of the great faiths must unite against
the ruthless pursuit of power masquerading as religion
The novelist Rebecca West once said that Jews, having suffered so
much, had an “unsurprisable soul”, In 2000 our daughter, then a
university student, attended an anti-globalisation rally in London
that turned into a tirade against America, then Israel and finally
Jews. “Dad, they hate us,” she said through her tears. Hearing those
words in Britain in the 21st century showed me that I had a
surprisable soul.
Jews in Europe have been shaken these past few weeks by the virulence
of the demonstrations about the war in Gaza that also turned into
something older and darker. More than a century after the Dreyfus
trial the cry of “death to the Jews” has been heard again in the
streets of Paris. Seventy years after the Holocaust, “gas the Jews”
has been heard again in Germany. In Britain last month antisemitic
incidents were at almost their highest level in 30 years. These are
danger signals not just for Jews but for Europe.
After our daughter’s experience I saw events move rapidly. In August
2001 at the UN international conference against racism in Durban,
Israel was accused by NGOs of the five cardinal sins against human
rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and
crimes against humanity. A new blood libel was born. Days later came
9/11, and almost immediately an opinion poll found that 40 per cent of
Pakistanis believed it was carried out by Mossad, Israel’s secret
service.
The new antisemitism is different from the old. In the past Jews were
hated for their religion, then for their race. Today they are hated
for their nation state. But it was not long before I saw how
seamlessly the old and new hatreds meshed.
In April 2002 our family was in Italy celebrating Passover, which
usually falls close to Easter. In Israel a group of Palestinian
terrorists had taken refuge in the Church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem. The Israeli army, not wishing to enter a house of worship,
stationed soldiers outside to wait until the terrorists emerged. It
took several weeks. One day we opened the Italian newspaper La Stampa
and saw a cartoon of the infant Jesus in a crib with an Israeli tank
pointing at the child. The caption read: “Surely they don’t want to
kill me again?!”
Weeks later the Catholic Herald in Britain published an apology about
its reporting of the event. Initially it had criticised the Israelis.
However, once the terrorists had left, Christians returned to the
church to discover they had torn up bibles, stolen all religious
artefacts of value and hidden 40 bombs, some booby-trapped, to kill or
injure those who had given them refuge. The paper admitted that it had
misjudged the situation.
It has been this rush to judgment, the assumption that if people are
killed it is Israel’s fault, that convinces many of us that something
other than the normal passions of politics is at work. In the 12 years
since, the situation has become steadily worse. Criticism of Israel is
not antisemitism, but demonisation is.
This matters because antisemitism is not really about Jews. It is
about how societies treat the Other, the one-not-like-us. For more
than 1,000 years Jews were the most conspicuous non-Christian presence
in Europe. Today they are the most prominent non-Muslim presence in
the Middle East. Jews were hated because they were different. But it
is our difference that constitutes our humanity. Because none of us is
the same as another, each of us is irreplaceable. A nation that has no
room for difference has no room for humanity.
The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. It was not Jews
alone who suffered under Hitler and Stalin, nor is it Jews alone
suffering from the ruthless pursuit of power that today masquerades as
religion. Christians are under assault in more than a hundred
countries: put to flight in Syria, driven out of Mosul, removed from
Afghanistan, butchered, beheaded and terrorised elsewhere. Hundreds of
Muslims are dying daily, 90 per cent at the hands of fellow Muslims.
Bahais, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs have all suffered their own
tragedies. Yazidis are on the brink of the abyss. The world is awash
with hate across religious divides.
The West misread the 21st century. This is not an age of secular
ideologies. It is an era of desecularisation. Our greatest challenge
is not political or economic or military. It is in the deepest sense
spiritual. No one expected this and we have not been equal to it. What
rescued Europe from its last age of religious wars, in the 17th
century, was not weapons but ideas: those of Milton, Hobbes, Spinoza
and Locke that laid the foundations for religious liberty and the free
society. Thus far the 21st century has been marked by an unprecedented
series of new technologies, but no new ideas.
That is the challenge of our time and it will take a generation.
First, we must stand together in defence of religious liberty and the
scandalously neglected Article 18 of the UN universal declaration of
human rights. People have the right to practise their faith, or lack
of it, without fear. But without determined action on the part of the
West it will not happen.
Second, we need a commitment by leaders of all the great faiths to
work to ensure the rights of religious minorities in every part of the
world where they have an influence. None of us will win if we work
alone: not Jews, not Christians, not Muslims. The victim cannot cure
the crime.
There is serious spiritual work to be done. The 17th century curbed
religious conflict by depriving faith of power. That does not work in
an age where religious extremists are seizing power. Here we need
theological courage. The historic danger in monotheism has been the
willingness of believers to divide humanity into the redeemed against
the infidel.
To guard against this, Genesis 1, common to Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, says that every human being, regardless of colour, class or
creed, is in the image of God. Our shared humanity takes precedence
over our religious differences. Until we are prepared to take this
seriously, people will continue to kill in the name of the God of life
and practise cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. And God
himself will weep.
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