This article was Written and first published in 2005 but is still true in 2011: Half a century after the Holocaust, a new war against the Jews has been declared. We are only now - innocents that we have been, lulled by the world and our own wishful thinking into believing that widespread Jew-hatred is a thing of the past - waking up to its true dimensions.

I've always liked the Book of Romans, for its content is quite "meaty," and I suspect too much so for most Christians to understand. I have taken the liberty here today, to provide some excerpts from the letter. They speak of Israel's place in the world, specifically in relation to Christians. I do it as a prelude to the article which follows them.

Romans 11 (References taken from NET BIBLE AT : www.bible.org/netbible)

11:1 So I ask, God has not rejected his people, has he? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 11:2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew!

11:5 So in the same way at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 11:6 And if it is by grace, it is no longer by works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. 11:7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was diligently seeking, but the elect obtained it. The rest were hardened, 11:8 as it is written, 'God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear,
to this very day.'

11:11 I ask then, they did not stumble into an irrevocable fall, did they? Absolutely not! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make Israel jealous. 11:12 Now if their transgression means riches for the world and their defeat means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full restoration bring?

11:16 ... if the root is holy, so too are the branches.

11:17 Now if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among them and participated in the richness of the olive root, 11:18 do not boast over the branches. But if you boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.

11:24 For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree?

11:25 For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 11:26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: 'The Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob. 11:27 And this is my covenant with them,when I take away their sins.'

11:28 In regard to the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but in regard to election they are dearly loved for the sake of the fathers. 11:29 For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. 11:30 Just as you were formerly disobedient to God, but have now received mercy due to their disobedience, 11:31 so they too have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. 11:32 For God has consigned all people to disobedience so that he may show mercy to them all.

11:33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how fathomless his ways.

With this Scriptural background provided, I present to you today, (In full and with permission from 'Women in Green') the following article:

The New War Against The Jews
by Hillel Halkin June 2005

A man wakes up one morning and thinks he's back in the Middle Ages. Russian State Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov, the front page of the Russian newspaper Izvestia reports, has decided to launch an official investigation of the Shulhan Arukh, the definitive compendium of Jewish law written in the 16th century by Rabbi Joseph Caro and used to this day - generally in an abbreviated version - as a standard reference book by Orthodox Jews. Prosecutor Ustinov has already summoned Moscow rabbi Zinovy Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Organizations, for questioning in order to determine whether the Shulhan Arukh should be banned for "racist incitement." He took this action after receiving a letter last January, signed by 500 patriotic Russians, calling the Jewish religion "anti-Christian and inhumane" and demanding that the Shulhan Arukh be banned.

You read and rub your eyes and read again. And still it's hard to believe.

When did something like this happen before? Well, the first time was in 1240, when Pope Gregory IX, after receiving a formal denunciation of the Talmud as "blasphemous" and "pernicious" from a French Jewish apostate, ordered all copies of it seized and an investigation of it undertaken. At a public inquiry held in Paris in the presence of King Louis IX, the Talmud was found guilty. On June 17, 1242, all confiscated copies of it were burned, as part of 24 cartloads of Jewish books, in a large bonfire.

State Prosecutor Ustinov - indeed, the government of Russia that has not immediately acted to remove him from office - can be proud to belong to a time-honored tradition. Perhaps we can look forward to bonfires in Moscow sometime soon. You rub your eyes and read again. Not, of course, that the Talmud - or the Shulhan Arukh, for that matter - is entirely free of anti-Gentile remarks. Given the world's treatment of the Jews over the past 1,500 years, it's surprising that there aren't more of these. Yet if we're going to start eliminating religious books for their hateful passages, why start with the minor case of Jewish ones? Let's first burn the New Testament and the Koran for viciously consigning all nonbelievers, Jews included, to the eternal torments of hell. (Which is a punishment, incidentally, that Jewish tradition never invoked on Christians and Muslims.)

But, of course, even to make this kind of argument is to stoop to taking the intellects of State Prosecutor Ustinov and the 500 letter writers - among which were Russian authors, mathematicians, and former international chess champion Boris Spassky - too seriously. One doesn't argue logically with rabid idiots. One fights them as dangerous enemies must be fought, with no holds barred.

The scary thing is that once again, 50 years after the Holocaust, the Jews have so many enemies. And make no mistake about it: They are dangerous. Nor are all of them primitives out of the Middle Ages. Some are very suave, very cultivated gentlemen. They wear three-piece suits and they speak with Oxonian accents and they say things like "bloody nuisance" and "spot on." Some are even leaders of the Anglican Church.

You may have noticed it. The international advisory body of that church voted last Friday in London to urge its congregations, which have 75 million members worldwide, to disinvest in Israel because of its "oppression" of the Palestinians.

These are not benighted Slavophiles. They are sophisticated High Churchmen.

With them one can argue. One can say: "Of all the world's 'oppressing' countries - China, which oppresses Tibet; India, which oppresses Kashmir; Russia, which oppresses Chechnya, et cetera, et cetera - the one you've decided to boycott as good Christians is the country of the Jewish people?

The country of the same Jews whom you Christians have hounded throughout your history and whom you Anglicans and Englishmen watched as they were slaughtered by the millions in Europe while you did nothing to rescue them and barred the gates of Palestine and England to those of them who might have fled? Have you no shame? No honor? No awareness of your own appalling hypocrisy?"

No, they have no shame, no honor, no awareness of their own appalling hypocrisy. And they are Anti-Semites no less than State Prosecutor Ustinov and his 500 imbeciles. In fact, they are State Prosecutor Ustinov's allies.

This cannot be said too often. In an age in which a Jewish state's right to exist is still not recognized by much of the world - in which tens of millions of Arabs and hundreds of millions of Muslims regularly clamor for its destruction - in which a Muslim country now in the process of arming itself with nuclear weapons openly refers to it as an outlaw creation that must be wiped from the face of the earth - anyone deliberately undermining this state's legitimacy, even if he wears a respectable English clergyman's collar, is contributing to another possible genocide of the Jews.

Criticism of Israel? By all means. This is perfectly legitimate. So is concern for the Palestinians. But disinvestment is not criticism. It is an attempt to turn Israel into a pariah state. And Jews, having been treated as pariahs by Christian civilization since the age of Constantine, know exactly what this means.

Half a century after the Holocaust, a new war against the Jews has been declared. We are only now - innocents that we have been, lulled by the world and our own wishful thinking into believing that widespread Jew-hatred is a thing of the past - waking up to its true dimensions.

It is not a war that we Jews will necessarily win, although it is not one that we can afford to lose. But we, too, have our allies and we are fortunate that they are more intelligent than our enemies. We have to impress on them that the fight is not only for us but for a sane world that has not completely lost its moral and intellectual bearings.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.

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R.P.Bendedek

Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com

R.P.BenDedek is the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' and a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News.

"The King's Calendar" [ drastically reduced in price - while the economic recession is on], is a chronological study of the historical books of the Bible (Kings and Chronicles), Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, and the (Essene) Damascus Document of The Dead Sea Scrolls. See Chapter Precis page.

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