The study of anti-Semitism provides much insight into the growing violence of our day, as we witness the End-Times unfolding. For this reason, a new term had to be coined to deal with the phenomenon of End-Times anti-Semitism. The reason why it was necessary to create yet one more category of anti-Semitism is multi-faceted and will be developed in my future podcasts.

On one hand, the level of animosity against the Jews has greatly increased to the point of death in several cases and/or countries. On the other hand, the players have once again changed – or we should say “morphed” – into a larger, more diverse group that includes a greater variety of people, ideologies and religions.

Racial Hatred. The racial aspect of classical anti-Semitism that most thought was gone for good, seems to be making a comeback. What is terrifying is the fact that for the most part, the racial components of this End-Times anti-Semitism are rarely questioned. Something is going on beyond the usual rhetoric and sporadic insults and property damages.

Irrational Thinking. This newest breed of anti-Semitism, when studied closely, appears highly irrational, that is, to people of good will. To the rest of the world, the irrational seems to be very rational, and that shift is at the core of the problem. To be sure, I am not saying that any sort of Jew hatred was ever rational in any way.

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People have argued about the legitimacy of Israel in the land, pretty much officially since May 14, 1948, but the saga started way before. The 1917 Balfour Declaration followed by the 1920 San Remo Conference really made it clear that the land then known as “Palestine” belonged to the Jewish people. This led to the November 1947, United Nations vote to partition Palestine between Jews and Arabs. Palestine was only a name for a geographical area that comprised “Palestinian Jews” and “Palestinian Arabs” living in harmony or at the very least tolerating each other. And that was fine–not that I ever cared for the renaming of Eretz Yisrael to Palestine by the Romans in AD 135. But, for all intents and purposes, Palestine was just the name of a piece of land in the Middle East from AD 135 to 1948.

Eventually, it became a politically charged word, synonymous with the country of origin for a people known as the Palestinians. Yasir Arafat mastered that narrative to the day he died, and the baton was passed to Mahmoud Abbas who has shared the burden of promoting the same lies with Hamas. So, today, people around the world are buying into the narrative of “the Palestinian victims of occupation and ethnic cleansing by Israel.” It doesn’t matter if it is not true, it has become the new truth about the Middle East, and most people are OK with that. But, for those who really care about the truth, I would like to offer three reasons why Israel ownership of the whole Land is the only viable and legitimate solution.

History has always been written with blood, sweat and tears, but never with disappearing ink. Unless you are H. G. Wells, armed with a pen, you cannot erase, ignore or alter the past. There is a great danger in rewriting history, because it eradicates key events that future generations would end-up knowing nothing about. A powerful and sad example of that is what has happened with the Holocaust. A survey was taken in 2018 yielding terrifying results. Two-thirds of millennials in America do not know what Auschwitz was, and 25% do not know that six-million Jews died in the Holocaust. So, when historical revisionists creep in with their altered narrative, much of our young population doesn’t have the know-how or even the motivation to check the stories’ accuracy. Add to that the dwindling down of Holocaust survivors and pretty soon nobody will remember the Jewish catastrophe. The same is happening in America right now with a rewriting of the future and history!

When I moved to the United States in 1985, it quickly became evident that there were racial tensions between blacks and whites on many levels. Economically, culturally, politically to name just a few. Blacks and whites were clashing. Inter racial relations have not improved, they have actually gotten worse, to the point of injustice and wrongful deaths that we have witnessed in 2020. There is a serious problem affecting America today that cannot be ignored, and that is a reason why the movement known as Black Lives Matter–founded in 2013– has gathered so much momentum and picked the interest of so many. Such a movement appears to be giving the African American community the voice and momentum that they need to push reform forward. Philosophically, this is a good thing, but practically, the BLM ideology sends a very different message–if you know where to look. To be sure, I am not saying that black lives do not matter. Of course they do, as all lives matter. I am simply saying that before we blindly join and support the BLM movement based on somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction, from a mix of compassion, rightful indignation and misplaced guilt, we should investigate who the BLM supports and promotes. Let’s consider some of the evidence.

Apparently, the short answer is YES, and it is unfortunate. The swastika is an old symbol that was hijacked by Nazi Germany and should have been retired in 1945 at the very latest. It goes back thousands of years in history and is meaningful to Buddhists, Hindus and a few other Eastern religious groups. 

While the original design can still be found in other cultures, clearly predating the Nazi era, there is an unspoken international agreement that the swastika was retired at the end of World War Two. It is also understood that the counter-clockwise symbol is the original one from Eurasia, while the clockwise one is the one adopted by the Nazis. Would a business person making a new kind of fun shaped caramel crackers, call and market their products as “Krazy Karamel Kracker”, taking the chance of being remembered as the KKK candy manufacturer? Of course not, because anything that would create the KKK acronym has also been retired from the vocabulary of decent people.

So, I was very disturbed when I was made aware of a couple of Penn State students who recently took a picture of themselves and posted it on Twitter, both displaying a drawn swastika on their shoulders, while smiling at the camera. The message that they tried to convey was unclear, but the symbol they used was crystal clear. There has not been an answer or explanation from the students using the symbol. Silence can be a wise choice at times, but when accused of using an unequivocally antisemitic symbol, silence is not the appropriate answer. The use of that symbol by the students can only be explained in one of two ways: Ignorance or malice. Maybe a little bit of both is even more accurate.

I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I will first assume that the two girls didn’t have any idea of the weight that this symbol carries. I personally don’t think that it is the case, but it is always possible. If it was the case, it will validate why we still need to educate people about this dark period of human history.

Early in 2020, everybody was talking about impeachment, and just like that, by March COVID-19 became the sole topic in the News, and again, just like that, at the end of May, the virus took second fiddle to the George Floyd death/race riots. What a year this has been so far!           The virus is very real and has tragically taken many lives, and the last thing I want to do is to appear as if I am trying to minimize its devastating effect on us all. As to the protests, they are justified from the standpoint of the frustration and reaction to injustice and the wrongful death of George Floyd. There is no way to look at what happened to him and not declare foul play.      A peaceful protest is one thing, but when it turns into violent riots coupled with uncontrolled looting, it affects many people and businesses that have no connections to the issue, and it will ruin them… some for good! we must stand against that. As a matter of fact, standing up against riots and looting as one American people regardless of color or creed might be a great starting point to initiate dialogue and hopefully, reconciliation.     But there is another common denominator to these events that I need to bring to your attention, and that is the fact that they have all been linked one way or another to Israel and/or the Jewish people. The proverbial “Scapegoat of Humanity” can be found as the responsible party–partially or fully– in any of these crises. Even though they might appear as childish, ludicrous and unsustainable theories to most people of goodwill, these are circulating in the news and are being believed by more people than you would expect.

Recently, President Trump made a very uncomfortable comment as he was visiting a Ford factory in Michigan. 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. 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. President 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! 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. To support our ministry: www.chosenpeople.com/olivierFor more info: www.newantisemitism.com

An introduction to author and conference speaker Olivier Melnick who specializes on explaining, exposing and fighting antisemitism in all of its forms.