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Anti-Semitic graffiti in Europe

COGwriter

Voice of America reported the following:

March 9, 2015

Among those attending the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington last week was Roger Cukierman, president of an umbrella group of Jewish organizations in France.

Anti-Semitic violence there has gotten global attention since the January attacks on a Jewish deli and the headquarters of a satirical magazine in Paris, but the trend began more than a decade ago, Cukierman says.

“In 1991, there were 70-80” violent incidents directed against Jews for the whole year, Cukierman told reporters at a press conference at the Washington residence of the French ambassador. “Last year there were 851 incidents” against Jews in France, he said.

According to Cukierman, the numbers started rising exponentially after the year 2000. …

Jews have lived in France for 2,000 years, he said, and endured far worse periods, including a World War II government that collaborated with the Nazis and let 25,000 French Jews be gassed at Auschwitz. But more and more French Jews are choosing to leave now because of hostility from the extreme right, the extreme left and elements in France’s growing Muslim population, he said.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced criticism in January for suggesting that France’s half million Jews should move to Israel for their own safety, Cukierman said it was a reality that emigration is on the rise.

Some 3,000 Jews left the country for good in 2013, 7,000 in 2014 and “I expect between 10,000-15,000” in 2015, he said.

They are going not because of Netanyahu’s appeal, he added, which he said he has heard before from previous Israeli leaders.

“A man who is considering leaving France does not do it because the prime minister of Israel has requested his presence,” Cukierman said. Instead, he blamed an “atmosphere” in which Jewish children must be protected by both police and the army and young men wearing skullcaps are accosted in the subway.

Only a third of Jewish families now send their children to public school in France to avoid harassment, he said.

Stuart Eizenstat, a former undersecretary of state, ambassador to the European Union and special adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry on Holocaust Issues, told a panel at the AIPAC conference that Belgian Jewish friends had told him recently that they were moving to Florida because as one put it, “there is no future for my children in Belgium.”

Other friends in Britain recounted that one their daughters, a teacher, was advised by her principal not to let her students know she was Jewish, while another daughter was asked by her professor at Bristol University, “ ‘Isn’t it odd that no Jews were killed in the 9/11 attacks?’ ”

While anti-Semitism has long plagued Europe, the current animosity suggests an increasing conflation of attitudes toward Jews and Israel.

Eizenstat quoted the results of a 2012 survey by the Anti-Defamation League in 10 European countries in which more than half of those polled said Jews were more loyal to Israel than to their native countries and 65 percent said their opinion of Jews had gotten worse because of Israeli actions.

Of European Jews polled in 2013 by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, almost 60 percent had been confronted by the claim that the Holocaust was a myth or exaggerated, a third said they had experienced harassment because of their religious or ethnic identity in the previous five years and nearly a third said they had considered emigration because they did “not feel safe” anymore, Eizenstat said.

Over the past three years, besides this year’s attacks in Paris, there have been fatal assaults in Belgium, at a school in Toulouse and a synagogue in Denmark.  http://www.voanews.com/content/rising-anti-semitism-in-europe-prompts-exodus/2673521.html

European leaders and their predecessors in the Roman Empire who claimed Christianity have long promoted anti-semitism.

According to Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, Book III chapter 18, the Eastern Orthodox saint and Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth stated:

Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way.

The way that Jesus, who was Jewish, taught differently was love.  Jesus never taught to have ‘nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd.’  Roman Catholics refer to Constantine as ‘Constantine the Great,’ but he obviously held anti-semitic views.

Around 332, Constantine issued what is known as the Edict Against the Heretics which included persecution against Christians who held to the original faith and had practices, such as the date of Passover, the same as the Jews (see also Persecutions by Church and State).

In 387, the Eastern Orthodox saint and bishop John Chrysostom preached the following:

The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts. There are many in our ranks who say they think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now…If the Jewish ceremonies are venerable and great, ours are lies…Does God hate their festivals and do you share in them? He did not say this or that festival, but all of them together. (John Chrysostom. Homily I Against the Jews I:5;VI:5;VII:2. Preached at Antioch, Syria in the Fall of 387 AD. Medieval Sourcebook: Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407) : Eight Homilies Against the Jews. Fordham University. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html 12/10/05).

John Chrysostom preached the following in his Homily Against the Jews (of which there are at least eight anti-Semitic homilies):

But do not be surprised that I called the Jews pitiable. They really are pitiable and miserable (I:II:1).

So the godlessness of the Jews and the pagans is on a par. But the Jews practice a deceit which is more dangerous (I:VI:4).

Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? (I:VI:7).

Since it is against the Jews that I wish to draw up my battle line, let me extend my instruction further. Let me show that, by fasting now, the Jews dishonor the law and trample underfoot God’s commands because they are always doing everything contrary to his decrees. When God wished them to fast, they got fat and flabby (VI:IV:2).

Indeed, the fasting of the Jews, which is more disgraceful than any drunkenness, is over and gone (VIII:I:5).

John Chrysostom is considered to be a major Roman Catholic saint.  He is one of the four ‘doctors of the church’ who is shown supporting a large black chair that is called the Cathedra Petri (Chair of Peter) in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.   The late Joseph Tkach once referred to this chair as Satan’s throne (see ).

The improperly named Protestant publication Christianity Today once had a link titled, “Person of the Week: John Chrysostom” which went to an article titled: John Chrysostom Early church’s greatest preacher.  So, Protestants too, endorse an anti-semite.  More on him can be found in the article John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople and Antisemite.

As far as Protestant leaders themselves with anti-semitic views, one can notice the some of the teachings of Martin Luther, who wrote in the 16th century:

My heart is fuller of these thoughts than my tongue can tell. I have come to the conclusion that the Jews will always curse and blaspheme God as all the prophets have predicted. He who neither reads nor understands this, as yet knows no theology, in my opinion. And so I presume the men of Cologne cannot understand the Scripture, because it is necessary that such things take place to fulfill prophecy. If they are trying to stop the Jews blaspheming, they are working to prove the Bible and God liars (“Martin Luther’s to George Spalatin,” from Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporan, Letters, trans. by P. Smith (1913), Vol. 1, pp. 28-29).

Furthermore he wrote:

I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that those miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them…They are so blind and stupid that they see neither the words found in Genesis 17 nor the whole of Scripture, which mightily and explicitly condemns this lie…They are real liars and bloodhounds who have not only continually perverted and falsified all of Scripture with their mendacious glosses from the beginning until the present day. Their heart’s most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther…The worse a Jew is, the more arrogant he is, solely because he is a Jew — that is, a person descended from Abraham’s seed, circumcised, and under the law of Moses. David and other pious Jews were not as conceited as the present-day, incorrigible Jews…I wanted to present this to us Germans so that we might see what rascals the blind Jews are and how powerfully the truth of God in our midst stands with us and against them (Medieval Sourcebook: Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543)

Martin Luther advised his followers:

…to burn down Jewish schools and synagogues, and to throw pitch and sulphur into the flames; to destroy their homes; to confiscate their ready money in gold and silver; to take from them their sacred books, even the whole Bible; and if that did not help matters, to hunt them of the country like mad dogs (Luther’s Works, vol. Xx, pp. 2230-2632 as quoted in Stoddard JL. Rebuilding a Lost Faith, 1922, p.99).

Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch (Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 as quoted from Luther’s Works, Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). pp 268­293).

Leaders esteemed by the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants have all advocated horrible anti-semitism.

Sadly, many in Europe and elsewhere hold anti-semitic views.  It is little wonder that many Jews are leaving and others are considering to leave.

We will see persecution will greatly increase before Jesus returns. And this will not be limited to Jews, but will include all real Christians (cf. Daniel 7:25; see also Persecutions by Church and State). The underlying anti-semitism in Europe and throughout the world will allow for this, especially when the time will come when the Beast’s government will mandate it (Revelation 13:15-17).

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2015 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Religious News.

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