Unofficial Transcript

The Human Rights Dimension: Addressing the Rise of Global Genocidal Anti-Semitism and Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate

August 11, 2015
Conference at the United Nations


DR. ALEX GROBMAN, historian with a Masters and PhD in Contemporary Jewish History from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem:  Thank you, Laurie.  Since the 3rd century BC when the Hellenists first advanced the case against the Jewish people, an underlying animosity towards Jews has stayed basically constant no matter what the grievance.  Pagans disliked Jews for being aloof, for refusing to worship their gods, for their practice of marital exclusivity, dietary restrictions and missionizing.
Christians accused them of killing Jesus.  Enlightenment theorists condemned them for Christianity.  Populists, who supported the right of the people to fight against the privileged elite blamed them for modernity.  And Islamists depicted and continue to depict them as being in the vanguard of Western ideas and values.
During the Medieval period Jews were blamed for causing the Black Death by poisoning Europe's wells.  They were accused of engaging in black magic, witchcraft, profanation of the name of the Host, of scheming to destroy Christendom.  And of committing ritual murder to obtain the blood of non-Jews for the use in ritual -- in religious rituals.  
This latter accusation became so common that it earned a name of its own, the blood libel.  In the 19th century blood libels reached epidemic proportions and occasionally led to outbreaks of violence throughout Europe.  They continue to endure primarily in the backward areas of Eastern Europe and the Russian empire and the Russian government exploited this myth to incite pogroms.  But the accusations eventually lost their potency, especially in secular urban areas.
In rural regions, the legend persisted through the encouragement of the Catholic Church, whose local priests continued to attest to the veracity throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century.  Blood libel led Christians to view the Jew as the harbinger of evil.  The blood libel and the medieval myth of Ahashveros.  The Wandering Jew represented to them the curse that Jesus had placed on the Jewish people.  
The legendary Ahashveros was said to have rushed Jesus to his crucifixion while denying him consolation or refuge for which he was cursed to wander the rest of his life without a place to live, loathed and disowned.  In Christian folklore Jewish presence portends horror and emptiness.  The myth of the wicked Jew became emblematic of the condemned destiny Jews were supposed to inflict on themselves and all they encountered.  The Jew is the eternal, rootless foreigner who never finds his home or develops roots anywhere.  
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion became known as the Jewish blueprint for world domination.  There were numerous versions about the origins of the Protocols.  The most popular theory was that the Protocols were adopted at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897.  The ostensible purpose of the Congress was to discuss the creation of the Zionist movement but that was only a ruse to plan a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.  The Russians, the French and the Vatican also expressed their concerns about this Congress.  
A secret manuscript was fabricated between 1898 and 1903 by Russian anti-Semites working in Paris for the Czarist Secret Police, who were instructed to identify the Jews at the source of an insidious plot to oust the Russian monarchy.  The manuscript they produced became known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an alleged summary of the secret meeting of the heads of the Jewish organization scheming to establish a Jewish world state on the remains of Gentile civilization. 
Thus the discontent within Russian society could be explained as having been provoked by Jews rather than by anger and resentment directed at Czarist tyranny and inept Russian bureaucracy.  In this eternal conspiracy to control the world, Jews will use any nefarious methods necessary to achieve their objective.  Communism and capitalism were said to have to been created as a means to manipulate the world and dominate its people.
Jews were accused of infiltrating modern society and using their skills to direct the government, the stock exchange, the press, the theatre and literature.  Jews took control of Imperialist countries.  In other words, Jews are behind every nefarious act, including Colonialism.  And the Protocols provided convincing explanation for societal problems at a time of industrialization, confusing social change and general upheaval in the same way they had been used in the past to account for plagues and natural catastrophes.
Hitler used the Protocols to explain his theory of how Marxism had created a weapon by which international Jewish financiers could manipulate the world.  Henry Ford used the International Jewish Series in the Dearborn Independent to reach millions of Americans, especially from those in rural areas who knew little of Jews except through rumor or religious studies and were exposed to the Protocol's myths about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.  
The idea of Jewish 9/11 conspiracies and other theories about Jewish attempts to control the world have generated an entire cottage industry of books, pamphlets, videotapes, Websites and expert speakers on this subject.  The charge that the Jews were behind 9/11 revived in modern form the classic old lies about Jewish pursuit of world domination. 
In a very real sense, the Protocols have offered concrete proof that those who fear and hate Jews and now the State of Israel are truly justified.  In this environment John Mearsheimer, who is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt at Harvard, began to examine the Israel lobby and its alleged profound influence on the United States' foreign policy and the contentious issue of dual loyalty, an issue that we're dealing with today thanks to our President.  Alan Dershowitz observed that since Mearsheimer and Walt are mainstream American academics it gives their thesis added authority and credibility in the academic and general community.  
The Protocols have been exposed by historians, journalists, politicians, police and religious leaders, yet the Protocols continue to be published in practically every language in hundreds of editions, in hundreds of millions of copies, and in very compelling videos on the Internet.  The potential damage and danger of the Protocols in shaping public opinion should not ever be underestimated.  When Jews are portrayed as manipulators who seek power over other people's lives, they come to be perceived as a dire threat.  
It is therefore particularly disconcerting that this false and harmful perception of Jews is embraced even today by leaders of the Arab Muslim world, where the Protocols are published in vast quantities and cited in the writings of mainstream academics, not the crazies, in mainstream academics who lend credibility and legitimacy to this utter falsehood.  
In the Hamas covenant, Article 22 states with their money they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations and others.  And it goes on.  In London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Caracas and other Western cities today, as we heard, protestors carry signs with anti-Jewish slogans.  Hitler was right.  Be prepared for the real Holocaust.  Cleanse the earth from dirty Zionists.  Israel is the anti-Semite or the cancer of the Middle East.  Israel must not exist.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel attitudes on campus are closely linked to disparaging attitudes to America, opposition to free-market capitalism and distrust of business.  In other words, if anyone thinks for a moment that this is just an issue alone, they are really, their head is in the sand.  These people hate America.  They oppose free markets, capitalism and business.  Not that there's some reason not to distrust business at times but we believe in capitalism.
Israel is seen as an extension of Western neo-colonialism and Jews as the embodiment of the oppressive power elite.  But anti-Semitism has long been seen by Jews as a harbinger of profound problems and a clear indication of fissures within society.  The loathing that originates with Jews does not cease with them.  
Eric Hoffer, a former longshoreman and non-Jewish American social philosopher recognized the double-standard and hypocrisy in the way Jews were being portrayed and treated when he observed, The Jews are a peculiar people.  Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.  Other nations, when victorious on the battlefield, dictate peace terms.  But when Israel is victorious, it must pursue peace.  Everyone expects the Jew to be the only Christians in the world.  Other nations, when they are defeated survive and recover.  But should Israel be defeated, it would be destroyed.
Hoffer understood the importance of the Jews as the harbinger of what happens when evil reigns unchallenged.  Jews are in the forefront in the war to preserve our liberal democracy, our freedoms and our way of life.  Failure to respond to assaults encourages even more attempts to destroy not only Jews but Western culture and civilization.  
I have premonition, he concluded, that will not leave me.  As it goes with Israel so it will go with all of us.  Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us.  Thank you.









		1