From the Stone Age to this day, there have been skirmishes,
revolutions and wars that lasted for years, decades and centuries among human
beings. Most notable among these has been the hundred-year war between the
Catholics and the Protestants on the European Continent. It was a war that
ended with a whimper where no side scored a total victory over the other by
delivering the proverbial death blow; known as the final solution.
There have also been cases where one side in the conflict
was vanquished never to be heard from again. These were cases involving ethnic
groups – usually in the minority – that disappeared when the last individual or
the last couple of the group died. And so, it must be said that an ideological
movement has a better chance of surviving adversity than a group that has a
distinct ethnic traits. This is because an ideological movement recruits
members from a variety of ethnic groups, one of which may be vanquished but not
all. And this lends credibility to the saying that you can kill a person but
you cannot kill an idea.
One idea that came into being early in the history of
cultural developments is the supremacy of one group of people over the others.
Such group viewed itself as having a divine right to rule over everyone else
which meant that its members (regarded as masters) could live off the labor of
others (regarded as being of a lower caste). The masters raised an army and put
it in charge of collecting goods from the lower caste that produced the
necessities of life by farming, mining and making handicrafts. Failing this,
the poor people were required to serve the masters in their household as
servants, or work on their land holdings as laborers. As to the masters and
their children, they enjoyed a life of continuous play and leisure.
That was a system of fiefdoms which later developed into one
of sovereign states. But there too, homogeneity among the groups remained rare,
and the internal distinctions between them persisted. This meant that friction,
even if temporarily suppressed, could flare up at any time. Something else
began to happen, however. Fearing the possibility that the various lower castes
may get together despite their differences and turn against the masters, the
latter maintained a controlled kind of rivalry between the groups so as to
divide them and rule over them. This approach produced one of three possible
outcomes. One, the scheme worked as designed and the rulers maintained a
relative state of peace. Two, the scheme failed when the lower castes got
together and toppled the masters in what came to be called a revolution. Three,
the scheme failed because the lower castes fought each other and caused the
sort of chaos that resulted in a failed state.
But every rule having an exception, the one which states
that nothing has remained permanent from the Stone Age to this day has had its
exception. No, it is not the one saying the only thing permanent is the
tendency to change. Rather, it is about something that has indeed remained
permanent – if not from the Stone Age to this day – at least from biblical
times to this day. It is a movement which refers to itself as being both of a
Semitic ethnicity and a Judaic faith when in fact, it is neither. Instead, it
is an ideological movement with roots that go in every direction. It recruits
members from all other races and religions, proselytizing among them the
superiority of its ideology, and the claim that God chose it as His favorite.
And since nobody argues with God, this truth is absolute and cannot be
questioned. It is a dogma that is binding on all human beings now and to the
end of time.
Well, absolute or not, the fact that an ideology like this
exists has prompted different groups of people to challenge it throughout time
and everywhere on this planet. Those who adhere to it started calling
themselves Jews, and in response to the challenges, adopted the sort of
behavior that pitted them against all of humanity.
One pernicious behavior has been to foster sectarian
divisions to the point of inciting wars among the races and the religions.
People fought each other then turned to fight against them. They lost every
time, but instead of attributing their failures to what they do – and change
their behavior or dissolve their movement – they accused the human species of
suffering from an incurable disease they call antisemitism.
That is why the movement never perished the way that others
did. And that is why some of the rivals thought up schemes to implement a final
solution aimed at putting an end to their movement once and for all.