Friday, December 24, 2021

Friends on Good Friday, enemies at Christmas

 Living, working and studying in the tight-knit Anglo-Jewish neighborhood in French-speaking Montreal for nearly two decades, I saw human behavior that was so bizarre, it reminded me of video clips that showed animals of different species develop unexpected relationships between them, such as cats and dogs getting along as good friends, for example.

 

So, how about the one I did not see happen in real life, but could easily have imagined given the strange relationships I saw develop and dissolve between devout Christians and fanatic Jews? Here is one scene that could easily have been produced in my imagination: A cat plays mother to a newly hatched duck for a few days and then eats it.

 

What I saw in Montreal were not cannibalistic scenes of Christians and Jews eating each other, but scenes that were so extreme, they suggested that the actors could live on hate alone, nourished as they were by the power of revulsion produced with the force of their passion.

 

The people acted lovey-dovey when facing each other, using words and gestures that projected a friendship based on the appreciation and admiration they had for each other when in reality, it was fear of the other that motivated them to put on such phony scenes. You would sense the extent of their phoniness when you saw them apart from each other, and witness them spew venom about the other in quantities that could fill the Grand Canyon.

 

It would have been nearly impossible at that time to convince anyone in Montreal or elsewhere that the love they were seeing envelop the two characters, was as real as a mirage produced in the desert on a hot Summer day. Well, my friend, that was then but things are different today because the truth about the loathing these two have for each other is getting harder to hide.

 

You’ll know why things are different today when you read the article that came under the title: “A Christmas crusade: scapegoating the Jews,” and the subtitle: “Anyone connected to reality would be perplexed by church leaders’ campaign to blame Israeli Jews for driving Christians out of Israel, as the country’s Christian population actually increased last year.” The article was written by Melanie Phillips and published on December 23, 2021 in Jewish News Syndicate.

 

The story is of the kind that would be circulated sotto voce because it criticized Israel at a time when doing so was a sacrilege that called for the immediate cancelation of the offender. But things are different now thanks to an internet that has allowed amateurs to act more professionally than the highly paid professionals who would rather kiss a rear-end than be kissed goodbye and be out of a job.

 

The truth is that the Jews are not only ethnic cleansing the country of Palestine which they stole lock, stock and barrel from its indigenous population, they have also been working on erasing the country’s Christian heritage by among other things, chasing away Christians of every ethnicity. They do so by physically attacking Christians, vandalizing their buildings and desecrating their monuments.

 

What was kept under wraps previously is now said openly by the priests, thus forcing the Jews of Israel and their mouthpieces in America to come out of their hiding places and howl their distress in unison. Rather than react the way that normal thieves do, which is to explain why they behaved the way they did, and ask for understanding as well as forgiveness, the Jews of Israel and their Anglo-American mouthpieces acted in the uniquely Jewish fashion of the Jew who insults the victim he just robbed. This is the mentality that Melanie Phillips contributed to the Jewish howling meant to respond to the complaints expressed by Christian leaders of the various churches in Jerusalem.

 

What is noteworthy about what Melanie Phillips did, is that she couched the latest verbal flare-up in the language of mutual hatred that has characterized the Christian-Jewish split over the past 2000 years. Here are examples of the language that she used:

 

“Christian churches mark Christmas 2021 by scapegoating the Jews. A preposterous campaign was mounted by church leaders to blame Israeli Jews for driving Christians out of Israel. This campaign is grotesque. More disturbing, as noted by Marie van der Zyl, was the archbishops’ reference to the Christmas story taking place against the backdrop of a genocide of infants. ‘I found this reference troubling, she wrote, ‘because of the linkage which could be made between Christianity, Jews and the killing of children in any current context.’ It’s more than just troubling. Not only does it slyly reinforce the blood libel that the IDF willfully slaughters Palestinian children, it continues to tap into the calumny of replacement theology, which has been revived within the church. This doctrine, responsible for the Christian pogroms against the Jews of Europe, held that the Christians had replaced the Jews in the eyes of God while the Jews had become the party of the devil. Today, this doctrine has been endorsed by many Western churches, claiming that the Palestinians have inherited the divine promise of the land of Israel. This has created absurdities and obscenities. The churches chose to scapegoat the Jews for crimes against Christianity, the myth fueling Christian antisemitism. Many are horrified by the venom of the churches towards Israel and the resurgence of theological Christian Jew-hatred. Little has changed for the church in its malice towards the Jewish people”.

 

That hate surfaces at Christmas time as noted by Melanie Phillips, and it is no accident. It is that before the Jews embraced what is a joyful season for the Christians, they used to treat as a calamity the birth of the “bastard” Jesus to the “whore” that was his mother. It was a calamity, said the Jews, because the misery that birth brought to them happened on that day.

 

But while Christmas was a day of mourning for the Jews, Good Friday was truly a good day for them because on that day, they would have wanted to be on location centuries ago, hammering the crown of thorns into the head of Jesus.

 

They would have danced in the street, even kissed a Christian.