Why the Jews? Quotes

“In short, had the antisemitism of Hitler and the Nazis been perceived (both by the New York Times and broad sections of the American and European public) to be the evil it was, and had Hitler and the Nazis, therefore, been perceived to be the evil they were, good nations would have then opposed Hitler earlier and saved not only six million Jews but tens of millions of others.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Though many moving individual instances of Poles risking their lives to save Jews are recorded, such as the seven Poles who smuggled arms into the Warsaw Ghetto and several thousand Poles who hid Jews, Poles overwhelmingly reacted to the Nazi genocide of the Jews with, at best, indifference, and often, support. Only with Polish cooperation could the Nazis have murdered over 90 percent of the more than three million Jews of Poland. And it was not coincidental that the major Nazi death camps were located in Poland.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“In Poland, with its history of antisemitism and its large Jewish population (10 percent of the population), the Germans were repeatedly aided in their program to murder all Polish Jews. When Poland became independent in 1919, the event was accompanied by a series of pogroms.III During the years between the wars, severe quotas were placed on Jews in universities, and discriminatory economic regulations impoverished many Jews.23 The record of Polish support for Nazi actions against the Jews is documented in many sources, nowhere more vividly than in The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Pierre Leroux, creator of the term “socialism,” identified the Jews with the despised capitalism, and regarded them as the incarnation of mammon, who lived by exploiting others.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Pierre Leroux, creator of the term “socialism,”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“The belief in Jewish world domination was spread during the twentieth century through The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and used by the Nazis as a justification for genocide. This mythical worldview was first introduced into the West’s consciousness not by racists, Fascists, or Nazis, but rather by socialists in nineteenth-century France.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Throughout”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“While the Holocaust took place in Christian Europe, Jews’ assessments of the Christian world must adapt to the contemporary reality. While never forgetting the past, Jews must recognize that major changes have taken place within all major branches of Christianity, and that American Christianity has no such history of antisemitism. While there are still Jew-haters in all branches of Christianity, particularly among the extreme Right and extreme Left in Europe and South America, there are now also many Christian philosemites. Jews must also recognize that in the contemporary world Christians, particularly in the United States, are often an ally, sometimes the most loyal ally, of Jews. Over the past century, Nazism, the Left, and Islam have replaced Christianity as the world’s foremost purveyors of antisemitism. Moreover, the ideals of both religions demand that Jews and Christians forge an alliance to “repair the world under the rule of God.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Christianity was in many ways more accessible to the pagan world. Christianity offered pagans not only the incorporeal God of the Jews, but also a god in human form who died and was resurrected. In addition, it announced the good news that the Messiah had come, whereas the Jews were still waiting for him. Christianity also dropped Jewish law, which had been a major obstacle to many prospective converts. The church adopted Paul’s position, as articulated in Romans 3:28, that now that Christ had come all God demanded was proper faith, and this faith ensured eternal salvation. Judaism, on the other hand, continued to demand adherence to its laws, and it focused much more on this world than on salvation.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“PHILOSTRATUS, A THIRD-CENTURY TEACHER AND RESIDENT of Athens and Rome, summarized the pagan world’s perception of the Jews: “For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasures of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separated from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Sura or Bactra of the more distant Indies.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Undeniably, economic factors can and often do exacerbate antisemitism, and often create crises in which antisemites may flourish. After all, such factors impinge on virtually all aspects of society, and when an economic crisis occurs, the resultant social upheaval may unleash many of the worst aspects of a society, among them Jew-hatred. But economic factors do not cause Jew-hatred; they only provide opportunities for it to be expressed. For one thing, there is little if any correlation between Jews’ wealth and antisemitism. Jews have often suffered the worst antisemitism when they were poor, as was true of the overwhelming majority of Jews in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Poland and Russia, and have encountered the least amount of antisemitism when affluent, as in the United States and Canada today. As regards attributing medieval antisemitism to the Jews’ role as moneylenders, this puts the cart before the horse. Because of Christian European antisemitism during the Middle Ages, Jews were often denied the right to practice professions other than moneylending. Jews were not hated because they lent money; they lent money because they were hated. Obviously, once Jews became moneylenders, Jew-hatred was exacerbated.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Hitler was so preoccupied with Jews that he withdrew troops and vehicles from the war fronts so that the killing of European Jewry would not slacken. The killing of millions of Jews itself proves that Hitler did not view the Jews as scapegoats. If the Jews had been only scapegoats, then why murder them? Why not, let us say, compel them to do forced labor? The Nazis ordered the overwhelming majority of Jews to be immediately murdered, and those who were used as slave labor were treated so abominably that most died within a few months. Antisemitism was not a vehicle for the Nazis; Nazism was a vehicle for antisemitism.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“The major fallacy of the scapegoat theory is not that Jews have not been used as scapegoats. They have. The problem with the scapegoat thesis is that it does not explain antisemitism. It only explains why, when, or how people use antisemitism—not why they are antisemitic. It does not even purport to answer the question, why, to begin with, do people hate Jews? What is it about this small group that enables so many people to believe the most horrible accusations leveled against them?”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Moreover, virtually everything these radicals claim to care about the most—women’s equality, tolerance, pluralism, gay rights, rights of the accused, freedom of speech—is honored in Israel and is essentially nonexistent among its Arab enemies. Obviously, then, morality does not move radical Jews (or non-Jews) to support Israel’s enemies. Which only reinforces our original question: why are there Jews who work toward another Holocaust? We believe that there are two primary answers. One is that radical Jews, like other radicals, have no roots. By and large, they have no national or religious identity, and they disdain Jews (and Americans) who do. The Übermensch, which is how they see themselves, rises above such parochial identities. While that explanation applies to radicals in general, there is another that is specific to the Jews who work to hurt Israel and Jewry. They likely believe (even if only subconsciously) that if they side with those who hate Jews, they will not be hated by them. To understand the Chomskys and the Finkelsteins, one has to appreciate how much Jews have been hurt by antisemites. The Jews have humanity’s longest history of being tortured and murdered, and this history has pathologically affected more than a few Jews. Finkelstein is a poignant example. As the child of two Holocaust survivors, he has almost surely been adversely affected psychologically by his parents’ experiences—just as most children of Holocaust survivors have been. In that sense, for survivors and their children, the Holocaust is far from over.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Moreover, virtually everything these radicals claim to care about the most—women’s equality, tolerance, pluralism, gay rights, rights of the accused, freedom of speech—is honored in Israel and is essentially nonexistent among its Arab enemies. Obviously, then, morality does not move radical Jews (or non-Jews) to support Israel’s enemies. Which only reinforces our original question: why are there Jews who work toward another Holocaust?”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“That Israel is one of the most decent democracies on earth, with one of the most elevated records on civil rights and liberties; that it offered those seeking its extermination a state of their own; that it is a tiny state engulfed in a massive sea of hatred; that its enemies have among the worst human rights records in the world—all this is ignored by radicals who loathe Israel.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“A reader of Noam Chomsky’s political writings would conclude that the world’s most evil nations are the United States and Israel. They are the target of nearly all his invective. For example, he has denied that Israel is a democracy or that it could even become one.22 Typical of his statements about the evil nature of America was his comment during the war in Vietnam that the U.S. Defense Department is “the most hideous institution on earth.”23 As regards the Jews and Zionism, Chomsky is so hate-filled that in 1980 he defended the publication of a book written by a French neo-Nazi who claimed that the Holocaust was a fiction made up by Zionists. Chomsky’s defense was subsequently published as the introduction to the book. He claims that he was merely defending the French professor’s academic freedom. But when Herbert Mitgang of the New York Times asked Chomsky to comment on the professor’s views, Chomsky noted that he had no views he wished to state. As Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic, has noted: “On the question, that is, as to whether or not six million Jews were murdered,Noam Chomsky apparently is an agnostic”24 (for a further analysis of Chomsky, and the phenomenon of Jewish antisemitism, see this chapter’s EPILOGUE: SELF-HATING JEWS: EXPLAINING JEWISH ANTISEMITISM).”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“In the 1930s and 1940s, non-Jewish Jews were among the leading pro-Soviet and anti-American agitators. During these two decades Jews constituted half of the membership of the American Communist Party.III Two alienated Jews, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were convicted in the early 1950s of helping to smuggle America’s atom bomb technology to Stalin. A study by Professor Joseph Adelson in the early 1960s of the relationship between political orientation and personal background among undergraduates at the University of Michigan revealed that 90 percent of radical students came from Jewish backgrounds.20 A national survey sponsored by the American Council of Education in 1966-67 revealed that the “best single predictor of campus protest was the presence of a substantial number of students from Jewish families.” In 1970, a Harris study showed that 23 percent of Jewish college students termed themselves “far Left” versus 4 percent of Protestants and 2 percent of Catholics.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Among non-Jewish Jews there have been some who, in addition to their alienation from Jewish roots, have not felt rooted in the non-Jewish society in which they lived. During the last century, some of these Jews have contributed to intense Jew-hatred. These are radical and revolutionary Jews. The reasons for the antisemitism they engender are unique. First, their challenges to non-Jews do not come from within Judaism. Second, they not only challenge the non-Jews’ values, but the non-Jews’ national and religious identity as well. Third, they are as opposed to Jews’ values and identity as to non-Jews’. Nevertheless, and unfortunately for other Jews, the behavior of these radical non-Jewish Jews is identified as Jewish. The association of Jews with revolutionary doctrines and social upheaval has not, unfortunately, been the product of antisemites’ imaginations. Marx, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rosa Luxemburg, Béla Kun, Mark Rudd, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin,William Kunstler, Norman G. Finkelstein, and Noam Chomsky are among the better known.2 The phenomenon of the highly disproportionate role played by Jews in radical causes often has been commented upon. As the social psychologist Ernest van den Haag noted, “although very few Jews are radicals, very many radicals are Jews: out of one hundred Jews five may be radicals, but out of ten radicals five are likely to be Jewish. Thus it is incorrect to say that a very great number of Jews are radicals but quite correct to say that a disproportionate number of radicals are Jews. This was so in the past, and it has not changed.”3 How are these Jewish radicals made and why do they cause antisemitism? The making of a Jewish radical is a complex social and psychological process but its essential elements can be discerned. First, these individuals have inherited a tradition of thousands of years of Jews challenging others’ values—though of course in the name of Judaism and ethical monotheism rather than radical secular ideologies. Non-Jewish Jews do not base their radical doctrines on the Jewish tradition; indeed, they usually denigrate it, but the tradition’s impact could not be avoided, only transformed.4 Second, radical non-Jewish Jews are rootless in that they do not feel rooted in either the Gentiles’ or the Jews’ religion or nation. They may very well have become revolutionaries precisely to overcome this root-lessness or alienation. Because they refuse to become like the non-Jews by identifying with the non-Jews’ religious or national identities, they seek to have non-Jews (and Jews) become like them, alienated from all religious or national identities. Only then, these revolutionaries believe, will they cease to feel alienated.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“The relative absence of poor Jews has led many non-Jews to believe all Jews have money. But Jews have simply aided their needy more than other groups have aided theirs. This pattern continues. To cite one large-scale example, between 1948 and 1951, Israel almost doubled its population by absorbing more than 500,000, largely penniless, Jewish refugees who had fled the Arab world. The 650,000 Jews of Israel, with help from Jews elsewhere, housed, clothed, fed, educated, and provided a livelihood for these Jews. In contrast, at the very same time, an equal number of Palestinian refugees were left in great poverty by all the Arab states, and this never changed, despite the enormous growth of Arab oil wealth. It was non-Arabs who have provided the large majority of the Arab refugees’ aid. Jews’ aid to other Jews has led to the anti-Jewish canard that “Jews only care for their own.” Aside from this being untrue, that is not the point. Those who make this charge are not so much complaining that “Jews only care for their own” as that “only Jews care for their own.” THE”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Almost every nation sees itself as special in some sense—from the Chinese, whose word for China is “center of the earth,” to the Americans and the belief, which we share, in being a “bright, shining light.” Many Christians believe that only Christians go to heaven, and Muslims see themselves as God’s messengers. Yet of all the world’s peoples, the Jews, with their doctrine of chosenness, elicit the sharpest attacks. This is yet another unique aspect of the unique phenomenon known as Jew-hatred.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“There is an additional reason Jewish chosenness should never be understood as a doctrine of racial superiority. By no accepted definition of either Jew or race are the Jews a race. The Jewish people is composed of members of every race; it is a nation defined by its religion, not its race. Hence, anyone, of any race or nationality, can become a Jew and thereby chosen.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Every nation is equal before God—“Are you not as the children of Ethiopia to me, children of Israel?” states the prophet Amos (9:7). God chose the Jews, “not because you are big; indeed you are of the smallest nations” (Deuteronomy 7:7), but simply because they are descendants of the first ethical monotheist, Abraham (Genesis 18:19). That is their single merit.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Jewish chosenness has always meant that Jews have believed themselves to be chosen by God to spread ethical monotheism to the world and to live as a moral “light unto the nations” (Isaiah 49:6). All other meanings imputed to Jewish chosenness are not Jewish. 8 The Hebrew Bible, where the concept originates, neither states nor implies that chosenness means Jewish superiority or privilege. The Bible repeatedly declares that the Jews were not chosen because of any intrinsically positive qualities.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“In America, according to a University of California Five-Year Study of Antisemitism in the United States, of the eighteen “potentially negative” beliefs Americans hold about Jews, the one with the widest acceptance (59 percent) is that “Jews still think of themselves as God’s chosen people.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“But, it is often asked, how would American Jews react if war broke out between the United States and Israel? In view of the fact that democracies do not go to war with one another, the only imaginable way in which the United States and Israel would find themselves at war would be if either country abandoned its democratic and other moral principles. In such an event, the individual, whether Jew, Christian, or atheist, would be obligated to follow the dictates of his moral values, which are (or should be) higher than all governments. Loyalty to any country should never mean supporting the country’s policies when they are morally wrong. But still, doesn’t the fact of Jewish nationhood mean that committed Jews are theoretically members of two peoples—the Jewish people and the people among whom they reside? Yes, and in this respect Jews are unique. But as long as moral rather than nationalist values are held supreme, this should trouble no one. An American Jew, for example, is no less loyal an American because he has a special attachment to Ethiopian Jews. But if this fact in and of itself should provoke certain individuals to antisemitism, that, as Jews have repeatedly seen, is the price a Jew pays when nationalism becomes a god.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Among the most ardent enemies of Judaism today is the Left. Marxists, for example, are theoretically opposed to all religions. But from Marxism’s earliest days, its adherents tended to be particularly anti-Jewish. Among other reasons: Judaism, unlike other religions, incorporates nationhood, while Marxist theory advocates the tearing down of national as well as religious allegiances. In practice, however, Marxist parties have been intensely nationalistic wherever they attained power, and the combination of chauvinistic nationalism with Marxist theory produced a particularly virulent strain of antisemitism. Neither could tolerate the Jews. Thus, for example, Soviet Jews who were committed to the God and Torah components of Judaism provoked antisemitism for Marxist reasons (quite aside from traditional Russian Orthodox antisemitism), while those who affirmed the national component of Judaism provoked Jew-hatred for Soviet nationalist (Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian, etc.) as well as Marxist reasons. Thus, Soviet antisemitism was a reaction to every component of Judaism.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“To non-Jews and even to many Jews, the peoplehood of the Jews is usually the most perplexing aspect of Judaism. This confusion is understandable. For one thing, one normally associates a national group with a land and a state, yet for nearly two thousand years the Jews lived without their state and most Jews lived outside their land. A second source of confusion is that the Jews constitute the only group in the modern Western world that is both an ethnic group and a religion. For both these reasons, Jews are unique, a uniqueness that often renders the Jews suspect in the eyes of others. But as perplexing, unique, and even discomfiting as it may be, the Jew is a member of both the Jewish people and the Jewish religion, and this has been so since the beginning of Jewish history. To deny that nationhood is a component of Judaism is as untenable as to deny that God or Torah are components of Judaism. This is particularly evident today, since Jewish nationhood is the one component of Judaism with which both religious and committed secular Jews identify.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“Until the modern era, Jews observed Jewish law, and this differentiated them from their non-Jewish neighbors and increased anti-Jewish sentiments. Even today when most Jews have ceased strictly observing Jewish law, thousands of years of observance continue to influence most Jews’ behavior. In general, Jews still have lower rates of intoxication and spouse beating, higher levels of education, greater professional success, commit much less violent crime, and engage in greater communal solidarity. All this has been due solely to millennia of adherence to Jewish law (see Chapter 4), and has provoked profoundly ambivalent reactions—from admiration, to envy, to hostility—from non-Jews.”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism

“From the time of their earliest writings, Jews have understood the separatist and challenging nature of their laws and the resentment they can engender. In the biblical book of Esther, the Persian king plans to destroy the Jews because they are “dispersed among the peoples in all provinces of [the] kingdom, and their laws are different from those of everybody else (Esther 3:8; emphasis ours).”
― Dennis Prager, Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism