n the words of a former president of South Africa, “Listen carefully!”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (of blessed memory) recognised the new face of anti-Semitism years ago. In a speech to the EU parliament in 2016 he said:
“Anti-Semitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. It takes different forms in different ages. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and early 20th century they were hated because of their race.
“Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel. It takes different forms but it remains the same thing: the view that Jews have no right to exist as free and equal human beings.”
He likened anti-Semitism to a mutating virus, and this was before the 2020 Covid pandemic that made us all armchair experts overnight. Sacks said:
“Throughout history, when people have sought to justify anti-Semitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority available within the culture. In the Middle Ages, it was religion. So we had religious anti-Judaism.
“In post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. So we had the twin foundations of Nazi ideology, Social Darwinism and the so-called Scientific Study of Race.
“Today the highest source of authority worldwide is human rights. That is why Israel — the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary — is regularly accused of the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.”
The recent massacre of Jews by Hamas in Israel has revealed to us the face of this anti-Semitism in our government leaders and many church leaders, both in what they have said, justifying the actions of Hamas as a liberation struggle, and by what has been left unsaid, the silences.
This was to be expected from a ruling government who themselves supported an armed liberation struggle that targeted not only security forces but also ended up killing civilians. According to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission report published in 2003, “the majority of casualties of MK operations were civilians”.
But what about the response of church leaders?
A central tenet of the Christian faith is that one new man (or one new humanity) has been achieved in Jesus Christ, that the old creation has gone, and all things have become new. That’s the claim, anyway.
In the name of this new humanity, and in the name of human rights, the church has been outspoken and taken a vocal public stand against the rape of women, the murder of children and the abuse of the elderly.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, in particular, calls its members to observe Thursdays in Black, arguing that (and I quote from the Thursdays in Black movement) “we all have a responsibility to speak out against violence, to ensure that women and men, boys and girls, are safe from rape and violence in homes, schools, work, streets — in all places in our societies”.
Furthermore, the Anglican church has gone out of its way to set up safeguarding policies, protocols and commissions to ensure that its own members are safe and secure.
Yet what was the response when Hamas raped Jewish women, murdered Jewish children and abused Jewish elders? Mostly silence, a few vigils for the Palestinian cause, some generalised prayers for peace and plenty of qualified fence-sitting statements that never mentioned Hamas, let alone condemned Hamas.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa was not alone. In effect, what many church leaders seem to be saying, by what they’re not saying, is:
The rape of women is wrong, except if you’re a Jewish woman.
The murder of children is wrong, except if you’re a Jewish child.
The abuse of the elderly is wrong, except if you’re a Jewish elder.
The blaming of the victims for the crimes perpetrated against them would not be tolerated by the #MeToo movement or by Thursdays in Black advocacy or by a Safe Church Commission. This is exceptionalism. This exceptionalism has a name. It is called anti-Semitism.
Throughout history, prominent church leaders have been the incarnation of the anti-Semitism of that age, preaching it in the Middle Ages, theologising away Jesus’s Jewishness under Nazism and ignoring Hamas in their liberation struggle narratives while also remaining silent about the rise of blatant anti-Semitism around the world.
Since the Sukkot massacre in Israel on 7 October, Jews have been subject to a marked and sudden rise in anti-semitic incidents on the streets of London, Manchester, Berlin, New York and elsewhere. The number of anti-Semitic posts online has surged by 1 200%. Jews are being subjected to horrendous verbal abuse, vandalism of property — and even physical attack.
Each new epoch of anti-Semitism builds on the old. We hear echoes of 20th century anti-Semitism when a “race” narrative is advanced to explain the conflict in Israel as being a liberation struggle against white colonial oppressors, only this time Jews are not the antipathy of a particular form of whiteness (which Nazis believed) but have come to embody whiteness.
But even older echoes are heard. The Blood Libel accusation is one of the most ancient and enduring forms of anti-Semitism. The accusation first arose in the 12th century, alleging that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. Despite these allegations being baseless, Jews were killed in retaliatory riots.
When the Black Death swept Europe in the 14th century, killing an estimated 25 million to 50 million people, Jews were accused of poisoning wells to kill Christians. The reality was that the bubonic plague killed people irrespective of their religion, including Jews. Nevertheless, Jews were killed in retaliation.
Read it all in the Mail & Guardian
Reverend Canon Peter Houston is a senior Anglican priest and canon theologian in the Diocese of Natal. He has an academic interest in church history, especially as it pertains to Christian anti-Semitism.
