Had you picked up any number of newspapers in May you would have seen headlines such as "BLOODBATH: Scores dead, thousands wounded as Israel fires on Palestinians protesting over Trump’s new embassy" [1] and “Mother’s agony as baby dies in Gaza gas horror.” [2]

You would have read, for example, that “the South African government condemns in the strongest terms possible the latest act of violent aggression carried out by Israeli armed forces along the Gaza border. Given the indiscriminate and grave manner of the latest Israeli attack, the South African government has taken a decision to recall [its ambassador] with immediate effect until further notice.” [3] You would have learned of the call by the UN secretary general for an “independent investigation” of the IDF for disproportionate casualties against peaceful civilians demonstrating for the right of Palestinians to return to their villages. [4]

You would not have known, unless you went to sources other than the mass media, that “The Great March of Return,” billed as a peaceful protest, was anything but peaceful. Gazan terrorists, under the leadership of Hamas, planned (under cover of tens of thousands of demonstrators, and billowing smoke from burning tires) to storm the border fence with Israel, breach it, and carry out massacres and abductions in nearby Israeli villages. [5] They had firearms, knives, and machetes, and had been given maps of neighboring villages. The protestors, who had been picked up and bussed to the site, were promised money for participating, and more if wounded. [6] They were incited by statements, like the head of the Hamas military wing Yahya Sinwar’s: “We will tear down the border, and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies... and eat the livers of Israelis.” [7]

When Israeli snipers were able to contain the rioters from breaking into Israel, the rioters added incendiary kites to their rocks and Molotov cocktails. These they launched over the fence to burn thousands of dunams of forest and farmland, causing millions of shekels of damage. [8] The only reason we now know that fifty of the sixty-two “demonstrators” killed on May 14 were terrorists is that Hamas official Salah Bardawil admitted so to answer the Gazans who were furious at being pushed toward the fence by Hamas while the terrorists stayed behind. [9] The papers didn’t retract their “baby dies in Gaza gas horror” headline, even though medical authorities later admitted that the baby was born with a life-threatening heart condition. [10]

You can expect that Israel will continue to be demonized and slandered by the mass media, world leaders, and institutions because of the spiritual powers that deceive and guide them. A glance at the history of the Jewish people will demonstrate how zealously Satan manufactures the most outlandish lies and calumnies against them. This is not to say that Jewish people do no wrong, but that there is a spiritual conspiracy at work to demonize them and inculcate people with ferocious, irrational hatred toward them.

Here are some examples from the Bible.

  • Pharaoh says of the children of Israel, who were such a blessing to Egypt, “If war breaks out, they [will] join our enemies and fight against us” (Exodus 1:10).
  • Although Israel was careful to conquer only the land of Canaan, the Moabites warned, “This horde will now lick up all that is around us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field” (Numbers 22:4).
  • Israel conquered none of the land of Ammon, yet their king made war against Israel, claiming, “Israel on coming up from Egypt took away my land” (Judges 11:13).
  • Although Cyrus, king of Persia, ordered the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the enemies of Israel wrote letters of complaint to Persia and also slandered Nehemiah, saying, “It is reported among the nations … that you and the Jews intend to rebel; that is why you are building the wall. And according to these reports you wish to become their king” (Nehemiah 6:6).
  • Because Mordechai would not bow to him, Haman plotted to annihilate all the Jews and approached the king with these words: “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom … they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not to the king’s profit to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed” (Esther 3:8).

We know that the early believers in Yeshua were accused of atheism and cannibalism by the Romans, [11] and that Emperor Nero viciously persecuted them under the false charge of burning Rome. Greco-Roman society often harbored anti-Semitic views, referencing their “base origin, misanthropy, superstition, impiety and sacrilege, and rebellious conspiracy nature.” [12]

The ancient Greeks believed that the Jews annually sacrificed a Greek, or other foreigner, to their God, and “tasted his flesh.”[13]

Satan used the church itself to slander the Jews. John Chrysostom, one of the early church fathers, wrote, “The synagogue is not only a whorehouse and a theatre; it is also a den of thieves & a haunt of wild animals … if a person call it a brothel today, or a criminal’s hangout, or a resort of demons, or a Citadel of the Devil … he would speak more kindly than the place deserves.” [14]

Jews were later accused by the church of sacrificing Christian children to use their blood in preparing the Passover Matzoh (Blood Libel) [15], stabbing or mistreating the transubstantiated body of Jesus used in the Eucharist service (Host Desecration) [16], poisoning wells to spread the Black Plague, and deicide. Even the great reformer Martin Luther turned on the Jews calling them “these poisonous envenomed worms” and advocated burning their schools and synagogues as well as confiscating their property and money. [17]

In modern times many patently absurd characterizations and slanders were directed against them from secular sources. After the 1905 Revolution in Russia the Czarist secret police began circulating The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This booklet, purported to be the minutes of a secret international meeting of Jewish leaders to take over the world, was found to be a forgery. Nevertheless, the Czarists, as well as the Nazis, used it to justify murdering Jews. [18] They have been accused of working for Germany to defeat France, and of causing the defeat of Germany. Jews have been stigmatized in capitalist societies as being Bolsheviks and Communists, while being accused by Communists of being capitalists, and blamed by others for controlling the world banking system.

Anti-Semitism in the Arab world has both denied that there was a Holocaust and at the same time characterized the Jewish State as being Nazis. [19, 20] They have appropriated the history of the Jewish people for themselves. The Holocaust is replaced by the Nakba; the genocide carried out by the Nazis has been repackaged as directed against the Palestinians; the Jewish Right of Return to Israel has become the Palestinian Right of Return; the racism perpetrated against the Jews throughout history has been changed to characterize Israel as an apartheid state. On June 8, Arabs prepared to march to the border “wearing clothing made to resemble uniforms worn by prisoners in concentration camps in the Holocaust,”[21] and attempted to cross over, as if breaking out of the death camps.

Satan has deceived the whole world in his efforts to isolate and annihilate God’s covenant people. As Paul urges in Romans 12:2, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” We must not rely on public opinion to form our worldview but rather renew our minds by seeing through the lens of Holy Scripture, which will dispel the lies of the enemy.

Footnotes:
  1. Daily Mail Australia, May 14, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/DailyMailAust/posts/2175067892728269
  2. Sunday Express, U.K., May 16, 2018, https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/960462/israel-gaza-killing-mother-dead-daughter
  3. City Press, May 15, 2018, https://city-press.news24.com/News/sa-recalls-ambassador-as-israeli-troops-kill-dozens-of-palestinians-20180515
  4. Times of Israel, March 31, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-chief-calls-for-independent-investigation-of-gaza-deaths/
  5. “In Context: The Recent Violence in Gaza,” AIPAC Memo, May 16, 2018, https://www.aipac.org/-/media/publications/policy-and-politics/aipac-analyses/issue-memos/2018/the-recent-violence-in-gaza.pdf
  6. Times of Israel, “Hamas pays families of Gazans killed in border clashes with Israel,” April 5, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-will-reportedly-pay-families-of-gazans-killed-in-israel-clashes/
  7. Arutz Sheva, “Is Israeli winning the battle but losing the war?” April 11, 2018, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21971
  8. Ha’aretz, May 29, 2018.
  9. National Review, May 16, 2018, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gaza-protests-50-hamas-terrorists-killed-israel-border/
  10. Arutz Sheva, “Gaza Baby likely died of pre-existing heart condition, not tear gas,” May 27, 2018, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/246525
  11. “Why Early Christians Were Despised,” https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1-300/why-early-christians-were-despised-11629610.html
  12. Arieh Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, J.C.B. Mohr Tuningen, 1985, 327.
  13. Bezalel Bar Kochvah, The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature, “The Hasmonean Period,” University of California Press, 2016, 266.
  14. John Chrysostom, Against the Jews. Homily 1.
  15. Encyclopedia Brittanica, “Blood Libel,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/blood-libel
  16. Wikipedia, “Host Desecration,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_desecration
  17. Wikipedia: “On the Jews and their Lies.”
  18. Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ldquo-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-rdquo
  19. Arutz Sheva, April 17, 2015, “Why does the Muslim World deny the Holocaust?” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194186
  20. Arutz Sheva, Nov. 10, 2013, “The Continuing Nazi Influence on Arabs Attitudes,” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14090
  21. Jerusalem Post, June 8, 2018, “Report: Gazans to Dress Like Concentration Camp Prisoners in Protest,” https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Report-Gazans-to-dress-like-concentration-camp-prisoners-in-protest-559441