The world is a dangerous place for anyone who is Jewish. Both in Israel and in other nations of the world, simply being identified as a Jew—whether going to synagogue or a kosher market, wearing a yarmulke or other traditional clothing, or even having a name that sounds Jewish—can trigger a sudden and violent…and all too often deadly…attack.
The tragic and devastating murderous assault on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018 was sadly not an isolated incident. Instead, it was part of a tightly woven fabric of hatred and violence that circles the globe. There is no place on the planet where it is safe to go about daily life without concern for Jewish people. They live with a constant awareness of danger.
No people have ever been as plagued, pursued, pressured, and persecuted throughout history than the Jewish people. Many attempts at annihilation have been made, dating all the way back to Pharaoh in Egypt, but none have succeeded. That is because God has made an eternal promise which can never be broken. The Jewish people will always exist. The nation of Israel is the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. No scheme of man or human decree can undo what God has promised.
The Jewish people were conquered and scattered again and again…by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans who took Israel captive. Following the destruction of the Temple and one final revolt, the Romans dispersed the Jewish people throughout their empire and forbade them from living in the land of their ancestors. For hundreds of years, the Jewish people roamed the earth with no place to call home. They were discriminated against, persecuted, faced the Inquisition and the pogroms. But all those paled compared to the horror of the Holocaust.
During World War II. Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, declared the Jews were not the Chosen People, that the Aryan race was. He determined to resolve what he called the “Jewish problem,” and disseminated the belief that the Jewish people were responsible for anarchy, dishonesty, and the ruin of civilization, government, and finance. According to those so-called “learned men,” the purpose of the Jew was to completely weaken Germany and dilute the superior Aryan race. The mustachioed little man mesmerized his listeners with a gravelly, impassioned voice. Never mind that his speeches contained little of actual value. Near the end of 1921, he had come to be known as the der Führer (The Leader).
Though Hitler is long gone, the hatred remains. Today a demonic plan has been birthed in hell to destroy the nation of Israel, to literally bankrupt her and curse the nation. It is known as BDS: Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. It is all about money. The plan is to turn worldwide public opinion against Israel, to isolate the Jewish nation and turn it into a pariah state which no one will be willing to defend. It is a “Curse Israel” movement. And sadly, it is a fast-growing and very popular movement.
The BDS campaign officially started on July 9, 2005, when nearly 200 Palestinian organizations met together and called for a worldwide economic boycott to attempt to force concessions from Israel. The main stated goals of BDS are to end the Israeli “occupation” of the Bible lands of Judea and Samaria, and the so-called “right of return” for Palestinians into Israel.
The BDS campaign is founded on a lie. And while there are good and well-meaning people who have been deceived by that lie, it is also being used as cover by those who hate the Jewish people. While anti-Semitism is rampant in much of the world, it is still regarded as unacceptable in some quarters. So, the “collective Jew” of Israel replaces the individual Jew, and all of the hatred and contempt that must be concealed in polite company can be expressed under the cloak of BDS. These are the forces of hatred and bigotry against God’s Chosen People that we must resist. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past and ignore the threats until it is tragically too late.
