Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019 - by Barry OshryIt’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. To really remember is too painful to tolerate. The absolutely mad mass murder of a people, regardless of age or sex or profession or even belief. Simply because they were Jews. Hate and kill. And here we are again, in the face of ignorance and stupidity. Hate the Jews. And why? They killed Jesus. They’re in a plot to control the world? They are more loyal to Israel than to their own country? Throughout the ages, people have found whatever ignorant belief allowed them to righteously hate the Jews. I have another explanation for this unrelenting hate that has persisted throughout the millennia; mine is a simple systemic explanation: They didn’t agree. The Jews didn’t agree that Jesus was the Messiah. They didn’t go along. To not go along not only makes you the hated outcast that must either be brought into the fold or expelled; but, at a deeper level, to dissent is to throw into question the validity of your own belief. So, if you can’t bring the dissenter into line, maintain the purity of your conviction by killing them. All of them. It is too horrible to consider.
It is Holocaust Remembrance Day. For those who continue the ugly passion of anti-Semitism, reflect not only on the disaster you are complicit in but on the depth of your own ignorance. Barry Oshry's author page |
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