By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
Without a doubt, there is today the broadest, most widespread, and perhaps the most virulent anti-Semitism the world has ever seen, according to an expert in the subject.
Bruce DeBoskey, director of the Mountain States regional office of the Anti-Defamation League in Denver, told a packed room of nearly 200 at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island how hatred toward Jews, often called “the longest hatred,” is really the result of beliefs that have been reinforced throughout history.
“Anti-Semitism: It’s Not a History Lesson: It’s a Current Event” was co-sponsored by the American Israel Political Action Committee, the American Jewish Committee, American Technion, the B’nai B’rith Evergreen Region, Hadassah, Hillel, the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
“I submit to you,” said DeBoskey, “that the threat of anti-Semitism in the world today is real, it is a menace, it has grown, and it has the potential to disrupt even our safe lives here in America in ways that we could never foresee.”
DeBoskey, who left behind a successful 25-year-long law career to work for the ADL, made his case using a historical timeline.
Starting with the story of Purim, and Haman’s decree to isolate and oppress the Jews of Persia, DeBoskey explained how Haman’s xenophobia — his fear of strangers — served as fertile ground upon which all other anti-Jewish beliefs blossomed.
But it is not until the Jews are blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus, he said, that Jewish hatred increased and continues to spread today, throughout the world.
“It is the story of the death of Jesus,” said DeBoskey, “when the responsibility for his death is shifted from the Romans to the Jews, that the Jews were forever to become a cursed people. For 2000 years, anti-Semitism has been fueled by four words — the Jews killed Christ.”
The opening of Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ, said Deboskey in an interview with The Transcript, will re-open this wound and have serious consequences.
“More people will see this story of the crucifixion in the next 70 days than in the whole of history,” said DeBoskey. “His vision is insensitive and in contrast to the teaching of the Catholic Church. It has the potential to cause more pain, more, hatred, more bigotry.”
Those words already showed themselves to be prophetic when on Feb. 25, the opening day of The Passion, a church in DeBoskey’s hometown of Denver posted the statement, “Jews killed the Lord Jesus” on its street sign. Though the Colorado Council of Churches and DeBoskey himself have protested and criticized the statement, the church’s pastor refused to take the sign down.
It is this charge of deicide, DeBoskey said, that caused further violence against Jews.
“During the Crusades, Jews were forbidden from owning land, engaging in commerce, traveling or joining guilds. They were forced to go into the only trade they were allowed — lending money.
“Charging interest had been named a sin by the Catholic Church,” added DeBoskey, “so by virtue of the very profession they were forced to undergo, they became blood-sucking, money-loving Jews.”
The Black Plague, he said, which wiped out almost a third of the population of Europe, was blamed on the Jews and fueled the belief that Jews are dirty. DeBoskey credited the rise of Nazism in the early 1900s for popularizing the belief that Jews are racially inferior.
And finally the allegation, he said, that there is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world was set forth in a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fictitious set of 24 separate plans said to be written at a secret meeting of Jewish world leaders, Jewish financiers and Jewish bankers and industrialists.
“Why is it that for 2000 years we have been the object of hate?” asked DeBoskey. “Because images and lies about Jews fed into a cultural belief that not only were we different, not only did we kill Christ, not only were we greedy but we engaged in bizarre and even in some ways demonic behavior that made us the object of scorn and make us a threat to other people.”
DeBoskey referred to mid-18th century cartoons depicting large, swarthy, beak-nosed Jews slitting the throats of defenseless Christian children and drinking their blood.
Some audience members sat silently stunned while others moaned in disgust.
“The blood libels of the Middle Ages became the popular belief throughout medieval Europe, despite proclamations from popes and princes that this was a false allegation,” said DeBoskey, referencing the persistent myth that Jews slaughter Christian children and use their blood in the baking of Passover matzoh.
DeBoskey showed a cartoon depicting a monstrously large head of Ariel Sharon devouring a cluster of Palestinian babies that he said was chosen Cartoon of the Year in Great Britain in December 2003.
“These images are 2,000 years old, but they have only been reinforced through time,” said DeBoskey.
Last month, the heads of the European Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress told a conference in Brussels that European Jews live in fear because of the rising tide of anti-Semitism on that continent.
The Community Security Trust, a United Kingdom Jewish organization that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, has reported the second-highest annual figure for anti-Semitic incidents in Britain since records began in 1984.
“The Jews in Europe are highly aware of what’s happening,” said DeBoskey told The Transcript, “but many Jews in this country have not recognized the potency. They are still feeling secure.”
Today, DeBoskey believes there is a “new anti-Semitism” directed towards Israel and “Zionist Jews” who are again believed to be responsible for all the evil in the world and therefore, do not deserve to exist and are legitimate targets.
“Israel is being held to a different standard than any other country on earth,” warned DeBoskey. “We as a people cannot afford to be silent. We cannot be complacent. Our only choice is to educate. Jews don’t have the luxury of leaving other people to shape the image of the Jews.”