Vicious Mutual Hate

"The LORD shall scatter thee among all peoples ... and among these nations shalt thou find no ease ... and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have none assurance of thy life" (Deut. 28:64-66).

This warning given by God to Israel through the prophet Moses has found tragic fulfilment across all the centuries of Israel's dispersion. Not all the time of course, for Jewish communities have thrived in many countries. Yet periodically there have been fresh outbursts of anti-Jewish feeling in confirmation of Moses' prophetic work.

From the Soviet Union today comes evidence of widespread hostility to Jews. It had lain dormant for many years, but seems to have been stirred up by a fascist4ype movement named "Pamyat". Those involved claim also to be members of the Orthodox Church. Stressing contrasts in belief between Christian and Jew, they urge Jews to "get going to Israel". Nor do they hesitate to threaten physical violence. As one sad result of this, Jewish believers in the Lord Jesus find it difficult to testify to fellow Jews. "As long as those Pamyat members call themselves Christians, the gospel has nothing to say to us" - an understandable reaction.

Official Soviet policy now allows Jews to emigrate, and thousands are taking this course to escape from antisemitism. At present the United States will admit only a limited quota of Soviet Jews each year. Some are fearful of going to Israel in view of the present situation in the Middle East. Last year East Germany opened its doors to Jews from Russia, and during the six months before reunification with West Germany 2,500 people had taken advantage of this. Ironically an advisory centre for Jewish immigrants was opened in a building which had been once used by Goebbel's propaganda ministry in Berlin! Since the unification of Germany the new regime's suggestion to limit the influx of Soviet Jews has met with strong protest. "There were no quotas when Germans gassed Jews", one protester argued, "and there should be no quotas now".

Following the Temple Mount casualties in Jerusalem last October, a West Bank Arab stabbed three Israelis to death in a quiet Jewish suburb. The intifadeh called for the liquidation of Jewish soldiers and settlers, and a

senior PLO official spoke of the new "war of daggers". The level of mistrust and fear between Arab and Jew in Israel rose to unprecedented levels.

About a month later Rabbi Meir Kahane was assassinated in a New York City hotel. It is said that he never expected to die peacefully. For he had spent his life advocating policies of violence and racial hatred, such as the mass expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. In New York he founded the Israel Defence League. Then in 1971 he moved to Israel and established the ultra-right Kach movement. In 1984 he was elected to the Knesset, but was barred from standing for re-election in 1988 on the ground that his movement was racist. His assassination by a man of Egyptian origin provoked immediate reaction in Israel. Two Arabs were shot dead by a Jewish settler. At Kahane's funeral in Jerusalem twenty thousand people joined the procession chanting "Death to the Arabs". As they swarmed through the city they searched markets and shops for Arabs, beating one man unconscious and injuring others. By his followers Kahane is seen as a martyr, and his vengeful influence lives on.

Against this background of escalating hatred we remember the Psalmist's call, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Ps. 122:6) - its very name meaning "foundation of peace". From the Mount of Olives Israel's Messiah rode according to Zechariah's prophetic word: "Thy King cometh unto thee:

He is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech. 9:9). "And when He drew nigh, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes" (Luke 19:4142). Doubtless the Lord had particularly in view the impending destruction of Jerusalem by Roman legions. But in omniscience He could also look down all the centuries to the present ominous Situation. Peace is still "hid from their eyes". The vicious circle of hatred points relentlessly towards the future time of Jacob's trouble. Of that time Jeremiah wrote: "We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace it is even the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer. 30:5,7). That fearful period already casts its sinister shadow across Israel and the Diaspora.

unknown | Apr 1991
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