Racial, religious, and ethnic bigotry, intrinsically, are not merely perceptual phenomena, founded upon unsophisticated experience or aesthetic predisposition; they constitute the existence of remorseless, cognitive predisposition and empirical aberration bordering on pathology. These traits, in our view, are initiated by insensitive early teaching and thereafter, submissive predisposition. Such malignity profoundly and gravely, encompasses social or anthropological perception and non-empirical, pre-judgments, often to the extent of the hatred of members of humankind who, by the vagaries of Nature, look dissimilar, or for cultural or ethnic reasons, live or believe differently from the observer.
The eternal outcome of the diverse facets of bigotry and prejudice has been its universal injurious impact on human life, blamelessly, suffered by its victims. Perverse racism, religious persecution, gender bias, ethnic and xenophobic hatred have constituted a shameful and atavistic blemish on the history of our purportedly, “advanced,” species of advanced “sentient” Homo sapiens.
We have selected, from the evidently, copious smorgasbord of hateful iterations of this human pathology, to comment on a specific brand of ancient bigotry, anti-Semitism, because of its contemporaneous pandemic-like outbreak and, its timeless and unique nuance.
The reader is presumably aware of the violent incursions into Israel, on October 7, 2023, by the Palestinian militant Islamist Group, Hamas. The attack was preceded by a barrage of upward of 3,000 rockets. Reportedly, in a single day, 859 Israeli citizens and 349 soldiers and police were killed; 250 hostages were taken, including children and the elderly. Hamas soldiers committed horrific and virtually unimaginable atrocities, including the torture and killing of parents in the presence of their later murdered young children, amputation, rape, burning people alive, and countless other unspeakable acts. According to their preconceived plan, they then retreated, with the hostages to their well-supplied, underground tunnels, strategically constructed, under hospitals and civilian centers. The result, as planned, was the tactical creation of an unavoidable necessity for retaliation for Hamas’ incursion and barbaric acts, to be visited upon the civilians, (human shields) living on the surface. Hamas, only too aware that it did not have the military capacity to achieve its goal of the obliteration of Israel, militarily, tactically conspired to thereby, turn World opinion against it for its predictable retaliation, meted out to the public by its created tactical necessity. Such a pernicious, evil, and pathological plot was successful. World opinion has (unjustly) denigrated Israel for its heartless retribution against innocent Gaza citizens, living (and dying) on the surface.
As shrewdly and perniciously planned, not only did World opinion accuse Israel of war crimes, but as has so often occurred in history, the ancient serpent of anti-Semitism emerged from its temporary pit, to again strike, indiscriminately, with its eternally-ready, ardent aggressiveness. Based upon the age-old (since the 4th Century, Holy Roman Empire) hatred, recent historical experience reliably demonstrates that when conflict erupts in Israel, anti-Semitic attacks, predictably, soon follow in the United States as well as on a global scale. A historically accurate observation can, be made that such consistent observation is motivated by innate and ignorant, reductive prejudice. Clearly, “Jews,” as an international World subculture are distinguishable from “Israelis;” however, anti-Semitism has always obstinately persisted, irrespective of empirical cause, or rationally, or as in this case, derivatively. Reportedly, this category of hatred has increased in our Nation by 400%.
Among European Nations, especially, there is an understandable great concern, fueled in great part by the tragic experience of Jews, before and during the Second World War. This is particularly evident in those individuals who may be only one or two generations removed from people who were victims of Nazi brutality. Hamas has awakened a temporarily dormant species of human hatred and fear.
We find especially concerning the pervasive anti-Semitism currently asserting its venom on college campuses. It has been revealed by The Anti-Defamation League that 73% of Jewish college students have experienced or witnessed some form of anti-Semitic act on campus. It may be observed, that classically, College students, have universally participated in violent acts of protests and insurrection; which, in our view are conceivably motivated by an effective combination of insufficiently acquired knowledge, or reductive thought, plus empirical “Sturm und Drang” of youthful, sophomoric outrage.
By the natural happenstance of birth we find ourselves included in the ethnic category of American Jews, and, at times, when we deem it appropriate, criticize Israeli policy, however, we oppose prejudice and reductive thinking in all its malign iterations on an eternal basis.
-p.
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