Part 34 (1/2)

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors!... Wash your, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, etc.[820]

Thus even the Word of G.o.d itself is powerless to mitigate the immense megalomania of the Jewish race. It is doubtful indeed whether by the majority of Jews the Bible is now regarded as divinely inspired. ”The ten commandments which _we_ gave to mankind[821]” is a phrase typical of the manner in which Israel now arrogates to itself the sole authors.h.i.+p of the Scriptures. The deification of humanity by the Freemasons of the Grand Orient finds its counterpart in the deification of Israel by the modern Jew.

It is here that we must surely see the cause of much of the suffering the Jews have endured in the past. No one of course would justify the cruelty with which they have frequently been treated; nevertheless to maintain there was no provocation on the part of the Jews would be absurd. A race that has always considered itself ent.i.tled to occupy a privileged position amongst the nations of the world must inevitably meet with resentment, and in a primitive age or population resentment is apt to find a vent in violence shocking to the civilized mind. Moreover, to represent the Jews as a gentle long-suffering people, always the victims but never the perpetrators of violence, is absolutely contrary to historic fact. In the dark ages of the past the Jews showed themselves perfectly capable of cruelties not only towards other races but towards each other. One of the first pogroms recorded in the Christian era was carried out by the Jews themselves. The Jewish historian Josephus describes the reign of ”lawlessness and barbarity”

that was inaugurated about the middle of the first century A.D. by the band of a.s.sa.s.sins known as the Sicarii, who infested the country round Jerusalem and, by means of little daggers that they wore concealed beneath their garments, ”slew men in the daytime and in the midst of the city, especially at the festivals when they mixed with the mult.i.tude.”

During one night raid on the small town of Engaddi they ma.s.sacred more than seven hundred women and children.[822] And Josephus goes on to say:

Somehow, indeed, that was a time most fertile in all manner of wicked practices among the Jews, insomuch that no kind of villainy was then left undone; nor could anyone so much as devise any bad thing that was new if he wished. So deeply were they all infected, both privately and publicly, and vied with one another who should run the greatest lengths in impiety towards G.o.d, and in unjust actions towards their neighbours, men in power oppressing the mult.i.tude, and the mult.i.tude earnestly endeavouring to destroy men in power.[823]

It is futile then to maintain as do the Jews and their friends--for the pro-Jew is frequently _plus royaliste que le roi_--that all the faults of the modern Jew are to be attributed to bitterness engendered by persecution. Judaism has always contained an element of cruelty[824]

which finds expression in the Talmud. It is from the Talmud, not from the Mosaic law, that the inhuman methods of Jewish slaughtering are derived.[825] The Talmud likewise gives the most horrible directions for carrying out capital punishment, particularly with regard to women, by the methods of stoning, burning, choking, or slaying with the sword. The victim condemned to be burnt is to have a scarf wound round his neck, the two ends pulled tightly by the executioners whilst his mouth is forced open with pincers and a lighted string thrust into it ”so that it flows down through his inwards and shrinks his entrails.”[826]

It will be said that all this belongs to the past. True, the practice here described may be considered obsolete, but the spirit of cruelty and intolerance that dictated it is still alive. One has only to study the modern Jewish press to realize the persecution to which Jews are subjected from members of their own race should they infringe one fraction of the Jewish code.

If, then, ”the modern Jew is the product of the Talmud,” it is here that we must see the princ.i.p.al obstacle to Jewish progress. It is said that Isaac Disraeli, the father of Lord Beaconsfield, gave as his reason for withdrawing from the Synagogue that Rabbinical Judaism with its unyielding laws and fettering customs ”cuts off the Jews from the great family of mankind.”[827] Such a system is indeed absolutely incompatible not only with Christian teaching but with the secular ideas of Western civilization. The att.i.tude it adopts towards women would be in itself sufficient to justify this a.s.sertion. The Jewish daily prayer, ”Blessed be Thou, O Lord our G.o.d, King of the universe, that Thou has not made me a woman!”[828] is a ludicrous anachronism in the present age. According to the Talmud a service can take place in the Synagogue only if ten persons are present, which number ensures the presence of G.o.d in the a.s.sembly. Drach explains however that these persons must all be men. ”If then there were nine men and a million women there could be no a.s.sembly, for the reason that women are nothing. But there arrives [on the scene] only one small boy of thirteen years and a day, at once there can be a holy a.s.sembly and, according to our Doctors, it is permitted to G.o.d to be present[829].”

When therefore we say that we must respect the Jewish religion we cannot, if we know anything about it, mean that we respect that portion of it which is founded on the Rabbinical traditions of the Talmud and the Cabala, but only that ethical law set forth in the Old Testament, to which right-living Jews have faithfully adhered and which is largely in accord with Christian teaching.

Let us not forget that Rabbinical Judaism is the declared and implacable enemy of Christianity. Hatred of Christianity and of the person of Christ is not a matter of remote history, nor can it be regarded as the result of persecution; it forms an integral part of Rabbinical tradition which originated before any persecution of the Jews by Christians had taken place, and has continued in our country long after all such persecution has ended.

It is here that we cannot fail to detect the origin of much of that virulent anti-Christian teaching that is being disseminated in our midst to-day. This teaching will be observed to follow three lines, of which the course has been traced throughout this book. These consist in desecrating the Christian tradition by declaring that Christ was either (_a_) a myth, (_b_) a purely human teacher endowed with superior virtue and knowledge of natural laws, (_c_) a crazy fanatic[830] or a malefactor. The first two theories are, as we have seen, those held by secret societies; the last is essentially Jewish. It is true that there is now a movement amongst the more enlightened Jews to recognize Jesus as a great teacher; so far, unfortunately, this is met by bitter hostility from the rest, and in the current Jewish press contemptuous and even blasphemous references to Christ and the Christian faith frequently occur. The fact that here in England, for nearly three hundred years, the Jews have been allowed to dwell in peace and carry out their religious rites unmolested, that they have been admitted to society, to masonic lodges, and to all offices of State and have met with increasing tolerance and favour, has done nothing to moderate that hatred of Christianity inculcated throughout nineteen centuries of Rabbinical teaching. Thus, for example, under the heading of ”What Christianity has Meant,” we read in a modern Jewish periodical:

We are thinking of what Christianity as an inst.i.tution has meant to us Jews. The twenty centuries of its existence have been coeval with the long-drawn tragedy of the Jew's dispersal among the nations.... What kindliness and consideration we have received at the hands of Christianity has for the most part been tendered with the lure of the baptismal font. To the extent to which Christianity's embodiment, the Church, has been puissant has the Jewish tragedy deepened. Only when and where the Church has been weak has life been tolerable for the Jew.... Hatred of the Jew, anti-Jewish outbursts and anti-Semitic campaigns, are traceable to nothing so surely as to antipathy to the Jew which has been inbred by Christianity.... There is thus precious little about which the Jew has for rejoicing and gladness in the inst.i.tution of Christianity, etc.[831]

The most cursory study of history would reveal the falseness of this contention. Antipathy to the Jew began long before the Christian era; in Egypt, Persia, and Rome he became, whether just or not, the object of suspicion to rulers. The reason given by Pharaoh for oppressing the Israelites was that if they were allowed to grow too powerful they might join themselves to the enemy in time of war[832]; the Emperors of Rome regarded them as a turbulent element; Mohammed declared: ”Their aim will be to abet disorder on the earth, but G.o.d loveth not the abettors of disorder.”[833] Meanwhile, the antipathy shown by the ”people” in every country was mainly based on economic grounds. It was not simply the possession of wealth--which according to the Socialist creed should justify any amount of hatred--but the manner in which it was acquired and the arrogance with which it was displayed that roused popular feeling against the Jews. An Arab Fakih, Abu Ishak of Elvira, thus warned his master of the growing power of the Jews in Spain in the middle of the eleventh century A.D.:

The Jews, contemptible outcasts, have become great lords, and their pride and arrogance know no bounds.... Take not such men for thy ministers, but abandon them to curses, for the whole earth crieth out against them--ere long it will quake and we shall all perish.

Turn thine eyes to other lands and behold how the Jews are treated as dogs, and kept apart....

I came to Granada, and there I beheld the Jews reigning. They had parcelled out the provinces and the capital between them: everywhere one of these accursed ruled. They collected the taxes, they made good cheer, they were sumptuously clad, while your garments, O Moslems, were old and worn-out. All the secrets of state were known to them; yet is it folly to put trust in traitors!

While believers ate the bread of poverty, they dined delicately in the palace.... How can we thrive if we live in the shade and the Jews dazzle us with the glory of their pride?[834]

In mediaeval France the chief cause for complaint against the Jews is that of not working with their hands but of enriching themselves by ”excessive usury.” In the fifteenth century the Strasbourg preacher Geyler asks: ”Are the Jews above the Christians? Why will they not work with their hands?... practising usury is not working. It is exploiting others whilst remaining idle.”[835] Such quotations as these might be multiplied _ad infinitum_.

To attribute the persecution of the Jews to Christianity is therefore ludicrous. That in a less enlightened age the Church should have adopted rigorous measures--although no more rigorous than their own laws demanded--against those Jews who practised magic and witchcraft must appear deplorable to the modern mind, but so must many other phases of mediaeval life. Why then hark back perpetually to the past? If the Jews were persecuted in a less enlightened age, so were many other sections of the community. Catholics were persecuted, Protestants were persecuted, men were placed in the stocks for minor offences, scolding women were ducked in the village pond. But if all these cruelties of the dark ages are to be remembered and perpetuated on the plan of a tribal blood-feud, what peace can there be for the world? The disastrous results of this tendency were seen in the Irish Intellectuals, nourished from infancy on the story of Ireland's wrongs, who, instead of sanely facing present problems, unhinged their minds by brooding on historic grievances, thereby sealing their own doom and plunging their country into ruin. So, too, the enraged Feminists, harking back to injustices that had long ceased to exist, embittered their lives by proclaiming themselves the eternal enemies of Man. Emerson, the prophet of sanity, declared: ”The only ballast I know is a respect to the present hour.”

It is for lack of this ballast that the Jews have become victims of a fanaticism in which Christians from a mistaken idea of kindness have frequently encouraged them. In reality nothing is more cruel than to encourage in the minds of a nervous race the idea of persecution; true kindness to the Jews would consist in urging them to throw off memories of past martyrdom and to enter healthfully into the enjoyment of their present blessings, which are the direct outcome of Christian civilization.

Let us consider what Christianity has in reality done for the Jews. If so much is to be said about the persecutions they have endured, what of the extraordinary indulgence shown them as the result of Christian respect for the Bible? For hundreds of years Christian school children have been brought up on Old Testament history and Christian congregations have listened sympathetically to the story of Israel's sufferings and hopes of final restoration. All the support lent to Zionism arose from this tradition. Christianity, then, so reviled by the Jews, has been their greatest protection. If Christianity goes, the whole theory that the Jews were once the Chosen People goes with it as far as Gentiles are concerned, and the Jewish race, divested of its halo of divine favour, will have to be judged on its own merits.

In our own country, the Chosen People theory has in fact been carried to the point of superst.i.tion--a superst.i.tion immensely advantageous to the Jews--which consists in interpreting the pa.s.sage of Scripture containing the promise made to Abraham, ”I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curseth thee,” as meaning that favour shown to the Jews--who form merely a fraction of the seed of Abraham--brings with it peculiar blessings. In reality it would be easier to show by history that countries and rulers who have protected the Jews have frequently met with disaster. France banished the Jews in 1394 and again in 1615, and did not readmit them in large numbers till 1715-19, so that they were absent throughout the most glorious period in French history--the _Grand Siecle_ of Louis XIV--whilst their return coincided with the Regency, from which moment the monarchy of France may be said to have declined. England likewise banished the Jews in 1290, and it was during the three and a half centuries they remained in exile that she was known as ”Merrie England.” The fact that their return in force in 1664 was followed the next year by the Great Plague and the year after by the Great Fire of London would not appear to indicate that the Jews necessarily bring good fortune to the land that protects them. The truth is, of course, that kindness to any portion of the human race brings its own reward in the form of moral improvement in the individual or nation that performs it, but no more benefit attaches to philanthropy when exercised towards the Jew than towards the Chinaman.

I would urge, then, that the Jewish problem should be approached neither in the spirit of superst.i.tious pro-Semitism nor in the bitter spirit of ”anti-Semitism,” but with a sanity worthy of an enlightened age. To quote again the words of Bernard Lazare, let us enquire what part ”the Jew, considering his spirit, his character, the nature of his philosophy and his religion,” may now be taking ”in revolutionary processes and movements.” Is there, then, any evidence that there exists amongst Jewry to-day an organized conspiracy having for its objects world-domination and the destruction of Christianity such as the famous _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_ suggest?[836]

The theory of a Jewish world-conspiracy does not, of course, rest on the evidence of Protocols. To judge by the paeans of joy that rang through the press after the publication of the _Times_ articles, one would imagine that with the so-called ”refutation” of this one doc.u.ment the whole case against the Jews had collapsed and that the ”anti-Semites”

must be for ever silenced. But the arguments of the Jews and their friends go further than this; not only do they claim that there is no Jewish conspiracy, but no world-plot of any kind. This contention they had indeed maintained from the beginning, and Mr. Lucien Wolf, in his earliest ”refutation” of the Protocols, derided the exponents of the secret-society danger as vehemently as he derided the perfidious author of the Jewish Peril. It will in fact always be noticed that references to the Illuminati meet with almost as much resentment from the Jewish press as allusions of a directly ”anti-Semitic” character. Barruel, who refused to incriminate the Jews, and de Malet, who never referred to them at all, are denounced by Mr. Lucien Wolf no less as scaremongers than Gougenot des Mousseaux or Chabauty. To suggest that any Hidden Hand has ever been at work in the world is to raise immediately a storm of Jewish protest.

Yet intelligent Jews must be well aware that, whether secret societies have contributed as much to past revolutions as these writers believed, their existence and their very real influence is not a matter of surmise but of historical fact. No one ever warned the British public more distinctly of the danger they presented or of the role the Jews were playing in them than Disraeli, whose famous words have been quoted so frequently in this connexion: ”The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” What is this but a clear recognition of the Hidden Hand? Why, then, is Disraeli not included with Barruel, Robison, de Malet, and Des Mousseaux in Mr. Wolf's list of scaremongers? Is it because Disraeli pointed the moral that, Jews being so dangerous, they should be employed?