Is Antisemitism Part of The European DNA?
Q: Do you agree with Mark Levin and Josh Hamner that antisemitism is in European DNA? Wouldn’t that be considered hateful towards white people?
A: I do not agree with Mark Levin about that. I don’t think antisemitism can be literally passed down genetically from generation to generation. But I do believe that Jew-hatred has been around for a long time. Something really remarkable happened after the Second World War. After the Second World War, there was a sympathy for the Jewish people in the Western world that had not existed for a long time. People felt sorry for the Jews and for what they had gone through in the Second World War. Jew hatred receded like a tide for many decades after the Second World War, based on that very essential thought where people said, “Look at the terrible thing that happened to the Jewish people. We feel sorry for them, and we don’t want to see them exterminated as a people.”
It may very well be that we are returning to what can be called a “norm” historically, a time when there is more and more hostility towards the Jews. But friends, you should not take your attitude toward the Jewish people from social media, or commentators on television, or any popular video that’s making the rounds. You should take your attitude toward the Jewish people from the Bible.
The Bible says, in Romans 11, that even though the Jews could be considered enemies as far as the gospel is concerned, they are considered beloved by God for the sake of the fathers. God loves the Jewish people, and He loves them not because they’re the best or the most holy or the smartest or any other reason like that. God loves them because of the patriarchs, because of the fathers of that nation: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons. That’s something for us to consider. The Jewish people have a continuing role in God’s unfolding plan. Sometimes that role seemed like a blessing for the Jewish people, and sometimes it seemed like a great burden for them.
Our attitude towards the Jewish people must be taken from the Bible, not from culture, society, or guilt about human events, but from the Scriptures themselves. I think that will make us a people who are sympathetic to the Jewish people. That doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with everything that the State of Israel or the army of Israel does. No, of course not. Even when the nation of Israel was a theocratic nation in the Old Testament, they were not beyond rebuke. That fact remains true today. But in general, it is good for the Jewish people to survive, and if a nation helps them to survive, that’s a good thing.