Mankind’s capacity for hatred never fails to impress me. It is the source for the evils of war, genocides, and the long litany of horrors. In the last century it manifested itself with the Armenian genocide by the Turks, the Holocaust by the Nazis, the inter-tribal massacres in Rwanda, and, of course, wherever you found communism, you found also the deaths of millions.
There has been a spate of articles regarding the rise of fascist groups in Europe and, in February, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the rise of anti-Semitism, calling it not only a threat to Jews, but to other religious minorities and the ideal of tolerance in general.
Anti-Semitism ranks among the world’s oldest hatreds. It is endemic to Islam, but the hatred of Christianity and all other religions is a pillar of faith in Islam whose “holy war” is contributing so much unrest in the world today. Islam’s earliest efforts to penetrate Europe were stopped in 732 at Poitiers, France and 1683 outside of Vienna. In 711, Muslims had invaded Spain and remained until they were driven out seven centuries later. The Crusades to redeem Jerusalem were conducted from 1095 to 1291.
The Jews have always been a minority. The best estimates are that there are about 13,800,000 Jews in the world today and reportedly their numbers are declining. It was big news in March when the Jewish population of Israel passed the symbolic six million mark that was set by the Holocaust that killed a comparable number in Europe during World War II.