The following essay has been circulating on the internet for many years (under the title Why They Hate Us in The Hague) without acknowledgement of its source. We reproduce it with some minor changes.
Every so often we hear again about increasing hatred against the Jews. The so-called World Conferences against Racism in Durban have all turned into hotbeds of anti-Semitism. Annual rallies signaling “Apartheid week” against the State of Israel are common occurrences at university campuses across the United States, and many more are to come. Attempts to stop anti-Semitism have, for the most part, proved ineffectual, and we still have a long way to go.
Nevertheless, many gentiles are our best friends and we should not forget this.
Here are some quotes by Gentiles of international repute, who fell in love with the Jews and Judaism. Let us not forget!
1. Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world. (1)
Winston Churchill (British politician and statesman; former Prime Minister of Great Britain)
2. The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions. (2)
Leo Tolstoy (Russian writer)
3. It was in vain that we locked them up for several hundred years behind the walls of the Ghetto; no sooner were their prison gates unbarred than they easily caught up with us, even on those paths which we had opened up without their aid. (3)
Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (French publicist and historian)
4. The Jews gave us the Outside and the Inside – our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact – new, adventure, surprise; unique, individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice – are the gifts of the Jews. (4)
Thomas Cahill (American scholar and writer)
5. One of the gifts of the Jewish culture to Christianity is that it has taught Christians to think like Jews, and any modern man who has not learned to think as though he were a Jew can hardly be said to have learned to think at all. (5)
William Rees-Mogg (English journalist)
6. It is certain that in certain parts of the world we can see a peculiar people, separated from the other peoples of the world and this is called the Jewish people…. This people is not only of remarkable antiquity but has also lasted for a singular long time… For whereas the people of Greece and Italy, of Sparta, Athens and Rome and others who came so much later have perished so long ago, these still exist, despite the efforts of so many powerful kings who have tried a hundred times to wipe them out, as their historians testify, and as can easily be judged by the natural order of things over such a long spell of years. They have always been preserved, however, and their preservation was foretold… My encounter with this people amazes me… (6)
Blaise Pascal (French mathematician, physicist and writer)
7. The Jewish vision became the prototype for many similar grand designs for humanity, both divine and man-made. The Jews, therefore, stand at the center of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose. (7)
Paul Johnson (English journalist, historian and author)
8. As long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest. (8)
Matthew Arnold, (British poet and cultural critic)
9. The study of history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one uniform lesson: That the nations which received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have tortured and oppressed him have written out their own curse. (9)
Olive Schreiner (South African novelist)
10. If there is any honour in all the world that I should like, it would be to be an honorary Jewish citizen. (10)
A. L. Rowse (British historian)
*****
Indeed, these and many more powerful remarks remind us why we Jews should be proud and why we still have many special friends. Above all, it is a strong reminder of why we are indispensable in this troublesome world.
No doubt, it is difficult for some people to live in the presence of Jews. We are irritating and make them feel uncomfortable. They consider us an embarrassment to the world, as we have done things that are beyond the imaginable. Jews are seen as moral strangers since the day our forefather Abraham introduced the world to high ethical standards and the awe of Heaven. We brought the world the Ten Commandments, which many people prefer to defy.
Moreover, Jews have violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common sense and historical evidence. We have outlived all our enemies, including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks.
We angered the world when we returned to our homeland after 2000 years of exile and following the murder of six million of our brothers and sisters in the Holocaust. We aggravated mankind by building, in the blink of an eye, a democratic state that others were unable to create in hundreds of years.
Jews built living monuments such as the duty to be holy and the privilege to serve one’s fellow men. In total disproportion to our actual numbers, no nation has been as involved as the Jews in every aspect of human progressive endeavor, whether in science, medicine, psychology or any other discipline. No nation has given the world a moral guide as powerful as the Bible.
Jews have taught not to accept the world as is but to transform it. Yet only a few nations wanted to listen. Moreover, we introduced the world to one God, yet only a minority wanted to draw the moral conclusions. Many anti-Semites realize they are lost without the Jews. And while their subconscious tries to remind them how much of Western civilization is framed in terms of concepts first articulated by the Jews, they do anything to suppress it. The fact that we remind them of a higher purpose in life, and the need to be honorable, is too much to bear, and they will do anything to escape its consequences. It is simply too much to handle; too embarrassing to admit; too difficult to live by.
As a result, large amounts of people, including some powerful nations, decided once again to go out of their way and find a stick to hit the Jews. Their goal? To prove that Jews are as immoral and guilty of massacre and genocide as some of them are; to hide and justify their own failure to protest, condemn, and actually do something when six million Jews were brought to the slaughterhouses of Auschwitz and Dachau; to wipe out their moral conscience, of which the Jews are a constant reminder. And indeed, they found a stick.
Nothing could be more gratifying than to find us in a struggle with another people –completely terrorized by their own leaders – against whom we are forced to defend ourselves in order to survive. With great satisfaction, the world not only allows but initiates the rewriting of history so as to fuel the rage of yet another people against the Jews. This despite the fact that the nations understand very well that peace between the parties could have come long ago, if only they would have given the Jews a fair chance. Instead, they happily jumped on the bandwagon of hate to justify their jealousy of us and their incompetence in dealing with their own moral issues.
When we Jews look at the bizarre activities on University campuses we simultaneously smile and cry, as this artificial game once more proves how the world paradoxically admits the Jews’ uniqueness. In their obsession to undermine us, they actually bolster us.
The Jews’ greatest problem is not continuity but making sure that we advance Judaism’s great teachings. Our destiny is to aid and to serve, beyond the possible. Our existence is a protest against despair. We must be overwhelmed by our uniqueness, so as to be humble, and triumph for the sake of others. We must ask ourselves why we are prepared to endure anti-Semitism. We pay a heavy price to be Jews. What keeps us on our feet is the knowledge that we are indispensable. To believe that we are superfluous is a betrayal.
*****
(1) “Zionism versus Bolshevism,” Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920, page 5.
(2) Quoted by Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, A book of Jewish Thoughts, Oxford University Press, 1966, p.135.
(3) Israel among the Nations: A Study of the Jews and Antisemitism, Ayer Publishing, 1904, p. 174.
(4) The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, New York: Doubleday, 1998, p. 240-41.
(5) “The Times of London,” quoted by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Radical Then, Radical Now, HarperCollins, London, 2001, p.4. The same book was published in the USA as A Letter in the Scroll, by The Free Press, New York, in 2000.)
(6) Pensées, tr. by A.J. Krailsheimer, Harmondsworth, England, Penguin Books, 1968. P.176-177.
(7) A history of the Jews, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987.p.2.
(8) Literature and Dogma, London: Smith Elder & Co, 1876. P.58.
(9) Quoted by Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, Ibid, p. 180.
(10) Historians I have known, Duckworth, London, 1995. Quoted by Jonathan Sacks, A Letter in the Scroll, p 47.
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