Response to anti-Semitism: A strong Israel
Op-ed: ADL survey proves that while anti-Semitism is very common in Muslim countries, it originates in Christianity. There is only one way to fight it.
As a person who has been touring the world for about 60 years, mainly in order to tell the world about the Germans' acts against the Jews in the Third Reich, I am very familiar with the issue and of course very sensitive about it.
Anti-Semitism is of course widespread in very high numbers in the Arab countries in particular, and in the Muslim countries in general. As I have known for a long time now, the survey reveals that it is much more common in the devout Christian countries than in other countries in the West.
This proves that anti-Semitism originates in Christianity and in its attacks on the Jewish people since its foundation about 2,000 years ago.
"The traitorous and inferior people," the Catholic prayer books wrote about the Jews. And after such words, not a single statement by one pope or another that the Jews must not be accused of Jesus' crucifixion will do any good. Popes' visits to synagogues in Rome will not help soften these words either.
Nor will they convince the masses in eastern European countries or in central Europe – including the Hungarians, the Austrians and the Germans. They will remain anti-Semitic in any event no matter what.
This painful problem, this tradition of passing anti-Semitism from generation to generation, has no response other than a strong and steadfast Jewish state which is uncompromising and will always be a safe haven for the world's Jews.
It's possible that even the enemies of Judaism will eventually realize that their forefathers were wrong – although I am not at all certain that that will actually happen.
