Passover Reflections on Jewish, Islamic and American History
“No people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny,” Paul Johnson wrote in “A History of the Jews” (1987).
Reflecting on Passover, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that in retelling the saga of the exodus from Egypt, Jews commit themselves to a “momentous proposition: that history has meaning” and that “we are not condemned endlessly to repeat the tragedies of the past.” — William Galston, “When A Nation Loses Its Self-Confidence: Both America and Israel have both experienced a series of setbacks leading to self-doubt…As Lincoln remarked during the Civil War, the question isn’t whether God is on our side, but rather whether we are on God’s side.”
I do wonder if Israel is currently repeating the tragedies of the past.
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia Have Deep Roots in American History. Writers Seek to Counteract Bigotry
Given the unprecedented, staggering rise in anti-semitism and anti-Muslim behavior in the U.S. since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, historian and author Dan Gardner points out on his Substack that Henry Ford, inventor of the mass production assembly line technique and founder of Ford Motor Company, led a movement of anti-Semites in the early 1920s who blamed “international bankers,” ie Jews for the world’s problems.
“This was a time of international turmoil and increasingly extreme ideologies. It was a time of exploding extremism and nativism, anti-immigrant vitriol, and racist pogroms like the Oklahoma City massacre. It was a time when the economy was struggling. For millions of Americans, it was a time when it felt like the world they knew was falling apart. And Henry Ford was flicking lit matches at a gas pump,” Gardner wrote.
To counteract this racist invective, many prominent American leaders, including President Woodrow Wilson, published an open letter in The New York Times on January 17, 1921, deploring these sentiments and urging all Americans, especially Christians, to speak out against this propaganda. Click to read.
The signers are a veritable Who’s Who of prominent Americans at the time.
Addressing Islamophobia, Shadi Hamid, a Washington Post columnist, author, and research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary, points out that “cancel culture is back…Republican officials and right-wing commentators are working overtime to criminalize and punish pro-Palestinian speech they disagree with, indiscriminately charging anyone who is insufficiently supportive of Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism.” Read the article.