Has The Modern State Of Israel Solved The Jewish Question?

By Mike Stallard

[Seminary Dean, Professor of Systematic Theology, Baptist Bible Seminary, Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania]

Introduction

Sometimes, the obvious truth needs to be said out loud once again. Political and theological shackles sometimes cloud one’s observations in a direction that is untenable and at times shocking. With this in mind, this article seeks to highlight the details of the “New Anti-Semitism” primarily for conservative, Bible-believing Christians who need to be aware of these developments. The truth lies before the world in almost every newspaper issue as the current political nation of Israel is attacked from all sides. Revealing the facts honors those who are persecuted.

Perspectives On The Jewish Question

Theodore Herzl And The Modern Zionist Movement

Just what is the “Jewish Question”? In 1896 Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, couched the definition in terms of persecution:

The Jewish question still exists. It would be foolish to deny it. It is a remnant of the Middle Ages which civilized nations do not even yet seem able to shake off, try as they will. They certainly showed a generous desire to do so when they emancipated us. The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.[1]

Later Herzl goes on to describe the conundrum in even starker terms:

Everything tends, in fact, to one and the same conclusion, which is clearly enunciated in that classic Berlin phrase: “Juden Raus” (Out with the Jews!)

[S]hall [sic] now put the Question in the briefest possible form: Are we to ‘get out’ now and where to?

Or, may we yet remain? And, how long?”[2]

Herzl’s analysis revolves around the dilemma of assimilation. If Jews kept their unique customs and emphasized their ethnic identity, they were persecuted. If Jews tried to assimilate to the cultures around them, they were persecuted. What way existed to move out of the circle of discrimination? In essence, from this point of view, the Jewish Question is primarily anti-Semitism.

Herzl’s proposed solution is that Jews must have their own political state and national existence. He naively believed this would end most, if not all, anti-Semitism: “But the Jews, once settled in their own State, would probably have no more enemies. As for those who remain behind, since prosperity enfeebles and causes them to diminish, they would soon disappear altogether.”[3] A cursory look at the current geo-political state of affairs in the Middle East shows glaringly that these early hopes of the modern Zionist movement have not been realized.

Adolph Hitler And The Final Solution

Hitler’s Nazi Germany remains in Western culture, and perhaps the whole world, the premier example of governmental brutality and genocide. The reputation is overwhelmingly deserved so that Hitler becomes the “whipping boy” or “by-word” that is invoked when various proponents want to put down their enemies through a guilt-by-association argument. Relative to the Jews in Europe, Hitler’s view is the exact opposite of what Herzl understands. Herzl looked at what others were doing to Jews. Hitler looked at what he thought Jews were doing to the nations in general and to Germany in particular. In perhaps the most explicit reference to the “Jewish Problem,” Hitler addresses the Jewish Question in a political speech in January 1939:

And one other thing I wish to say on this day which perhaps is memorable not only for us Germans: In my life I have often been a prophet, and most of the time I have been laughed at. During the period of my struggle for power, it was in the first instance the Jewish people that received with laughter my prophecies that someday I would take over the leadership of the state and thereby of the whole people, and that I would among other things solve also the Jewish problem. I believe that in the meantime that hyenous laughter of the Jews of Germany has been smothered in their throats. Today I want to be a prophet once more: If international-finance Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe (emphasis added).[4]

Thus, Hitler believed the essence of the Jewish problem was Jewish influence over the finances of the world. Beyond that he saw Jewish influence and leadership in the rise of communism. The answer to this “Jewish Problem” was clear—the final solution could only be found in the destruction of the Jewish people.

One cannot relegate such thinking by Hitler to bombastic political jargon gearing up the nation for war in 1939. In Mein Kampf (1925), the future Führer sets his eyes on the extermination of the Jewish people at the outset. He comments,

The folkish state, a general picture of which I have attempted to draw in broad outlines, will not be realized by the mere knowledge of what is necessary to this state. It is not enough to know how a folkish state should look. Far more important is the program for its creation. We may not expect the present parties, which after all are primarily beneficiaries of the present state, to arrive of their own accord at a change of orientation and of their own free will to modify their present attitude. What makes this all the more impossible is that their real leading elements are always Jews and only Jews. And the development we are going through today, if continued unobstructed, would fulfill the Jewish prophecy—the Jew would really devour the peoples of the earth, would become their master.[5]

It is not clear whether Hitler’s understanding of Jewish prophecy is talking about Bible passages or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[6] Either way he sees the Jews as attempting to force their will upon the peoples of the world. His solution to this problem is to eliminate them. He goes on to add, “For it will take a struggle, in view of the fact that the first task is not creation of a folkish state conception, but above all elimination of the existing Jewish one.”[7]

Hitler’s views never diminished over time. The day before his suicide in his Berlin bunker, he wrote a final political testament to his belief, a kind of letter left for the German people:

It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted the war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or worked for Jewish interests.…Centuries will pass away, but out of the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred against those finally responsible, whom we have to thank for everything, international Jewry and its helpers, will grow….

Moreover, I do not wish to fall into the hands of the enemy who requires a new spectacle organized by the Jews for the amusement of their hysterical masses.

I have decided therefore to remain in Berlin and there of my own free will to choose death at the moment when I believe the position of the Führer and Chancellor itself can no longer be held.[8]

To the bitter end, Hitler fanatically believed against all evidence that the Jewish Question was the problem that the Jews caused the world through their domination of it. Thus his struggle was against the Jews. Herzl would have been mystified having witnessed the massive persecution of the Jews in his day; he saw the problem as the refusal of other peoples to respect the Jews as equal people. In all of this, the thoughtful Christian with his Bible in his hand might suspect the satanic designer behind the curtain.

David Baron

Although Herzl’s position is to be respected in spite of its naiveté and Hitler’s approach is to be despised for its utter lack of human decency, the presentation of David Baron strikes a chord of biblical delight. Baron was a Jew converted to the Christian faith who was also a contemporary of Herzl. At least six years before Herzl writes The Jewish State, Baron speaks at the summer Bible conferences common at Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1890.[9] In response to a request he writes down one of his messages, which is published in book form under the title The Jewish Problem: Its Solution.[10]

For Baron the “Jewish Question” is the sad condition of the Jews currently scattered among the Gentile nations (the Diaspora). Remember that there is no national Israel when his book was published. However, at the outset of the first chapter entitled “The Jewish Problem,” Baron frames the question in terms of the lack of a national restoration which has been predicted in Scripture. In dealing with hermeneutics, he correctly rejects interpretations of this restoration of Israel that either affirm the church takes over the promises in an allegorical or spiritualized way or that the restoration simply means the future coming of the Jews into the church.[11] The only accurate conclusion that is possible is that Israel will yet be restored to its land; the Jews will have a homeland. The God who scattered the nation will bring them back to the land, and they shall have their nation again (Jer 31:7–10).

The solution for Baron is a biblical resolution. The “Jewish Problem” of scattered Jews will be ended when the Messiah Jesus returns to set up his kingdom. The “iron yoke of Gentile oppression was not to last forever.”[12] There is to be a future and final gathering or re-gathering of the Jews to their homeland in Palestine. With carefully crafted wording, Baron notes what many sensationalists have unfortunately left unsaid since the formation of the modern state of Israel in 1948: “Now, supposing that since these inspired announcements by Amos and Jeremiah there had already taken place a hundred dispersions and a hundred restorations, we would still be justified in believing in yet another gathering, after which there should be no more scattering.”[13] Thus, while the ongoing nature of Israel’s possession of the land is a question mark, when Messiah returns, the ultimate national restoration will begin under His watchful care. To be sure, Baron acknowledges in much detail that the Jews will experience the greatest of persecutions when the tribulation period comes.[14] Nonetheless, the ultimate end of the converted nation is secure as promised by God, who will solve the Jewish question of history.

The Unloving Scourge Of Anti-Semitism In Christendom

What is unfailingly true is that the Jews scattered throughout the world since the earliest days of the church have suffered and continue to suffer great persecution from those who dislike them including professing Christians. The hateful focus on the Jews at times has a surreal quality. Hence, the inclusion of Christians in the list of persecutors is unsettling for those who accept the concept of Christian love taught by Jesus and the future of national Israel as given by the prophets and the apostles.

Early Church

As early as Ignatius, the notion of the Jews as the “Christ-killers” was presented. Rausch reports that on “his way to martyrdom by the Romans in the early second century, Ignatius, the famed Bishop of Antioch, claimed that Satan ‘fights along with the Jews to a denial of the cross’ and ‘if any one celebrates the Passover along with the Jews, or receives emblems of their feast, he is a partaker with those that killed the Lord and His apostles.’”[15] Ambrose, influencer of Augustine, complains about the building of a synagogue under government sponsorship. He shockingly admits, “I declare that I set fire to the synagogue, or at least that I ordered those who did it, that there might not be a place where Christ was denied.”[16]

In the early church, perhaps the most heinous anti-Semitic comments are found in the sermons of John Chrysostom. In a series of sermons entitled Eight Orations Against Judaizing Christians (387–388), the preacher strongly exhorts his congregation with anti-Jewish rhetoric:

What is this disease? The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts. There are many in our ranks who say they think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now .... But now that the Jewish festivals are close by and at the very door, if I should fail to cure those who are sick with the Judaizing disease. I am afraid that, because of their ill-suited association and deep ignorance, some Christians may partake in the Jews’ transgressions; once they have done so, I fear my homilies on these transgressions will be in vain. For if they hear no word from me today, they will then join the Jews in their fasts; once they have committed this sin it will be useless for me to apply the remedy.[17]

In even stronger language, Chrysostom goes on to add: “But the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theater; it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts…But when God forsakes a people, what hope of salvation is left? When God forsakes a place, that place becomes the dwelling of demons.”[18] It is hard to imagine any more antagonistic language. While describing the Jews and their religious practices in the most degrading ways, the famous preacher concludes they have no hope and are seemingly controlled by Satan. The words of those such as Ignatius, Ambrose, and Chrysostom could be multiplied many times over in the Christian literature of the past.

Middle Ages

Rausch makes the astonishing (but generally accurate) claim, “So horrid was the persecution by Christian Byzantines that the Jewish communities welcomed the rise of Islam in the seventh century and its rapid victories over Christian lands.”19 While this may be overstatement to some degree, the reality is a far cry from the current twenty-first century dilemma that the Jews face with radical Islam as their greatest enemy.

If the spirit of the early Middle Ages was dangerous to Jews, the later Middle Ages only increases in its anti-Semitic intensity. In fourteenth-century Catholic Spain

…Ash Wednesday of 1391 saw the bloody sacking of the Jewish section of Seville, despite the efforts of the civil authorities to quell the berserk mob. An orgy of bloodletting and destruction spread like wildfire over the whole of Spain, presenting Jews—despite the civil power—with the cruel alternative of baptism or death. In many towns the whole community was exterminated, their quarter was everywhere left in ashes, and before the wave had spent itself as many as fifty thousand were dead.[20]

Jews were exiled from England (1290), France (1306 & 1394), and Germany during this era.[21]

Rausch writes, “When the Black Death epidemic occurred from approximately 1348–1351, the Jewish community was blamed for the plague, and was massacred and evicted in many

European towns and villages. Hatred of the Jew permeated medieval society.”[22] Schweitzer gives perhaps the saddest commentary on such events in a professing Christian culture from a Catholic point of view when he says that “we are presented with the paradox of a theology that is right and a history that is wrong.”[23]

Reformation

If the evangelical Christian expects the history of the Reformation to deliver him from the accounts of such atrocities to the Jews, he will be greatly disappointed. The example of Luther, whom even the Nazis quoted with appreciation from time to time,[24] serves as a warning to all Christians. Luther initially revolted against the history of medieval persecution of the Jews. He wrote a pamphlet entitled That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew (1523) in which Luther presented a sympathetic posture toward the Jews. However, when the Jews continued to reject the Protestant gospel, Luther eventually turned on them twenty years later. In a scathing and ungodly work of hate, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), Luther appears to be as clear as Hitler:

• Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer selfglory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them.
• Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury.
• Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death.
• First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.
• Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies.[25]

The atrocities that have occurred because of these statements would no doubt amaze the great Reformer of Germany today.

Post-Reformation

The eighteenth-century Enlightenment brought hope to the Jews as the idea of emancipation of the Jews grew. Though negative in many ways, the French Revolution of 1789 was a positive symbol to the Jews (since it cast off Catholicism in France) and Napoleon later became a kind of hero to the Jews since his victories throughout Continental Europe led to better conditions for the Jews.[26]

However, the fragile optimism was easily displaced. In 1791 the Pale of Settlement began for Imperial Russia. In this arrangement, Jews were limited as to where they could live. Beginning around that time, pogroms or uprisings against Jews occurred in Odessa, Kiev, Warsaw, Bagdad, Damascus, Wales, and Argentina.[27] If the Enlightenment was a success in the world, this massive persecution of Jews (occurring before Hitler came on the scene, but culminating in the Holocaust) cast doubt on how to define that success. It was certainly not from the Jewish point of view. Persecution was the norm. It was this culture in which Herzl pondered the Jewish Question and gave as his answer the cause of Zionism.

The New Anti-Semitism

If we are to measure the success of Zionism’s attempt to end anti-Semitism, we must examine at least two things: (1) the bridge or transition document of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and (2) the current state of anti-Semitism.

The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion

Brooks calls this document the “Bible of Anti-Semitism.”[28] He goes on to describe the problem with the Protocols in this way: “After being thoroughly discredited as a base forgery and for some years being considered a dead issue, the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany caused these strange documents again to be circulated as evidence that the Jews of the world were plotting the destruction of Gentile civilization.”[29] This text purported to be a Russian writing by one Serge Nilus around the turn of the twentieth century.[30] Rausch described the significance of The Protocols in this way:

The Protocols are of Russian origin and are the alleged secret proceedings of a group of Jews plotting to destroy Christianity, challenge civil government and disrupt the international economy in an effort to control the world. This document added to the anti-Semitism prevalent in the world, and when Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent published excerpts of the Protocols, it gave anti-Semites in America another torch in their parade of anti-Jewish propaganda.[31]

Thus, the documents are generally conceded to be a convenient fiction by serious-minded scholars.

Of particular note is the observation that anti-Semites are still using the Protocols to attack Jews. Such persecution using the Protocols as rhetoric most often appears to be aimed at national Israel more than individual Jews. For example, Article 32 of the Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement (known popularly as HAMAS) states

The Islamic Resistance Movement calls upon the Arab and Islamic people to work seriously and constructively in order not to allow that horrible plan to be carried out and to educate the masses of the dangers of withdrawal from the struggle with Zionism. Today it’s Palestine and tomorrow it will be another country, and then another; the Zionist plan has no bounds, and after Palestine they wish to expand from the Nile River to the Euphrates. When they totally occupy it they will look towards another, and such is their plan in the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” Their present is the best witness on what is said.[32]

The focus on Zionism is clear. The truth of the Protocols is assumed. The current activity of national Israel is thought to be militaristic. Such a conclusion is laughable. National Israel has shown great restraint and has given the Sinai back to Egypt numerous times. Hence, the irrational nature of anti-Semitism aimed at Israel should be obvious.

The Current State Of Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism has not decreased in the world because of the creation of the modern state of Israel. Instead, the river of persecution has continued with increase and some nationalistic twists. Zuckerman notes that the “new anti-Semitism is not exclusively hostile to this or that individual Jew, or to Judaism. It is directed primarily against the Jewish collective, the modern State of Israel.”[33]

Formally, this truth was demonstrated by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975.[34] This resolution clearly associates racism with Zionism. It references the “unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism.” The nations of the world should work to end “colonialism, neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, zionism, apartheid, and racial discrimination in all its forms.” The resolution also refers to the “racist régime in occupied Palestine” and condemns Zionism “as a threat to world peace.” Finally, this General Assembly Resolution “[d]etermines that zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” One of the implications of such a statement is that dispensationalists, who are Christian Zionists who believe Israel has a right to the land, would be considered racists. This evil resolution was happily overturned by the General Assembly in December 1991.

The unending and frustrating Arab-Israeli conflict, which began in earnest between the two World Wars and explodes dangerously when Israel declares independence in 1948, highlights the fact that most Arab leaders have no interest in making permanent peace with Israel.[35] Over and over, Israel has faced threats. The nation was attacked the day after declaring independence. There is the scuffle with Egypt in 1956. The Six-Day War in 1967 gave the miracle of Israel’s existence when faced with overwhelming numbers in the opposition. Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinians at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Attempted hijackings against Israeli citizens culminated in the fascinating rescue at Entebbe in Uganda (1976). The First Lebanon War in 1982 was Israel’s response to the Palestinians who had found refuge in Lebanon and attacked Israel from that safe haven. More recently the Intifada (uprising) of 2000–2005 saw the increase of suicide bombers and other nonconventional approaches against Israel. During all of these activities of war there are peace treaties that are signed that apparently do not have any meaning. The current Iranian threat and the PLO’s refusal to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist show that a national form of anti-Semitism has become the new norm for such hateful persecution of the Jews. It is Israeli military strength (with help from the United States) that has prevented her destruction.

Zuckerman, referencing the Israeli literary giant Amos Oz, shows the shift that has taken place based upon graffiti found in Europe:

The insight of Amos Oz, a liberal Israeli writer, is pertinent. He is haunted, he said, by the observation that before the Holocaust European graffiti read, “Jews to Palestine,” only to be transformed in modern times into “Jews out of Palestine.” The message to Jews, Oz said, is simple: “Don’t be here, and don’t be there. That is, don’t be.”[36]

The change in the form of anti-Semitism could not be stated more strongly. While it is impossible to suggest there is no persecution of Jews elsewhere in the world, the record shows that the nation of Israel in Palestine has become the new locus for anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence.

Conclusion

The modern state of Israel has not solved the Jewish Question. The summary given above shows that Herzl’s dream was against all hope. Is there any expectation of an elimination of anti-Semitism in the foreseeable future? Biblical teaching shows that Satan will severely persecute Jews during the last half of the tribulation period (Rev 12); it is highly unlikely that the world will self-correct on the matter. The dispensational Gaebelein, after making a trip to Germany in 1937, returned with stern warnings of the coming holocaust. He was able to believe in the severity of Hitler’s hatred largely because he believed in a coming tribulation period as predicted in the Bible, a time of Jacob’s trouble which would engulf a re-gathered Israel.[37] Gaebelein’s perspective on the Jewish Question was closer to the biblical Baron than to the secular Herzl and was far removed from the pagan Hitler. In outlining the ultimate hope for Israel and the solving of the scattered Jews who suffered, he bypassed the Zionist hope for a home in Palestine in the present evil age. Herzl had argued for a political solution. Instead, Gaebelein offers a spiritual answer, God’s Final Solution:

There is but one answer to all these questions concerning the promised hope for Israel, for the nations of the earth and for all creation. That answer is:

The Lord Jesus Christ.

He alone is the only answer, the completest answer, the never-failing answer to all our questions. But what do we mean when we give His ever blessed and adorable Name, the Name above every other name, as the only answer? We do not mean that the answer is a practical application of the principles of righteousness declared by the infallible teacher in the sermon on the mount. We do not mean the practice of what has been termed the golden rule. We do not mean a leadership of Jesus. We do not mean that these questions will be answered by future spiritual revivals, nor do we mean that a blasted Western civilization, misnamed Christian, will influence heathen nations to accept Christianity and turn to God from their idols. The sorrowful fact is that what military Christendom has done and is doing, and the shameful failures of Western civilization, has been a curse to heathen nations.

What we mean, the only answer, the completest and never-failing answer to all our questions, is

The Glorious Reappearing of the Lord Jesus Christ

This future event will answer every question, solve every problem which humanity faces today, and all the existing chaotic conditions, and bring about that golden age of which heathen poets dreamed, which the Bible promises is in store for the earth.[38]

Notes

1. Theodore Herzl, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), trans. Sylvie D’Avigdor (n.p.: American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946), 5. Herzl’s original publication was in German in 1896. Its subtitle was “Proposal of a Modern Solution for the Jewish Question.”
2. Ibid., 10.
3. Ibid., 47. To be fair to Herzl, he goes on to say that Jews in their own nation would continue to have enemies like all nations, but it would be impossible after that to scatter the Jews all over the world. In essence, he viewed this as an end to the “wandering Jew” and the end of the Jew himself carrying persecution with him as was stated above.
4. Adolf Hitler, Speech on January 30, 1939; cited in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), 257. For analysis of how this speech by Hitler was received by other Nazi leaders, see Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 339-42.
5. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 452.
6. Ibid., 307-308. Hitler clearly acknowledges his belief that the Protocols of the Elders [Wise Men] of Zion is an accurate document.
7. Ibid., 453.
8. Adolf Hitler, “Political Testament,” April 29, 1945; cited in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), 635.
9. The Northfield Conferences had as a focal point the personality of D. L. Moody when he was alive. Moody is buried in Northfield. The conferences appear to have begun in the 1880s. Many personalities from the Niagara Bible Conference were frequent speakers. Many of the speakers in their beliefs would be consistent with the theological position known today as dispensationalism.
10. David Baron, The Jewish Problem: Its Solution, or, Israel’s Present and Future (London: Morgan & Scott, n.d.). In later editions, Baron apparently adds some statements about the young and growing Zionist movement, although he does not specifically name Herzl.
11. Ibid., 12ff.
12. Ibid., 19.
13. Ibid., 25. Baron is dealing with Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Amos 9:14-15 in this quotation. In the entire section of the book he also adds other passages such as Ezekiel 37:24-28.
14. Ibid., 26-31.
15. David A. Rausch, Building Bridges (Chicago: Moody, 1988), 113. The two citations from Ignatius can be found at Ignatius, The Epistle to the Philippians, IV & XIV, respectively. In the sections to follow on the history of Christian anti-Semitism, the outline of Rausch will largely be followed.
16. Ambrose, Letters, XL.8. See Ambrose of Milan, “The Letters of St. Ambrose,” in St. Ambrose: Select Works and Letters, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. H. de Romestin, E. de Romestin, and H. T. F. Duckworth, vol. 10, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1896), 441. See also the comments by David Rausch, Building Bridges, 118. Ambrose ministered in the late fourth century.
17. John Chrysostom, Eight Orations Against Judaizing Christians, Homily 1.I.5.
18. Ibid., 1.III.1.
19. Rausch, Building Bridges, 121-22.
20. Frederick M. Schweitzer, A History of the Jews Since the First Century A.D. (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 105.
21. Rausch, Building Bridges, 125.
22. Ibid., 125-26.
23. Schweitzer, History of the Jews, 13.
24. Rausch notes that Julius Streicher, one of Hitler’s henchmen, cited Luther in his defense at the Nuremberg trials (Building Bridges, 135).
25. This list of excerpts can be found at the Jewish Virtual Library, <http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html> (accessed 18 March 2014).
26. Abram L. Sachar, A History of the Jews (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 278-84.
27. Ibid., 309-22.
28. Keith L. Brooks, The Jews and the Passion for Palestine in the Light of Prophecy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1937), 51.
29. Ibid.
30. The actual publishing date seems difficult to determine as sources conflict. Ariel said The Protocols were published in Russia in 1903, but probably originated in the 1890s (Yaakov S. Ariel, “American Premillenialism and its Attitudes Towards the Jewish People, Judaism and Zionism, 1875-1925,” [Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1986], 262). Note that these details were left out of the publication of Ariel’s dissertation in the book form (On Behalf of Israel, 111). Timothy Weber dated the document’s Russian origin as 1901 (Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism 1875-1925 [New York: Oxford UP, 1979], 185). Gaebelein himself dated The Protocols of Zion as 1905 (“Current Events and Signs of the Times,” Our Hope 27 [November 1920]: 297). Information along with some of the wording for this section of the paper is taken from Michael D. Stallard, The Twentieth-Century Dispensationalism of Arno C. Gaebelein (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2001), 37-38.
31. David Rausch, Arno C. Gaebelein 1861-1945: Irenic Fundamentalist and Scholar (New York: Edwin Mellen, Press, 1983), 130-31.
32. “The Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 22 (Summer 1993): 132, <http://www.palestine-studies.org/files/pdf/jps/1734.pdf> (accessed 19 March 2014).
33. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, “The New Anti-Semitism: Graffiti on the Walls of History,” UN Chronicle 34, no. 4 (2004): 36.
34. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, November 10, 1975; Thirtieth Session; 83-84, <http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/3379%28XXX%29&Lang=E&Area= RESOLUTION> (accessed 19 March 2014).
35. A standard work on the Arab-Israeli conflict from Israel’s point of view is by the sixth president of Israel, Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East from the War of Independence through Lebanon (New York: Vintage Books, 1984).
36. Zuckerman, “The New Anti-Semitism,” 36. The reference by Amos Oz is from How to Cure a Fanatic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2010).
37. See Stallard, Gaebelein, 47-49.
38. Arno C. Gaebelein, Hope of the Ages (New York: Publication Office “Our Hope,” 1938), 71-72. To defer ultimate hope to the second coming of Christ is not to diminish personal responsibility of Christians today in dealing with anti-Semitism. There are some general avenues of response: (1) Christians should not practice anti-Semitism or any form of racist actions; (2) Churches should include a proclamation opposing anti-Semitism in the church’s doctrinal statement; and (3) Christians should generally be pro-Israel without being anti-Arab or “Israel, right or wrong.”