The Privileges and Tragedy of Israel

The Privileges and Tragedy of Israel
ROMANS 9.1-5

This morning’s newspaper carries a whole page of correspondence about an ugly fact of modern life: anti-Semitism is on the rise again. Jews have been attacked and threatened, vilified and abused in many cities in our supposedly civilized world. Old lies about the Jews, long since disproved and discredited, have been revived, published and widely circulated. And the letter-writers are asking: could this be because of people’s antipathy, not to Jews as such or their Semitic origins and identity, but to the policies of the present Israeli government? This in turn generates a second level of debate, often as bitter as the first: does opposing the policy of a government mean that you are prejudiced against the nation in question? Are you prejudiced because you criticize, or do you criticize because you are prejudiced? It doesn’t take much of an argument like that to make most of us throw up our hands in frustration and change the subject. Meanwhile, hatred and violence continue unchecked on their vicious spiral...