This has got to be said.

If this blog had a wider audience, I could guarantee a heated response to the forthcoming entry. Because every time a newspaper columnist tackles this topic, he or she is beseiged with email, most of it full of misspellings, grammatical errors, and, of course, hatred.
I'm talking about anti-Semitism.
What triggered this was the news today that an Irenian athlete withdrew from the Olympics rather than face an Israeli. For refusing to engage a Jew, this man's government will pay him a lifetime fortune and he will be treated as a national hero.
Disgusting.
And incomprehensible.
I mean, listen, if you truly believe that Jews are the scum of the earth, and you have the opportunity to completely humiliate a Jew athletically...in front of a huge international audience...wouldn't you just be chomping at the bit?
Or are you afraid the Jew might beat you?
Small chance of that, right? You are, after all, favoured to win a gold medal, the first for your country in Olympic history, and he's not favoured to win anything at all. But you never know, right? After all, he's a Jew, and Jews know magic. And they run the world. Right?
Hey! If you face off against this Jew and win, you prove your superiority. And if you lose, you prove he's in cahoots with Satan. So no matter what, you win.
Except that's not what happened, was it? You wouldn't fight at all, and by this action have proven nothing but your own ignorance...and cowardice.
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I've never understood anti-Semitism.
Let's get one thing clear, here. Anti-Semitism means hatred of Jews. It's a ridiculous coinage, since both Jews and the Arabs who by and large hate them are Semitic races, but it's not the first ridiculous coinage in English and it won't be the last. Anyway, anti-Semitism does not mean disapproval of the policies of the Israeli government. I'm against George Bush and his Republican Guard in Washington, but I am most emphatically not anti-American.
So: hatred of Jews. It's pretty widespread even now, over fifty years since its most vicious expression to date. And the first thing we have to ask ourselves is, why?
Let's dispense with that old-saw about "Christ-killers" right away, okay? The Jews around Golgotha on the day Jesus the Christ was crucified were at most complicit in His death, but consider: (a) Jesus of Nazareth Himself was born, lived, and died--twice--a Jew; (b) it's been a long time since Sunday school, so forgive me if I am wrong, but wasn't Jesus's death kind of important? Even necessary? If you believe all this stuff, anyway, and the people who spout off about "Christ-killers" claim to. Oddly enough, for people who claim to love Christ so much, their view of Christianity seems very centered on the Old Testament...'eye for an eye' and all that.
So. Do people hate Jews because they 'run the world'?
In Palestine, this is common knowledge, along with interesting tidbits such as Arabic babies as Jewish delicacies (they use the blood to flavour Seder cakes, apparantly.) Who knew?
Certainly not the Jews, who not only don't eat Arabic babies, but also don't run anything other than their own families...just like human beings the world over. Other than multinational corporations, it's awfully hard to find a candidate for world domination these days...and no one multinational has the upper hand.
It is true, historically, that Jewish people have often set themselves up as moneylenders, like Shakespeare's Shylock. There are also a preponderance of Jews in the creative arts...art is usually pain recalled in times of tranquility, and if there's anything that Jews know well as a race, it's pain. Is it rich Jews who are hated? No, it's all Jews. Is it famous Jews who are hated? No--in fact, in Hitler's Germany a famous Jew could (maybe) avoid the camps. It's all Jews. And the funniest thing in this whole sad mess is that most people wouldn't know a Jew by sight.
I just don't understand it. I doubt I ever will.