Who Is for Free Speech? The Ariel Toaff Case
This article is about three things: Jewish attitudes on free speech, a book about the so-called “blood libels”, and how these ritual murders of which Jewish groups have been accused are linked to aversion for Jesus and Christians in Judaism.
The threads are all related. I’ll start from the third.
The above video, which I posted on my blog, among others attracted comments to the effect that it is not representative, publishing it is a biased choice, and the people in it are just a band of idiotic alcoholics. (In addition, Christians in Israel are treated wonderfully, have the same rights as Jews, and they all lived happily ever after.)
Those who make these claims have (or pretend to have) little knowledge of Jewish religion and Jewish history.
Because the people in the clip may as well have been drunk (or not), but what they say is due to much more than just alcohol. After all, as they say, in vino veritas, “in wine there is truth.”
The video shows images of 2012 Jewish attacks on a church and a monastery in Israel, with the background of a song from a group of Jews who gathered on Christmas Eve 2007, “to ‘celebrate’, in the Jewish way, the birth of Jesus.”
The signs defacing the church’s walls read “We will crucify you”, “Death to the Christians”, “Jesus is dead”, “Jesus son of Mary, the prostitute”, “Jesus the son of a whore”, “death to Christianity!” And on a car: “Jesus is now a corpse.”
The lyrics of the song repeatedly convey one of the messages written on the church’s walls: “Jesus is a bastard.”
In the same way as Islamic apologists attempt to portray Muslim terrorists, murderers and jihadists as betraying the true meaning of Islam, so Judaism apologists try to describe Jews who have attacked Christian buildings or gratuitously insulted Christian beliefs as having nothing to do with Judaic religion.
Both are wrong. Read more