We spend most of our time in the pro-life movement thinking about the horror of abortion… the killing of unborn children…the tragic consequences to the mother and the moral damage to those who advocate for abortion, those who try to keep mothers in desperate situations from knowing about alternatives and accepting help.
But, let us not forget that disrespect for human life in any of its stages and conditions is disrespect for life in all its stages and conditions. Virtually all of the violence in our society is linked to disrespect for the lives and dignity of others, beginning with the unborn, but with the spectrum extending to embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia and assisted suicide. When we terminate the lives of helpless unborn children, it is only a small step to killing infants, toddlers, youngsters, teenagers, adults and the elderly.
Why are we surprised when children are killed in a school or our people kill each other in the streets. Are they taught from childhood to respect the life and dignity of others in all stages, conditions, and circumstances in life? Apparently not, so how do they know what society expects from them? Worse yet, they are doing what society fails to tell them not to do. Lacking guidance and seeing the examples by which life is denigrated and wantonly terminated, they extend those actions to suit their impulses, seeing nothing morally wrong with killing.
At the same time, this disrespect for the lives and dignity of others foments hatred for entire groups of people and justifies killing them. We have seen this with racism and bigotry of every kind. We saw the Slavics enslaved in such large numbers as to give their ethnicity to the word “slave.” We saw millions of Africans kidnapped and sold into forced labor. And, we saw Jews murdered by the millions.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
Martin Niemöller sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements. But after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller became an outspoken critic of Hitler and his policies that persecuted and imprisoned people (ultimately leading to the death camps). He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule, from 1937 to 1945, in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. After the war, he made the above statement, and we are well to remember it.
I discuss in my book “Building a Culture of Life” https://buildingacultureoflife.org/?page_id=194 how eugenics influenced the notion used by the Nazis to assert that some people are inferior to others and should be eliminated, and that some entire groups are subhuman so that their deaths were desirable in order to produce a more healthy society. But, in the case of Jews, this was just an excuse to execute a mindless hated that has been pervasive in societies everywhere for 2800 years. I did not neglect to confront this evil in my book “A Timeline of the Journey of Humankind” (more information may also be found at the above link).
Those passages would be discovered by a careful reader, but I share it here and now because I am incensed by the mindless hatred of Jews that we see on TV all the time now. Do not make the mistake that this is because of the policies of the Israeli government. Sure, those who even bother to deny their hatred of Jews say that they don’t hate Jews, they just disagree with the Israeli government policies. However, in order to force the Israeli government to change policies, they persecute the Jews in front of them and advocate to kill all of the Jews everywhere. When something defies logic, one just has to admit that it is motivated by something deeper that cannot be understood by a rational mind.
I will copy and paste from the extended narrative (in an appendix) that accompanied an illustration in the text of the “Timeline” book. Throughout history, there has been such reprehensible mindless hatred of Jews as to defy our ability to understand how one person can do such things to another, much harder still to comprehend how an entire ethnic class of people could be so mistreated and hideously murdered just because of one identifying factor…their parents were Jews. Not that they have done anything wrong, not revenge because their parents did anything wrong, but just because their parents were Jews.
“The Alhambra Decree by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella forced all practicing Jews to leave the territories under their control in 1492. Nearly 100,000 Jews left, but some 200,000 converted to Christianity in order to stay. Jews were expelled from Portugal in 1497. Later, the Inquisitions in Portugal and Spain targeted Jews of forced conversion to determine if they were truly practicing the Christian rights or were pretending to be Christians in public while secretly practicing Judaism.
This engraving depicts a Jewish man angrily protecting his wife, daughter, and infant son while being threatened by a crowd of people flanked by a man elevating a crucifix. Their belongings are being dumped into a cart.
Forced deportation of Jews dates as far back as 733 BC when ordered by King Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC) of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Other than massacres, expulsions, and slavery after the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, Jews were expelled from Rome in 139 BC, AD 19, and AD 41-53, then from lands occupied after the Jewish-Roman and Kitos wars, and following rebellion against Byzantium in 629.
Other such expulsions were from Alexandria in 38 and 415; Minorca in 418; by the Visigoths in 612; by Muslims throughout the 7th century; from Mainz in 1012; during the Crusades 1095-1350; by Muslims in Spain in mid 13th century; from Bavaria in 1276, 1442, 1551; from France in 1182, 1254, 1306, 1322, 1359, and 1394 (often readmitted for a ransom/bribe); from Vienne, France in 1253; Naples, Italy in 1288, 1293, 1495, and 1510; England in 1290; Berne , Switzerland in 1294 and 1392; Hungary in 1360; Austria in 1420, again from Vienna in 1669; Passau in 1478; Ravenna in 1491; Spain in 1492; Sicily in 1493; Portugal in 1497; Nuremberg 1499; Berlin in 1510; Regensburg in 1519; Pressburg in 1526; Calambria, Italy in 1554; Papal States in 1569 and 1593; Milan in 1597; Frankfurt in 1614; Yemen (by Muslims) in 1679; and from (French controlled) Haiti in 1683.
This list is by no means complete and does not address other systemic persecutions, malign treatments, disparagements, and discrimination over the last 2800 years. To the shame of modern cultures, this prejudice is persistent today in corners of society and widely in some nations around the globe, some with deadly intent.
Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky in 1862. The Russians carried out pogroms from 1880-1910s with emigration of 2.5 million Jews. The Nazi’s killed 6 million Jews while millions more Jews suffered horribly in World War II. The Fascists in Italy expelled Jews from Italian cities 1943-1944.
In 1948, the state of Israel was established in the historical Jewish homeland. Jews from all over the word have immigrated to Israel with hope of being safe from persecution. Unfortunately, the state of Israel exists under constant threat of destruction by other countries in the region.”
Surely, there are numerous examples in history of various groups of people being singled out for persecution and murder. I confront them along the way in “Timeline,” for we must not forget, and we must not persist to repeat history. However, we seem not to have realized that hatred of Jews continues to be so pervasive in our own society today, until reminded recently.
Now, we are brutally reminded that the mindless hatred that Jews have suffered at every opportunity in history is alive and well in our educational institutions and in the minds of our neighbors. It is shocking, but it is a call to all of us that advocate for the unborn that some of those babies have Jewish parents, and we see on TV people advocating to kill all the Jews, including these innocent babies, because their parents are Jews.
It boggles my mind, and I confess that it infuriates me. I had Jewish friends in college that I spent a lot of time with. I visited them in Israel. I have a Jewish barber. I had a Muslim woman working for me for awhile. I went to the funeral of her father-in-law. I have friends who are Buddhists…great people who I enjoy to be with. I have traveled throughout Israel and Jordan and enjoyed the company of Jews and Muslims, Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians, had dinner with a Palestinian family, stopped on the side of the road and drank coffee with Bedouins, and ate with them in the desert.
Apparently I was lucky not to encounter some psychopathic killer. We have seen that there are plenty of them in the Middle East, and now we are growing them at home.
Let us resolve to redouble our demand for respect for the life and dignity of every person recalling that it begins with the unborn and has become a slippery slope where violence is now extended to all levels of our society. Let us not wait until we have to make a lamenting statement similar to that of Niemöller…after it is too late.