Why the Jews?

Michael Gerson wrote a great piece for the Washington Post with a simple, direct title: “Why the Jews?“

The Jewish people have been subject to incredible persecution and abuse for thousands of years, including the abject evil of the Holocaust at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany during World War II. Yesterday, a white supremacist and anti-Semite walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and fatally shot a security guard before being critically injured by return fire. Thankfully the attacker was stopped before killing others.

I haven’t covered this story because, frankly, isolated incidents of violence in Washington, DC are not newsworthy. But this incident is a reminder that, against all reason, antisemitism still exists in this world.

So why the Jews? Why are the Jewish people the recipients of such constant, inexplicable hatred from certain corners of society? I agree with Gerson that there is likely no sufficient explanation, but I would venture a guess: The Jews are God’s chosen people. People who oppose God do so—on their own or through Satanic influence—by targeting the peoples and institutions closest to Him. They target Jews. They target essential social institutions like the Church, and essential norms of human behavior like marriage. There is a kind of sad, amoral, perverse logic to the moral flash-points of the last 100 years.

Widespread violence and discrimination against Jews is a sign of deep, fundamental moral disorder in a society—prevalent today in the Muslim world and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. One isolated incident does not indicate the U.S. is following in these footsteps, but we must be constantly guarding ourselves against this kind of evil.