The biggest misdirection and possibly the most devastating
That's an ambitious headline. I certainly don't claim to have the absolute wisdom to make such a judgment. And one should not speak in superlatives without reference to oneself. Nevertheless, I dare to do just that.
Who is chosen and why is that important?
I am the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. The very fact that I preface this statement as an alibi, as legitimization, is a partial answer to the question posed above. As a Jew, am I chosen to enjoy more freedom of opinion and speech? Am I, as a descendant of the survivors? The question is rhetorical, the answer is "yes". And that is devastating. Wrong and devastating in every respect: religious, social, societal and even geopolitical.
In 2014, Dr. Naomi Wolf[1] - also a descendant of Holocaust survivors - confronted the religious aspect of the concept of being chosen as part of a political debate. And I thought: finally an attempt at correction, may millions experience it. If anything, hundreds or, with a little luck, a few thousand people in the U.S. have been able to follow this. I would now like to bring the essence to Germany, to the country where the realization is particularly important.
No, Jews are not chosen, that cannot be found in the ancient scriptures. The one who does good is chosen. That is so simple and so essential. Since I'm nowhere near as Bible-savvy as Naomi, I'll just quote from her lecture[2]
" Okay, so I was challenged to “Read the Bible! God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.” So….I may get crucified for this but I have started to say it—most recently (terrified, trembling) to warm welcome in a synagogue in LA: Actually, if you read Genesis Exodus and Deuteronomy in Hebrew — as I do — you see that God did not “give” Israel to the Jews/Israelites. We as Jews are raised with the creed that “God gave us the land of Israel” in Genesis — and that ethnically ‘we are the chosen people.” But actually — and I could not believe my eyes when I saw this, I checked my reading with major scholars and they confirmed it — actually God’s “covenant” in Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy with the Jewish people is NOT ABOUT AN ETHNICITY AND NOT ABOUT A CONTRACT. IT IS ABOUT A WAY OF BEHAVING.
Again and again in the “covenant” language God never says: “I will give you, ethnic Israelites, the land of Israel.” Rather God says something far more radical – far more subversive — far more Godlike in my view. He says: IF you visit those imprisoned…act mercifully to the widow and the orphan…welcome the stranger in your midst…tend the sick…do justice and love mercy ….and perform various other tasks…THEN YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE AND THIS LAND WILL BE YOUR LAND. So “my people” is not ethnic — it is transactional. We are God’s people not by birth but by a way of behaving, that is ethical, kind and just. And we STOP being “God’s people” when we are not ethical, kind and just. And ANYONE who is ethical, kind and just is, according to God in Genesis, “God’s people.” And the “contract” to “give” us Israel is conditional — we can live in God’s land IF we are “God’s people” in this way — just, merciful, compassionate. AND — it never ever says, it is ONLY your land. Even when passages spell out geographical “boundaries” as if God does such a thing, it never says this is exclusively your land. It never says I will give this land JUST to you. Remember these were homeless nomads who had left slavery in Egypt and were wandering around in the desert; at most these passages say, settle here, but they do not say, settle here exclusively. Indeed again and again it talks about welcoming “zarim” — translated as “strangers” but can also be translated as “people/tribes who are not you” — in your midst.“
For people of faith who adhere to the three world religions, this correction should be of great importance. And last but not least, this idea promotes the good across religions and eliminates the conflict that the claim to be chosen inevitably stirs up.
This rectification is already due to the indisputable maxim that only the truth makes free. And truth is the first casualty in every war. It seems to me that this fact leads to the conclusion that there would be no wars if we could live, were allowed to live, in truthfulness.
I believe that besides the organized wars of modern times, this has been the perversion of religions that has claimed and, in some places, still claims the most lives. The Jewish religion may not have caused any crusades or jihad, but this one misinterpretation of Judaism has been particularly successfully exploited to attack our perception and understanding, for the information war: relying on guilt and remorse, the good in people is perfidiously abused against them. I am far from denying, relativizing or trivializing the events of the 1930s/40s in Germany, or anything else that is punishable by law. But the intention of all the legal paragraphs is important to me: it is one thing when guilt and remorse strengthen a nation through knowledge, another - when the nation is deliberately broken as a result.
I am the founder and international spokesperson of 'We for Humanity', an initiative of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. In 2021, We for Humanity wrote an open letter to the media. "That is not the lesson of the Holocaust, that Jews must not be killed or questioned (emphasis is mine). No human being may be killed! The lesson of the Holocaust is that you must not stand by and not participate when a minority is persecuted. You have instrumentalized the Holocaust for the opposite: to take away people's will to defend themselves against injustice," the letter reads.
I have tried so often to make my thoughts and concerns understandable in personal conversations. It's not easy - the beliefs that make people feel they are doing the right thing are too deep-seated. But after the abuse of guilt and remorse spread around the world during the corona crisis, I have to try again.
I have underlined "must not be killed or questioned" in the quote from our letter, because something fundamentally wrong has happened or been implemented: The former has justified the latter. Victims at the time, Jews today are under special protection as compensation for the suffering inflicted. Is that all right? I don't think so. Exclusion, as then, and exclusivity, as now, are ugly twins. Those who are seriously against the exclusion of a minority must also be against the exclusivity of that minority. Every phobia is rooted in segregation, whether because one is gay, or because one obese, or because one is Jewish, regardless of whether the segregation is expressed through exclusion or through exclusivity. "Chosen for what?" asked Vera Sharav[3] during one of our conversations. "To be killed? To enjoy absolution?" Being chosen as an obligation, as a way of behaving, excludes both options, disregarding ethnicity, skin color and sexual orientation. And this is how it should be.
Edward Griffin reported back in 1969:
“In 1943, party headquarters sent the following directive to all Communists in the United States: ‘If certain obstructionists become too troublesome, label them as fascists, or Nazis, or anti-Semites, after appropriate accusations, and use the prestige of anti-fascist and tolerant organizations to discredit them. In the public consciousness, those who oppose us are associated with names that already have a bad smell. This association will become fact after enough repetition in public.’“ [4]
I think that says it all. The "bad smell" attached to a tragedy has been misused since the Second World War to incense individual and societal perceptions. This, combined with the reversal of left and right, has given us the present we live in and a broken backbone of the German nation. "Right-wing Nazis" is an oxymoron, because Nazis were avowedly left-wing[5], like today's governments. UK MPs and candidates have a script[6] - I use the term "script" deliberately - explaining how to “fumigate”: How to denigrate opposition to any subject as conspiracy and anti-Semitism. Even the word "elite" is allegedly anti-Semitic. There is no doubt in my mind that this or a similar ugly document also provides a guide for German parliamentarians. If you read the document, you realize that the all-round attack by former Stasi informant Anetta Kahane[7] is in fact a quote from this script: all government critics are conspiracy theorists, and all conspiracy theories are anti-Semitic.
And since I mentioned Anetta Kahane, one more aspect to conclude.
The Jews' special need for protection as compensation for the Third Reich - the renewed exclusivity as compensation for the exclusion at that time - has led to people like Kahane being untouchable. If you want to criticize them for what they have done, let alone hold them accountable, you are an anti-Semite. Alfred Bourla, avowedly Jew, CEO of Pfizer, abused Israel as a laboratory for his experimental gene therapy.[8] It is a disturbing realization that some Auschwitz survivors who found refuge in Israel died as a result of contemporary medical experimentation. Alfred Bourla and his ilk must be held accountable, Jews or not. No ethnic or other group should suffer exclusion, and none should enjoy exclusivity.
And this brings us to the definition of being chosen: this divides people into good and bad according to Matthew 7:16-20: "You will recognize them by their fruits". This is simple and essential.
[1] https://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=4259
[2] https://dorseteye.com/jewish-scholar-proves-that-the-jews-are-not-gods-chosen-people/
[3] Vera Sharav survived as a child in a Nazi labor camp; she is a fighter for medical ethics and consequently a fierce critic of the corona measures https://ahrp.org/
[4]Edward Griffin, lecture from 1969 https://rumble.com/v3hwmbg-edward-griffin-leftist-ideology-and-enacted-misuse-of-the-terms-nazi-fascis.html
[5] https://wie24.com/nazis-links/
[6] https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Conspiracy-Theory-Guide.pdf
[7] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anetta_Kahane