Caution: May Lead To Unpredictable Results

John Hinderaker, whom I normally take as seriously as I take any other Ivy League Republican, actually raised an important point yesterday. First, he cited the Washington Free Beacon:

A Rutgers University town hall descended into anarchy Thursday evening as anti-Israel students chanted demands to "globalize the intifada," hurled anti-Semitic insults at Jewish students, and forced the school's president to end the event early[.]

Hinderaker then observes,

“Globalize the intifada” means that no Jew should ever be able to live in safety, anywhere in the world.

He cites shouts of "Go back home!" elsewhere in the story and asks,

“Go back home”? Where might that be? Not Israel, evidently. Maybe, like the former “dean of the White House press corps,” Helen Thomas, they want Jews to go “back” to Germany and Poland. But they don’t want Jews here in the U.S., or in Israel.

What strikes me in the current outbreak is that since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism has been characterized as something that developed from medieval Christianity, or perhaps from European occultism or neo-paganism, which all led to the Nazis. This is the subtext of Raiders of the Lost Ark, for instance. But the whole idea of the chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" derives from a much more basic conflict, the original one between the Jews and the Canaanites or Philistines. This is something Hinderaker senses; these demonstrators aren't brown shirts, they're something much older. (Dershowitz even makes this mistake in calling them brown shirts. Nazis don't explain it.)

This year I've been following Ascension's Bible in a Year podcast -- I tried it when it came out two years ago, but at the time, I faltered as it plodded through Numbers and Leviticus (I discovered in Leviticus that boilerplate is nothing new). After I completed their Catechism in a Year program last year, I decided to give Bible in a Year another try, and this year, it's caught on with me.

At the end of each day's readings, the host, Fr Mike Schmitz, gives remarks that put the readings in context. As they move through Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel, commentators like Jeff Cavins, Fr Schmitz, and Bp Barron make the point that God is gradually making Himself known to the Jews in the specific historical dialectic of the conquest of the Promised Land. Not only are the Jews taking geographical territory, but there are specific requirements that they have nothing to do with the pagan beliefs of the original inhabitants.

A consistent theme is that whenever the Jews wander away from God's clear directive -- for instance, when they vacillate over the whole question of whether to go through with the conquest at all, or decide worshiping the pagan idols is more or less OK -- things work out badly for them. Then one or another figure herds them into line, and things work out a lot better, until they wander away again. But this always takes place in the specific context of the temptation represented by the Philistine inhabitants.

This isn't just an isolated historical artifact. Pope Pius XI made this point on September 6, 1938:

At the most solemn moment of the Mass we recite the prayer which contains the expression "sacrifice of Abel, sacrifice of Abraham, sacrifice of Melchisedek" in three strokes, three times, three steps, the entire religious history of mankind—a magnificent passage. Every time we read it we are seized by an irresistible emotion. The sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham. Note that Abraham is called our patriarch, our ancestor. Antisemitism is incompatible with the thought and the sublime reality expressed in this text. It is alien to us, a movement in which we Christians can have no part. The promise was made to Abraham and to his descendants. It is realized in Christ, and through Christ in us who are members of his mystical body. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. No, it is not possible for Christians to take part in antisemitism. We acknowledge for all the right to defend themselves, to adopt measures of protection against what threatens their legitimate interests. But antisemitism is inadmissible. Spiritually, we are Semites.

I'm profoundly uncomfortable with an agenda that seeks in some way to redo Old Testament history, especially by wiping out the Jews. I used to write software manuals that had the standard phrasing in relation to deviating from prescribed procedure: "Caution: May Lead To Unpredictable Results". It reminds me of Wikipedia's account of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark:

The vessel travels to an island in the Aegean Sea, where Belloq intends to test the power of the Ark before presenting it to Hitler.

On the island, Jones ambushes the Nazi group and threatens to destroy the Ark but surrenders after Belloq deduces that Jones would never destroy something so historically significant, also surmising that Jones wants to know if the Ark's power is real. The Nazis restrain Jones and Marion at the testing site as Belloq ceremonially opens the Ark but finds only sand inside. At Jones' instruction, he and Marion close their eyes to avoid looking at the opened Ark, as it releases spirits, flames, and bolts of energy that kill Belloq, Toht, and the assembled Nazis before sealing itself shut. Jones and Marion open their eyes to find the area cleared of bodies and their bindings removed.

You don't mess with the Ark of the Covenant. This isn't myth or fairy tale. Some things can lead to unpredictable results.