Frequently, the small population of Jews are held responsible for geopolitical and other events far beyond their control.
This week, two American "far-left" anti-Israel groups -- Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), among others -- actually blamed Israel for the ongoing California wildfires.
"When US taxes go to burning people alive in Gaza, we can't be surprised when those fires come home," Code Pink posted on Instagram.
It was, in fact, Palestinians from Gaza who burned Israelis alive -- including infants -- that started the current conflict. If you do not want your people killed, do not start a war.
Code Pink apparently receives a major portion of its funding from an American couple, Sri-Lankan-born Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans, based in Shanghai.
"'Jewish Voice for Peace' is Neither," and appears to be a "false-flag" operation:
"Many of its chapters were started by non-Jews. In 2019, Facebook's transparency feature revealed that the JVP page administrator was based in Lebanon, a fact that JVP later tried to hide."
JVP, reportedly with "ties to terrorism," has been given $490,000 by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and $75,000 from the Tides Foundation, funded, along with others, by George Soros, with $875,000 coming directly from Soros's Open Society Foundations.
Centuries earlier, during the bubonic plague, "Jews were doubly attacked," notes historian Jeremy Brown, "once by the bacteria, and then a second time by violence that in some cases killed more."
To their enemies, the Jews cannot do anything right. They are hated when they are strong; they are hated when they are weak. They are hated when they are poor; they are hated when they are rich. They are hated when they win; they are hated when they lose.
In December 2024, Russia's President Vladimir Putin accused "ethnic Jews" of "tearing apart the Russian Orthodox Church." After excluding Orthodox Christians and Muslims from these opponents of the church, he explained further:
"These [Jews] are people without kin or memory, with no roots. They don't cherish what we cherish and the majority of the Ukrainian people cherish as well."
How this unfounded, blatantly anti-Semitic blaming of innocent Jews arose is difficult to fathom -- particularly as the traditional custodians and purveyors of Judeo-Christian moral-ethical precepts are, in fact, the Jews. It is their principles -- the Judeo-Christian values -- that underpin Western Civilization, the Christian Church in general, and the Russian Orthodox Church.
That conflict, however, actually has nothing whatsoever to do with Russia's or Ukraine's small Jewish populations or with Israel itself. Putin's accusation, therefore, might need to be understood as yet another instance of Jews being accused of events outside their sphere of influence, but for which they are unjustly and irrationally held accountable. The nation's Jews become collateral damage in the process.
Understandably, there is some apprehension of potentially devastating consequences for Russia's remaining Jewish population. Putin's remarks will be taken seriously by his siloviki -- his devoted security apparatus, successors to the defunct Soviet-era KGB -- keen to place the blame on outsiders for Russia's mounting death toll in the war and Putin's failure to bring an early victory.
Once Jews are blamed for certain events, the likelihood of adverse after-effects for their community principles greatly escalates, as during the repressive reign of Josef Stalin.
Moscow's Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, currently president of the Conference of European Rabbis -- who himself had to flee from Russia in 2022 when he refused to endorse the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- explains of Putin's blame-gam:
"This is all reminiscent of Stalin's 'Fight against Cosmopolitanism' and the 'Doctors' Plot' of 1948–53, the brutal antisemitic campaign in the Soviet Union, resulting in the arrest and killing of much of the Soviet Jewish leadership in the Soviet Union. We cannot emphasize enough, the dangerous effect of such statements in a semi-totalitarian society."
For centuries past, Jews have been scapegoats for events outside their involvement. This blame-game often led to brutal pogroms in which they were murdered or ousted from villages (shtetls) where they had quietly resided for generations.
During the massacre of Jews by Cossacks in the 1648-1657 Khmelnitsky pogroms, in what is now Ukraine, a series of bloodthirsty assaults on peaceful Jewish communities were initiated by Ukrainian rebels, led by Bogdan Khmelnitsky (Chmielnicki). Again, the Jews became the innocent scapegoats for political events.
Although at that time, the Cossacks were rebelling against the ruling Polish nobility, it was the Jews who were blamed by both parties and became collateral damage in the conflict. Rabbi Yehuda Altein describes what transpired:
"Over the course of the insurrection, hundreds of thousands of Jews across Eastern Europe were savagely pillaged, tortured, and murdered, in a tragedy surpassed only by the Holocaust three centuries later."
The Nazis' so-called "final solution" for the Jews was itself fomented through mass propaganda that blamed them for Germany's defeat during World War I and the subsequent dire economic situation -- yet another horrific instance of blaming the most miniscule part of the population for events beyond their control.
Even after the unspeakable events in Israel of October 7, 2023, with the slaughter of more than 1,200 innocents, many onlookers held Israel and the Jews -- not Hamas and Iran -- primarily responsible for the horror. Some Western politicians claimed that "Israel had it coming."
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis remarked that he would "never denounce Hamas for these atrocities." Instead, he blamed Israel:
"The path to ending the tragic loss of innocent lives – both Palestinian and Israeli – begins with one crucial first step: the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid."
This blame-game, it seems, will never cease. Perhaps that is due to the fact that Israel and the Jewish people set an example that others would rather not try to live up to. Turning a land the size of New Jersey, of malaria-infested swamps and sand dunes, into a major nation is probably a sight that could induce envy and resentment.
In December 2024, British-Israeli Rabbi Leo Dee proposed that:
"Just like our ancestors, the mighty Maccabees, armed with a Torah in one hand and an Iron Dome missile interception battery in the other, the Israeli people defend the only true morality."
Of course, compared to 3,000 Hamas terrorists who gang-raped, tortured, beheaded and burned alive Israeli men, women, children and babies, such a claim might not have been that hard to make.
The Jews continue to exist because, as with other attempts throughout history to eradicate the Jews, the "final solution," thanks to the WWII Allies, was not final, their hearts did not stop beating, and the Jews had again called on what the State of Israel's founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion called the nation's "secret weapon": "ein brera" ("no alternative"). They live because every spring, at the Passover Seder, they continue to recall their past in Pharaoh's Egypt, determine never to be slaves again, and remember their ancient homeland with a prayer, "Next year in Jerusalem."
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning," is from Psalm 137:5, which is thought to have been written roughly 2,500 years ago, when the Jews were forced out of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Around 589–587 BCE, Babylonian armies besieged Jerusalem and then destroyed it, along with the Jews' sacred Temple of Solomon.
After so many years of exile, the Jews can once again gather together as a nation, in a land of their own, with Jerusalem as its capital. This nation provides them with strength: "Don't threaten us with cutting off your aid," Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin told US Senator Joe Biden in 1982, "It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history."
They have no choice but to succeed, and succeed they shall.
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, a faculty member at Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Retired from law, his particular field of interest is political theory interconnected with current events. He holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology. Dr. Haug is author of 'Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity'; and 'Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.' His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Gatestone Institute, Jewish News Syndicate, Minding the Campus, James Wilson Institute (Anchoring Truths), national Association of Scholars, Document Danmark, Jewish Journal, and others.
