Dave and Tom Classic: Judgment Day - What Is the Real Cause of Anti-Semitism?

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. I’m Gary Carmichael. We’re glad you could tune in. In today’s program, we conclude our series of classics from our Search the Scriptures Daily archives, with the late founder of The Berean Call, Dave Hunt, and T.A. McMahon. With part 4 of their radio discussion of Dave’s book Judgment Day: “What Is the Real Cause of Anti-Semitism?” first broadcast in 2006. Here’s TBC executive director, Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth, to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

In this segment of our program, we are discussing Dave Hunt’s new book Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations. Now, Dave, last week we finished chapter one - every chapter that I have seen here is really a stunner, but this one, chapter two, “Hatred’s Final Solution,” is all about anti-Semitism, and for some people, Wait a minute - that happened, that’s gone, that’s history. But boy, it’s on the rise, isn’t it?

Dave: Tom, anti-Semitism is one of the great proofs the Bible offers that God is God, the God of Israel, the God of the Bible is the one true God, and that the Jews are His chosen people, and there is no way to escape it. And you know, I like to offer people proof, evidence - why should you believe the Bible? Why should you believe in Jesus Christ? What do you need this for? There are many prophetic proofs, and one of the great prophecies is that these people, God’s chosen people, God warned them when He brought them into the land, “If you disobey me, rebel against me, I’ll cast you out. I’ll scatter you to every nation on the face of the earth. You will be hated and persecuted and killed like no other people.” And it happened, okay? That’s a prophecy, and no one can deny this, Tom. I mean, there are people who have been not just maligned but killed. The blacks who were brought here for slavery - it was terrible what was done to them. The Armenians - about a million of them killed by the Turks (Muslims, of course), but no one like the Jews. And not just the Holocaust, but it’s been going on down through history, the pogroms, and on and on it goes, and as you have intimated, anti-Semitism is on the rise.

Tom: Now, Dave, there’s some confusing messages out there. For example, you document very clearly Roman Catholicism’s involvement in this, yet Pope John Paul II seemed to have distanced the Church from this, but…not the case.

Dave: Well, Tom, the Crusaders slaughtered Jews on the route to this “Holy Land,” they called it, to liberate Jerusalem.

Tom: Under Pope Urban II.

Dave: Right, that was the first Crusade. You would think that they would go there to liberate it for the Jews. In fact, they chased all the Jews into the synagogue and set it ablaze; they slaughtered Jews all across Europe. Now, the pope apologized. But, Tom, you read his language - and I don’t have to inform you; you know, but we want our listeners to know - just go back and read what he says, his apology. Never, ever, did he apologize for what the Church did; never did he apologize for what the popes did. The popes put the Jews in ghettos, the popes killed the Jews, the popes destroyed synagogues all down through history. Okay? So what John Paul II apologized for was (these are his words) “what the sons and daughters of the Church have done.” In other words, the Church, of course, didn’t want this to happen, but the sons and daughters of the Church - they got a little bit out of line, and they were mean to the Jews. John Paul II did not recognize Israel until 1994 - that was 46 years after Israel declared its independence. It took the Vatican that long. 

Furthermore, in his kind statements about the Jews - and he did go to Israel - but he is favoring Arafat, the worst anti-Jew that you could imagine! He is worse than Hitler, or at least on a par with him - he didn’t have the opportunity to kill as many. The Muslims have been anti-Israel, anti-Jew, ever since Islam arrived on the scene. Arabs and Jews got along fairly well before Islam. So Islam is a major engineer in this anti-Israel, anti-Jew, anti-Semitic campaign. In fact, we’ve quoted Muhammad before on this program - he said, “The last day will not come….” Now, the last day is when Muslims are resurrected, and then their good deeds weighed against the bad to find out whether they are going to get to Paradise or not. So you can’t even get resurrected, Muhammad said, “…until every Jew on the face of this earth has been killed, and even the rocks and the trees, Allah will give them a voice, and they will cry out, ‘O Muslim, O Abdullah, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’”

Tom: You even find within the Reformation - Martin Luther, for example - and you seem to indicate that it was because of his Catholic trappings that pointed him in that direction.

Dave: Well, yes, and anti-Semitism hung on to Luther even after he left the Church, or was excommunicated from the church, but that’s where it began. And Luther, as you know - I think it was 1542 - wrote a book against the Jews and their lies, which was actually filled with lies about the Jews: “They ought to have their tongues torn out. Burn down their synagogues.” He was angry because they wouldn’t convert, but nevertheless, you don’t do that. 

So, Tom, we try to explain in the book anti-Semitism - what is behind it? I mean, I’ve had Jewish friends all my life, some of the most ethical, wonderful people that I have ever known - competent doctors, lawyers, and so forth. What is there about these people that causes them to be hated? And I sometimes think, How would I have reacted growing up as a Jew knowing that the whole world hates me simply because I am a Jew, and knowing what they have done, and so forth? You cannot rationally explain it. These people don’t deserve this kind of hatred, persecution, and slaughter. 

Well, Tom, it’s very simple - it’s satanic, and the reason for it is this: the Messiah was going to be a Jew. This is what the Scripture said: “Abraham, in you and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” How would that come about? Only through the Messiah, who would be the Savior of the world. Well, then, Satan must destroy the Jews. If he could possibly have destroyed the Jews before the Messiah was born - there are no Jews left to give birth to a Messiah - then Satan has won his battle with God. 

Well, the fact is the Messiah came, and you remember that Satan inspired Herod to try to wipe out all the babies two-years old and younger to get rid of the Messiah, but he failed in that. The Messiah defeated Satan on the cross. So, now, is the battle over? No, the battle is not over, because the Bible is full of promises that, although the Jews are under God’s judgment - and indeed they are, because of their disobedience, rebellion, He is punishing the Jews. He’s the one that scattered them, although the nations have done this, the persecutors have done it, but it couldn’t happen unless God allowed it. So He says He’s the one who scattered them, and the Bible is filled with hundreds of promises in the Old Testament that God, who scattered these people…well, you could take Jeremiah:31:10Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.
See All... - God said: “Nations, you listen to me: I am the one who scattered Israel, and I will re-gather her, and you’d better watch out what you do with her.” 

So the Bible is filled with promises that God would bring these people back to their land, their latter end would be better than their beginning, and the Messiah will return to reign over them. So if there’s no Jewish people left, if Satan has managed to destroy them, there’s no Second Coming - Satan has proved God to be a liar - he has pulled the moral ground out from under God; God could not punish Satan for what he has done, because God himself has proved to be a liar.

Tom: In your book - this is in chapter 2 - you quote from another book, and I present this to our listeners because it’s really fascinating. If our listeners aren’t following your reasoning for the persecution of the Jews, they have to ask themselves the question, “Well, what’s the point? Is there another point to it?” And I want to quote you from a book by John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People - a fascinating quote. It says, “For more than 20 centuries, the Jewish people, more than any other segment of humanity, have been persecuted, uprooted, and annihilated. It is true that many ethnic and religious groups have suffered grievously at the hands of tyrants, but there is a crucial difference. More Africans were killed in the era of slavery, but there was no determined intent to eradicate the entire Negro race. A higher percentage of Armenians perished in the Turkish genocide before World War II, but the main intent was to deport them, not extinguish their genetic pool. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Suharto murdered millions of their own citizens, but the motive for those crimes was political power, not racial animus. In each of these cases, genocide was intended to serve a deeper purpose - the conquest of territory, the acquisition of wealth, the enlargement of political power. In contrast, the genocide of the Jewish people was not intended to be a means to an end. It was not attempted in order to achieve a more fundamental purpose. It was the fundamental purpose. This is what makes the Nazi Holocaust unique in human history." 

Dave: I have studied it at great length, and I can tell you, I have gone through so many books about the Holocaust, and it’s pretty hard to do it with a dry eye. And one of the things that I point out in the book - of course, Aarons and Loftus said it very well - it was to exterminate the race.

Tom: And to what point?

Dave: Just to exterminate them.

Tom: Right, the only possible reason is what you’ve given, which is what the Scripture says.

Dave: Just to get rid of these people, but that’s satanic, okay? So, Tom, we go into a little bit of detail (not as much as we could in the book) pointing out that it wasn’t Hitler alone who did this. It’s called “Hitler’s Holocaust,” or the “Nazi Holocaust.” It couldn’t have been done without the cooperation of the German people, the Polish people, the Hungarians, the Russians…it was all through Europe, and of course the preparation was through the anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church that set them up for this. How could you declare Judenfrei Village: “No Jews are welcome here.” Hitler’s not imposing that; they eagerly went along with this. There was something inside of them that wanted to take advantage of this new law now, and “we can get rid of these people we’ve wanted to get rid of for some time.” 

But, Tom, it’s worse than that. We Americans think of the United States - we’re the good guys; we try to help the downtrodden, and we open our borders to refugees from other countries, and so forth. We did not open our borders to the Jews. There was a meeting in 1939 called by President Roosevelt. They met at Evian, France, in the Hotel Royale on Lake Geneva. Thirty-two nations came; they discussed the plight of the Jews. Before the conference was even convened, Roosevelt said, “We are going to do nothing.” They all knew that Hitler had identified eleven million Jews in Europe, east and west Europe, for extermination. They wrung their hands, they played golf, and went horseback riding and skiing up in Chamonix, Mont Blanc, and so forth, and then they said, “Well, we’re sorry, we just can’t do anything about it.” And it gave Hitler a wonderful opportunity.

Tom: I can quote him if you like.

Dave: Okay, why don’t you quote what Hitler said.

Tom: You write, “Hitler mocked the participants: ‘Since in many countries it was recently regarded as wholly incomprehensible why Germany did not wish to preserve in its population an element like the Jews, it appears astounding that countries seem in no way anxious to make use of these elements themselves now that the opportunity offers.’”

Dave: You can’t read the truth about the way the Jews have been treated without just being astonished - staggered. Let me just give a little more of the evidence. In 1943, top State Department people from America and England met together. They agreed, “We will not push Hitler about the Holocaust. We can’t put pressure on him, because if we do, he will disgorge them. He’ll dump them all on us.”

Tom: Here’s a quote - this was the meeting in Bermuda you just referred to: “The British Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department were both afraid that the Third Reich would be quite willing, indeed eager, to stop the gas chambers, empty the concentration camps, and let hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jewish survivors emigrate to freedom in the West. The Foreign Office ‘revealed in confidence’ to the State Department its fear that Hitler might permit a mass exodus. If approaches to Germany to release Jews were ‘pressed too much,’ that is exactly what might happen.”

Dave: I put these things in the book from my research to show people how shocking it is. The whole world was involved in this. Hitler, in fact, at this time - the time of the Evian meeting in ’39 - he said, “I’ll put them on luxury ships for you; I’ll ship them to you. You can have them.” Nobody wanted them. And then you were mentioning 1944 - that takes us a little farther down the road - there were 500,000 Hungarian Jews untouched by the Nazis, because Hitler was busy in the Russian front, and Hungary was actually one of his allies. But when he came back from his defeat, he offered to sell 500,000 Hungarian Jews for $2.00 a piece. Nobody would take them, and Britain said, “There is no room in Palestine for them.”

Tom: Moreover, Dave, Pope Pius XII wrote an urgent letter to President Roosevelt to persuade him that the Jews should not be allowed to return to Palestine.

Dave: Yeah, this is in ’43, with the smoke of incinerated Jews hovering over Europe, and he was opposed to the Jews coming back to “Palestine,” so-called (it’s not really Palestine). 

And then, Tom, throughout the war and especially in the closing days of the war, the allies steadfastly refused the pleas of the Jewish organizations around the world, “Would you at least bomb the rail lines going into and out of these death camps?” And we would not do it.

Tom: You document it right here: “The United States government had full knowledge from reliable intelligence of the extermination of the Jews at least as early as August 1942.”

Dave: And they tried to suppress it, Tom - didn’t want to do anything about it. And furthermore, they shut down the diplomatic channels to any communication about the suffering of the Jews. Tom, it makes my blood boil! 

Now, you had 900-and-some Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany, and they had been welcomed by Cuba. They were on the ship St. Louis - probably most people have heard of it - and when they arrived in Havana Harbor, or approached Havana Harbor, the Cuban government said, “Oh no, we’re not going to honor those visas that we have given you. You must pay us a half a million dollars each.”

Tom: It even went up to a million, didn’t it?

Dave: Yes, then they raised it to a million; it was impossible. So this ship, the St. Louis, Captain Schroeder, took it up and down the coast of South America, Central, North America, trying to find someone who would take them. He, of course, came to the United States - Roosevelt would not take these people; they were sent back to go to the Holocaust! 

Now, Britain - we have to give them credit for this - they did take 288. Those are the only ones that survived, because the rest of them were taken in by Belgium and Holland, France, and so forth, but of course they ended up in the Holocaust. 

But, Tom, incredible that the world stood by, would not accept refugees, would not pay $2 a piece for the ones that Hitler offered, did not want to pressure Hitler because they didn’t want any Jews sent from Nazi Germany into their countries…Tom, it’s horrible, and you can only explain it - it’s satanic!

Tom: Dave, you give a stunning example - I mean you have many, many of these things - but…1993, there’s a stock market crash in Japan. Now, you point out that less than one percent of the Japanese have ever had any contact with Jewish people, but they blamed them for their stock market crash! Come on! 

Dave: Tom, it’s irrational, it’s satanic - you cannot explain it any other way. The Jews are blamed for almost everything. “Oh, they’ve got control of the banks, they’re in control of this…” You hear it all the time, you know.

Tom: Dave, tell our listeners - right after 9/11, you went over to Germany.

Dave: Yeah, we were in Germany.

Tom: Among solid Christians.

Dave: Yes, and, Tom, they were seriously asking us, “Well, were the Jews responsible for this? After all, we heard that there were 4,000 Jews that worked in the Twin Towers and they didn’t show up for work that day.” I mean, Tom, it’s so ridiculous! Four thousand Jews knew about it and they all kept the secret, but nobody else knew it was going to happen, and then the Jews themselves knocked down the Twin Towers in order to blame the Muslims? You don’t need any excuses to blame Muslims. Islam is the most vicious, murderous, anti-Christian, anti-Israel religion the world has ever seen, and it was Muslims who did it, and we know why they did it. We’ve traced their steps - they did it in order to enter Paradise to please Allah, because Allah hates Jews, whereas the God of the Bible (203 times) is called the God of Israel.

Tom: Now, Dave, the recent bombing in London was a stunner for most people, because this was not the extremists, this was not the fanatical terrorist profile that we’ve had. This was British citizens, but really renewed in their Islamic faith.

Dave: Exactly. The young man who rolled the grenade into the tent to do away with some officers in Iraq, he had converted to Islam. He was an American. He converted to Islam in a mosque in Los Angeles. You see, Tom, that’s one of the points I make in the book: it is not some extremists, it is Islam, and there are thousands - in fact, there are millions who are willing to do this in order to gain Paradise according to the rules of Islam, and especially if you kill a Jew.

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7 featuring T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. The complete radio discussion of Dave Hunt’s book Judgment Day – Israel, Islam & The Nations is available in Mp3 or compact disc from thebereancall.com. We offer a wide variety of resources to help you in your study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon, 97708; call us at 800.937.6638, or visit our website at the bereancall.org. I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for being here, and we invite you back again next week. Until then, we encourage you to Search the Scriptures 24/7.