The Nazi Anti-Semitic Spirit Is Back From the Dead

The New York Times released an interview with Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League (adl), on August 9. The adl has discredited itself in many ways, particularly with its incessant criticism of all things Trump and its ability to find far-right extremism everywhere. Nevertheless, Greenblatt’s interview raised some important points that should alarm anybody who knows history:

I think this is a time of great concern for Jews all over the United States. At adl, we track anti-Semitism, we measure attitudes, and we also track incidents. And we’ve never really seen a time like this, at least not in recent memory. So on the one hand, elevated or intense anti-Semitic attitudes, as a percent of the population, have more than doubled in the last five years. And we also track incidents. What I can tell you is, last year, 2024, was the worst year we had ever recorded in terms of acts of harassment, vandalism and violence directed at Jewish people or Jewish institutions. That was the fifth time in the last six years that we’ve broken a new record. And if I look back over the 10 years since I became adl ceo, the number’s up 10 times where it was when I started on the job.

Strong words. Are Greenblatt’s worries exaggerated? Examine a sampling of high-profile anti-Semitic acts in the U.S. from the past few months:

• On April 13, Cody Balmer attempted to assassinate Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro by setting the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence on fire. Balmer said he did so because Shapiro, who is Jewish, was not pro-Palestinian. Balmer “admitted to harboring hatred” of the governor and said he would have “beaten him with his hammer” if he found Shapiro the night of the attack.
• On May 21, a gunman killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sara Milgrim, employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., shouting “Free Palestine!”
• On June 1, an Egyptian national attacked peaceful pro-Israel protesters in Boulder, Colorado, with a flame thrower and Molotov cocktails. An 82-year-old woman died weeks later because of the attack.
• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—usually a vehement critic of Israel in the House of Representatives—received multiple death threats and had her office vandalized the weekend of July 19-20, after she voted against an amendment to cut American funding of Israel’s missile defense systems.
• On August 10, unknown vandals spray-painted swastikas and words like “burn” and “SS” at the headquarters of the Israeli-American Council in Los Angeles.

These anti-Semitic actions are not restricted to the U.S. Europe is seeing similar cases:

• During the annual Glastonbury Festival on June 28, British punk rock duo Bob Vylan led the crowd chanting “Death, death to the idf,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
• Belgian authorities arrested two Israelis at a concert July 20 after a pro-Palestinian group accused them of “severe violations of international humanitarian law” with no evidence other than them waving idf flags. The two Israelis were later released. But on July 30, Belgium announced it had referred their case to the International Criminal Court.
• An Israeli cruise ship docked on the Greek island of Syros on July 22. Around 300 protesters encamped at the island’s port to face the roughly 1,600 Israelis on the ship. The cruise line decided not to let passengers disembark on Syros and sailed to Cyprus.
• Forty-four French teenagers of Jewish descent boarded a flight on July 23 from Valencia, Spain, to Paris. The teens and eight counsellors were returning from a summer camp when the airline and Spanish police forced them off the flight. The airline, Spain-based Vueling, claimed the crowd was being disruptive. But video footage from the incident shows police using excessive force. Spanish Transportation Minister Óscar Puente on social media called the teens “Israeli brats.”
• The night of August 6-7, somebody smeared the Paris offices of El Al, Israel’s national airline, with red paint and graffiti saying “El Al genocide airline.” This comes as France has refused to renew visas for El Al security guards.

These are not the only recent examples of Jews and Israelis being attacked solely for who they are. Teens were chased by hoodlums on motorcycles on the Greek island of Rhodes. Tourists had their food flipped over at a London café. A man was beaten to the ground in front of his children in Montreal, Canada.

Many of the assailants may claim they are protesting Israel’s “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. But countries like China and Myanmar have been accomplishing well-documented genocide against their Muslim populations for years. Nobody is vandalizing the offices of politicians with connections to China. Nobody is assassinating workers at the embassy for Myanmar. Jews are being targeted because they are Jewish—and because people feel they can express anti-Semitism with impunity.

This has become the world’s new normal. Anybody with knowledge of history should be terrified.

Holocaust

On the morning of June 24, 1922, German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau left his villa in Berlin’s well-to-do suburb of Grünewald in an open-top limousine. As his chauffeur slowed down at a bend, another open-topped vehicle overtook the limousine and slowed down, where two black-clad assassins sprayed bullets into Rathenau. One of the assailants then threw a grenade under the limousine, springing the car into the air. Rathenau soon succumbed to his injuries.

The assassins were right-wing extremists. But Rathenau was an odd target for right-wing extremists. He worked for Kaiser Wilhelm ii’s government in World War i, helping Germany amass raw materials against the Allied blockade. As foreign minister, he helped negotiate a treaty with the Soviet Union, where Germany could rebuild its military in Soviet territory, away from the West’s prying eyes.

Making a deal with the new Bolshevik state made Rathenau unpopular with right-wingers. But on trial, the killers said they were motivated to accomplish “the exclusion of Jews” from the government through a bloody “internal war.” Rathenau was murdered because he was Jewish.

“Anti-Semites such as these young men,” historian Richard Evans writes in The Third Reich in History and Memory, “believed that Jews were traitors to Germany—a belief held among others by the nascent Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler …. Such men objected vehemently to the fact that the German foreign minister was a Jew, and saw this as a central reason for what they regarded as his treachery to the national cause.”

Today, historians view Rathenau’s murder as a stepping stone to the Holocaust. At the time, most of Germany was aghast at the murder. But it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Many people believed some variant of the “stab in the back” myth—that Germany lost the war because of internationalist forces like socialists and Jews sabotaging the war effort at home. Across the pond, celebrities like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh promulgated similar ideals. Replace “Jewish conspiracy” with “genocide,” and many of their claims sound modern.

As the 1920s gave way to the 1930s, anti-Semitic acts became more large-scale, and not just in Germany. While Hitler locked people in concentration camps, pogroms in England, Poland and Turkey—not unlike the one Amsterdam had last year—sent Jews running for their lives. Respected figures like Britain’s King Edward viii visited Germany for photo ops with Hitler, platforming him as a well-meaning visionary.

When the 1930s progressed to the 1940s, to enough people, sending Jews to gas chambers didn’t seem like a big deal.

Jesus Christ said that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). The Apostle James wrote that “when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15; New King James Version). Actions stem from attitudes. That was the case in the 1920s and 1930s. Events like Rathenau’s assassination reflected an attitude that would soon metastasize into Auschwitz and Treblinka.

We’re seeing the same attitude expressed around the world today.

Some may have the knee-jerk reaction, “Maybe there are some ugly problems here and there, but this isn’t the 1930s. Hindsight is 20/20. Mankind couldn’t sink to the level of depravity the Nazis in World War ii—surely not.”

Many Germans shocked at Rathenau’s murder in 1922 were extending their right arm to heil Hitler come 1941.

Prophets

In 1939, months from the start of World War ii, Hitler gave a famous speech in the Reichstag. He said:

In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. … Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

The prophet of the devil predicted his coming Holocaust. The Jews see themselves as the people of God. In the New Testament, Christ said “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). From Genesis to Revelation, God’s prophets have much to say on the history and future of the Jewish people. This includes what we are seeing right now.

Paul called the devil “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). John said in Revelation 12:9 that the devil deceives the whole world. The next verse calls him “the accuser of our brethren … which accused them before our God day and night.”

Satan influences civilization worldwide with his accusations against those God is involved with. This includes the Jews.

Revelation 12:12 says: “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time” (nkjv). Other prophecies label this time of Satan’s wrath, just before the return of Christ, as the “great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21). Luke 21 gives a parallel account to Matthew 24: “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. … For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (verses 20-21, 23-24; nkjv).

“When a race receives honor as God has honored the Jews,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in The Key of David, “Satan hates them for that. He inspired enemies to rise up and strip them of all dignity! The Nazis often shaved their heads, took their clothes, beat them, and used them for medical experiments. God says it will be far worse the next time around. Do you believe God?”

He writes: “The Jews say, ‘Never again!’ Sadly, we have to tell them they are dead wrong. It is going to happen again, and it’s going to make the Holocaust look like a dress rehearsal. The Jews suffered horribly in World War ii. That history is a stark warning of what is about to come upon them!”

Hope

Mr. Flurry concludes the section in his book: “They need to know what an exalted role God has given them! They need hope! This whole world needs hope.”

How does one find hope amid so much bad news?

Christ said He would cut the devil’s rule short with His Second Coming. Luke 21:27-28 read: “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”

Christ in verse 28 was speaking to His people who submit to His rule and do His Work today. But before this redemption comes, the world is in for some extremely tough times. He gives a warning in verses 34-36: “But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (nkjv).

Jesus Christ berated those of his day who could “not discern the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3). Some very evil signs are taking place all around this world. It is up to the individual to respond to them.

To learn more, request a free copy of The Key of David.