Israeli Neo-Nazi
I try to follow world events as much as I can. If one uses only American media sources, that makes it difficult to keep up with world news. Americans are notoriously self-absorbed and so we simply don’t get the kind of world news coverage that is commonplace worldwide. I’ve recently begun to receive the superb magazine The Economist, a British publication that delivers an incredible amount of world news in its pages. It blows TIME and NEWSWEEK away, hands down, no questions asked. I take those too, but they pale in comparison to The Economist.
This week’s issue contains a shocking story of a neo-Nazi movement in the country of Israel! Unbelievable, yet true. Apparently a group of Russian immigrants had formed a neo-Nazi group. The Israeli "Law of Return" allows not only Jews themselves, but all relatives, no matter how remote their actual Jewishness. This allowed persons with only the most sketchy of Jewish ties to come to Israel seeking a better life, which did not come about. Their children are not growing up disaffected and what better way to express disdain for Israel than by becoming a neo-Nazi?
The Nazis slaughtered countless millions of Jews and other minorities. And let it be said that they truly did this, in spite of claims by Holocaust revisionists that they in fact did not. [It is profoundly shameful and embarrassing that a certain weekly publication closely associated with The LCMS will, with some regularity, get on a revisionist tear and deny that the Nazis in fact did slaughter as many as they did. As if outreach to the Jews is not hard enough for Lutherans, who can never remove themselves form the darkest mark on the German soul-Nazi Germany. And anyone who says that the majority of Germans were not supportive of Nazi Germany just does not know what they are talking about.]
Interesting …..Why is the FACT that millions of Lutheran Germans were either SLAUGHTERED by Hitler during his rise to power or had the brains to get out of Germany when they saw what was coming not mentioned in this article ? Millions of Lutheran Christians are filled with sadness at the Jews denial of Christ as their Messiah and pity them at their Destruction .
McCain: Millions? Sadly, you’ve got your facts wrong. The sad blight on our own Synod is that before WWII Hitler recruited American Lutheran pastors to come over to Germany to be wined and dined. They returned with tales of how wonderful Hitler was. It was the editor of the WITNESS at the time who exposed Hitler and vigorously refuted the claims of Missouri Synod German pastors that Hitler was harmless to religion. He saw clearly what was coming. Frankly, the Lutherans I admire are the American Lutherans who gave their lives destroying Nazi Germany.
I went to a small Lutheran Seminary which is not part of the LCMS. I did have LCMS professors. Two of my LCMS professors and one german ALC professor expressed doubts about the holocaust. I always supposed this to be rooted in germanic pride and not anti-semitism. Perhaps the same can be said about the Lutheran weekly you mentioned. You are right this is very bad PR. Nothing is gained for the Gospel by associating it with Holocaust denial.
McCain: I doubt it was even that sophisticated. They probably just were repeating the nonsense that is printed from time to time in CHRISTIAN NEWS on this subject.
What I find hard to get my head round is that these folk were allowed in to Israel in the first place. The Law of Return allows people of part Jewish “blood” automatic right of citizenship but does this not go with even the most basic vetting?
The irony is that these part-Jews would have been the victims of the same ideology so admire sixty years before.
Pax Christi
D.P.(11.35 am GMT)
I always enjoyed the The Economist when I worked for the campus library at Texas A&M. I made all the other Grad. students jealous because my position in Circulation meant I saw all of the journals before they did.
I must say, in regards to the article, I am not surprised to see the neo-Nazi’s are finding a following in Israel. I suspect with everything that goes on and the power the Jewish community has it would lead to a great deal of resentment against the Jewish people.
I know a retired pastor (had been ALC, don’t know about LCMS) who believes the Jews control the media and would rant about it from time to time. It was in a small confessional group, and the other pastors rolled their eyes each time. He would also praise socialized medicine from time to time, boasting how it started first in the European countries with Lutheran state churches. He studied in Germany; maybe he picked it up there.
But he gave me Communion once too. God at work through sinners….
The life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is, of course, well known to Lutherans and nonLutherans alike.
A very interesting book of that period is “With Bound Hands”, the story of Jesuit Father Alfred Delp who was wrongly accused by the Nazis of plotting against Hitler. His life in prison, conditions in Germany (which, I think would be validated by my mother who lived there through that period) and the perilous nature of that time are well covered in the book.
Father Delp was eventually tried and hung by Hitler’s “Peoples Court” shortly before the end of the war, as was Bonhoeffer.
There are countless other courageous examples of other Christians who lived with as much integrity as they could during those dark times.
I find it bizarrely interesting that these are people with Russian blood embracing Nazi ideals. Russians were not considered part of “the superior race” by any means, and their fate would’ve eventually been similar.
But I suppose in this day and age, we pick and choose what parts to believe in, with evil as well as with good.
Reverend, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you here.
I’d encourage you to objectively watch “1/3rd of the Holocaust” if you have time. I’d bet just about anything that you’ll walk away a Revisionist after watching it.
As per Nazi influence in Israel, this does not surprise me. There were thousands of Jews that fought for the Third Reich, and Hitler was funded by the prominent Jewish bankers such as the Rothschild Dynasty. Zionism is all about supporting the Jewish state of Israel, and Hitler himself wanted the Jews to have their own state. I’m opposed to Zionism, Nazism, and any form of statism and/or anti-Christian conspiracy. Doctor Luther, in his book, On the Jews and Their Lies, did not see Jews as being good citizens of a Christian land. The Jewish Question is one that must be asked, but surely no one (other than Aryan Nation kooks) thinks that genocide is the answer!
The Germans were wrong to have supported the evil tyrannies of the Reich, but to say they were guilty of killing Six Million Jews is simply false. The interesting thing about World War II is that so many of the world leaders at that time were Jewish. Hitler himself was part Jewish, FDR changed his name and was Jewish, and Stalin is rumored to be somewhat Jewish (and it is a fact that the Bolshevik Revolution was thoroughly Jewish).