"These people aren't exactly Einsteins."
Jerusalem, June 20 - An ancient teaching admonishing the nation of Israel to acknowledge that other peoples possess advanced, sophisticated philosophical systems and robust, eloquent methods to express profound, eternal ideas of the human condition, not to mention knowledge of the universe and its functioning, poses a conundrum, observers report, given the prominence in worldwide rhetoric of the most moronic, incoherent, self-contradictory, hypocritical, and downright dumb arguments against the continued existence of a sovereign Jewish state in the ancestral Jewish homeland.
A statement in the third- or fourth-century work Eikha Rabba expounds a phrase from the Biblical book of Lamentations to teach, "Should a person say to you, 'There is wisdom among the nations,' believe it." The work also includes a lengthy exploration comparing and contrasting "Athens" with "Jerusalem," in which the unknown author acknowledges and appreciates important elements of Greco-Roman lore and intellect, even as he laments the destructive impact of the rampant immorality in that culture.
Such praise, however, flies in the face of observed reality, analysts acknowledge, given the ignorance, muddled thinking, and intellectual paucity, if not dishonesty, that characterizes much of "the nations'" contentions against the State of Israel.
"It's hard to square that teaching with gentiles confidently proclaiming, 'Judaism is just a religion, and Jews aren't a nation,'" noted one scholar. "It's especially stupid considering that the Bible, the very set of works that so many non-Jews have claimed as theirs, as well, repeatedly refers to the people called 'Israel,' using terminology inherent to nationhood."
"Then there's the non-Biblical stuff, such as ignorance of anti-Jewish violence, hate, and persecution," another scholar added. "I've lost count of how many times I've encountered the 'anti-Zionist' idea that Jews were fine under Islamic rule, and that the creation and maintenance of the State of Israel is the source of Arab antisemitism. Or that Jews, who represent an unbroken tradition of belonging to this specific piece of land, and who have long been accused of favoring attachment to that land over the ones to which they have been exiled, can be colonists or invaders "
"Oh my God," he continued, "the use of 'Semitic' to refer to Arabs - that's up there among the stupidest. 'Semitic' is a linguistic term referring to a group of languages in the Afro-Asiatic family. It has nothing to do with ethnicity. 'Antisemitism' was specifically coined in the nineteenth century as a sanitized, 'scientific' replacement for 'Judenhass' - 'Jew-hate' - for use in polite company. It's getting more and more difficult to see the 'nations' that produced such imbecility as the intellectual giants that the author of Eikha Rabba describes."
"These people aren't exactly Einsteins."
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