Introduction

Abstract

“Jews are news.” This phrase is sometimes offered as a facetious explanation for the international attention directed at events in and around the State of Israel. It is a half-joking justification for the incommensurate scrutiny Israel seems to receive in the news media. But though the words “Jews are news” have a modern ring, Jews actually have held a position of unique prominence in the collective imagination of the Christian West for centuries. In fact, even a cursory survey of texts that have influenced Western culture reveals that Jewish existence, Jewish exile and dispersion and Jewish stereotypes bear great symbolic weight in our collective traditions.

[The Jews] are our supporters in their books, our enemies in their hearts, our witnesses in their scrolls.

Augustine, On Faith in Things Unseen

The history of the nation of Israel is indeed unlike that of any other nation throughout human history. No other nation has been so blessed by God and yet so hated by Satan. The factors of satanic persecution, divine judgment for sin, and divine blessing honoring the promises to Abraham are all evident throughout Jewish history.

John Ankerberg and John Weldon, One World: Biblical Prophecy and the New World Order

Why this extraordinarily neurotic way of reacting to anything to do with Israel — and to quite a lot of things to do with Jews elsewhere?

Norman Solomon, “The Context of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue”