The world’s most impossible villains

What if, for thousands of years, a remarkably small group of people, less than 0.1% of the global population, were blamed for everything?

Imagine if, despite their tiny numbers, they were painted as the masterminds behind wars, financial collapses, and political conspiracies, while simultaneously being exiled, persecuted, massacred, and made stateless?

How can one be both the puppet master and the marionette, dangling from the noose of history? You’d have to be really stupid to believe it.

What if, in a vast region dominated by a single faith, a minuscule sliver of land, barely visible on a world map, was called a coloniser? A country where people of all races, religions, and sexualities live and participate fully in society, while its far larger neighbours, who have expelled nearly every religious minority, claim it is they who are intolerant?

A people who have been chased from nearly every country they’ve ever called home, who found a place to exist, only to be told that their very existence is unacceptable? You’d have to be really stupid to believe it.

What if, for thousands of years, this group was denied entry into clubs, businesses, universities and entire nations, not because of anything they ever did, but because of who they were?

And yet, when they created their own communities, institutions and businesses, they were suddenly accused of being insular, secretive, and controlling?

What if they were called both dirty and elite, both impoverished leeches and greedy capitalists, both weak parasites and powerful overlords?

Too rich, too poor. Too successful, too unworthy. Too separate, too influential. You’d have to be really stupid to believe it.

What if, after surviving mass genocide, over and over again, the survivors weren’t mourned but vilified? What if the people who had been rounded up, starved, tortured and gassed were told they were the real oppressors? What if the world looked at the murdered and decided they had it coming? You’d have to be really evil to believe it.

What if the people who have contributed more to medicine, science, literature and the arts than any other group per capita, were dismissed as having no value to the world? If their musicians wrote the songs you sing, their designers created the clothes you wear, their scientists developed the medicine that saved your family, but still, they were treated as a global affliction?

What if one in five Nobel Prizes were awarded to members of this tiny group, yet they were painted as useless? You’d have to be really stupid to believe it.

What if the very faith that shaped much of Western civilization, whose principles formed the foundation of law, morality and justice, was considered foreign, unwelcome and alien? What if the same people who scoff at them still kneel before a deity from their lineage, pray from a book written by their ancestors, and follow commandments they introduced to the world?

What if those who excluded them from their country clubs didn’t realise that their own G-d wouldn’t have been allowed in? You’d have to be really blind to believe it.

And yet, for millennia, this has been the reality. And still is. A lie so preposterous that no rational mind should accept it.

A narrative so contradictory, no logical person should repeat it. A hatred so ancient and enduring that no modern society should tolerate it.

So unless you are really stupid enough to believe it, you need to stand against it. Forcefully. Unapologetically. Relentlessly.

With deepest concern,
A wandering and wondering Jew

#StandAgainstHate