The reader may find it regrettable that Arabs give such a poor example of true Christianity to Jews. But the Jew finds nothing incongruous about the Arab attitude at all. Each Israeli child learns in school that his history is one long, tragic persecution of Jews by Christians. Anti-Semitism has always been present in the Christian world to some extent, but at certain points in history it has been vicious. For example, during the Crusades, Christian hordes swarmed across Europe toward the Holy Land, slaughtering the Jews as they advanced. One such incident happened in Esslingen, Germany. There the Crusaders locked all Jews in the village inside the local synagogue and burned it down. The Crusade period was a very dark time in Jewish history.

Another unspeakable tragedy occurred in Spain. During the period of Moslem rule in Spain, the Jews were left alone. A Jewish diaspora culture advanced to an all-time high. However, when the Christian King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella united Spain under their throne in the 15th Century, they began a horrific persecution of the Jews. The Jewish people were told, "Kiss the cross and become a Christian." The alternative was deportation. Thousands were tortured and killed. Most, feeling they could not become a part of an idolatrous heathen religion, preferred death or expulsion. Some took oaths of Christianity, but were deported anyway.

In Russia, persecution took the form of pogroms. For centuries under the Christian czars, the Russian army swept through Jewish villages to slaughter, rape and destroy. At times, Russian soldiers--or others with some spark of feeling toward the Jews--warned them to flee before the army arrived. Countless Jewish villages throughout Russia and Eastern Europe received orders that Jews would no longer be able to reside there. So the Jewish people would pack up their belongings, put them in carts and start down the road, not knowing where they were going.

It is not accidental that many of the first Jews to return in this century to the Holy Land came from Russia and Eastern Europe. Although what was then called Palestine was a land of malarial swamps and desert wastes, Jews preferred it to continual ejection from places in Christendom.

The culmination of all persecutions was masterminded by Hitler. Since Hitler was neither a Jew nor a Moslem, he was, in the eyes of Jews, a Christian. (He had a Catholic background.) If a questioning Christian Gentile strongly resists the idea that Hitler was a Christian, the Jew will answer that Hitler did not destroy these millions of Jews by himself. Thousands of Germans, Poles and others who called themselves Christians herded Jews onto the trains or met them at the sites of destruction. If you should have opportunity to look through old World War II pictures, notice the Crusaders' Cross pinned to the Nazi uniform. The cross is the symbol of Christianity to the Jews.

Even today, Jewish people in such countries as France rarely discuss with a Gentile the fact that they are Jews. And in the Passover season of 1970, European papers published reports that Jews had been accused (as they have for centuries) of killing Gentile children for their blood to be used at the Passover.

Communism has collapsed. And at this moment, the old line churches--Russian Orthodox in the Soviet Union, Catholic in Poland and Eastern Europe--have come out into the open. Anti-Semitism is again rapidly gaining ground, causing Jews living there to fear for their lives. There is also a visible growth in hatred of the Jews in Catholic and Protestant Western Europe, Scandinavia, Britain, and even parts of the U.S.

Now imagine a sincere, born-again American or European traveling to Israel. He finds himself caught up in the ecstasy of the Reborn Land, with its rich promises of God for Israel, and he asks a Jew, "Wouldn't you like to become a Christian?" The Jew's negative response inevitably leaves both parties puzzled.

Thus the paradox: the positive, but meaningless answer from a Christian Arab, who is glad to tell you he is a Christian, and the extremely negative reaction from a Jew. The Jew understands the question thus: "Would you like to become a part of a Gentile, idolatrous religion which consists of heathen who have tried to exterminate the Jews for nearly 2,000 years?" The Jew, at best, will probably politely answer, "I cannot be a traitor to my people."

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