In 2024, Amnesty International released a report on the Gaza conflict entitled "You Feel Like You Are Subhuman." On page 12 of the PDF, the report begins: "On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration."

 

This opening statement is, in my view, fundamentally misleading because it begins the narrative with Israel's military response while omitting Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel. The report frames Israel as the initiator of the violence. Sadly, narratives that portray the Jewish people as uniquely evil are not new. Similar accusations have been repeated for centuries.

 

Some are almost absurd, while others have had devastating consequences. One recent example illustrates how bizarre such claims can become. Following Argentina's 3-0 victory over Algeria in a 2026 football match, in which Lionel Messi scored a hat-trick, some commentators in Algeria reportedly claimed that Jews somehow controlled Messi. The accusation is obviously ridiculous. If Jews truly possessed such power, Israel would surely have won a World Cup by now.

 

Perhaps the saddest aspect of these libels is that many originated within Christian Europe. In 1144, in Norwich, England, a twelve-year-old boy named William was found murdered. The killer was never identified. Four years later, a monk named Thomas of Monmouth arrived in Norwich and claimed that Jews had committed the murder as part of a religious ritual. From this grew the infamous "blood libel"—the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children and used their blood to make matzah for Passover.

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Another medieval accusation alleged that Jews broke into Catholic churches to steal consecrated communion wafers and stab them as a symbolic reenactment of Christ's crucifixion.

 

There was also the legend of the "Wandering Jew," a figure who supposedly mocked Jesus during the crucifixion and was condemned by God to wander the earth until Christ's return. The story became a symbolic condemnation of the Jewish people for rejecting their Messiah and was used to explain their dispersion throughout the world.

 

These stories may have begun as words, but words have consequences. They fostered deep fear and hatred toward Jewish communities throughout Europe and often led to violence.

 

For centuries, Christians accused Jews of being "Christ-killers." During the Middle Ages, after Good Friday services in which the Passion narrative was read, mobs sometimes left churches and attacked nearby Jewish communities.

 

Friends of mine from Goa, India—a former Portuguese colony—have told me that, as children during Lent, they caught lizards, nailed them to sticks, and called them "Jews." The term had become an insult, demonstrating how deeply anti-Jewish attitudes had become embedded in their culture.

 

One of the most devastating accusations arose during the Black Death of the fourteenth century, when nearly sixty percent of Europe's population died from the bubonic plague. Today we know that the disease was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted primarily by fleas carried by rats. Medieval Europeans knew nothing of this and instead accused Jews of poisoning wells. The result was the massacre of thousands of Jews across Europe. In Basel, Switzerland, the city's Jewish population was rounded up and burned alive. Interestingly it was in this same city, in 1897, that the first Zionist Congress led by Theodore Hertzl was convened.

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Another libel that continues to circulate is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in 1903. The booklet claimed to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. Although it has long been exposed as a forgery, it has been translated into many languages and continues to influence antisemitic thinking.

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At the 2003 Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit, Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad declared:

 

"They (Jews) survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong... With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries..." (The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 2003)

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This raises an important question: Where do these lies originate, and why do they persist?For Christians, the answer is found in Scripture. Yeshua identified Satan as the father of lies.

 

John 8:44 (NKJV)

"You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it."

 

The purpose of these lies is to stir hatred against the Jewish people and ultimately against the nation of Israel.

 

I believe that, Satan knows that his time is short. He seeks to destroy the Jewish people because he believes that doing so would frustrate God's redemptive purposes. Yet Scripture teaches otherwise. God's covenant with Israel has not been revoked.

 

Paul writes that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29), and the angel Gabriel declared that Yeshua "will reign over the house of Jacob forever" and will sit on "the throne of His father David" (Luke 1:32–33).

 

Therefore, Christians should reject falsehood wherever it appears. We are called to speak the truth, oppose hatred, and remember that God remains faithful to His promises.

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