As my father used to say, the worst kind of anti-Semite is a Jewish anti-Semite. The most infamous of this breed was Karl Marx. Both of his grandfathers were rabbis, but he hated Jews. Why? Because they’re so bourgeois -- shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers… successful capitalists.

Nowadays, we have intensely committed leftists, who just happen to be Jewish, joining Palestine Liberation protests. The complicit media just love to focus in on these zealots.

Speaking of familiarity breeding contempt, Arabs are also Semites. Their language and alphabet are very similar to Hebrew. Jews and Arabs both believe that they are descended from Abraham. Sarah, the mother of Isaach, was a “superior” wife to Ishmael’s mother, Hagar… even though Ishmael was born first. BTW, Mongols and Turks have a similar legend -- having a common ancestor. Thus, they are also very similar linguistically.

Islam came to the Arab world relatively recently. They are an ancient people. Some of the earliest Christians were Arabs, being geographically near the beginning of the phenomenon. In today’s world there are still Christian Arabs. Many have had to flee to either Israel or the United States. When swine flu hit the street, Christian Arabs were massacred, particularly in Egypt, because some of them raised pigs.

Islam and Judaism have a lot in common. Circumcision being at the top of the list. Then there’s the dietary prohibition on pork products. I’ve been told that eating shellfish is okay for Moslems, but Jews are supposed to avoid anything that swims but doesn’t have scales. A Moslem woman I used to work with told me that she bought her meat at a kosher butcher shop, because it was the most convenient source for halal. Archaeologists theorize that the prohibition on pork meat is the result of the pastoral-nomad life style of both Hebrews and Arabs. Unlike goats, sheep and cattle, pigs do not herd well. Excavated evidence suggests that, once herders settled down into villages, pig bones started showing up in their debris dumps.

Historically, Jews have been hated not because they’ve caused harm to the Gentile world… but because they’ve enclosed themselves in their own isolated communities, ultimately to be known as ghettos (after an Italian island where Jews were sequestered for their own protection). Their apparent prosperity encouraged envy among some of their “neighbors.” Such may also be the enduring effect of tribalism. “Us” verses “Them” is a mainstay throughout the scope of human conflict. Many of the tribal names for the native peoples recorded by early American anthropologists mean nothing more than “enemy” as told to them by members of a neighboring group.

Progress in reducing this tension is largely due to improvements in transportation. Starting with sailing ships and then the compass, various populations began to mingle and tribalism began to fade away. Railroads and then automobiles mostly finished the job. The greatest genetic diversity among the human population is found in Africa… because it has the least developed forms of transportation and, thus, the least amount of mingling. According to census data, the fastest-growing ethnic type in the U.S. is “mixed.” And, yet, mingling is still a scattershot process. While driving up through Oregon, I went into a roadside store to buy something to eat. I asked the fairly middle-aged lady behind the counter if there was something like a picnic area up the road where I could have lunch. “I don’t know, I’ve never been up the road” was her answer.

In our modern world, we are confronted with the legal absurdity of the hate crime. Murder, assault, and vandalism aren’t bad enough -- the state of mind of the assailant is now of particular importance. Why? Because social justice warriors have to deny the existence of true evil.

Tendencies towards prejudices and negative stereotypes are part of human nature and are now considered criminal motives, instead of the usual desire to steal or harm for all sorts of other reasons. A classic leftist canard is that poverty is the primary cause of crime. And yet, crime rates actually decreased during the Great Depression, perhaps largely because of the repeal of Prohibition in 1934.

In case you haven’t noticed, crime has again become a major political issue. Here in Alameda County CA, we have a brand-new district attorney who just happens to think that incarceration is cruel and unusual. Card tables supporting petitions for her recall have already appeared by the entrances of the local supermarkets. Unlike the price of various consumer products, crime is truly a matter of public policy.

Image: Montecruz Foto