Anti-semitism

This post was inspired by watching a short segment of The Ten Commandments on NineGem TV last night which took me by surprise as it's the sort of film not aired as much as it used to be.

I've watched it in its entirety many times but the scenes I saw were the ones around Passover where Joshua smears the blood of a sacrificial lamb on the door to the house of Dathan (the Jewish origin but now Egyptian bureaucrat/taskmaster) in order to protect the women he loves in that household, against the wishes of Dathan.

Like many old films it packs in scene after scene of cinematic gold but the scenes relevant to this post are the ones surrounding the jubilation for the end of bondage. This preparation for Passover, is culminated by a scene in which Dathan is shown again scheming with his Egyptian masters reimagining a way to return to  his rapidly vanishing life of luxury and opulence amongst the Egyptian elite.

So here we have a film example of a person of the Jewish race who everyone including Jewish people themselves would agree is despicable.

But we hate him because he is doing hateful things, not because of his colour or creed.

So would hate of this man be considered antisemitism?

I believe the answer is no though many in today's world seem to believe any hate of anyone or anything having a Jewish identity or background is.

The answer to this is present in this Dathan archetype. A man so obsessed with status and wealth that he has forgotten what it means to be human altogether and accepts oppression of the many for the good of the few such as himself.

What else they happen to be whether it be Jewish or Moorish matters not. We have to finally agree that hateful oppresion and the pursuit of wealth and status, over the well being and betterment of the oppressed will always be evil.

While we must be mindful of intolerance based on ethnicity, religion or creed - intolerance of hateful things and people must not be mislabelled as something which gives one an easy get out of jail card.

The world has always been full of men like Dathan and one day Hell will be full of multitudes of people like him.