The Normalization of Antisemitism

Olivier Melnick: It’s good to be back. Thank you for having me.

Tim Moore: Well, we’re glad you are here. And we’re also joined today by our good friend Dave Bowen, the pastor of Standing Stones Community Church in Phoenix, Arizona. You know, Dave for many years has had a tremendous Bible prophecy ministry called Interpreting the Times. And we’re very glad that he has joined us as our teaching evangelist here at Lamb & Lion Ministries as we interpret the signs. Dave, thank you for being here.

David Bowen: I am so excited to be here, especially today with this topic being so important as it is.

Tim Moore: Well, it is tremendously important. And Olivier, we’re here talking to you today because you’ve written a book called “The Normalization of Antisemitism.” And that title sounds very self-explanatory, but you’ve actually defined both of those words, normalization and Antisemitism. So for our viewers tell us what those words mean.

Olivier Melnick: Well, the way I define Antisemitism is and I had to, it’s like a definition that keeps changing slightly on me because the way I’m studying what’s going on, so I’ve added two words lately. And the way I define Antisemitism is: Antisemitism is the irrational, satanic, hatred of the Jewish people and of Israel characterized by thoughts, words and deeds against them. And I had to add the word irrational and satanic, that’s the one thing that most people, I have read a lot of books on the topic, that’s the one thing that most people miss is the connection between Antisemitism and Satan, because it’s a creation of Satan.

Tim Moore: Certainly it is. And you’ve talked about the normalization. I want you to define that as well. But I think it’s important, as you describe in your book, that we understand the terms we use. Too often I’ll ask someone, are you a believer? And they’ll say, yes. And I think oh, we’re in common cause, we’re both followers of Christ. But even the word believer, unless we agree on what that term means, may not lend itself to any commonality.

Olivier Melnick: It happened to me years ago in upstate New York, when I was in line behind an Orthodox Jewish man and we started to talk, and I told him, “Oh, I’m a believer in God.” I just said, “I’m a believer.” He goes, “I’m a believer, too.” And I’m going, oh, this is exciting, so I started talking about Yeshua, about Jesus. And he looked at me funny and he told me, “I meant I’m a believer in God.” So that was really that was a lesson for me, okay, define your terms, because sometimes we talk and we’re not even communicating.

Tim Moore: Very true.

Nathan Jones: And when you say Antisemitism, that the source of it is Satan. Why is it different than any other hatred of any particular racial group? Why is Satan so back behind pushing Antisemitism? And people too I mean, it’s not just demons coming in, but you see this just around the world, especially the U.N., Nakba Day they have officialized the celebration of Nakba Day, condemning that Israel ever existed. And that’s the highest echelons of our society.

Tim Moore: Nakba Day meaning the disaster of losing Jerusalem to the Jewish people in Israel.

Olivier Melnick: Yeah, the catastrophe, that’s what it means in Arabic, I believe. Well, I think the reason why Antisemitism is unique and why I connect it to Satan is because Satan knows the Bible pretty well. He’s read the book cover to cover. And he knows that actually, most Christians don’t even know that when the Jewish people call on Jesus at the end of the Tribulation, Jesus comes back. And when they say “Baruch haba b’shem Adonai” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” So at that point, and I’ve said it to you guys before, Satan does not like his retirement plan. He doesn’t like the where he’s going to go retire. He’s not going to be the boss of Hell. He’s going to be one of the first ones thrown in the lake of fire. Not to rule there, but to suffer just like everybody else who is thrown in there.

Nathan Jones: Praise the Lord.

Olivier Melnick: And praise God. And but he knows that that’s happening when the Jewish people call upon Yeshua Jesus. So what he’s done for the last 2,000 years a very, very thorough job at turning the church against the Jews, and turning Jewish people against Jesus. When you do those two things as well as He has, unfortunately, then it’s becoming very, very difficult to share the Gospel, the message, of the truth of Yeshua, of His death and resurrection with my people. Because the whole world is going against the Jews and the Jewish people looking at Jesus, going like anything but Jesus. And that was me before I became a believer. Give me anything but Jesus, because Jews don’t believe in Jesus. You’d asked me why, I wouldn’t know why.

David Bowen: But going back to his point too, doesn’t that go back to Abraham in Genesis because God chose Abraham, and that becomes the Jewish race, and that is why Satan is so desperate against them, because the covenants that God made was the Jewish people.

Olivier Melnick: Absolutely. I mean, of the eight covenants made between God and mankind, five were made with the Jews, and four of those are unconditional.

David Bowen: Yeah, except for Moses.

Olivier Melnick: You’re right, that’s the one that’s conditional. So God chose the Jewish people, not because we’re better, not because we are smarter, not because we’re better looking. Of course I’m the exception.

Tim Moore: Present company excluded.

Olivier Melnick: Just joking. Just joking. But He just chose the Jewish people to carry on His plan. And you have to think, you know, the very first book of the Bible that was, it always gets me 11 chapters on mankind, 39 chapters on the Jewish people in Genesis. Do you think God is trying to tell you, listen, I’m going to do something special with the Jewish people?

Tim Moore: I think it’s important to build on that point. I mean, we take for granted that this is the Word of God and we talk about the Jews as being the chosen people. But they weren’t chosen, just as you said, Olivier, because they were better, or more righteous, or more worthy. No, as a matter of fact, God says He chose them and blessed them more than any other people on earth as a demonstration of His grace. In other words, His unmerited favor. I love what it says in Ezekiel, you can look in chapter 36 where the Lord actually calls out and says, “I’m not going to even keep my promises to you for your sake because you don’t deserve it. I’m going to do it for My namesake.” So even His determination to bless the Jews, I just think is a great picture of His grace. He didn’t choose any of us because we’re better looking or more worthy, but because He chose to manifest His glory and His grace in our individual lives.

David Bowen: And talk about being chosen, you made a good point in the book I really enjoyed you called it biblical pagan jealousy. What was that all about and how do you explain that?

Olivier Melnick: Oh, you mean the different steps in Antisemitism?

David Bowen: Yes.

Olivier Melnick: Yeah. Well, I look at the very first the very first, at its inception, Antisemitism was not first of all, the word didn’t exist until the late 1800s, but it was not really anything more than a pagan jealousy like, oh, they’re different. They’re like, you know, we don’t we don’t believe the same. And then, you know, then the Christians look at the Jews going like, well they believe this, we believe that. So it was more like a theological anti-Judaism not Antisemitism like we see it today. And then it became what it became over the centuries. But it started as just a jealousy because these people are different. They have their own God. They dress differently, they eat differently, they speak differently. And to this day, by the grace of God.

David Bowen: Would that go back to Abraham’s time, even back then, or when do you think that all started?

Olivier Melnick: Well, I mean, you know, I look at Abraham as being the father of the Jewish nation, but not necessarily the first Jew. I would say the first Jew, you would have to go through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to start seeing, defining who’s Jewish, which could take another two week of discussing that.

Nathan Jones: Because the Jewish people are meant to be set apart. Different and holy so people look at them and say, hey, something is different about them. I need to know their God. But instead, as you said, with paganism, paganism, instead of turning towards it, became jealous of it and persecuted it.

Olivier Melnick: Right.

Nathan Jones: So you could almost say that Antisemitism is ancient.

David Bowen: That’s what I’m saying, how far back does it go? No king for Israel, so and so forth.

Olivier Melnick: But you see you see traces of Antisemitism in the book of Esther, obviously. And I make a great parallel, I have studied this is a great parallel in the way Haman treated the Jews, and the way Hitler treated the Jews.

Tim Moore: Yeah.

Olivier Melnick: All the steps, they are all there.

Nathan Jones: That’s his MO, he always does the samething.

David Bowen: Counterfeiting.

Tim Moore: And the sad reality is, and not sad, but it’s a glorious reality of God, but part of that jealousy is because the Jewish people have been a conduit of God’s blessing. We wouldn’t have the Bible if it weren’t for Jewish authors. We wouldn’t have God’s law if He did not give it to the Jewish people. And obviously the Jewish Messiah is the great gift. The greatest gift of all came through the Jewish people. And so they have been a conduit. I don’t know if they’ve always realized that they were to act as a conduit of blessing to the rest of the world.

Olivier Melnick: No, I don’t think the Jewish people, the vast majority of Jewish people know that. First of all, almost 85% of the Jewish people in the world today don’t believe that Jesus is anything beyond just a man who existed and a teacher and maybe a prophet. But the Jewish people have been we’ve been blessed by God, and it is only by the grace of God. When you look at the history of Jewish people, which I often say can be punctuated by acts of Antisemitism, the whole history, I mean one after the other, we should not exist today if it was not for the grace of God. And the fact that, again, going back to what you said, He gave the Jewish people the covenants and those unconditional covenants, I am so glad they were unconditional because if it was based on Israel’s performance, we wouldn’t be here. But it’s based on God’s character.

David Bowen: His grace.

Nathan Jones: There are about what 14 to 18 million Jews in the world? When you think that the Jewish can go back over 4,000 years almost, that there’s only 12 to 14.

Olivier Melnick: About 14 and a half million. Yeah.

Nathan Jones: That’s amazing. Satan has been very successful in his Antisemetic endeavers.

David Bowen: Yeah, but wiping them out and having them come back, and wiping them out and having to come back. And just returning back from Israel. The sad part as a Gentile, as an evangelist, the Holy Land is not holy, it is only about 2% Christian.

Olivier Melnick: And depending on where you go in Israel there are some places that are definitely not holy.

David Bowen: Yeah.

Tim Moore: Now, many of our viewers today, I think Olivier would say, well, I’m not anti-Semitic. I mean, obviously, I love the Jews. That’s what God commands us to do. And so they would never embrace outright Antisemitism. But you have described in your book how insidious this attitude can be. And even if it’s not overt or outright, you make a point that Antisemitism can be expressed as antagonism toward the Jewish people or in animosity toward Israel as the Jewish state. So you call it the stages of Antisemitism. What are some of those stages that would cause us to reflect, maybe I need to guard against Satan creeping into my outlook toward the Jewish people.

Olivier Melnick: Well, I identify ten stages, and spoiler alert when you read the book, nine of the stages are already in place. There’s only one stage that I think is not in place yet, which is the last one, which is mass murder of Jews. And but I talk about apathy with people. You know apathy exist in a lot of different contexts, but basically when it comes to the Jewish people, when people are like I don’t know anybody Jewish, or I don’t live in Israel, or my neighbors are not Jewish, I don’t live in a Jewish town or neighborhood. So it’s just not close enough that I should care. So people do not react. And the big one that I’ve been fighting for 22 years now is either poor or lack of education. People don’t have a clue. When I hear today that 33% of millennials do not know the meaning of the word Auschwitz or Holocaust, 33% of millennials. And the number is actually very high as well in Poland, in Germany it’s not just in America.

Nathan Jones: Or they’ll believe the propaganda that the Holocaust never happened.

David Bowen: Right.

Olivier Melnick: The Holocaust never happened. Yeah, that one makes me kind of laugh and cringe at the same time when in the Middle East, like, for instance, somebody like Mahmoud Abbas, who did is he’s the leader of the Palestinian Authority. He did his PhD dissertation on Holocaust denial. So the Holocaust never happened. But in the same breath, they tell you, we’re going to kill you again. We’re going to kill all the Jews again. So again, again based on what? So, anyway apathy, lack of education. The reporting I started gathering data on Antisemitism in the world in 2,000 so it’s going on 22, 23 years now. The reporting is always either poor reporting, incorrect reporting or no reporting at all. And we’ve come to a place where Jewish people don’t even report acts of Antisemitism anymore because it’s like, well, do we really know it’s Antisemitism?

There was a man and I document that in the book, there was a man that was thrown out of his 17th floor window in Paris by his Arab neighbor. Nothing against Arabs, his Muslim neighbor, I should say, and the police, it took him a while to determine like, well, this is probably not Antisemitism. It’s probably just two neighbors arguing. You don’t throw somebody through a 17th floor window just like that.

And there was another case of a woman thrown out of the second floor window. She died. They both died, actually. And she was a she was called names by her Muslim neighbor. And in France, if you kill a pet, you get up to 50,000 euros that you have to pay, and five years in prison. That man who killed that woman walked free without a trial. That was about two years ago. He walked free without a trial. So, the Jewish people are feeling very, very unsafe. I mean, they don’t know where to go. And that’s why they’re going back to Israel.

Tim Moore: So what are some of the other, the other signs as we move through them?

Olivier Melnick: Well, lack of accountability.

Tim Moore: Yeah. There you go.

Olivier Melnick: People do things and they’re not persecuted. And the laws are being they are some committees that are put together, some, you know like think tanks. And they go like, what are we going to do about Antisemitism? They talk about it. They write things down. But nothing. It’s just on paper. It’s just like this all bark, no bite. So a lack of accountability. Empowerment, we’ve seen in the last couple of months with, you know, I don’t know if I can mention those names on your show. Like with and well, we’re not on YouTube, so I don’t know.

Nathan Jones: We will be.

Olivier Melnick:We will be.

Tim Moore:We will.

Nathan Jones: We will be. Just go ahead.

Olivier Melnick: What happened with Kanye West. Is he sick, is he not sick? That’s not the issue. What really bothers me is not so much what he said, but what people came to his defense like Candace Owens. She came to his defense and she said, “Well, he’s not trying to start another Holocaust, so give him a break.” And she needs an education because when Martin Luther spoke ill against the Jews and their lies, he did not even have the Holocaust in mind. He didn’t look forward to a Holocaust. But Hitler looked back and said, I’m going to finish his job. So, when Kanye West says what he said about the Jews, I’m going to go, you know I’m going to go DEFCON 3 on the Jews tomorrow when I wake up. When he said that, whatever he meant by this, he probably didn’t mean another Holocaust. But whoever is coming after him is going to go like, I’m going to finish Kanye’s job. That’s where we are right now. So we that’s part of the lack of education. And that becomes the encouragement to kill the Jews. And the one thing that I also see Christians need to understand is they’re going to have to make I think we live in a time that Christians are going to have to make a decision, am I going to be available to help my Jewish neighbors, my Jewish friends? Because if they’re not, then we’re going to repeat what took place 80 years ago.

Tim Moore: We’re heading that way.

David Bowen: And that example you gave is part of that irrational being seen as being seen as rational then, correct?

Olivier Melnick: Correct. Yes, exactly. So the persecution of the Jews and of the defenders of the Jews is coming as well. We are at a place now, if you say that you’re pro-Israel as a Gentile, you say I’m pro-Israel. I love the Jewish people. People are going to start judging you as well.

Tim Moore: I know.

Nathan Jones: Well, you had brought up in your book a series of statistics and you said the 2022 statistics are out about how much Antisemitism. To go on that point you made. What are those statistics?

Olivier Melnick: Well, it just came out less than a week ago that 2022 was up by 36%. It was like 3,700 acts reported. And that’s only what’s reported. There is probably more. There is more. But 3,700 in the year 2022 is about ten a day, when you think about it.

Tim Moore: In the United States.

Olivier Melnick: In the United States. It’s the highest, it’s 36% over 2021, and it’s the highest in the history in a recorded history of the United States.

Nathan Jones: And the United States used to be so pro-Israel. I mean, so many Jewish people are here. Well, as we see Antisemitism rise in the United States, how do we as Christians push back against that? How do we show our support?

David Bowen: Because it will keep rising.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, because we’re going to become outcasts too by aligning with the Jewish people. But we should and how do we do that?

Olivier Melnick: Well, it starts it’s one person at a time. I tell people, if you have a Jewish neighbor, you know them, or you don’t know them, just knock on their door, say, “Hey, I’m you, I’m your neighbor. And I just want you to know I’m very aware of what’s going on in the neighborhood.” Because they’re just fliers being distributed by this crazy Antisemitic group called the Goyim Defense League in Florida. And so just go to your neighbors and say, “Hey, I’m a Christian. I love the Jewish people. I love Israel. And I want you to know that no questions asked if you ever need anything from us because you’re being harassed because of Antisemitism, we’ll be there for you.” Start one person at a time. Call the synagogue. Call the Jewish Community center, say, “Hey, we know what happened. You got graffiti, you’ve got something we want to come and help you clean.” They might say no, but at least they know that you are a friend.

Tim Moore: Well, in addition, we have learned and you have shared with us, Olivier, that sometimes the best way to evangelize, in other words, to share the good news is not by just immediately diving into a description of our faith, but by building these relationships and by showing our love for the Jewish people.

Olivier Melnick: And care.

Tim Moore: It kind of lowers those walls that have been built up over millennia, quite frankly, so that they are receptive. Because we know that Jewish people are not saved by their Jewishness, even though they’re chosen by God. There’s a special promise held out to the Jews and in mass. But individual Jews, just like individual Gentiles, must put their faith in the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus Christ.

David Bowen: And there is that sense of urgency. We have to have urgency there. One term, I don’t know if we have time for another, but one term you brought up in the book that I thought was very interesting was the Tribulation Antisemitism. You know, that’s looking forward that’s still going, so we’ve got to be saying we’ve got to be helping people understand what the future holds, too. We’ve got a problem now, but in the future.

Tim Moore: It’s going to get even worse.

Nathan Jones: Get saved before the Rapture.

David Bowen: Yes.

Olivier Melnick: You know, you get the Jewish people saved before the Rapture in Zechariah 13:8-9 it says during the Tribulation, two-thirds of the Jews will die.

David Bowen: Yes.

Olivier Melnick: And what I love about this scripture, I hate a lot about the scripture that two-thirds will die, but what I love about it is that God did not give us a number, He gave us a percentage. So in other words, it’s our job to make that number smaller. It’s always been two-thirds will die, and one third will survive and refined as gold and silver. But if we preach the Gospel to my people and they are raptured with us before the Tribulation, that number will reduce.

David Bowen: Because Jesus is coming.

Olivier Melnick: It’s not ten million, five million, it could be a lot less because they could come with us. So, let’s get busy. And take the Gospel to my Jewish people.

Nathan Jones: Oh, that is such a great message! You know people need to connect with you and your ministry. How do they do that? And how can they get a copy of your book? It’s a really good read.

Olivier Melnick: If they if they go on their in their Google search and they type at Olivier Melnik, they can connect with me on Twitter, on YouTube, I have a lot of videos and on Instagram. I have my website at NewAntisemitism.com.

Nathan Jones: And the book?

Olivier Melnick: And the book they can get on my website or they can just go and get it on Amazon along with my other books.

David Bowen: It is a good read.

Tim Moore: It is a very good read. Olivier, we’re glad you joined us today. As a matter of fact, we look forward to the day when Zechariah 8:23 is fulfilled and until then, guys like Dave and Nathan and I will continue to grab hold of you on a regular basis. So come back, brother.

Olivier Melnick: Anytime. Shalom.

Tim Moore: Shalom. And Dave, of course, we’re glad that you were here with us today. You’re going to be a more regular participant in our conversations.

David Bowen: I’m just thrilled to be able to come here and help with this and do this ministry because people need to know the day we’re living in and know how to respond and what to do. And this is a perfect message for that because we have time. And while we have time we need to take advantage of it.

Tim Moore: We certainly do.

Part 2 — Application Segment

Tim Moore: Our theme today has been the normalization of Antisemitism. In recent weeks, unrest in Israel has dramatically revealed heart attitudes in America—and exposed what Olivier calls incorrect reporting and demonization of the defenders through antagonism toward the Jewish people and Israel as a state.

I’m referring to the effort on the part of Israel’s ruling coalition—led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—to rein in the unchecked power of the Israeli Supreme Court. To be sure, many Israelis are up in arms over this proposed change to the status quo. But American media outlets have not accurately conveyed the cause of the political turmoil.

Unlike America, Israel lacks a written Constitution. Like Great Britain, it relies instead on a widely accepted set of practices that form the basic structure of government. Obviously, Israel has an elected Parliament called the Knesset made up of 120 members.

Every Israeli citizen—Jew, Arab, or otherwise—is able to participate in electing Knesset members, a level of democracy that is virtually non-existent throughout the broader Middle East. The leading party, and realize that Israel has many small political parties, selects a single person who will serve as Prime Minister—but only after they have assembled a coalition that signifies a majority. So, although the Likud party has only 32 of the 120 seats, its leader Bibi Netanyahu was able to assemble a solid coalition that would be considered conservative within the political spectrum.

The Supreme Court, on the other hand, is made up of 15 judges who are selected by a 10-person Judicial Selection Committee—with a majority of the committee representing the legal community. Over time, the process of appointing justices to the Israeli Supreme Court has become what we used to refer to as a self-licking ice cream cone in the military.

Not only is the Supreme Court immune from political influence, it has granted itself absolute dominance over every other branch of government—and even independence from legal precedents known as Stare Decisis. Ruling according to an arbitrary and self-defined reasonableness standard, the Supreme Court has upended the legislative process of Israel’s elected leaders and hamstrung its Prime Minister—unless their laws and policies adhere to a Liberal or Progressive ideology.

The conservative majority in the Knesset—duly elected by the increasingly conservative Israeli electorate—has tried to assert a balance of power with the Supreme Court. I’ll leave the outcome of this so-called “Constitutional Crisis” to the Israelis. But our own media and government elites—overwhelmingly liberal in their worldview—have violated long-established precedent to try sway the domestic policies of a democratically-elected ally.

Why do they assert themselves into Israel’s internal affairs? For the same reason that Israel is treated with condescension and scorn by many of the same liberals throughout the West—a form of soft Antisemitism. This is also why anyone who stands with Israel is increasingly ridiculed and condemned. Taken together, this incorrect reporting and demonization of the defenders threatens to undermine support for Israel in America and contributes to rising overt Antisemitism.

Do not be deceived. The same folks that endorse unelected judges undermining Israel’s right of self-determination want to bring back judicial activism here as well—as long as it serves a leftist agenda.

Israeli leaders recognize the tremendous support they receive from Evangelical Christians. We need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem—and honor God’s covenant with Abraham by blessing the Jewish people—in Israel and beyond.

Part 3 — Closing

Nathan Jones: Well, we pray that our dialogue has both challenged and blessed today. God has not washed his hands of the Jewish people. As Paul wrote, He gave them the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the temple services and the promises.

Tim Moore: Paul was emphatic that God has not rejected the Jewish people. Instead, by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Do you understand your opportunity, your privilege, and your responsibility to make your Jewish friends and neighbors jealous? How do you do that? By demonstrating the blessing of being reconciled with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by loving and obeying our Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ. Certainly, He still has plans and promises to be fulfilled for the Jewish people. Thankfully, more and more Jews are coming to recognize Yeshua as the Messiah who has come and is coming again.

Nathan Jones: And one of the ways Lamb & Lion Ministries fulfills our mission is by proclaiming the Gospel and the message that Jesus is coming soon to Jews and Gentiles alike. We also support several ministries aimed at sharing that message with Jews and even with Israel itself. So, we’d like to invite you to become a Prophecy Partner, help us in this effort. For only $25 a month, you can support the outreach of Lamb & Lion Ministries, extend a blessing to those ministries, to the Jews and Israelis, and make an eternal impact. And as a partner, you’ll receive regular reports and special gifts from us. Just visit our website or call the number you see on the screen.

Tim Moore: Well, that’s our program for today. Join us again next week. Until then. Look up and be watchful for our Jewish Messiah is drawing near. Godspeed.