Introduction
    Anti-Semitism – and by extension, anti-Shemitisim, that is, anti-Nameism which is a first cousin to Anti-nomialism, or anti-Law – is found early on, in the Scriptures. Anti-Semitism has its origin with Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people. We are told early on, in Genesis 12, of the Covenant Yahweh made with Abram … even before this man had stepped foot across the Jordan:
   And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (English Standard Version used throughout, unless otherwise noted.)

A Review
    Leaning to his own understanding, Abraham in Genesis 16 yielded to his wife Sarah’s suggestion that in order to fulfill Yahweh’s promise that of his seed should come a nation which should be innumerable, as the stars in heaven and the sand on the seashore, he should take Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian maidservant, and of her, raise up an heir.
   Ishmael, their issue, was prophesied to be a wild man, untamable, set in opposition to Isaac, the progenitor of the Hebrew people. Isaac in turn, had twin sons – Esau, the elder, grew up … a grief of mind to his father Isaac and his mother Rebekah, and after his birthright and the blessing attendant to it was taken via a conspiracy between his mother and his younger brother, Jacob, Esau purposed to slay his brother.
   Principal among reasons he was a grief of mind to his parents is that he took wives of the Hittites, one of the seven nations Israel was to later purge from Canaan (Gen. 15:20).
   But seeing his marriages were displeasing to his parents, he then compounded their displeasure by taking to himself wives of the family of Ishmael.
   In Genesis 19, we read the men of Sodom protest to Lot, Abraham’s nephew who had come out with him from Ur and into Canaan, who refused to surrender his guests to their perverse dispositions, saying,
   But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down, Genesis 19:9. 
   Flight from Sodom, owing to Yahweh’s destroying the cities of the plain of Jordan, prompted Lot’s two daughters who were barren, to fornicate with their father. Of them, came forth the forbearers of the Ammonites and Moabites, which would later present as thorns in the flesh during Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness following their departure from Egypt.
   In the 34th chapter of Genesis, we read the account of Simeon and Levi perpetrating a matter among the Hivites – another people nation, later destined to be purged from Canaan (Exod. 23:28) – at She’chem requiring all the males there to be circumcised and then slaying them at the edge of the sword as a just retribution for the prince of that people violating their sister, Dinah.
   Their father Jacob chided them, saying,
   Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household,” Genesis 34:30.
   Then in Genesis, Chapter 39, we read of Potiphar’s wife, disappointed because she couldn’t persuade Joseph to yield to her wanton pursuits. Subsequently, she lied to her husband, saying,
   Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home, and she told him the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me. But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house,” Genesis 39:16-18. 
   Certainly, we can discern an Anti-Semitic attitude come from Exodus, Chapter 1, Verses 8-19. This same Joseph had been awarded the position of viceroy over Egypt owing to his interpretation of Pharaoh’s troublesome dreams and his wise counsel of making preparation for the seven-year long famine that should come. But after Joseph’s death, another Pharaoh acceded to the throne. His fear that this people who had emigrated from Canaan some two hundred-ten years earlier, and who were occupying Goshen, the best land in Egypt, were multiplying rapidly and might, in a military contest with Egypt’s adversaries, ally themselves with Egypt’s enemies.
   And so, he commenced a plan by which he would make “their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field” (Exod. 1:14, KJV) and, moreover, commanded that that every male born to an Hebrew woman should be killed (Exod. 1:8-16).
   Exiled, owing to their failure to keep the land Sabbath, and for other disobediences, principals of Judah, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael were singled out for their refusals to bow before Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold (Dan. 3). Later, under the authority of the Persian, Darius, Daniel, too, was fingered for continuing to defy royal decree that forbade intreating any other elohim not on the ‘approved list’.
   The Book of Esther supplies us with a narrative of intrigue. A plot was conceived of Haman, a courtier and counselor to Ahasuerus, to enact the first, ‘final solution’.
   At this time, Judah was still in captivity throughout the 127 provinces of Persia’s vast empire. Because of Haman’s disdain for Mordecai, a Jew, and for reason that the latter declined from supplying the other with the honor and respect to which the former expected and required, Haman contrived a plan to extirpate all the Jews.
   Let’s pick it up in the narrative, in Esther 3:8-15:
   Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not to the king’s profit to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, that they may put it into the king’s treasuries.” So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews. And the king said to Haman, “The money is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you.” Then the king’s scribes were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month, and an edict, according to all that Haman commanded, was written to the king’s satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the officials of all the peoples, to every province in its own script and every people in its own language. It was written in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed with the king’s signet ring. Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with instruction to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. A copy of the document was to be issued as a decree in every province by proclamation to all the peoples to be ready for that day. The couriers went out hurriedly by order of the king, and the decree was issued in Susa the citadel. And the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion.
   The want of space precludes telling in detail, of other rampages of anti-Semitism, but following are a few highlights:
      > Antiochus Epiphanes’ genocide of Jewry during the Maccabean era for their rejection of his edicts to force paganism on them;
      > Emperor Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome (see Acts 18:2);
      > Titus’ destruction of Jerusalem in 68-70 CE;
      > Emperor Hadrian renaming Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, building a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, renaming the province Palestina, and expelling the Jews from Judea following the Bar Kokhba Revolt early in the 2nd century CE;
      > King Ferdinand of Spain expelling all Jews c.1492 when it is supposed that Columbus discovered the New World;
      > The Protestant Reformation occurring in the early 16th century and sparked by Martin Luther’s University of Wittenberg lectures, writings, and his posting of 95 theses on the door of the Cathedral of Wittenberg, supplied impetus to the development of Replacement Theology that suborned the Jewish people from their Covenant relationship with Yahweh in favor of Christianity for reason of their impalement of the Messiah;
      > Hitler’s purge of 6.5 million Jews during the 1930’s and 1940’s;
      > The United States during this same time, refusing ships conveying Jewish emigres fleeing persecution, to secure docking privileges at Eastern seaboard ports.

A Declaration of Blessings and Cursings
    Toward the end of the fortieth year of Israel’s wilderness sojourning, Moses addresses this people whom Yahweh intended should become a people peculiar above all the people of the earth.
   Following are a few highlights from that message:
   And if you faithfully obey the voice of Yahweh your Eloha, being careful to do all His commandments that I command you today, Yahweh your Eloha will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of Yahweh your Eloha. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. Yahweh will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. Yahweh will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that Yahweh your Eloha is giving you. Yahweh will establish you as a people holy to Himself, as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of Yahweh your Eloha and walk in His ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the Name of Yahweh, and they shall be afraid of you. And Yahweh will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers to give you. Yahweh will open to you His good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. Yahweh will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of Yahweh your Eloha, which I command you today, being careful to do them, and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other elohim to serve them. But if you will not obey the voice of Yahweh your Eloha or be careful to do all His commandments and His statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you, Deuteronomy 28:1-15.
   And then what follows, is 53 verses detailing curses, vexations, and rebuke, concluding with dire words of prophetic doom:
   And as Yahweh took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so Yahweh will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. And Yahweh will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other elohim of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but Yahweh will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul. Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life. In the morning you shall say, “If only it were evening!” and at evening you shall say, “If only it were morning!” because of the dread that your heart shall feel, and the sights that your eyes shall see, Deuteronomy 28:63-37.

Israel, Now
    So now, we come to the early morning hours of October 7th, 2023, a Sabbath and according to the Jewish calendar, the 8th day (Shemini Atzeret, a High Sabbath), following the Festival of Sukkot, when the Palestinian militant group hamas initiated an attack on Israel at kibbutz Re’im, three miles from the Gaza-Israel border.
   There at Re’im, it was reported that 364 of the more than 3,500 festival-goers who had come from all over the country were killed with 40 taken as hostages.
   The terrorist assault was a coordinated attack alongside those at the moshavim, the villages adjacent to the Gaza Strip, Netiv ha Asara, Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz and Holit where at least, 1,100 more were added to the casualties occurring at Re’im, and more than 200 more were abducted as hostages.
   Many of the kidnapped, particularly women, were violated, tortured, and murdered.
   At sunrise, around 7 AM, a siren warned of an incoming rocket attack, but at 6:29, the noise of music was interrupted by armed militants, dressed in military attire and using motorcycles, jeeps, vans, trucks, and powered paragliders, surrounding the festival grounds making incursions into the encampment and begin firing indiscriminately on individuals attempting to escape.
   Their assailants, exclaiming, “allah akbar” (god is great) gleefully slaughtered, mutilated, and documented their atrocities via GoPro cameras and victims’ cell phones, uploading footage on the world wide web in an effort to inspire their terrorist comrades the world over to do the same.
   Attendees seeking refuge in bomb shelters, bushes, and nearby orchard trees, were killed.
   Those who reached the road and parking areas, in an effort to flee the barrage of bullets, were trapped in a traffic jam as militants blockaded every avenue of escape and fired incendiary rounds at vehicles.
   The open terrain left few places to hide and phone calls and WhatsApp messages from them who sought mere survival, were not able to facilitate immediate aid from emergency responders and a cadre of military, even though there were police and military personnel present at the, “festival.”
   The massacre at the festival grounds and the accompanying villages was the largest attack and the worst civilian loss of life in Israel’s modern history.
   Billed as the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, “a celebration of friends, love and infinite freedom,” the venue was produced by an organizer known by the peculiar cognomen, “the Tribe of Nova,” and was scheduled as a week-end long outdoor psychedelic trance, music festival that blends music from many different genres.
   The event attended by mostly 20 to 40 year-olds began on Friday October 6th and was to conclude on Sunday the 8th, on Simchat Torah, “the Joy of Torah.”
   Traditionally, Simchat Torah occasions the reading of the last two chapters of Devarim (Deuteronomy) of the Torah after which, the scroll is rolled back to Genesis and the Torah begins Its cyclical read for the next Jewish liturgical year.
   The invasion which hamas has labeled the “Al-Aqsa Flood” had spawned memorials in as far away places as Las Vegas, Nevada, as the Irish rock band U2 performed, “Pride (In the Name of Love)” with modified lyrics as a tribute referencing the, and other memorials since, have featured backdrops of bullet-ridden porta-potties and incinerated vehicles and personal effects recovered from the Re’im festival grounds.
   The butchery, rape, torture, and mutilation of some 1,000 Israeli civilians by hamas murderers and their comrades, while it shocked many, nevertheless jettisoned the unapologetic, proud, and defiant amoral behavior that characterizes American higher education.
For example:
      > an instructor at Stanford University boasted about denying the Holocaust and singled out Jewish students for unhinged rantings;
      > an even bolder Cornell history faculty member bragged he was exhilarated on news that Jews were being butchered;
      > a University of California at Davis professor threatened to the children of what he called, Zionist journalists;
      > another, at the Art Institute of Chicago ascribed to Israelis in as blatant words as what the Scriptures in the Book of Jeremiah reference as an astonishment, a byword, a curse, a desolation, a hissing, an execration, a proverb, a reproach, a taunt, a waste;
      > at rallies and protests, hundreds of students and faculty inciting residents in the communities in which their schools are located, have become the equivalent of anti- Semitic sheet-wearing Klansmen;
      > and Spring 2024 commencement exercises at colleges and universities across this country were disrupted by bands of hamas-supporting rabble-rousers, intent in making their voice to be heard in opposition to Israel’s prosecution of a war that is poised to spark another war that engulfs the world.

A Peculiar People? Head, or Tail?
    And so, what are we to make of all this activity? As we posited earlier, anti-Semitism – best understood in the context of anti-Nameism, that is, to say, at variance with; at enmity against; and contrary to that Name Above Every Name – and the pro-hamas talking points which have intensified among elitist communities of higher education and institutions of government and culture, are owing to a people whom the Covenant Maker would, should have become, a peculiar people above all the peoples of the earth but who have chosen, in their continuing disobedience to that Covenant to which their fathers and they, nominally agreed, to instead become the tail and beneath.
   And questions abound. Why did it take Israeli Defense Forces hours to respond to the emergency? Was the Israeli intelligence community apprised of potential Palestinian incursions? Did high-level authorities in the Israeli Government withhold emergency response in order to opportune an occasion by which they could launch an aggressive counteroffensive – “Operation Swords of Iron” – under color of a nation defending itself against the Palestinian people at large? And what are we to make of Yahweh’s foretelling Abram, I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great: and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed, Genesis 12:2-3, KJV.
   Some, sympathetic to Israel and in defense of Israel and the Covenant that Yahweh made with Abraham and with his seed, have been outspoken concerning what’s perceived as the Government of the United States softening its aid response to Israel.
   Well, we are reminded by Scripture, that Yahweh made a Covenant with a people who three times assented to, and agreed to the terms of His Initiative.
   “All that Yahweh has spoken we will do … and we will be obedient” (Exod. 19:8, 24:3, 7) – and must question whether or not, they which today, profess themselves to be of Israel, are in fact, Israel: “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Rom. 9:6b, KJV).
   In other words, are all they who profess themselves today to be of Israel, that peculiar treasure unto Yahweh above all people (Exod. 19:5), heirs to the Covenants and commonwealth of Israel, or are they strangers from the Covenants of Promise and the commonwealth of Israel (Eph. 2:12)?
   Perhaps, we might find some appropriation from the apocalyptic writer who faithfully recorded what was revealed to him by Yahshua: “… and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not …” (Rev. 2:9).

Conclusion: History Repeats Itself
    Before any would judge us anti-Semitic, we acknowledge hamas and its terrorist-allies as the aggressors, while at the same time, recognize Israel as culpable for having dwelt carelessly, instead of maintaining a sober vigilance during this Set Apart Season. This tragedy is but yet another consequence of Israel ceding real estate covenanted to their trust by the Grantor, Yahweh. Many who look toward the day when the branches that were broken off might be grafted in have renounced the media propaganda that has heightened what’s regarded as the disproportionate Israeli response to Arab attacks but which, at least, has uncovered the unwarranted bias concealed by many who were thought intellectual and above mob mania.
   But much the more, are we concerned with something more important, with something more at the foundation of Truth: Its abandonment. This three-day event was scheduled to coincide with the closing days of the Feast of Tabernacles, and as our image portrays, parallels an event occurring 3,500 years earlier at Sinai and on the occasion of another solemn occurrence in the life of a people – yes, even the ancestry of the Re’im festival goers – who, at that time, what was inaugurated as the Feast of Shavuot, and the giving of the Torah, three times professed themselves to Moshe, and before Yahweh, “All The Words Which Yahweh Hath Said Will We Do, And Be Obedient” (Exod. 19:8, 24:3, 7).
   Yes, history repeats itself, over and over again: as Moses and Joshua proceeded in their descent from Sinai, with the elder of the two carrying The Ten Words inscribed on tablets of stone by the finger of El Shaddai, they heard from below, the noise of the people in the camp as they shouted in revelry.
   And then, another licentious people at Re’im, as Sinai’s descendants, were shouting in trance dancing until 6:29 AM when suddenly, the noise of their merriment was changed to cries of terror with the hailing of rocket fire and the burst of machine gun artillery … and all, before the presence of another image, of another elohim.
   And so, we ask: “How can it be thought that ‘a celebration of friends, love and infinite freedom’ on a Sabbath and that, a High Sabbath, too, could be thought anything but “a turning the foot away from the Sabbath, from doing Yahweh’s pleasure on His Set Apart Day to theirs; from calling the Sabbath a delight, the Set Apart Day of Yahweh, honorable … honoring Him, and not doing their own ways?” (Isa. 58:13).
   Pray for the peace of Jerusalem? indeed, but how can, and how will, there be peace so long as a people, any people, decline from, or outright deny, the Prince of Peace in preference to doing fealty to the prince of this world,
      > whether in a trance dance at a Supernova music festival that diminished the esteem that ought to have been accorded the Producer of this Feast of Sukkot or,
      > in some other activity that wastes the substance of life by the making of provision for the flesh, running to some other excess of riot and revelry of man’s choosing?
   We conclude with what Solomon calls the whole duty of man, and the conclusion of this matter, too: “Fear Yahweh, and keep His Commandments” (Eccl. 12:13) which is but Man’s whole duty and reasonable service.