The Religious Origins of Globalism:
An Interview with Hervé Ryssen, Part 4

Emilio Sala Frances, "The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain" (1889, Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada) The figure in the foreground is either Don Isaac Abravanel or Don Abraham Senior.

From Mechanopolis, February 24, 2009

Translated by Greg Johnson

Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.
Read Part 3 here.

Mechanopolis: How do you explain this obvious lust for vengeance in [Jewish] religious texts that profess universal peace? What is the source of this vengefulness?

Hervé Ryssen: The spirit of revenge is found in quite a few texts. It appears in novels like Albert Cohen’s Frères humains or Patrick Modiano’s La Place de l’Etoile. The current American guru of Afrocentrism, Martin Bernal, who is “white,” also evokes this sentiment: “My goal is to reduce the intellectual arrogance of Europeans.” Now, if one plunges into the remote past, one realizes that these attitudes have traversed the centuries without so much as a wrinkle.

At the beginning of the 16th century, for example, Rabbi Shlomo Molkho, who was regarded by many Jews as a Messianic figure, wrote his very revealing prophetic visions in which one finds the idea of a “revenge against the gentiles” which will be achieved. He also assures us that “the foreigners will be broken” and that “the nations will tremble” (Moshe Idel, Messianisme et mystique, 1994, pp. 65-66). Moshe Idel comments: “the poem of Molkho clearly refers to the advent of a double revenge: against Edom and Ishmael,” i.e., against Christendom and Islam, then he adds furthermore: “God reveals not only how to fight against Christianity . . . but still how to break the force of Christianity so that the Redemption occurs” (p. 48). Isn’t it clear?

One can find this type of delirious prophecy in many other Jewish historical characters, such as Isaac Abravanel, who was the chief of the Jewish community of Spain before the expulsion of 1492, and who became one of the mythical heroes of the Jews of Iberian origin. He also quite explicitly calls for the revenge of the people of Israel against Christendom and invited “all the nations to go to war against the land of Edom” (the vision of Obadia, in Genesis 20:13, quoted in John-Christoph Attias, Isaac Abravanel: La mémoire et l’espérance [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1992], p. 256).

For those who still wonder about the reasons for this secular hatred, here is a small explanation: “It is close the day when the eternal will take revenge on all the nations that destroyed the First Temple and which controlled Israel in the exile. And with you also, Edom, as you made at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, you will know the sword and revenge (Obadia). . . . Any deliverance promised to Israel is associated with the fall of Edom” (Lamentations 4:22; p. 276).

This vengeful hatred, nursed for twenty centuries, was also expressed by the philosopher Jacob Talmon, who wrote in 1965: “The Jews have very old blood feuds to settle with the Christian West” (J.-L. Talmon, Destin d’Israël, [Paris: Calmann-Lévy 1965, 1967], p. 18). Pierre Paraf, the former President of the LICA (League against Anti-Semitism), writes, in the voice of a character of his novel republished in 2000: “So many of our brothers marked by circumcision groan under the whip of the Christians. Glory to God! Jerusalem will gather them together one day; they will have their revenge!” (Quand Israël aima [Paris: Les belles letters, 1929, 2000, p. 19). These people are tenacious in their resentment.

Mechanopolis: We really are far from the cinematic stereotype of the “poor little persecuted Jew.” In the end, can one take seriously the widespread idea, or “prejudice,” that “the Jews want to dominate the world”?

Hervé Ryssen: I do not have any personal ideas on this subject, and I am content to analyze what is written. Consequently, I cannot say that it is a general disposition of all Jewish intellectuals. But this idea was expressed by some of them. The book on Abravanel confirms this interpretation, on the basis of biblical texts: “At the time of the Messiah,” he writes, “Samuel thought that all the nations would be subjects of Israel, in accordance with what is written: ‘His empire will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth’” (Zechariah 9: 10, p. 181). “During the deliverance to come, a king of the house of David will reign” (Attias, Isaac Abravanel, p. 228). In fact “the great peace would reign on earth at the time of the King-Messiah” (Attias, Isaac Abravanel, p. 198). Here we have confirmation that Israel militates for “peace”!

Camille Marbo, in her novel Flammes juives (Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1936, 1999) tells the story of young Moroccan Jews who leave their mellah and settle in France in the 1920s. One explicitly speaks about the “conquest of the world by Israel” (p. 10). One also finds such passages: “‘Israel must control the world,’ said Daniel. . . . ‘They fear us,’ repeated the old man Benatar, ‘because we are the race of the Prophets’” (p. 18); “Our generation which can conquer Christendom has not yet come. You yourselves will lay the foundations, and your children will carry out the task. They will confound the Christians. Israel will lead the world as it must” (p. 126). There are many other texts on this subject.

Read Part 5 here.