The prayers of Jews over the ages, if not for outright deliverance, were at least for just enough time to allow them to move away from the regular flareups of Anti-Semitism. Habituation to adversity usually provided them with a sensitive enough early-warning system to allow them a chance to resume their eternal wanderings. However, the contraction of time and distance in today's world deprives present and future Jews of that same escape hatch. In this new milieu, every news item, attitude, or fad can spread like an instant contagion to every corner of the world.
It took almost a half-century for the Vatican to bestow its grudging and limited recognition on the State of Israel, even while establishing and maintaining unrestricted ties to most of the oppressive tyrannies throughout the world. Regardless of all the platitudes and patronizing scraps of goodwill from them, the reservoirs of Anti-Semitism within Christendom remain filled to the brim.
The People's Republic of China, numbering more than a billion souls who have never met a Jew, dutifully turns its thumbs down against Israel in the colosseum that is the United Nations. And Latin America, Japan, and all the other nations that grovel for Arab oil, show no qualms in practicing their own versions of Anti-Semitism, even though lacking any significant Jewish presence - much less provocation - in their own histories. Indeed, Black Africa, probably the beneficiary of more humanitarian and technological aid from Israel than from any other single source, remains cordial to Moslem nations whose traders - right up to the present - sell Blacks into slavery.
At this moment the world is busily tearing itself into smaller and smaller shreds, rejecting out-of-hand all concepts of a "melting pot" and converting itself into a Babel of mini-states, tribes, clans and cults. Within the U.S., meanwhile, there is a parallel stampede toward "multiculturalism," which mocks and trivializes the very concept of harmonious integration that once made this country so unique.
Historically, negotiation can lead to harmonious integration which should be the sensible goal of any group that is exhausted by millenia of the hostility that exists at the interface between cultures. However, when there is a dogged determination on the part of such a group to remain permanently separate and aloof, antagonisms inevitably become hardened, and the possibilities of developing less traumatic relationships virtually disappear. Under those circumstances, when the group has already been consigned by unanimous agreement to the bottom of the Pecking Order, such rigidity on its part only succeeds in locking it hopelessly into that position.
As with the sacrificial chicken, after each frenzy of social fragmentation has spent itself, it is the Jews who will be used to provide the baseline or benchmark upon which the rest of the Order eventually reconstitutes itself.
Years ago, cartoonist Al Capp introduced into his popular comic strip, "Li'l Abner," some mythical beasties he called "Kigmys." These perpetually smiling creatures resembled nothing more than soft and cuddly bowling pins, and attained their ultimate joy when they were being kicked by humans. Humans, they believed, were full of frustrations; and by their volunteering to absorb their kicks, the Kigmys felt they were conferring great joy on their owners. Those Kigmys - whether lovable or terminally masochistic - were originally named "Schmoos," before being discreetly renamed by Capp, their Jewish creator.
