The power of Jewish lobbying

Shylock, the Jewish money lender in Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice,” lends money and uses a pound of flesh as collateral. Tolstoy depicts Jews as arrogant and shameless in his novels “Anna Karenina” and “Resurrection.” Dostoyevsky also describes Jews as unfavorable characters in “Crime and Punishment.” The roots of anti-Semitism, or literally hostility against the descendants of Semites in the Old Testament, have a long history.

The killing of Jews goes back to the massacre at the fortress Masada in 73 A.D. Demanding freedom of religion from the Roman Empire, 960 Jews in the fortress killed themselves instead of surrendering to Roman troops. After recapturing Jerusalem during the Crusades, European soldiers killed Jews for secretly communicating with Muslims. The pogrom, or the organized looting of Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe, took the lives of more than 70,000 Jews between 1881 and 1921. Then Nazi Germany killed six million Jews in the Holocaust.

After establishing an independent country, Israel, in 1948, Jews fought wars against Arab nations four times until 1973. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq attacked Israel but none of them won. Upon discovering that any of their neighboring nations had a nuclear facility, Israel promptly bombed and destroyed it. Rumor has it that Israeli agents assassinated five Iranian nuclear scientists who began uranium enrichment. In Nam-shik, a professor of Middle Eastern at Korea National Diplomatic Academy, said, “these shows the Jews` strong will that they will safeguard their country after nearly 2,000 years of the Diaspora.”

U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group based in the U.S., in Washington Sunday. President Obama said, “I won’t hesitate to use physical power if it is necessary to stop Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.” The lobbying group invites both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates and lets them promise support for Israel. Former Korean Ambassador to Morocco Park Jae-sun said, “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is like the rear echelon supporting Israeli forces.” This is how Israel survives amid terrorist threats.

Editorial Writer Ha Tae-won (triplets@donga.com)