There are certain laws of nature. They apply everywhere without exception and do not change across time or location. When events follow those laws, we don’t get angry at them. That would be stupid.
Gravity is a law of nature. If I drop a glass in Spain, England, or Egypt, if I do it tomorrow or next week or next year, it is going to fall to the ground and probably break. We know this because we have observed falling objects for hundreds and thousands of years.
The other day I lost my grip on my bourbon. It did not hover in the air or take flight. It fell and broke. I did not blame gravity or Isaac Newton. I blamed myself, cleaned it up, and poured another. A double.
When God said to Abraham (Genesis 12:3), “I will bless those that bless you, and those that curse you I will curse,” that is a law of nature. Isaac similarly blesses Jacob (Genesis 27:29) and the Holy Spirit overtakes the pagan prophet Balaam to bless the entire people of Israel in the same way (Numbers 24:9).
This law of nature applies everywhere without exception and does not change across time or location. We know this because we have observed this dynamic for hundreds and thousands of years.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, forcing the Jewish people into exile in the 6th century BC. Less than 50 years later, they were defeated by the Persians. The Roman Empire devastated Judea, demolished the Second Temple, and expelled the Jewish population during the 1st and 2nd centuries. Today Italy is basically a third world country where fewer than 5 percent of homes have a clothes dryer.
When Spain expelled its Jews and implemented the Inquisition in the fifteenth century, it was one of the most powerful empires on earth. They subsequently suffered catastrophic inflation, repeated state bankruptcies, and centuries of structural economic stagnation. Recently, Spain has emerged as one of Israel’s sharpest European critics, implementing diplomatic, legal, and economic sanctions. They suffer from chronic structural unemployment, a severe housing crisis, surging illegal immigration and rising crime rates. No bueno.
The Russian Empire enacted the anti-Jewish May Laws of 1882, permitting violent state-sanctioned pogroms. The empire totally collapsed in 1917. The Soviet Union subsequently oppressed its Jews, and it too imploded in 70 years.
In the 1940s, Iraq initiated violent persecution of its Jewish population, stripping them of citizenship, seizing assets, launching the 1941 Farhud pogrom, and driving out over 130,000 productive members of society. In the 1950s Egypt expelled tens of thousands of Jews and appropriated their property. In the 1960s Libya forced its Jewish citizens to flee without their wealth. These failed states are now best known for their poverty, terrorism, and overall misery.
Speaking of which, Yemen banished its Jewish population to the desert during the 1679 Mawza Exile, then severely and violently oppressed them for centuries until the nascent state of Israel airlifted them to freedom in 1949’s Operation Magic Carpet. This historic class of master artisans, silversmiths, and builders brought their talents to the Jewish state, leaving behind a country now suffering one of the worst humanitarian and economic crises in the world, a violent civil war, near famine levels of food insecurity, a lack of safe drinking water and sanitation, massive outbreaks of diseases, and roughly 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
Historical and economic data illustrate that empires and nations suffer profound commercial, intellectual, and cultural stagnation after expelling or severely oppressing their Jewish populations.
One could believe this phenomenon occurs because the Jewish communities frequently formed the backbone of trade, finance, medicine, scientific and academic scholarship. One could believe it is because God wills it.
Either way, it repeats across time and space. It is a law of nature. Don’t blame “the Jews” any more than you would blame “the Gravities.”
It’s stupid, then, for the United Kingdom, in coordination with France, Canada and other European countries, to implement import bans and sanctions on Israel. England is already in the hole, having invented the blood libel in Norwich in 1144.
Seeing as the UK is already experiencing a surge in illegal immigration, rising inflation, strains on public assistance programs, state policing of speech, a deep public division, and localized civil unrest, I think I know where this is going.
To go with my popcorn, I’m going to pour myself a drink, hold on tight, and be grateful that I live in a country that has for centuries been a blessing to the Jews. May we never change.
S.C. Legoni is a writer, international conflict analyst, and amateur theologian.
