MARTIN Luther was by any standards a great man. He took on mediaeval Europe’s strongest institution, the papacy, and changed the continent’s religious map. The 95 theses he nailed on the door of a church in Wittenberg were a declaration of war on the religious establishment, ultimately heralding an era that encouraged free thinking and led to Europe’s reawakening. However, looking for something else about him, I ran into Luther’s views about Jews and Judaism and was shocked to discover someone who should have been in Adolf Hitler’s cabinet.

The Jews survived 2,000 years of unabashed persecution, but emerged powerful in every sense of the term. They also produced some of the world’s greatest scientists and scholars — Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, etc.

The brutalities to which they were subjected in mediaeval as well as modern times gave the Jewish people a psyche that has steeled them. Regretfully, some among them also developed a shocking indifference to human misery.

We know, for instance, of Iraq’s fate after Saddam Hussein’s Kuwait misadventure, and the consequences of sanctions. Israel considered Iraq its principal enemy, and Saddam’s stupidity provided Iraq’s, and not just Saddam’s,........

© Dawn