Antisemitism as a Specific Phenomenon - Journal for the Study of ...

2009] OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF CHRISTOPHER JON BJERKNESS 23
the image of all Jews.” (p. 341) 15
Likewise, the perpetuation of antisemitism itself is part of the Jewish
political agenda toward world take-over:
These Sabbatian/Frankist Cabalistic Dualistic sects among Jews—including
the Dönmeh who committed genocide against the Armenian Christians—even
promoted antisemitism—even Blood Libel 16 accusations—
in order to promote their political agendas in an unbroken chain of revolutionaries
from the Frankists to the Marxists to the political Zionists. (p.
371)
These Dönmeh who ultimately were responsible for the overthrow of
the Turkish Empire and the genocide of the Armenians, according to Bjerkness,
arose in response to the failure of the Jewish false messiah Sabbatai
Zevi:
Many had predicted that the year 1666 would mark the arrival of the
Messiah. For Christians, this meant the second coming of Christ, for the
Jews, the long awaited arrival of the Jewish King. After the Chmielnicki
holocaust 17 which some saw as the sacrifice of masses of Jewish lives as
an act of atonement, Shabbatai Zevi declared himself to be the Jewish
15. That some Jews, both individually and collectively organizationally, have
abused the memory of the Holocaust and its Jewish victims remains an ongoing
source of both sadness and debate within the organized Jewish communities and
the State of Israel. And, yes, some have exploited the Holocaust as moral capital to
justify their actions or the actions of others as being above reproach. Such thinking
and behavior, however, is not above critique. See, for example, specifically with
regard to the State of Israel, Avraham Burg, The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise
from Its Ashes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Tom Segev, The Seventh
Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Idith
Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Israel Studies, 14, no.1: Spring 2009
Special Volume “Israelis and the Holocaust: Scars Cry Out for Healing.”
16. Among the most insidious of all the antisemitic charges of long standing in
European history, and now making its way into the Middle East, has been the lie
that prior to Passover, Jews will kidnap innocent Christian children, murder them,
drain their blood, and use it in the making of the matzot, the flat unleavened cakes
associated with the festival. See, for example, Alan Dundees, ed. The Blood Libel
Legend: A Casebook in Antisemitic Folklore (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1991); Saul S. Friedman, The Incident at Massena: Antisemitic Hysteria in a
Typical American Town (New York: Stein and Day, 1978); and Po-chia R. Hsia,
The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1988).
17. The Chmielnitzki massacres of as many as 100,000 Polish Jews in 1648-
1649 at the instigation of Bogdan Chmielnitzki, Hetman (Leader) of the Ukrainian