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By Alan M. Dershowitz
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
RECENTLY IN JERUSALEM, a group of 500 Christians from America and
Europe
made a pilgrimage to seek forgiveness for the Christian Crusades in which tens
of thousands of innocent Jews and Muslims were slaughtered in the name of
Jesus. Jesus, of course, bears no guilt for the misuse of his name, but those
popes, kings, generals and other leaders who ordered Christian soldiers to put
non-believers to the sword deserve a special place in hell and in infamy.
The Crusades, after all, were the prelude to the Holocaust. Entire
undefended communities babies, pregnant mothers, and the aged were all
slaughtered in the name of religious cleansing. Yet the Crusaders are
presented in Western literature as brave, noble Christian soldiers performing a
sacred religious duty. There is nothing brave about slaughtering a
two-year-old child while his mother watches.
Now that good Christians have taken the lead in renouncing the Crusades
and in seeking atonement for their butchery, the time has come to correct
history and to eliminate all positive references to the Crusades. “No one has
ever endeavored to apologize for the Crusade,” according to Lynn Green, who
directed the “Reconciliation Walk.” The Christian group brought to Jerusalem
letters of support from the hierarchies of Lutheran, Catholic, and Episcopal
denominations. The Chief Rabbi of Israel, Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor,
greeted the group and told them that “this evil century which we are leaving
started with those evil events of 900 years ago.”
But there remains resistance to atonement for an event which was so
central to the Christian mission of the Middle Ages. Several years ago, I
wrote to the then-president of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester,
Mass., urging him to stop using the name “Crusaders” for the Holy Cross
athletic teams. I tried to explain how insensitive to Jewish and Muslim
memories was the glorification of crusaders. Surely, a Lutheran athletic team
would never call itself the Stormtroopers. Nor would a Catholic school name
its team the Inquisitors, after the second-worst instance of Christian
bloodletting in this millennium. The president wrote an angry letter back,
telling me, in effect, to mind my own business. I wish the Crusaders had
minded their own business, instead of traveling through Europe murdering Jews
and then reaching the Holy Land where they murdered Muslims and Jews alike.
Whenever I hear crowds yell, “Go Crusaders!” I wonder how many students even
know about the Crusades. I cannot imagine that the good students of Holy Cross
would allow their teams to be named after genocidal murderers if they knew the
history of the Crusades. I am certain that few of them know how strongly their
Jewish and Muslim friends must feel about the use of the name Crusaders. As
one of the Christians who went to Jerusalem seeking atonement correctly put it,
“When you ask a Muslim or a Jew from the Middle East about Christianity, a
touchstone for them is often the Crusades. That is the lens through which they
view Christian history.” It is important that Christians break that lens so
that the process of reconciliation may go forward. The philosopher Santayana
said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In this
century of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and religious warfare, it is important
that Christians understand the lessons of the Crusades. I went to a Jewish
high school, where we learned about the Crusades from the perspective of the
victims. I wonder how many young Christian students learn about the Crusades
from the perspective of the perpetrators.
Some may say that since the Crusades ended hundreds of years ago, why bother to
seek atonement now? The answer is that the Crusades are still glorified in
Christian history, Western literature, and daily usage. If you took a public
opinion poll today, you would find that most people have a positive image of
the word “crusade.” The President and members of Congress repeatedly use it in
their speeches. President Clinton has implored the public to join crusades of
different varieties, including the “crusade to prevent the spread of HIV and
AIDS” and the “crusade to abolish discrimination in our society.” And a search
of the Congressional Record alone yielded over 2,000 instances when
Senators and
Representatives have used the term “crusade.”
I do not wish to impose rules of political correctness on everyday speech. But
when an event is as outrageous, brutal, and unjustified as the Crusades, it is
important that we say so in clear and direct terms. Until we eliminate the
words “crusade” and “crusaders” from our vocabulary of praise, we will not
achieve religious reconciliation. Recently, the Lutheran church formally
renounced the anti-Semitic writings of its founder, Martin Luther. Can the
rest of Christianity do any less with regard to the
Alan M. Dershowitz is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Send your comments to him by clicking here.