Samuel Johnson’s poem “The Vanity of Human Wishes” opens with this line: “Let Observation with extensive View, / Survey Mankind, from China to Peru.” We all know that there is currently an epidemic of anti-Israel animus closely linked to antisemitism, spreading throughout much of the world. That includes even China, where the government has adopted an anti-Israel policy not out of deep belief, but in order to curry favor with the Muslim states and undermine America’s position in the Middle East. And now we learn that Peru — the other endpoint of Johnson’s sweep of our giddy globe in an iambic pentameter couplet — has not been spared antisemitism. More on the surprising outburst from Peru’s interim president, José María Balcázar, can be found here: “Peruvian president claims Jews pushed Germany into war because ‘they controlled banks,'” by Mathilda Heller, Jerusalem Post, April 30, 2026:
Peruvian President Jose Maria Balcazar has sparked outrage after claiming that Jews were partly responsible for “pushing” Germany into war.
The comments were made on Tuesday in a speech during a ceremony for the 138th anniversary of the Chamber of Commerce of Lima. Balcazar referenced a book called Los enemigos del comercio (“The enemies of commerce”) by Antonio Escohotado, saying that the arguments in the book should be recognized.
Oh dear. Those warmongering Jews, always trying to start wars. Remember 1948, when without the slightest provocation, the mighty Israelis simultaneously attacked five of its Arab neighbors. Or think of 1967, when the Israelis falsely claimed that Egypt was preparing to invade just because Nasser chose to whip up Cairene crowds, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, by promising them that Egypt’s army would “soon be in Tel Aviv,” and that would be an end to Israel, and used that as an excuse to launch a sneak attack on the too-trusting Egyptians. And the Israelis started every conflict between Israel and the Arabs, including those with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Doesn’t everyone know that Israel tricked the U.S. into attacking Iran? True, for 47 years, the Islamic Republic has been denouncing America on every conceivable and many not so conceivable occasions, has supported the terror group Hezbollah that was responsible for killing 241 Marines and other American military personnel in 1983 as they slept in their Beirut barracks, took U.S. embassy personnel hostage and held them for 444 days, and has repeatedly organized mass demonstrations across Iran, where American flags are trampled on and then set on fire, while demonstrators denounce the “Great Satan.” And true, the Iranians have been working furiously on ballistic missiles capable of hitting America’s east coast, and on their nuclear program which, if completed successfully, would provide the world’s most dangerous weapon to the world’s most dangerous country. But was that really enough to make the U.S. go to war? It was the diabolical Israelis who convinced Trump to attack Iran. And in the same vein, Peruvian President José María Balcázar knows that World War II was started by “the Jews.” It was they who “pushed Germany” — innocent naïve peace-loving Nazi Germany — into World War II.
Balcazar then said, “It is a monument to the history of commerce: how bills of exchange were born, how international trade moved, what role the Jews had in Germany’s national and international trade, how Germany was pushed into a war also partly because of the Jews because they controlled all the banks, all the commerce, and practiced usury.
He, El Señor Presidente, repeated such timeworn antisemitic tropes as the one about Jews controlling all the banks in the world, which would make them the hidden masters of our fate. Why is it that those who accuse Jews of controlling the universe — all the banks, all the media, all of everything — never ask themselves if that is true, how is it, then, that those all-powerful Jews have never been able to prevent themselves being victims, over many centuries of persecution in many different places, and ending with the final hideous apocalypse of Jew-murdering during the Holocaust?
The murdered Jews were not just German nationals. They were from Poland, Russia, Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Belgium, Italy, even the U.K. (Jews taken by the Nazis from the Channel islands of Guernsey and Jersey were sent to extermination camps.)
Balcaázar has been made to apologize for his intolerable remarks blaming Jews for “pushing” Germany into World War II, in order to dampen criticism that might harm Peru’s international standing. But I wonder what Balcázar, who seems to have been so greatly impressed by that one book, The enemies of commerce, by Antonio Escohotado, really thinks. And I also wonder whether in the future, say a decade or two from now, the virus of antisemitism will still be found “from China to Peru,” or will it be put back in its bottle by people who understand that Islam is coming not just for “the Jews,” but for all of us.
Kepha says
Re China, I am not surprised.
Apart from certain Christian circles that see the re-emergence of Israel as a harbinger of the SecondAdvent, many on both sides of the Taiwan Strait perceive Israel as another Western colonialist phenomenon–although many Taiwanese also admire Israeli pluck in the face of overwhelming Arab numbers. For Mainland China, modern Isael is primarily a case of Western colonialism, and its recognition of the Beijing regime simply another example of a dying West bowing to “the inevitable”.
Interestingly enough, Ze’ev Suffot, Israel’s first ambassador to beijing, ran into Chinese Communists who blamed the Jews such as Two-gun Cohen and a few other “foreign friends” of importing a dangerous fanaticism into an otherwise humane Chinese Communism–as if Mao Zedong’s real name were Murmeltier and he was born in Halicz instead of Hunan.
But, I will remind all here that official Mainland China is an equal-opportunity hater of all “Western” (from a Chinese stanpoint) religions. Back in the 1990’s, they got all antsy and anxious over a few of their “foreign friends” who’d settled in China going frum in their old age and a couple hundred people in Kaifeng looking into their jewish heritage. One Party circular noted the dire fate of the Soviet Union after “those people” got uppity.
Re Latin America, I’m also not surprised. I knew a Jewish student who’d lived a part of his life in the DR who recalled that a lot of the country people there believed that Jews have horns.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Is antisemitism receding in Latin America? Of all the places, I’m puzzled why they should be antisemitic at all! They were a bunch of indigenous peoples, got conquered and converted to the Roman Catholic church by the Spaniards and Portuguese, and after the end of colonialism, had the full liberty to revert to whatever else they were before. There are hardly any Jews among them. Of all the things in the world they could bellyache about, why Jews? I get it that communist undercurrents there are strong, but even Communists should know better than to have a scapegoat that is not even an asterisk in terms of population percentage in the region
Also, as far as China goes, there isn’t any antisemitism within there aside from
⮞ Their general crackdown on all faith – Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism as well as islam, where they have written their own qur’an that Uyghurs must follow (hope one day Robert reads that qur’an as well and explores whether a “made in China” qur’an might be an improvement 😈
⮞ Beijing’s alliance w/ the OIC and its eagerness to get them all into the belt/road initiative, for which they are more than happy to toss Israel under the bus
Israel would do well to just ban Chinese imports. In fact, the best way of doing that would be to cut all ties w/ Beijing, but recognize Taiwan as Taiwan (as the DPP would have it). Piss off the Chicoms to no end. What can they do beyond what they are already doing – trying to salvage the islamic thugs in Iran?
Kepha says
@Infidel
I have Chinese family ties and use that language. I disagree that there is no anti-Semitism in China apart from the general animus towards historical religions, and “Abrahamic” ones in particular.
Communist ideology is keen to create, propagate, and believe propaganda against whomever the Party wishes to make fiend du jour. With the popularity of the Palestinian Arab cause among Wetern “progressives” surging, the CCP will certainly use it and propagate it among the Cihnese masses. The CCP is also pro-Palestinian as a matter of course in its “anti-colonialist” stance. Note as well Ze’ev Suffot’s encounter with CCP members who blame the Jews for the excesses of their own party during his tenure as Israel’s ambassador there. And, given a cultural propensity to value personal and associational loyalty, Chinese Communists must feel a very keen sense of betrayal when some of the Western Jewish Communists who settled in China go frum in their old age.
Joel says
A couple of years after the end of WW2, the writer, Ben Hecht, stated these prophetic words: “the nazis aren`t gone. They`re just resting”.
Patrick says
Long live Israel and America, targets of world leftism and Islamism. Long live God/Jesus, forever targets of leftism/Islamism
Leftism/Islamism targets All non-Muslim!
Edmund Carey says
When it’s “Israel is committing genocide [because it has no choice but to defend itself against users of human shields]” you are hearing hypocrisy. When it’s “Jews around the world are complicit in war crime because they support the Jewish state [which has been under siege one way or another since before it was founded]” you are hearing a double standard which is seldom or never applied to any other people. But when you hear “Jews pushed Germany into war because ‘they controlled banks” you are hearing unalloyed anti-Semitism – hatred of a people justifying itself with myth and false imputation. An opinion Josef Goebbels would admire. The man is despicable, and his being stupid does not redeem him.
gravenimage says
Antisemitism, From China to Peru
………………………………….
Just sickening.