The history of Jews, anti-Semitism and Israel

[Portuguese Man-Of-War]

An extract compiled from various places on the Net, primarily:



http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhist ... braham.asp



This is strictly an extract, for people who do not have a background on what the hell is happening out there. None of this is my point of view - I am just a humble tribal warrior .



Long read, but simple and interesting.



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Jewish history doesn't happen in a vacuum. No people's history happens in a vacuum. So first we have to zoom out and get a little understanding of where Abraham fits in the world of his time.



Abraham appears at a period of time called the Middle Bronze period, around the 18th century BCE. (Early civilization is characterized by the metals they predominantly used and the Middle Bronze period includes the period of time from 2200 BCE until 1550 BCE.)



Whereas most anthropologists believe that hominids, forerunners of human beings physically, originated in Africa, human civilization begins in the Middle East in the Fertile Crescent, which is where Abraham was born.



When we say civilization, we are talking about sophisticated arrangements of people living together, not just simple agrarian settlements, not just a few people living in a few huts. About 5,500 years ago in the Middle East, there occurred an evolution of humanity from hunter/gatherers -- people who spend their whole day looking for food -- to people who were able to domesticate livestock. This meant they could raise animals to eat them or to use them for their milk and their hides, and to plow the land to grow crops.



Once this occurred, there was a surplus of food, which led to population growth and people started specializing in types of labor -- you had craftsmen, scholars, priests and warriors. That, in turn, led to the growth of cities.



The earliest civilizations in the world, according to most opinions, began in the area called the Fertile Crescent.



THE FERTILE CRESCENT



The Fertile Crescent encompasses the area flowed by the Nile in Egypt, the Levant (the middle section where Israel is located), and the area flowed by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers.



The three great rivers contribute mightily to the fertility, and consequent desirability, of this area. The Nile is an incredible river, the largest river in the world. Without the Nile, Egypt would be a desert. In ancient times, 3% of Egypt was arable land, 97% was desert. Also the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers are two tremendous rivers; they run through what is today basically Iraq and into Turkey, but what historians have dubbed Mesopotamia, which is Greek for "in the middle of two rivers."



There is some debate whether the first civilization sprang up in Egypt or in Mesopotamia (specifically in the section of Mesopotamia called Sumer) but we can be fairly sure that the first hallmark of civilization -- writing -- originated in the Fertile Crescent.



Writing was a tremendous invention though we take it for granted today. It began with pictographs. You drew a stick figure and that stood for "man." Later those pictures evolved into more abstract symbols which stood for phonetic sounds, until eventually there came about a system of three "letters," each representing a sound and combining together to make a word that conveyed an idea. (To this day, Hebrew is based on a three-consonant root system.)



Writing was the single greatest human invention. All the technology of today depends on the collective accumulation of accurately transmitted information, which now comes so fast we can't keep up with it.



"A SPEAKING SOUL"



From the Jewish perspective the ability to express oneself -- whether through writing or speech -- personifies what human beings are all about. We learn that when God created the first human being -- Adam -- He "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7) The Hebrew phrase l'nefesh chayah, "living soul," can also be translated as "a speaking soul." (Targum Onkelos)



Of the two earliest civilizations that developed, Egypt is unusual because it's surrounded by desert and so it is virtually unapproachable. Egypt as a civilization survived for close to 3,000 years. This is an incredibly long period of time for civilization to survive. Why did Egypt survive for so long? Because no-one could invade it. It took the Greeks -- specifically Alexander, the Great -- to finish Egypt off, and then it becomes a Greek colony.



Mesopotamia had no such natural defenses. It was a giant flood plain sitting in the middle of the great migration pattern of all ancient peoples. Whatever conqueror came out of Asia or out of Europe set foot here. It had no natural defenses -- no mountains, no deserts -- and it was a very desirable fertile land.



We see the land changing hands many times and a huge number of civilizations in this part of the world -- Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and then, of course, the Islamic invaders.



AT THE CROSSROADS



In this tumultuous place is where Jewish history begins -- at the bottom of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in the cradle of civilization. This was the logical place for civilization to begin in terms of the development of agriculture and culture. And it's also a logical place for Abraham to appear, because if Abraham is going to affect the world, he has to be at the crossroads of the ancient migration pathways. If he were born an Eskimo or an American Indian, all of human history would have been different.



But Abraham was born in Mesopotamia, in particular in a bustling place called Ur Kasdim, or Ur of the Chaldees, which has been excavated by archeologists in today's Iraq.



This was then the center of earliest human civilization, a cosmopolitan center. And it is from here that Abraham's journey begins.



ABRAHAM'S JOURNEY



History is a guidebook for the future. The early lessons of Jewish history reveal a pattern, so we have to pay extra special attention to anything that happens at this period of time.



When we meet Abraham in the Bible in the Book of Genesis, he is already 75 years old, which is interesting because we'd love to know what Abraham did as a little kid and what sports he played, etc. But God doesn't want to fill our brains with extraneous information. He only wants to give us the messages we need to learn, because He's trying to teach us and guide us.



The story of Abraham begins when God first speaks to him. This means that Abraham lived his whole life without prophecy, without any kind of outside confirmation that his ideology of monotheism is correct, and this says a lot about Abraham's dedication to truth.



In an entirely polytheistic world, Abraham chose to see the reality of one God and to dedicate himself to a mission -- if necessary, at the cost of his own life -- of bringing that reality to human consciousness. He did so not because God needs people to die for Him, but because that's reality.



It's one thing if God is regularly speaking to you, you'll take any pain to live in that reality, but to just go on the basis of your own conviction takes some doing. And this gives us a little indication of what a great human being Abraham was and what a tremendous idealist he was. He did not mind standing "on the other side" -- and that is the meaning of the word Ivri, "Hebrew."



And this is why I call Abraham "the proto-Jew." From Abraham onward, we see this idealism -- an uncompromising drive to "change the world" -- in the Jewish personality.



Abraham passed on this drive to his descendants, who have been at the forefront of virtually every major advance, cause, or social movement in world history. (Jews have not only been awarded a disproportionate number of Nobel prizes for their intellectual contributions, but have led movements such as communism, socialism, feminism, civil rights, labor unions, etc.) Notes non-Jewish historian Ernest Van den Haag:



Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture? (Ernest Van den Haag, Ernest, The Jewish Mystique.)

The answer to Van den Haag's question is understanding the personality of Abraham.



THREE PATTERNS



So now let's take a look at how Abraham is introduced in the Bible -- not for purposes of Bible study but to identify the sweeping patterns we encounter here, of which we can identify three.



Number one:



God said to Abram, "Go from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. (Genesis 12:1)



We see here that God is not like Charles _. _ got paid by the word, and he would be as verbose as possible. God is the exact opposite. So the question we have to ask is: Why does God, who uses words so sparingly throughout the whole Bible, repeat this command so emphatically? "Separate yourself completely, not just from your land, but from your birthplace, from your father's house."



If you grew up in a specific house for a specific period of time, that will always be home for you. When you think of home, no matter where you've lived after that and how comfortable you've been, you'll always think about it as home. There's a very deep connection. So God is saying to Abraham: "Separate yourself on the most basic emotional level."



More importantly, from the macrocosmic, historical perspective, God is saying to Abraham, and therefore the Jewish people: "Separate yourself completely and go in a different direction."



The journey that God is directing Abraham to undertake is not just a physical journey, it's a journey through history that is going to be different from anyone else's. Abraham is going to become a father to a nation that is not reckoned among the rest of the nations, a nation that dwells alone.



This is the first unique characteristic of Jewish history.



Number two we learn in the next verse:



"I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great; and you will be a blessing." (Genesis 12:2)



This verse conveys God's promise that He will be actively involved in Jewish history: "I will make you ..."



In the 17th century when Blaise Pascal, the great French enlightenment philosopher, was asked by Louis XIV for proof of the supernatural, he answered, "The Jewish people, your Majesty." Why? Because he knew Jewish history and he realized that for the Jewish people to survive to the 17th century, violated all the laws of history. Can you imagine what he'd say seeing the Jews made it to the 20th century?! Jewish history is a supernatural phenomenon.



Jewish people should have never come into existence. With Abraham's wife Sarah being barren, that should have been it. Abraham would have died, and his mission would have died with him. But it didn't. A miracle happened.



Thus we learn that the Jewish people come into being miraculously and survive all of human history miraculously, outliving some of the greatest empires that ever were.



This is so because the Jews are a nation with a unique mission, a nation with a unique history. Things happen to the Jews that don't happen to other peoples.



To live for 2000 years as a nation without a national homeland is not normal. It's unique in human history. To re-establish a homeland in the place that was yours 2000 years ago is not normal. It's unique in human history.



And number three:



"I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and through you, will be blessed all the families of the earth." (Genesis 12:3)



God is saying here to Abraham that he and his descendants -- the Jews -- will be under God's protection. The nations and peoples who are good to the Jews will do well. Empires and peoples that are bad to the Jews will do poorly. And the whole world is going to be changed by the Jewish people.



That is one of the great patterns of history. You can literally chart the rise and fall of virtually all the civilizations in the western world by how they treated the Jews. A part of it is supernatural for sure, whether it's Spain or Germany or Poland or America or Turkey. We will see this as we go through the timeline.



Part of it, by the way, is not so supernatural, because if you have a group of people living within your country -- an educated, driven, dedicated, loyal, creative, well-connected people -- and you're nice to them and you allow them to participate and contribute in a meaningful way, your country is going to benefit. If you crush those people and expel them, you're going to suffer, because of the economic fallout. But, of course, there's much more going on than just that.



So we have a third pattern -- that the rise and fall of nations and empires is going to be based on how they treat the Jews, which is an amazing idea, and one you can clearly demonstrate in human history.



You can see the incredibly positive impact the Jews have had on the world. The most basic of all is that the Jews have contributed the values that are now linked with democracy -- the values that come from the Torah -- respect for life, justice, equality, peace, love, education, social responsibility etc.



So from these three verses in Genesis we see the key underlying patterns of Jewish history.



Abraham's journey is the paradigm. His personal life and the life of his immediate descendants is going to be a mini-version, a microcosm, of what Jewish history is all about.



THE PROMISED LAND



The Jewish story begins in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 12, when God first speaks to Abraham, and continues through to the end with the death of Jacob and Joseph. This segment can best be described as the development of the "family" of Israel, which in the Book of Exodus will become a "nation."



In the last installment of these series we examined the patterns set into history when God sent Abraham on his journey.



Abraham had been born in Ur Kasdim in Mesopotamia (today's Iraq) then moved with his father to Haran (today's northern Syria/southern Turkey) and that is where he got the instruction to go to Canaan, the Promised Land, which will become the Land of Israel.



God said to Abram: "Go from your land ... to the land that I will show you." (Genesis 12:1)



This is a key statement and the promise is repeated several times. For example:



On that day, God made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites, Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites." (Genesis 15:18-21)

"And I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your temporary residence, all the land of Canaan as an eternal possession and I will be a God to them." (Genesis 17:8)



We say that Judaism is God, Torah and the Land of Israel. The Land of Israel is not a pay off. God did not say to Abraham: Support me and if monotheism spreads throughout the world, I will give you a good piece of real estate for your own. God gave Abraham and his family the Land of Israel as a laboratory where his descendants are supposed to create the nation that's the model for the world.



A SPIRITUALLY SENSITIVE PLACE



The Land of Israel is a special place; it's the only place on the planet earth where the Jewish people can achieve their mission. A model nation cannot come to be anywhere else. So, it is very important to understand the Jewish relationship with the land.



And because it's a special place, a spiritually sensitive place, a place of tremendous potential, it's also a place where one has to behave in a special manner. The Jews were only given the land because of their mission. If they abandon the mission, they lose the land. This is another very important lesson in Jewish history which is repeated, and it is also one of the most often repeated prophecies: "If you don't keep Torah, the Land will vomit you out."



Throughout the early part of the Bible, God is constantly talking about giving the Jewish people the Land of Israel and reaffirming that commitment.



Indeed, the great 11th century Biblical commentator Rashi, asks a question of the very first sentence in the Bible: Why does God begin with the creation of the universe?



If the Bible is a book of theology for the Jews, why not begin with the creation of the Jewish nation and go immediately to the story of Exodus. That's when the Jews become a nation, get the Torah, and go into the land.



And Rashi answers, quoting an ancient oral tradition that in the future, the nations of the world will say "you are thieves" to the Jewish people. You have stolen the land from the Canaanite tribes. So God begins the Bible here at the creation of the universe to tell the world: "I am the Creator of the Universe. Everything is mine. I choose to give the Land of Israel to the Jewish people."



CLAIMS OF CONQUEST



Every other nation in the world bases its claim to its land on conquest. A people came (for example, the English or the Spanish) conquered the indigenous people (for example, the Indians) took the land, settled it, and called it by a new name (for example, United States of America). "Might makes right" is the historical claim of almost all nations in history.



However, the Jewish people base their claim on God's promise. It is a moral claim because God is God and God is by definition truth, and God is by definition morality. God gave the Jewish people the Land of Israel. Without that, the only claim the modern State of Israel can make is it is stronger and was able to take the land from the Arabs.



This is a very important thing, and essential for the State of Israel -- which is not a religious state and often far removed from Jewish values -- to realize that the Bible gives the Jews a moral claim.



Indeed, the early founding fathers of the modern state, even if they were not religious, were deeply steeped in the realization of Biblical heritage of the Jewish people and their connection to the land. Ben Gurion had an appreciation of the necessity of anchoring a modern, even secular Israeli state in Judaism and Jewish tradition. (We'll get more on Zionism later in this series.)



ISHMAEL



After Abraham arrives in the Promised Land, he is faced with a dilemma. His wife Sarah is barren, and she wants Abraham to have an offspring. So she suggests that Abraham take a surrogate wife, Hagar, who joined Abraham's camp when he passed through Egypt. Hagar is the daughter of the Pharaoh and she had elected to travel with Abraham as Sarah's maidservant. Great people have great servants. And so Abraham takes Hagar as his second wife and from that relationship is going to come a child by the name of Ishmael.



Ishmael will not want to carry on Abraham's mission. Ishmael will go off and found his own lineage; this is all recorded in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 16.



In human history, we're going to have two great monotheistic faiths, which are going to appear later, after Judaism is already established for more than 2,000 years: Christianity and Islam.



Islam is a religion which originated with the Arab peoples. The Arabs, according to their own tradition and according to the Jewish tradition, are the descendants of Ishmael. One of the great attributes of Arab culture is hospitality. And the Bible tells us that Abraham was famous for hospitality.



It seems therefore that even though Ishmael does not carry on Abraham's mission he can't help but be great. He's blessed. By the way, the Bible says specifically that Ishmael is going to be great and that he's going to be at odds with the rest of the civilized world.



"You shall call his name Ishmael ... And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall live in the presence of all his brothers." (Genesis 16:11-12)



SUPERNATURAL BEGINNING



When it is clear that Ishmael will not carry on the mission, God tells Abraham, who is then 99, that Sarah, who is 90, is going to become pregnant. And this is how Isaac is born, supernaturally.



As we noted earlier, this is what defines the Jewish people. The Jews never should have been there. The Jews certainly shouldn't have survived, yet they did and still are here.



Before Sarah conceives God tells Abraham:



"Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will name him Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him as an eternal covenant to his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael ... I have bless him and I will make him fruitful and will increase him exceedingly. He will become the father of twelve princes and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish My covenant with Isaac who Sarah will bear to you at this time next year." (Genesis 17:19-21)



So Isaac is the person who will carry on the mission of Abraham, the mission of the Jews.

[Portuguese Man-Of-War]

Here, the history of anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews). Again, all this is quote-unquote. If you have any points to contribute, just post them here.



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ANTI-SEMITISM



The Biblical Times



The Bible is filled with disputes that the nation of Israel had with the nations surrounding it. However, in two well known places in the Bible, there are specific statements against the Jewish nation - that they are a different nation, with stereotypical characteristics, which, it seems, threaten the leaders of the world.



The first is a statement by Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus (1:8-10): "And there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his nation, Behold, the nation of the children of Israel are more numerous and greater than us. Come and be clever with them lest they multiply and if war should happen, they would also join our enemies and will fight us and go up out of the land". As a result of Pharaoh's fears, harsh decrees are passed over the nation of Israel - forced labor and the killing of babies.



The second case and a more characteristic case of a declaration of hate against Israel, is the remark by Haman, advisor to King Ahasuerus, king of Persia (Scroll of Esther 3:8): "And Haman said to King Ahasuerus: there is one nation dispersed and divided among the nations in all the states of your kingdom, and their religion is different from every nation and they do not practice the religion of the king and it is not worthwhile for the king to leave them be." In this case too, Haman is not satisfied with a general utterance against the Jews, but also offers a plan of action - genocide.



It is interesting to note that these two characters were in a way actually prophetic. It seems in fact that the more things change the more they stay the same. The same accusations and plans of action return over and over throughout the generations.



The Greco-Roman World



This period was characterized by a multitude of deities and apparent religious pluralism. The Greek and Roman rulers and societies were accepting of other forms of ritual. In return they demanded that members of other religions would respond likewise too and be open and tolerant of them. A central principle in Judaism is the prohibition against idol worship. This principle prevented the Jews from accepting the idol worship of those times and this lead to Jews and Judaism been seen as harmful to universal peace and tolerance. In the eyes of society in those days - only the Jews were seen to be exceptions, as they did not accept the Greek and Roman deities and even practiced commandments that lead to them being separate from the rest of society - prohibitions against drinking non-Jewish wine and marrying non-Jews and their absence at public ritual ceremonies. Due to all these, the Jews were suspected of treason against the monarchy.



Dr Dan Mechman summarizes this period of anti-Semitism (in his book 'From Shoah to Revival', published by the Open University) as follows:



"it is important that we understand that in this period [anti-Semitism] was built up upon the first seeds of hatred of the Jews, as is seen in the approach of Haman, another level to the attitude of scorn, contempt and loathing of the Jews. This was not yet the attitude of an entire culture. However this is the attitude of an often significant portion - and it is significant for us to mention, among those who held this attitude, the historian Tactitus and the orator Cicaro - and it continues to spread. The seeds of virulent anti-Semitism are found from now on in various parts of the extensive Roman world."



Early Christianity



In its infancy, Christianity was a Jewish sect - and from this, the ambivalent attitude between Christianity and its Jewish mother-sister stems. Both religions see themselves as chosen by God; both are fighting for the birthright. And as usually happens in wars among brothers - the results are harsh.



In the eyes of Christians and Christianity, the Jews are guilty of three main sins:



· The Jews did not accept the message of Jesus and his disciples and remained true to the Old Testament.

· The Jews killed Jesus.

· In their persecution of the early Christians, the Jews sinned by preventing the spread of Christianity to the world and by preventing salvation from reaching the rest of the world.



These claims appear in the Epistle of the early Christians and in the Gospels. For example, Paul writes in his Epistle to the Thessalonians (Christians of Salonica):



"[The Jews] killed Lord Jesus and the prophets, persecuted us, and are not pleasing in the eyes of God and strive against all people"



In one of the Gospels it is written that Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor, proved himself innocent of the killing of Jesus, and the Jews admitted that they were guilty:



"When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, and that instead the uproar was growing, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd. 'I am innocent of this righteous man's blood,' he said. 'It is your responsibility!' And the people [the Jews] answered him saying, 'his blood is on us and our children…'"



The Spread of Christianity



As long as Christianity remained a small and persecuted sect - their activities against the Jews remained on a small and limited scale. As the new religion grew, an "official" standpoint against the Jews needed to be adopted. The early leaders of Christianity voiced a whole range of hated filled remarks vis-à-vis the Jews, such as a remark by John Chrysostom (leader of the Christians of Antioch in the 4th century CE):



"The Jews are lecherous, avaricious, lovers of money, traitors, criminals, murderers, stiff-necked, destructive, possessed by evil spirits … they have overthrown the natural order … there is no atonement, forgiveness or absolution [for killing Christ]."



However the "Molders of Christianity" in the first centuries CE were confronted with a serious dilemma. On one hand they saw the Jews as the former "chosen people", the biological "brothers" of the true believers - the Christians. Even if the Jews did not accept the message, and lost the birthright, they could still be saved. On the other hand - how could one grant atonement and forgiveness for a sin as dreadful as the killing of Christ.



In the 5th century CE, Augustine, one of the founding fathers of the church, delineated an approach which answered this dilemma:



"In this way God showed his mercy to his church, even by the hand of his enemies, the Jews, as in the words of the apostle "through their sins the salvation comes to the nations". Therefore he did not kill them, but rather let the knowledge that they are Jews be kept by them, although they are slaves to the Romans, lest they disappear completely and we forget the law of God, in the issue of this testimony. Therefore it was not enough that he should say, "Do not kill them," but he also added, "Disperse them": because if they were not dispersed throughout the world, with the testimony of the Scriptures, the Church could not have had them as witnesses to the fulfillment of the prophecies concerning our messiah."



According to Augustine, the solution to the dilemma of how to deal with the Jews was actually not to harm them, since their existence in the world and their humiliation is proof of the victory of Christianity over Judaism. Therefore, the Jews have an essential task, of a negative nature, in the fulfillment of Christianity.



The Medieval Period



The Medieval Period of European history is also known as the Dark Ages. This was exactly what the Medieval Period was for the Jews. During this period the church had widespread influence over all aspects of life in Europe. The stereotype set by previous generations - of the Jew with negative characteristics, who strives to harm the very basis of society and its rulers - continued and strengthened in this period. The theory which developed from the earliest days of Christianity - of a nation which killed Christ, rejected the revelation and prevented others from gaining salvation - became firmly entrenched as one of the central factors of life in Medieval Europe.



The influence of Christianity encompassed all strata of society and all aspects of life. Christian heritage, with its anti-Semitic aspects, was passed on in the preaching and sermons of the church. Cultural life also reflected these beliefs:



· Art - Art contributed greatly to the spread of the negative image of Jews in pictures of Jews with horns and a tail (depicting Satan), Jews breastfeeding from a pig, Jews performing rituals which harm Christians and many more suchlike. Most of the famous artists of the period painted and sculpted creations stemming from Christian heritage. The focus of this artwork was the suffering of Jesus with an ever present accusing finger pointed at the Jews.

· Literature - Literary characters and works strengthen the negative stereotype, for example Shylock in Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice'. It is interesting to note that this work was written in England at a time when Jews were not allowed to reside in the country at all and despite this the anti-Semitic overtone is blatantly clear.

· Theatre - In Medieval times it was very common to present religious plays which were seen by all strata of society. The 'Passion' was one sort pf play which dramatized, in detail, the suffering of Jesus, with the Jews playing a significant (negative) role.

· Archaeology - Many churches have displayed in front, symbols emphasizing Christianity's victory over Judaism. A famous example that exists till today - in the cathedral in Strasbourg, France, there are 2 statues - one stands erect and beautiful, representing the church, upright and proud, and next to her an image of the "Synagoga", eyes blindfolded and head downcast, to emphasize the blindness and humiliation of Judaism.

· Language - Language is a means of transferring messages and ideas. This is very apparent when looking at the word 'Jew'. In European dictionaries the word Jew is equivalent to exploiter, an untrustworthy person or a liar. 'Jew' has also become a verb meaning to swindle. In a thesaurus, the word 'Jew' appears together with the expressions 'interest bearing loan' and 'miser'. It is important to note that definitions such as these appeared in the widely used Oxford Dictionary up till the middle of the twentieth century!



Anti-Semitism had considerable effect on the daily lives of Jews. The Fourth Lateran Council of the Church, in 1215, decreed that "Jews shall be distinguished from Christians in terms of dress". In different countries the distinguishing dress was different: a pointed hat in England and Italy, a heart shaped badge of shame in certain areas in Germany, a red and white circle in France and even a yellow (!) patch in Frankfurt and other areas in Germany. Jews were sent to live in specially designed quarters and the term "ghetto", which we know from the period of the Holocaust, has its source in the Jewish quarter of Venice.



This period is characterized by decrees against the Jews, which forced them to live in cities under the protection and mercy of the local ruler. Jews were forbidden from working the land (and obviously also forbidden to own land) and therefore they were forced to earn their living from commerce and usury. Undoubtedly this necessity raised to new levels the description of Jews as thieves, misers and villains who are trying to take control of the world financially.



One of the most outstanding expressions of the influence of religion on all aspects of society and state, were the crusades. The crusades were meant to conquer the sites in the land of Israel which were holy to Christianity, from their Moslem conquerors. However, in the midst of the religious frenzy - the Jews, who were also heretics, were seen as easy and worthwhile prey.



The prevailing atmosphere was described by a Jew of that period by the name of R' Ephraim son of Yaakov of Bonn:



"And he went back and forth shouting out [=the preacher] … to travel to Jerusalem to fight Ishmael, and in every place he came to, he spoke evil of the Jews who lived in the land, and incited every snake and dog against us, saying: take revenge of the crucified one against his enemies who stand before you and afterwards you can fight against the Ishmaelites…"



The Middle Ages were also the period of the Inquisition during which Jews were accused of heresy and burnt at the stake. Various European countries expelled the Jews from their territories - including Spain, Portugal, Britain and other countries.



These were also the years of blood libel in which entire communities were punished due to false accusations of Jews murdering for the sake of some imagined ritual. This happened in the blood libel of 1475 when Jews of the city Trent were burnt at the stake as a result of the discovery of the body of a child names Simon. In this case, as with many other similar cases, Jews were accused of murdering the boy in order to use his blood for baking matzoth (unleavened bread).



Another famous blood libel case was the false accusation that Jews poisoned the wells of the Christians and caused the outbreak of the plague which caused the death of a quarter of the population of Western Europe of those days.



Anti-Semitism in the 20th Century till the aftermath World War Two



At the beginning of the 20th century anti-Semitic philosophers continued to have influence over the common people and also over the patterns of leadership. Parties based on an anti-Semitic platform were elected to parliaments in Europe (especially Germany). Anti-Semitic nationalistic organizations continued to flourish and attract thousands of members.



The feelings of superiority of the German people were the main reasons which lead Germany into the First World War - and their defeat in 1918 lead to deep feelings of frustration among the German people. The myth of "being stabbed in the back" and the inability to reconcile themselves to their defeat, were a result of these feelings. Despite the fact that about 12,000 Jews died as defending German in the war, it is not surprising that the Jews were still seen as those responsible for Germany's sufferings.



In the years following the First World War, Germany suffered from extremely harsh economic conditions, from an unstable political system and, as already mentioned, from a low national morale. These were ideal conditions for the flourishing of anti-Semitic organizations. As is well known, Adolf Hitler became a rising star in this atmosphere. The National-Socialist movement which he turned to the nation - with mass meetings, with connections made with army officers and intellectuals among the elite, with anti-Semitic propaganda such as Hitler's book "Mein Kampf". Nazi propaganda presented a racist doctrine containing elements of religious racism, but paradoxically - the Jews were accused of being an enemy of Germany and the whole world - on the basis of them being both communists and capitalists simultaneously.



In the 1930's the activities of the Nazi party reached a new level when Hitler and his party were elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament. In 1933 Hitler was appointed Prime Minister of Germany. This was the beginning of a regime under which anti-Semitism was a central and official element of its policy. Initially decrees were passed with respect to Jews in Germany, Jewish leaders were jailed and Jewish property was damaged.



In 1939, World War II broke out and this affected Jews in all countries conquered by the Germans. Initially decrees were passed, later they were gathered into ghettos and finally they were taken to concentration and extermination camps.



It is important to mention that theoretical and practical anti-Semitism were not only a German heritage. Throughout Europe, governments and individuals joined the Germans in their deeds - in countries like Poland, France, Holland, Italy, Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia, the "puppet governments" (governments claimed to be 'independent', but in fact carried out the wishes of the Germans) passed laws against the Jews. Many of the members of the various nations joined forces with those who attacked and murdered Jews.



During the war years, 6,000,000 Jews were annihilated - about two-thirds of all European Jewry.



Anti-Semitism after the Second World War



With the end of the war, the Allied forces that had fought against the German army entered the concentration and extermination camps and this caused enormous agitation in worldwide public opinion. As a result of the terrible findings of Nazi atrocities against the Jews, the Human Rights Charter of the United Nations was composed and the Nuremberg trials against the Nazi leadership began.



Nonetheless, despite the international outcry against anti-Semitism - Jewish survivors who tried to return to their homes after the horrors of the Holocaust - met up again with the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. Again Jews who attempted to return home and reclaim their property were attacked. Again Jews were blamed for tribulations of Europe that had been destroyed by world war.



Since the end of the Second World War, acts of violence against Jews in Europe have in fact not ceased. As time goes by, small groups have begun to deny the existence of the Holocaust and again nurture the ideology of the superiority of the Aryan race and as time passes, these groups are growing.



Violence and hatred against the Jews has been dressed in different garb in different places around the world.

[JUst]

NATURE OF THE JEWISH STATE



Israel was established as a Jewish state. It was not intended as a state for all of its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike. Rather, it was primarily envisaged as a state for Jews, that is, a state of which every Jewish individual throughout the world would be a potential citizen. Thus, when the state was unilaterally established on 15 May 1948, it became imperative for its legislative body, the Knesset, to define in law those persons who would qualify as actual or potential citizens, and those who would be excluded - that is, non-Jews in general, and Palestinian Arabs in particular. This was done without undue delay. In 1950 the Israeli Knesset passed two laws: the Law of Return, defining the boundaries of inclusion ('every Jew has the right to immigrate into the country') and the Absentee Property Law, defining the boundaries of exclusion ('absentee'). Under these laws, every Jew throughout the world is legally entitled to become a citizen of the state of Israel upon immigration into the country, while some two million people, the 1948 Palestinian Arabs and their descendants, who were exiled as a consequence of the 1948-9 and the 1967 wars, are denied the rights of citizenship. Nevertheless, their right of return is universally recognized in international law and in repeated UN resolutions (beginning with Resolution 194 (III), 11 December 1948). They clearly exist. Yet, they are defined in Israeli law as 'non-existent', and as 'absentees', and they are excluded by law from actual or potential citizenship in the Jewish state.



The Law of Return (1950) is the cornerstone of the Israeli Nationality Law (1952). The details of the Law of Return (1950), the Absentee Property Law (1950), the Israeli Nationality Law (1952), and the legal mechanisms of exclusion that are codified in this body of legislation will be discussed in detail [in the following chapters]. It is important to note here, however, that the Israeli Knesset, having elevated the attribute of 'being Jewish' to the status of a legally determining principle of exclusion from, or inclusion in, the constituency of actual or potential citizens of the state of Israel, has brought into sharp focus the crisis of modern secular Jewish identity which the Zionist movement claimed to have solved. Under this body of legislation, as amended over the past three and half decades, it is not only the Palestinian non-Jew - first and foremost the Palestinian Arab 'absentee' - who is excluded from his or her right to undisputed citizenship. Large categories of Jews are similarly excluded: Jewish bastards, Jewish persons born to non-Jewish mothers, Jewish persons born to Jewish mothers who converted to another religion, and non-Jews converted to Judaism by conservative or reform rabbis (only the Jewish orthodox conversion procedure is effectively recognized in Israel. The question of 'who is a Jew' has bedeviled Israeli political practice and legislation since the passage of the Law or Return in 1950. As Akiva Orr noted:



"First, Zionism did not believe in the existence of God; the movement was secular, not religious...Zionism insisted that suffering in exile was a result of a minority status, not of sin. Zionism preached that the Jews must act on their own behalf to create their state in Zion, rather than wait till God did it for them. Finally, Zionism argued that when Jewish independence was resurrected the Jews would become 'a nation like all other nations' or 'normalized' as some put it "(Orr, The unJewish State, p.6)



And yet, by every conventional criterion, the state of Israel is a theocracy. Civil marriage is not permitted under Israeli law, and marriage can be legally consecrated only by Rabbinical, Church or Shari'a courts. The same applies to divorce. Under Israeli law (Jurisdiction of Rabbinical Courts (Marriage and Divorce), 1953), religious courts are state courts and the religious judiciary (Rabbinical, Church and Shari'a) are paid by the state.



Political practice and legislation have been similarly bedevilled by the question of 'who is an Israeli' in the state of Israel. Clearly, the term 'Israeli' and 'Jew' are not coterminous. Seven hundred thousand of the over four million citizens of the state of Israel (some 17 percent) are non-Jewish. They are Palestinian Arabs, the descendants of the remnants of the Palestinian people who have remained in Palestine under Israeli rule (some 150,000 in 1948-9). Much of this volume will be devoted to the analysis and explication of the political and legal mechanisms in terms of which the state of Israel confers a priori exclusive and privileged access to national resources and services on its Jewish citizens, to the exclusion of its non-Jewish, mainly Palestinian Arab, citizens.



In this context, however, it is necessary to remember that Israeli legislation is not directed against those non-Jews who are legally incorporated, albeit in terms of extreme discrimination, into the Israeli body politic as citizens of the Jewish state. Rather, the most damaging manifestation of Israeli legislation is directed against those non-Jews who are legally excluded as 'absentees' from the body of Israeli polity: two million Palestinian Arab displaced persons, conventionally referred to as 'refugees'.



Thus, each Israeli Jew has a shadow: the Palestinian Arab refugee of 1948. Israeli Jewish homes are built on the ruins of their homes. Israeli Jews cultivate their land.



The Palestinian Arab refugee of 1948 is today a soldier in the Palestine Liberation Army: a fida'i. All human beings will rebel, must rebel, in such circumstances, to reconstitute their full human existence, to reclaim their rights, if necessary by armed struggle, inside every part of the homeland from which they have been excluded. And in this struggle the Palestinian Arab deserves full moral and material support.



http://www.allaahuakbar.net/jew/nature_ ... israel.htm