Anti Semitism In The Middle East

Throughout history Jews have been residents of predominantly Christian and Muslim lands, often resulting in conflict, turmoil, war and most evidently, Anti-Semitism. The official worldwide acknowledgment of the State of Israel in 1948 truly peaked Anti-Zionism throughout Islamic countries and the Muslim world, which then manifested itself into Anti- Semitism. It is argued that classic European Anti-Semitism that most prominently took place all over Europe during WWII is undoubtedly the worst act of Anti-Semitism to date. However, it is clear that the current wave of Anti- Semitism in Europe is different from classic European Anti- Semitism because it is stemming from Anti-Zionism. The rise of Anti-Semitism in Europe today is reminding us
of the darkest period in European history. However, it is Anti- Zionism that is being acted upon predominately by the overwhelming amount of Muslim immigrants that have been residing in Europe for the last 20 years. The Anti- Zionist movement that has been all over the Middle East ever since the official status of the State of Israel in 1948 seems to move wherever its followers and believers reside, which has now spread to Europe. It is also clear that Anti-Zionism is the same thing as Anti- Zionism. Anti- Semitism is hostility, prejudice, or discrimination directed against Jews as a group. A person who holds such positions is called an anti-Semite. Anti-Semitism is generally considered to be a form of racism. However it is Christianity that held the strongest and most open hatred for Jews from the very beginning of their religion.
Christian rhetoric and antipathy towards Jews developed in the early years of Christianity and was reinforced by the belief that Jews had killed Christ and ever increasing anti-Jewish measures over the ensuing centuries (Grobman, 1990). This has led them to believe Jews are untrustworthy, dirty, conniving, and only looking out for their own. Christian anti-Semitism has been attributed to numerous factors including theological differences, competition between Church and Synagogue, the Christian drive for converts, decreed by the Great Commission, misunderstanding of Jewish beliefs and practices, and a perceived Jewish hostility toward Christians.
Of course two religions, Judaism and Christianity; the latter deriving from the first, were so similar that one was bound to be hostile towards the other. Traditionally, both Judaism and Christianity believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for Jews the God of the Tanakh, for Christians the God of the Old Testament, the creator of the universe. And both religions agree that God shares both transcendent and immanent qualities. These attitudes were reinforced in Christian preaching contempt for Jews, as well as statutes, which were designed to humiliate and stigmatize Jews. Scholars have debated how Christian Anti-Semitism played a role in the Nazi Third Reich, World War II and the
Holocaust. Anti- Semitism is sometimes called "the longest hatred," having persisted in many forms for over two thousand years. In the first millennium of the Christian era, leaders in the European Christian (Catholic) hierarchy developed or solidified as doctrine ideas that: all Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ; the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the scattering of the Jewish people was punishment both for past transgressions and for continued failure to abandon their faith and accept Christianity (Grobman, 1990). In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Jews were considered a threat to the Church hierarchy and whilst seeking to retain their beliefs and culture, Jews became bearers of the only minority religion on a now Christian continent of Europe. As outsiders, Jews were objects of violent stereotyping and subject to violence against their persons and property. Among the myths about Jews that took hold in this period was the "blood libel," a myth that Jews used the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes. Other myths included the idea that Jewish failure to convert to Christianity was a sign both of service to the anti-Christ as well as of innate disloyalty to European civilization. Conversely, the conversion of individual Jews was perceived as insincere and as having materialistic motives. Theological anti-Semitism reached its height in the Middle Ages and the most common manifestations of anti-Semitism throughout the ages were pogroms which were; riots launched against Jews by local residents, and frequently encouraged by the authorities (Grobman, 1990). Pogroms were often incited by rumors of blood libel and in desperate times, Jews often became scapegoats for many natural catastrophes. For example, some clerics preached and some parishioners believed that Jews brought on the "Black Death," the plague that killed millions of people in Europe in the 14th Century, as divine retribution for their allegedly blasphemous and satanic practices (Grobman, 1990). During the Early Modern Era beginning in the 14th Century throughout the end of
The Enlightenment of the 19th Century anti- Semitism changed in ways that reflected new cultural, intellectual, and political realities. However, Jews were still given the short end of the stick and kept at arms length. There were many restrictions involving Jews and allowing them into society in order for them to make money. Jews were subject to a wide range of legal disabilities and restrictions in Medieval Europe. Jews were excluded from many trades, the occupations varying with place and time, and determined by the influence of various non-Jewish competing interests. Often Jews were barred from all occupations but money lending and peddling, with even these at times forbidden. Jews association to money lending would carry on throughout history in the stereotype of Jews being greedy and perpetuating capitalism. All of this hatred with no evidence, only beliefs passed down through hundreds and thousands of years really crippled Jews from living their lives in these European nations, they were always the strangers in their homes and were constantly ostracized. With the development during the last third of the nineteenth century of technological progress and scientific knowledge, especially about human biology, psychology, genetics, and evolution, some intellectuals and politicians developed a racist perception of Jews.
This perception developed within a broader racist view of the world based on notions of "inequality" of "races" and the alleged "superiority" of the "white race" over other "races" (Bergman, 1999). Nazism was bubbling up from almost 1875 when it reached its peak in 1933, the belief in the superiority of the "white race" was both inspired and reinforced by the contact of European colonist-conquerors with native populations in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, an evolutionary theory known as "Social Darwinism” (Bergman, 1999). Social Darwinism postulated that human beings were not one species, but divided into several different "races" that were biologically driven to struggle against one another for living space to ensure their survival (Bergman, 1999). Only those "races" with superior qualities could win this eternal struggle, which was carried out by force and
warfare. Before World War I, radical, racist anti-Semitism was confined to the fringe of right-wing politics throughout most of Europe and in the United States. Many trends, using the Jews as scapegoats, developed during and immediately after the World War I brought anti-Semitism, including its racist variant, into the mainstream of European politics. Germany as a whole nation felt total embarrassment in their defeat in WWI and felt that the Jewish people in particular were to blame. There are theories that German Jews during WWI were either spies working for foreign interests or did not help assist Germany in being the most powerful of the nation in WWI, many also resented the Jews and claimed they were not loyal and did not consider Germany their first home. Because Jews did not share the religion of the majority of nation, Christianity, they were forever considered traitors, dirty, and the outsiders, even if they were there for generations. German Jews were never considered to be true Germans because their blood was considered impure; they were not of Aryan descent. Through hatred comes evil, and through the malevolent visions of Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany committed one of the most heinous crimes against humanity to date. The Nazi party gained popularity and, after seizing power, legitimacy, in part by presenting "Jews" as the source for a variety of political, social, economic, and ethical problems facing the German people. Inspired by Adolf Hitler's theories of racial struggle and the "intent" of the Jews to survive and expand at the expense of Germans, the Nazis, as a governing party from 1933-1938, ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, staged book burnings, and enacted anti-Jewish legislation. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws defined Jews by race and mandated the total separation of "Aryans" and "non-Aryans." On November 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed synagogues and the shop windows of Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany and Austria known as Kristallnacht (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2017). These measures aimed at both legal and social segregation of Jews from Germans and Austrians. The key focus of Nazi anti-Semitism was to ethnically cleanse through genocide so that Aryan was the only race left in the world. To justify the murder of the Jews the Nazis used not only racist arguments but also arguments derived from older negative stereotypes, including Jews as communist subversives, as war profiteers and hoarders, and as a danger to internal security because of their inherent disloyalty and opposition to Germany (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2017).