23-08-2002 07:36									#31
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How do you explain the persecution of Jews by non-christian Europeans? The Nazis were quite public about their fondness for the old gods and considered christianity to be a religion for losers ( just like Ted Turner ).

	23-08-2002 08:27									#32
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It actually started in Ancient Egypt, was revived during Rome, continued during the infestation of Christianity, was a major part of Europe in the Middle Ages, and is alive and well today.

It all starts with ignorance.

	23-08-2002 08:36									#33
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Non assimialtion (also a big problem for the Romany) and "chosen people" help to create friction and tend to increase bigotry. Rejecting most of the doiminant ethnic group's or groups' common customs can appear to be arrogant, insluting, unneihborly, etc. The setting apart also makes a group a more obvious and easy target for scapegoating. In San Antonio, I have never observed anti-semitism, and rarely heard of any (and most of that 2 {3 for you guys}generations ago). The vast majority of the jewish population in San Antonio is not ulta orthadox or otherwise "different looking'. They do not dress differently, they do not talk differently, they do not set themselves apart in ways that could be interpreted, by thoses predisposed to, as 'in your face', we live in the same neighborhoods. They have not hsitation in integrating with gentiles in for business or social. Ther are no all jewish law firms, etc. My family has had 4 generations of close business association or partnerhips and social relations with two Jewish prominent Jewish families, and my generation in the family has multiple close social contacts with Jewish families . Gentile freinds go to Bar Mitzvas and events a Synagogs, Jewish freinds go to christenings and events at churches. The more the assimilation toward the 'average' of the non religious customs in an area the less the trigger points for those person vunerable to zenophobia and bigotry.

	23-08-2002 09:15									#34
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quote: Originally posted by Sava It actually started in Ancient Egypt, was revived during Rome, continued during the infestation of Christianity, was a major part of Europe in the Middle Ages, and is alive and well today.

The Egyptians weren't anti-Semetic. They were just anti-non-Egyptians. Oppression fo the Jews for being Jews was started by the Christians. Even the Romans only persecuted Jews in Judea because they were revolting. Jews elsewhere in the Empire weren't oppressed until the Christians came to power.

	23-08-2002 11:07									#35
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In more general terms, the persecution of the jews can be traced to monotheism. If you believe in one god then anyone who believes in another god, or worships a god differently, is a threat. Religious leaders demonize other religions in order to protect their power base.

Religions with multiple gods tend to be more accepting of other beliefs.



Christianity can also be easily used to incite violence against others. A basic Christian belief is that if you don't accept Christ as your saviour then you are going to hell. This leads to the idea that if Jews are sinners for not believing in Christ and they are going to hell, then it is okay to kill them.

	23-08-2002 11:09									#36
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Let's put it this way. In their thousand year history, the Romans only banned two religions, the Druids (who practiced human sacrifice) and the Christians.

In the early years, Romans thought that Christians were cannibals after hearing stories about how Christians ate the body of their lord and drank his blood.

	23-08-2002 11:42									#37
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I don't know all the history of antisemitism, but some details:
- In Roman times, there were persecutions of Jews as well as of Christians - before Christianity became a dominant religion in terms of numbers, Romans took Christianity simply as an odd sect of Judaism. The problem the Romans had (except that for some people it is fun to watch others dying) was that both refused to worship the emperor as a god. Thus they were traitors.
Of course, the Jewish uprising around 67BC was also a reason.
There were some cultural misunderstandings, like the visit of Pompeius in the temple in Jerusalem: He went into the sanctum of the temple and meant to give a special reverence to the God of Israel (not a problem for him as polytheist - important person meets important god). He didn't know that this area was to be entered by the priests only.
- Then, there is the simple fact that the Jews were the only to successfully resist the Christian mission in Europe, making them invariably special.
- I know from persecutions from the time of the crusades. ("When we fight against those who occupy Jerusalem, we also have to fight against those who killed Jesus"). As special details I know from York about a pogrom in the 13th century (can those York residents here just have a look, it's on a somewhat lonely tower not too far from Ouse ), and that Jews had to leave Cologne (and settled on the other bank of the Rhine in a smaller town).
- Before being expelled from Cologne, they inhabited the area of the Roman town hall, which later became the palace of a Frankish king (to be killed by his cousin Chlodwig/Clovis). So this was an area owned by the state, and the Jews were under special protection of the king/emperor. This protection hadn't been necessary if there wouldn't have been prosecutions. I can't date this too exactly, however, probably between 600 and 1200 BC .

	23-08-2002 13:49									#38
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quote: Originally posted by axi One thing I still cannot understand is how much attention the Jews are getting. If everybody stopped concerning themselves about the Jews, then there would be no antisemitism to begin with.

Ohhh.... You so hate to see everyone agree with the Jews, right?

	23-08-2002 13:50									#39
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Che is correct about the persecutions of christians being in large part the result of propoganda at the time, and the resulting myth which has been enshrined now by over a thousand years of repetition. The truth is that the early christians were already in a position of power when they were banned, and courted martyrdom for the sake of destroying the de facto "don't ask don't tell" policy that allowed the empire to continue functioning without a major dislocation over the issue. In the end they got their way, and not only were allowed to practice their religion openly, but got the empire to destroy every other religion as well. History is written by the winners, which is why we are taught to feel sorry for the few early christians who committed state assisted suicide while not a tear is to be shed for the millions who were force-converted to christianity.

	23-08-2002 14:28									#40
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I know I´ve posted this before but I can´t be arsed to find the thread

It´s written by the jewish socialist Abraham Léon during WWII.

The full text HERE

quote: It is modern capitalism that has posed the Jewish problem. Not because the Jews today number close to twenty million people (the proportion of Jews to non-Jews has declined greatly since the Roman era) but because capitalism destroyed the secular basis for the existence of Judaism. Capitalism destroyed feudal society; and with it the function of the Jewish people-class. History doomed this people-class to disappearance; and thus the Jewish problem arose. The Jewish problem is the problem of adapting Judaism to modern society of liquidating the heritage bequeathed to humanity by feudalism.

	23-08-2002 15:17									#41
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Up to the time that Christians got stronger it were the Jews that were persecuting Christians.
Romans didn't love Jews. All the things that they later accused Christians later were earlier pointed out against Jews.

	23-08-2002 15:38									#42
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The bible was written to absolve the romans and blame the jews for Christ's death. Pilot washes his hands and therby gave responsibility to the Jewish authorities.

Very convenient for early christians as they were having enough problems with the romans without having to blame them for Jesus's killing

EDIT: I meant the gospels not the bible

	23-08-2002 16:47									#43
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I've already refuted lots of Leon's points ( not all of the article , it's probably impossible to refute a whole article ) , Kamrat , so there .

	23-08-2002 17:12									#44
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I could write a thesis on this but I'll try and keep it brief.

If you go back to the ancient period the ancient Israelites were not much different from other minor semitic groups in the region and got along reasonably well with their neighbours. They always shared Palestine with a lot of other ethnic groups including the forerunners of the modern Palestinians and were rarely dominant or had their own independent state. This is why the Kingdoms of David and Soloman are revered by Jews. Those kingdoms were the exception rather than the rule.

They did occasionally annoy major powers like Egypt and Persia and paid the price for that. Their religious ideas were unusual but not unique - the "one God idea" was shared with the Persians and appears to have originated in Mesopotamia (Modern Iraq), from where Abraham came.

In the period leading up to Roman occupation there appears to have been an increase in nationalist religious fanaticism (sound familiar?) associated with messianic movements and consequently they were a prize pain the arse for the Romans - the Romans could never quite understand why. This was not a good idea to say the least and led eventually to their bloody expulsion from Palestine by Trajan (?), the so-called diaspora, in the first century AD.

In the early Christian period they were again a fairly innocuous group, sharing religious facilities with Christians. Christianity started out as a Jewish sect.........

Dang it I'm going to bed

Night!

	23-08-2002 18:47									#45
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This, coming from the troll with a burning Israeli flag. I guess it's good to know the past of the hobby you partake in right, AH?

	23-08-2002 21:37									#46
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quote: Originally posted by Azazel I've already refuted lots of Leon's points ( not all of the article , it's probably impossible to refute a whole article ) , Kamrat , so there .

A simple assertion proves nothing, Comrade.

	23-08-2002 23:02									#47
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is it some kind of a concealed message that you actually want me to disprove it , again?! oh, no way, jose. unless , of course , you really insist.

	23-08-2002 23:04									#48
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You could just point to the thread where you didn't previously.

	23-08-2002 23:43									#49
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. search Abraham Leon on poly . I was discussing the topic of " Is Zionism = Jewish Nationalism" with KX . Leon claims that it's not . But to point out the quote , by KX , of Leon:

quote: It is modern capitalism that has posed the Jewish problem. Not because the Jews today number close to twenty million people (the proportion of Jews to non-Jews has declined greatly since the Roman era) but because capitalism destroyed the secular basis for the existence of Judaism. Capitalism destroyed feudal society; and with it the function of the Jewish people-class. History doomed this people-class to disappearance; and thus the Jewish problem arose. The Jewish problem is the problem of adapting Judaism to modern society of liquidating the heritage bequeathed to humanity by feudalism.

in this quote , you can see that he refers to the jews as a people-class, disregarding the fact that jews in different parts of the world , and even europe itself acted in different occasions as nomadic traders , money lenders, craftsmen, peasants, and small rank miscellaneous jobs, and he refers to jews as only traders, and therefore, Antisemitism being caused by the struggle between the "local burgeoisie" and the jews, like in this quote:

quote: In struggling against the Jews, the native traders were rising up against an outmoded economic function which appeared more and more as an intolerable exploitation of the country by foreigners.

I'd like also to point out that I am not taking this quote and claiming the falseness of the entire article, but I am taking this quote as an example of a point of view that repeats itself through the entire article.

	24-08-2002 00:21									#50
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Az, I´d like to joust a bit but I´ve got to take a shower and then play some SMACX

Che, you wanna pick up the slack?

	24-08-2002 00:47									#51
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I haven't read the article. I have no opinion on it right now, but I don't agree with the small portion you posted.

I always thought the Jewish Question was a false question, "What to do about the Jews?" indeed. Why do anything at all? Why is there a need to do something about the Jews. Even by the time Leon was writing this was a false question, though not when Bauer and Marx were writing about it.

I'll go read the article but I can't promise on which side I'll stand.

	24-08-2002 00:59									#52
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quote: I always thought the Jewish Question was a false question

rather interesting. Leon actually claims that the problem only arose recently due to the fact that Judaism lost it's role in society ( approx. meaning )

	24-08-2002 21:21									#53
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quote: Originally posted by Azazel rather interesting. Leon actually claims that the problem only arose recently due to the fact that Judaism lost it's role in society ( approx. meaning )

That might have been true in the 19th Century or Russia even into the 20th Century, but by time Leon is writing, the Jews were emancipated and integrated, more or less. The "Jewish Problem" like the "Black Problem" was in actuality a racist problem, i.e., the problem was with the racists, not the Jews or Blacks.

	24-08-2002 22:53									#54
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I have never interpreted "The Jewish problem" as "a problem with the jews" rather like you said a racist/intolerance problem. And I think Léon interpreted it in the same way. It is a misleading choice of words IMO.

But what Léon means in the quote above is that when society went from feudalism to capitalism antisemitism begun ´cause now everyone could do what only the jews were allowed to do earlier, ie handle money, acting as private bankers and stuff. And since the jews had done this for several hundred years they were very good at it and the fledgling capitalists did everything to get rid of their competitors. And what better way to do it than accuse them of being gready bastards that sucked the life out of a defensless population. That should be the privilege of the new capitalist class...

Thus the jews were labeled as vermin, not by religious reasons (that was just a front) but by purely economic reasons.

	24-08-2002 23:47									#55
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I believe that many Jews, also here, believe that prejudice towards Jews or disliking them is something very different than prejudice towards any other nation.

	25-08-2002 00:05									#56
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Propoganda: antisemitism is inferiority complex.

	25-08-2002 01:28									#57
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So you consider jews a superior people?

Heresson, When you talk of the devil...

	25-08-2002 01:53									#58
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quote: But what Léon means in the quote above is that when society went from feudalism to capitalism antisemitism begun ´cause now everyone could do what only the jews were allowed to do earlier, ie handle money, acting as private bankers and stuff. And since the jews had done this for several hundred years they were very good at it and the fledgling capitalists did everything to get rid of their competitors. And what better way to do it than accuse them of being gready bastards that sucked the life out of a defensless population. That should be the privilege of the new capitalist class...

This still doesn't glue up. So he's explaining the rise of modern , non-religious antisemitism, which begun at the 19th century, with the fact that jews supposedly started to be pushed away by the local merchants that used the modern anti-semitism as a tool of taking them out, by the pretext of nationalism (i.e. "they're aliens" ) . The problem in that is that to create such a picture, you have to take as a precondition the supposed fact that jews held a unique trading niche that noone or almost noone other, before the industrial and national changes , held. This is wrong , of course. Not all jews took up this niche, and not all the people that took up this niche were jews.

I'd also , as a side note , would like to point out the falseness of arguments like this:

quote: It is incorrect to state that a solution for the Jewish problem has been needed for two thousand years. The very fact that in the course of this long period such a solution was not found best demonstrates that it was not necessary.

Is the fact that a solution hasn't been found for two millenia a proof of the non-existance of the problem ?

All in all, you have to give this guy some credit. He wrote it during the Holocaust.

	25-08-2002 07:37									#59
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In the pre-enlightenment era the cause of antisemeitism was religious. In the early 19th century judiaism experienced a degree of toleration unprecidented for more than a thousand years, but there appears to have been a resurgence of anti-semitism in the last few decades of the century, a trend which extended into the 20th century. Initially this trend seems to have been fostered by conservative religious figures who were aggitated over the loss of importance of religion in industrializing europe. The main reasons for their loss of prestige was of course urbanization, rising standards of education, the rapid expansion of scientific knowledge, and competing ideologies. Conservatives found themselves in the awkward position of profiting from, or more importantly being associated with thiose who profited from, the very things which threatened their way of life. There was only one solution to their dilemna - find a comfortable scapegoat.

I don't think that this process of "scapegoating" usually starts out with a conscious attempt to blame the innocent. Instead the aggitated mind of the bigot-to-be becomes hyper - sensitive and eventually focuses on an alternate object which irritates it for an unrelated reason, such as "those people", who dress funny. It then finds it convenient to invest inappropriate quantities of its hostility to the object, in effect shifting hostility which can not be resolved because the source is threatening or unassailable to the new scapegoat object. Once the hostility has been redirected the developing bigot invents reasons for his hostility, as a failure to do so would compel him to give up the scapegoat.

	25-08-2002 09:14									#60
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From a biblical-historical point of view it can be dated back to Isaac and Ishmael*). Some claim that Ishmael is the father of the Arabs. The Jews descend from Isaac. Ishmael and Isaac were halfbrothers and their mothers didn't get along. Ishmael teased Isac..

In the NT it is said that Ishmael represents the natural man while Isaac is the spiritual one. In christian theology there will always be tension between the two types. The natural man is said to persecute the spiritual one. This paragraph is my interpretation of Gal 4:21-31.

Egypt also plays a part, but did not really come into focus before the Jewish immigration. The Jews served as slaves for 400 years. In the beginning of their Egyptian exile the two people were on good terms. Then a pharaoh came along who didn't know how the Jewish immigration was sparked.

According to Goethe you have to have oversight over 6000 years of history to understand the present. People who don't know their history can be dangerous - we call them "historyless" in Europe.

Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites outta fear - the Jews had now grown to a few million and pharaoh claimed that the Egyptians were outnumbered and that the Israelites were stronger.

Later the Jews invaded Canaan and failed to wipe out all the inhabitants. Those remaining became a thorn in the side of the Israelites and some would say they still are. The largest (or the only? - don't feel like checking up on this now..) remaining group were the Philistines (today's Palestinians).

*) Some might claim that it even predates the two halfbrothers. Abraham and his wife had a few run-ins with both Philistines and Egyptians.

We can even stretch it further back to Canaan, grandson of Noah. He was cursed by Noah and it was prophecied that he would become a slave to Shem (semites). Later this prophecy was fulfilled. The Canaanites who survived the Jewish invasion were later enslaved. The father of Canaan, Ham, might be the father of the Egyptians and Philistines, among others.

I keep going back and back in history... Abel and Cain seem a bit like Isaac and Ishmael.. This might not be too relevant though since it predates the flood.

But anyhoo, Cain represents natural man..of course. Why not go back even further to the fall in the garden of Eden where sin came into the world... Or even back to the fall of Lucifer and when he was thrown outta heaven and fell down to earth... Ok, this is as far back as I'm gonna go