Jews: Why the animosity towards them?

[KrooK]

How about another reply
- Jews started massive murdering first Christians.

[Askthepizzaguy]

How about another reply
- Jews started massive murdering first Christians.

I believe the Romans did as well. Why no animosity towards the Romans?


In all seriousness, if people are concerned about crimes which happened 2 thousand years ago, then I think it's high time we offer the Jews reparations for slavery... in EGYPT.

[KarlXII]

I believe the Romans did as well. Why no animosity towards the Romans?

Why no animosity to Romans?

Because it's the Jews!!

[Askthepizzaguy]

It's gotten to the point where whenever I hear someone say the word "Jew", I assume they have something defamatory, slanderous, and racist to say about them.

I've never been personally maligned by a person of Jewish descent or of Jewish faith. That does not mean I automatically agree with everything they believe or do, but I do not see the harm. As for the Israeli situation, since Israel is made up of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, you can't simply blame the Jews for the Israeli/Palestinian standoff. I've also noticed that when Israel acts, it is in self-defense, and then retreats back to their own soil, while the stated goals of the Arab groups who border Israel is to destroy Israel itself and drive them into the sea. They violate numerous cease-fires and fire into crowds of innocent civilians with rocket launchers and use bombs to devastate markets. I don't recall Israel ever attempting to exterminate Arab civilians.

It's kind of hard not to take a side here. But it's also a separate discussion from the Jewish animosity question, so I will shaddap. I understand there are militant Jews who are radical extremists who would do anything to defend Israel, but compared to the sheer number of anti-Jewish extremists, it's hard to blame them. For as long as these militant extremists exist, there can be no peace settlement between the two sides.

And until mankind learns to leave the horrors of the past in the past, and simply learn from past mistakes, the old hatreds and ignorance will never die. Like a virus, it is passed on from one generation to another, instead of dying naturally along with its host .

[KarlXII]

How about another reply
- Jews started massive murdering first Christians.

Evidence?

[CBR]

This thread seems to have run it's course and I think it's best to let Askthepizzaguy's post be the last.

This is the Monastery and not the Backroom on a bad day.


CBR

[JR-]

How about another reply
- Jews started massive murdering first Christians.

that is quite literally a worthless comment.


now here is where i interject with a generalising comment:

in all my travel around the world, and given my polish girlfriend leading me to spend a lot of time in poland, never have i come across a nation with such an all-encompassing acceptance that jews are the cause of all their nations troubles, not to be trusted, and outright devious as a race. It is pervasive among the over forties, less so for the younger generations.
the phrase; "he is a jew" is used with a casual loathing that really is something to behold, and this from people i otherwise like and respect.

fortunately it appears to be a dieing trend as the grip of the catholic church lessens and millions of young poles live abroad.

[Askthepizzaguy]

This is something that has been bothering me.

Jews, gays, blacks, arabs, etc...

These groups are often scapegoats and are blamed for society's problems. I am especially offended whenever some reverend or pastor stands up and begins condemning homosexuality as being immoral. I often scratch my head and think to myself... why them? The rational explanation, if any, that they give is because sexual activity and promiscuity outside the realm of traditional marriage leads to the spread of disease. But at the same time, I think to myself how guilty of that straight people are... so it makes no sense to focus exclusively on the gays. Then they quote passages from the Bible, Torah, or Qu'ran (all stemming from Leviticus 18) which states:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviticus_18
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

But they conveniently ignore passages from the Bible, Torah, or Qu'ran which condemn other activities. I'm not even quoting the most ridiculous of them:

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/lev/20.html#9
20:9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

If you should ever swear and or insult your parents, you're supposed to be killed on the spot.

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/lev/21.html#9
21:9 And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.

If the daughter of a priest (oooh, just the priests' daughter? What about a cardinal, rabbi, or imam? What about the rest of us) profanes herself by "playing the whore" (interpret as you will), we need to burn her to death.

Then there are certain passages dealing with what kinds of meat you are allowed to eat, and when you are allowed to eat them. I know everyone here knows exactly what I'm talking about, and follows these laws as strictly as they interpret the passage about men lying with men.



And it's such a small portion of the book. Why they spend all day, every day, rallying against the gays, instead of giving them "equal time" with all the other so-called sins... isn't that twisting and warping the word of "God" to give so much weight to one part of his "written word" and almost no attention to the other parts?

We can find plenty of people who can quote the anti-gay part of Leviticus. How many of us here can quote the parts where people "begat" other people for generations? Hmmm? Isn't that important stuff? It's the word of the Lord, so I wonder why people aren't paying as much attention to that. Frankly, if I were convinced something was the WORD OF GOD I would memorize that sh.

So, other than organized religion, there's very little reason to condemn gayness. So let's move on.
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Jews.

My, oh my, have they been given a bum rap. Everything in the world is apparently their fault.



If you've seen a list of things people blame the Jews for, then you've noticed that it just gets longer and longer, and more ridiculous as we go along. Apparently, the Jews control the world economy, and are the puppet masters of world politics, and control Hollywood and the mass media, and are in control of the Christians who follow them, and they control the entire West.

Yes, given how much influence Jews have, it's amazing how history has treated them. These people, if they indeed have so much control over the world, must all be masochistic. I am beginning to wonder if there was a century where the Jews were not mass murdered or otherwise persecuted. Lets' check the history books.

20th century, ummm genocide.
19th century, Dreyfus Trial, pogroms in Russia.
18th century, stuggles for emancipation and equal treatment (almost a breath of fresh air)
17th century, hundreds of thousands slaughtered by the Cossacks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmielnicki_uprising
16th century, end of the Inquisition, expulsion from European nations by force
15th century, Spanish Inquisition
14th century, 100,000 Jews expelled from France, subjected to the Shepherd's crusades http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherds%27_Crusade
13th century, Banning from England, first Shepherd's crusade.
12th century, Second Crusade, Jews in France frequently massacred.
11th century, German Crusade. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Crusade,_1096
10th century, (still checking... all I found so far was that the newly appointed Fatmid Caliph of Islam persecuted Jews)

Dark ages get pretty sketchy. But we do know Jews were persecuted and forced to convert to Islam, whenever they were found in conquered territory. Then prior to that, the Romans treated the jews pretty poorly... early christianity (prior to Islam) treated the jews very poorly. Christians hated the jews very much so. Around 0AD and into BC times, Jews were persecuted by the Romans, and prior to that there was something that happened in Egypt involving a lot of slavery.

And that covers most of Jewish history that I, a non-Jew, can easily find. I am quite certain someone who is a Jewish scholar could fill in the blanks of what I am missing. But this is very telling:

According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine%27s_Sword


I think we can safely conclude that the Jews are not in possession of the world, and that they are therefore NOT the source of all the world's problems. Duh.

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Black people;

Enslaved for centuries by European traders and settlers, conquered and persecuted and butchered by European Imperialism, conquered and forced to convert to Islam by Arab invaders, and otherwise maligned since the time of the Roman empire.

I would do them justice by adding more, but it's almost time for me to go to work. And never once did I find that a large nubian empire went around conquering everyone. The only people that black people seem to have persecuted were other black people, and recently, white minorities (I wonder why?)

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Arabs; conquered by Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, armies of Islam, Crusaders, European Imperialists, and now they fight amongst themselves for having slightly different interpretations of Islam. Plus that whole Iraq thing.

Since 9/11 they have been hated by the entire West, because most Arabs are Muslim, and apparently all Muslims are guilty of the crimes of their minority extremists.

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I could do this for every single minority group. If you don't vastly outnumber people, you've been hated and persecuted, for no reason whatsoever.

Why the animosity towards the Jews? For the same reasons that there is animosity towards any group. A combination of ignorance, blind hatred, greed, envy, desire for power, lies, propaganda, religion and superstition, and a wonderful thing called tradition.

I conclude that the human race needs to be lined up, and slapped in the face repeatedly, one at a time, until everyone knows what it feels like to be persecuted.


Actually the only solution is education, tolerance laws and legal justice, and the hope that hate and ignorance dies naturally with the current generations.