Anti-Semitism (alternatively spelled antisemitism) is hostility towards Jews
(not, in common usage, Semites in general - see the Misnomer section below). This happens on an individual level and goes on to the institutionalized prejudice and
persecution once prevalent in European societies, of which the highly explicit ideology of Adolf Hitler's National Socialism was perhaps the most extreme
form.
This article describes the development and history of anti-Semitism from its earliest inception up until World War II. A
separate article exists on modern anti-Semitism, which
deals with anti-Semitism after World War II up to the present.
Some forms of anti-Semitism include:
- Racist anti-Semitism, a kind of xenophobia. Some people perceive Jews as people of a racially distinct origin from other peoples, and claim that
discrimination on the basis of such distinctness is valid.
- Religious anti-Judaism. Like other religions, Judaism has faced discrimination and violence from people of competing faiths and in countries that practice
state atheism. Unlike anti-Semitism in general, this form of prejudice is
directed at the religion itself, and so does not affect those of Jewish ancestry who have converted to another religion.
- Socio-economic anti-Semitism rooted in the alleged disproportionate success or influence, relative to their numbers within
the general population, that individual Jews have achieved in a variety of occupations, including finance, politics, the media,
academia, the law, medicine, and science.
Etymology and usage
The political writer Wilhelm Marr is credited with coining the German word
Antisemitismus in 1873, at a time when racial science was fashionable in Germany but religious prejudice was not. This term was offered as an alternative to the older German
word Judenhass, meaning Jew-hatred. The aim of the effort to rename "Jew-hatred" into Anti-Semitism was to give
"Jew-hatred" a more scientific basis. However, it was never intended to eliminate the concept of hatred towards Jews based on the
Christian conspiracies and legends so popular with the general population. In his book, "The Way to Victory of Germanicism
over Judaism" (1879), Marr took up secular
racist ideas of Arthur de Gobineau's "An Essay on the
Inequality of Human Races" (1853, though direct influence is debatable). Marr's book
became very popular, and in the same year he founded the "League of Anti-Semites" ("Antisemiten-Liga"), the first German
organization committed specifically to combatting the alleged threat to Germany posed by the Jews, and advocating their forced
removal from the country.
So far as can be ascertained, the word was first printed in 1881. In that year Marr
published "Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte," and Wilhelm
Scherer used the term "Antisemiten" in the "Neue Freie Presse" of January. The related word semitism was coined around 1885. See also the
coinage of the term "Palestinian" by Germans to refer to the nation or people known as Jews, as distinct from the religion of Judaism.
Misnomer
The term anti-Semitism has always referred to prejudice towards Jews alone, and
this was formerly the only use of this word for more than a century. It does not traditionally refer to prejudice to other people
who speak Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs or Assyrians). Bernard Lewis says that "Anti-Semitism has never anywhere been concerned with anyone but Jews."[1] (http://middleeastinfo.org/library/lewis_antisemitism.html) However, in recent decades some
people have argued that the term should be extended to include prejudice against Arabs, since Arabic is a Semitic language; these
arguments are commonly made in the context of accusations of Arab anti-Semitism. Though
this usage has not been widely adopted, one example is this October 16/17, 2004 statement
by Ralph Nader in Counterpunch: "There is, as you always ignore, aggressive anti-Semitism against defenseless Arabs in many
places in the world..."[2] (http://www.counterpunch.org/nader10162004.html)
In that there are few instances of prejudice against both Arabs and Jews to the exclusion of other races or nationalities, and
in fact many more instances of antagonism between Jews and Arabs than of a specific bias against both groups together, there
would seem to be little need for a word to describe such a prejudice, and thus to redefine anti-Semitism this way would
result in robbing the word of any usefulness. Lewis writes "the term Semite has no meaning as applied to groups as heterogeneous
as the Arabs or Jews." And, as has been pointed out by Neil J. Kressel, "In any event, nothing is gained from applying the anti-Semitism label to anti-Arab
discrimination, abhorrent in its own right, except to confuse matters and take attention away from anti-Jewish hostility"
[3] (http://www.ainsof.com/urgent.htm).
Despite the use of the prefix "anti," the terms Semitic and Anti-Semitic are not antonyms. To avoid the confusion of the misnomer, many writers on the
subject (such as Emil Fackenheim of the Hebrew University) now favor the unhyphenated term
antisemitism.
An alternative term, "Judeophobia", stands for fear or irrational hatred
of Jews. It was invented by Leon Pinsker and first appeared in his 1882 pamphlet Autoemancipation (text). As a
professional physician, Pinsker preferred the medical term because he was convinced that pathological, irrational phobia may explain this ancient hatred:
- "Judeophobia is a variety of demonopathy... this ghost is not disembodied like other ghosts but partakes of flesh and blood,
must endure pain inflicted by the fearful mob who imagines itself endangered... To sum up then, to the living the Jew is a
corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a
millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival."
Historical forms of anti-Judaism
Prejudice against Jews can be traced back to the Graeco-Roman period and the rise of Hellenistic culture. Most Jews rejected
efforts to assimilate them into the dominant Greek (and
later Roman) culture, and their religious practices, which conflicted with established
norms, were perceived as being backward and primitive. Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, for example, writes disparagingly of many real and imagined practices of
the Jews, while there are numerous accounts of circumcision being described
as barbarous.
Throughout their diaspora, Jews tended to live in separate
communities, in which they could practice their religion. This led to charges of elitism, as appear in the writings of Cicero. As a minority, Jews were
also dependent on the goodwill of the authorities, though this was considered irksome to the indigenous population, which
regarded any vestiges of autonomy among the local Jewish communities as reminders of their subject status to a foreign empire.
Nevertheless, this did not always mean that opposition to Jewish involvement in local affairs was anti-Semitic. In 411 BCE, an Egyptian mob destroyed the Jewish temple at Elephantine in Egypt, but many historians argue that this was provoked by anti-Persian sentiment, rather than by anti-Semitism per se — the Jews, who were protected by the imperial power,
were perceived as being its representatives.
The enormous and influential Jewish community in the ancient Egyptian port city of Alexandria saw manifestations of an unusual brand of anti-Semitism in which the local pagan populace
rejected the biblical narrative of the Exodus as being anti-Egyptian. Accordingly, a
number of works were produced to provide an "Egyptian version" of what "really happened": the Jews were a group of sickly lepers
that was expelled from Egypt (see Manetho, Apion). This was also used to account for Jewish practices — they were so sickly that they could not even
wander in the desert for more than six days at a time, requiring a seventh day to rest, hence the origin of the Sabbath. It was
these charges that led to Philo's apologetic account of Judaism and Jewish history, which
was so influential in the development of early church doctrine. Ancient anti-semitic tales were also picked apart in Josephus Flavius' pamphlet Against Apion.
Prejudice against Jews in the Roman Empire was formalized in 438, when the Code of Theodosius II
established Christianity as the only legal religion in the Roman Empire, although already as early as 305, in Elvira, a Spanish
town in Andalusia, the first known laws of any church council against Jews
appeared. Christian women were forbidden to marry Jews unless the Jew first converted to Christianity. Jews were forbidden to
extend hospitality to Christians. Jews could not keep Christian concubines and
were forbidden to bless the fields of Christians. In 589, in Christian Spain, the Third
Council of Toledo ordered that children born of marriage between Jews and Christians be baptized by force. A policy of forced
conversion of all Jews was initiated. Thousands fled, and thousands of others converted. [4]
(http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/christian_persecution_of_the_jew.htm+pope%C2%B4s+persecution+jews&hl=es)
Judaic traditions extend for centuries BCE, and are the historical predecessor for the
religions of Christianity and Islam, both of whom hold some Judaic traditions and texts as sacred, though differ in aspects that are central to
each distinct branch of religion.
Hence Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, each took different course in terms of beliefs, as well as traditional customs; each
creating a separate and distinct culture, from the parent Judaism. Those who held to traditional Judaic belief were considered
"deniers" of the newer beliefs and traditions, in much the same way that some religions consider people of other religions to be
denying the truth.
Anti-Judaism in the New Testament
Christian theological anti-Semitism was stimulated by the New
Testament's replacement theology (or supersessionism), which
taught that with the coming of Jesus a new covenant has rendered obsolete and has superseded the religion of Judaism. It was believed that "the perfidious Jews", as a people, were responsible for the
death of Jesus. A number of Christian preachers, particularly in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, additionally taught that religious Jews choose to follow a
faith that they actually know is false out of a desire to offend God.
Examples of passages in the New Testament that are seen as anti-Semitic, or have been used for anti-Semitic purposes:
- Jesus said to them [i.e., the "Jews"], "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He
was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. . . . He who is of God
hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is you are not of God." (John 8:44-47)
- You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.
Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous
One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. (Acts
7:51-53)
- Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie -- behold, I will make
them come and bow down before your feet, and learn that I have loved you. (Rev. 2:9).
Anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages there were many reasons for prejudice against Jews in
Europe. The most obvious reason is religious persecution. However, this does not explain why violence increased greatly during
the High Middle Ages, so other more complex reasons have been put
forth by scholars.
In the Middle Ages a main source of prejudice against Jews in Europe was
religious. The Catholic Church taught that the Jewish people were
collectively and permanently responsible for killing Jesus (see Deicide). The power
of Christianity was very strong in the Middle Ages, and Jews were a direct affront to Christian beliefs.
Among socio-economic factors were restrictions by the authorities, local rulers and frequently church officials who closed
many professions to the Jews, pushing them into marginal occupations considered socially inferior, such as local tax and rent
collecting or moneylending, a necessary evil due to the increasing population and urbanization during the High Middle Ages. This
provided support for claims that Jews are insolent, greedy, engaged in usury, and in
itself contributed to a negative image. Natural tensions between creditors (typically Jews) and debtors (typically Christians)
were added to social, political, religious and economic strains. Peasants who were forced to pay their taxes to Jews could
personify them as the people taking their earnings while remaining loyal to the lords on whose behalf the Jews worked.
The demonizing of the Jews
From around the 12th century through the 19th there were Christians who believed that some (or all) Jews possessed magical powers; some believed
that they had gained these magical powers from making a deal with the devil. See also
Judensau, Judeophobia.
Blood libels
Main articles: blood libel, list of blood libels against Jews
On many occasions, Jews were accused of a blood libel, the supposed
drinking of blood of Christian children in mockery of the Christian Eucharist.
According to the authors of these blood libels, the 'procedure' for the alleged sacrifice was something like this: a child who
had not yet reached puberty was kidnapped and taken to a hidden place. The child would be tortured by Jews, and a crowd would
gather at the place of execution (in some accounts the synagogue itself) and engage in a mock tribunal to try the child. The
child would be presented to the tribunal naked and tied and eventually be condemned to death. In the end, the child would be
crowned with thorns and tied or nailed to a wooden cross. The cross would be raised, and the blood dripping from the child's
wounds would be caught in bowls or glasses. Finally, the child would be killed with a thrust through the heart from a spear,
sword, or dagger. Its dead body would be removed from the cross and concealed or disposed of, but in some instances rituals of
black magic would be performed on it. This method, with some variations, can be found in all the alleged descriptions of ritual
murder by Jews.
The story of William of Norwich (d. 1144) is the first known
case of ritual murder being alleged by a Christian monk. It does not mention the collection of William's blood for any purpose.
The story of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln
(d. 1255) said that after the boy was dead, his body was removed from the cross and laid on a table. His belly was cut open and
his entrails removed for some occult purpose, such as a divination ritual. The
story of Simon of Trent (d. 1475) emphasized how the boy was held over
a large bowl so all his blood could be collected. Simon was regarded as a saint, and was canonized by Pope Sixtus V in 1588. The cult of Simon
was disbanded in 1965 by Pope Paul
VI, and the shrine erected to him was dismantled. He was removed from the calendar, and his future veneration was forbidden,
though a handful of extremists still promote the narrative as a fact. In the 20th century, blood libel stories have appeared a
number of times in the state-sponsored media of a number of Arab nations, in Arab television shows, and on websites.
Badges
Main article: yellow badge
The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 was the first to proclaim the requirement for Jews to wear something that distinguished them as Jews. It
could be a colored piece of cloth in the shape of a star or circle or square, a hat, or a robe. This practice has its origins in
the Islamic world where it was common for various religions to wear badges of faith. In many localities, members of the medieval
society wore badges to distinguish their social status. Some badges (such as guild
members) were prestigious, while others ostracized outcasts such as lepers, reformed
heretics and prostitutes. Jews
sought to evade the badges by paying what amounted to bribes in the form of temporary "exemptions" to kings, which were revoked
and re-paid for whenever the king needed to raise funds.
Host desecration
Jews were falsely accused of torturing consecrated host wafers in a reenactment of the Crucifixion; this accusation was known as host
desecration.
The Crusades
The Crusades were a series of several military campaigns sanctioned by the
Papacy that took place during the 11th through 13th centuries. They began as Catholic endeavours to capture Jerusalem
from the Muslims but developed into territorial wars. The initial conquest of Palestine by the forces of Islam in the 7th
century did not interfere much with pilgrimage to Christian holy sites or the
security of monasteries and Christian communities in the Holy Land. However, in the year 1009 the Fatimid caliph of
Cairo, al-Hakim
bi-Amr Allah, had the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre destroyed. His successor permitted the Byzantine
Empire to rebuild it, and pilgrimage was permitted again. The decisive loss of the Byzantine army to the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 brought the beginning of Byzantine
pleas for troops and support from the West.
The mobs accompanying the first three Crusades attacked the Jewish communities in Germany, France, and England, and put many
Jews to death; this left behind for centuries strong feelings of ill will on both sides. The social position of the Jews in
western Europe was already in a bad state, for one thing because of the writing of bishop Amulo published in 846, called
Contra Judaeos (Against the Jews). But things distinctly worsened by the Crusades, and legal restrictions became frequent
during and after them. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III, and formed the turning-point
in the medieval history of the Jews.
The expulsion from England, France, Germany, and Spain
As many European localities and entire countries expelled their Jewish citizens after robbing them and others denied them
entrance, the legend of the Wandering Jew, a condemned harbinger of
calamity, gained popularity. Only a few such expulsions are described in this section, for a more extended list see History of anti-Semitism.
The practice of expelling the Jews accompanied by confiscation of their property, followed by temporary readmissions for
ransom, was utilized to enrich the French crown during 12th-14th centuries. The most notable such
expulsions were: from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from entire France by Louis IX in 1254, by Charles IV in 1322, by
Charles V in 1359, by
Charles VI in 1394.
To finance his war to conquer Wales, Edward I of England taxed the Jewish moneylenders. When the Jews could no longer pay, they were accused
of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, the Jews saw Edward abolish their "privilege" to lend
money, choke their movements and activities and were forced to wear a yellow
patch. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested, over 300 of them taken to the Tower of London and executed, while others killed in their homes. The complete banishment of all Jews
from the country in 1290 led to thousands killed and drowned while fleeing and the absence
of Jews from England for three and a half centuries, until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell reversed the policy.
In 1492, Ferdinand_II_of_Aragon and Isabella_of_Castile issued General Edict on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (see also Inquisition) and many Sephardi Jews fled to the Ottoman
Empire, some to the Land of Israel.
In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia limited Breslau to only ten
so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged similar practice in other Prussian cities. In 1750 he issued Revidiertes General Privilegium und
Reglement vor die Judenschaft: the "protected" Jews had an alternative to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin"
(quoting Simon Dubnow). In the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria
Theresa ordered Jews out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on condition
that Jews pay for readmission every ten years. This extortion was known as
malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced the law limiting each Jewish
family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II abolished most of persecution practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the
condition that Yiddish and Hebrew are eliminated from public records and judicial autonomy is annulled. Moses Mendelssohn wrote that "Such a tolerance... is even more dangerous
play in tolerance than open persecution".
Anti-Judaism and Reformation
(to be written) Main article: Christianity and anti-Semitism
The Bohdan Khmelnytsky massacres
For centuries after creation of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the people of Ruthenia had felt oppressed by the nobles and Jewish traders. Although Ruthenian nobility enjoyed full rights,
they quickly polonised and therefore were alienated from common people; the advent of Counter-Reformation meant troubles in relationship between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths. Unwilling
to attend to the details of administration themselves, Polish magnates made the Jewish citizens a go-between in the transactions
with the peasants of Ukraine. They sold and leased certain privileges to Jews for a lump sum, and, left it to Jewish leaseholders
and collectors to become the embodiment of hatred to the oppressed and long-suffering peasants.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the popular revolt against Poland in
1648 – 1654, which resulted in the Treaty of Pereyaslav and the annexation of Ukraine by the Russian Empire. The Ukrainian
Cossacks joined by peasants massacred tens of thousands of Jews. Estimates range from
10,000 to well over 100,000 out of over 500,000 Jews who lived in Poland. "Wherever they found the szlachta, royal officials or
Jews, they killed them all, sparing neither women nor children. They pillaged the estates of the Jews and nobles, burned churches
and killed their priests, leaving nothing whole." (Eyewitness Chronicle) [5] (http://www.jewishgates.com/file.asp?File_ID=687)
The Enlightenment and the rise of racial anti-Semitism
Racial anti-Semitism, the most modern form of anti-Semitism, is a type of racism
mixed with religious persecution. Racial anti-Semites
believe that Jews are a distinct race and inherently inferior to people of other races.
Modern European anti-Semitism has its origin in 19th century pseudo-scientific theories that the Jewish people are a sub-group of Semitic peoples; Semitic people were
thought by many Europeans to be entirely different from the Aryan, or Indo-European, populations, and that they can never be amalgamated
with them. In this view, Jews are not opposed on account of their religion, but on
account of their supposed hereditary or genetic racial
characteristics: greed, a special aptitude for money-making, aversion to hard work, clannishness and obtrusiveness, lack of
social tact, low cunning, and especially lack of patriotism.
Ironically, while enlightened European intellectual society of that period viewed prejudice against people on account of their
religion to be declasse and a sign of ignorance, because of this supposed 'scientific' connection to genetics they felt fully justified in prejudice based on nationality or 'race'. In order to differentiate
between the two practices, the term anti-Semitism was developed to refer to this 'acceptable' bias against Jews as a nationality,
as distinct from the 'undesirable' prejudice against Judaism as a religion. Concurrently with this usage, some authors in Germany began to use the term 'Palestinians' when referring to Jews as a people,
rather than as a religious group.
Equally ironic, and further proof of its pseudo-scientific nature, it is questionable whether Jews in general looked significantly different from the populations conducting "racial" anti-Semitism. This was
especially true in places like Germany, France and Austria where the Jewish population tended to be more secular
(or at least less Orthodox) than that of Eastern Europe, and did not wear clothing (such as a yarmulke) that would particularly distinguish their appearance from the non-Jewish population. Many
anthropologists of the time such as Franz Boas tried to use complex physical
measurements like the cephalic index and visual surveys of hair/eye
color and skin tone of Jewish vs. non-Jewish European populations to prove that the notion of a separate "Jewish race" was a
myth. In the 1990's, although this idea was long removed from any public thought or discourse in the Western world, more advanced
technologies in DNA analysis allowed for curious anthropologists such as Michael Hammer to revisit it, with very complex results.
Some studies (focusing on the Y-chromosome, which is carried by males only, and therefore should in Cohanim theoretically link directly back to Aaron), suggest a
significant genetic kinship with the historic population of the eastern Mediterranean; while others, (focusing on mitochondrial-dNA, which is inherited from the mother only), give more ambiguous
results as they do not appear to be related to one another or to those of present-day Middle Eastern populations.
See also eugenics.
Anti-Semitism and modernity
Many analysts of modern anti-Semitism have pointed out that its essence is scapegoating: features of modernity felt by some group to be undesirable (e.g. materialism, the power of money,
economic fluctuations, war, secularism, socialism, Communism, movements for racial equality, social welfare policies, etc., etc.)
are believed to be caused by the machinations of a conspiratorial people whose full loyalties are not to the national group.
Traditionalists anguished at the supposedly decadent or defective nature of the modern world have sometimes been inclined to
embrace such views. Indeed, it is a matter of historical record that many of the conservative members of the WASP establishment of the United States as well as other
comparable Western elites (e.g. the British Foreign
Office) have harbored such attitudes, and in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, some xenophobic anti-Semites have imagined world Communism to be a Jewish conspiracy (Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups [1980], p. 590).
The modern form of anti-Semitism is identified in Britannica 1911 [6] (http://54.1911encyclopedia.org/A/AN/ANTI_SEMITISM.htm) as a conspiracy theory serving the
self-understanding of the European aristocracy, whose social power waned with
the rise of bourgeois society. The Jews of Europe, then recently emancipated, were relatively literate, entrepreneurial and
unentangled in aristocratic patronage systems, and were therefore disproportionately represented in the ascendant bourgeois class. As the aristocracy
(and its hangers-on) lost out to this new center of power in society, they found their scapegoat - exemplified in the work of
Arthur de Gobineau. That the Jews were singled out to embody
the 'problem' was, by this theory, no more than a symptom of the nobility's own
prejudices concerning the importance of breeding (on which its own legitimacy was founded).
The Dreyfus affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal which divided France for many years during the late 19th
century. It centered on the 1894 treason conviction of Alfred
Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army. Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent: the conviction rested on false documents,
and when high-ranking officers realised this they attempted to cover up the mistakes. The writer Émile Zola exposed the affair to the general public in the literary newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn)
in a famous open letter to the Président de la République
Félix Faure, titled J'accuse ! (I Accuse!) on January 13,
1898.
The Dreyfus Affair split France between the Dreyfusards (those supporting Alfred Dreyfus) and the
Antidreyfusards (those against him). The quarrel was especially violent since it involved many issues then highly controversial in a heated political climate.
Dreyfus was pardoned in 1899, readmitted into the army, and made a knight in the Legion of Honour. An Austrian Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl was assigned to report on the trial and its aftermath. The injustice of the trial and the
anti-Semitic passions it aroused in France and elsewhere turned him into a determined Zionist; ultimately turning the movement into an international one.
Also see Alfred Dreyfus and Dreyfus affair.
Modern passion plays
Passion plays, dramatic stagings representing the trial and death of
Jesus, have historically been used in Christian communities to arouse hatred of local Jews; the plays usually depict the entire
Jewish people as condemning Jesus to crucifixion and being collectively
guilty of deicide, murdering God.
In 2003 and 2004 some have compared Mel Gibson's recent film The Passion
of the Christ to these kinds of passion plays, but this characterization is hotly disputed; an analysis of that topic is in
the article on The Passion of the Christ.
Anti-Semitism in Poland
The reign of Casimir III, the Great (1333 - 1370) made Poland a safe asylum for Jews. The Jewish population of
Poland played a very prominent role and their position was comparable with the status of nobles. After the partitions of Poland,
and the final defeat of the January Uprising (1863-1864), Polish nationalists and Jews began to diverge on many
issues.
See also History of the Jews in
Poland, Jacob Frank and Massacre in Jedwabne, Kielce pogrom.
Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia and in the Soviet Union
Main article: History of the Jews in Russia and Soviet Union
The Pale of Settlement was the Western region of Imperial Russia to which Jews were restricted by the Tsarist Ukase of 1792. It consisted of the territories of former
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, annexed
with the existing numerous Jewish population, and the Crimea (which was later cut out
from the Pale).
During 1881-1884, 1903-1906 and 1914-1921, waves of anti-Semitic pogroms swept Russian Jewish communities. At least some pogroms are believed to have
been organized or supported by the Russian okhranka; although there is no hard
evidence for this, the Russian police and army generally displayed indifference to the pogroms (e.g. during the three-day
First Kishinev pogrom of 1903),
as well as to anti-Jewish articles in newspapers which often instigated the pogroms.
During this period the May Laws policy was also put into effect, banning Jews
from rural areas and towns, and placing strict quotas on the number of Jews allowed into higher education and many professions.
As articulated by Konstantin Pobedonostsev, a
Russian statesman and known anti-Semite, it was designed to "cause one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to accept
baptism, and one-third to starve." The combination of the May Laws and pogroms propelled mass Jewish emigration, and by 1920 some
2 million Russian Jews had emigrated, most to the United States.
One of the most infamous anti-Semitic tractates was the Russian okhranka literary hoax,
The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, created in order to blame the Jews for Russia's problems during the period of revolutionary activity.
Even though many Old Bolsheviks were ethnically Jewish, they sought
to uproot Judaism and Zionism and established the Yevsektsiya to achieve this
goal. By the end of the 1940s the Communist leadership of the former USSR had liquidated
almost all Jewish organizations including Yevsektsiya.
The anti-Semitic campaign of 1948-1953 against
so-called "rootless cosmopolitans," destruction of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the
fabrication of the "Doctors' plot," the rise of "Zionology" and subsequent activities of official organizations such as the Anti-Zionist committee of
the Soviet public were officially carried out under the banner of "anti-Zionism," but the use of this term could not obscure
the anti-Semitic content of these campaigns, and by the mid-1950s the state persecution
of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West and domestically. See also: Jackson-Vanik amendment, Refusenik, Pamyat.
Anti-Semitism and Islam
Anti-Semitism within Islam is discussed in the article on Islam and anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in the Arab World is discussed in the article on Arabs and anti-Semitism.
The Qur'an, Islam's holy book, criticizes the Jews for corrupting the Hebrew
Bible. Muslims refer to Jews and Christians as a "People of the
book"; Islamic law demands that when under Muslim rule they should be tolerated as dhimmis - from the Arab term ahl adh-dhimma. The writer Bat
Ye'or introduced the modern word Dhimmitude as a generic indication of this Islamic attitude. Dhimmis were granted
protection of life (even against other muslim states), wealth and honor, the right to residence, worship, and work or trade, and
were exempted from military service, the zakah tax, and Muslim religious duties and
personal law. They were obligated to pay other taxes (jizyah and land tax), and subject
to various other restrictions regarding blaspheming Islam, the Qur'an or Muhammed, prosleytizing, and at times a number of other
restrictions on dress, riding horses or camels, carrying arms, holding public office, building places of worship higher than
mosques, mourning loudly, wearing shoes outside the mellah, etc. Anti-Semitism in the
Muslim world increased in the twentieth century, as anti-Semitic
motives and blood libels were imported from Europe. Some suggest this
phenomenon is a reaction to the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
Anti-Semitism in the 20th century
In the USA, in the years leading up to America's entry into World War II, Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic radio preacher, as well as many other prominent public figures,
condemned "the Jews" because they were leading America into war. While most Jews in America supported the interventionist camp,
not all did. Jews were often condemned by populist politicians for their left-wing politics at the turn of the century.
Germany
With the rise of the Nazis and their explicity anti-Semitic program, hate speech referring to Jewish citizens as
"dirty Jews" became common in anti-semitic pamplets and newspapers, such as
Völkischer Beobachter and Der Stürmer. Judging by information available to researchers of Jewish history, its origins can possibly
be traced to the Middle Ages, where isolated Jewish communities observed a strict dress code. Since Jewish clothing seemed
strange to the hostile surrounding Christian populations of Europe, and also due to religious bigotry of some Christians, the
expression was very widely used.
Nazi cartoons depicting "dirty Jews" frequently portrayed a dirty, physically unattractive and badly dressed "talmudic" Jew in
traditional religious garments similar to those worn by Hassidic
Jews. Articles attacking Jewish Germans, while concentrating on commercial and political activities of prominent Jewish
individuals, also frequently attacked them based on religious dogmas. Accusations of responsibility of "killing our savior Jesus
Christ" and refusal by Jews to "accept the savior" and convert to Christianity that fueled the hatred in the Middle Ages were
also repeated by Nazi propagandists.
Hatred against Jews manifested itself in such measures as the Nuremburg
Laws which banned "race-mixing" and in the Kristallnacht riots which
targeted Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship.
The Holocaust and Holocaust denial
The most horrific manifestation of anti-Semitism was the Holocaust during
World War II, in which about 6 million European Jews, 1.5 million of them children, were systematically murdered.
Holocaust deniers and revisionists often claim that "the
Jews" or "Zionist conspiracy" are responsible for the
exaggeration or wholesale fabrication of the events of the Holocaust. Critics of such revisionism point to an overwhelming amount
of physical and historical evidence that supports the mainstream historical view of the Holocaust. Most academics agree that
there is no credible evidence for any such conspiracy.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is a term that has been used to describe several very
different political and religious points of view (both historically and in current debates) all expressing some form of
opposition to Zionism. A large variety of commentators - politicians, journalists,
academics and others - believe that criticisms of Israel and Zionism are often disproportionate in degree and unique in kind, and
attribute this to anti-Semitism. In turn, critics of this view believe that associating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is
intended to stifle debate, deflect attention from valid criticism, and taint anyone opposed to Israeli actions and policies. This
subject is discussed in the main article on Anti-Zionism. In addition to a
conventional definition ("hostility toward Jews as a religious or racial minority group, often accompanied by social, political
or economic discrimination), Webster's Dictionary gives a
controversial second and third definition to anti-Semitism, defining the word as "opposition to Zionism" and "sympathy for the
opponents of Israel". [7] (http://adc.org/index.php?id=2175)
Anti-Semitism in recent times
Though obviously not at the levels seen in previous centuries, there are still attacks on Jewish people and their culture
today. The conflict in Palestine has provoked high levels of anti-Semitism in the Middle East, and there are still neo-Nazi
groups such as the British National Party and the skin
group Combat 18 who threaten all ethnic minorities and daub swastikas in public
places. These are sources of concern of many who fear a resurgence of hate, especially since the BNP has had some recent
electoral success. One of these victories was scored by Patricia Richardson (http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/1009_bnp_jewish_win.htm) who is Jewish.
New anti-Semitism
In recent years some scholars of religion and many Jewish groups, have noted what they describe as the new
anti-Semitism, which is a twenty-first–century coinage that expresses the idea that there exists today a form of
anti-Semitism that differs from the cruder and more brutal manifestations seen in, for example, Nazi Germany. Others have
criticised various groups for focussing on "new anti-Semitism" rather than the old, or have stated that the phenomenon is not
anti-Semitism at all. See New anti-Semitism.
References
- The Destruction of the
European Jews Raul Hilberg. Holmes & Meier, 1985. 3
volumes
- Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory Deborah Lipstadt, 1994, Penguin.
- Separation and Its Discontents : Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism, Kevin MacDonald, 1998,
Praeger.
- Antisemitism in the New Testament, Lillian C. Freudmann, University Press of America, 1994.
- Islamic Anti-Semitism as a Political Instrument, Yossef Bodansky, Freeman Center For Strategic Studies, 1999
- Warrant for Genocide Norman Cohn, 1967 (Eyre & Spottiswoode),
1996 (Serif)
External links
- Examples of anti-Semitism
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