Did you know that the vast majority of anti-Semitic libels, including accusations of disloyalty and the infamous blood libel, go all the way back to the Roman Empire. Of course Jews were slaughtered and attacked way before Romans became experts at it, but ancient nations like Babylonia and Assyria and Egypt were simply treating Jews the same way they treated everyone: conquest, slavery, high taxes...
Remember that the very, very first historical reference to "Israel" was an Egyptian boast by Merneptah that the people of Israel had been completely destroyed, leaving no offspring. But this boast was included in a long list of destroyed people.
Romans, as far as history tells us, were the first to villify Jews as they killed them. It was no longer a matter of bullying everyone. Jews were singled out in particular.
Apion (1st century BC) gave us the earliest version of the blood libel. The Roman historian Tacitus gave us the suspicion that Jews could never be loyal to their host nation and hence were always under suspicion. Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch all added to the earliest history of intellectual anti-Semitism.
Natrually the Spanish Inquisition, operating throughout Spanish and Portuguese territories, took anti-Semitism to new lows. Until the 1930's, with all due respect to modern Catholics, Catholics were the most rabid Jew-haters in history. Of course Hitler and the Nazis finally took that title.
But many others have vied for the title of most rabid anti-Semites. People wonder why Jews play the perpetual victim. Truth is it is nothing more than a solid understanding of history. Since the Roman Empire we HAVE had to be constantly wary of society turning on us.
And yes, it continues today:
The Polish European parliamentarian, Maciej Giertych, has published, with funds from the Parliament in Strasbourg, an anti-semitic pamphlet called Civilizations at War in Europe. Presented on Thursday 15 February to the European Parliament, this pamphlet explains, inter alia, how the Jews, who are not racially distinguishable (they can be taken for Poles, the author emphasizes) go from one country to another and adopt the local language whilst refusing to assimilate into the host country. (Guysen.Israël.News [1])
My wife is half Jewish half Polish Catholic. She likes to joke that her ancestors on one side probably oppressed her ancestors on the other side. Sadly, this kind of bullshit continues. So I say to Maciej Giertych: fuck you.
As an aside, I would like to point out that people can and do stand up against this kind of stupidity. My favorite examples from Nazi occupied Europe are Denmark, where the Queen put on the yellow star in solidarity with Jews, and Bulgaria, where, despite their allience with Germany, refused to turn over most of their Jews. While Sephardim in all the rest of the Balkans were practically eliminated, they survived in Bulgaria.
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