Definition: Anti-Semitism is a term that has come to describe expressions of racism, prejudice, hatred or discrimination against Jewish people as an ethnic, religious or racial group – both at individual level and in terms of organised attacks against whole Jewish communities.
Caveat: The term ‘Anti-Semitism’ is actually a misnomer popularised in 19th Century Germany as a palatable euphemism for ‘hatred of Jews’. Although the phrase ‘Anti-Semitism’ now tends to exclusively encompasses anti-Jewish prejudices, historically and ethnically there are a whole range of Semitic people who are not Jewish – Arabs, Ethiopians and Assyrians are all technically Semitic. For the purposes of this chapter, however, the term will be used as defined above.
So where and why did Anti-Semitism come about?
Cultural Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World: The term Anti-Semitism has come to be applied retrospectively to describe historic acts of aggression or prejudice against the Jewish people. The oldest examples can be attributed to little more than tribal territorial tussles, for example the sacking of the Jewish city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in the 6th Century BCE or the later Persian or Seleucid dominations of Judea. In saying that, written evidence mocking the religious customs and traditions of the Jews as ‘absurd’ does exist as far back as the 3rd Century BCE in Egypt, while anti-Jewish edicts by the Seleucids led to the Maccabee uprising in the 2nd Century BCE to reclaim control (briefly) of Jerusalem for the Jews. Jewish people were noted to have consciously lived apart from others during the age of Hellenistic (Greek) influence within the ancient world and were portrayed as ‘misanthropes’ who refused to accept Greek religious and social standards as opposed to their own. Thus, it could be said that an early form of ‘cultural’ Anti-Semitism based on the group’s apparent aloofness has existed since at least those times.
Religious Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World to the Middle Ages: The Roman Empire asserted territorial influence over Judea in the 1st Century BCE. The relationship between Romans and Jews – taking in the birth and death of the prophet Jesus Christ – was always antagonistic, but took a distinct turn for the worse when the cult of Jesus – subsequently know as Christianity – became the state religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th Century and Jews were banished from Jerusalem. Although Christianity began life as an offshoot from Judaism, the two religions were at heart irreconcilable. Most Jews regarded Jesus as a ‘false prophet’ and refused to worship him, while Christians – who regarded Jesus as the long-promised ‘saviour’ foretold by Jewish legend – freely allowed non-Jewish people to ‘convert’ to Christianity, thus removing the ethnic element from the old religion and widening the appeal of the new one. Ever since this split, the continued existence of Judaism has been an uncomfortable reminder to Christians that the legitimacy of their religion was not universally accepted. This centuries-old unease between Christians and Jews can thus be regarded as ‘Religious’ Anti-Semitism.
A second major ‘offshoot’ religion from Judaism, Islam, emerged in the 7th Century, having taken elements of both Judaism and Christianity as a starting point. In its early years, Islam was more tolerant of Judaism than Christianity. Indeed, as fellow ‘people of the Book’, Jewish culture flourished in Muslim Spain in the 9th-11th Centuries but, before too long, Jews in Muslim lands were being forced to convert to Islam or face death, prompting a large Jewish migration from the Middle East to Christian Europe. Things were not much better there – the Christian canard that Jews had ‘killed’ Jesus had taken firm root, allowing prejudice and hatred to run rampant. Pogroms (ethnic persecutions) were waged against the Jews in 11th Century Germany ahead of the First Christian Crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land (Christians having ‘adopted’ Jerusalem from the Jews as their own holy city). Jews were expelled outright from England in the 13th Century, from France in the 14th Century, mass persecutions and expulsions took place in Spain in the 14th and 15th Centuries as part of the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ to preserve Catholicism, and they were similarly expelled from Austria in the 15th Century. Many fled to Poland and the Ukraine, where a brutal Cossack massacre against Jews occurred in the 17th Century. Jewish people were persecuted wherever they went. The more they were persecuted, the more they became inward-looking and wary of outsiders. The more inward-looking they became, the more secretive and mysterious they were perceived to be. Ridiculous rumours about Jewish communities took root, such as sacrificing children to cook their blood, or that Jews were causing the bubonic plague.
Racial and Economic Anti-Semitism in Modern Times: The European Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution of the 17th and 18th Centuries brought less superstitious and more secular thinking to Western Europe. For a while, Jewish people began to resettle and experience a period of social mobility again. But just as ‘Religious’ Anti-Semitism began to play less of a role in public life, a dangerous combination of nationalism and racist pseudo-science – also called ‘Eugenics’ or ‘Social Darwinism’ – began to rear its head in the 19th Century, categorising non-northern European (or ‘non-Aryan’) races as innately inferior – the ‘Ayrans’ believing they had descended from some mythical white master-race and that selective breeding would ensure the strongest human characteristics survived. Jewish people living in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries bore the brunt of this – surprisingly fashionable – new racism as they were a closer target to lash out at than other so-called ‘inferior’ races living more distantly in Asia or Africa.
To escape Europe, almost 2 million Jewish people migrated to the United States in the early 20th Century, hoping for a new life in the ‘new world’. There they found many of the same prejudices that existed in the old world, European settlers having brought their own ingrained Anti-Semitic views with them – in particular, views that could be classed as ‘Economic’ Anti-Semitism. Jewish people, from their very early days, developed a skill and reputation for money-handling which has, over the years, proved helpful in making themselves valuable in the communities in which they settled. This in time, however, developed into a less favourable reputation for Jews being manipulative financiers, looking to control money-supply and banking for their own benefit and profit. The related ‘conspiracy theory’ that Jewish people control the world’s finances was propagated by a fraudulent early-20th Century document known as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ purporting to be minutes of a meeting setting out Jewish plans to control the world press and world economy. Although this document was exposed as an Anti-Semitic hoax, it was widely distributed as genuine by the industrialist Henry Ford in the United States and by Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany. The document is still quoted by Anti-Semites across the world to this day.
This new ‘Racial’ Anti-Semitism in Europe reached a dark end-game in Nazi Germany and its territories during World War II. When Adolph Hitler came to power in 1933, repressive legislation denied Jews basic civil rights. By 1939, Jewish property was being destroyed and synagogues torched. Jewish people were forced into ghettos across Nazi-occupied Europe and from 1942-45 the systemic mass-murder programme now known as the Holocaust was enabled. 11 million Jews were targeted for extermination and some 6 million were killed (see Chapter 16 for the full extent of the Holocaust genocide). As the full horrors of the Holocaust became known following World War II, the United Nations vowed “never again”. Surviving European Jewish people began migrating in large numbers back to the area around their ancestral homeland, Jerusalem, with the international community committed to creating a two-state solution between Jews and Palestinians. Before this territorial division could take effect, however, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, Jewish settlers took large swathes of traditionally-held Arab territories and controversially declared the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel on 14 May 1948. The Jewish people really wanted what they considered to be their own homeland back after what they’d been through, and tensions with the way they went about doing that have bubbled in the region ever since (see Chapter 12 for more detail on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict).
21st Century Anti-Semitism: We’re still a long way from being in a good place. While Anti-Semitism still exists in Europe and America, it has decreased vastly and is closely monitored. Progress, however, is not so positive elsewhere: Human Rights Watch has described Anti-Semitism as “deeply ingrained and institutionalised” in some Arab nations, with many Muslim-majority countries still holding overwhelmingly negative views of Jewish people. There was much opposition in the wider Muslim world to the creation of the Jewish state of Israel as the region is also closely associated with Islam, containing a number of Muslim holy sites. Today, Anti-Semitic rhetoric against the state of Israel is often dangerously conflated with legitimate criticism of modern Israeli politics (particularly regarding their treatment of Palestinians), leading to prejudiced ranting on one end of the spectrum, silent acquiescence from apologists on the other, and a confused guilty quagmire of inaction in the middle which benefits no one. We’ll explore this mess further in a later chapter (for untangling it will be a key step along the way in completing this World Peace Adventure), because the subject of Israeli politics can only be legitimately addressed when completely stripped away from the subjects of both Anti-Semitism and western liberal guilt.
To close out our consideration of Anti-Semitism, however, it’s worth quoting the author Michael Curtis who has succinctly pointed out the hypocrisies and contradictions of ingrained Anti-Semitic prejudices. To wit, Jewish people have been charged simultaneously with:
• alienation from society and cosmopolitanism;
• being isolationists and intermingling with other people;
• being capitalist exploiters and agents of international finance, and also revolutionary Marxists;
• having a materialistic mentality and being people of the Book;
• acting as militant aggressors, and being cowardly pacifists;
• adhering to a superstitious religion and being agents of secularism;
• upholding a rigid law while also being morally decadent;
• being a chosen people, and having an inferior human nature;
• being both arrogant and timid;
• emphasizing individualism and yet upholding communal adherence.
• being guilty of the crucifixion of Christ, and blamed for the invention of Christianity.
It becomes abundantly clear that none of these are reasons for Anti-Semitism, just excuses for racism.
Conclusion: For centuries, Judaism was nothing more than one of many ethno-religious groups localised in the Levant region. Through quirks of fate and history, however, the Jewish people’s beliefs were acquired, updated and adapted first by Christianity and later by Islam, both of which the Jewish people saw as peculiar heretical offshoots of their own religion, and both of which subsequently became far bigger religions than Judaism ever was – primarily because they were ‘non-ethnic’ religions and therefore less exclusive. Through no fault of Judaism, both of these new religions then viciously turned on their parent for having the nerve to represent a past that didn’t recognise the new groups’ legitimacy. As Christianity and Islam grew over the centuries, more and more adherents came to resent and harbour unjustified anger towards the esoteric exclusivity and aloofness of their parent religion. That resentment and anger, coupled with the fact that, for hundreds of years, the Jewish people had had no kind of religious or territorial power-base to speak of (they just survived, preserving their traditions in scattered communities where they could), has made the Jewish people an easy target to kick. And the Jewish people have been kicked hard and unapologetically by the rest of humanity for centuries; we almost kicked them to death just 70 years ago. Until such time as Anti-Semitism becomes a distant, distant memory, the world will continue to owe the Jewish people a profound debt of sorrow.
To separate Anti-Semitic prejudice and learn more about the legitimate international debate about the actions of the state of Israel, jump to Chapter 105: Criticism of the Israeli Government – content to follow
To learn more about the sometimes blurred differences between nationality, ethnicity and race – and whether it all still matters in the 21st Century – jump to Chapter 106: Ethnicity – content to follow
To learn more about the prejudices that lead people to believe different races within humanity are better or worse than others, jump to Chapter 107: Racism – content to follow
To understand what the term Semitic actually means, jump to Chapter 108: Semitic People – content to follow
