Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...
Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today and yet there are plenty in this country (the US) that wish everyone "would just speak English". I have plenty of friends whose parents grew up speaking Yiddish in this country.
Likewise, Jews were seen as people with divided loyalties. But this, again, isn't specific to Jews. Kennedy took plenty of hits as people questioned if he'd "just do what the pope told him to do." Were Jews really going to be loyal to the state they lived in? In an era when wars were often fought with what makes today's reasons seem air-tight, would Jews decide to sit on the sidelines (since they weren't really X nationality)? I mean, imagine if the US and Canada got into a war over who could call they're syrup "maple syrup". Would you fight in that? People have fought for some stupid things. Also, during a decent period of time, mercantilism became a big factor in economic thinking. If Jews didn't see a problem with cross-border trade, that was doing economic harm.
For Christians, "you've heard the good news and yet you still reject Christ?!?" This is one of the more simplistic ones. People have killed (and continue to do so) for religious reasons. Jews were especially problematic for Christianity. Here you have the predecessor religion co-existing. If they thrive more than the Christians, does G-d like them better than the Christians? And there's plenty of "they killed Christ" to go around.
Jews are, in some ways, refugees. I mean, there was an ancient state that existed and then diaspora as the Jews had to leave their homeland. First, people often don't like immigrants. How much scapegoating happens even today around immigrants and crime, jobs, culture, etc.? Heck, even things like sexuality come into play. In a lot of anti-Semitic literature, Jews were portrayed as ultra-sexual in the same "hide your daughters" way that can happen with African Americans today. Second, people really don't like refugees. I mean, these are people coming with nothing. These aren't university trained computer programmers coming over like H1-B visa getters. These are people who have it really hard.
Beyond that, someone like Dawkins might point out that we try to propel our genes and like genes forward. A decent amount of history looks like people trying to force their culture, their nationality, and their genes forward through history. Jews were a different group. If you're under the impression that wealth cannot be created, then any wealth that Jews get is wealth that people like you don't have. So, it becomes competitive in that sense and people try to propel people like them forward through history.
I guess I'll also touch on the fact that diaspora Judaism somewhat flies in the face of nationalism. I mean, if you're big into patriotism and nationalism, then the state should be the citizen's first priority, right? I think a lot of us now see the state as a tool meant to make our lives more stable and just. We don't live for the glory of our country. Our country is meant to help us have better lives. When we serve our country, it's to enhance the lives of the people and increase justice, not to enhance the country (although they sometimes go hand in hand). This is a big shift in modern thought (at least to me). But diaspora Judaism can fly in the face of "commitment to your country should take precedence over commitment to something else". I mean, to us it might sound ridiculous to say that your country should matter more than your morality - and I mean secular morality here. But in a Europe coming out of feudalism where they were trying to define national loyalties and borders, worried about losing territory to the neighboring country, worried about all sorts of things that look foolish from a modern perspective, well, if Jews weren't going to care if they were Polish or Russian, that was a huge problem. Frankly, this is one of the reasons that Jews came to America. While America has its nationalism, it's pluralistic, and it's often based off good governance and democratic principles more than the history of most places.
Jews could also be insular. Kosher dietary laws meant that they didn't eat with non-Jews and that they bought their food from within the community. Again, it's easy to see how something like "those assholes won't buy meat from me saying my meat isn't clean!" turns into anti-semitism in the way rumors spread. Before cars, towns were organized for churches or shuls to be within walking distance which means segregation.
Heck, even looking at the Harvard example, you see a private club that had a certain culture that was losing that culture. No longer would Harvard be almost all Wasp. I mean, they and their forefathers had put their money and effort into it. Shouldn't their progeny and the progeny of their religion and culture get the benefits of it? I'm not saying you should agree with that logic, but it is logic that is often used. I mean, there are people who don't want this country to become Spanish speaking or bi-lingual. Whether someone is the first person someplace or not, people and culture become entrenched and people don't want to see that culture change away from them. Heck, how much complaining do some people do that a lot of advertisements don't say "Merry Christmas"? Harvard was created by Wasps and now it was benefitting Jews and turning more Jewish. The identity of the institution was changing.
It isn't that the hatred is that different from a lot of other ethnic hatred. A lot of it can be seen in a lot of the other ethno-religious hatred that has existed in the world. It's that the Jews hit a lot of different sore points in human history. There was religion, there was national identity, there was immigrant status, there was language, there was hope of another homeland, their was separateness/insular-ness, etc.
I come from the point of view that nationalism is a bit outdated. People deserve to be justly governed in ways that make their lives better and that they should be allowed to choose how to live their lives in a way that makes them happy (clearly with restrictions on things that cannot be abided like murder). But providing good, just governance isn't why Europe has so many countries. Good governance and happy lives for citizens isn't why England subjugated Wales. Justice isn't what drove the Reconquista of Spain. Power, control, and the perpetuation of one's genes, culture, language, and religion have been a driving force in human history.
I, for one, am happy that we at least see such injustice and hatred as a bad thing these days. I'm not sure if you were looking for an answer like this. I didn't mean for it to be long like this. Hatred can be a bit hard to wrap one's head around (at least for me) and yet it's defined a lot of human history. I can't imagine someone hating me without knowing me. I don't understand it. I'm nice (honest)! Yet, even without understanding it, I know there are people who wish I didn't exist who don't even know me. It's actually quite an odd feeling.
If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated: Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add to the mix the fact that Jews dominate banking and media (I assume this is accepted as fact and not conspiracy theory), industries that get little love these days.
Since this opposition is shared by many westerners, I think a lot of westerners assume that it is shared based on similar reasoning. Human rights, international law, national freedoms. But the reality is that a substantial portions is nationalist/religious/xenophobic/nationalistic/scapegoating.
Belief in arab countries that Israel was behind 9-11 or some other local event (eg shark attacks in egypt)* is very common. Lots of easily verifiable made up stories are common knowledge. A lot of the old anti-semetic propoganda is distributed in the greater Muslim world via mainstream local media (I saw an article about the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a Czarist propoganda document that has a special place in most Jews consciousness, discussed in an Indonesian magazine. It's also in the Hamas charter document* .
A lot of the complaints that are interpreted as objections to human rights violations or similar are (when seen in context) really objections to non Muslim rule in 'Muslim Lands' (as opposed to lands where muslims live) or various conspiracy delusions.
I'm not trying to justify Israeli policy. I think it's immoral and stupid. But the type of objection to it do not make me think that changing policy will result in substantial changes in attitude, though they might provide an incremental improvement.
http://blogs.news.sky.com/middleeastblog/Post:2c6bf5da-e006-... * *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter
In the Middle East today, the relative prosperity of Israel relative to its neighbors is a good example of that. Abandoning science and reason has a negative affect on a society, and blaming your neighbor for your misfortune is easier than dealing with that.
But there is also a lot of anti-Muslim factor widely prevalent in the west too! Every bit of people on this earth have suffered with that problem. The Muslim world looks at these problems from their own view. Think of it this way, there was no signs of Israel in the Arab world around a century back, the settlements start. There are splinter groups. Slowly albeit steadily a vast majority of the native population was displaced to settle new set of people. A new nation is declared, backed by most powerful nations on earth. What was your country yesterday is not today and you are mercilessly kicked out. Now what sins did the natives do to deserve that? On top of loosing their lands, there is huge under development and humiliation since decades. How do you expect them to react?
To quote Ben Gurion himself:
I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.
- http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion
Tomorrow if some state like California is invaded by some one, existing citizens of the state thrown out. How will those people react. Will they laughingly walk out of their homes, stay in tents and welcome the invaders with Garlands? And business goes around normal?
There isn't a community on earth today which is different than any other community. People everywhere are just the same. When these sort of things happen friction is but natural but to take place.
All nations and their people on earth or same, Jews, Muslims and Christians. No one is different. Now there is also a clash of cultures. Others like their culture as much as you like yours. To assume everybody must follow your way of life is unacceptable to any community on earth.
I come from a nation(India) which hasn't attacked/invaded any country in thousands of years. We even got our freedom through complete non-violence. For thousands of years we absorbed other religions, cultures and languages and their people with open arms. Tolerance is not everybody's cup of tea.
Friction will remain, the way out is tolerance and respect for others.
I was commenting though on different types of objection though. Objections based on delusions, nationalism and religion. Jews absolutely do not have a monopoly over these. Anti-muslim sentiment in the Europe is largely xenophobia and in the US its mostly nationalism. These (as I'm pretty sure you agree by reading what you wrote).
But the scale and flavour of some of the delusions directed at Israel from what are in the Muslim world, non marginal sources are uncommonly fantastic. I participated in a Syrian-Israeli dialogue once where we answer each others' objections to peace. We found that the majority of Syrians believe that the stripes on Israel's flag represent the sea and the euphrates, Israel's ambition to conquer all of modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. They referenced a nonexistent map in the Israeli Parliament, nonexistent speeches by early leaders, etc. These were not hawks by any means. They doctors and engineers and teachers that wanted peace and were actively pursuing it. They basically wanted a guarantee that Israel will give up these ambitions. All fantasy.
There are some insane surveys from various countries (Egypt, most commonly) about what the average person believes.
Americans can be delusionaly racist and nationalistic to. But, you can't sell the idea that shark attacks were orchestrated by from Iran or anything like that.
You can't sell that kind of an Idea to any people in any part of the world. But you see you can always tell there are Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and go and invade them. Virtually tear their national infrastructure to shreds. Scare away investors and prospective companies from investing and forbid any sane economic growth in the foreseeable future. And Americans did buy that idea. Although no WMD's were found in Iraq. Do you still expect Iraq and their neighbors not to have sane opinions about America.
Now come to think of it. Iran has been repeatedly harping that they have no intentions of producing nuclear weapons. What guarantees do we have from the US that they are right and Iran is wrong. After all there wasn't a shred of truth Iraq WMD thing. Why should they even trust you?
I am not blaming Americans for this. But if you repeatedly demonize a set of people no matter who they are, after a some time no matter how absurd the argument vast majority of people will begin to believe in those lies. That's how Hitler managed to commit and get support to committing worst genocides in human history.
People in the arab world, heck every in the world are just like Americans. They have families, every day lives to live and businesses to run. Just like you.
“What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark (in the sea) to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm,” South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha was quoted as saying by state news site egynews.net…. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/uk-egypt-shark-idUK...
This is a single example and a relatively lighthearted one. The protocols (because of their history) is less funny but more mainstream.
There is a difference between that and false (or falsified) intelligence about the nuclear capabilities of Iraq or Iran (which is trying hard to convince the world it is trying to build them), two countries that are/were constantly on the brink of war with very dangerous powers. One is similar to 'She's a witch' and the other is like 'She's a criminal.' Both may be false but they are not the same.
I have no personal dislike for Arabs or Muslims. I know many and have had great friendships. I also do not really consider myself Jewish, or that my Judaism isn't very important to me.
Probably you could.
From my observation of the Arab world (which includes travelling there for work fairly extensively in the last few years) has been that a) these crazy stories do exist and b) the majority don't believe them outright, but shrug their shoulders at the suggestion.
As you said the subject is complex; ask a "standard" person on the street about the stories and they would probably know what you were on about. Ask if they believe it could be true a decent portion might say "maybe, who knows!".
But you could be stood on a US street and talking about 9/11 conspiracy theory. Or a UK street and talking about whether the French smell perpetually of onions (deliberately picking two ends of the scale there).
The key problem is you get a set of stories from the absurd to the quite reasonable; and you mix it with an already existing resentment. That leaves you with people who don't simply laugh at the absurd, and instead just shrug.
As to whether you could sell these stories to people; of course you can. The media, and other aspects of society, sell absurd stories to ourselves every day. Facebook has been abuzz at least three (distinct) times, to my recollection, about the fact that FB were going to start charging for access. People genuinely outraged about this development were raging about it.
Chain letters.
I also travel a lot in the US and in certain areas you see equally absurd stories about all sorts of different classes of people. Go back over history and it is even worse; we still get absurd stories about homosexuals. A little further and black people got the same treatment. Perhaps the stories we see here are not so openly absurd to us as "Iran releases killer sharks" - but if you dig into the story you example it is built on a perfectly plausible basis.
There is even a wholly relevant very-recent example; Jews and Money. That is still sold to people with alarming regularity.
I know a perfectly lovely, middle class, suburban housewife[1] who, on finding out one of my friends was gay, asked me if it was because he had been abused as a child. She is quite convinced that homosexuality is commonly the result of childhood abuse (safe to say; that one floored me :S).
1. No, not like that!
My point was people are every where the same. Jews or other wise. The problem exists because of massive trust deficit due to a long chain of history of events. We need tolerance from both the parties if they want to leave in peace. And lets hope they are sensible enough to realize that.
I am great admirer of all cultures. I would love to visit Israel some day learn and experience Jewish culture to the fullest
We are, of course, the same. Nationality, ethnicity and the rest are made up. But.. so is money. Imaginary things still have an effect as long as people believe in them.
As an American I wish this was true but there are people in the US that believe man walked amongst dinosaurs and the earth is 5000 years old. These are people that were educated to at least a high school diploma and learned the scientific method at some point.
The main difference to Karelia I can see, is that many refugees from Israel are locked into camps and get their lives destroyed, just in order to keep the question alive.
The point isn't right or wrong; the point is that everyone else with similar experiences left it behind them. Including almost all the Jews that lived in the Muslim world and had to leave -- because of their religion, not because of a civil war.
http://xkcd.com/915/ relevant?
I doubt it, if you compare Israel with e.g. the surrounding dictators -- and (at least here in Europe). Israel gets at least two factors of ten more criticism (before March this year) for arguably much less.
The first time when I read criticism of Tunisia's dictator in Swedish media, was when he fled.
(I'm not claiming you can't criticise Israel, democracies with terror problems tend to throw out the law book (Germany, USA, England, Spain, etc). I'm comparing amount of criticism.)
From my perspective (in my ultra-liberal enclave in the east), a large part of the criticism isn't that Israel's policies are objectively bad - one can hardly expect a country surrounded by its worst enemies to have a polite attitude toward said folk. The criticism is that we, in America (and until recently, throughout much of the west) are giving them disproportionate (military and otherwise) support. I'm not comfortable with giving aid - especially military aid - to a government with major human rights violations, and a generally trigger-happy military at odds with a free press and so on.
Again - the trigger-happiness is understandable, given their position - but until evidence is produced that withdrawal of military support would make the situation more violent, it's hard to justify that military support.
You should see my local Swedish media...
The reason I follow this is not that I care about Middle East politics -- it is because I am shocked about my local media. I have compared Swedish media with BBC and NY Times since 7-8 years.
Some subjects are more or less censored in Sweden. Things like torture between Palestinian groups have been cut out since the 1990s, Pallywood has never been mentioned, etc.
Translation of Reuters/AP/etc telegrams are slanted.
And so on. Sweden is probably an extreme case. I am seriously thinking of Swedish as the language of lies.
_I have compared Swedish media with BBC and NY Times since 7-8 years_
Neither of which is, in my experience, particularly reliable (although there's less of the blatant bias/censorship that you described). Comparing them against AJE (which has had it's own issues of late, in the /same/ direction) reveals that their reporting is severely biased toward sensational stories - every article needs a good guy, and bad guy, a winner, and a looser. And the good guy is then implied to be aligned with American interests, even if they're Al Qaeda-backed "islamists"[1] (not to say that said folk aren't aligned with American interests at times).
[1] Which can be interpreted anywhere from "Muslim" to "what Glenn Beck said".
Sensationalism and jingoism comes with times of war/terror. That excuse is not relevant for my local Swedish media.
(Even democracies do realpolitik and lie about it. Foreigners don't have votes at home. This is a built in disadvantage of democracies, I guess.)
My point is that the relationship between Israel and the US taxpayer is very intimate. I feel somewhat entitled to criticize Israel if I don't think they are acting in our interests.
It took me a while and I needed to move here to get a tiny feeling for the complexity of this issue. Before that, 'jewish' was a label that I had in the same mental box as 'christian', 'muslim', 'hindu' or whatever. Boy is that misleading.
So many things here in Israel are challenging my understanding, every day. It doesn't help that I'd describe myself as agnostic or atheist. I guess Jews are the only example (that I know of) of a group of people that claim to share religion, ancestors and culture. I wouldn't know how - for example - one could create a model of a secular state here. I wouldn't know where to separate culture from religion and I'm convinced that I'll never understand the idea of common ancestry / being descendants of the same tribes.
Maybe this intermingled religion/culture/ethnicity (if this is the right word?) is confusing more people, just like me. And maybe some people react with fear if they don't grasp a concept?
I guess Jews are the only example (that I know of)
of a group of people that claim to share religion,
ancestors and culture.
I don't know how much following either of them gets today, but I do know that during the feudal period the two religions were associated very strongly with the upper castes (Buddhism) and the lower castes (Shinto).
I do know that religion is not an identity to the Japanese in the way Judaism is for Jews. I know people who simultaneously consider themselves Jewish and atheistic or agnostic. That seems bizarrely contradictory unless you understand that "Jewish" is both an ethnic identity and a religious identity, so even individuals who reject the religious part can still embrace the ethnic part.
Like the gp, I would be very interested to know of any other group that ties religion, ancestry, and culture together into a single unique identity the way Judaism does. I think that Persia under Zoroastrianism might have been like that, but the conversion to Islam ended that.
How 'religious' is Japan? I was baffled on the day I learned that you cannot marry without a ceremony with a Rabbi here if you're a Jew. In DE it's (all romance removed..) signing paperworks and optionally going to a church if you like that sort of thing. Christian ceremonies have no influence over your status though: You're married _iff_ you signed the paperwork, whether a priest held your hands or not. Here this seems to be different. And this is just one thing that confuses the hell out of this particular secular guy.
Don't want to bash something I don't understand. Consider this just a try to emphasize my confusion and venting some 'Boy are things different' steam.
> Before cars, towns were organized for churches or shuls to be within walking distance which means segregation.
It's not gone. Some areas of North London are full of kosher delis, men with black hats and side-curls, etc, some don't have any.
Bnei Brak is, for all I know, a way to live a segregated (as in, among equals and without foreigners) and religious life. Heck, most Israelis I've spoken with (and 95% of my contacts here are ~secular~, more or less) avoid it, claim that I shouldn't go there on jewish holidays and certainly keep my wife out of it.
It's considered off limits for most of the non-observing population that I know. A (large!) ~ghetto~ next to the (secular, touristy, ~gay~) Tel Aviv.
Muslim immigrants in the west have very similar problems: they don't assimilate, their loyalties are brought into question, they only eat "halal" food, etc.
"if you go to a university campus good look finding a single muslim student"
is utter bullshit. There's nothing friendly I can reply here, you just pulled that out of your rear end. Stating it that broadly you were _obviously_ completely wrong, but from my (of course biased, limited) experience in Germany muslim students are actually common. A minority? Yes, but I guess ~real~ christian students are underrepresented as well.
What I said is a fact, if you don't believe it go and make a survey yourself or something. Honestly your reply is just childish.
Have it occurred to you guys that you may be talking to a muslim?
You claim something that immediately turns out to be either a) greatly! exaggerated or b) just plain wrong in my world.
Germany has around 5% muslims, less than the 10% you talked about. I've been to a couple of universities (long story) and visited even more and I've had no trouble finding muslims. Not that I particularly cared, but w/o investing any time I can claim that your bold statement doesn't apply. Depending on upbringing and on how religious observant the families are you'll easily spot women, for example. And it's _far_ from rare to notice those obvious 'I'm a muslima' signs. Again: Yes, they are probably a minority - but how can they represent just 5% of the population and end up as 50% at the universities?
Bottom line: I didn't take the topic personal. 'Refrain from comment' is a bad advice. Using overly broad statements is just as bad. Insisting on being correct after people from around the world state other observations is plain wrong. I know that my comment was written in a harsh tone, but you could've reconsidered your point and come out good with 'Okay, my experience is based on ... and I might have tried hard to make a point, but the fact is that ..'.
Instead you call me childish and stick to your ~false~ claim. Why?
You probably aren't running into many devout/conservative type muslims who pray during the day or wear appropriate regalia. By that logic, you could argue that Catholics are underrepresented, because nobody is carrying rosary beads or confessing sins daily.
For instance, they don't drink, so you're not going to find them in bars (where a lot of socialization occurs). They don't marry much into other religions (even if some types of marriage are not prohibited, they're still frowned upon socially). You're not likely to see them date at all (though it depends on how devout they are).
But they very often ARE people with divided loyalties! Several folks in the Obama and Bush administrations have had Israeli passports. To me, that's completely crazy.
Henry Kissinger, a patriotic American if nothing else, talked openly about how the US relationship with Israel makes no strategic sense. His fellow Jews viciously attacked him for the most part.
Another big point is the importance of education among Jews as compared to other second class citizens who may be of the same race/ethnicity as those in leadership but are poor. Even today in America, poor Caucasians and African-Americans concentrate a lot less on education than the wealthy or certain ethnicities (this of course is more complicated than just being educated). If you look at all of the revolutionaries, regardless of race, they are typically highly educated.
Between feeling like they do not belong within the current incarnation of the country while also being educated enough to point out issues and know about successful revolutions in the past, Jews were able to lead these movements.
It is that or the probability that a lack of bacon makes us all a bit more uppity.
So, from the outside, the local population sees a group of foreigners brought into the country. This group refuses to assimilate, actively shuts strangers out of their group, and maintains a certain aura of secrecy.
This means that the perception of the Jews as "outsiders" never goes away, even several generations after their arrival. Throw the semi-legendary Jewish financial success into the mix, and you fuel suspicion that "those people are up to something."
Muslim and Hindu communities in the West are also trying to be insular and maintain their own cultural identities, but I guess they're not so effective because they don't have the financial success backing them up that the Jews have. It's a lot harder to deride someone when you know they're making way more money than you, I suppose.
those people are up to something
I don't mean this in any negative way, but they ARE up to something. This something is maintaining their levels of privilege. Is this wrong? I don't know. Probably not, I guess.
I come from an upper caste family in India and it's easy for me to see that this is game that we in India have been playing since independence. There's a lot of cultural and economic know-how that helps people succeed in life, and upper caste families have an abundance of this.
On the one hand, these folks succeed only because they ace the admission tests, have extraordinary academic records and are excellent communicators. On the other hand, the reason they have these qualities is because they were born with privilege. Is this wrong? Unfair? I really don't know. I can't help thinking it's the same situation as the Jews, though.
Feel free to conflate Jews with successful former lower caste Indians, though.
Substituting someone from a less financially successful group would ruin their point.
Not the best source but check out the first paragraph of this http://www.jewishhistory.org/the-rothschilds/
"In the Middle Ages, the Church, in a misapplication of the Biblical prohibition against charging interest, forbade interest in all instances. The Talmud, in contrast, created an economic system in which loans could be converted into investments, so interest could accrue from them, but under the Christian interpretation, no credit market was possible. The way the Church got around that was by forcing the Jews to become the bankers. "
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/mormons-have-highe...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2008/12/religion-iq/
EDIT: Ouch. I know race, religion and intelligence are touchy subjects but I never thought I'll get downvoted on hackernews for (somewhat) sourced compliment. I myself am atheist in 95% catholic country where Jews are unrecognizable for anybody except antisemites. I personally have nothing against or for Jews.
I took Yiddish in university for a while. During the soviet years they tried to neutralize any hebraic or biblical references. For example, in hebrew the word for friend is "Chaver". It's the same in yiddish. But the soviets insisted that it be changed to the more germanic "fraynd". Similiarly, they insisted even on the changing of spellings to make the language altogether less hebraic and jewish - and more neutralized and soviet.
That is unfortunate story of our crazy world. Pick up any country in the world and you can find a story very similar to Jewish story... For example, Armenins in Turkey in 1915-16 (and latter on). Or Albanians in Serbia. Romas (Gypsies) in Nazi Germany. Palestinians in Israel. Tutsis in Rwanda. Etc. etc.
We just need to always fight against things like this.
Note that I'm not saying anything about the morality of this or whether we need to fight it, just that the different things you talked about are objectively very different from anti-semitism.
However, if you talk with people which have been sufferings these injustices you will hear the same story regardless how we classify that discrimination.
The only other group mentioned by you that has been discriminated against in many different places are the gypsies, but again the reasons are very different.
This would have three logical consequences: Jewish people becoming masters of finance; Jewish people helping their own community over others; and Jewish people obtaining all the disrepute that comes with being a loan shark. You can see how all 3 things would breed resentment/jealousy from other ethnic groups.
Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice cuts to the heart of the matter. Shylock offers the financing needed by the protagonists - but such financing by necessity comes with brutal collateral ('a pound of flesh'). People see the heartless lender exacting payment, but not the underlying laws of economics.
Happy New Year.
I found this interesting, if not alarming.
EXPOSE: The Vatican is Cozying Up to Iran's Ahmadinejad http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/1070...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Stat...
In fact Herzl published Der Judenstaat as a response to what he witnessed covering the Dreyfus Affair as a journalist.
Assuming that OP hasn't been around for thousands of years himself, I could only point out modern day antisemitism which makes perfect sense. OP never asked for a complete history.
However, if you're going to get to the root of things, you'd have to bring up religious prejudices passed down through the centuries as well as the origin of money lending and banking which undoubtedly cast Jews in a bad light.
This documentary had some good examples as well as an overall interesting view of money itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Money
Edit: And this is now getting downvoted why? What the hell is going on here?
But even if that were the case, you're making a pretty ridiculos argument:
1) Antisemitism has been around for a thousand years, before certain organizations existed.
2) Antisemitism is still around now.
3) Now it makes sense, because those organizations exist.
Whereas it makes a lot more sense that these organizations are an excuse for antisemitism, not the cause. After all, antisemitism has been around non-stop for thousands of years, there's no reason to think that it would have stopped had these organizations not existed.
Edit: HN has turned into Reddit. Ghostdownvoters, downvotes without explanation. Oy vey!
Not sure how my points weren't completely relevant. They were.
Either I made some sense (pointing out that AIPAC or Zionism could be a reason for hatred) or these guys just showed up in the thread:
You obviously don't understand how the HN discussion system is supposed to work, and you've been hellbanned to boot (which is why I am responding to you here), so you might as well just stop.