The Nightstar Zoo

Seriously. Why do so many people hate the Jews?


Was talking with a friend about it, and she said "Apparently some Christians are antisemitic because the Jews killed Christ."

But that doesn't make much sense either, because the whole point of Christianity is that Christ died for your sins... So it seems to me that the Jews did exactly what was required for Christianity. I mean, if Jesus had died quietly of old age, the whole religion just wouldn't have the same sort of zing. (It worked for Buddha, though.)

No, the horrible and violent death of Jesus was exactly what was needed for the religion of Christianity. So the Jews did them a favor. Besides, Christ was a Jew too.

So why do the Christians hate the Jews?

Why does /ANYONE/ hate the Jews? Seems to me, they pretty much keep to themselves, I've never heard of any groups of Jewish extremists blowing people up...

Except for this whole Israel/Palestine thing. Which is its own kind of bull. I mean, things got reorganized so that the Jews had their own country. Great. But the Palestinians won't recognize that country. So they attack it, try to get "their land" back. Stupid stupid stupid.

As far as I'm concerned, they should cut out all the holy places from Israel, set those aside as no-man's-land, and Israel should graciously allow free passage between their nation's borders and the holy zones for any pilgrim who wishes to visit them. And the Palestinians should shut the hell up and quit whining, and DEAL WITH IT.

But antisemitism itself makes absolutely no sense to me. What did the Jews do to anyone, that they are virtually the most hated race /and/ religion on the planet?

It better not be part of God's Plan. If it is, God sucks.

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For some people, at least, I'm sure it's a blame issue - they hate Jews for the same reason other people hate Mexicans, or the Irish, or any other identifiable group.

In short, they need a scapegoat. These people can not accept that they are responsible for their own failures, either personally or as a society, so they find a way to shift the blame to someone else. People blame "the rich," Jews, Mexicans, Koreans, or anyone else they see as somehow "taking jobs/money/whatever" away from them.

It's usually a cop-out; they don't want to accept that it's usually their own slothful or self-marginalizing behavior that causes their failure. I know plenty of people back in the Iowa town I lived in for years that feel just this way about the area's expanding Hispanic population.

Example: A guy I went to high school with, a guy I don't keep in touch with but I hear about him regularly through some mutual friends. He whines constantly that "Mexicans are getting all the good jobs now."

This guy barely graduated high school, is only marginally literate, he's a borderline alcoholic and he has hair down to his ass. He knows, at some level, that if he'd dry out, clean up, and sharpen up his written communications skills, he'd probably do a lot better in life - but instead, he constantly whines about "the damn Mexicans taking all the jobs."

And we all know what happens to kids in the school playground who keep to themselves.
If you act/look different, you become a target. That's true for all ages.

I agree with the "scapegoat" angle.

If you look at human history, we have a long and consistent history of dividing things into groups. The most basic of all is, "US" and "THEM". You can, of course, have many flavors of "THEM".

When one group of "THEM" is doing better than "US", resentment grows--even when the reason for this is perfectly obvious, as in Animal's example.

Jews have been all over the modern world. There are many places that they have been a "THEM". Like the Mexicans in Animal's example, those that traveled were probably those demonstrating a LOT of determination and drive (after all, they were willing to travel, take chances on success in an unknown place), therefore, they were very successfull at what they did.

This, of course, would have led to much resentment from the dominant groups. What did the Jews do that attracted hate? They succeeded, of course...

Don't even try to rationalize why different equals bad, and why being outclassed triggers hatred...might as well try to explain why, in school, being intelligent makes you a social pariah ("Nerds! NERDS! NNNNEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDSSSSS!!!" --entirely different Ogre, ROTN), while being big and stupid is popular--when, of course, in the final picture the long term rewards are supposed to go the other way around.

I vaguely remember an explanation about middle age anti semitism that had to do with banking.

Christians were forbidden to do it for some reason or other, while Jews weren't. So you had a lot of Christians owing money to Jews, who were social inferiors to start with. Or something like that.

Well truth to be told. The foundation of Israel wasn't smooth either. Infact a lot of countries tried there best to give the arabs the best positions. I am a little fuzzy about the details so I could be wrong here and there. But when the britains were turning the land too the jews, they made sure the arabs got the strategic better positions. So teh fact that there is an Israel is quite a feat.

But when I read nowdays about Israel and Palestina I get this itchy feeling. One side the Jews deserve their country, but the did take it from teh palestinians. That makes me go swa? . Also if you comment on this, i always got yelled as being a rasicst, while it seems to me that the jews are doing to he palestianan what Hitler did to them. And then the discussion turns into yelling and shouting at me for being a nazi and stuff. But that is then linked to the fucked up society my puny country has for the moment. And so forth and so forth.

IMO, the only possible solution is when both sides understand that to get somewhere they will have to give in. Only by talking will they ever get somewhere. And that is also a big part of my tiny country.

So did I make any grave errors?

Christians forbidden to charge interest on loans. Also, jews often forbidden to own land, etc, so many traders were jews. Soemthing often forgotten is, that while many bankers were jews, not all jews were bankers. The rich traders and usurers were just the most visible.

Man, I don't think that being disgusted about what's going on in Palestine/Israel has anything to do with anti-Semitism. Israel is violating international law, among other things.

Coincidentally, I was JUST ranting about this on my Xanga.

Yeah, sorry that that was off-topic.

I don't hate anyone because of their religion. I do have some problems with the way some think, but I don't make it a big deal. My boss is Jewish, and he wears his yamaka around the office. I've also seen a student wearing one around campus, and no one (that I notice) really does anything about. It's almost like there are civilized people in the world.