Hatred Against the Jews
Have you ever wondered why the world has always hated Jews or what cosmic sins they’ve committed to being on the receiving end of such intense hate? Put bluntly, they were scapegoats. Humanity always plays a game of pass – blaming others for everything – and the Jews were just the easiest to blame.
It all started when they were collectively blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which turned Christians against them. The world’s largest religion’s dislike for them was enough to spread rumours about the Jews. All the fabrications and misrepresentations were defamatory towards Judaism or Jews as a religious group. Some of today’s Anti-Semitic Canards or false accusations date back to the birth of Christianity.
Blood libel or blood accusation is one such superstitious accusation. It states that Jews ritually sacrifice Christian children to obtain blood for religious rituals or for baking unleavened bread. In 1144, an English boy, William of Norwich, was found brutally murdered with strange wounds on his head, arms, and torso. His uncle, a priest, blamed local Jews, and a rumour spread that Jews crucified a Christian child every year at Passover (a Jewish holiday). A century later an investigation into the death of another boy (1255), sparked anti-Jewish fervour that resulted in the execution of 19 English Jews. The story of “Little Saint Hugh” soon became part of popular literature and song, and he was widely venerated as a martyr.
‘The Jewish Death’ was another outrageous accusation against the Jews and blamed them for the spread of the Bubonic Plague. What sparked the furore, however, was a rumour that spread through the continent. It mentioned Jews poisoning the wells of Christians, leading to their widespread suffering and loss of lives. By the spring of 1349 CE, the devastating Bubonic plague, more popularly known as the ‘Black Death’, had swept through large parts of the European continent. At Strasbourg, a city located at the border between France and Germany, a couple of thousand Jews were rounded up and brought to a cemetery, where a wooden platform had been built. The Jews were then given an option to either convert to Christianity or be burnt alive. What followed was a spectacle, largely ignored by the pages of history. From those who chose to be baptized, children and those women considered attractive were actually converted, leaving the remaining to burn alive.
One Anti-Semitic cliché is that Jews control the media and Hollywood. It was believed that the Jews controlled the press and helped the nascent state of Czechoslovakia during its struggle for independence. Variants on this theme have focused on the press, Hollywood and the music industry.
Another conspiracy theory vis-à-vis World War I was that Germany lost the war due to the Jews living in Germany. The stab-in-the-back myth was an Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, widely believed and promulgated in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918. The belief was that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially Jews. Advocates of the myth denounced the German government leaders who had signed the Armistice on 11 November 1918 as the "November criminals".
The number of defamatory statements made, violent acts conducted, and injustice served against the Jews are numerous. The hardships they’ve faced – from the Holocaust to daily subtleties of anti-Semitism – leave us wondering why just one group of people deserve such intense hate.