Silentkillr69 wrote:
Tell me why does everybody seem to hate Jewish people? i mean come on. i list a couple
-the Holocaust
-the inquisition
-Stalin's persecution
-And now the current Al-Queda and Hezbollah
it just baffles me.
It has to do with the insular nature of Jewish communities. Jews generally create their own communities separate from the rest of society (in terms of where they live). They're more open when it comes to who they do business with, but when it comes to their private lives, they tend to associate only with other Jews -- at least, that's how things used to be.
As a result, people would get suspicious and assume they're up to something. If things went bad for whatever reason, Jews were an easy scapegoat. For example, during the Black Plague, some people thought Jews were responsible for spreading the disease through some nefarious means. Of course, more than just Jews were accused of being responsible for this.
In the years that led up to WW2, Jews were resented in Germany because of their relative wealth compared to the average German. Not every Jew in Germany was wealthy, but a higher percentage of them than of the general population was. As you can imagine, it wasn't hard for Hitler to use class envy as a basis for persecuting Jews.
Stereotypes of Jews persisted over the last 2 thousand years mostly because of the remarkable talent that many Jews showed in business. Many people assumed their success had more to do with the Jews cheating them than with any actual business acumen. Jews were assumed to be cheap and especially greedy when making loans.
As with any stereotype, some Jews really did fit the selfish image that many people labeled them with. However, most of them were just easy marks among societies looking for someone to blame for their troubles.
As for prejudice against Jews today, some of it is linked to how Jews have a lot of power in American media. In addition to this, AIPAC (an Israeli lobby group) has a lot of power in our government. So, some prejudice toward Jews (or at least Israelis) seems justified. I would suggest that most Americans don't have a problem with Jews overall, but plenty of Americans have problems with Israel -- as does most of the world.
The focus of most of the prejudice would seem to have shifted from Jews in general to specifically Israelis, and frankly, I can't blame people for that. I don't trust Israel either. I don't have a problem with the average Jew, but I do have a problem with extreme Zionists.