Israel’s war with Hamas, which began after the terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, led to a sharp increase in anti-Semitism around the world. Many countries perceive the Israeli Armed Forces’ retaliatory attacks on the Gaza Strip as disproportionate and sympathize with the Palestinians.
There is no need to describe the various anti-Semitic protests, actions and pogroms. If anyone is interested, they can go online. Residents of Russia’s Muslim regions, particularly Dagestan, also came to the fore in their own way, when a mob allegedly excited by rumors about the arrival of refugees from Israel destroyed Makhachkala airport.
If aliens suddenly watched all this from the sidelines, they would be very surprised: why do Jews suddenly evoke such ardent feelings in some people? Are other nations acting more humanely?
For example, on the same days, Pakistani authorities began the mass deportation to Afghanistan of Afghan refugees who had been living in the country for decades. Directly into the clutches of the Taliban (banned organization in Russia).
God knows how many people will become victims of lawlessness in the process of deportation and a “warm” welcome at home. But no one in the world cares about the word “nothing.” By the way, we are talking about 1.7 million people, which is slightly less than the population of Palestinian Gaza. Previously, the forced migration of more than 100 thousand Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh was met with almost the same indifference worldwide.
With a little Googling, the aliens were still able to understand the Arab countries: against the background of a long-term, constantly smoldering conflict, full of religious overtones, interspersed with wars, and at the same time against the background of sharply intensifying radical Islamism. It was not difficult to predict that there would be a harsh anti-Israeli reaction there in recent years.
But for a wave of anti-Semitism to sweep across American college campuses, it would seem, would everything have to be eliminated and completely burned with the iron of political correctness?! So the number of anti-Semitic acts in Germany increased significantly after the Second World War, which seemed to have eradicated this scourge? So much so that even Chinese bloggers are fond of cartoons exposing the “Israeli army” in the spirit of the Soviet satirical magazine “Crocodile” ?! It would seem where is Palestine and where is China.
The point is that antisemitism has deep historical roots in Western culture. In Christian culture as a whole. Its current rise is, to some extent, a manifestation of archaism in the fight against conditionally “modernity”, such as the incitement of hatred with religious or nationalist overtones.
It all started with the claim that the Jews who were guilty of killing Jesus Christ would be responsible for it forever. For example, the accusation of killing the god comes from the New Testament of Matthew: “His blood be on us and on our children.” This is the famous “curse of blood”. In some places in the Gospel of John, Jews are directly associated with darkness and the devil. These trends were further developed in the Middle Ages.
Pope John II When Urban II called for the liberation of Jerusalem in 1095, the Bible’s portrayal of Jews as Christ-killers and devils inspired Christian crusaders. In the centuries that followed, Jews in Europe were denied citizenship, barred from government and military offices, and excluded from most professions; This pushed them into activities such as lending, trading and commerce. This, of course, did not improve his image among ordinary Christians.
Jews with horns and cleft legs could often be seen in works of art; The allegation that they used the blood of Christian children in ritual sacrifices (the so-called “blood libel”) was actively used.
In many parts of Europe, Jews were forced to wear yellow emblems. Hitler’s Nazis were unoriginal in this respect.
In France, Spain, Portugal and the German principalities, Jews were simply deported; In some states, they were placed in separate areas, the same ghettos whose practices were revived by the Nazis. In Italy, for example, ghettos existed until the 1870s.
The high survival rate during plague epidemics in Europe played against the Jews: this gave rise to a conspiracy theory that it was they who poisoned all the wells of Europe. In fact, there was the influence of the ghetto isolation and some purity rituals. Just like in Muslim countries of that time.
In fact, European Christians learned to wash properly from Muslims during the Crusades, but for a long time this culture was limited only to the highest layers of society, and even then not to everyone. For example, British monarchs in the old days did not bathe throughout their lives.
Progressive reforms in the Christian Church for their time worsened the situation. In 1517, Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation. However, he failed to convert the Jews and later hated them.
“Their synagogues… should be set on fire, and the areas that do not burn should be covered with earth, so that no one can see either stone or slag from them again.” “Their houses should also be demolished and destroyed…. All prayer books… must be taken away from them.” This is what Luther the Reformer said.
The thesis about the killing of antisemitism among Christians was only rejected in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, when a document called Nostra Aetate (Our Time) rejected the collective responsibility of Jews for the death of Jesus. In Protestant churches, as in Orthodox churches, such formalities have so far been abandoned, but this thesis is no longer emphasized.
Significant changes began to occur against the background of the 18th century European Enlightenment, which laid the foundations of a secular state. However, at the end of the 19th century, a new phase began, connected with, on the one hand, the development of Zionism and, on the other hand, the growth of nationalism everywhere in Europe (the formation of nation states).
A forged document called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, parts of which first appeared in a series of publications in the Russian press in 1903, was widely distributed. Two dozen of these “protocols” were allegedly compiled by members of a secret meeting of Jewish leaders and outlined a malevolent Jewish conspiracy to rule the world by controlling the media, “damaging the economy,” and fomenting all manner of religious discord. The protocols have been translated into dozens of languages.
Attempts to expose this falsification were not very successful among the narrow-minded masses. The Times of London discovered, for example, that the Protocols were in fact not just fiction but a plagiarism, a “copy-paste” of Maurice Joly’s 1864 French political satire “Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.” But it was too late: the ideas reached the masses.
Every propagandist, including Goebbels, knows very well that the most durable and obsessive idea is often the first to be put forward. Then no matter how much you refute it, a residue will still remain.
Traditions of antisemitism were also strong in Russia. Theological debates with the Jews were conducted by Metropolitan Hilarion and the early thinkers of Russian Orthodoxy, beginning with his “Sermon on Law and Grace” in the 11th century. And the first Jewish pogrom took place in Kiev in 1113 and was associated with the summoning of Vladimir Monomakh to reign. However, before the final partition of Poland at the end of the 18th century, these were all intra-church disputes (such as the fight against the “heresy of the Judaizers” in the 15th century) and in terms of the scale of repressions. They could not be compared with what was happening in “educated Europe”.
Russia, which until then had been almost closed to them, came in large numbers from Poland, which had previously served as a refuge for persecuted Jews from Western Europe. The Pale of Settlements was established, where Jews were forbidden to settle. But they could be baptized, and then the ban was lifted, like all other prohibitions and restrictions.
The discussion included admission to educational institutions, military service (Jews were not accepted into the army), entry into the civil service, etc. It contained. The 19th century was perhaps the peak of the development of antisemitism in Russia. Leading Russian writers and thinkers (Dostoevsky, Aksakov, Bakunin, many Slavophiles and populists) and representatives of Ukrainian nationalism, which was beginning to take shape at that time, were also sensitive to these views.
The murder of Alexander by populists in 1881 gave rise to a powerful new wave of anti-Semitism: since then, the general version about the “alien”, externally imposed nature of the revolutionary movement in Russia has become widespread.
They say that these are all intrigues of Jews and even Poles and the students who joined them (who were very smart).
After a series of Jewish pogroms and a sharp tightening of anti-Jewish policies in general, during the reign of Alexander III, the first wave of strong (i.e. Jewish) emigration from Russia, especially to America, occurred. About a million people remain. During the reign of Nicholas, antisemitism continued to be an integral part of state policy, as did the Black Hundreds.
During the USSR, despite the official doctrine of friendship of peoples, elements of antisemitism appeared in the repressive policy of the 1930s, but this was more pronounced during the “fight against cosmopolitanism” campaign of the early 50s. In the late Soviet years, in an environment where Jewish immigration was permitted (but in limited quantities, essentially as an exception), anti-Semitism was already manifesting itself in more moderate and unregulated formats. For example, it was “not recommended” for them to accept studies at some universities; in career advancement, admission to CPSU, travel abroad, etc. There were unofficial restrictions. A lot has been written on this subject, there are still living witnesses, we will not repeat ourselves.
After the collapse of the USSR, almost all of these manifestations were practically eliminated. However, as we have seen, they are not stuck in dusty chests and archaic corners. The “external influence” thesis has now been partially revived. Perhaps this is even fair in its own way – that is, if it were not for Israel’s war with Hamas, the dusty chests of archaism, where the folder called “Anti-Semitism” lies, might not have been opened this time. time. But the precedent itself is worrying. As history shows, they often started with the Jews, but then they were not limited to them.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.