Quote:
Originally Posted by indes
anti-Semitism has always been a weird one to me. Obviously anecdotal but I've never experienced/seen/heard anything about it except online.
I'm sure I'm just ignorant on the subject but anything people could possibly hate the Jews for has to have happened almost 100 years ago right?
As for this conflict, I hope Israel does it's damnedest to wipe Hamas off the map. It sucks there will be so many civilian casualties but at the end of the day you have to draw the line somewhere. I don't believe there's a place for the kind of hatred they stand for in the world and steps need to be taken to eradicate it. You can argue both sides have been purports of hatred and violence along the way and you wouldn't be wrong.
That being said if you have to pick a winner, it should probably be the one who will lead to less violence, less suffering and more stability for a region that sorely needs it. Hamas has no real end game, only more violence and more suffering. It's their mandate and it's what got them voted in in the first place. That's my piece anyways.
#### Hamas and #### their supporters.
|
Not 100 years.
It's more like 1000-2000+ years of Jews being stigmatized by the dominant cultures of the Middle East and Europe who were predominantly Christian and Muslim. The Jewish people lost their state during Roman times and for two millennia, the diaspora basically spread out over the Middle East, Western, and Eastern Europe. However, the jews were always the "outsiders" who were blamed for a lot of social issues. Similar to how in modern times, racism might involve blaming illegal immigrants, etc. In Christian times, they were also the only ones allowed to lend money for interest (usury) while Christians were not permitted to do so which led to accumulation of wealth and further violence and hatred perpetuated against them (and the modern day conspiracies about their wealth and power).
Then what happened is in the 19th/20th century, the British controlled the entire area of modern Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and much more swathes of the Middle East. They artificially created borders and land lines (much like what they did to India and Pakistan which is another can of worms) and a movement started to grant the Jews their own state (related to Zionism) in their historic lands. This obviously does not go over well with the majority populations which were mostly Muslim. For centuries, there were religious edicts that allowed Jews to live peacefully among them but they had to pay a tax to the Muslims (Jizya) and there were times where peaceful coexistence was the norm. However, that hasn't been the case since the formal creation of Israel after WWII and constant wars have happened both from Israeli expansion to forcibly take more land (6 day war and modern day settlement expansion) and pushback/invasions of Arab states and terrorist groups (Yom Kippur war, etc.).
For me as an outsider, I think this is all incredibly stupid. I saw protesters for both sides all over downtown today and it's sad that people are caught up in these wars as they view it as part of their heritage and culture and religion. All of it is over tiny stretches of land that would be smaller than a tiny slice of Alberta.