Why Do People Hate Jews?
Why do people hate Jews? The term used for hatred towards Jews is anti-Semitism. This can be attributed to hating Jewish ethnicity and/or religion. In an extreme form, people see Jews as an inferior group among other civilizations and don’t consider them as part of the nation where they live. A person who holds such negative views on Jews is called an anti-Semite.
Why do people hate Jews and how do they express such hatred? Anti-Semitism may be expressed in different ways such as individually expressing discrimination and hatred against individual Jews and organized brutal attacks by mobs, state police, or military attacks on all Jewish communities.
Severe cases of Jew persecution include the First Crusade of 1096, Dreyfus Affair, Holocaust by Nazi Germany, and eviction from more than 80 European countries between the years 250 CE and 1948 CE, which include Germany, France, Portugal, Lithuania, Austria, Bohemia, Spain, and Moravia, among others.
A lot of people believe that the Jews were responsible to the death of Jesus Christ and this is their usual answer when asked the question “Why do people hate Jews?” In the New Testament of the Bible, specifically in the book of Acts, it states that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. At the time that Jesus was crucified, the Romans conquered the areas where Jesus lived. They allowed the Jews to continue with their government called Sanhedrin but they took away capital punishment. To be able to have Jesus crucified, the Jewish leaders manipulated Rome by lying and making up charges. This can be found in the book of Luke where the Jewish insisted on crucifying Jesus.
Another answer to “Why do people hate Jews?” is that people simply hate Jewish people because of their claim that they are the chosen people. Judaism believes, in what is called “chosenness,” that the Jews are the chosen people to be in a covenant with God. It is written in the first books of Moses in the Bible called the Torah, in the Hebrew Bible, as well as in rabbinic literature. The Jews have interpreted this idea that God has chosen the Israelites and the Israelites chose God.
Wealth and power also contributed to the people’s hatred on Jews. Hitler and his followers hated the Jewish people because in the 1920s and 1930s, there were some Jews who were very successful and held important positions in Germany and Austria. In fact, during the Great Depression in which Germany was hit the hardest by the global economic depression, a lot of Jews remained wealthy.
These are just some of the possible answers to the question “Why do people hate Jews?”
