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Anti-Semitism Facts

Anti-Semitism Facts
Generally speaking, anti-Semitism is are attitudes or general policies that discriminate against people of Semitic backgrounds - Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, and others of Semitic backgrounds - but more specifically it has come to mean hatred directed at those of Jewish ancestry or the organized Jewish community (Jewry). Some argue that the first well-documented instance was the biblical Exodus, while others believe it was the better documented Assyrian conquest of Israel and the deportation of all the Jews from that kingdom in 722 BC. Anti-Semitism has taken place on every continent and most time periods of human history, although it has been most common in Europe and the Middle East from the Middle Ages to the modern era. The reasons for anti-Semitism are many and varied and often depend on the place and time in history. Jews were often looked at as "apart" from the communities they live in, so they were often targeted in times of war as traitors, or during plagues as the reason for illness. Christian and Islamic usury laws also restricted followers of those faiths from pursuing banking in the Middle Ages, which allowed the Jews to take part in that field, but also to face criticism and even wrath during economic depressions. In the modern era, many more politically active members of the Jewish community, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, promoted socialist, communist, and anarchist ideologies, which often put them in the crosshairs of the right-wing. Organized anti-Semitism peaked with the Nazi Germany, but it still exists in different aspects in many different quarters.
Interesting Anti-Semitism Facts:
The term "pogrom" was first recorded in the Russian language in 1882. Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881, pogroms broke out across Russia. Jews were blamed for the assassination because a disproportionate number of the tsar's assassins were Jewish.
Jewish mercenaries immigrated to Egypt in late sixth and fifth centuries BC. A large garrison was stationed in the southern city of Elephantine. A pogrom broke out in 410 BC Elephantine when native Egyptians became angered that the Jewish mercenaries were building too close to the temple of their god Khnum.
During the American Civil War, General Order Number 11, issued by Union General Ulysses S. Grant, expelled all Jewish people from the states of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. Grant blamed the black market on the Jewish community.
The Nuremberg Laws were enacted in 1935 by the Nazi government to separate the Jews from Germans in Germany and classified Jews as a race, not a religion.
Much of the anti-Semitism in the history of the Middle East has been based more on religion than race or culture.
The Russian pogroms lasted until 1884 and included more than 200 riots and untold number of deaths of Jews.
After World War II, and particularly when the Jewish state of Israel was declared in 1948, the Jews of Egypt faced a series of pogroms and anti-Semitic laws. Their numbers declined from about 75,000 in 1948 to only a few dozen today.
Anti-Semitic laws were common in Europe until the late 1800s, which included property ownership restrictions and voting rights restrictions. France repealed those laws in 1791, Great Britain in 1858, Italy in 1870, and Germany in 1871, although, of course, Germany briefly reenacted even harsher anti-Semitic laws during the Nazi regime. Semitic laws during the Nazi regime.


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