Every Latter-day Saint needs to educate themselves about the history of the Jewish people and the land of Israel. Many of us have a general idea that the Nazis killed a lot of Jews during World War 2 (the number is 6 million!), and we may even know that the Jews refer to this disaster as The Holocaust. But few of us fully realize that horrific persecution and mass murder has been perpetrated against the Jews for centuries.
Persecution by Christians
After Babylon conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 586 BCE, many Jews fled to Spain (Sepharad in Hebrew). When Christianity came to Spain in the Third and Fourth Century, The Jews began to be force segregated from the rest of society.
During the High Middle Ages (1000 to 1300 CE) in Europe there were full-scale persecutions of Jews including expulsions and massacres. In 1096 the preaching of the Christian First Crusade led to the Rhineland Massacres, which were a series of murders of Jews by mobs of French and German Christians.
In 1290, King Edward I expelled the entire Jewish population of England. This was partly fueled by false allegations that Jews abducted and murdered Christian children for magical rituals.
Beginning in 1391, the Jews in Spain were forced to convert to Catholicism or die. Four thousand Jews were massacred in just the city of Seville. On March 31, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella (yes, the same ones who financed Columbus) signed the Alhambra Decree which required the complete Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. They were given three months to leave but were provided with nowhere to go.
In 1496, the Jews were expelled from Portugal by King Manuel I. They were told they could stay if they converted to Catholicism.
During the 19th Century, Imperial Russia had the world’s largest population of Jews. Most Jews were restricted to living in an area known as the “Pale of Settlement.” Even within the Pale, a number of cities prohibited Jews from living there.
Jewish villages in the Pale were subject to government-sanctioned anti-Jewish riots and pogroms. This violence was particularity bad in the years from 1881 to 1813 and again from 1903 to 1906.
Then, of course, there were the “Christian” Nazis of Germany….
Persecution by Muslims
After Islam was founded in Mecca in 610 CE, Mohammed led his followers in a brutal campaign against the Jews of the Arabian peninsula because they refused to convert to Islam. In 807, the caliph of Baghdad forced all Jews to wear a yellow badge (this idea was later adopted by Hitler). According to the Koran, the Jews “are enemies of Allah, the Prophet, and the angels (Sura 2:9798).
In 1465, Arab mobs killed thousands of Jews in Fez, Morocco. In Algiers, Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815, and again in 1830. In Yemen, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or be killed in 1165 and again in 1678. Synagogues have been destroyed by government decree, multiple times, in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
A clear indicator that the Jews were persecuted in Muslim countries in recent years is the change in population numbers in the past 75 years. Since Israel achieved statehood in 1948, the Jews have been almost completely forced out of the Muslim countries of North Africa and the countries that surround Israel.
A Jewish homeland
The examples above are a very small sampling of what the Jewish people have had to endure for centuries. Any discussion of policy regarding the Jewish people or the State of Israel must be informed by an accurate, and sympathetic, understanding of this history.
After being forcefully and violently murdered and pushed out of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Arab countries, the Jews are now finally reestablished in their original homeland – Eretz Israel. They will not be moved. They have no choice. The world has chased them out of everywhere else.
Zionism is not racism. It is not colonialism. It is both a happy homecoming and a last-ditch struggle for survival.
It is entirely possible, indeed necessary, to criticize the current right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. But to criticize the right of Israel to exist is to further persecute the Jews.
Sources:
Zdravco Batzarov, “History of the Sephardic Jews,” Orbis Latinus.
— “Persecution of Jews,” Wikipedia.
— “Rhineland Massacres,” Wikipedia.
— “Why were the Jews expelled from England in 1290?” Faculty of History, University of Oxford.
Rabbi Dr. Ari Z. Zivotofsky, “What’s the Truth about … Muslim Anti-Semitism?” Jewish Action, Spring 2016.
— “The Jews in Islamic Countries: The Treatment of Jews,” Jewish Virtual Library.
” It is not colonialism. ”
But however you feel, it is colonialism, settler colonialism – it has happened the world over – a new population moves in – forces the existing population out.
Lew, I must disagree. Settler colonialism is when non-indigenous people move in and replace the indigenous people. The Jews, as an ethnic group, are just as “indigenous” to the area as the Arabs. And, as a religious group, they pre-date Islam by Millenia.
” The Jews, as an ethnic group, are just as “indigenous” to the area as the Arabs….”
The Jews who have moved into Palestine came from Europe.
Sorry, Lew, but your knowledge of Palestinian history is weak. 45% of Israeli Jews identify as Mizrahi or Sephardic (from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Iberian peninsula). They moved to Israel because their Muslim home countries persecuted them and/or kicked them out. Only the Ashkenazi Jews came from Europe. More importantly today is the fact that 70.3% of Israeli Jews were born in Israel.
According to wiki half of Israel’s immigrants were from Europe.
Settler colonialism “non-indigenous people move in and replace the indigenous people. ” If in the face of the Trump dictatorship a group of us decided to settle in British Columbia we would be settler colonists.
Ok, Lew, last round. The original post is 2 weeks old. No one is reading this exchange except you and me.
If a native tribe had been forcefully expelled from British Columbia by invaders and then, years later, their descendants, who had been murdered and abused wherever they went in the world, finally returned to their ancestral homeland, revived their native tongue, and built a free and productive society, I would support and celebrate them. I would call it “returning home.” You would call it “colonialism.”
Fine. Shalom.
Ever since reading The Exodus by Leon Uris in high school, I have been compelled to study about early Christianity and Jewish history. It has been amazing to witness the swing of public opinion after the invasion of the Ukraine. The pendulum has swung from one side to the other and the same thing has happened since the attack by Hamas on the kibbutz.
I highly recommend the historical fiction novel “Exodus” by Leon Uris. It was first published in 1958 and became a #1 international bestseller. It was made into a film starring Paul Newman in 1960. It tells the important story of how Israel gained its independence after World War 2. Current events in the Middle East and on American college campuses make a renewed knowledge of this history critical. The book is available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.
I always understood that the Mormons have a special obligation to support the Jewish people. A dear friend has Jewish ancestry in Poland and Russia where most of her ancestors were killed. Her sister became involved with the Jim Jones cult and I have always believed it was partly because of the additional ethnic cultural burden she bore.