Thepersecution of Jews is a major component ofJewish history, and has prompted shiftingwaves of refugees and the formation ofdiaspora communities around the world. The earliest major event was in 597 BCE, when theNeo-Babylonian Empire conquered theKingdom of Judah and then persecuted andexiled its Jewish subjects.Antisemitism has been widespread across many regions of the world and practiced by many different empires, governments, and adherents of other religions.
Jews have been commonly used asscapegoats for tragedies and disasters such as in theBlack Death persecutions, the1066 Granada massacre, theMassacre of 1391 in Spain, the manypogroms in the Russian Empire, and the ideology ofNazism, which led tothe Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews duringWorld War II.
The Babylonian captivity or the Babylonian exile is the period inJewish history during which a large number ofJudeans from the ancientKingdom of Judah were captives inBabylon, the capital city of theNeo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat in theJewish–Babylonian war and the destruction ofSolomon's Temple inJerusalem. The event is described in theHebrew Bible, and its historicity is supported byarchaeological and non-biblical evidence.
After theBattle of Carchemish in 605 BC, the Babylonian kingNebuchadnezzar II besiegedJerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean kingJehoiakim.[1] In the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute. This led to another siege of the city in Nebuchadnezzar II's seventh year that culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile toBabylonia of his successorJeconiah, his court and many others.[2]
Jeconiah's successorZedekiah and others were exiled in Nebuchadnezzar II's 18th year. A later deportation occurred in Nebuchadnezzar II's 23rd year. The dates, numbers of deportations, and numbers of deportees given in the biblical accounts vary.[2] These deportations are dated to 597 BC for the first, with others dated at 587/586 BC, and 582/581 BC respectively.[3]
WhenJudea fell under the authority of theSeleucid Empire, the process ofHellenization was enforced by law.[4] This effectively meant requiring pagan religious practice.[5][6] In 167 BCJewish sacrifice was forbidden, sabbaths and feasts were banned andcircumcision was outlawed. Altars to Greek gods were set up andanimals prohibited to Jews were sacrificed on them. The OlympianZeus was placed on the altar of the Temple. Possession ofJewish scriptures was made a capital offense.
TheJewish Encyclopaedia refers to theantisemitic persecution of Jews and the paganization ofJerusalem during the reign of EmperorHadrian (117–138 AD):
The Jews now passed through a period of bitter persecution:Sabbaths, festivals, the study of theTorah andcircumcision were interdicted, and it seemed as if Hadrian desired to annihilate the Jewish people. His anger fell upon all the Jews of his empire, for he imposed upon them an oppressivepoll-tax. The persecution, however, did not last long, forAntoninus Pius (138–161) revoked the cruel edicts.[7]
In theMiddle Ages,antisemitism in Europe wasreligious. Many Christians, including members of the clergy,held the Jewish people collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus. As stated in theBoston College Guide toPassion Plays, "Over the course of time, Christians began to accept … that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus Christ's death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time, have committed the sin ofdeicide, or 'god-killing'. For 1900 years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred, violence against and murder of Jews in Europe andAmerica."[8]
During theHigh Middle Ages in Europe, there was full-scale persecution of Jews in many places, withblood libels, expulsions,forced conversions andmassacres. The persecution reached its first peak during theCrusades. In theFirst Crusade (1096), flourishing communities on theRhine and theDanube were utterly destroyed, a prime example being theRhineland massacres.[9]
In theSecond Crusade (1147), Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by theShepherds' Crusades of 1251 and1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions.All English Jews were banished in 1290. 100,000 Jews were expelled from France in 1396. In 1421, thousands were expelled fromAustria. Many of the expelled Jews fled toPoland.[9]
As theBlack Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews were taken asscapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberatelypoisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by violence in theBlack Death persecutions. AlthoughPope Clement VI tried to protect them bypapal bull on July 6, 1348 – with another following later in 1348 – several months afterwards, 900 Jews wereburnt alive in Strasbourg, where the plague hadn't yet affected the city.[10]
One study finds that persecutions and expulsions of Jews increased with negative economic shocks and climatic variations in Europe during the period from 1100 to 1600.[11] The authors of the study argue that this stems from people blaming Jews for misfortunes and weak rulers going after Jewish wealth in times of fiscal crisis. The authors propose several explanations for why Jewish persecutions significantly declined after 1600:
According toMark R. Cohen, during therise of Islam, the first encounters betweenMuslims and Jews resulted in friendship when the people ofMedina gaveMuhammad refuge, among them were Jewish tribes of Medina. Conflict arose when Muhammad expelled certainJewish tribes after they refused to swear their allegiance to him and aidedMeccanpagans. He adds that this encounter was an exception rather than a rule.[12]
Of the three Jewish tribes of Medina, theBanu Nadir and theBanu Qaynuqa were expelled in the course of Muhammad's rule after suspicion arose in the Muslim leadership that the Jews were planning the assassination of Muhammad. On the other hand, theBanu Qurayza tribe was exterminated by Muhammad in the aftermath of theBattle of the Trench. The tribe was accused of colluding with Meccan enemies during the Meccan siege of Medina and subsequently besieged. When they surrendered, all grown men were executed and women and children were enslaved.[13][14] Muhammad is recorded as saying that he would expel all Jews and Christians from Arabia,[15] although this was notcarried out until the reign ofUmar.[16]
WhenAmr ibn al-As conquered Tripoli in 643, he forced the Jewish and Christian Berbers to give their wives and children as slaves to the Arab army as part of theirjizya.[17][18]
Traditionally,Jews living in Islamic states were subjected to the status ofdhimmi, therefore they were allowed to practice their religion and administer their internal affairs, but were subjects to certain conditions.[19] They had to pay thejizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to Muslims.[19] Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legaldisabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims.[20] Contrary to popular belief, theQur'an did not order Muslims to force Jews to wear distinctive clothing.Obadiah the Proselyte reported in 1100 AD that theCaliph had created this rule himself.[21]
Resentment toward Jews perceived as having attained too lofty a position in Islamic society also fueled antisemitism and massacres. InAndalusian Spain,ibn Hazm andAbu Ishaq focused their anti-Jewish writings on this allegation. This was also the chief motivation behind the1066 Granada massacre, when "[m]ore than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day",[22] and inFez in 1033, when 6,000 Jews were killed.[23] There were further massacres in Fez in 1276 and 1465.[24]
In 1354, Muslim mobs in Egypt "ran amok ... attacking Christians and Jews in the streets, and throwing them into bonfires if they refused to pronounce theshadādatayn."[25]
The Almohads wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation, massacre, captivity, and forced conversion was described by the Jewish chroniclerAbraham ibn Daud and the poetAbraham ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim "inquisitors" took children from their families and placed them in the care of Muslim educators.[26]
Maimonides, who had to flee from Almohad-controlled Iberia with his family, said "God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us. Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they. We bear the inhumane burden of their humiliation, lies and absurdities, being as the prophet said, 'like a deaf man who does not hear or a dumb man who does not open his mouth' ... Our sages disciplined us to bear Ishmael's lies and absurdities, listening in silence, and we have trained ourselves, old and young, to endure their humiliation, as Isaiah said, 'I have given my back to the smiters, and my cheek to the beard pullers.'"[27][28]
The Jews suffered during the Ottoman conquests and policies of colonization and population transfers (the surgun system). This resulted in the disappearance of several Jewish communities, includingSalonica, and their replacement by Jewish refugees from Spain. Joseph R. Hacker observes:[29]
We possess letters written about the fate of Jews who underwent one or another of the Ottoman conquests. In one of the letters which was written before 1470, there is a description of the fate of such a Jew and his community, according to which description, written in Rhodes and sent to Crete, the fate of the Jews was not different from that of Christians. Many were killed; others were taken captive, and children were [enslaved, forcibly converted to Islam, and] brought to devshirme…. Some letters describe the carrying of the captive Jews to Istanbul and are filled with anti-Ottoman sentiments. Moreover, we have a description of the fate of a Jewish doctor and homilist from Veroia (Kara-Ferya) who fled to Negroponte when his community was driven into exile in 1455. He furnished us with a description of the exiles and their forced passage to Istanbul. Later on we find him at Istanbul itself, and in a homily delivered there in 1468 he expressed his anti-Ottoman feelings openly. We also have some evidence that the Jews of Constantinople suffered from the conquest of the city and that several were sold into slavery.
Hacker concludes that the friendly policies of Mehmed and the good reception by Bayezid II of Spanish Jews likely caused 16th century Jewish writers to overlook both the destruction Byzantine Jews suffered during the Ottoman conquests and the later outbursts of oppression under Bayezid II and Selim I.[citation needed]
SultanMurad IV feared that the Ottoman decline was a punishment from Allah for being lax on the enforcement of the sharia. In 1631, he issued a decree re-enforcing the dress restrictions fordhimmis, to ensure they would "feel themselves subdued" (Qur’an 9:29):[30]
Insult and humiliate infidels in garment, clothing and manner of dress according to Muslim law and imperial statute. Henceforth, do not allow them to mount a horse, wear sable fur, sable fur caps, satin and silk velvet. Do not allow their women to wear mohair caps wrapped in cloth and "Paris" cloth. Do not allow infidels and Jews to go about in Muslim manner and garment. Hinder and remove these kinds. Do not lose a minute in executing the order that I have proclaimed in this manner.
When a fire devastated much of Constantinople in 1660, the Ottomans blamed the Jews and expelled them from the city. Inscribed in the royal mosque in Constantinople was a reference to Prophets Muhammad's expulsion of the Jews from Medina; the mosque's endowment deed has a reference to "the Jews who are the enemy of Islam."[30]
In theZaydi imamate ofYemen, Jews were singled out for discrimination in the 17th century, which culminated in the general expulsion of all Jews from places in Yemen to the arid coastal plain ofTihamah, and which became known as theMawza Exile.[31]
TheDamascus affair occurred in 1840 when an Italianmonk and his servant disappeared inDamascus. Immediately following, a charge ofritual murder was brought against a large number of Jews in the city including children who were tortured. The consuls of the United Kingdom, France and Germany as well asOttoman authorities, Christians, Muslims and Jews all played a great role in this affair.[32]
There was a massacre of Jews inBaghdad in 1828.[23] There was another massacre inBarfurush in 1867.[23]
In early 1892, apogrom started against theJewish residents ofZakho, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan. During the pogrom, seven Jews were killed, homes and synagogues were burned, and many members of the Jewish community were imprisoned, tortured, and subjected to heavy taxation.[33][34][35]
In 1839, in the easternPersian city ofMeshed, a mob burst into theJewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed theTorah scrolls. This is known as theAllahdad incident. Between 30 and 40 people were killed, and it was only by forcible conversion that a large-scale massacre was averted.[36]
In Palestine there were riots and pogroms against Jews in1920 and1921. Tensions over theWestern Wall in Jerusalem led to the1929 Palestine riots,[37] whosemain victims were the ancient Jewish community at Hebron.
In 1941, followingRashid Ali's pro-Axis coup, riots known as theFarhud broke out inBaghdad, during which approximately 180 Jews were killed, about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted, and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed.[38]
On March 2, 1974, the bodies of fourSyrian Jewish women were discovered by border police in a cave in theZabdani Mountains northwest of Damascus. Fara Zeibak, 24, her sisters, Lulu Zeibak, 23, Mazal Zeibak, 22 and their cousin, Eva Saad, 18, had contracted with a band of smugglers to flee from Syria to Lebanon and eventually to Israel. The girls' bodies were found raped, murdered and mutilated. The police also found the remains of two Jewish boys, Natan Shaya 18 and Kassem Abadi 20, victims of an earlier massacre.[39] Syrian authorities deposited the bodies of all six in sacks before the homes of their parents in the Jewish ghetto in Damascus.[40]
The persecution of Jews reached its most destructive form in thepolicies ofNazi Germany, which made the destruction of Jews a high priority, starting with thepersecution of Jews and culminating in the killing of approximately 6,000,000 Jews duringWorld War II andthe Holocaust from 1941 to 1945.[41] Originally, the Nazis useddeath squads, theEinsatzgruppen, to conduct massive open-air killings of Jews who lived in the territories that they conquered. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to implement theFinal Solution, thegenocide of the Jews of Europe, and increase the pace of the Holocaust by establishingextermination camps for the specific purpose of killing Jews as well as other perceived undesirables such aspeople who openly opposed Hitler.[42][43]
This was an industrial method ofgenocide. Millions of Jews who had been confined to disease-ridden and massively overcrowdedghettos were transported (often bytrain) todeath camps, where some of them were herded into a specific location (often agas chamber), then they were either gassed or shot to death. Other prisoners simply committed suicide, unable to go on after witnessing the horrors of camp life.[citation needed] Afterward, their bodies were often searched for any valuable or useful materials, such as gold fillings, women's hair was cut off, and then their remains were either buried in mass graves or burned. Others wereinterned in the camps and during their internment, they were given little food and disease was rampant.[44]
Escapes from the camps were few, but they were not unknown. For example, the few escapes fromAuschwitz that succeeded were made possible by thePolish underground (which operated inside the camp) and local people who lived outside.[45] In 1940, the Auschwitz commandant claimed that "the local population is fanatically Polish and ... prepared to take any action against the hatedSS camp personnel. Every prisoner who managed to escape can count on help the moment he reaches the wall of the first Polish farmstead."[46]
During the 1930s, manyNationalist Party leaders and wide sections of theAfrikaner people strongly came under the influence of the Nazi movement that dominated Germany from 1933 to 1945. There were many reasons for this. Germany was the traditional enemy of Britain, and whoever opposed Britain was seen as a friend of the Nationalists. Many Nationalists, moreover, believed that the opportunity to re-establish their lost republic would come with the defeat of theBritish Empire in the international arena. The more belligerent Hitler became, the higher hopes rose that a new era of Afrikanerdom was about to dawn.[47]
During the 1930s, the Nationalists found much in common with the 'South African Gentile National Socialist Movement', headed by Johannes von Strauss von Moltke, whose objective was to combat and destroy the alleged 'perversive influence of the Jews in economics, culture, religion, ethics andstatecraft, and re-establish EuropeanAryan control in South Africa for the welfare of the Christian peoples of South Africa'.[47]
For much of the 19th century,Imperial Russia, which included much ofPoland,Ukraine,Moldova and theBaltic states, contained the world's largest Jewish population. FromAlexander III's reign until the end ofTsarist rule in Russia, many Jews were often restricted to the JewishPale of Settlement and they were also banned from many jobs and locations.[citation needed] Jews were subject to racial laws, such as theMay Laws, and they were also targeted in hundreds of violent anti-Jewish riots, calledpogroms, which received unofficial state support.[citation needed] During this period a hoax document alleging a global Jewishconspiracy,The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was published.
The Tsarist government implemented policies that ensured that the Jews would remain isolated. However, the government tolerated the existence of their religious and national institutions and it also allowed them to emigrate. The restrictions and discriminatory laws drove many Russian Jews to embrace liberal andsocialist causes. However, following theRussian Revolution, many politically active Jews forfeited their Jewish identity.[48] According toLeon Trotsky, "[Jews] considered themselves neither Jews nor Russians but socialists. To them, Jews were not a nation but a class of exploiters whose fate it was to dissolve and assimilate." In the aftermath of the overthrow of Tsarist Russia, Jews found themselves in a tragic predicament. Conservative Russians saw them as a disloyal and subversive element, while the radicals viewed the Jews as a doomed social class.[48]
Even though many of theOld Bolsheviks were ethnically Jewish, they sought to uproot Judaism andZionism and to achieve this goal, they established theYevsektsiya. By the end of the 1940s, theCommunist leadership of the formerUSSR had liquidated almost all Jewish organizations, with the exception of a fewtoken synagogues. These synagogues were then placed under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informants. They were stronglyopposed to Judaism (and indeed to any religion) and conducted an extensive campaign to suppress the religious traditions among the Jewish population, alongside the traditionalJewish culture.[49][50][51]
After 1948, antisemitism reached new heights in the Soviet Union, especially during theanti-cosmopolitan campaign, in which numerousYiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were arrested or killed.[52][53][page needed] This campaign culminated in the so-calledDoctors' plot, in which a group of doctors (almost all of whom were Jewish) were subjected to ashow trial for supposedly having plotted to assassinate Stalin.[54] Although repression eased after Stalin's death, persecution of Jews would continue until the late 1980s (see:refuseniks).[55]
While Jews have been present in the Middle East since ancient times and have been a part of some societies,[56] they have faced historical persecution, which has been ongoing in Middle Eastern countries with minority Jewish populations.[57] Though in the medieval era, many Jewish people were integrated into their environment,[56] yet most Jews did not assimilate into Muslim culture, and retained their religious and cultural identity.[58] There have been many anti-Jewish riots in the region, such as1945 anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania and1967 Tripoli pogrom. Following the1948 Arab–Israeli War, and1967 Arab–Israeli War, the vast majority of Middle Eastern Jews fled the Muslim Middle-east countries and moved to Israel and the Western countries.[59]
In 1911, Jews from Italy, Greece, Syria, and some other countries moved to Beirut, expanding the local community. For a brief period under theFrench Mandate of Lebanon and 1926Constitution of Lebanon, the Jewish community of Lebanon was constitutionally protected, however, outside of Beirut, the attitudes toward Jews were often hostile.
After 1947, the security of Jews remained fragile, and the main synagogue in Beirut wasbombed in the early 1950s, and theLebanese Chamber of Deputies moved a unanimous resolution toexpel and exclude Jews from theLebanese Army.[60]
In the wake of the1967 Arab–Israeli War, there was mass emigration of around 6,000 Lebanese Jews from Lebanon to Italy, Israel, Canada, United States, and some other Western countries.[61][62][63][59]
TheLebanese Civil War, which started in 1975, brought immense suffering for the remaining Lebanese Jewish community, leading to a mass exodus of over 1,800 of the remaining Lebanese Jews.[64]1982 Lebanon-Israel war further reduced the number of Jews in the country.[65][66][67]
As of 2005, the Jewish quarter of Beirut, Wadi Abu Jamil, was virtually abandoned, and the synagogue was in a dilapidated condition after the assassination of Prime MinisterRafik Hariri, and there were only around 40 elderly Jews left in Beirut, almost bringing an end to theHistory of the Jews in Lebanon.[68]
In 1945, there wereanti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania, in which over 140 people were killed. Again in1948 Anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania, 14 Jewish people were killed.[69][70]
In June 1967, ananti-Jewishpogrom took place inTripoli. The 1967 riot broke out in response to theSix-Day War between Israel and the Arab world.[71][72] Arab leaders, especiallyGamal Abdel Nasser,[73] broadcast public statements calling for the destruction of Israel and in support for the Arab cause.[11]
On the night of 5 June 1967, the day the war started, a mob of hundreds of Muslim Libyans attacked Jewish homes and businesses in the city'sJewish Quarter, burning theBet-El synagogue to the ground.[74][75] Rioters attacked and set fire to Jewish houses, stores and cars, in addition tolooting Jewish properties.[76] Of all Jewishassets, both public and private, 60% were destroyed.[75]
KingIdris of Libya tried to evacuate the Jewish population, transporting 3,000 Jews into a former Britishmilitary base in theLibyan Desert.[74] Staff of the ItalianAlitalia airline also shielded Jews who had fled to the airport for safety; the airline staff also helped repel rioting mobs from getting to the airport and provided numerous plane tickets to Jews so they could escape safely.[75] Alitalia's efforts were assisted byChief Rabbi of RomeElio Toaff and theGovernment of Italy.[77]
According to sources, at least 18 Jews were killed in the pogrom, and another 25 were injured.[78][79]
The pogrom was beginning of the end forJews in Libya.[80] 4,100[72] Jews managed to flee the country to Italy, including 2,500 who arrived toRome via Alitalia.[76][75] AfterMuammar Gaddafi took power in a1969 coup, he ordered a persecution campaign against his country's Jewish minority, which led to the remaining 100 Jews fleeing the country.[81]
Overall, the difficulty in calculation arises because the biblical texts provide varying numbers for the different deportations. The HB/OT's conflicting figures for the dates, number and victims of the Babylonian deportations become even more of a problem for historical reconstruction because, other than the brief reference to the first capture of Jerusalem (597) in theBabylonian Chronicle, historians have only the biblical sources with which to work.
The Mufti tried to establish Muslim rights and the Jews were deliberately antagonized by building works and noise.
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