Why do so many people seem to hate Jews and Israel?

Answer

There is no satisfactory answer to this question. But certainly, there are factors we can consider in trying to understand it. Here is a fab piece on this topic from http://www.simpletoremember.com

Historians have classified six explanations as to why people hate the Jews:

1. Economic -- "We hate Jews because they possess too much wealth and power."
2. Chosen People -- "We hate Jews because they arrogantly claim that they are the chosen people."
3. Scapegoat -- "Jews are a convenient group to single out and blame for our troubles."
4. Deicide -- "We hate Jews because they killed Jesus."
5. Outsiders, -- "We hate Jews because they are different than us." (The dislike of the unlike.)
6. Racial Theory -- "We hate Jews because they are an inferior race."

As we examine the explanations, we must ask -- Are they the causes for anti-Semitism or excuses for Anti-Semitism? The difference? If one takes away the cause, then anti-Semitism should no longer exist. If one can show a contradiction to the explanation, it demonstrates that the "cause" is not a reason, it is just an excuse. Let's look at some contradictions:

1. Economic -- The Jews of 17th- 20th century Poland and Russia were dirt poor, had no influence and yet they were hated.
   
2. Chosen People -- a) In the late 19th century, the Jews of Germany denied "Choseness." And then they worked on assimilation. Yet, the holocaust started there. b) Christians and Moslems profess to being the "Chosen people," yet, the world and the anti-Semites tolerate them.
   
3. Scapegoat -- Any group must already be hated to be an effective scapegoat. The Scapegoat Theory does not then cause anti-Semitism. Rather, anti-Semitism is what makes the Jews a convenient scapegoat target. Hitler's ranting and ravings would not be taken seriously if he said, "It's the bicycle riders and the midgets who are destroying our society."
   
4. Deicide -- a) the Christian Bible says the Romans killed Jesus, though Jews are mentioned as accomplices (claims that Jews killed Jesus came several hundred years later). How come the accomplices are persecuted and there isn't an anti-Roman movement through history? b) Jesus himself said, "Forgive them [i.e., the Jews], for they know not what they do." The Second Vatican Council in 1963 officially exonerated the Jews as the killers of Jesus. Neither statement of Christian belief lessened anti-Semitism.
   
5. Outsiders -- With the Enlightenment in the late 18th century, many Jews rushed to assimilate. Anti-Semitism should have stopped. Instead, for example, with the Nazis came the cry, in essence: "We hate you, not because you're different, but because you're trying to become like us! We cannot allow you to infect the Aryan race with your inferior genes."
   
6. Racial Theory -- The overriding problem with this theory is that it is self-contradictory: Jews are not a race. Anyone can become a Jew - and members of every race, creed and color in the world have done so at one time or another.

Every other hated group is hated for a relatively defined reason. We Jews, however, are hated in paradoxes: Jews are hated for being a lazy and inferior race - but also for dominating the economy and taking over the world. We are hated for stubbornly maintaining our separateness - and, when we do assimilate - for posing a threat to racial purity through intermarriages. We are seen as pacifists and as warmongers; as capitalist exploiters and as revolutionary communists; possessed of a Chosen-People mentality, as well as of an inferiority complex. It seems that we just can't win.

This is a complicated question because the answer is complex and can become inflammatory quite easily. The following are answers given by various WikiAnswers users speculating why some people claim to hate the Jews and Israel. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the people who gave them, and are certainly not endorsed by the WikiAnswers site.

• The license for antisemitism can be found in the Bible, where the Jews who killed Jesus said Let his blood be upon their heads, and upon the heads of their descendants unto the furtherest generation. This has historically been taken to mean that the Jews of today are just as guilty as their ancestors for the death of Jesus.
  
• I'd say this hatred towards other religions, their people or countries is due to the fact that these groups hold views which are in complete opposition to what the "hater" has come to believe. In the case of the Jewish people they, while acknowledging Jesus might have been a man of God, do not accept him as the Son of God and thus this challenges a basic tenant of most Christian religions. While most religions state they can accept the beliefs of others they all hold deep beliefs that they are right and everyone else is wrong. And of course this hatred doesn't just extent to religious matters but almost every difference unique in mankind's existence. Your color, your language, your food, your culture, your place of existence. You name it we all find things to dislike in others. Sometimes trivial sometimes earth shattering. And in the end it seems to be a code of human existence that our ignorance or failure is many times passed off as someone else's fault. The leaders who stand and profess goodness to all are most of the time the promoters of the very differences that drive out hatred.

• Humans are very good at hating people different from themselves. The Jews have been around a long time, and have lived in a lot of different places. Therefore, lots of enemies. As if denying the deity of Jesus wasn't enough.

• I don't believe it is a hatred for the people necessarily, it is senseless to hate innocent people simply because they belong to a particular ethnic, racial or social group. When considering the ramification surrounding issues dealing with world power which is above and beyond the understanding of most in society. I think the [hatred] is more focused on Zionist self-interest.

• The Jews have been systematically demonized and subject to all kinds of conspiracy theories since the time of the First Crusade (1095-1099). Obviously, there have been times when this has been more intense and times when things were rather better for Jews. I think there's little disagreement that Jew-baiting peaked in the Holocaust. More recently, hostility to Israel in some of the media seems to has spilled over into a more general hostility towards Jews.

• We humans tend to be jealous of people who have more money, resent people who have more political power, and distrust anyone from a different culture. Obviously, Jews win the triple crown of scapegoating. They're usually the richest and most politically influential ethnic group, per capita, wherever they live, and they're always very different culturally from the majority. The cultural distinction sometimes makes people suspect that "the Jews" are all acting together as a team bent on subjecting the world to their own interests, or that their different value system and lesser solidarity with the majority community gives them an unfair advantage in acquiring wealth and power. The Christian teaching is that we shouldn't think about such things, but should instead concentrate on our own values and our own responsibility to the community, and let God worry about whether other people are doing the same. But the flesh is weak, and we sometimes fall short of that ideal. The Jews in Israel are the prime example of anti-Jewish sentiment today. They're a very small minority in the Middle East, with values seemingly opposite to those of the majority, and they have the greatest wealth and power in the region, as expressed in advanced military technology and US economic and military aid. Also, Muslims contend that Jews didn't live in that part of the world for 19 centuries, and were only moved into the region after the discovery of oil, to help sow discord, to divide and conquer as it were, and to make it easier for oil imperialists to control everything; i.e. that Israel is a kind of invading and occupying colonial force, or as Noam Chomsky said, "the local cop on the beat". The Israeli position is that Jews have always lived there, and their interest in living there has nothing to do with oil, Europe, or the US. But that debate is a specialized case that applies only to Israel and not to the general question of animosity toward Jews.

• The way I see it, only Christians and Muslims hate the Jews. Why? Maybe because it is their parent religion and hating, and blaming the Jews put a semblance of legitimacy on why they broke away. The same way why the Protestant (of earlier times) hated Catholics, and later on, why the Protestants hated the breakaway Anabaptists, The Mennonites hating the Anabaptist, the Amish hating the Mennonites. The lists goes on and on. Have you ever noticed that the newly formed Christians denominations bad-mouthing the other elder denominations? That's also the reason why most questions posted in this websites concentrates on the differences (which are few) of different religion and denominations and became blind to similarities (which are many) of the Doctrines....Yet they all preaches"Love Thy Neighbor."Matthew 15: 7] Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,[8] This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
  

• In addition to the answers above it is interesting to note that Jews were very much discriminated against in medieval England. They were barred from holding most jobs, and so resorted to working as tax collectors and money-lenders. Loaning money at interest, which at that time was called "usury" (though today the term means charging exorbitant interest), was considered immoral and was prohibited among Christians. This made Jews an easy target for hate. Eventually, in 1290, Jews were totally banned from living in England. The ban was not repealed until 1656.
  

• People who hate Jews and Israel are people who have been misinformed. Some people believe the Jews, or more accurately, the Israelites are an African nation and that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were born in Africa, lived in Africa and died in Africa. As for the State of Israel, they believe it is a colony that was created by the British. All colonies represent the unlawful taking of land. Israel was the name given to Jacob, Israel was not a land. Those who follow this view believe the people who occupy the Israeli State are not Jews, they are Europeans and are not descendants of Abraham and therefore have no right to claim Jerusalem as the land of their ancestors.

• It started with Constantine and spiraled from there. When the church was divided between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. The Jewish calendar, feasts and traditions passed down from the 1st Century apostles were done away with. Jews were loathed as KILLING THE CHRISTIAN MESSIAH.
• Obviously, not everyone hates or even dislikes the Jews. Some also dislike Jews for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. One possible reason is that the Jews tend to keep themselves apart from other people. I often wonder if Hitler's ideas would have found such fertile soil if more Jews in Germany had real non-Jewish friends, not just acquaintances. Many Jews also look down on other people. There are derogatory Jewish terms like shiksa to refer to a non-jew. Often a person cheated by a Jew will declare all Jews guilty, not just the one who cheated him. I've known many Jews and even had a few Jewish friends. They are much the same as other people. Among them you will find all types, good and bad.

• I don't know about the Jews - I am part Jew myself and so is half of the rest of the world, so I don't have any racial problem with them. However when it comes to the English taking it upon themselves to create country and dispossess the inhabitants of the real estate they took to create it, using a biblical story as a basis to do this leading to the destabilization and terrorism that now comes from the middle east. And this just to appease what we now call an Israeli with a European accent is just a little over the top. The English dislike Jews to much to have done the same for them in Britain after all they used to kill them of (cull) them selves through out history.There are really issues here antisemitism and the wrong full occupation of a country.
  

• The Jews that killed Jesus declared that His blood would be upon themselves and their descendants indicates no reason to hate them. There were also Gentiles involved with killing Jesus. So should we hate all Gentiles? If so, then everyone should hate each other because mankind is either Jewish or Gentile. Jesus speaks of love not of hate. Jesus said to love your enemies as yourselves as He was dying for the ones that were killing Him.

• Historically, the Jews have been an immensely unpopular race. This stems from their apparent wealth and control of world business; Adolf Hitler thought they were the cause of Germany's defeat in the first World War. A culture of resentment in general has formed around the Jews, though unjustifiably so. I am part Jewish myself on both sides of my family and I don't have anything in particular against them. However the attitude of the chosen people towards all else is also pretty shabby. Just look at whats happening in the Middle East.

• The devil hates Jews and makes others hate them too, even though they are nice people.

Answer : The deceipt that being Jewish means being zionist, and the determind resistance of zionists to concede the difference.

This must surely be a major factor, in confusing some of those who would otherwise be anti a nation state which depends on genocidal ethnic "cleansing" to exist, (especially if they are direct victims), into believing themselves to be anti - Jew.

Furthermore, having added a further paragraph, at great effort, with great thought, though I have serious health problems, and am not very computer/keyboard skilled, and then finding it simplydeleted, with no comment as to where it was wrong. This adds to my personal experience which in turn adds to the widespread perception amongst activists of the kind of tricks played by zionists, which, when falsely associated with Jews, results in hatred of Jews. When such zionist agitators, who commonly declare themselves to be Jews, and accuse Jewish anti - zionists, of being "false", and "self hating" Jews, and who use despicable double standards, death threats, acts of violence and various trickeries, they lay the foundation of hatred of Jews. As anti - zionist Jews tend to be less willing to be seen publicly than zionists demonstrating hypocrisy, etc., the experience of their victims and onlookers, is one where most overt Jews, will be remembered as hypocrites, etc. This readily reinforces the growing awareness, that Israelis could not have created a new country, without terrorising the previous population, and practicing genocidal ethnic "cleansing against them. And so, we have even more hatred of Jews, originating from zionists.

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First answer by ID3486020742. Last edit by Jew With A View. Contributor trust: 18 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 113 [recommend question]