Thursday, April 07, 2005

Blaming the Victims

"However, my point was that antisemitism is a result of many complex factors and that we are culpable for some of it."

Just about every culture or society or religion you have ever heard of has a superiority complex. They all think they're better than everyone else and Jews are hardly an exception to that rule.

In Western societies you'll see that orientals are often more standoffish than Jews. There's a Chinatown in most great American cities. They're generally quiet people but also very insular.

Were unfavorable Jewish statements about non-Jews the cause of antisemitism you should see similar negative feelings towards most other human societies, etc. But Jews are singled out. Ever heard of antisinoism?

Did all those Koran quotes come to fore from nowhere or did they follow after negative feelings for Muslims began to rise?

The quotes serve to fan the flames, but they didn't start them.

Maybe Jewish insularity, feelings of superiority and quotes to show the same helped spread antisemitism to some degree, but ever were those things not present, I do believe that antisemitism would still exist. Either that or Jewish life would not. Without such insularity, Jewish life would have been quickly subsumed by the larger European culture. It is also all those centuries of non-conformity which aided antisemitism's growth.

It was the fact that Jews were around which caused antisemitism. It didn't matter what the Jews actually thought of gentiles, the gentiles already assumed much worse. Don't try looking to blame the victims here.

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