Judge the Jewry?

With the current ‘crisis’ in the Israel-Palestine drama with a 19 year old Jewish soldier abducted, another significant incursion and the abduction of a significant portion of the Hamas government I decided to jot down some thoughts about Jews.

1) The Jews hold a rich history and are even newsworthy today. It’s thousands of years old and still unfolding. Their involvement with the Romans and other powerful civilisations and Nazi Germany with the Holocaust means it’s quite entwined with European History as well.

2) The Jews are unusual in that it’s essentially a nation, a race and a religion entwined as one (with plenty of exception of course). So when one says ’Jew’ there are multiple meanings implied.

3) The Jews have a long history of persecution with the Nazi Holocaust being the famous one but there have been many other examples if one digs a little into history. While persecution is nothing new for any race or religion it does seem the Jews get a higher level of it.

4) When I looked up the population statistics for the Jews I was somewhat surprised that there were so few. There are 15 Million or so most of whom live in the US and Israel with some in Europe and elsewhere. The Holocaust killed around 5-7 million Jews so it’s hardly surprising that this issue is so significant to the Jews.

5) The Jewish religion is quite unique in that it is exclusionist. Most world religions desire and readily fully accept converts. The Jews, for the most part, do not.

6) The most clear cut cause of Jewish persecution are noticeable differences in cultural/religious etc practices. Some of which are considered repulsive to the persecutors of the time. This is not a deep reason because the question of why these differences were so significant or less tolerated is not covered.

7) There are loads of Jewish conspiracies. I was even brought up on a few. I think it’s high time they were tossed out. A favourite seems to be a relatively small number of Jews secretively controlling powerful institutions like banks or the US.

8) The attitude of the conservatives to the Jews is interesting for its lack of uniformity. Some appear to want to continue genocide and others are heavily supportive. There’s not much middle ground.

9) There is a strong relationship of Jews with two other major organised religions of Christianity and Islam. This may serve as part of the persecution from good old fashioned religious contention as well as the issue of Israel itself being an area of interest to all 3 religions. Major organised religions outside of these don’t appear to have the same level of antagonism to Jews. Of course there is also the fact that Jews don’t populate in those areas much.

10) Jews are fairly well known for being rather law based and with strict organised bases of ritual. Is the exclusionism and rigidity of the Jews setting a view of the Jews being implacable? Perhaps hardening the idea in the intolerant that extermination (the final solution) is the only way since change will not occur? This is a more nebulous idea not sure how much truth is in it.

11) Do I think Israel is by right the Jews through God granting it to them? No. I’m no supporter of the religion. However Israel fulfils all four of the most reasonable ways to define land ownership. They were there first. They are there now. They make good use of the land. Others accept their right to exist.

I’ll post more about the actual conflict later.