Why did the jews leave and returned in 1948?

[Lonkut]

I have question. After moses led the jew back to canaan and after beign coqnuered by the romans what happened to the jews? did they leave the lands or what?

 

[Adler17]

After the uprising 79 AD and the fall of their fortress Masada the Jews were spread over Europe, Small Asia and Africa. Some stayed also. The Jews outside of Israel call it the Diaspora. In the 19th century a group of Jews wanted to return into the holy land and so Jews started to immigrate into the Ottoman Palestina. After ww1 Palestina became British and the immigration of Jews had been limited- with the effort that the illegal activities by Jewish nationalists grew. In this time the Arab- Jewish conflict was born. When the British retreated from Palestina they had not solved this problem. Several wars and uprisings followed and until now there is no peace found now.

Adler

 

[luiz]

Zionism, a jewish ideology with the goal of returning to the Holy Land was born in the 19th Century, but the Holocaust was a definately a a "big push", as many jews decided that they would only be safe with a nation of their own.

 

[MaisseArsouye]

Zionism, a jewish ideology with the goal of returning to the Holy Land was born in the 19th Century, but the Holocaust was a definately a a "big push", as many jews decided that they would only be safe with a nation of their own.

I think that the Holocaust also made a lot of Europeans felt guilty. And actually there were right to feel so. It made them very receptive to the idea of a jewish state and it helped jews on their way to build Israël. It was obvious that we had to help jews, that a jewish state was necessary. It's a pity we needed the Shoah to see it.

But the way Israël was created was a big mistake. We imposed a solution to local populations who had nothing to do with Shoah. I sometimes feel that Palestinians suffer because of the horrors we did.

 

[The Art of War]

after taking Canaan, they were invaded by the Assyrians and Babylonians and hauled off into slavery (book of Esther, I think).

 

[Verbose]

The Jewish diaspora didn't start with the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. The social elite of the kingdom of Israel was hauled of to Assyria , became assimilated and never returned. The population left in place became poltheistic and stopped considering themselves as the chosen of Jahweh. (That sees to have been the reason for the split between the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Juda anyway.)

The elite from Juda stayed for a shorter period in Babylon and had the windfall of being conquered by the Persians, who allowd those who liked to return home and restored at least a substantial part of the temple treasure.

What really got the hebrews/jews moving around was the opportunities presented within the Roman empire. The failed uprising in 79 AD fed the process. And there was a repeat in a general rebellion, including the Jews, in a large part of the eastern Med under emperor Trajan (or was it Hadrian?, about 50 years or so after the 79 uprising anyway). That also helped spread the Jews accross the Roman world.

Besides, we shouldn't necessarily think of the ancient Jewish people as a small group. There are some demographic estimates that indicate that the Jews may have made up 10% of the entire population of the Roman empire. 5 million out of 50 or so. (Since this was the community in which christianity started it would explain some of its initial success. It adressed a lot of people from the word go.)

I'd say part of the original Jewish diaspora (Roman times) was due to the success of this group of people. Their communities were established almost everywhere around the Med and remained in place when Rome went christian.
(Christianity may have blamed the Jews for being "Christkillers", but the Jews have also been seen as having a role to fill in the Apocalypse. So the Jews have been kept around to play this part, while having their lives made miserable in the mean time. This is unlike the fate of christian heretics who where hunted down.)

 

[Lonkut]

Where were the jews during the crusades? What I don't understand is that if jews were in canaan ( or whatever ) why did they leave the land entirely? as I understand untill 1948 (?) the entire area of post-1948 was all palestinian. So when and why did the jews leave the land entirely?

 

[Arvin]

During the crusades, the Jews where spread all over Europe, North Africa and Asia minor. As they experienced more tolerance from the Arabs than from the Europeans, they often helped them during the Crusades. Many Crusaders in Germany killed the Jews in their home communities before they began their voyage to Palestine. They hated them because of their prosperity. These progroms mainly happened against the will of the Church (you could say the Pope lost control over the monster he created). The massacres against the Jews didn't end in Palestine, with the difference that Arabs were victims, too. There were so many corpses in Jerusalem that you had to wade through the streets.

For Comparison: When Saladin had reconquered Jerusalem, the Christians could leave the city without being touched. When the christian refugees came to Tyros, the Genuese and Pisanian (sic) seamen demanded astronomical prices for the crossing. Saladin forced them to stop practising usury.

 

[Verbose]

For Comparison: When Saladin had reconquered Jerusalem, the Christians could leave the city without being touched. When the christian refugees came to Tyros, the Genuese and Pisanian (sic) seamen demanded astronomical prices for the crossing. Saladin forced them to stop practising usury.

Yeah well, I won't say Saladdin wasn't a good egg, but he was also a very shrewd politician. He could send the christians to their settlements on the coast knowing that 1.) he'd score points with them for being better at practising "christian" charity than the christians, 2.) by doing so he would give the remnants of the crusader states a logistical nightmare, since they would be burdened with the task of taking care of these refugees. They became a drain on the crusader states' resources, not on Saladdin's.

 

[bigmeat]

it's my uunderstanding that before the crusades jews were treated fine in europe, but when they started crusading the crusaders needed money, and the jews had it, and they use a good excuse for stealing the money

 

[Adler17]

Saladin was a man who lived after a strong codex. He was indeed a very chivalrious man and nearly the prototype of a good knight. The only mistake he had in they eyes of the crusaders was the fact he was a muslim.

Adler

 

[Terrapin]

On the original question, it is worth noting that hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven out of various Arab dominated in the Middle East during and immediately after WWII and these refugees made up a significant part of the population of the new state of Isreal. In this sense, the Arab nations were just as responsible as the Nazis for creating Isreal. It just is not as politically correct to blame non-Europeans for anyone's problems.

 

[Verbose]

Saladin was a man who lived after a strong codex. He was indeed a very chivalrious man and nearly the prototype of a good knight. The only mistake he had in they eyes of the crusaders was the fact he was a muslim.

He was all the rage in the West and among his own, sure. But I know the historian of the rival Zengid dynasty in Mosul, Ibn al-Athir had some pretty harsh things to say about Saladdin. He was considered a religious hypocrit for one.

 

[Terje]

Why was he considered a religious hypocrite?
Could it have something to do with the fact that he treated the "infidels" like humans?

 

[Verbose]

Why was he considered a religious hypocrite?
Could it have something to do with the fact that he treated the "infidels" like humans?

A bit of it is a question of "sour grapes for the Zengids". (Saladdin used to serve their ruler Nureddin, who seemd poised to become the leader of all the muslims, but was upstaged.
They seem not to have considered Saladdin a devout muslim. He just used religion as a politcal tool, to gather all the muslim principalities around himself.

Generally speaking the muslims didn't go in for wholesale slaughter of christians until the Egyptian Mameluks under Baybars got on the scene in the second half of the 13th century.

 

[Verbose]

it's my uunderstanding that before the crusades jews were treated fine in europe, but when they started crusading the crusaders needed money, and the jews had it, and they use a good excuse for stealing the money

I would think it was real religious fervour that made them descend upon the Jewish quarters of towns and cities in Germany and the Balkans, and burn the Jews en masse. A case of "an infidel is an infidel is an infidel", don't worry about what KIND of infidel.
Seems more plausible than greed mascerading as religion, especially since I doubt most of the Jews that were killed had any wealth to speak of.

 

[Arvin]

They seem not to have considered Saladdin a devout muslim. He just used religion as a politcal tool, to gather all the muslim principalities around himself.

Erm sorry, I have a comprehensive problem, probably due to my bad english. Who are 'they'? The members of the Zhengi dynasty? Since they lost their power to Saladin I can imagine that they weren't too excited about him.

And I assume sending refugees to the enemy to pass on the trouble is more ethic then, well, kill them all.

I don't agree with you when you only state ideological reasons for the progroms. It is right that not all Jews were rich, but there were some. And there were also christian crusaders who owed them money for equipping themselves. Since the first crusaders were huge crowds and poor lords (it was called the "crusade of the people" and ended in a massacre in anatolia) it probably wasn't too difficult for the ones who had debts to influence them. These people had no political reason to take part in a crusade, teir motivation was their poverty and their belief (some followed a goose as they thought it was holy) . No wonder that the opinion that the Jews weren't better than the muslims, or, because they killed Jesus (from their point of view, of cause), even worse, spread easily in these crowds. The efforts of the Jews to avoid the disaster by paying the armies' leaders or other lords for not doing them any harm weren't succesful, as we know today. They could influence some crowds, but there appeared new ones nearly out of nothing, and they weren't bounded on any promise.

So, superficially the progroms were ideological motivated, but I think the main cause was economic and social. The animosity the people had towards the Jews existed for years and fueled through the economic dependance of the christians - and pure envy. The crusades were just the ideological valve to let out this hatred.

 

[civ2]

A very interesting fact:
The Land of Israel remained a desert for almost 2000 years and suddenly only during some 50 years it became a garden with flowers.
I read something about this that it was exactly as prophesied.
And that directly shows who is the owner of the land.
If you don't beleive me - visit Israel and compare Negev and Eilat.

 

[Louis XXIV]

One thing to note. The Brittish organized an Arab revolt in Ottoman land during World War I. After the war, the Brittish leaders in Palestine were torn between their sympathy for the Jews who lived there, and the Arabs, who they promised to support because of their help in achieving victory.

BTW, during the Middle Ages, Christians believed that banking went against their philosophy of charity. Although some tried to get around this by doing weird ways to make profits on loans, the Jewish religion had no theological reason not to run banks, so the banking industry became dominated by them. This led to many rich Jews, but, more significantly, it led to anti-Semitism for those who resented their success.

Also, in Russia, there was a campaign of "Rusification". This was designed to make all the subjects of the empire "Russian" in culture (adopt the language, Orthodox Religion, etc). The Pogroms were a result of this.

 

[superisis]

The Knight Templars created a sort of bank organization. Besides, cristian crusaders weren't late to slaughter anyone who came within their way: Jews, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, regional christians (who lived in the holy land and had absorbed its culture... they were christian, but how could the crusaders tell?)