History of Jewish Attitudes

Supposedly the Jews have a history of being hated, but what is the history of Jewish opinion about the rest of the world?

Here is a history of Jewish attitudes towards others:

The most insightful ancient critique, though, comes from Roman historian Tacitus. His works Histories (100 AD) and Annals (115 AD) both record highly damning observations on the Hebrew tribe. In the former, the Jews are described as “a race of men hateful to the gods” (genus hominum invisium deis, V.3). Somewhat later, he remarks that “the Jews are extremely loyal toward one another, and always ready to show compassion, but toward every other people they feel only hate and enmity” (hostile odium, V.5). But his most famous line comes from his later work, Annals. There he examines the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, and Nero’s reaction to it. Nero, says Tacitus, pinned the blame in part on the Christians and Jews—“a class of men loathed for their vices.” The Jews “were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race” (odio humani generis, XV.44). Clearly this was the decisive factor, certainly in Tacitus’ eyes and perhaps in all of Rome: that the Jewish odio humani generis, hatred of humanity, was a sufficient crime to banish and even slay them.

I could go on, but the message is clear: The ancient world viewed the Jews as exceptional haters. I could also cite, for example, Philostratus circa 230 AD (“The Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against all humanity”) or Porphyry circa 280 AD (The Jews are “the impious enemies of all nations”)—but the point is made.

Importantly, this impression carried on for centuries in Europe, into the Renaissance, the Reformation, and even through to the present day. Martin Luther’s monumental work On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) includes this passage: “Now you can see what fine children of Abraham the Jews really are, how well they take after their father [the Devil], yes, what a fine people of God they are. They boast before God of their physical birth and of the noble blood inherited from their fathers, despising all other people.”[6]On the Jews and Their Lies (2020, T. Dalton, ed; Clemens & Blair), p. 53. Two centuries later, circa 1745, Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud wrote that “The Jews…were hated because they were known to hate other men.”[7]Eternal Strangers, p. 68. And then we have Voltaire’s entry on “Jews” in his famous Philosophical Dictionary, which reads as follows:

It is certain that the Jewish nation is the most singular that the world has ever seen, and…in a political view, the most contemptible of all. … It is commonly said that the abhorrence in which the Jews held other nations proceeded from their horror of idolatry; but it is much more likely that the manner in which they, at the first, exterminated some of the tribes of Canaan, and the hatred which the neighboring nations conceived for them, were the cause of this invincible aversion. As they knew no nations but their neighbors, they thought that, in abhorring them, they detested the whole earth, and thus accustomed themselves to be the enemies of all men. … In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.[8]

The article has many other quotes like these. I would have thought that centuries-old quotes about a people would not have much relevance to the present day.

Here are some modern Jewish attitudes:

Society for Children’s Book Writers and Editors put up a post on Facebook that began: “The SCBWI unequivocally recognizes that the world’s 14.7 million Jewish people (less than 0.018% of the population) have the right to life, safety, and freedom from scapegoating and fear.” The June 10 post went on to condemn antisemitism as “one of the oldest forms of hatred,” and asked readers to “join us in not looking away.”

April Powers, the woman who wrote the post, is black and Jewish. And, as of last week, she is out of a job.

Apparently she thought that being Black and Jewish allowed her to scapegoat other ethnic groups, while being immune from criticism herself.

News:

Democrat President Joe Biden raised eyebrows this week after photographs revealed that he knelt before the Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and his chief-of-staff, “ultra-Orthodox” Rabbi Rebecca Ravitz. According to Israeli media, Biden then offered his “unquestionable commitment to Israel’s self-defense,” and promised that his commitment to Israel is “known and engraved in the rock.”

Saying anything less gets you branded antisemitic.

Hollywood has lots of examples of modern Jewish attitudes towards non-Jews, such as shown in this video about the movie Norma Rae.

Nick Fuentes has angered the Jews somehow by his America First talk, and now here is the SPLC bragging about getting him banned:

“Aunt Jemima came off of the syrup bottle and onto the $20 bill,” he tweeted on Feb. 9, referring to the Black abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

Fuentes deleted the tweet after Twitter users denounced it as racist. Joan Donovan, the disinformation expert at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, said this technique – posting inflammatory content, allowing it to provoke outrage and then deleting it before Twitter feels obliged to suspend the offending account – is a common tactic used by far-right actors. Hatewatch reached out to Fuentes by email for a comment on this investigation, but he did not respond. (Editor's note: Following publication of this report, Twitter suspended Nick Fuentes's account.)

I am not sure why anyone would be offended by that tweet. Aunt Jemima and Harriet Tubman are both Black female symbols. The whole purpose of putting Tubman on the $20 bill is to show a Black female symbol, so it should be fair to refer to it as a Black female symbol. I suspect that no one was really offended, and that the real reason is that Fuentes is against military aid to Israel.

Here is more Jewish thinking:

Leading “LGBT” intellectuals are responding to public demands that they stop performing public sex acts in front of small children at “Pride” parades by doubling down.

Joseph J. Fischel, a Jewish queer theorist at Yale, recently published a piece in Boston Review arguing that performing perverted homosexual acts in front of children is important because it teaches them to reject racism, sexism and homophobia, as well introducing them to visual stimuli he hopes will arose them.

In the essay, he dismisses concerns that performing sex acts in front of children brought to “Pride” by their homosexual parents is wrong because they can’t “consent.” According to Fischel, this perspective is “racist” and “bad for children.” He refers to writings by transsexual blue check Julia Serrano, who states that people wearing wedding rings and publicly expressing right-wing political beliefs violate its consent, and so nobody has a right to demand that “kink” and public sodomy be banned from gay parades.

To build his argument from a legal standpoint, Fischel relies on Brenda Cossman, Stuart Green, Richard Posner and Joel Feinberg — all of them Jewish academic legal theorists — who argue that public sex acts in front of unsuspecting people are no more offensive than racist or “offensive” political speech, and that the distinction between private and public behavior is arbitrary, heteronormative, and should be done away with.

In fairness, Orthodox Jews do not go in for this nonsense.