General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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The theological origins of anti-semitism
JAMES CROSSLEY charts how anti Jewish sentiment developed from ancient days and the dawn of Christianity to the Middle Ages, the birth of Protestantism and the sinister era of of the Nazis
Black Death
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TODAY, anti-semitism is typically understood as the belief that Jews are an inferior race. This form of anti-Jewish discrimination developed in the 18th and 19th centuries in influential strands of European nationalism. Here, Jews were not seen to share the same culture, language, religion, and history of a given nation. Jews could then be used as a convenient target of blame for a nation’s economic, social and political problems. Cliches about Jews were explained in pseudo-scientific terms as inherited racial behaviour.
Modern anti-semitism was also built on centuries of anti-Jewish discrimination and persecution that predated the rise of capitalism and modern nationalism.
Tracing their ancestry back through the Iron Age kingdoms of Judah and Israel, Jews as a recognisable group in the ancient world developed under various empires (eg, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman). Before the emergence of Christianity, Jews faced discrimination, expulsion and persecution. But this was not unusual for minority groups, religions or smaller territories.
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