Why were the Jews oppressed?

Answer 1

As a general rule people who hate a particular race, religion or creed do so because of fear or ignorance. It is also encouraged by people with an agenda against that group, using Propaganda, half truths and lies. Hatred also underlies much violence in the world. If people stopped exerting so much energy toward hating people who are different, they might just have the energy to rebuild this world to be a happier place. This hatred provided much of the legitimacy towards oppressing Jews.

Additionally, in the case of oppression there were two main advantages:

(1) When people are oppressed, their belongings and wealth can be confiscated. This can lead to lower taxes on the majority, increased privileges for the majority, and a party from which the majority can steal with much more impunity than the government coffers.

(2) Oppressed peoples are the perfect scapegoats for bad public policy or when governments lack knowledge as to a problem's true cause. Rather than try to calm the people and give rational explanations as to how and where they should direct their anger, it is far easier to point at a maligned group of people and say "They did it", regardless of their actual complicity. This was most prevalent during the Black Death and the European Great Depression.

Answer 2

Answer 1

They were not exiled from Palestine; Jews live in Israel.

Answer 2

After the Roman conquest, Jews continued to live, by the hundreds of thousands, throughout what is now Israel and what are now the Palestinian territories. Archaeological remains of their villages are found throughout these areas.

To address the Question, the Romans exiled the Jews only from the Jerusalem area. This was part of the Roman retaliation for the ill-advised attempt at revolt, by the Zealots. The Jews eventually found it impossible to survive in the rest of Judea (Palestine) due to the persecutions of the Christian Romans, from the 4th Century onward, and most left (but not all). Until that time, they had remained a majority in Judea (Palestine).

Answer 3

While seconding everything mentioned in Answer 2, there was a second minor expulsion of Jews from Palestine in modern times. During the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, there was coordinated campaign by Palestinian militias in the West Bank (term used anachronistically) and the Jordanian Army to forcibly expel the half-dozen Jewish settlements in that territory as well as the entire Jewish population of East Jerusalem and the Old City of Jerusalem. The purpose was specifically an Anti-Semitic view that the Jews were evil and the territory should be Judenrein. This banning of Jews from the West Bank was reversed in 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordanian forces and began the Settlement Process.

Answer 3

In 68 CE, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. The Romans did not force the Jews out of Judea (which they renamed Palestine) in a single expulsion. Rather, the Romans expelled them from Jerusalem only; and the rest of Judea lost its Jews slowly, over a period of centuries, as living there became too harsh. Even then, we have records of Jewish communities who lived in Judea (Palestine) during the entire period of the last two millenia. (See:History of the Jews in Israel)

Those Jews who left Judea went to southern Europe, North Africa, Arabia, the Near East, and (slowly) further afield (especially throughout Europe).

See also:

Jewish history timeline

Where do Jews live today?