| For over 2,000 years, Jews in the Disapora were attacked, murdered, their communities destroyed, their populations exiled and in each event those who did it always found `reason` to do it. In the First Crusade (1096) Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed; In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds` Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions, including in, 1290, the banishing of all English Jews; in 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France; and, in 1421 thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland. We know what happened to them some 522 years later. German policy in the 1930s was to exile all Jews to Palestine, their historic homeland. If only they did. Blaming Israel for anti-Semitism today is like blaming your neighbor for the today`s rain. |
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