Anti-semitism

Anti-semitism. Hostility against the Jewish people. The term was first used by Wilhelm Marr in Germany) in 1879, but prejudice against the Jews appeared in ancient times. With the triumph of Christianity, Jews were increasingly persecuted, marginalized, and deprived of civil rights. In 1215, the 4th Lateran Council decreed special clothing for Jews, thereby increasing their isolation. They were accused of desecrating the Christian host, of poisoning wells, and of killing Christian children.

Although Jews fared somewhat better in Islamic lands, they did not achieve full civil rights in Christian Europe until the 19th cent. Anti-Semitic feelings did not disappear then, however, as is illustrated by the Dreyfus case in France in 1894, the pronouncements of Richard Wagner in Germany, the circulation of such spurious works as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the huge numbers of Jews who emigrated to the United States to escape the pogroms of E. Europe, culminating in the Holocaust. The foundation of the state of Israel was believed by Zionists to be the only solution to anti-Semitism, but as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Muslim anti-Semitism is today even more virulent than its Christian counterpart.