Saturday, April 12, 2008

Hugging Jews

Interesting article here.

Interesting thing that people forget is that historical Jew / Muslim enmity isn't really historical. Baghdad had the largest Jewish population of any city in the world at one stage (if I'm not mistaken) and Jews were considered as Arabs too; I suspect middle Eastern Jews were treated much better by their country folk than in Europe.

In any case, my own great great grandfather was a Yemeni Jew who married my Maduran great great grandmother and lived in Surabaya.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi John,

I was surprised for the link, but i am pleased, any how. thanks.

i am not sure if its really historical or not. But it's in the history of each religion.

In Israel, according to Eli, my friend whom i told in the article, previously they have more specific differentiation between Arab, Jew, Arab Islam, etc which i dont understand completely (they also differ Indian from Asian).

nowadays it's getting less differentiation on races made formally. perhaps like Chinese and pribumi in Indonesia-i suspect.

And you are right. It kinda pop up in my mind when i was a child; why do the Jews hates us if the it was the Arian who hated them?

My fellow European said, nowadays although European society support Palestinian but they couldn't really formalize this. It's like a redemption of their past sins.

i think it's wrong. But i can understand. In a way, my willingness to help and do more for Jews is also like a redemption of my guilty feelings over my past prejudice to them.

Unknown said...

i agree with u, western guilt over the holocaust has tied their mouths. compare reactions to tibet and palestine.

history is complicated. too many ppl believe what they are taught in history and religion class.

i was reading about jewish history in the middle east, and read how many jews were involved in the pan-arabic freedom movement for example.

how does that square with israel & palestine? it doesn't, jews, muslims, and christians etc are individuals after all.