Antisemitism is not new
"Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from every other people, neither do they keep the king’s laws. Therefore it is not for the king’s profit to tolerate them." - Esther 3:8
Long before today’s Iranian Ayatollahs, or even Hitler, the Jewish people, always a tiny minority of humanity, seen prospering and achieving merits in every field, even many Nobel prizes in modern times, have been singled out for persecution and extinction. Here are a few examples.
Daniel the Jewish prophet, after being exiled from Jerusalem, grew up and lived in the Gentile nation of Babylon (today's Iraq) in the 6th century BC. There he excelled in every field and, recognized for his abilities, was taken into the Babylonian leadership. His wisdom helped to guide the nation to prosperity, and he was lauded by the king himself. Upon seeing Daniel raised up in position, his fellow Babylonian ministers grew in jealousy and sought to defame him to the king. But upon examination, the king found no flaw or dishonesty in Daniel. Therefore the coworkers hatched a conspiracy by convincing the king to declare an edict that no other god be worshipped in Babylon, on pain of death, as they had watched Daniel in his quarters pray to the God of Israel three times daily, facing Jerusalem. When the king complied, the men reported that Daniel continued praying to his God, and the king was obliged by his own law to punish Daniel by placing him in the lions' den. There he was miraculously preserved from the jaws of the beasts.
Likewise, in Persia (today’s Iran), in the 5th century BC, a conspiracy was launched against the Jews of the empire by a government minister by name of Haman. Seeing the Jews prospering there living under the laws of their own /God, he convinced King Achashverosh of their presence as a danger to his kingdom, and the need to exterminate them. Thus the edict was passed and preparations made. But the plot was foiled by the marriage of the Jewess Esther to the king, making her the queen. She exposed the conspiracy and the Jews were saved.
The same may be said of Joseph the son of Jacob (Israel) in the 15th century BC, who also excelled in wisdom from his God, but was betrayed by his Egyptian employer’s wife, who falsely accused him of sexual assault. He was accused and sentenced to many years in an Egyptian prison. But even there his faithfulness to the God of Israel led him to being eventually released, and then made the second-in-command under the Pharaoh.
Even earlier, when the Hebrews were held as slaves in Egypt, and they were seen to multiply and prosper even under the bondage of slavery. the plot to reduce their numbers by drowning all the firstborn infants in the Nile led to the survival of the newborn Moses, who would later lead Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus.
In our day, the hatred of the Jew has once again risen and increased and manifests itself against the State of Israel, the one tiny Jewish nation the size of New Jersey in a sea of hostile Islamic nations, born of a Holocaust fourscore years ago that destroyed a third of Europe’s Jews, now accused of every crime and sin imaginable. There are nations roundabout whose one declared purpose is the annihilation of the one Jewish nation. But somehow Israel survives the many wars of annihilation and prospers, contributing advancements to humanity in every field - medicine, agriculture, water conservation, technology and, yes, Nobel prizes.
It would seem that jealousy plays no small part in the continued hatred of the Jew - of antisemitism.
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