[orieleye]

Originally Posted by Errigal

Anti-Semitism, like terrorism, is an old problem. And as with terrorism, so with anti-Semitism: even a minor outbreak reminds us of the consequences in the past of not taking it seriously enough.
The \'Problem of Evil\' in Postwar Europe - The New York Review of Books

On the one hand the near extermination of Europe's Jews summarized the case for Zionism. Jews could not survive and flourish in non-Jewish lands, their integration and assimilation into European nations and cultures was a tragic delusion, and they must have a state of their own.

These two quotes imply that anti-semitism mysteriously broke out now and again, and that Jews tried to integrate and assimilate. The mystery as to the causes of anti-semitism derives from ignoring the Jews' own behaviour (for instance as taxing middlemen in Poland for centuries) which made the gentiles hostile. As for the Jews deluding themselves about assimilation, there is a lot of truth in that, because assimilation ran contrary to their own separatist practises: endogamous marriage, exclusive dietary and dress customs, and an ethnic religion centered on the notion of a chosen people. Those traditions kept Jews apart more than any reactive gentile hostility. As they were thrown out of every major European country, sometimes more than once, they should at some stage have realised that it wasn't just gentile evil to blame. A Holocaust rethink should encompass these issues too.

I recommend A People that shall dwell alone, by Kevin MacDonald.