From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.greek,soc.history
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Re: More on Macedonia (was Re: Greece reacts sharply to remarks
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 20:07:09 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <9301261746.AA10633@kocrsw06.delcoelect.com> c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Spiros Triantafyllopoulos) writes:

>And there's one Ancient Historian that has *nothing* to contribute to
>today's political discussions. 
>[other than by 'digging up more dirt about dem greeks']

Your insight and ability to foresee events is truly amazing, "sipa of
delco".

  <<In Roman Egypt and Syria there were difficulties caused by the
  long-standing Greek antipathy for Jews. Hellenic authors depicted
  Jews as a contaminated rabble of unclean lepers, whom the Egyptians
  had thrown out of their country in the time of Moses in order to
  purge themselves of defilement. Already at this time the Greeks were
  inventing the blood libel and desecration of host fantasies which
  were to cause so much suffering in later times, affirming that Jews
  sacrificed human beings at the Temple in Jerusalem, using their blood
  for religious rituals. Many Greeks used the destruction of the Temple
  as proof that God hated the Jews and was punishing them for their
  'evil acts'. As a result, even as Rome continued to treat Jews well,
  in the East there were numerous Greek attacks against Jewish settlements.

  After the Edict of Milan (AD 312) began Roman Empire's gradual conversion
  to Christianity (...) the Empire became increasingly intolerant toward
  Jews. The Hellenistic anti-Semitic images of the Jews as a people whom
  God hated were revived. Roman Jews therefore were gradually deprived
  of their rights and made into second-class citizens. They were excluded
  from administrative and military positions. (...) and the masses
  increasingly attacked them in the streets as well as in their homes
  and shops. In 387-388 Christian mobs followed the destruction of all the
  heathen temples in Rome by going on to destroy synagogues as well....>>

 <<This intolerance and persecution was even worse in the East Roman
   Empire, founded in AD 330, when Emperor Constantine dedicated the old
   town of Byzantum as the site for his new capital and gave it his name,
   Constantinople. Imperial edicts starting with those of Emperor Arcadius
   in 395 and continuing until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople
   in 1453, subjected Byzantine Jewry to over a millenium of oppression
   and persecution. Thousands of Jews who had flooded into Asia Minor
   following their exile from the Holy Land and their descendants were
   forcibly converted, murdered, or driven out as a result of sporadic
   purges.>>

  <<Jews were similarly persecuted on a large scale in Serbia and the
   other Balkan states in the two centuries before they were conquered
   by the Turks. In Crete, the Jews comprised a middle class between
   the mass of Greeks and the feudal nobles, acting as bankers, artisans,
   lawyers and physicians, with the right to maintain their own community
   organization. They were treated as serfs, however, forced to live in a
   ghetto (Ciudecca), and to affix a special Jewish badge to the fronts of
   their houses as well as on their clothing. After the island came under
   Venetian rule in 1204, local Greeks continued to harass,  persecute,
   and attack their Jewish neighbors, particularly because of Jewish
   support for the periodic Muslim efforts to conquer the island. (...)
   During the Venetian war with the Ottomans in 1538, the Jews were
   subjected to extortions to finance the military operations, and a rumor
   that the jews of Crete were helping the Ottomans led local Greeks
   to massacre all the Jews they could find. Giacomo Foscari (1574-77)
   introduced harsh anti-Jewish laws intended to force them to convert or
   to live in isolated parts of the island.>>

Serdar Argic

                           'We closed the roads and mountain passes that 
                            might serve as ways of escape for the Turks 
                            and then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)
                           'In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists 
                            a single Turkish soul.'    (Sahak Melkonian)


Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast