The Land and the Nation

Judaism consists of two parts, the Land of Israel, (known in the Bible as the Land, promised, to Abraham Gen 12:7, 15:18-21, to the whole Jewish Nation Ex 23:31, to Moses Deut 11:24, to Joshua 1:4,) and the Nation of Israel, specially chosen by God (Deut 14:2) 

The two concepts were considered to be joined together. Before the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians it seemed that the nation could not survive without the land. With the exile of the Jews to Babylon, however the Jewish nation learned that the nation could survive without the land. Customs were instituted, like the synagogue attendance and the communal celebrations of the Sabbath and festivals, that kept the Jews unified as a distinct nation even though they had lost possession of the promised land and became scattered to the four corners of the earth. They even believed that they were destined to be scattered all over the earth among different nations, as predicted by God in His promise to Abraham, Gen 15:13, Deut 28:64.

There were in fact three scatterings in Jewish history. Each dispersion lasted for hundreds of years and after each one many Jews returned to their land, while many others chose to continue living in the lands of their dispersion. Those who returned found their land possessed by strangers and had to struggle with them for repossession. 

The nations who had possessed the promised land came to hate the Jews who wanted to return. This is the origin of antisemitism. It became a technique to dispossess the Jews of their land. Naturally antisemitism became associated with the nation and the determination of the nations to possess the Land of Israel was considered preposterous. Most people will laugh at the idea that antisemitism is a technique in the hands of the nations to prevent Jewish repossession of their land.  

This explanation may well be rejected but we are still faced with the need to explain the phenomenon. 

Many people may be right in saying that Christians hate the Jews because the Jews killed Christ and Moslems hate the Jews because the Koran calls them liars and murderers of the prophets.

Neither of these above-mentioned reasons seem to have any connection with the land of Israel, but no one can deny that Christianity conquered the promised land (the crusaders), the Moslems conquered it (The Umayyads in 738 CE) and the Romans in 70 CE.

There is also the amazing fact that Rabbis of the 2nd century CE prohibited the Jews from trying to repossess the land after the devastation of the nation in the Bar Kochba rebellion of 135CE. 

Paradoxically, however antisemitism was go so bad in Eastern Europe that it had the opposite result of dissuading Jews from re-establishing their homeland. The Jews established the Zionist movement in an attempt to save the Jewish nation from annihilation.