The roots of this genocide were planted a very long time ago and are embedded in the Jewish belief that they were the chosen people. Though initially this belief was cultivated among them to keep up the spirit of a weak community battling great odds, with the passage of time and ever greater hardships it became an article of faith with them.
Very early on, the “odds” against them sprang from their being odd or peculiar among the peoples who surrounded them because of their evolving belief in monotheism. This led them to stand out among all those around them who were polytheists of different stripes but who, nevertheless, got along with each other on “religious” grounds by accepting the gods of each other.
In the case of Jews, their separateness from the others was further accentuated on grounds other than that of worship, which were an obstacle against intermingling with them. Their dietary laws prohibited their breaking bread with others, and this ruled out eating or attending many festivities together. And their laws against nudity did not allow them to make use of gymnasia with them nor to participate with them in “games” etc. The combined effect of all these was that the Jews were marked out as a distinct community on other grounds than those around them were differentiated from each other.
It was during their Babylonian captivity [ 597-548 B.C] that they completed the transformation of their religion known to us as “Hebrew” or “Israelite”, which was “henotheism”, to that of strict monotheism which we know today as Rabbinic Judaism.
This created a real problem for the Jews especially after Rome conquered Palestine and one Caesar after another was proclaimed a god by the Romans. Jews, who were now the followers of strict monotheism, could not bring themselves to the Caesars as gods and bow down to them, and were thus looked upon as being a rebellious people by Rome.
Eventually, this led to open rebellion by them, and the siege of Jerusalem by a Roman army ensued in 70 A.D, which led to the conquest of Jerusalem, the demolition of the Temple, and the expulsion of all Jews from the city. And this was followed by one final revolt by the Jews in 132 to 135 A.D, known as the Bar Kokhba revolt, in which the Jews suffered a massive defeat, after which they began leaving Palestine in large numbers and settling down elsewhere in the empire. After this it was 500 years, in 638 A.D, when the Muslims defeated the Byzantines and wrested control of Jerusalem, that the Jews were given free access to this city once more.
After the Bar Kokhba revolt the only “religious” community in the Roman empire to be treated worse than the Jews, were the Christians.
It was in 312 A.D that the miracle of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity took place, and he banned all other belief systems from the empire, leaving Christianity as its sole legitimate religion. Almost overnight therefore, Christians, from being the despised dregs of society arose to become the most fervent persecutors in their own cause. And almost the first people they went after were the Jews, blaming them for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ [pbuh], though historically there was no evidence of this beyond the fact that Christ had rebelled against the Temple Priests and their corruption. And it was the priests who were keen to be rid of Jesus who was crucified when he was still a practicing Jew in pursuit of religious reform.
After the Council of Nicaea [325 A.D] during which Christian orthodoxy was defined, the Church organized itself, the Christian priesthood became increasingly more influential, and Christianity began spreading into the heartland of Europe and to its extremities. Many Jews, running from the power of the Catholic Church, had located themselves at the fringes of the empire but the spread of Christianity followed them there. With this what also got organized and found structure was antisemitism as a specifically Christian institution of Europe, which then spread to the four corners of the earth as European settlers put down roots there.
Some of the libels placed at the door of the Jews were founded on fact, but most were rooted in prejudice, bias, and falsehood. And from here sprang many laws specifically as they applied to the Jews and were uniformly injurious to them. For example, most professions considered to be respectable were barred to them. One profession they waded into in a big way was banking as the Church prohibited this to its followers because it involved lending on interest. And the irony was that though this served to enrich a tiny fraction of the Jews, the discredit which sprang from the usurious nature of the business rebounded on them all. In most states they were not allowed to own land and were thus deprived of a livelihood that was both wholesome and respectable. Many became vendors or petty tradesmen. In most large cities they were consigned to the ghetto, and frequently were not allowed to teach or study secular subjects. Often the right of self-defense did not apply to them. In most states they were considered as the property of the king, and many a time they were expelled from various states. Often this was resorted to by kings to wipe out the debts owed by them to Jewish bankers or rich merchants. And often they were visited by pogroms, general looting, and massacres of various intensity.
But in most of the Islamic states of the time they were not subjected to any of these indignities or tyrannies. They lived under the laws applicable to the “Dhimmis”. This allowed them rights of second-class citizens, under which they had to pay the jizya, but were extended full protection as that given to all the other citizens, with their own courts to settle such religious or cultural disputes as were distinct to them. But notwithstanding the fact that they were Dhimmis, many reached the highest positions in court, became ministers, exalted diplomats in the service of the state, and chief physicians to various kings. In short, they were NOT looked down upon in any of the Muslim lands on the basis of their belief.
Indeed, when Ferdinand and Isabella reconquered Spain and expelled all the Jews on March 31, 1492, an overwhelming majority among them took shelter in Muslim countries, and the Ottoman Sultan specifically invited them to his realm, declaring quite openly that Jews were excellent subjects for a state to have, as by their endeavors they helped to enrich the state.
Note. The “antisemitism” practiced by the Christians over the last 2000 years was against Judaism as a religion. When people in the West accuse Muslims of being antisemitic [over the last one hundred years] they only go to prove that they are ill-informed halfwits. Muslims are merely anti-Zionist because of what Zionism has proved to be. They, being obligated to believe in ALL the prophets mentioned in the Holy Quran, just CANNOT be antisemitic in the Christian sense of the word!