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They were conscripted for being men, and then sent into battle to die, or be decimated, or what have you. > They were killed for being men from the opposing si

They were conscripted for being men, and then sent into battle to die, or be decimated, or what have you. > They were killed for being men from the opposing side (perhaps killing women and children was considered too barbaric, or women were considered useful for some reason). Or because they were men and thus seen as being future potential combatants where women and children were not. Men were seen as potentially future detriments and thus were killed. The distinction is thin to the point of being indistinguishable. Under that logic, eugenics isn't genocide either. The intent isn't to eliminate a specific group, it's to get rid of some trait they attribute to that group. I'm not aware of any instances where Jewish people were rounded up purely for being Jewish. There was always some misguided and wrong justification, like a belief that the plague was caused by Jewish people poisoning wells, or that their numbers were enough to threaten the Christian institutions, or that they sabotaged the war effort. In other words, they were perceived as "the opposing side" in one misguided way or another. I can't recall any sort of -cide where the cause is purely because of membership in some group. In purely practical terms, it's too expensive and too large an undertaking to randomly decide to do. There's always some kind of twisted logic underneath it.

dumpsterdiver 3y ago
> I'm not aware of any instances where Jewish people were rounded up purely for being Jewish. There was always some misguided and wrong justification, like a belief that the plague was caused by Jewish people poisoning wells At that point though, those Jewish people were in fact persecuted and murdered purely because of their ethnicity. It matters not that the persecution was justified with stories of poisoned wells. What matters is that those stories pertained directly to a specific ethnical group, and that group was subsequently hunted.
- everforward 3y ago
  Sure, and I'd agree with that. My point is that under GP's argument of "it wasn't because they were men, it's because they were from the other side" the same thing applies to other instances of persecution. Flimsy excuses either matter or they don't, and the application is universal.
throwaway749381 3y ago
Longtime lurker here. I am taken aback by the suggestion that Jews have never been rounded up purely for being Jewish. I find this notion historically unfounded and antisemitic. Your comment broadly argues that killing of one group by another is never done with purity of intention. I submit almost nothing people do is for its own sake, but rather woven within individual and collective stories. To think otherwise is to deny the role narrative plays in human consciousness. A cursory glance through a list like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom shows numerous examples of massacres of Jews (and others, but mostly Jews). The attackers always claim justifications--again, no group attacks any other group without somehow justifying it to itself, either initially or post-hoc. 1. What about the many massacres of the Jews for rejecting Christianity? Surely those are examples of being rounded up for the sake of being Jewish, since the Jewish religion is incompatible with, for example, the concept of the divinity of Jesus. A key point here is that Judaism is a tribal and not universal religion. Thus, it is hard to divorce attacks on the Jewish religion from attacks on the Jewish people. 2. What about the massacres justified by absurd pretenses, such as (As you mentioned) poisoning wells, corrupting the host (Communion), or the blood libel (That Jews kill Christian children and use their blood to bake Matzo). These justifications, which do not hold up to scrutiny, only work for a population that wants to believe them in the first place. The sheer number of nonsensical justifications points to the underlying fact--there is no justification at all. 3. Need I mention the Holocaust, in which the stated aim of the Nazis was to eliminate the Jewish race? Even those with Jewish ancestry but with no religious practices (and who were not considered Jews by themselves or other Jews) were nonetheless sent to the death camps. By the way, I have focused on historical violence from the Christian world, but this is not to the exclusion of violence from the Islamic world, of which there has been much as well. In sum, if there was ever an example of a group persecuted for purely "being themselves", it is the Jews.
- everforward 3y ago
  I appear to have struck a nerve, and I apologize for the offense. My intent wasn't to imply or argue that Jewish people have never been persecuted. I would agree that Jewish people have certainly been persecuted for their faith. My point was primarily that in a world view where flimsy excuses like the side of a combatant makes something not a gendered massacre, those same flimsy excuses would also apply to other instances of mass killings. I'm essentially arguing that if a mass killing predominantly or solely impacts a certain group of people, then it counts as a targeted killing of that group. The justification is largely irrelevant. Given the 2 responses, I apparently did a poor job of conveying that and should have been more clear.

dumpsterdiver 3y ago

> I'm not aware of any instances where Jewish people were rounded up purely for being Jewish. There was always some misguided and wrong justification, like a belief that the plague was caused by Jewish people poisoning wells At that point though, those Jewish people were in fact persecuted and murdered purely because of their ethnicity. It matters not that the persecution was justified with stories of poisoned wells. What matters is that those stories pertained directly to a specific ethnical group, and that group was subsequently hunted.

everforward 3y ago
Sure, and I'd agree with that. My point is that under GP's argument of "it wasn't because they were men, it's because they were from the other side" the same thing applies to other instances of persecution. Flimsy excuses either matter or they don't, and the application is universal.

throwaway749381 3y ago

Longtime lurker here. I am taken aback by the suggestion that Jews have never been rounded up purely for being Jewish. I find this notion historically unfounded and antisemitic. Your comment broadly argues that killing of one group by another is never done with purity of intention. I submit almost nothing people do is for its own sake, but rather woven within individual and collective stories. To think otherwise is to deny the role narrative plays in human consciousness. A cursory glance through a list like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom shows numerous examples of massacres of Jews (and others, but mostly Jews). The attackers always claim justifications--again, no group attacks any other group without somehow justifying it to itself, either initially or post-hoc. 1. What about the many massacres of the Jews for rejecting Christianity? Surely those are examples of being rounded up for the sake of being Jewish, since the Jewish religion is incompatible with, for example, the concept of the divinity of Jesus. A key point here is that Judaism is a tribal and not universal religion. Thus, it is hard to divorce attacks on the Jewish religion from attacks on the Jewish people. 2. What about the massacres justified by absurd pretenses, such as (As you mentioned) poisoning wells, corrupting the host (Communion), or the blood libel (That Jews kill Christian children and use their blood to bake Matzo). These justifications, which do not hold up to scrutiny, only work for a population that wants to believe them in the first place. The sheer number of nonsensical justifications points to the underlying fact--there is no justification at all. 3. Need I mention the Holocaust, in which the stated aim of the Nazis was to eliminate the Jewish race? Even those with Jewish ancestry but with no religious practices (and who were not considered Jews by themselves or other Jews) were nonetheless sent to the death camps. By the way, I have focused on historical violence from the Christian world, but this is not to the exclusion of violence from the Islamic world, of which there has been much as well. In sum, if there was ever an example of a group persecuted for purely "being themselves", it is the Jews.

everforward 3y ago
I appear to have struck a nerve, and I apologize for the offense. My intent wasn't to imply or argue that Jewish people have never been persecuted. I would agree that Jewish people have certainly been persecuted for their faith. My point was primarily that in a world view where flimsy excuses like the side of a combatant makes something not a gendered massacre, those same flimsy excuses would also apply to other instances of mass killings. I'm essentially arguing that if a mass killing predominantly or solely impacts a certain group of people, then it counts as a targeted killing of that group. The justification is largely irrelevant. Given the 2 responses, I apparently did a poor job of conveying that and should have been more clear.