How a Tiny People's Big Ideas Shaped—and Sometimes Snagged—the World

Imagine it's 167 BCE in ancient Judea, a dusty corner of the Seleucid Empire where a band of rebels called the Maccabees are lighting oil lamps in a desecrated temple. They've just kicked out the Greek overlords who tried to stamp out their weird monotheistic ways— no more pig sacrifices, no bowing to Zeus. These weren't power-hungry warlords; they were farmers and scribes fighting for the right to keep their calendar, their Sabbath, their stubborn insistence on one invisible God. Fast-forward 2,200 years, and those flickering flames still glow in Hanukkah candles worldwide. But what started as a gritty stand for survival has morphed into something bigger, more complicated: a story of a people who, against all odds, turned exile into excellence, trauma into triumph, and a divine "chosen" whisper into a roar of influence that echoes from Hollywood boardrooms to the halls of the United Nations.

This is the Jewish story, or at least one thread of it—the diaspora chronicle. It begins not with conquest but with scattering. Picture the Assyrian armies rolling in around 722 BCE, hauling off the northern tribes of Israel like unwanted furniture. Then the Babylonians in 586 BCE, toppling Jerusalem's walls and marching Judah's elite to the rivers of exile, where they sat down and wept. By 70 CE, the Romans had torched the Second Temple, the heart of their world, sending Jews spilling across the Mediterranean like seeds on wind. For centuries, they were the ultimate nomads: no homeland, no army, just scrolls of law and a knack for turning lemons into intellectual lemonade. In medieval Spain, they were poets and physicians until the Inquisition chased them out in 1492. In Eastern Europe, they built shtetls of Yiddish wit and Torah study, only to flee pogroms that painted them as eternal outsiders - poisoners of wells during the Black Death, profiteers in hard times.

And yet, here's the puzzle that hooks you: Why did this tiny group—never more than 0.2 percent of the world's population end up punching so far above their weight? Twenty percent of Nobel Prizes? Founders of Hollywood studios that dreamed up the American Dream? Leaders in civil rights marches and Silicon Valley startups? It's not magic, or some shadowy cabal (more on that later). It's a survival hack born of necessity. Barred from owning land or joining guilds, Jews leaned into what they could carry: literacy. Every boy learned to read the Torah, a radical idea when most of Europe was signing X's on contracts. That edge snowballed. By the Enlightenment, when Europe finally cracked open its doors, Jews flooded universities and professions, turning exclusion into a launchpad.

But success like that doesn't come without strings. It breeds envy, whispers, myths and yes, conspiracies. Enter antisemitism, the world's oldest grudge match. Coined in 1879 by a German agitator named Wilhelm Marr—not to bash Arabs or Assyrians, mind you, but to give Jew-hatred a "scientific" sheen. It stuck like glue because it was flexible. In medieval Europe, Jews were "Christ-killers." In tsarist Russia, they were revolutionary plotters. In Nazi Germany, a racial poison. Why Jews and not, say, Italians with their Mafia stereotypes or Afrikaners nursing grudges from Boer War camps? Those biases flare up locally, e.g. anti-Italian slurs in 1920s New York tenements, anti-Boer resentment in post-apartheid South Africa, but they fade with assimilation. Italians became "white ethnics," blending into pizza-loving Americans. Afrikaners, after losing 28,000 women and kids to British concentration camps in 1900, flipped the script to rule South Africa for decades, no global victim card needed.

Jews? They stayed distinct, a diaspora without a dashboard light saying "merge left." No nation to retreat to until 1948, so the hatred traveled with them: from Alexandria's riots in 38 CE to Yemen's orphan laws in the 1920s. Crises made it worse. Plagues? Blame the well-poisoners. Economic crashes? The bankers (even if most were just tailors). And the conspiracies? Oh, they were tailor-made for paranoia. 

The forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903 spun a tale of Jewish world domination that Nazis printed by the millions and QAnon echoes today. It's not that there's zero merit in eyeing power hubs. Jews are overrepresented in U.S. media and finance, a holdover from immigrant hustles when "No Jews Allowed" signs dotted doors. But swap "Jewish" for "corporate" or "elite," and you see its systems, not scheming. The trope endures because it's unfalsifiable: Any critique? The Jew cries - "Antisemite!" Any success? The Antisemite cries - "See, they're controlling everything." (The people in these positions are controlling and influential, not because they are Jews, but because of - you guessed it - human nature.)

At the heart of this tangle sits the idea of being "chosen." In Genesis, around the 6th century BCE, God picks Abraham not because he's the smartest cookie in Ur, but out of sheer affection, promising descendants as numerous as stars. The deal? Live righteously, keep the 613 rules, and be a blessing to everyone else - a "light to the nations," as Isaiah puts it. It's less VIP pass, more heavy backpack: Obey, or face the wilderness. The rabbis, scribbling in Babylonian academies centuries later, called it a yoke, not a crown. Humility was the point. Serve, don't swagger. I believe, without any real justification I might add, that God equipped the Jews for the task by blessing them with good genetics, and that their culture intrinsically had ‘features’ (like a strong oral tradition) that helped ensure long term survival and coherence.

Fast-forward to today, and that script's been rewritten in the diaspora glow. In Reform synagogues, it's a feel-good nudge toward justice; feed the hungry, fight the good fight, no divine favoritism required. Orthodox folks might stick closer to the original, seeing it as a sacred grind. But in the secular rush? It can twist into "We're chosen because look how awesome we are." Freud psychoanalysing the world, Einstein warping space-time, Marx flipping capitalism on its head—these 19th- and 20th-century giants fuel a quiet giddiness. Twenty percent of Nobels? That's not luck; it's the payoff of mandating book-learning when peasants elsewhere herded goats. But it whispers: Maybe we are special.

And specialness, unchecked, curdles into supremacy. This is no slur on Jewishness, it is simply an observable reality. It is (again) human nature if you will. For the same reason celebrities feel entitled to dish out life advice and political instructions to all and sundry not because they are in fact special, but because the constant adoration tends to corrupt human judgement. When parents raise children with constant positive affirmations only, entitlement is an inevitable outcome. It is just human nature to be affected by the trappings of your success.

Layer on the Holocaust—that industrial nightmare from 1941 to 1945, erasing two-thirds of Europe's Jews—and you've got a shield as sturdy as it is scarred. Survivors, once pitied or shamed as "too passive," became icons of grit. Reparations from Germany, totaling billions since 1952, rebuilt lives and Israel alike. "Never again" birthed museums, laws, a global allergy to genocide talk. It's powered empathy engines: Jews marching with MLK in Selma, lobbying for refugees from Vietnam to Syria. Beautiful, right? Except when it ossifies into armour. Critique Israeli settlements in the West Bank - land Palestinians trace to Canaanite olive groves and Ottoman censuses - or question donor influence at Columbia University or Harvard, and out comes the invocation: "Antisemite!" 

It's not every Jew, mind you; polls show 40 percent of American Jews agonizing over Gaza's toll since October 2023. But the reflex? It quietens rooms, stifles debate, turns Talmudic argument - Judaism's secret sauce - into tribal lockdown.

Jewish culture is not without its flaws. Many of its actions are not beyond. Using the shield of the Holocaust to place your tribe beyond criticism has led to a backlash. As much as those flaws are understandable expressions of human nature, so is the unsurprising backlash.

This isn't unique to Jews, though it feels that way because their story's so outsized. Armenians, scattered after the 1915 genocide that wiped out 1.5 million, built a diaspora machine: Cher belting hits, the Kardashians twisting pop culture, lobbies prying genocide nods from Congress in 2019. Their "shield" fights Turkish denial but sometimes blinds them to Armenia's own post-Soviet stumbles. Overseas Chinese, remitting $50 billion home yearly, dominate Southeast Asian economies, until 1998 Indonesian riots torched their shops, envy boiling over like it did for Jews in 1930s Germany. Even Afrikaners: Those Boer camps were hell, 28,000 dead from fever and famine. But as white rulers post-1910, they (we) channeled the pain into apartheid supremacy, not pleas for pity. No endless reparations chase; but they (we) wanted to and succeeded at holding the whip hand.

So why the difference? Why is antisemitism so pervasive and so persistent? It is conceivable that the that Jews statelessness - an absence of Homeland made them a people without a pause button. Wherever they found themselves in diaspora, they congregated and built insular little communities that would protect and preserve their identity.

Trauma didn't make them oppressors; it made them organisers, networkers, the ultimate comeback kids. Communal chests funded schools when public ones barred them. Synagogues doubled as strategy sessions.

But unfortunately, there was also a a confluence of other factors that created a "lethal brew" (according to Finkelstein) — wealth from finance niches, organisation from centuries of huddled planning, a post-1945 critique bubble, and that secular swagger. All of these factors inevitably created a sense of superiority that fueled their desire to survive and prosper. And their disproportional success fueled envy. It's not malice; it's muscle memory from when survival meant sticking together.

But here's where the story pivots—not to blame, but to blueprint. Israel's 1948 birth was a diaspora dream: refuge after the world shrugged at gas chambers. David Ben-Gurion reading the declaration amid Egyptian bombs, Jews from Yemen to Brooklyn pouring in. Yet it crashed into Palestinian reality—750,000 uprooted in the Nakba, villages like Deir Yassin erased, claims rooted in millennia of Semitic soil from Philistines to fellahin farmers. The two-state hope of 1967 borders? Settlements now house 700,000 Israelis on West Bank hilltops, aquifers diverted, a "failed experiment" in ethnonational haven, as Norman Finkelstein calls it. It's the chosen puzzle writ large: A light meant for nations dimmed by the glare of "our security first."

An impossible conundrum.

Would it even be possible to flip the script? Lean into the original covenant's humility/ Tikkun olam isn't a bumper sticker; it's code for showing up. Think Ruth Bader Ginsburg dismantling biases from the bench, or Jonas Salk gifting the polio vaccine gratis. Or the quiet bridge-builders: Interfaith iftars in Brooklyn, joint Israeli-Palestinian water projects in the Jordan Valley. Ditch the shield for a mirror. Question the influence not as conspiracy fodder, but as any elite should—transparently, honestly. Renounce the "we're better" vibe for the (original) Biblical invocation: Chosen to serve, not to lord.

This would be the ‘secular’ wet dream of diversity and inclusion. Many would scoff at the naivety of such grandiose dreams. And, to be perfectly clear, so would I. It is the popular, most accommodating stance to take, but I do not believe it is achievable.

In the end, the Jewish diaspora is part cautionary tale, part masterclass in reinvention. From Maccabean rebels to Nobel whisperers, they've taught the world that ideas outlast empires. But the real genius? That endless questioning, the what-ifs over matzo ball soup. What if 'chosenness' means elevating everyone? What if "never again" covers Gaza's kids too? In a world of scattered seeds—Armenians, Chinese, Palestinians, all of us—the path to harmony isn't supremacy's throne. It's the table where stories mingle, lamps relit together. Turn those flames outward, and watch the world catch fire with possibility.

As an Aussie would say after contemplation: Yeah-Naah'.

The cultural missteps the Jews have made are, perfectly understandable. All of them are simply a function of human nature expressing itself in a particular way to preserve itself. Socio-Cultural ‘mistakes’ are prevalent in every nation. A good starting point for Jews would be to admit that and stop weaponising victimhood in order to avoid criticism - even though it is an understandable human instinct. This is what fuels people like Nick Fuentes, and makes his presence in this conversation necessary, because it forces some honesty. (Not because he is ‘right’.)

Once anyone can admit that they may be wrong, only then can the real dialogue start to explore alternatives and solutions.

Whilst you may or may not agree with my exposition thus far, I am pretty certain that the majority of you, and almost definitely all Jewish readers, will disagree with my proposed remedy for the persecution and vilification of the Jewish people over two millennia. 

I can predict with certainty that my solution will be perceived to be insulting and maybe ridiculously arrogant. And just like the ‘secular’ option outlined earlier, my proposal is even more unlikely to come to fruition without divine intervention. From a Jewish perspective, the solution is to 'just leave us alone' - but the reality is that hasn't happened in millennia and is unlikely to ever happen. The world will not just leave the Jews alone to just be.

In the absence of any alternative, viable option, we should consider a solution even if that is possibly offensive. I raise it not to stir or offend, but because I believe it to be true, and I am therefore compelled to raise it: Believe Christ!

I realise this is not an 'argument' and it certainly is not a 'proof'; it is a mere proclamation of faith.  Before you dismiss it, know that this is where all arguments (including yours) eventually lead to: a conclusion that is merely a matter of faith. Even the hardest of hard sciences - Mathematics - that underpin all of science has a departure point a series of axions - statements taken for true without proof. The question is always what is that you choose to believe at the root? My faith is Christian, and I believe that the wholesale adoption of a pure Christian faith by all is ultimately the only path to peace.

Will an entire ethno-religious state convert to a different religion? Unlikely. Not all Jews even share the same faith, so it is a big ask and admittedly an impossible dream. I want to lay just one argument before those Jews who embrace the Torah, hoping to spark a curiosity. Because if you can look anew and discover Christ foreshadowed in your Holy Books, it may lead to a new perspective.

Open the Hebrew Bible and the very first word you encounter is Bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית) — “In the beginning.” Centuries later, the Gospel of John begins with a deliberate echo: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Two beginnings, separated by time, yet joined by a single thread: the Word. Genesis speaks of creation; John speaks of incarnation. Together, they form a prophetic arc that stretches from the dawn of the universe to the cross on Calvary.

Messianic commentators have long noted that Bereshit contains embedded words and images that foreshadow Christ:

Thus, the first word of Scripture can be read as:

“The Son of God, crowned with thorns, upon a tree, as a covenant gift.”

(Read an extended explanation here.)

I understand the Christian Bible is not accepted by Judaism. But Jesus was a Jew - one of your own - and the bearer of a very important message. The Cross was the fork in the road for Israel that would have and still can lead to a different path.

This path we are on now has yielded no peace for two thousand years, has no prospect of achieving it as far as I can tell; and I believe the only viable option is to consider a different path.