In 167 BC, king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, taking the Jews at their word that Yahweh was the Supreme Cosmic God, had their temple dedicated to Zeus Olympios. Most Jews loved Greek culture and had no objection. But as always in the history of Israel, a fanatical elite stirred a civil war and took the destiny of Israel into their own hands (as told in the Books of the Maccabees). This episode is interesting because it illustrates the fundamentally deceptive nature of Jewish monotheism. Not only Jews refused to show respect to the gods of other people, destroying their sanctuaries wherever they could, but they denied Gentiles the right to share in the worship of their god, although they claimed he was the supreme God of all mankind. This was utterly incomprehensible to the Greeks. During this period appeared the first written expressions of Judeophobia, which include various versions of the story that Jews had not escaped from Egypt as they claimed, but had been expelled from there as either physical or spiritual lepers.

We find this story for example in Diodorus Siculus, who also tells that, when king Antiochus VII Euergetes besieged Jerusalem in 134 BC, his friends “earnestly advised him to root out the whole nation, or at least to abolish their laws, and compel them to change their former manner of living. But the king, being of a generous spirit and mild disposition, received hostages and pardoned the Jews: but he demolished the walls of Jerusalem, and took the tribute that was due”. Thus the Hasmonean kingdom survived, until the Roman general Pompey intervened to end a civil war and put an end to Jewish independence (62 BC).

In 66 AD, emperor Nero sent his general Vespasian and his son Titus to subdue a rebellious Jerusalem. The war lasted four years, and ended with the looting and destruction of the temple. The Romans would normally welcome the gods of vanquished people, but the god of the Jews, Yahweh, was considered unassimilable, even poisonous. And so his sacred objects were treated as war spoils, and, as Emily Schmidt explains, “the Jewish people were made into the ultimate anti-Romans: defeated godless rebels.” Moreover, since Jews throughout the world used to pay two drachmas (silver coins) a year for their temple, Vespasian now compelled them to pay that tax to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol.

In the next dynasty, Emperor Trajan had to put down Jewish insurrections throughout the Diaspora, and especially in Northern Africa (115-117). His heir Hadrian tried to eradicate Jewish nationality by outlawing circumcision, under penalty of death. However, he had to face a serious messianic uprising in Jerusalem, led by self-proclaimed messiah Shimon Bar Kochba, who managed to establish an independent state for some years (132-135). The Roman military campaign left 580,000 dead according to Cassius Dio, who adds: “At Jerusalem, Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter.”[vi Jews were banned from the city. The name of Israel was erased and the new province was renamed Syria Palæstina (in remembrance of the long gone Philistines, of Greek descent). As Martin Goodman comments in Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations: “In the eyes of Rome and at the behest of Hadrian, the Jews had ceased to exist as a nation in their own land.”

And where is the Roman empire along with it's emperor today?

But isreal is standing and waxing strong and there is no longer a place called Palestine on earth again and never would there be..!!

Muslims should remove the Quranic verses about killing Jews and other non-Muslim people. These verses are the main reasons for Islamic terrorism, women’s oppression and anti-Semitism. The civilized people should raise their voices against these hateful anti-Semitic Quranic verses. For example, Surah Nisa (4:89): “They wish that you should become disbelievers as they disbelieved so that you and them become equal. Therefore, do not take any of them as a friend until they migrate in the way of Allah. Then if they turn away, seize them and kill them wherever you find them.”