What can a person apply from Jewish Diaspora to examine similar cases and problems?

Answer 1

There are several things that a person could take away. The Jewish Diaspora has many corollaries with other Diasporas, like the Circassian Diaspora, the Palestinian Diaspora, the Romani (Gypsy) Diaspora, the African Diaspora, the Armenian Diaspora, and the Lebanese Christian Diaspora.

Importance of Tradition

The vital importance of holding on to one's traditions. If not for the Talmud and Orthodox Jewry, the Jewish people would have forgotten what they were a long time ago (as happened, for example, to the Jews of Kaifeng).

Inability to Self-Defend

In almost every Diaspora-situation, when the population was under the control of the "homeland occupier" and when the population was "countries of refuge", they were often forbidden from having weapons, being members of the government in good-standing, or embracing ethnic or historic symbols. In the case of the Palestinian Diaspora, the Palestinians are brutally mistreated by neighboring Arab States including actual wars in both Jordan and Lebanon, being held in refugee camps continuously, and lacking permissions to work. Because they are strictly forbidden to have means to protect themselves in their "countries of refuge" they are subject to violence and repression, just as the Jews were. The Romani have never even consolidated to defend themselves.

Failure to Elicit General Sympathy

In many cases, including the Jewish and Armenian cases, the victim of the discrimination and violence has an uphill battle to "prove" that they are indeed the victims of violent actions as opposed to being insurrectionists or traitors to the national cause in some other way. There is a large Anti-Semitic population that faults the Jews for their discrimination, just as many Muslim-majority countries near Armenia fault the Armenians for the situation that led to their genocide. Of course, these arguments are ridiculous, but many would rather vindicate the larger, more powerful ethnicity than the small minority. During the African enslavement period, Africans in the Diaspora were also faulted for their enslavement under the belief that they were somehow dumber than Whites and unable to live except in servitude.

Insecurity of Political Changes

Any minority group always watches changes of power with apprehension since a new government can completely reverse the policies of tolerance or marginal acceptance of a previous government. The Jews fled from state to state whenever the situation became too intolerable. In the case of the Circassians, they were allowed to speak their unique language and perform their rituals in Ottoman Turkey and there is a current resurgence in this as well, but the Young Turks and Kemalist government in the 1920s actively banned these things, leading to the mass assimilation of Circassians. The Young Turks had a more disastrous effect on the Christian populations of Anatolia, removing the Greek Christians from Smyrna and ethnically cleansing the Armenians in the east.