In the past few years, anti-Semitism has once again become an
issue. Jews and non-Jews alike claim that it is on the rise and the
veracity of this assertion has by now become a bone of contention.1
This anti-Semitism is seen to exist not only in Europe but on a
global scale, and for many, the main realm of a rampant and vicious
anti-Semitism are the Arab world, the Muslim diaspora in the West
and, to a lesser extent, other parts of the Islamic world. Many of
the perpetrators of violent acts against Jews in France during the
year 2002 were, in fact, young male immigrants of Muslim (mainly
Maghrebi) background. And a scrutiny of the content of Arab media
reveals a certain amount of anti-Semitic statements. Outfits like
the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an institute that
documents and translates Arab media items with a critical
intention, remind us constantly of this fact.
The picture of Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism drawn in that context
is horrifying. In many cases, it amounts to the claim that the
Arabs are the true heirs of the Nazis. Whereas the open expression
of anti-Semitism in the West is proscribed by virtue of the
revelation of the Holocaust with all its horrors - so runs the
argument - no such taboo exists in the Arab world. There,
anti-Semitism was imported from Europe, became quite widespread,
and survived its ostracism from the rest of the world.
Nazi Heirs?
In Germany where the atmosphere is especially loaded because the
specter of the Holocaust looms so large, some pieces along these
lines can be found in a collection called A New Anti-Semitism? A
Global Debate.2 Jeffrey Herf's contribution "The New Totalitarian
Challenge" is typical of the "alarmist" streak of the debate.
According to him, we are witnessing a new wave of totalitarianism -
the first one being the German and other European fascisms and
Stalinism. This was overcome by the defeat of Nazi Germany and,
later, the demise of the Soviet Union. Totalitarianism thus
defeated in its traditional domain - Europe - was then transferred
to the Arab and Islamic worlds where it could grow and even become
dominant according to Herf. He points to certain roots of
Arab-Islamic totalitarianism - French fascism, German national
socialism and Russian Stalinism - and sees it as composed of Arab
nationalism in its Saddamist version and Islamic fundamentalism
perceived as a vicious, anti-Semitic and terrorist beast. "This
wave that has taken root in the Arab and Islamic worlds consists of
a mixture of secular Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.
Added to that is an influence of French fascism, German national
socialism and Soviet communism that is tied up to secular pan-Arab
radicalism and Islamic fundamentalism."3
Yet Herf's main contention is not with this totalitarianism but
with the reaction of the European public to it. The world got rid
of the "first wave" through vigilance and armed anti-fascism, and
this experience should have been deeply engraved in the memory of
European leftists and liberals. And indeed it was. But that
changed. In the context of its sympathy for the anti-imperialist
struggle of the Third World, the left developed an enmity towards
the U.S. and Israel that was largely inspired by cultural
anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism; that proved so persistent that
it blinded its proponents to the dangers of the "new wave" of
totalitarianism. Instead of coming out in full force against this
threat and in unconditional support for the war against terror,
spearheaded by the United States and the Israel of Sharon, they
hesitated to hail the war in Afghanistan, came out vigorously
against the war in Iraq, and found fault with Israel's oppression
in the occupied territories. Needless to say, Herf supports that
oppression ("Israel's justified retaliation," p. 206) and those
wars, again adducing the parallel with the war against Hitler, that
might have been less costly and saved many millions of lives had it
been waged in time as a preventive war - like the Iraq war. It is
not always spelled out, but the implication is that the failure to
identify Arab-Islamic totalitarianism is due to an anti-Jewish bias
and, thus, to anti-Semitism even in Europe.
Typically, these warning cries concerning anti-Semitism in the Arab
world are embedded in the picture of a new global anti-Semitism,
and they are not accompanied by any precise depiction, let alone
explanation of the "oriental" anti-Semitism. Rather, it is taken
for granted that it has the same character, scope, context, and
possible effects as Nazi anti-Semitism. Some of the proponents of
this view, like Herf himself, are historians of Nazi Germany but
know next to nothing about the Arab or Islamic world. Accordingly,
they refer extensively to Nazi anti-Semitism but detailed
references to Arab or Islamic anti-Semitism are scarce, second-hand
or nonexistent. Such is the case of Omer Bartov who also has a
contribution in The New Anti-Semitism mentioned above. Apart from a
number of what he alleges are instances of anti-Semitism in the
West, he cites four occurrences that are supposed to demonstrate
the dominance of a massive and vicious anti-Semitism in the whole
Islamic world: the famous (or infamous) speech of former Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad at the summit of the Organization
of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in November 2003; the murder of the
American Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl in Pakistan; some
utterances by the perpetrators of September 11; and the charter of
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organization.4
However revolting these instances are, they hardly serve to shed
any light on the phenomenon "Islamic anti-Semitism." Societies with
Muslim majorities cover a large part of the globe; they differ
vastly amongst themselves; they have huge discrepancies and
contradictions within each of them; and they undergo varied
experiences. In order to grasp any fact pertaining to these
societies, one has to accurately describe it and to consider the
given political and social juncture - mostly within a national
framework and, only exceptionally, as in the case of the
"free-floating" international terrorism, within a global one. And
seen from that angle, the Mahathir speech, the murder of Daniel
Pearl, the thoughts of Usama bin Laden and his ilk, and the Hamas
ideology have vastly different backgrounds. To disregard this fact
precludes any sound understanding of the phenomenon.
The Background
If these incidents have anything in common, it is the fact that
they came against the background of an escalation of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and large-scale and stepped-up Israeli
oppression in the occupied territories. And it is precisely this
common denominator about which our authors remain largely and
curiously silent. To be sure, Bartov, for instance, denies the
intention of mitigating Israel's occupation policies and warns us
"never [to] confuse the legitimate criticism of Israeli policies
with what all reasonable people agree is the despicable ideology of
anti-Semitism."5 Yet this is all he has to say about the
subject.
This and similar pictures are quite widespread in Western
perception. They shift the responsibility for the Palestine
conflict and its existential character away from the realization of
the Zionist project to which the Palestinians were reacting and
onto a Palestinian anti-Semitism seen as an independent variable
that led them to attack the Zionist enterprise, the latter being,
thus, forced to defend itself to this very day. The ease with which
this picture is accepted in leftist and liberal circles in Europe
(and more specifically in Germany) is due to the perception of
Zionism as a defensive reaction of Jews against mounting
anti-Semitism in Europe and the ensuing basic sympathy for Zionism
and its product, the State of Israel - all this of course against
one background: the horror of the Holocaust. That this defensive
movement took the form of a colonizing one in the place where it
achieved its realization, and caused enormous harm to the
Palestinians was less clearly and readily seen - helped by Israeli
propaganda and widespread ignorance of facts and developments on
the ground.
In the Arab world, it is the other way round. Everyday oppression
in the occupied territories is perceived much more massively than
in the West (most Arab TV stations have correspondents in
Israel/Palestine), and, by and large, people are aware that this
oppression does not come out of the blue or is a mere defensive
reaction against suicide bombers but is the continuation of the
century-old conflict. On the other hand, many of them do not see
the defensive beginnings of Zionism in Europe because they are
overwhelmed by its oppressive side in the Middle East. Seeing that
the Holocaust is often brought forward to legitimize Zionism and
Israeli actions and hence the Palestinians' predicament, many Arabs
try to minimize its scope or even deny it altogether. Thus, the
Holocaust deniers find receptive ears among Arabs. And what is at
base sharp criticism and condemnation of Zionism and Israeli
actions - quite justified considering the facts on the ground - all
too often takes anti-Semitic forms insofar as no distinction is
made between the Zionist movement (and, since its creation, the
State of Israel) and world Jewry.
A Double Mix
As a consequence, there is a double mix: In the West, there is
concern over the possible re-emergence of anti-Semitism and over
the actual or alleged anti-Semitism one sees in the Arab and
Islamic worlds. Against this background, Israel's actions in the
occupied territories tend to be accepted as legitimate
self-defense. This concern is used by an Israeli propaganda that
portrays Arab enmity towards Israel as exclusively motivated by a
deep-rooted and intense anti-Semitism of the Arabs. Inimical
reaction to actual or potential anti-Jewish racism can take on the
form of a general anti-Arab prejudice and, thus, another form of
racism. In the Arab world, on the other hand, there is sharp
criticism of Israel and its actions, fed by these actions
themselves, partly intermingled with an anti-Semitism that draws
its inspiration from different sources: anti-Jewish themes of
Islamic tradition, European anti-Semitism, resentment of the label
"losers of modernization," and an Israeli leadership claiming that
even its most brutal acts of oppression are in the best interest
not only of Israel but of Jews worldwide.
The more these lines of argument are left entangled, the more they
will reinforce each other and constitute a vicious circle. To break
it, one has to separate the constituents of the respective
mixtures. In the West, the rejection of Arab anti-Semitism should
not prevent people from seeing Israeli injustice as an important
background for the development of such anti-Semitism, and the
latter should not be used to justify that injustice.6 And regarding
the Arab world, one should try to distinguish between
conflict-induced enmity and anti-Semitism. Dan Diner, in a
contribution to the German volume, states that the enmity of
Palestinians and other Arabs towards Israel and Zionism is
primarily due to the reality of the conflict, but that the origin
of the anti-Jewish clichés and pictures through which this
enmity is expressed should be sought elsewhere. One should seek
them in the anti-Jewish elements of early Islamic tradition and,
overwhelmingly, in traditional Christian anti-Judaism and modern
"conspiracy-style" anti-Semitism that was borrowed from Europe.
This has been readily accepted today, as it enables people to
"understand" their marginal position in the world and their defeats
more easily than by confronting the actual, complex causes.
Conflict-induced enmity and anti-Semitic clichés have become
so thoroughly intertwined that it gets virtually impossible to
analytically disentangle them - or so Diner claims. Therefore, he
suggests a "Gordian" approach: to fight anti-Semitism as if there
were no Palestine conflict and to try to solve the conflict as if
there were no anti-Semitism.7
This formula seems to imply that there is a contradiction between
both courses of action. This does not necessarily have to be the
case. Arab anti-Semitism and the need to fight it do not stop us
from trying to solve the conflict but are an additional incentive
to do so. And work at a solution of the conflict is perfectly
compatible with speaking out against Arab anti-Semitism. So let us
try to do both. To do so, things have to get disentangled, and this
is difficult as Diner rightly claims. One thing, however, has to be
done, and that is a much more thorough analysis of Arab
anti-Semitism than is available so far.8 MEMRI, Robert Wistrich9
and others have drawn a distorted picture, for their own purposes.
Many Arabs and others who resist the anti-Arab clichés have
left the subject untouched because it appears embarrassing. Yet the
problem exists, and it has to be tackled lest it become an
additional stumbling block to the attempts which aim to solve the
problem on a rational and human basis.
1. See for instance the controversy around the study
"Manifestations of anti-Semitism in the European Union"
commissioned and, for a while, suppressed by the "European
Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia."
2. Neuer Antisemitismus? Eine globale Debatte. Ed. by Doron
Rabinovici, Ulrich Speck and Natan Sznaider. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
2004. It should be noted that by no means do all contributions in
this volume fall in the alarmist category.
3. Jeffrey Herf, "Die neue totlit?re Herausforderung," in: op.
cit., pp. 191-210, here p. 195.
4. Omer Bartov, "Der alte und der neue Antisemitismus," in: op.
cit, pp. 19-43, here pp. 33-43. A shorter version of this piece was
published under the title "He Meant What He Said" in The New
Republic, Feb. 2, 2004.
5. Bartov, 27.
6. Bartov is absolutely right when he states: "There is every
reason in the world to reject attempts to justify objectionable
Israeli policies by reference to the Holocaust" (Bartov, 27).
7. Ibid., 328s. The wording of the proposal takes up Ben-Gurion's
famous formula from the beginning of the Second World War: To side
with the British in the war against Nazi Germany as if there were
no White Paper and to fight the White Paper as if there were no
war.
8. For a comparative review of two German monographs on the subject
see, Alexander Flores, "Arabischer Antisemitismus zwischen
D?monisierung und Analyse," in: Inamo 37, spring 2004, 48-52.
9. The writings of Robert Wistrich are a main source for the
proponents of the "Arabs Are Nazis" view; see e.g. his "Muslim
Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger."
(http://www.ajc.org/InTheMedia/PublicationsPrint.asp?did=503)