1 definition by History101MiddleEast
Arab anti-Semitism isn’t confined to the fringes of society. Whereas in Israel, overt bigotry is scolded, ignored, or kept out of politics, mainstream Arab culture promotes extreme anti-Semitic ideas through schools, newspapers, television, popular culture, and official ideology.
Bernard Lewis’ classic book Semites and Anti-Semites provides insight into how this condition came to be. As he notes, anti-Semitism in Arab countries (and non-Arab Islamic states such as Iran) has risen as Jew-hating in the areas formerly known as Christendom has plummeted. For example, whatever one thinks of the extent of anti-Semitism still extant within the Catholic Church, most Westerners consider the 1964 decision by the Second Vatican Council to repudiate claims that Jews killed Christ to be a mark of progress, to say the least. In Islam, however, centuries of teaching that the Jews didn’t kill Christ have now given way to an embrace of the very claims Christians have renounced. When Vatican II convened, it was Arab and Muslim organizations that most vehemently opposed exculpating the Jews of deicide—the Quran notwithstanding.
In the 19th century, anti-Semitism became increasingly racialized. Notions that human beings belonged to different races, some superior to others. Under these notions, Jews (as well as Africans and others) were deemed to be biologically and thus immutably inferior to white or “Aryan” Europeans.
Bernard Lewis’ classic book Semites and Anti-Semites provides insight into how this condition came to be. As he notes, anti-Semitism in Arab countries (and non-Arab Islamic states such as Iran) has risen as Jew-hating in the areas formerly known as Christendom has plummeted. For example, whatever one thinks of the extent of anti-Semitism still extant within the Catholic Church, most Westerners consider the 1964 decision by the Second Vatican Council to repudiate claims that Jews killed Christ to be a mark of progress, to say the least. In Islam, however, centuries of teaching that the Jews didn’t kill Christ have now given way to an embrace of the very claims Christians have renounced. When Vatican II convened, it was Arab and Muslim organizations that most vehemently opposed exculpating the Jews of deicide—the Quran notwithstanding.
In the 19th century, anti-Semitism became increasingly racialized. Notions that human beings belonged to different races, some superior to others. Under these notions, Jews (as well as Africans and others) were deemed to be biologically and thus immutably inferior to white or “Aryan” Europeans.
Things changed during 1850-1900s. Jews turned to Zionism as a solution to escalating European persecution and Arab antisemitism. Jews had maintained a sizable presence in the ancient kingdom of Judea (which in the late 19th century Europeans began calling Palestine).
Jewish settlers ran into conflicts with local Arabs. As crude anti-Semitic ideas circulated more widely, the view of Jews as greedy, devious, and bent on world domination became bound up with the Arab critique of Zionism. The first major expression of the now-common view that Jewish settlement was published in 1909 by Turkish journalist Yunus Nadi, who warned without any evidence at all that the Jews aimed to establish “an Israelite kingdom comprising the ancient states of Babel and Nineveh, with Jerusalem at its center.” The conspiratorial notion of the Jews as plotting to take over the world quickly developed.
Because Arab leaders shared the Germans’ hostility to Britain and France—the dominant colonial powers in the Middle East—they were eager to make common cause with Hitler, despite Nazi belief that they, like the Jews, were inferior to Aryans. The mufti of Jerusalem, among others, actively spread propaganda about “Anglo-Saxon Jewish greed” while praising the Nazi war effort. Even years later, sympathy for Nazism could be easily found in Arab culture. When Israel apprehended Adolf Eichmann in 1960, a Saudi newspaper headline read, “Capture of Eichmann, Who Had the Honor of Killing Five Million Jews.”
Jewish settlers ran into conflicts with local Arabs. As crude anti-Semitic ideas circulated more widely, the view of Jews as greedy, devious, and bent on world domination became bound up with the Arab critique of Zionism. The first major expression of the now-common view that Jewish settlement was published in 1909 by Turkish journalist Yunus Nadi, who warned without any evidence at all that the Jews aimed to establish “an Israelite kingdom comprising the ancient states of Babel and Nineveh, with Jerusalem at its center.” The conspiratorial notion of the Jews as plotting to take over the world quickly developed.
Because Arab leaders shared the Germans’ hostility to Britain and France—the dominant colonial powers in the Middle East—they were eager to make common cause with Hitler, despite Nazi belief that they, like the Jews, were inferior to Aryans. The mufti of Jerusalem, among others, actively spread propaganda about “Anglo-Saxon Jewish greed” while praising the Nazi war effort. Even years later, sympathy for Nazism could be easily found in Arab culture. When Israel apprehended Adolf Eichmann in 1960, a Saudi newspaper headline read, “Capture of Eichmann, Who Had the Honor of Killing Five Million Jews.”
by History101MiddleEast February 3, 2021