Israel Foreign Policy Manuel Project

About the FOREIGN POLICY MANUAL PROJECT
The Foreign Policy Manual Project has created this Foreign Policy Manual in order to provide the Israeli government with a comprehensive, Zionist “rights based” foreign policy. Israel is currently facing a diplomatic disaster, due to its self-defeating foreign policy positions, based on the false premise that surrendering Israel's national rights will advance Israel's quest for peace. The fault lies not in Israel's failure to explain its policies, but in their substance. The Foreign Policy Manual Project proposes to act as think tank, which can provide Israel with a winning strategy in dealing with its enemies. Support for the Foreign Policy Manual Project is greatly encouraged. Comments, criticisms, and new ideas are welcome. November 10, 2010 For more information on the Foreign Policy Manual Project: Contact: Alan M. Lurya, Esq.(949) 440-3230
alanlurya@yahoo.com

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Foreign Policy Manual 11-10-10

Anti-Semitic, Who Us?

I hate Zionists, nor Jews. It's anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism:

* A Chicago Jewish day school received a bomb threat.
* A molotov cocktail was thrown at a Chicago synagogue.
* Hand-made posters in support of Hamas were placed on two synagogues in Irvine, California.

None of these places are Israeli. And yet, somehow, they're all being attacked as if they were connected to Israel. Why is that?

Hmmm... Let's think:

Officials say they don't know if there's a link between the incident and increased violence in the Middle East.

Right. They don't know. They can't figure out why people will attack Jewish schools and religious institutions when they're angry with Israel, the Jewish State. But again, it isn't anti-Zionism. It's anti-Semitism.

Anti-Zionism has become the most dangerous and effective form of anti- Semitism in our time, through its systematic delegitimization, defamation, and demonization of Israel. Although not a priori anti-Semitic, the calls to dismantle the Jewish state, whether they come from Muslims, the Left, or the radical Right, increasingly rely on an anti-Semitic stereotypization of classic themes, such as the manipulative "Jewish lobby," the Jewish/Zionist "world conspiracy," and Jewish/Israeli "warmongers."

One major driving force of this anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism is the transformation of the Palestinian cause into a "holy war"; another source is anti-Americanism linked with fundamentalist Islamism. In the current context, classic conspiracy theories, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are enjoying a spectacular revival.

The common denominator of the new anti-Zionism has been the systematic effort to criminalize Israeli and Jewish behavior, so as to place it beyond the pale of civilized and acceptable conduct.

Indeed, Israel is today the only state on the face of this planet that such a large number of disparate people wish to see disappear - itself a chilling reminder of the Nazi propaganda of the 1930s. The most virulent expressions of this "exterminationist" or genocidal anti-Zionism have come from the Arab-Muslim world, which is the historical heir of the earlier 20th-century forms of totalitarian anti-Semitism in Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union. Even "moderate" Muslim statesmen such as Mahathir Mohammad have publicly repeated the classic anti-Semitic belief that "Jews rule the world" while eliciting virtually no objections in the Islamic world. The more radical Islamists from Al-Qaida to the Palestinian Hamas go much further since they fuse indiscriminate terror, suicide bombings, and a Protocols of Zion style of anti-Semitism with the ideology of jihad. In this case, the socalled "war against Zionism" unmistakably embraces the total demonization of the "Jewish other":

As the "enemy of mankind," as deadly poisonous snakes, as barbarian "Nazis" and "Holocaust manipulators" who control international finance, not to mention America, or the Western mass media, while they busily instigate wars and revolutions to achieve world domination.

Such conspiracy theories sailing under "anti-Zionist" colors constitute a highly toxic, even murderous worldview that today is linked to religious fanaticism and a worldwide revolutionary agenda. The same demonizing stereotypes can, however, be found in moderate pro-Western Egypt (home to the Protocols based anti-Semitic soap opera Rider without a Horse), secular Baathist Syria, conservative Wahhabite Saudi Arabia, and the Shiite fundamentalist Iran of the ayatollahs. This is an ideological anti-Zionism that seeks both the annihilation of Israel and a world "liberated from the Jews" - in other words, it is a totalist form of anti-Semitism.

Palestinian suffering and Arab "anti-Zionism" have helped to infect Europe with an old-new version of anti-Semitism in which Jews are rapacious, bloodsucking colonialists. The theme is that Jews were rootless, imperialist invaders who came to Palestine to conquer the land by brute force, to expel or "cleanse" it of its natives. They are the modern "Crusaders" with no legitimate rights to the soil - an alien transplant, absolutely foreign to the region. They succeeded only because of a gigantic occult conspiracy in which the Zionists (the Jews) manipulated Great Britain and subsequently America. This is a typically anti-Semitic narrative of which Hitler might have approved - widely believed around the world, even credited by millions of educated people in the West. The popularity of the Protocols today is the one telling symptom of the growing merger between anti-Semitism and "anti-Zionism".

Zionism is increasingly depicted in some mainstream media as being "criminal" in its essence as well as its behavior.

Zionism, the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, advocated, from its inception, tangible as well as spiritual aims. Jews of all persuasions, left and right, religious and secular, joined to form the Zionist movement and worked together toward these goals. Disagreements led to rifts, but ultimately, the common goal of a Jewish state in its ancient homeland was attained. The term “Zionism” was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum.

Anti-Zionism

What is anti-Zionism?

Anti-Zionism is the conviction that Israel, of all the world's countries, does not have the right to exist. It is the conviction that the determination of what constitutes Israel's "secure and defensible borders" should not be made by the Israeli people, either directly or via representation. It is discrimination or double standards against Israel, even if because of ignorance; the criticism of Israel while displaying relative silence on often much more pressing and tragic situations all around the world.

- The Society for Rational Peace -

Before we had a Jewish State, when we were dispersed among the nations, we assumed that Jew hatred was a result of our not having a country of our own. Because we maintained our unique and different customs in our host countries, people related to us as aliens. It mattered not that we learned the language and contributed to the development of all the lands of our Exile. We were always outsiders.

There were some Zionist leaders who thought that this hatred could be removed with the reestablishment of an independent Jewish state. We would then become like all the other nations and no longer appear as aliens who needed to depend upon others. This line of thought has been proven untrue, because now all that hatred which was directed at the Wandering Jew, who lived without a country and benefited from others, is now directed against the Jewish independent state.

We have been hated and looked down upon as "sub humans" for so long that the nations of the world refuse to accept the phenomenon of a Jewish independent nation in their homeland. They feel a need to impose limits to our independence. They will determine for us how and when to defend ourselves. They will tell us where our capital should be located. They will decide where a Jew can or cannot live in his homeland.

Should we decide to defend ourselves against our enemies we are condemned for fighting as aggressors and terrorists. And should we decide to build homes in our capital city we are condemned for initiating a war!

- Rabbi Eliezer Waldman -

Though Israel may often be deserving of criticism, what is missing is the comparable criticism of equal or greater violations by other countries and other groups. This constant, often legitimate criticism of Israel for every one of its deviations, when coupled with the absence of legitimate criticism of others, creates the impression currently prevalent on university campuses and in the press that Israel is among the worst human rights violators in the world....it is not true, but if it is repeated often enough, it takes on a reality of its own.

- Alan Dershowitz, noted civil rights lawyer -

Is anti-Zionism the same thing as anti-Semitism? Is an anti-Zionist also an anti-Semite?

When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews, You are talking anti-Semitism".
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech at Harvard University shortly before his assassination in 1968, from "The Socialism of Fools" The Left, the Jews and Israel by Seymour Martin Lipset; in Encounter, (December 1969), p. 24.

The older type of anti-Semitism, based on outright racial prejudice, is unfashionable today, and the modern anti-Zionist, whether by calculation or because he is a product of his times, tends to avoid it. He has therefore invented a neo-anti-Semitism, the logical inconsistencies of which are to some extent masked by ambiguity.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" -

Today the boundary between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is often indistinct. It is clear, too, that the anti-Semitism proclaimed by a good many Arab governments is a veil designed to hide the negligence and corruption of the governing classes, and to divert attention from poverty and unemployment by focusing it on an external foe.

- G. Chaliand, The Palestinian Resistance, Penguin, London, 1972 -

Zionism, even as a code word, is the litmus test with respect to anti-Semitism throughout the world, even in America. The facile rhetorical linkage of Zionism with imperialism and racism is little more than an admission that Jews are uniquely not entitled to be like everyone else and live as citizens as part of a majority in a nation, for better or for worse. Zionism, as mirrored in the State of Israel, has proven the point that Jews are in fact just human. Israel has displayed a full range of human achievement and weakness and of decency and its absence common to all nations. Comparatively speaking, one can make the case that Israel has behaved better, given its circumstances. The anti-Zionist, like the anti-Semite a century ago, does not allow the Jew the privilege of normalcy.

- Leon Botstein, The New Republic, September 8, 1997 -

Looking back now over nearly 50 years, I have to say - regretfully - that I believe history has proved me right. The establishment of the State of Israel has merely provided a more "politically correct" name "Anti-Zionism" in place of "Anti-Semitism." If anything,the virulence has increased.

- Derek Prince, Canadian Friends of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem -

In short, "anti-Israeli" sentiment at the UN is often a surrogate for two other predilections: anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.

- John R. Bolton, Senior Vice President, American Enterprise Institute, July 14, 1999 -

The unprovoked attacks launched against Israel, whether against the State itself or its subjects, all derive from the same deliberate attempt at repression - repression of any aspiration towards emancipation of the Jewish people, in the Diaspora or in the resurrected homeland; repression which, alternating with periods of paternalism and condescension, has been a constant feature of the policy of many countries towards the Jews.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" -

During the 1970's, an especially blatant and vulgar brand of anti-Semitism became a unifying global ideology of the totalitarian Left. Couched in the language of opposition to Zionism, this anti-Semitism became the preferred vehicle of the Soviet Union and its clients in international forums for political assaults against democratic nations - most obviously Israel, but ultimately all the West, and especially the United States.

- Ambassador/Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in the introduction to "The Anti-Zionist Complex", by Jacques Givet -

"The responsiveness of post-Shoah Europe to anti-Zionism has many geo-strategic and economic reasons, but it also derives from the easy channeling of traditional judeophobia into anti-Zionism. Thus, it is not surprising that the PLO's official Christian representatives were much appreciated by politicians, intellectuals, and the European media. In antisemitic circles, they were endowed with a holy mission, embodied in the historic role of the Palestinian clergy..."
"...Among the multitude of events from the 20th century, historians in the next millennium may well be intrigued be two particularities: the first concerns the relentlessness shown by many European politicians in exterminating and pillaging European Jewry, the second concerns post-Shoah Europe, which is linked to the first by a similar desire of many to demonize Israel. Yet, this 20th century has witnessed important Western strategic defeats in the Middle East. Armenian independence, promised at the end of World War I (Treaty of Sevres) was never implemented; the same applies to the Kurds. Lebanon, considered as a paragon for the realization of an Islamic-Christian symbiosis, finally collapsed in a bloody tragedy. Massacres and slavery continue to ravage the Christian and Animist populations of southern Sudan; the war in the Philippines fueled be a secessionist Muslim minority group has claimed 120,000 lives over the past 20 years. Genocidal massacres have been perpetrated in numerous countries, but for 30 years the main target-constantly highlighted in the media remained Israel."

- Bat Ye'or in Dhimmitude: Jews and Christians Under Islam, published in MIDSTREAM. Born in Egypt, Bat Ye'or is the author of The Dhimma: Jews & Christians Under Islam (French, 1980; English 1985; fourth reprint, AUP, 1996).

There is no difference whatever between anti-Semitism and the denial of Israel's statehood. Classical anti-Semitism denies the equal right of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations. The common principle in the two cases is discrimination
- Abba Eban, New York Times, November 3, 1975

Jew-hatred and its latest incarnation, Israel-hatred, are the price Jews pay for their role in history. They pay it often unwillingly and they live the role, for the most part unwittingly. But as the great French Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain noted: "Israel...is to be found at the very heart of the world's structure, stimulating it, exasperating it, moving it. Like an alien body, like an activating ferment injected into the mass, it gives the world no peace, it bars slumber, it teaches the world to be discontented and restless as long as the world has not God, it stimulates the movement of history...It is the vocation of Israel which the world hates".

- Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, in their book, "Why the Jews? : the Reasons for Antisemitism", -

A hundred years after Basel, fifty years after the founding of the state, no self-respecting Jew should have to defend Zionism. The argument from history was made a hundred years ago: Israel was our sovereign land from which we were exiled and the claim to which we never renounced; unlike the colonizers of, say, Australia, South Africa and North America, we are returning to--not creating--our patrimony. And the argument from necessity--that a people savagely persecuted and denied refuge in every corner of the globe needs at least one place of its own--was made fifty years ago, tragically and definitively, in the wake of the Holocaust. Moreover, the last fifty years of rebuilding the land with Jewish labor and genius, and of defending it with Jewish blood, have made denials of the Jewish claim unworthy even of reply. No one asks Australia to justify its right to breathe. The time for justifying Israel's is long past.

This is not to say that the deniers are not there. Entire nations deny. Entire leagues of nations deny. Why, the United Nations, speaking for the mass of mankind, would still be denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state were it not so beholden to the United States. The war against Zion is, of course, the leitmotif of Arab international life. And not just of the Iraqs and Syrias. It infuses the discourse of post-Camp David Egypt and of the post-Oslo Palestinians. "We know only one word: jihad, jihad, jihad.... We are in a conflict with the Zionist movement and the Balfour Declaration and all imperialist activities." That was Yasir Arafat in Bethlehem three years after Oslo. (Balfour, no less.)

Arguing with anti-Zionists is not just pointless. It is demeaning. The intellectual battle to be fought today is not with the anti-Zionists, those who maintain that the Jewish state should never have existed, but with the post-Zionists, those who maintain that the Jewish national idea has outlived its usefulness, that it is obsolete, an impediment now both to individual self-expression and to entry into the post-sovereign world of the coming century.

- Charles Krauthammer, The New Republic, September 8, 1997 -

Our disappointment is not in Zionism, but in anti-Zionism, the adjustment that anti-Semitism made when the Jews moved into modern statehood.

- Ruth R. Wisse, The New Republic, September 8, 1997 -

The anti-Zionist becomes an overt anti-Semite as soon as he goes beyond criticism of the policies of the Jerusalem government (a favorite activity of the Israelis themselves) and challenges the very existence of the State of Israel. For to refuse the Jews their right to nationhood is to perpetuate their bondage. To "de-Zionize" Israel would be like trying to "de-Helvetize" Switzerland. The fact that Israel has an Arab minority is shocking only to those for whom the idea of a Jewish majority in any country is intolerable.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" -

Although Stalin said that anti-Semitism was the most dangerous sequel of cannibalism, his name will remain associated with an absurd variety of anti-Semitism born in certain socialist countries under the new name of anti-Zionism ...a sad, ridiculous, reactionary, and very dangerous phenomenon.

- Reporter, Prague, March 1969. Note the date; this publication, the official organ of the Union of Czechoslovak Journalists, was still (to its cost) faithful to the milder line inaugurated in January 1968, before the Soviet invasion. (from Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex")

In the 1990s, many of the Islamic social and political movements in the Arab world joined the resurgent trend of Holocaust denial among European anti-Semites. This was mainly the result and influence of the persistent activity in this field by Roger Gauroudi, a French scholar and leading European anti-Semite. Gauroudi, a former Christian Marxist and French Communist Party member of the French parliament, converted to Islam following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. He soon became a prominent figure in promoting anti-Semitism among Islamic movements. But since he was known for his anti-Jewish writings as a Marxist too, he gained the support of many Arab circles beyond the Islamic movements. When he was put on trial and convicted in France for Holocaust denial several years ago, his popularity in Arab and Islamic countries increased. Even the Islamic official establishments in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) supported him. For instance, in 1997, Al-Azhar, the official monthly of the highest Islamic religious authority in Egypt, published sympathetic articles supporting both Gauroudi and his ideas on Jews and Judaism.

- Reuven Paz is a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute and a Counter-Terrorism expert -

Did even the fiercest enemies of United States policies in Vietnam ever open fire at random, with submachine guns, in Kennedy Airport or within the precincts of a New York nursery school? Has there ever been an incident in which some ferociously anti-communist group has gunned down Soviet tourists (denounced as "Stalinists")? No, and had such things occurred, those responsible would have been denounced as mad and bad. Not so when Israel is concerned.
Anti-Zionism carried to such a pitch is in fact madness. Israeli Jews are killed because they proclaim themselves as such. Israel is to be destroyed because it is a Jewish State. Incidentally, the hostage-taking is never designed to improve the lot of the Palestinian masses, but rather to obtain the release of other killers, previously detained, for further feats. At Munich (5-6 September 1972) and Entebbe (4-5 July 1976), the aim was to secure the release of the Japanese terrorist who had survived the Lod massacre (30 May 1972).

...So, at Munich and Entebbe, the Jews as such were not the target? Fair enough; the victims were not the ordinary kind of Jew, citizens of States liable to persecute or protect them as circumstances or political convenience might dictate. Although weaponless, they represented something to be feared - Jews with a country of their own, Jews disinclined to accept a "democratic, secular State of Palestine" which they know would not hesitate a moment in reducing them to stateless ciphers. Dub a Jew "Zionist" and any crime can be committed against him with the clearest of consciences.

This convenient confusion between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is nothing new. A similar cynicism, and similar sneers, were in order during the great Stalinist show-trials, conducted in Prague, among other places. The survivors have described how, arrested as Jews, they were addressed as "Zionists" so that the interrogators could feign to be anti-Zionist rather than anti-Jewish, while insulting their victims with taunts traditionally reserved for Jews, thus giving brutal bad manners a Marxist dimension hitherto lacking.

...Anti-Zionists, like traditional anti-Semites, see only the reverse side of the coin in Jewish history - the reaction not the act, the accident not the cause, the wastage not the process of creation. In this they display a lack of human understanding and also an inability to think dialectically - shortcomings from which they are the first to suffer. The way in which, to salve their consciences and in the interest of their policies, they picture the Jew as a sordid, guilty "Zionist" freezes their ability to think and feel. The freedom to exist which they refuse me prevents them from seeing the world as it is. Their reasoning is infantile, their information inadequate, their scale of values absurd in that one Palestinian equals 1,000 Kurds or 10,000 Balts or Armenians - and how many Nagas or Tibetans? (A scale in which an Afghan, incidentally, counts for nothing.) The anti-Zionist is not interested in the sufferings of these other peoples and takes no trouble to find out about them, or about many others in revolt against the imperialisms he is all too ready to praise. The free Jew, the Israeli, he is completely unable to understand.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" -

Anti-Semitism is not dead. Although anti-Semitic incidents have declined and a multi-cultural acceptance has produced wider tolerance in many states including the US, a 2000-year-old virus has mutated, and lives on, often in a disguised form. And the existence and achievements of the Jewish state in an area of relative backwardness stimulate anti-Semitism and furnish a respectable cover.

...Hitler exploited anti-Semitism with deadly consequences for Jews and the world. But racial anti-Semitism has been tabooed after the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials. Now the existence of the state of Israel permits anti-Semitism to assume a political form, safe from challenge as intolerance or racism. How many times one hears: "I like Jews but I can't stand Zionism," or "I have nothing against Jews, but I don't like Israel." The existence and achievements of Israel offer a visible and irresistible target for dormant anti-Semitic feelings aroused by a focus on Israel's mistakes and misdeeds, which are characteristic of every state including the US.

- UN Watch, December 1997 -

"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."

- Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League [Israel came into being on May 14, 1948. The five Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq immediately invaded the new microstate. Their combined intention, expressed as above, blurs the distinction with what had just happened in Europe 5 years prior.]

"The Palestine tragedy is unequaled in history. The Zionist imperialistic plot against Palestine was most inhumane and base. World Judaism plans to take over most of the Arab countries to fulfill its so-called historical dream of a homeland between the Nile and Euphrates. The Imperialist Jewish plot is not aimed at Palestine only...-,,
- Haj Amin el-Husseini, former Mufti of Jerusalem, Grand Mufti of Palestine, Hitler's Middle Eastern propaganda specialist during the WWII and head of the "Arab Republic of Palestine" in Baghdad, 1964. The similarity to 'Protocols' is probably not coincidental.

Anti-Zionism is the hatred of the Jews (antisemitism) as expressed through (or masquerading as) hatred of, or bias against, the Jewish homeland, Israel.

- The Society for Rational Peace -

Do Hizballah and Hamas hate Israel because of Israeli policies, or because it is the Jewish State?

Selections from Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizballah and Hamas
by Esther Webman

Anti-Semitism as a corollary of anti-Zionism: a basic tenet of Hizballah ideology as reflected in the Hizballah press

Hizballah is completely opposed to Jews and Judaism and stresses the eternal conflict between them and Islam, although it also cites the more tolerant aspects of Islam toward the Jews. The movement calls to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, but at the same time reinforces its anti-Zionism by reviving the ancient Islamic enmity toward the Jews, revealing that essentially there is no separation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Hizballah's total negation of Israel's existence is, on the face of it, a natural extension of its negation of the West, especially the US, inasmuch as Israel is perceived as a tool to realize American interests in the region. However, this negation based on Islamic precepts portraying Judaism as the oldest and bitterest adversary of Islam and intertwined with anti-Semitic motifs, taken mainly from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeyni's preaching and rhetoric, turns into a basic tenet in the movement's general Islamic plan. It appears, therefore, that the line distinguishing between anti-Zionism - the de-legitimization of Israel's right to exist - and anti-Semitism - a primordial hatred of the Jews is becoming increasingly difficult to define.

.Hizballah spokesmen interchange the terms Zionism and Judaism, and Zionists and Jews, freely. In an interview, Husayn Fadlallah, the most senior religious authority of Hizballah, [uses] Qur'anic references to the corrupt, treacherous and aggressive nature of the Jews. "We find in the Qu'ran that the Jews are the most aggressive towards the Muslims, not because they are Jews or because they believe in the Torah but because of their aggressive resistance to the unity of the faith. They reached an agreement with the idolaters to fight the prophet Muhammad, Fadlallah asserted; they are known as the killers of the prophets; they spread corruption on earth; and they oppress other peoples." The idea that those most hostile to the faithful are the Jews and the idolaters is a theme which appears repeatedly"

Fadlallah and other Hizballah spokesmen do not see any contradiction in presenting Islamic sources as displaying tolerance toward the Jews, on the one hand, and as exposing the Jews' wickedness, on the other. These same sources, according to Hizballah ideologists, also provide the reasoning behind, and the motivation for, the irreconcilable struggle between Islam and Judaism, which is viewed as the struggle between truth and falsehood, and good and evil. The Hizballah fighters wage war on Israel out of religious belief and conviction, "just as they pray and fast--it's God's order to them."

Israel is a state that emerged in the heart of the Arab nation in order to revive "the Jewish persona" through Zionist racism in confrontation with all Muslims. "Either we destroy Israel or Israel destroys us." A further dimension is added to the abiding enmity between Islam and Judaism in the utilization of Western anti-Semitic images and perceptions of Jews. "The Jews are the enemy of the entire human race." "Zionism dictates the world and dominates it." "The Jews constitute a financial power ... They use funds to dominate the Egyptian media and infect its society with AIDS." "The Torah inspires the Jews to kill."

THE HAMAS IDEOLOGY

In November 1988, Hamas published a covenant which was an attempt to systematically present the movement's ideology, in contrast to the PLO covenant. It presents the Arab-Israeli conflict as the epitome of an inherently irreconcilable struggle between Jews and Muslims, and Judaism and Islam. It is not a national or territorial conflict but a historical, religious, cultural and existential conflict between "truth and falsehood," the believers and the infidels, in which one side will eventually be the victor. The only way to confront this struggle is through Islam and by means of jihad (holy war), until victory or martyrdom. "The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews [and kill them]; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: Oh Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!? This ideology is represented in the movement's emblem, which shows the Qur'an and a sword. Reflecting this point of view, the Hamas leaflets were the most vociferous of all leaflets distributed by the Palestinian organizations during the Intifada and contained the most extreme anti-Semitic statements against Jews, Israelis and Zionists.

The terminology used against the Jews in the leaflets is a mixture of Western anti-Semitic and Islamic rhetoric. Some of the anti-Semitic expressions appearing repeatedly in the leaflets are:

"The brothers of the apes, the killers of the Prophets, blood suckers, warmongers," "barbaric," "cowards," "cancer expanding in the land of Isra' [reference to Palestine which was the destination of Muhammad's night journey and Mi'raj [Muhammad's ascent to heaven] threatening the entire Islamic world," "a conceited and arrogant people," "the enemy of God and mankind," "the descendants of treachery and deceit,", Nazis," "spreading corruption in the land of Islam," "the Zionist culprits who poisoned the water in the past, killed infants, women and elders," "thieves, monopolists, usurers."

Verses from the Qur'an and the hadith (the traditions associated with Muhammad passed down by his companions) were used often to reinforce the negative image of the Jews, and terminology with Islamic connotations was dominant. The leaflets usually began with the religious invocation: "In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compa.ssionate." Almost every leaflet contained a Qur'anic verse either as a heading or as a conclusion, emphasizing a certain feature inherent to the Jews, is instigating war. For example: "Oh believers! take not the Jews or the Christians as friends." "So make war on them: By your hand will God chastise them, and will put them to shame, and will give you victory over them, and will heal the bosoms of a people who believe."

Is Zionism racism?

What is this 'Zionism is Racism' resolution?

The Soviets were strong, mobilized enemies of Israel early on, and they remained so until relatively recently. Soviet foreign policy has been active, not passive, during this whole period and its hostility toward Israel was manifested in a variety of ways. I am especially sensitive to the campaign in the various organizations of the United Nations, where the Soviets pioneered and strongly supported the Zionism-is-racism resolution. The Soviets sponsored that resolution in UNESCO and in the General Assembly. The Soviets were pushing that resolution as recently as 1985 at UN meetings in Nairobi. Even when the Arab nations were ready to abandon it, the Soviets pushed to keep the Zionism-is-racism resolution on the agenda of the Women's Conference.

- Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Soref Symposium, April 29, 1990 -

It had become a crime to be a Jew who wished to return to the Jewish national homeland.
- Ambassador/Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in the introduction to "The Anti-Zionist Complex", by Jacques Givet

Is Zionism a form of racism?

See Zionism is Racism

Who are the anti-Zionists? What are their organizations, their support, their origins?

"Spreaders of racial and religious bigotry in the United States are among the prime suppliers of propaganda to the Arabs in their political and propagandistic war against Israel"
- Joe Alex Morris Jr., New York Herald Tribune, 1965

Is Zionism part of Judaism? Is it central to the Jewish People?

See Israel & Zionism

Is the Arab anger toward Israel just a disagreement over borders or ownership or water or economic prosperity?

"The Children of Israel were enemies of Islam from the outset and continue, to this day.. Our battle against them is a religious war."

- Palestinian religious leader Sheikh Ismael Nohaba, in the weekly Friday sermon delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, July 18, 1997 -

"Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their... rejection of his chosen Prophet."

- King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, quoted by Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe, July 10, 1997 -

Moslems are urged to "follow the example of a page in history when the Prophet of Islam...described breaking up the center of Zionists in al-Medinah [Editors note: the reference is to the JEWS living in the Arabian city of Medina in the 7th century] and the execution of 700 of them in a single day as a step toward strengthening Islam, in order to crush the bastion of the global arrogance, and ...to eradicate this cancerous tumor."

- Iranian "moderate" Grand Ayatollah Nuri Hamadani -

The Peel Commission Report stated in 1937 [Q: When was Israel established? A: 1948] that the conflict between the Arabs' and the Jews' aspirations is "irrepressible" and "irreconcilable" and that it is "difficult to be an Arab patriot and not to hate the Jews."

I did not forget the first song I learned in school just before the six day war titled "Arabs our beloved and Jews our dogs." I used to wonder at that time who the Jews were, but repeated with the rest of the kids the words without any knowledge of the meaning.

- Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector recalling antisemitism at school in Jericho, Jordan before it became administered by Israel -

Later my father transferred me to the Government school where I grew in the faith of Islam, in which I was fed the idea that one day a fulfillment of an ancient prophecy by the Muslim prophet Mohammed will come to pass, this prophecy foretold a battle in which the Holy Land would be recaptured and the elimination of the Jews would take place in a massive slaughter.

...When I graduated from high school they sent me to the United States to seek a higher education, and of course I got involved with many anti-Israeli social and political events. I still remember my favorite sick joke I used to like to tell my friends, that I hated Hitler very much because he never got the job done, that is: he never finished the Jewish problem "once and for all".

With Hitler being my idol, and Mohammed my prophet, I went on with my life with little regard for Jews, Christians, or anyone who was not a Muslim. I believed that one day the whole World will submit to Islam, and that the whole world owes the Palestinians for their loss in all the battles with Israel, I also believed that Jews were prophet-killers and that they corrupted the Scriptures to serve their evil desires. This is what Muslims teach, they also teach that Mohammed is our only redeemer and God's favored prophet.

As I lived in America I could not forget the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who died just in the last 20 years in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and in every single Muslim nation, I had to get revenge for them, and someone had to pay the price, and of course there is no question in my mind that the Jews had to pay the penalty, somehow we always managed to twist things together and make it their fault.

One day I fought with a man and struck his eye blind, I was so happy to learn that the man was a Jew.

I was fascinated with Islamic history as I learned that the Islamic prophet Mohammed extradited a Jewish tribe from Saudi Arabia and ordered the be-heading of all the men from another tribe, the women were taken as concubines. I used to believe as Islam taught, only a Caliph (Islamic ruler) can rule the world. Islam is not a religion for one's personal and moral life, but a system of law and government to the whole world, if not achieved through peaceful means would have to wage war against all whom do not submit to Islam, and with one billion Muslims living today I believed that it could happen.

- Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector > quoted from "Answering Islam"

More Anti-Semitism from the Palestinian Authority:
"Dennis Ross amuses himself on his visits like a Shylock, deriving pleasure from imagining how he will slice three percent from the body of the victim... [The] biased mediator [is] part of the oppressive racist Zionist apparatus [influenced by the] Likudnik Zionist lobby in the American administration."

Fatah newsletter, reprinted in official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda September 17, 1998

"The Israelis' haste in sending in a rescue team to Africa with American approval was in order to create solidarity among the victims for Israel... What the Israelis are doing is attempting to Judaize every tragedy on the face of the earth and erase the ongoing tragedies occurring to the Palestinian people. This is a despicable act from the point of view of turning the facts on their head, exploiting emotions and directing accusations at the victim. It is giving credit to the hang- men, the murderers and the thieves who have stolen land."

Editorial in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda August 15, 1998

"Everywhere, the Jews have been the subjects of hatred and disdain because they control most of the economic resources upon which the livelihoods of many people are dependent... There is no alternative but to say that the success of the Jews is not coincidental but rather the result of long years of planning and a great investment of effort in order to obtain their wretched control over the world's media... The winds began blowing in their favor when the campaign of persecution against them was begun by Hitler the Nazi... the international Jewish communications media under their control exploited this in the best possible way, and then the show started. They began to disseminate frightful pictures of mass executions and invented the shocking story of the gas ovens, where Hitler allegedly burned them... they focused on women, children and old people and have exploited this to arouse sympathy for themselves when demanding financial compensation, donations and grants from all over the world."

"The truth is that the persecution of the Jews is a deceitful myth which the Jews have labeled the Holocaust and have exploited to get sympathy.... And even if it is possible that Hitler's assault against the Jews hurt them a little, the fact is it did them a clear service whose fruits they are reaping until today..."

Article, "The Jews and the Media Monopoly," in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda July 2, 1998

"Washington's decisions are not made in the White House, which is busy cleaning up its bed- rooms, but in the offices of Netanyahu, who is feverishly trying to recruit America and its allies to serve the hated agenda of the Torah."

From an article in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda March 25, 1998

"[Israeli border control policy] should remind the Europeans of Nazi occupation by Nazi soldiers surrounding churches and places of worship during the Second World War. Israeli practices in many aspects are equal with, if not more brutal than, those practiced by occupying Nazi soldiers dealing with French-Dutch citizens during the Second World War."

PA Information Ministry press release December 10, 1997

"We must not lay aside the blade of the Palestinian struggle which we grasp with Arab and inter- national support, a blade with which we must struggle to shatter the two elements in the Likud's ideology: the racist-Torah part and the nationalist-fascist part."

Article in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda December 6, 1997

"... 'Netanyahu's Plan' completely matches the foundations of the greater Zionist plan which is organized according to specific stages that were determined when the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were composed and when Herzl along with Wiezmann traveled around the world in order to determine the appropriate location for the implementation of this conspiracy."

Article in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda November 30, 1997

"We must act on the international level in the framework of a detailed information plan which will expose the Zionist-Colonist plot and its goals, which destroy not only our people but the entire world."

PA Agriculture Minister Abdel Jawad Saleh in an interview with the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda November 6, 1997

"Whoever comes in contact with the banks discovers that they act in Shylock's way.... We do not want Shylock-style banks that empty our pockets, but national banks; we have had enough of the Shylock of the lands and settlements."

Article, "The Banks and Shylock" by Hafez al-Barghouti, Editor, in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda November 5, 1997

"Israeli society started feeling ashamed of Netanyahu's rise to the highest position of power... when all of his qualities amount to his outdated Talmudic arrogance and his absolute belief that he is the spoiled child of Brooklyn's nymphs."

Communiqueé issued by Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, quoted in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda November 4, 1997

U.S. Ambassador-Designate to Israel Edward Walker "underwent extensive hearings in the Congress or, that is, in the 'Council of the Elders of Zion,' in order to win his post."

Article by Hafez al-Barghouti, Editor, in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda October 30, 1997

..."The Jews always set a trap for the community of Muslims... The Koran repeatedly warns against the traps and plots of the 'people of the book.' They relentlessly scheme in all times and places and this is what they do today and tomorrow against the Muslim camp."

Excerpts from the weekly Friday prayer sermon at Al-Aqsa Mosque broadcast on the official PA radio station, the Voice of Palestine October 24, 1997

"It is impossible to rely on international or Arab national circles as long as Netanyahu's claws of hatred dive into our Palestinian blood in search of oxygen-rich blood cells.... our movement found in Netanyahu something it could not ignore which is the dismemberment of the agreement by the fangs of hatred and the chewing of the peace by the teeth of the Talmud.... We must recognize that this stubborn enemy, locks itself in the Talmud's cocoon...."

Excerpts from a position paper issued by Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, published in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda October 18, 1997

"Just as Hitler's Mein Kampf was a warning sign for his future political path which brought disaster on Germany and the world, so Netanyahu's A Place Among the Nations explains all of the author's initiatives since he took power in Israel... The racist curses against the enemy and the legendary praises of himself make a noticeable point of similarity between Hitler's and Netanyahu's books.... Netanyahu tries to calm Jewish fears about the demo- graphic superiority and the natural Arab birth rates in Palestine.... HE does not refer to the means he will employ to achieve the goal of a reduction of the Arab birth rate.... In this point we are reminded of Hitler's statements about the sterilization of undesired segments of the populations."

Article by PA Legislative Council member, Nahid Muir Al-Rayis, Al-Quds October 15, 1997

"This reminds me of the Goebbels [Hitler's propaganda minister] who said 'tell lies and lies, and in the end they will believe you.' The same is true of the Jews. It is a disgrace that they are issuing an arrest war- rant against me. Apparently they have learned Goebbels' methods."

PA Police Chief Ghazi Jabali, in reaction to the arrest warrant issued against him by Israel for his involvement in terrorist attacks, quoted in Ma'ariv September 12, 1997

"The appearance of the Zionist movement prompted the emergence of terrorist, racist ideologies, such as, the Nazi ideology. There is great similarity between the two ideologies: The Zionists believe that they are 'God's Chosen People,' and that other nations were created to be used and ridiculed... the Zionist Jews claim that they hate the nations since they persecute them out of jealousy of their wisdom, their success and their being God's chosen similarly, the Nazis claim that the Aryans are the chosen and the pure and that the anti-Semitism is the punishment of the Jewish Germans who betrayed their country.... Of course the similarity between the two racist ideologies -- the Zionist and the Nazi -- is obvious and the despicable racial content of each of them is clear... This proves the shared roots of Nazi and Zionist thought. This also ex- plains the cooperation between the Jews and the Nazis during World War II, through which were revealed the forged claims of the Zionists regarding alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period.... There is no difference between Hitler and Ben-Gurion, and if there was a difference at all, it was one of quantity and not one of substance. Anyone who investigates the crimes of the Zionists. . . discovers explicitly the complementary traits between Zionism, which is a racist terrorist movement, and the Nazi movement."

Article in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda September 3, 1997

"Since its establishment, the racist Zionist entity has been implementing various forms of terrorism on a daily basis which are a repetition of the Nazi terror.... This also explains the cooperation between the Jews and the Nazis during World War II, through which were revealed the forged claims of the Zionists regarding alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period."

Article in the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda September 3, 1997

"It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on... particularly the Jews... such as the Torah, the Talmud and the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion]... All signs unequivocally prove that the conflict between the Jews and the Muslims is an eternal on-going conflict, even if it stops for short intervals...This conflict resembles the conflict between man and Satan... This is the fate of the Muslim nation, and beyond that the fate of all the nations of the world, to be tormented by this nation [the Jews]. The fate of the Palestinian people is to struggle against the Jews on behalf of the Arab peoples, the Islamic peoples and the peoples of the entire world."

Article from the official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, summarizing the work of a Palestinian researcher September 1, 1997 -

- source for the above quotes: The Anti-Defamation League -

Can you name some anti-Zionists; people who would probably deny being antisemitic?

Anti-Zionist	Profession	Description	Source
Noam Chomsky	ex-Linguist, Lecturer, Author		Chutzpah by Dershowitz, Why the Jews? by Prager and Telushkin, Eye on the Media by David Bar-Illan
David Barsamian	Radio Personality
Alfred Lilienthal	Author	"anti-Zionist polemicist"	ZOA Press Release: March 9, 1998 - Deir Yassin: History of a Lie
Nathan Weinstock	Marxist Author
Uri Avnery	Leftwing Activist, Author
Norman Finkelstein	Holocaust revisionist	claims that Holocaust studies grew out of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war as part of an effort to silence critics of Israel
Yael Dayan
Tamar Gojansky
Anat Maor			Netta Cohen Dor-Shav
Dalia Rabinovitz			Netta Cohen Dor-Shav
Michael Lerner	Editor of Tikkun magazine		Netta Cohen Dor-Shav
Yigal Tumarkin	Sculptor	[He] once blithely remarked to the effect that when he sees haredi [ultra-orthodox Jewish] families he can sympathize with what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Holocaust. "...The real educators are Kahane, Raful and Gandhi. My true contribution will be if I take a sub-machine gun instead of pen and pencil and kill them".	Dr. Irving Kett, Netta Cohen Dor-Shav
Abe Foxman	ADL national director	"[his] anti-Israeli idiosyncrasies are becoming more than embarrassments."	Richard H. Shulman in Who is ADL For?, Maccabean, January, 1999
Nathan Weinstock	Author	"Marxist anti-Zionist"	ZOA Press Release: March 9, 1998 - Deir Yassin: History of a Lie
Moshe Zimmerman	Hebrew University Professor	compared Jewish children in Hebron to "Hitler Jugend."	Dr. Irving Kett
Ehud Sprinzak	Hebrew University Professor	had the audacity to find justification for the Arab terrorists who have massacred Jews.	Dr. Irving Kett
Ralph Schoenman	longtime anti-Israel activist		Anti-Defamation League
Kwame Ture	Black nationalist and anti-Zionist propagandist	former Stokely Carmichael, he founded The All African Peoples Revolutionary Party	Anti-Defamation League
Jacques Chirac	President of France	encouraged Arafat to escalate the violence and incitement	Dr. Gerald M. Steinberg, in the Jerusalem Post
Edward Said			CAMERA Update -- Edward Said's Documented Deceptions
Ilan Pappé	a leader of Israel's Communist Party (known as Hadash)	a radical historian discredited by even post-Zionist scholars.	CAMERA Update -- Edward Said's Documented Deceptions
Israel Shahak	one of the world's leading anti-Semites.	Shahak accuses Jews of worshiping Satan	CAMERA Update -- Edward Said's Documented Deceptions
Azmi Bishara	Israeli Arab Knesset Member	claims that Israel is apartheid while he lives in a luxury home in a Jewish suburb.	CAMERA Update -- Edward Said's Documented Deceptions
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod	well-known anti-Israel activist		CAMERA Update -- Edward Said's Documented Deceptions
Linda Brayer	anti-Israel lawyer	has a long history of exploiting clients to further her own anti-Israel agenda	CAMERA Update -- Edward Said's Documented Deceptions

So how do you explain Jews who are anti-Zionist?

It is never easy to be oneself; when a man's sense of identity and his awareness of himself as a Jew are at loggerheads, the result is liable to be confusing, even distressing. For Jews in this position, the emergence of Israel on the scene has intensified their inner conflicts.

...The re-emergence of Israel - an event so unexpected as to appear miraculous - has given Jews an opportunity to become once more masters of their own collective fate and to retrace the steps which led their forefathers into exile. But the glory of that event has been a deeply alarming experience for certain Jews (among whom anti-Zionism has found eager allies) too long accustomed to the gloom of the Diaspora and its twilight delights.

...It is the repeated emergence of the same old theme in different guises that needs elucidation. The language of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism - blatant, insinuating, grotesque or vulgar - is monotonous enough, testifying more to the existence of a psychological malaise than to any originality of thought. Anti-Zionists range from the moderates to the extremists, who are not open to argument at all. Some of the most unbridled extremists, some of the most emotionally confused among the moderates, happen to be Jews; and the Jewish moderates, especially, are often held up for our admiration. Unfortunately, such persons tend to be the rejects and the dross of a community undergoing a transformation, a community of which they are very far from being representative.

The Jewish Diaspora is not immune to its own brand of wishful thinking, undue depression or elation, and mental confusion induced by misinformation. Its weaker members turn renegade or, like metal filings arranging themselves round lines of force, turn ingratiatingly to the powers that be, or what they see as such. That there should be Jews to challenge the existence of Israel and indulge in lengthy public self-questioning on this theme represents warped thinking, a breach of faith, and a human tragedy. And this is a unique phenomenon, No Algerian, Cambodian, Chilean, Czech (and now, Afghan) exile, however bitterly opposed to his current government, questions his country's right to exist.

I may be accused of giving unmerited importance to persons who have cut themselves off from the fate of their own community. But their views are often given exceptional publicity in quarters ill-disposed towards Israel, and hence they cannot be ignored.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" -

Is post-Zionism a form of anti-Zionism?

They claimed that the Jews had never been a people until the Zionists muddled their thinking, and had no desire for nationhood. Post-Zionism turned out to be a peculiar form of anti-Zionism. In contrast with the anti-Zionism of an earlier era, the post-Zionists made their peace with Israel's existence as a state. (It is hard to argue with success.) But they sought to undermine the state's moral and philosophical foundations, to dismantle the Jewish identity of the state and reconfigure it as a state of "all its citizens.
- Anita Shapira, in The Past is Not a Foreign Country, The New Republic -

The distinction between "nation" and "State" - which the anti-Zionist likes to make against Israel (one of the oldest nations in the world) - is never used in criticism of any of the scores of newly created States whose national unity is far from evident.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" -





Peace Faq

What Are the Sources of Anti-Semitism?

In general, people feel more comfortable with similarities than they do with differences. People who refuse to accept the norms and ways of their neighbors are often rejected by those neighbors. Throughout history the Jews adhered to their beliefs and way of life even in the face of persecution, and many felt resentful or threatened by the Jews’ refusal to conform to the practices of the larger society.

Jewish identity can be traced all the way back to Abraham, who rejected the idolatry of his fellow Mesopotamians in favor of monotheism, the belief in one God. The Hebrew slaves in Egypt maintained that monotheistic difference from their polytheistic (i.e., multiple-god worshipping) Egyptian masters up until Moses led the Hebrew exodus from slavery to freedom, as celebrated in the Jewish holiday of Passover. In Persia, a Jew named Mordechai rejected Prime Minister Haman’s order for all subjects to bow down to him, refusing to bow down to anyone but God, as celebrated in the Jewish holiday of Purim. When the land of Israel was ruled bythe empireofAlexander the Great, a band of Jews rebelled against the forced imposition of Greek religion and culture, as celebrated in the Jewish holiday of Chanukah. Later, when Jews refused to obey the anti-Jewish rules of the Roman Empire, the Roman army destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands of Jews, and banished most of the survivors to live in exile, as commemorated by the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’av.

As this list demonstrates, not only haveJews been singled out for thousands of years, but Judaism actually celebrates and commemorates its historical challenges. For the last 2000 years, Jews have refused to accept Jesus as the messiah. Couple that refusal with the traditional accusation that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus and the result has been centuries of Christian European anti-Semitism.

In the Muslim world, Jewish refusal to accept Mohammed as a prophet of God has resulted in Jews (along with Christians) being considered as dhimmis (second-class citizens), with fewer rights and privileges than their Muslim neighbors. This coupled with the existence of Israel has resulted in decades of rising and ever-more virulent anti-Semitism across the Arab and Muslim worlds.

A Short History of Anti-Semitism

Definition
Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews simply because they are Jews. Sometimes referred to as “the oldest hatred,” it has been called anti-Judaism when it targets Jewish beliefs and practices, and anti-Semitism when it targets the Jewish people as a hated “race.” Historically, what began as a conflict over religious beliefs evolved into a systematic policy of political, economic, and social isolation, exclusion, degradation, and attempted annihilation. Anti-Semitism did not begin in the Nazi era, nor did it end with the close of World War II. Its continuance over the millennia speaks to the power of scapegoating a group that is defined as “other.”

Biblical Times
Abraham, the father of the three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) led his family to Canaan, where a new nation — the people of Israel — came into being almost 1,000 years before the Common Era (BCE). During those many centuries before Jesus, the Hebrews (the early Jewish people) experienced intermittent persecution because they refused to worship the idols of local rulers, which was the custom at the time. This refusal to worship idols was seen as stubborn and was resented.

Anti-Judaism
In the year 70 CE the Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Romans and most Jews were exiled throughout the ancient world. After the advent of Christianity, a new anti-Judaism evolved. Initially, Christianity was seen as simply another Jewish sect since Jesus and his disciples were Jewish and were preaching a form of Judaism. During the first few hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans, adherents of both Judaism and Christianity co-existed –– sometimes peacefully, sometimes with animosity –– as they sought to proselytize their faith in the same lands.

With the conversion of the Roman emperors, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Early church fathers sought to establish Christianity as the successor of Judaism. Since both religions derived from the Old Testament, Christians sought to establish the validity of their new religion by claiming that it superseded Judaism. The unwillingness of Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah was viewed as a challenge both to the Roman rulers and to the Christian faith.

The Middle Ages
Leading up to the Middle Ages (from 300-600 CE), a new pattern of institutionalized discrimination against Jews occurred. Jews were forbidden to intermarry with Christians (399 CE), prohibited from holding high positions in government (439 CE), and prevented from appearing as witnesses against Christians in court (531 CE). As Jews were being officially ostracized, certain bizarre fantasies about Jews arose in Northern Europe that foreshadowed the anti-Semitism of the 20th Century. By this time in the Middle Ages it was alleged that Jews had horns and tails and engaged in ritual murder of Christians (for example, to make matzah for Passover). The latter allegation, referred to as the “blood libel,” was fabricated by Thomas of Monmouth in 1150 to explain the mysterious death of a Christian boy. It recurs in English and German myths.

In 1095, Pope Urban II made a general appeal to the Christians of Europe to take up the cross and sword and liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims, beginning what were to be known as the Crusades. The religious fervor that drove men, and later even children, on the Crusades was to havedirect consequences for Jews. The Crusader armies, which more closely resembled mobs, swept through Jewish communities, looting, raping, and massacring the inhabitants.

Thus the pogrom, the organized massacre of Jews, was born.

During the middle of the 14th century, the Bubonic Plague spread throughout Europe, killing an estimated one-third of the population. Fear, superstition, and ignorance prompted the need to find someone to blame, and the Jews were a convenient scapegoat because of the myths and stereotypes that werealready believed about them. Though Jews were also dying from the plague, they were accused of poisoning wells and spreading the disease.

In1290, Edward I expelled the Jews from England, making England the first European country to do so. Over two hundred years later, on July 30, 1492, the Jewish community of Spain — some 200,000 people — was expelled by an edict issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. This was part of the larger Spanish Inquisition, which was carried out in part to convert Jews to Catholicism.

In 1545, Martin Luther, the founder of the 16th Century Reformation and Protestantism, wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Jews and Their Lies,” claiming that Jews thirsted for Christian blood and urging the slaying of Jews. The Nazis reprinted it in 1935. Some scholars feel that these scurrilous attacks mark the transition from anti-Judaism (attacks motivated because of the Jews’ refusal to accept Christianity) to anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews as a so-called “race” whose existence would contaminate the purity of other “races”).

Increasingly Jews were subjected to political, economic, and social discrimination, resulting in the deprivation of their legal and civil rights. They were restricted to living in ghettos and, beginning in the 13th Century, were required to wear a distinctive emblem (a badge and/or a pointed hat) so that they could be immediately recognized.

Since the Church did not allow Christians to lend money for profit, some Jews became moneylenders. Once they became associated with the forbidden trade of usury, a new set of stereo-types evolved around Jews as money-hungry and greedy. As moneylenders, Jews were frequently useful to rulers who used their capital to build cathedrals and outfit armies. As long as the Jews benefited the ruler either through finance or by serving as a convenient scapegoat, they were tolerated; when it suited the ruler, they were expelled — from England in 1290, from France in 1394, and from Spain in 1492.

Anti-Semitism
The term “anti-Semitism” was coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr, a German political agitator. It coincided with the development across Northern Europe and the United States of a new pseudo-science based on theories of racial superiority and inferiority.

Many have asked why anti-Semitism turned genocidal in Germany, rather than in France or England, which had the same medieval heritage. Following World War I, Germany was a deeply troubled country. Having lost the war, its citizens felt humiliated bythe defeat. The victorious countries, including the United States, France, and England, authored the Treaty of Versailles, a peace treaty that compelled Germany to give up territory and to pay large sums of money to the countries whose lands it had damaged. Inaddition to this social and economic degradation, Adolf Hitler employed a demagogic leadership that exploited the German cultural norm of obedience to authority and the long historyof demonizing Jews. Hitler played up conspiracy theories of victimization about WWI, blaming Jews for poisoning Germany’s body politic. He also called upon myths such as the “blood libel”to evoke fear that the Jews would contaminate what he referred to as the superior “Aryan race.” According to Hitler’s doctrine, all Jews and their genetic pool had to be eliminated.

The Holocaust
There may be no more succinct description of the Holocaust than the statement issued by the Vatican on March 12, 1998: This century has witnessed an unspeakable tragedy, which can never be forgotten: the attempt bythe Nazi regime to exterminate the Jewish people, with the consequent killing of millions of Jews. Women and men, old and young, children and infants, for the sole reason of their Jewish origin, were persecuted and deported. Some were killed immediately, while others were degraded, ill-treated, tortured and utterly robbed of their human dignity, and then murdered. Very few of those who entered the [Concentration] Camps survived, and those who did remained scarred for life.

This was the Shoah.

As Pope John Paul II recognized, “erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and their alleged culpability have circulated for too long...” and may have created anti-Jewish sentiment in some Christian minds and hearts. The progressive dehumanization that Jews endured — the image of the Jews’ demonic “otherness” –– made the Holocaust possible.

Contemporary Anti-Semitism
In Germany today, governmental safeguards against fascist anti-Semitism have been instituted and yet young neo-Nazi Skinheads, frustrated at rising unemployment, look for scapegoats. When they cannot find living Jews, they desecrate Jewish cemeteries. They also look for other vulnerable targets such as immigrant workers. Physical attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe come from some in the Muslim community under the guise of anti-Zionism. In Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union has brought with it a rise in nationalist groups that use anti-Semitism to meet their political ends. There is even anti- Semitism in countries wheretherearevirtually no Jews.

TheUnited States has been unique in its constitutional separation of church and state, full provision for citizenship for Jews, and its institutional support of Jewish life from President Washington to the present. Despite enjoying the full benefits of citizenship, Jews are still being victimized by acts of hate. In addition, extremist groups and Skinhead youth promote racist and anti-Semitic world views and are actively recruiting young people through various means including music and the Internet. Although such groups constitute only a tiny minority, one of the lessons we learn about anti-Semitism is that we can never be complacent.

Anti-Semitism Prejudice and Discrimination Against Jews

Prejudice and discrimination against Jews has its own special name: anti-Semitism. This term was invented in the 19th Century by European Jew haters who believed that Jews were a race apart from and inferior to Europeans from other backgrounds, and who wanted to give a scientific-sounding name to their hatred of Jews.

There is a lot of confusion around the term “Semitic,” which historically has referred to a language group that includes Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and Tigrinya. “Semite” was a term that described a person that spoke one of these languages. Notwithstanding the traditional meaning of the word “Semite,” anti-Semitism refers specifically to hatred of Jews.

Some who express prejudice or hatred toward the Jewish people claim that they cannot be anti-Semites because they, too, areSemites. This argument is a semantic one. Arguing that such prejudice is not possible is a distraction from the problem of anti-Semitism, and detracts from the dialogue about ways to end hatred of all kinds.

Today, anti-Semitism can be based on hatred against Jews because of their religious beliefs or their group membership (ethnicity), as well as the erroneous belief that Jews are a “race.” At times, anti-Semitism takes the form of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist beliefs and actions. The wordIsrael has been and is still used to refer to different things. Israel is another name for the Jewish people. Israel also refers to the land located at the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. In addition, Israel can refer to the modern country.

Zionism is a political movement, based on traditional Jewish religious principles, that states that the land of Israel is the national homeland of the Jews, much like Ireland is the national homeland of the Irish and Italy is the national homeland of the Italians.

Anti-Zionism is an extreme form of being anti-Israel, which essentially states that the modern country of Israel should not exist, that the Jews are not entitled to a national homeland. As a modern sovereign country, Israel has policies that can be and are questioned and challenged, not the least byIsraeli citizens themselves, much as many Americans challenge some policies of the U.S. government. However, when anti-Israel attitudes and actions are based on double standards (that is, holding Israel to different standards than those applied to other countries), then being anti-Israel is often just anti-Semitism in disguise.
It is important that all countries be held to consistent standards with regard to international practices and human rights. Unfortunately Israel is sometimes held to a standard that is unrea- sonable, and in such instances we need to question whether or not this is due in part to anti- Semitism.

Natan Sharansky, Israel’s former minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs, applies a test in such cases that he calls the “3D Test”: Demonization, Double standards, and Delegitimization:

1. Is the Jewish state being demonized for its action?
2. Are the problems of the world or the Middle East being blamed on Israel?
3. Is there a double standardwhen criticizing Israel in relation to other countries?
4. Are Israeli faults exaggerated and far worse human right violations in other places ignored?
5. Istherean attempt to delegitimizethe Jewish state?
6. Are the Jewish people alone in not having the right of sovereignty?