Jews, Judaism & Anti-Semitism

Jew! - Epithet with a Pedigree

This Jew Page
This Jew page is not intended to give a thorough explanation of the origins and history of the Jews, our nation or the Jewish faith. It is here to counteract hate materials about Jews that abound on the Internet, but it is not joke or filibuster. This is the truth about Jews.

Who is a Jew?
Jews are members or descendants of members of the Jewish faith or the Jewish people, that had a kingdom in ancient Judea and Israel and were then called Hebrews, Judeans or children of Israel (Bnei Yisrael). Jewish orthodox religious law recognizes anyone whose mother is Jewish as a Jew. Reform Jews also recognize as Jewish anyone whose father was a Jew. Israeli Law of Return recognizes anyone who had at least one Jewish grandparent, and who has not converted to a different faith, as a Jew. Non-Jews often use a much looser definition, so that even Jews who are are descendants of converts, like Karl Marx, or Benjamin Disraeli may be called a "Jew." The Nazi regime used a pseudo-scientific criterion of racial descent, so that a Jew with one Jewish parent was a "half Jew," a Jew with a Jewish grandparent was an eighth Jew.

A Jew may thus be a person, who believes in the Jewish faith, a person who identifies themselves as a member of the Jewish people, or a person defined by others as a Jew, or all any of the above in combination. Members of the Jewish faith believe that there is one God, who is omnipotent and indivisible, and with whom the Jews have a covenant, a special relationship of ethical and moral obligations and of protection. Jews do not allow any images of their God. The foundations of the Jewish faith are given in the The Old Testament Bible and in the later law books, particularly the Mishna, the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch.

Origin of the word 'Jew'
The word Jew first appears in Middle English about 1000 A.C.E. and is probably derived from similar forms in Old French, such as giu and juieu. These in turn are probably from the Latin "Judeaus" which is the Latin form of the Hebrew word "Yehuda" - Judah, which was the name of one of the Jewish tribes and of the ancient Jewish kingdom. The word "Jew" or similar words, are used in many European languages, often as pejoratives. Thus, the more polite Russian word for "Jew" is evrei, while Zhid is the word used by Jew haters.

Becoming a Jew
The Jewish religion does not, as a rule, actively seek converts, but it is possible for a non-Jew to become a Jew -- convert to Judaism -- either following the stricter Orthodox rules, or the more lenient courses of study and preparation followed by Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist Judaism. If you are curious about conversion, further information is at Converting to Judaism.

Jew Hate
The many meanings and overtones of the word "Jew" in English betray the history of racism and prejudice that has beset the Jewish people for about 2,000 years. "Don't Jew me down" and "Don't be such a Jew" are linguistic legacies that attest to the attitudes and the facts about Jew hate, not about Jews.

The Jew has been considered the epitome of evil in Western society for over 2,000 years. Anti-Semitism, the term used for Jew hate, was coined in the 19th century, but Jew hate originated before Christianity. Pagan authors insisted that the Jews worshipped a golden donkey in the temple. This myth was repeated by Tacitus. The fathers of the Christian church spread rumors that Jews engaged in cannibalism. One of these was quoted by Edward Gibbon in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Jew-Hate has periodically erupted in violence, expulsions and religious persecution. Jews were expelled from Jerusalem in the time of the Romans, they were expelled from Spain several times, they were expelled from medieval Britain. During the rusades, the Jews of several German towns were murdered, and the Crusaders expelled the Jews from Jerusalem. Jews were treated better in Muslim countries, but they also underwent periodic persecution and forced conversions. As Arab and Muslim society declined, the position of the Jew declined in Muslim society. In the nineteenth century, many observers reported that it is customary for Muslim children to throw rocks at Jews. (see Jews in Arab Lands ).

In medieval Europe and until the 19th century in fact, Jews were confined to ghettos and the occupations permitted to them were often restricted. Forced religious conversions were frequent. The "ghetto Jew" became a standard stereotype. The Shakespearean play, "The Merchant of Venice," immortalized the European stereotype of the Jew as a crafty and evil money lender.

Emancipation freed the Jew from the ghetto, but the Jew soon found his way barred in many areas of modern society: clubs, universities and professions were often closed to Jews, or had a quota for Jews. In modern times, Jew hatred was exacerbated by the rise of nationalism. The Czarist Russian government forced Jews to live in a pale of settlement. Czarist secret police helped to incite massacres of Jews in the nineteenth century, called Pogroms.

In the early twentieth century Jew hate was rife in most of Europe. Western culture took stereotypes of Jew hate for granted. The novels of Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie and Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the Jew as crafty, pushy and dishonest. In his youthful diary, Somerset Maugham described the Jew as crafty, dishonest and ugly, and "Jewesses" as sexy and promiscuous.

In France, the Jew Alfred Dreyfus was disgraced, dismissed from the French army and banished to exile on a false espionage charge at the end of the nineteenth century. The Jew became the target of numerous right wing groups in Central and Eastern Europe. European Jew hate culminated in the Holocaust, perpetrated by the Nazi regime in Germany, in which six million Jews were murdered. The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans, but they were eagerly assisted by Jew haters in the territories they occupied, and by the fact that almost no country in the world was willing to take in Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.

The Holocaust also spawned a new Jew hate libel, Holocaust denial: the perverse claim that Jews fabricated the story of the Holocaust.. Anti-Semites variously refer to the "Holocaust Myth," and "Holocaust Hoax." Massive documentation, confessions of war criminals, accounts of survivors, physical evidence of the gas chambers, documentary records, population statistics, crematoria and death camps are all dismissed as "inventions" by Holocaust deniers.

Following the Holocaust, outright Jew hate became less fashionable in the West, and therefore the same product is often served up in the guise of "anti-Zionism." In the USSR, the Jew was attacked as a "rootless cosmopolitan," and "Zionist" was used consistently as a substitute for "Jew." The Soviets invented an anti-Semitic "science" of Zionology. This practice spread, so that myths of Zionist control of the world substituted in many places for myths of Jewish control.

However, in the Arab world some Jew haters are more honest, and use the Jew word unabashedly. For example, in Al Ahram, Khaled Amayreh recently quoted a Palestinian official as saying of German Chancellor Angela Merkel : "This woman, like all German leaders since [Konrad] Adenauer, feels enslaved by the Jews." Al-Ahram also reported that Jimmy Carter lashed out against "the Jews" at an award ceremony.

Copies of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Hitler's Mein Kampf, Henry Ford's International Jew, and other hateful works, many produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, continue to circulate, especially in the Arab world. These and other books perpetuate Jew hate, and harp on the following classic themes:

Jews are all powerful.

Jews are taught by the Talmud to be deceitful, to hate non-Jews and to plot the conquest of the world.

Jews practice ritual murder of Christians. This is called the blood libel. It was condemned by some popes but affirmed by others (See Papal Bulls about Jews). Even today there are groups and Web sites that support the cults of child "saints" like Andreas of Rinn and Simon of Trent allegedly murdered in fictitious Jewish rituals. The blood libel is widely believed in the Arab world and supported by a popular book by Moustapha Tlass, former Defense Minister of Syria.

Jews start all the wars, including World War I, World War II, the Iraq War and the French Revolution.

The Jews have secret lore, including hidden plots against Christians, revealed in a "secret" book called the Hesronot Shas, which only Jews are allowed to read.

There is a powerful Jewish conspiracy, the Elders of Zion, that is plotting to take over the world.

Jews bake Matzot or Purim pastries from the blood of Christian children. This medieval accusation appeared in a Saudi Arabian journal not long ago.

"The Jews" are responsible for World War I, World War II, the Russian Revolution and the French Revolution. These accusations recur in various places, including the charter of the Hamas movement.

Jews invented the Holocaust, in order to gain concessions from the world, and in particular, to get a Jewish state.

There are No Jews
A novel form of Jew Hatred has been invented by a Jew. We shall call it Jew denial. Shlomo Zand, a professor of French history, insists that Jews are all impostors and not descended from the ancient Jews. Jews, according to Zand, were never exiled from Roman Palestine, and all those people in the Diaspora were converts. The "real" Jews of ancient times are the Arabs of Palestine. Hitler killed the wrong people, it seems. More about Zand and his ideas: Jewish people: Do we exist?

Jew Pig
Medieval and renaissance churches in Germany and a few other places in Europe are decorated with a common motif called the Judensau - Jew Pig or Jews Pig. This shows Jews performing various indecent acts with pigs. A particularly odious one was reproduced in a book published in Frankfurt Am Main in the 18th century. It shows Jews copulating with a pig and suckling it, while a goat copulates with a Jewess and the Devil looks on. The top panel represents the blood libel. showing the child "martyr" Simon of Trent.

Jew Gold
Jew Gold is a superstition that may have originated with the satirical animated show, South Park. The claim is that Jews have a bag of gold that they wear around their necks, or perhaps that Jews wear one fake bag that is fairly visible and contains only rocks and a different one that is real and concealed and contains the gold. Unfortunately, the "joke" is believed in one form or another by many people, such as for example, a Dr. William Pierce who wrote about it here: natvan.com/free-speech/fs987c.html. You can see the clip of the Jew Gold episode from Southpark here

Jew on the Internet
Although Google and other search engines do not feature the Jew hate Web sites as prominently as they once did, it is still very easy to find anti-Semitic propaganda on the Web. Some of these sites are returned for keyword "Zionism." Some of the principle purveyors of racism today include these Web sites among others:

* jewwatch.com/ - Features Jewish conspiracies, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Henry Ford's "International Jew," Zionist Occupied Government (see ZOG). Claims that Leon Trotsky was a Zionist, a claim that might surprise a lot of Trotskyites. This site was once returned by Google as number 1 for keyword "Jew." It now seems to be listed only for its main page domain name.

* biblebelievers.org.au - Protocols of the Elders of Zion and similar materials.

* serendipity.li/zionism.htm - Portrays "Zionism" as a "pernicious" conspiracy precisely the way Judaism is described by anti-Semites. Google returns this site as number 3 currently when people search for "Zionism."

* stormfront.org - American Nazi Party.

* ziopedia.org - An up and coming Australian anti- "Zionist" Web site that features standard anti-Semitic shibboleths. At one point the owner threatened to close the site for lack of funds. It seems that this problem was quickly remedied by eager donors.

* rense.com - Claims to be anti-"Zionist." Features links to the defunct ABBC.COM Web site. Sample material:
Zionists Made A Deal With The Devil
Accepting The 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'
radioislam.org - Features Jew-Hate and Jew Hate disguised as anti-Zionism.

* ihr.org/ - Holocaust Denial.

* jewscontrol.com/ - Charges that Jews control the media, the government etc.

* zundel.org - Web site of an infamous Holocaust denier

* zundelsite.org/english/101/101toc.html - features the "Holocaust Myth".

www.natall.com is prominently featured in search engines for keyword "Holocaust Hoax"

Note - if you write about these sites on the Web, please do not link to them, as that will increase their popularity in search engines.

And of course there was the Iran Holocaust Contest - a virtual event that may be a preparation for the real thing.

Jews, Zionism and the Talmud
The Talmud is the oral exegesis of Jewish law. Anti-Semites claim that the Talmud teaches hatred of gentiles, and that it is the basis of Zionism. However, the "gentiles" of the Talmud were pagans and not monotheists, and the claims often cite non-existent books of the Talmud such as "Libbre David" invented by anti-Semites. The claim that Zionism originated in the Talmud, is absurd. Many of the founders of Zionism, including Theodore Herzl, were not religious Jews and did not follow the Talmud. There are several non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish sects, such as the Neturei Karta and the Satmar Hassidim (originating in the Transylvanian town of Satu Mare) (see also Jews against Zionism). All of them follow Talmudic law, and include many Talmudic scholars. None of them are Zionists. The same Web sites that claim that the Talmud is the basis of Zionism often proudly link to Neturei Karta and Jews against Zionism Web sites, which explain why, in their view, the Talmud forbids Zionism!

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a document fabricated by the Czarist Okhrana secret police in the nineteenth century. It claims that the Jews plan to take over the world in conjunction with the Freemasons. The document was apparently concocted by plagiarizing from an 1864 non-anti-Semitic satire by Maurice Joly, about Louis Napoleon, and from an 1868 anti-Semitic novel by one Hermann Goedche written in 1868. In 1921, the New York Times revealed the protocols as a hoax, based on a book by Lucien Wolfe published in London, on research by Alan Dulles and information supplied by an anti-Semitic Russian emigre. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are sometimes entitled "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."

A version of the document and elaborations on the theme of the "International Jew" were published by Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent newspaper in a series of articles in the 1920s. Ford had printed 500,000 copies of the Protocols, but he later retracted and apologized. Nonetheless, racists cite Ford as an "authority" for the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been translated into many languages including Arabic, and regrettably enjoy a wide readership in Arab countries. The Hamas Charter assumes that they are factual.

Further reading about Protocols of the Elders of Zion
In addition to our own article about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you may be interested in these sources: Wikipedia - Protocols of the Elders of Zion Christian Action: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (quotes Ford's repudiation) The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Anti-Semitic Conspiracism The Protocols of the Elders of Zion among Palestinians. A Web site that give the texts of protocols are biblebelievers.org.au/przion1.htm which calls it the "Zionist" plan for conquest. This site - biblebelievers.org.au/intern_jew.htm publicizes the "International Jew" articles of Henry Ford. This page documents Egyptian publicity for a television series based on the: Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This article by an Egyptian comments on the TV Series: "Knight without a Horse" that dramatized the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

More about the above at Jew, Talmud Zionism - sense and nonsense about the Jewish religion.

The image of the Jew
First, some pictures of actual Jew-Zionists. We come in all shapes, colors and sizes.

Anti-Semitism: Image of the Jew in the Arab world and Pro-Palestinian Groups
Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism, or Jew hate. Arab world propaganda prominently features Jew hate, and anti-Semitism is regrettably a permanent feature of Arab world rhetoric (see Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism - A Study) . Honest supporters of the Palestinian cause condemn anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, but anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are in fact mingled freely with "criticism of Israel" in Arab propaganda and in Web sites like Rense.com, serendipity.li and the IHR Holocaust denier's Web site. Recently a pro-Palestinian movement (ISM in Britain) failed to pass resolutions condemning anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism in US Policy - "The Jews" control the government
The idea that the "Israel Lobby" controls the United States is not new. Though it is now popularized by Jimmy Carter, it was already a pillar of attitudes to Israel in 1967, on the eve of the Six Day War, as revealed in recently declassified documents. Actually, US policy at the time was probably more influenced by the pro-Arab Aramco lobby, which pressured the government, apparently successfully, to renege on its commitments to support Israeli rights to navigation in the Straits of Tiran. In Britain popular journals recently pictured the Jews taking over Europe, but a reformed terrorist revealed that actually, British authorities had made a deal with Islamist terrorists to allow them to operate freely, so long as they do not perpetrate acts of terror in Britain.

Famous Jews
Attention Jew Haters. Here are some famous Jews to hate:

* Jesus of Nazereth - "King of the Jews"
* Mary - Jewish Mother of Jesus
* Joseph - Jewish father of Jesus
* John the Baptist - Just "another" Jew.

Remember that, Mr. Mel Gibson and Biblebelievers. Since someone wrote and asked if Jesus was really a Jew, we should emphasize that indeed he was a Jew, born of a Jewish mother and therefore Jewish by Halachic law even today. This must be true according to Christian belief as well as historically, since Christians believe that Jesus is a descendant of King David.

Jesus celebrated the Passover holiday with his disciples before the Roman authorities crucified him. That was "The last supper."

Jesus said He was a Jew and was very proud of it:
John 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

Jesus said "we." It was not an accident.

A few more "evil" Jews in modern times:
* Albert Einstein - Famous Jew-Zionist.
* Jonas Salk - Inventor of the polio vaccine - a Jew.
* Albert Sabin - Inventor of the oral polio vaccine - a Jew.
* Edwin Land - Inventor of the Polaroid Camera - a Jew.
* Carl Sagan - Astronomer, Author - a Jew.
* Norbert Wiener - Invented Cybernetics - a Jew. .....

There are hundreds and hundreds of these people and you hate all of them. Too bad for you! Too bad for Hitler, who forced all the Jewish or part-Jewish scientists in Europe to flee - these included, among many stars - Albert Einstein, Lisa Meitner, Max Born and a host of others. This was a great blow to the Nazi war effort, and fortunate for the allies. Among those forced to flee was Fritz Haber, a Jew who originally had the delusion he could be a German. Haber's work was crucial to the German war effort in World War I. He had haughtily turned down all requests to back Zionism, as he was a proud German, but in the end, stripped of his honors, his position in the university and in society, he had to admit, too late, that the Zionists were right.

See also Jewish Scientists and Philosophers Jewish Nobel Prize Winners

Humor about Jew hate

Uncyclopedia: Jew

My Favorite Jew Jokes:
Ikey is reading a newspaper on a park bench. His friend Mo sees him and says:

"Ikey, why are you reading that anti-Semitic newspaper?"

"Mo, I like to read good things about the Jews."

"Good things?"

"Certainly. It says right here that we Jews control the banks, Jews control the newspapers, Jews control the government and all Jews are rich. So what could be bad?"

It's 1932. Ikey and Morris the Jews haven't had work in a year. They are hungry. They see a sign on a church,

"Converts to the Catholic Faith get $100.

$$$ One Hundred Dollars!! $$$"

A fortune in 1932!!

But converting to Catholicism is a big barrier. Ikey and Morris aren't religious, but still, they do not want to leave their people and insult the memory of their ancestors... And yet, they are very hungry. A hundred dollars would buy a lot of food in 1932, and pay the rent too.

"And what if we convert and they don't pay?" asks Morris.
"I'll tell you what," says Ikey. I'll do it, and if they pay, then you can do it."
So Ikey goes into the church, and Morris waits expectantly, and waits, and waits..."
At length, Ikey emerges, beaming.
"So, how was it, Ikey?" asks Morris.
"Ikey? Who is Ikey? I am Aloysius Xavier now."
"OK, OK but how was it?"
"Oh it was wonderful. Father O'Brien said the mass, and at the conclusion the congregants participated in the Eucharist and..."
"Never mind all that, what about the money. Did you get the $100?"
"Money! All you Jews ever think about is money!"





Zionism Israel

Exposing How Post-Zionists Manipulate History

by Avi Beker

The Israeli New Historians have heavily influenced academic teaching about the Arab-Israeli conflict on campuses throughout the world.

The New Historians disregarded and omitted the two most critical features of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war: the religious-jihadi nature of the Arab campaign and Arab rejection of the UN partition resolution. The narrative built by the New Historians changed the parameters of political negotiations: a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel is not meant to correct the 1967 "occupation" and create a framework for a territories-for-peace exchange but to atone for the alleged atrocities of the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) of 1948. The sharp reversal of his positions by Benny Morris, regarded by many as the dean of the New Historians, must be viewed as a full exposure of the fictitious structure and distorted facts of what was an orchestrated, antihistorical, anti-Zionist endeavor.


"Historians have tended to ignore or dismiss, as so much hot air, the jihadi rhetoric and flourishes that accompanied the two-stage assault on the Yishuv and the constant references in the prevailing Arab discourse to that earlier bout of Islamic battle for the Holy Land, against the Crusaders. This is a mistake. The 1948 War, from the Arabs' perspective, was a war of religion as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory. Put another way, the territory was sacred: its violation by infidels was sufficient grounds for launching a holy war and its conquest or reconquest, a divinely ordained necessity." -- Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War --

What happens when historians ignore or dismiss central components of history? In the above statement, Benny Morris provides a very unusual glimpse at the major historians' omission of what was the central feature of the Arab war against Israel in 1947-1948: uncompromising jihad against the Jews. The Arabs never concealed that this was a religious war and they were on record in taking responsibility for it. The Arab Higher Committee representative Jamal Husseini told the UN Security Council on 16 April 1948: "The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight."

Husseini was quoted in the New York Times explaining that the Arabs "would never allow a Jewish State to be established in one inch of Palestine," and he issued a clear warning that attempts "to impose any solution contrary to the Arabs' birthright will only lead to trouble and bloodshed and probably to a third World War."

Behind such deadly threats that were delivered to the whole world was the ongoing use in the Arab world of religious incitement against the Jews in public broadcasts and in mosques. Prominent in this regard were the mufti of Jerusalem and main leader of the Arabs in Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the religious scholars of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the highest religious authority for Sunni Islam, which issued an official call for a "worldwide jihad" immediately after the UN resolution on the partition plan had passed in November 1947. Religion was central to the war effort as demonstrated by the rector of Al-Azhar University, Muhammad Mamun Shinawi, who told the Egyptian expeditionary force as it crossed the border in Rafah on 15 May 1948 on its way to fight the newborn state of Israel: "The hour of Jihad has struck.... This is the hour in which...Allah promised paradise."

These two critical and central features of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence - the religious-jihadi nature of the campaign and Arab responsibility for launching the war in rejection of the partition resolution - are very often disregarded or deliberately ignored in the vast amount of literature on the war.

What happened in 1948? This is the core of the debate. Basically the revisionist New Historians sought to challenge what they termed Israel's official historical canon. They rejected the collective memory of Zionism and the state of Israel, particularly the memory regarding the state's establishment. By claiming to have discovered new archival evidence - which in most cases was not new at all - and while ignoring the historical context of the war, this group of Israeli historians turned the saga of Israel's birth upside down so as to prove that Israel was born in a sin of conspiracies, ethnic cleansing, and massacres.

This essay, in focusing on the return of Benny Morris to the fold of mainstream Israeli historians, will review the impact of the New Historians on Middle East studies in academia, on the peace process, and on Israel's general image. Morris in his new incarnation provides the best ammunition in the intellectual struggle against the anti-Zionist historians disguised as revisionist historians, who claim to possess "new" documents that show the "true" history. Ethan Bronner in the New York Times explains the role historians play in political debates:

History does not get written or read in a vacuum. The new historians had an agenda - promoting the peace process then beginning. And many Israelis, eager to put an end to their century-old conflict, were willing to be told that their successful nation building had come at a high cost to the Palestinians. They were adjusting their collective narrative to make room for coexistence with onetime enemies. Did the New Historians write history or, rather, attempt to promote a political agenda? Was it motivated by a wish that admitting responsibility for supposed past wrongdoings would be reciprocated by the other side? Morris's case proves how shifting political perspectives can lead to revolutionary changes in historical analysis and conclusions.

Academic Impact

The impact of the New Historians who revised and interpreted anew the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be exaggerated. Their amendment of what they termed the "official" Zionist version of history, mixed with postmodernist assumptions (such as that there is no one version of history), was not confined to intellectual debates in academia. Dismissed at the beginning as a fringe phenomenon, this revision of history became within less than a decade the mainstream reading and learning in universities around the world.[6] Benny Morris, who is considered the dean of the New Historians and coined the term, has provided since 1988 the intellectual infrastructure for this revamped history. Morris's selective use of documents and disregard of Arab hatred, anti-Semitism, and rejectionism toward the idea of a Jewish state have become a goldmine for anti-Zionist literature.

The group also denied what they called the Israeli myth of "the few against the many" regarding the 1948 War, and for some (such as Ilan Pappé) these post-Zionist views were replaced by a self-declared anti-Zionism. In addition to Morris and Pappé, two or three others are considered part of the founding group of the New Historians. Simha Flapan, who was the first (1987) to engage in "demythologizing" the story of Israel's founding, was included in the list retrospectively after his death. Avi Shlaim emphasized what he viewed as the conspiratorial nature of Israel's collaboration with Britain and Jordan against the Palestinians. Another writer, Tom Segev, who arrived to this group as a post-Zionist, postmodern journalist, wrote about the Yishuv's (prestate Israel) attitudes toward the Holocaust and about Israeli society during the 1967 Six Day War, and latter added his own interpretation of the British Mandate in Palestine. In Segev's book it is hard to find the role of the Jews in British policy calculations in Palestine, and it is the Arabs who drove the British out.

The books written by these revisionist historians were published by prestigious publishing houses. They immediately affected the textbooks of Middle East studies syllabuses and reoriented the direction of new research projects and policy ideas on the peace process. The leading opinion-making publications in the United States, the dailies, weeklies, and foreign policy journals, devoted extensive reviews and discussions to what were perceived as groundbreaking works. Typically, even the more objective academics who did not accept all of the New Historians' premises found it necessary to present the conflict in terms of two competing views of history, admitting that "the very concept of objectivity has in recent decades been subjected to relentless attack."

The buzzword in studying the conflict was therefore "narrative," which was supposed to replace the "nonobjective" record of history. Instead of discussing the broad context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is central to the history of each of its particular wars, the popular approach started to isolate it as an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The new books focused on alleged myths, on distorted collective memories, explaining that both sides were sanctifying hatred and resentment by "building legitimacy through narrative." Narrative - defined by the dictionary as "a story or account of events, experiences or the like, whether true or fictitious" - replaced the search for truth in historical research. Some argue that regardless of validity, a narrative is important because it is part of a collective memory, the belief-set of a group. However, as Morris would realize about two decades later, such fictitious narratives can be very dangerous when they have only one purpose: to deny responsibility for past hatred and to perpetuate it for generations to come.

In Israel, the transformation of history into narratives was reflected in the state-run TV miniseries Tekuma (Revival). Broadcast in 1998, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the state, it adopted many of the New Historians' findings. A year later these postmodern theories were given legitimacy by the Ministry of Education itself in its revised high school textbook (A World of Changes: History for Ninth Grade), part of a new curriculum aimed at teaching history from an expressly "universal" (as opposed to "nationalist") perspective. This trend even entered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which through its history division cosponsored a book that cast serious doubt on previous images of the War of Independence.

Replacing the Historical Canon

The basic arguments of the New Historians can be summarized as five challenges to the official Zionist canon of the history of 1948:

The official version said that Britain tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state; the New Historians claimed that it tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Shlaim and Pappé describe in their books a conspiracy between Britain and the Jews at the expense of the Palestinians, and Shlaim extends this to a conspiracy between Zionism and King Abdullah of Transjordan to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In another stretch of imagination, a Palestinian professor (a former negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization) argues that the target of the Arab armies was not the Jews but rather the expulsion of the Arabs in Palestine before taking it over.

The official version said - so claimed the revisionists - that the Palestinians fled their homes of their own free will; the New Historians said that the refugees were chased out or expelled. Here Morris's contribution was central though he himself was later quoted out of context. This aspect was pivotal for the moral and political campaign to delegitimize Israel. The official version said that the balance of power favored the Arabs; the New Historians said that Israel had the advantage both in manpower and in arms, and denied what they regarded as the myth of a heroic liberation war of the few against the many. While denigrating and inciting against Israel, the New Historians also came to the rescue of the Arab image and revised or denied the official Israeli claim that the Arabs had a coordinated plan to destroy Israel. The New Historians said that the Arabs were divided or denied their death threats altogether.

All these four questions lead to the ongoing debate among historians: did the Yishuv in 1947 joyously embrace partition? Who is responsible for the lack of peace? Is it Israeli intransigence or the Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish state? Some historians (including Flapan and Shlaim) have claimed that the Arabs wanted peace but the Zionists have been wily in maneuvering Arab leaders (such as al-Husseini, Gamal Abdel Nasser, or Yasser Arafat) into the rejectionist camp.
Impact on the Peace Process

The revisionist historians did not just end up conquering the syllabuses and the instruction in academia; they also took over the arena of Middle East diplomacy and politics. The New Historians had a major impact on the peace process and in shaping the positions taken by the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the Americans. While negotiating for the Oslo agreements in 1992-1993, the then Israeli deputy foreign minister Yossi Beilin was reading Morris's book on the Palestinian refugees; later Beilin said the book was a must for Israeli negotiators. Subsequently, during meetings of joint Palestinian-Israeli groups to promote the peace process, the refugee issue became the focal point in attempting to create "agreed mutual perception" of the parties' grievances and to assume responsibility for past wrongdoings.

The revisionists and their guilt-filled narrative loomed over the Israeli negotiators at Camp David hosted by President Bill Clinton in July 2000 and, a few months later, at the Taba talks in the Sinai. The Palestinian negotiators at both forums referred to the work of the New Historians, especially Benny Morris, in trying "to establish Israel's share of responsibility for the plight of the 1948 refugees." Israeli negotiators Beilin and Gilad Sher quoted from Morris's book, and Daniel Levy, Beilin's assistant, has described how important it was for the Israeli team to change the historical narrative so as to reach an agreement with the Palestinians on their "right of return."

Another participant at Camp David was the then Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, himself a historian who admitted that the New Historians had "definitely helped in consolidating the Palestinians' conviction as to the validity of their own narrative" and that the "Israeli peacemakers also came to the negotiating table with perspectives that were shaped by recent research...powerful arguments on the 1948 war...[which] became part of the intellectual baggage of many of us, whether we admitted it or not."

In sum, the narrative built by the New Historians changed the parameters of political negotiations: a peace agreement was not meant to correct the 1967 "occupation" and create a framework for a territories-for-peace exchange, but to atone for the alleged atrocities of the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) of 1948. It became apparent to all that the main obstacle to peace was the problem of the refugees' "right of return" to all parts of Israel.

Morris's Retreat

The person who laid the foundation for historical post-Zionism, Benny Morris, is also the one who undermined it in bringing the most serious challenge to its intellectual integrity. Morris still appears unable to say "I was wrong" and express regret for helping build the intellectual basis for the campaign against Israel and Zionism. Instead of exposing his own distortions and fallacies, he says he has found new documents in the Israeli archives that gave him a new perspective on the conflict. Reading his new interpretation of the same events makes it clear how the New Historians - at best - wrote history out of context, completely detached from the reality of its origins. In most cases they engaged in a deliberate falsification and used the "grand lie" technique against Israel.

Then suddenly, about twenty years later, Morris discovered that the Arabs had declared a jihad against Zionism already back in the 1930s. He explains his new approach as stemming from the opening of archives, including the IDF's archive, which was closed to researchers previously. He also adds that "in the current book [1948] I placed the refugee problem within the overall context of the War of Independence," and with the help of recent studies, "I tried to present a new and comprehensive description of the war, and primarily of the connections between the military processes and the diplomatic processes."

A new description? The exact opposite, in fact. His two most recent books, 1948 and One State, Two States, which were released over the past two years, completely contradict his arguments and the factual basis for his revolutionary historical approach. Morris returns to what was so detested by the New Historians, or as they put it: the canonical version of the official Zionist narrative. His new books demolish all the premises and conclusions of the New Historians. He feels no need to apologize for presenting a sharp indictment of all of post-Zionism, claiming that "historians tended to belittle the importance of the religious rhetoric during the war" and the central role of "religious motivation." This is exactly the omission committed by Morris in his previous books. The dismissal of the threats of jihad was intentional and critical for those who set out to write the "new" narrative and to turn the Nakba into the Palestinian "Holocaust."

The jihad was apparent to all in the existing literature since 1948: threats of annihilation were heard from all Arab sides and even from the dais of the United Nations in 1947 and 1948. As noted, the mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, repeated such threats over and over again; and religious scholars in Cairo issued an official manifesto calling for jihad two days after the partition resolution was passed in November 1947. The translation of the religious decree into military action was the invasion of the Arab armies, which were called the Arab Liberation Army and the Jihad al-Mukades (Holy War) Army.

On the day that Israel declared its independence, Arab League secretary-general Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha declared a holy war. He said, "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, who was the leading spokesperson of all Arab states, had been similarly clear and violent in opposing the partition resolution: "The partition line will be nothing but a line of fire and blood." Al-Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!"

Suddenly, and consistently, Morris renounces the post-Zionist narrative in numerous articles, interviews, and lectures, and presents his new position in scholarly books. Indeed, Morris informs his readers that his previous books missed the historical context of the 1948 War, which was a jihadi onslaught by the Muslim world against the Jewish community in Palestine. From the start Morris was little embarrassed, telling The Guardian in 2002: "The rumour that I have undergone a brain transplant is (as far as I can remember) unfounded - or at least premature. But my thinking about the current Middle East crisis and its protagonists has in fact radically changed during the past two years."

In his own testimony, Morris explains that a new historical awareness about Arab sources of rage, hatred, and anti-Semitism led him to a new reading of the 1948 war. He is even able to document the intellectual transplant surgery he was undergoing:

My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted Labor or Meretz or Sheli [a dovish party of the late 1970s], and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [Prime Minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa.

Morris goes further in his interview and explains - as was unknown in his previous books and is unheard of in politically correct circles - that there is a "deep problem in Islam." It is a world in which "life doesn't have the same value it does in the West." The Arabs belong to a "tribal culture" in which "revenge" plays a "central part" within a society so lacking in "moral inhibitions" that "if it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them."

Rewriting the Revisionist History

The complete disregard of historical context can be detected in the tables of contents and in the indexes of the New Historians' books. Arab or Islamic anti-Semitism is nonexistent; if one reads Ilan Pappé or Avi Shlaim on the conflict he may think that jihad was invented on September 11, 2001.

The New Historians' omissions regarding al-Husseini's role in fomenting hatred against the Jews are part of their great exercise of rewriting history. There were plenty of records on the mufti from the early stages of the conflict under the British Mandate. To evaluate his role as the only recognized leader of the Palestinians until after Israel's establishment, there was no need for new archives to be opened. It is striking that an anti-Israeli Palestinian American such as Rashid Khalidi presents more self-criticism on the destructive role of the two most prominent Palestinian leaders, al-Husseini and Arafat, and also devotes more analysis to Arab anti-Semitism than do the Israeli New Historians. At the same time, Khalidi refers to Morris's early book on the Palestinian refugees as a "groundbreaking" work that "shattered many myths."

Morris "B" (in 2008) reveals how the confluence of Islamic anti-Semitism and jihad played a critical role at the early stages of the conflict in Palestine. It was an integral part of the Arab Revolt in 1936 and it was pursued repeatedly by outsiders such as the speaker of the Iraqi parliament Sa'id al-Haj Thabit when he visited Palestine in March 1936. Morris also notes the mufti's active role in the Nazi jihadist propaganda to the Middle East and in recruiting Bosnian Muslims to the Wehrmacht. The mufti, says Morris, was "deeply anti-Semitic" and justified the Holocaust based on the Jewish character with "their exaggerated conceit and selfishness, rooted in their belief that they are the chosen people of God." Jihad was even part of the diplomatic exchanges sometime before the 1948 War. The Palestinians' main political organ at the time, the Arab Higher Committee, used the term jihad as a formal threat and ultimatum early in 1946 in a letter to British prime minister Clement Attlee.

In the last chapter of 1948, Morris is detailed and persuasive on the critical role of religious hatred in 1947-1948. He concludes: "The jihadi impulse underscored both popular and governmental responses in the Arab world to the UN partition resolution and was central to the mobilization of the 'street' and the governments for the successive onslaughts [during the war.]... The mosques, mullahs, and 'ulema all played a pivotal role in the process." With these open and prevailing attitudes, the threat to the Jews was very clear in the eyes of Arab observers. As one Christian Lebanese quoted by Morris told the press: "The Jewish State has no chance to survive now that the 'holy war' has been declared. All the Jews will eventually be massacred."

With threats of jihad and extermination coming from all over and with the rejection of the diplomatic track, coupled with the calls to deploy all available military force, the Yishuv could only prepare for the worst-case scenario. As many voices made doomsday warnings, the leaders of the Yishuv had no need to engage in theoretical war games. When the 'ulema of Al-Azhar University proclaimed a "worldwide jihad in defense of Arab Palestine," British foreign minister Ernest Bevin expressed his concern for "the safety of thousands of Jews scattered in the Arab world" and in particular the hundred thousand Jews of Baghdad who were at "risk of having their throats cut."

Jihad was openly declared both in demonstrations in Damascus and in diplomatic circles in the United Nations, where the head of the Egyptian delegation said that "the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Muslim countries would be jeopardized by the establishment of a Jewish state." In May 1948, U.S. secretary of state (and World War II hero) George C. Marshall warned Israeli foreign-minister-to-be Moshe Sharett against signing Israel's Declaration of Independence: "Believe me; I am talking about things about which I know. You are sitting there in the coastal plains of Palestine, while the Arabs hold the mountain ridges. I know you have some arms and your Haganah, but the Arabs have regular armies. They are well trained and they have heavy arms. How can you hope to hold out?"

A comparison between Morris "A" and Morris "B" shows how the historical context can become blurred and even distorted by using selective facts that are inflated at the expense of the larger and more critical forces of history. It may be true that at the end of the war the newborn IDF emerged better organized, trained, and motivated. Yet during the war itself, as Morris shows in his more recent incarnation, there was a totally different assessment. The majority in the interim Jewish government before statehood as well as the Arabs, British, and Americans all thought the Arabs would defeat the Jewish army in Palestine. It is true that with current hindsight we can explain how the Arabs failed to organize adequately and how the Palestinian Arabs failed to mobilize their own resources because of "their well established traditions of disunity, corruption, and organizational incompetence." However, the war context was different: "In rough demographic and geographical terms, without doubt, the Arabs were far, almost infinitely, stronger than the Yishuv...and the disproportion in terms of land mass and economic resources, or potential economic resources, was, if anything, even greater."

The four armies that invaded Palestine on 15 May, even after leaving behind large formations to protect their regimes, "were far stronger than the Haganah formations" in all kinds of equipment, having far more tanks, artillery, and combat aircrafts (Israel lacked all of these initially). It is natural that at this point, particularly after witnessing the Arab mindset in the systematic destruction of all Jewish settlements by Arab invading armies, the Yishuv's aim was simply "to survive." In addition to a clear perception of military inferiority, based on facts and calculations, it was obvious to the Yishuv leaders that the international diplomatic environment was "consistently pro-Arab" and that the British and the Americans were working together on retracting the implementation of the UN vote to establish a Jewish state.

The New Historians' attempt to prove the British collusion with the Jews against the Arabs is refuted by both the diplomatic and military posture of the Mandatory power. To the contrary, the British were helping in training and in supplying weapons to the Arab Legion of Transjordan, which was the best-trained army in the region, and they worked actively with the Americans to foil the partition in Palestine. Their assessment of the military situation was expressed by the Chief of the Imperial Staff: "In the long run the Jews would not be able to cope...and would be thrown out of Palestine unless they came to terms with [the Arabs]." On 16 May 1948, the British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham determined that the balance of forces "seems to have turned much in favor of the Arabs." Their representative in Amman, Alec Kirkbride, passed along a message from Azzam Pasha: "It doesn't matter how many [Jews there are]. We will sweep them into the sea."

Conclusions

In his most recent book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, Benny Morris casts a dark cloud over the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. He asserts that the primary reason there is no peace is "the stifling darkness, intolerance, authoritarianism, and insularity of the Muslim world," a reality that makes any solution a dim prospect.

The problem with Morris is that these factors, as well as those numerous statements on jihad and exterminating the Jews, were in the public domain everywhere in the Middle East, the United Nations, and the Western press and academic publications since 1947-1948. The opening of archives that historians so solemnly flaunt as "new sources" can sometimes add to the knowledge but not necessarily to the historical context and awareness. New documents may provide some previously unavailable details, but in most cases they cannot change the direction of historical research. Worst of all, a selective use of archives that ignores the historical context, ends up in distortions and misleading accounts. It can only serve those like Ilan Pappé, who does not attempt to disguise his anti-Zionist agenda and defines the "new history" as a revolutionary movement whose goal is to "reconsider the validity of the quest for a Jewish nation-state in what used to be geographic Palestine."

In reply to readers in the Irish Times, Morris was unequivocal on the refugee problem:

The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became "refugees" - and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee) - was not a "racist crime"...but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves. There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing."
Morris went on to say that, given the deadly threats "and the anticipated Arab armies' invasion routes...I for one cannot fault [the Jews'] fears or logic."

The new Morris blames the Arabs for their misfortunes, denies the existence of a Jewish strategy of expulsion or transfer, and, in effect, defends the right of David Ben-Gurion to expel even more, in light of the threats of jihad. Suddenly, in the concluding chapters in both books, Morris brings the case of the Jews who were expelled from Arab lands, showing that there was an exchange of refugees, with approximately the same figures, as a result of the war. The Arabs who declared the war, says Morris, are also responsible for perpetuating the tragedy of the Palestinians in refugee camps, unlike those Jewish refugees who were absorbed in Israel.

As noted, Morris speaks openly about his failed expectations regarding the Palestinians' aims in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Probably, in addition to his learning process on the roots of the conflict, he could not ignore the fact that there are virtually no "new historians" on the Arab or the Palestinian side who could inquire into how the religious factor was so detrimental in perpetuating the conflict and how radical Islam was instrumental in inciting against the acceptance of a Jewish state. Hence, he ends his study on 1948 with a clear "J'accuse" against those historians who fail to understand the Arab rejection of the Jewish state and disregard clear facts and statements of religious hatred.

In his more recent books and articles, Morris has become the leading and most effective voice in exposing how the remaining New Historians cling to their unfounded and false messages. Morris's journey and his radical retreat from his earlier publications constitute an unusual testament to the thin line separating history from propaganda or even falsehood. When the recording of events is motivated by a determination to create a postmodern political narrative, it may end up escaping from history altogether.

Dr. Avi Beker teaches in the MA program on diplomacy at Tel Aviv University, returning from two years as a visiting professor at Georgetown University. He is the former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress and has published books and articles on international politics and security and world Jewry.

This article was published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, JCPA. Contact them by mail at jcpa@netvision.net.il

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?

9/11 was Mossad Inside Job

Where does it come from?
Immediately after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, rumors began circulating that the airplane hijackings and subsequent crashing of the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been the work of Israel’s secret service, the Mossad. At the heart of this propaganda, named the “Big Lie,” were stereotypical messages: “Only the Israelis could have been skilled enough, only Jews could have been smart enough to plan and execute such a complicated and intricate plot.” There is another virulently anti-Semitic assumption underlying this notion: “Only Jews could have been evil enough.”

Another version of this falsehood is that Jews had advance knowledge of the attacks; that Jewish employees were secretly warned not to go to work that day. In fact, then poet laureate from NewJersey, Amiri Baraka’s poem, a lengthy diatribe about September 11, repeats the conspiracy about Jews and Israel having foreknowledge of the attacks and the false rumor that 4,000 Israelis did not show up for work at the World Trade Center.

What are the facts?
The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by members of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda. Jews and Israelis had no knowledge of the attacks. Of the 2,9962 victims who died during the September 11 terrorist attacks, an estimated 400 victims were Jews, including at least two
Israeli citizens. The primarypropagators of the lie that Jews were somehow behind the terrorist plot are the Arab and Muslim media in the Middle East, attempting to deflect blame from their brethren onto Jews and Israel.

The September 11 terrorist attacks were perpetrated by 19 members of Al Qaeda, ten of whom hijacked and flew two passenger airplanes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, five of whom hijacked and flew another passenger airplane into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and another four who died when the passengers on a fourth hijacked airplane rose up and prevented the hijackers from crashing that airplane into the White House.

How we should respond?
While the notion that Jews/Israel is responsible for September 11th sounds incomprehensible to most, this myth has traveled around the Internet and throughout the Middle East with speed and acceptance. This myth plays into classic anti-Semitism. The idea that Jews control the world, and conspire to manipulate the rest of society, has characteristics of Nazi propaganda –– the Jews being the source of all evil. It is important to question the validity of the statement that Jews were responsible for 9/11 and to ask those who make the accusation where they got their information.

The Internet is where many read this lie, and while the Internet can be a great source of information, you have to be careful where you get that information. You can direct people to the Anti-Defamation League Web site that documents how these lies found their way into the media at http://www.adl.org/anti_semitism/9-11conspiracytheories.pdf. You can also advise people to comparewherethey got their information to reputable news sources like CNN that have special Web pages dedicated to the September 11th attacks.

"9/11 is Mossad Inside Job" - False Accusation

Jews Killed Jesus

Where does it come from?
The belief that the Jews killed Jesus grew out of interpretations of the trial and crucifixion portions of the New Testament. The Gospels describe Jewish religious leaders delivering Jesus to Roman authorities with the request that they execute him for blasphemy and public menace. In the Gospel of Matthew (27:25), it is written that Jews cried out, “His blood be on us and our children,” as they demanded his crucifixion. As a result, Christians have historically held Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.

What are the facts?
Crucifixion, the particular method used to execute Jesus, is forbidden by Jewish law. Moreover, Jesus did not commit any crime that is punishable by death according to Jewish law. It is widely agreed upon bycurrent scholars that Jesus was executed bythe Roman rulers of Israel, the same Romans who also executed tens of thousands of other Jews by crucifixion, including two others on the day Jesus was executed.

The myth of Jewish responsibility for Jesus’ death is embedded in 2,000 years worth of Christian teaching and Western culture, starting with the gospels’ attempt to define who the true Jews were. While most people respect the rights of others to adhere to the tenets of their religion, therehas been a historic resentment against Jews by many Christians who cannot understand why Jesus has been so stubbornly rejected. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Christians believed that Jews desecrated communion wafers and killed Christian children to use their blood for matzah (the famous “blood libel”). Today, these issues come up in all sorts of ways, from history classes where the Crusades are taught as heroic times (thousands of Jews were slaughtered during this period) to literature and media that refer to Jewish responsibility for Jesus’ death. The most recent widespread example is Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.

In Mr. Gibson’s film, there is absolutely no ambiguity as to who is responsible for the death of Jesus –– it is the Jews.

According to Christian theologian Carl Evans, “From the New Testament times to the present, it is difficult to find a single period when the Church has not acted shamefully toward the

Jews. I’m convinced that anti-Semitism has been such a powerful and persistent nemesis largely because of the Church’s false witness against the Jews.” To this day, some Christian children are still being taught that “Jews are Christ-killers” and “Jews drink the blood of Christians.” However persistent these myths may be, the Catholic Church has recently made significant steps to correct them. In 1965, the Vatican Council issued Nostra Aetate, which stated that Jesus’ death “cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” In 1992, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (a teaching guide) noted that no one is certain of what happened 2,000 years ago and that Jews as a collective group should not be considered responsible for the crucifixion.

How we should respond?
When someone labels you with something as loaded as “Christ Killer,” it is easy to react emotionally. It is best in such a situation to avoid taking the comment to heart and to respond with objectivity.

1. Jesus was a Jew
2. The Romans are responsible to the crucifixion of Jesus as they responsible to the crucifixion of over than 10,000 Jews
3. The Roman Catholic church adopted Christianity, therefore, the Roman Catholic Christians are ashamed to take responsibility of the crucifixion of their prophet.

While reason will not work with everyone, it may be useful to point out that placing responsibility on a modern-day person for something that happened 2,000 years ago is absurd. Pointing out the Catholic Church’s stance on the issue today may also get the person to stop and think. Keep in mind that comments like this often stem from ignorance, and do not necessarily reflect anti-Semitic attitudes. If you share facts rather than condemn people for such statements, they may be morewilling to listen and learn.

You might point out, as an example, the irony of the blood libel, since Jewish dietary laws strictly prohibit consuming any type of blood.

Many choose to respond to this allegation bypersonalizing their response, “Are you blaming me for the death of Jesus? How can you hold me responsible for something that happened 2,000 year ago?
I wasn’t there, were you there?”

While this type of response doesn’t provide factual information, it does push people to reflect on what they are saying.

"Jews Killed Jesus" is a false accusation!

Dutch Police to Use 'Decoy Jews' as Concerns Grow About Mounting Hate Crime in Cities

Police in the Netherlands are to use 'decoy Jews' to catch anti-Semitic attackers amid growing concerns about rising hate crime in the country.

Amsterdam mayor Lodewijk Asscher ordered the new strategy in a bid to cut the number of verbal and physical attacks on Jews.

Officers will wear religious dress such as skullcaps as they patrol the streets.

'Jews in at least six Amsterdam neighbourhoods often cannot cross the street wearing a skullcap without being insulted, spat at or even attacked,' according to reports in the Telegraph.

The move was sparked by secret footage gathered by the Jewish broadcasting company, Joodse Omroep, which showed young men, often of Muslim immigrant origin, shouting and making Nazi salutes at a rabbi when he visited different areas of the Dutch capital.

Similar schemes are already used in other crime areas with decoy prostitutes, homosexuals and elderly deployed to help catch would be muggers and abusers.

The Daily Telegraph also report that police in the city of Gouda have disguised officers as frail old age pensioners.

'If we receive several reports of street robbery in a certain location, we send out the granny. That soon quietens things down,' a spokesman told them.

The city prides itself on liberalism and which is home to the museum of Anne Frank, a Jew killed during the Holocaust.

Daily Mail

Anti-Semitic Political Cartoons

The following is essential reading to understand the warped hateful & cruel minds of some left wing intellectuals. May their children receive the punishment in kind that their parent deserved!

New Jihadist action hero travels back in time to fight for Allah!

By Adam Levick

* Political cartoons often have more of an immediate impact in reinforcing negative stereotypes about Jews than a lengthy essay. By far the largest output of anti-Semitic cartoons nowadays comes from the Arab and Muslim world. A yet uncharted field of hate cartoons against Jews is that in progressive blogs.

* Anti-Semitic cartoons found - and seemingly tolerated - on progressive blogs such as Daily Kos, MyDD, Mondoweiss, and Indymedia are mainly expressions of anti-Israelism, a more recent category of anti-Semitism than the religious and ethnic-nationalist versions.

* Traditionally the core motif of anti-Semitism is that Jews represent absolute evil. The cultural notion of what that means has changed over the centuries. Nowadays absolute evil is often expressed as Jews or Israelis being Nazis. Indeed, the cartoon motif most frequently appearing on the progressive blogs is imagery equating Israel with Nazi Germany. Others reflect Jewish conspiracies, Zionists controlling the world, the blood libel, or show Jews as animals.

* Most of the progressive blogs discussed, containing such anti-Semitic imagery cited in this essay, generally fail to remove such hateful cartoons, despite blog policies expressly prohibiting posts that contain "hateful" or "inflammatory" content.

Cartoons have to express ideas in an easy-to-understand way. Therefore they are often accessible even to people who cannot read. Cartoons are also an efficient way to transmit hate and prejudices, including anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in cartoons has been investigated, among others, by the Belgian political scientist Jöel Kotek in his book Cartoons and Extremism.
Political cartoons often have a more immediate impact in reinforcing negative stereotypes about Jews than a lengthy essay.

The largest output of anti-Semitic cartoons nowadays comes from the Arab and Muslim world. Outside it one also finds a significant number of anti-Semitic cartoons in many countries. In Europe, for instance, over the past decade such imagery has been particularly strong in countries such as Norway and Greece.

A yet uncharted field of hate cartoons against Jews is that in progressive blogs. They are mainly expressions of anti-Israelism, a more recent category of anti-Semitism than the religious and ethnic-nationalist versions. Traditionally the core motif of anti-Semitism is that Jews represent absolute evil. The cultural notion of what that means has changed over the centuries. In current times absolute evil is often expressed as Jews or Israelis being Nazis. This charge is usually identified with the virulent anti-Semitic cartoons on right-wing extremist sites and in Arab media. This motif, however, is also the main one found in anti-Semitic cartoons on progressive blogs.

Also the three major submotifs of anti-Semitism are expressed in cartoons on progressive blogs. The first one is that Jews lust for power. In progressive blogs this is manifested mainly as caricatures on Jewish conspiracies and Zionists controlling the world. The second major anti-Semitic submotif is that Jews lust for blood, and progressive blogs include cartoons accusing Jews of infanticide. The third anti-Semitic submotif, namely, that Jews are inferior beings, is expressed on these blogs in cartoons showing Jews as animals.

The cartoonist most frequently appearing on the progressive blogs analyzed here is Carlos Latuff. He is an extreme left-wing political activist who won second place in the notorious Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Competition. Latuff is one of the more prolific anti-Semitic cartoonists on the web, with a staggering amount of work dedicated to advancing explicitly anti-Semitic political imagery.

Israel as a Nazi State
The U.S. State Department's2008 report on "Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism" asserts regarding the new anti-Semitism:

Comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis is increasingly commonplace. Anti-Semitism couched as criticism of Zionism or Israel often escapes condemnation since it can be more subtle than traditional forms of anti-Semitism...those criticiz ing Israel have a responsibility to consider the effect their actions may have in prompting hatred of Jews. At times hostility toward Israel has translated into physical violence directed at Jews in gener al.

The European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia presents a similar definition.

The 2009 report on anti-Semitism by the Stephen Roth Institute noted that anti-Semitic attacks on Jews worldwide doubled from the previous year. The study also points out that extreme anti-Israel sentiments, such as equating Israel with Nazi Germany, are often the catalyst for such attacks. As the report observes, "The dramatic increase in anti-Semitic manifestations in West European countries was influenced considerably by the virulently anti-Israel discourse and propaganda that portrayed Israel as a Nazi state and consequently delegitimized its right to exist."

As analyzed in an interview with Kotek in 2004, as well as by Arieh Stav in his 1999 book on anti-Semitic cartoons in the Arab world, the charge that the behavior of the Jewish state is similar to that of Nazi Germany has been a staple in the Arab media for years, used as a tool for demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. As Kotek noted, "Long before [Ariel] Sharon came to power [as prime minister], the theme of the Israeli as a Nazi was well-represented in the Arab caricature. According to it, all Zionists from Peres and Barak to Sharon are inspired by Nazi methods." As Stav pointed out, "The idea of NaZionism...was a central theme of the Soviet Press [during the Cold War] and had considerable impact on Egypt and Syria...particularly during the Lebanon War and the Intifada, as well as in the Western Press. The Arabs...are in the vanguard of this trend. The Judeo-Nazi Motif is among the central themes of Arab propaganda."

The following cartoons illustrate how the hate motif of Israel as a Nazi state appears regularly on progressive blogs. As Kotek remarks, "Cartoons [that] convey the idea that Jews behave like Nazis [would] lead readers to conclude that Israel, alone among the nations, has no right to exist. Such cartoons represent a continuation and rebirth of the malicious Zionism=Racism charge codified in 1975 - later repealed - by UN member states (Arab and Soviet bloc) who at the time were openly dedicated to Israel's destruction."



jcpa.org