Does Nazi antisemitism still impact Mideast?

Does Nazi antisemitism still impact Mideast?

The short answer is yes, but hopefully not as much as some people think.

At YIVO in New York, on March 4, I attended a lecture by Prof. Jeffrey Herf, a historian at the University of Maryland, on his new book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press). It shows how Nazi Germany planted its own brand of antisemitism in the Muslim Middle East. First of all, Nazi officials went to great lengths to explain to the Arab world that its antisemitism was not against all “Semites,” that it only targeted Jews.

A US diplomat, Alexander Kirk, documented how consistently and cleverly the Nazis propagandized in the Arab world to create a “meeting of minds” and a “cultural fusion.” This involved an identification with Arab anti-Zionism and the notion that Islam and Nazism held common values: i.e., that both Nazism and Islam were in opposition to liberal individualism, prizing unity and family instead. Prof. Herf noted that the notoriously antisemitic charter of Hamas incongruously mentions the French Revolution, which it blames on the Jews–and not by accident, according to Herf. He indicates that the Nazis also blamed the French Revolution on the Jews, and were dedicated to its reversal, because Nazism associated the ills of modernity with the ideals of liberty, equality and human rights that were born with the French Revolution. Hamas would not have any such conception without having inherited it from Nazi Germany.

I am reminded of a forum I attended a few months ago at Columbia University. On that occasion, I asked the prominent historian and Palestinian-American activist, Prof. Rashid Khalidi, about the role of the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini; he downplayed his importance—opposite to Herf’s view and I think somewhat contrary to the truth. Herf indicated that the Mufti had escaped Allied imprisonment in France to influence Palestinian politics (from Cairo) by heading the Higher Arab Committee in 1946-’48. Herf feels it’s a pity that Husseini and others were not prosecuted for war crimes—specifically for incitement to genocide in broadcasting from Nazi Germany in July 1942 that the Egyptian public take up arms and murder the Jews in their midst.

I take Herf at his word that he’s an honest scholar, not trying to score ideological points. But Herf’s notion (voiced briefly by him) that if the conflict between Israel and the Arabs were only about land, it would have been settled already, seems rife for exploitation by voices on the right who will discount all efforts at peacemaking. Unfortunately, the writing of history remains, all too often, a weapon of political conflict.

By | 2010-03-11T05:05:00-05:00 March 11th, 2010|Blog|3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Werner Cohn March 13, 2010 at 6:37 am - Reply

    Historians must work with their historical materials, whether or not others may later wish to exploit their work for other purposes. The WWII relationships between Nazis and sections of Arab elites are facts, whatever the doves or hawks of today may wish to make of them. As it happens, Herf’s work deals mainly with what the Nazis told the Arabs; he has little to say about how Arab elites reacted to this Nazi propaganda. But we now have a shorter but more balanced account of Nazi-Arab relations in Chapter Twenty of the new history of anti-Semitism by Robert Wistrich, “A Lethal Obsession.” While Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was by far the most prominent Arab leader to have close relations with Hitler, he was not alone. Wistrich shows in detail how pervasive the Nazi influence was among Arab elites. On the other hand, we know that many Arab leaders worked for the West and against the Nazis. We do not have as yet an overall study, as far as I know, of the relative strengths of these two groups in the WWII Arab world.

  2. Protect March 19, 2010 at 6:08 pm - Reply

    The claim that Jews were responsible for the French Revolution also migrated to the U.S. in the anti-Semitic literature of the 1920s and 1930s, in writing like those of Nesta Webster and her series “The Jewish Peril.” In the U.S. American fundamentalists including William Bell Riley, founder of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, embraced these anti-Semitic works including “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Many fundamentalists believed that these narratives validated the anti-Christ narratives of their dispensational eschatology, the end times narrative which birthed today’s Christian Zionist movement.

    These anti-Semitic stories live on in today’s American Christian Zionism. For instance, in Pat Robertson’s 1991 book New World Order he states on page 69, “The precise connecting link between the German Illuminati and the beginning of world communism was furnished by a German radical named Moses Hess.” Then on page 258 he states, “In fact, the Bible refers to Mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots. It is this stream of humanity that asserted itself in the French Revolution, in Marxist communism, and now appears again in new world order planning.” Robertson quotes Nesta Webster as a source.

    John Hagee, who hosted Netanyahu, Oren, and Ayalon, at a Christians United for Israel event in Jerusalem on the evening of Biden’s arrival in Israel, has disseminated globally many of the anti-Semitic conspiracies which have been perpetuated through American fundamentalist end times narratives merged with anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. This includes entire sermons on the “Mystery Babylon” religion, including one sermon in his “Prophecy for the 21st Century” series which he markets. This is a conspiracy narrative which has been used by Protestant fundamentalists to attack Catholics since the mid 1800s, but is also used against Jews.

    In Christian Identity, the virulently anti-Semitic belief system of many American white supremacist groups, “Mystery Babylon” is described as the demonic religious system through which Jews control the world.

  3. Rachel Tabachnick March 21, 2010 at 2:21 am - Reply

    The conspiracy theories about Jews being responsible for the French Revolution also migrated to the U.S. in the anti-Semitic literature of the 1920s and 1930s. This including the writings of British author Nesta Webster. In the U.S., American fundamentalists like William Bell Riley, founder of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, embraced these anti-Semitic works including “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Many fundamentalists believed that these narratives validated the anti-Christ narratives of their dispensational eschatology, the eschatology which birthed American Christian Zionism.

    These anti-Semitic stories live on in today’s Christian Zionism. For instance, in Pat Robertson’s 1991 book New World Order he states on page 69, “The precise connecting link between the German Illuminati and the beginning of world communism was furnished by a German radical named Moses Hess.” Then on page 258 he states, “In fact, the Bible refers to Mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots. It is this stream of humanity that asserted itself in the French Revolution, in Marxist communism, and now appears again in new world order planning.” Robertson quotes Nesta Webster as a source.

    John Hagee, who hosted Netanyahu, Oren, and Ayalon, at a Christians United for Israel (CUFI) event in Jerusalem on the evening of Biden’s arrival in Israel, has disseminated globally many of the anti-Semitic conspiracies which have been perpetuated through American fundamentalist end times narratives merged with anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. This includes entire sermons on the “Mystery Babylon” religion, including one sermon in his “Prophecy for the 21st Century” series which he markets. This is a conspiracy narrative which has been used by Protestant fundamentalists to attack Catholics since the mid 1800s, but is also used against Jews.

    In Christian Identity, the virulently anti-Semitic belief system of many American white supremacist groups, “Mystery Babylon” is described as the demonic religious system through which Jews control the world.

    One of the most underreported aspects of Christian Zionism is the movement’s mass dissemination of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

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