Antisemitism (also spelled
anti-semitism or
anti-Semitism)
is
prejudice against or hostility towards
Jews, often rooted in hatred of their
ethnic background,
culture, or
religion.While
the term's
etymology might suggest that
antisemitism is directed against all
Semitic peoples, since the term was invented
it has been used to refer exclusively to hostility toward
Jews."Antisemitism has never anywhere been concerned with anyone
but Jews."
Lewis, Bernard.
"Semites and Antisemites",
Islam in History:
Ideas, Men and Events in the Middle East, The Library Press,
1973. In its extreme form, it "attributes to the Jews an
exceptional position among all other civilisations, defames them as
an inferior group and denies their being part of the nation[s]" in
which they reside.
Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from
individual expressions of
hatred and
discrimination against individual Jews to
organized
violent attacks by
mobs or even
state
police or
military
attacks on entire Jewish communities. Extreme instances of
persecution include the
First Crusade of
1096, the
expulsion from England
in 1290, the
Spanish
Inquisition, the
expulsion from
Spain in 1492, the
expulsion from
Portugal in 1497, various
pogroms, the
Dreyfuss Affair, and perhaps the
most infamous, the
Holocaust under
Adolf Hitler's
Nazi Germany.
Forms
The Roman Catholic historian
Edward
Flannery distinguished four varieties of antisemitism:
In
addition, from the 1990s, some writers claim to have identified a
new antisemitism, a form of
antisemitism coming simultaneously from the far left, the far
right, and radical Islam, which tends
to focus on opposition to Zionism and a
Jewish homeland in the State of Israel
, and which may deploy traditional antisemitism
motifs, including older motifs like the 'Blood Libel'.
Etymology and usage
Usage
Despite the use of the prefix "anti," the terms
Semitic
and
anti-Semitic are not directly opposed to each other.
Antisemitism refers specifically to prejudice against
Jews alone and in general, despite the fact that
there are other speakers of
Semitic
languages (e.g.
Arabs,
Ethiopians, or
Assyrians) and that not all Jews speak a
Semitic language.
Both terms
anti-Semitism and
antisemitism are in
common use. There are some arguments over which term is to be
preferred. All major dictionaries prefer a hyphenated form, i.e.
anti-Semitism or
anti-semitism. Scholarly usage
is divided. Some scholars favor usage of the unhyphenated form
antisemitism to avoid possible confusion involving whether
the term refers specifically to
Jews, or to
Semitic-language speakers as a whole.
Etymology

Cover page of Marr's
The Way to
Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1880 edition
The word
antisemitic ( in German) was probably first used in 1860
by the Austrian
Jewish
scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase
"antisemitic prejudices" ( ). Steinschneider used this
phrase to characterize
Ernest Renan's
ideas about how "
Semitic races" were
inferior to "
Aryan races." These
pseudo-scientific theories concerning race,
civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in
Europe in the second half of the 19th
century, especially as
Prussian
nationalistic historian
Heinrich
von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. In
Treitschke's writings
Semitic was
synonymous with
Jewish, in contrast to its
usage by Renan and others.
In 1873 German journalist
Wilhelm Marr
published a pamphlet
"The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the
Germanic Spirit. Observed from a non-religious
perspective." (
"Der Sieg des Judenthums über das
Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus
betrachtet.") in which he used the word
"Semitismus"
interchangeably with the word "Judentum" to denote both "Jewry"
(the Jews as a collective) and "jewishness" (the quality of being
Jewish, or the Jewish spirit). Although he did not use the word
"Antisemitismus" in the pamphlet, the coining of the latter word
followed naturally from the word "Semitismus", and indicated either
opposition to the Jews as a people, or else opposition to
jewishness or the Jewish spirit, which he saw as infiltrating
German culture. In his next pamphlet,
"The Way to Victory of
the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit", published in
1880, Marr developed his ideas further and coined the related
German word
Antisemitismus
-
antisemitism, derived from the word "Semitismus" that he
had earlier used.
The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year he founded
the
"League of Antisemites" ("
Antisemiten-Liga"),
the first German organization committed specifically to combatting
the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews
and their influence, and advocating their
forced removal from the country.
So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in
1881, when Marr published
"Zwanglose Antisemitische
Hefte," and
Wilhelm Scherer
used the term "
Antisemiten" in the January issue of
"Neue Freie Presse". The related word
semitism was coined around 1885.
Definitions

Antisemitic caricature by C.Léandre
(France, 1898)
Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or
prejudice against
Jews, a number of authorities
have developed more formal definitions.
Holocaust scholar and
City University of New York
professor
Helen Fein defines it as "a
persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a
collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture
as myth,
ideology,
folklore and imagery, and in actions – social or
legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and
collective or state violence – which results in and/or is designed
to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews."
Professor
Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne
further expanded on Professor Fein's definition by
describing the structure of antisemitic beliefs. To
antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by
nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this
bad nature: (1) Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a
collective. (2) Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding
societies. (3) Jews bring disaster on their 'host societies' or on
the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the
antisemites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish
character."
Bernard Lewis defines antisemitism as
a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed
against people who are in some way different from the rest.
According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct
features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from
that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil."
Thus, "it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews
without necessarily being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or
persecution displays one of the two features specific to
antisemitism.
There have been a number of efforts by international and
governmental bodies to define antisemitism formally. The United
States Department of State defines antisemitism in its 2005 Report
on Global Anti-Semitism as "hatred toward Jews — individually and
as a group — that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or
ethnicity."
In 2005, the
European
Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), a body of
the
European Union, developed a more
detailed discussion: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews,
which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and
physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish
or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish
community institutions and religious facilities.
In addition, such
manifestations could also target the state of Israel
, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.
Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm
humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews
for 'why things go wrong'."
The EUMC then listed "contemporary examples of antisemitism in
public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the
religious sphere." These included: "Making mendacious,
dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews;
accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined
wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group;
denying the Holocaust; and accusing Jewish
citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged
priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own
nations. The EUMC also discussed ways in which attacking Israel
could be antisemitic, e.g.
- * Denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination,
e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a
racist endeavor;
- * Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior
not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;
- * Using the symbols and images associated with classic
anti-Semitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to
characterize Israel or Israelis;
- * Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of
the Nazis;
- * Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the
State of Israel.
The EUMC added that criticism of Israel cannot be regarded as
antisemitism so long as it is "similar to that leveled against any
other country." (see
anti-Zionism below). To
encourage additional usage of the definition, the European Forum on
Antisemitism has commissioned
translations of the working definition into
numerous languages.
Evolution of usage as a term
In 1879,
Wilhelm Marr founded the
Antisemiten-Liga (Antisemitic League). Identification with
antisemitism and as an antisemite was politically advantageous in
Europe in the latter 19th century.
For example, Karl
Lueger, the popular mayor of fin
de siècle Vienna
, skillfully
exploited antisemitism as a way of channeling public discontent to
his political advantage. In its 1910 obituary of Lueger,
The New York Times notes that Lueger was "Chairman of the
Christian Social Union of the Parliament and of the Anti-Semitic
Union of the Diet of Lower Austria. In 1895
A. C. Cuza organized the
Alliance Anti-semitique
Universelle in Bucharest. In the period before
World War II, when animosity towards Jews was
far more commonplace, it was not uncommon for a person,
organization, or political party to self-identify as an antisemite
or antisemitic.
The early zionist pioneer,
Judah Leib
Pinsker, in a pamphlet written in 1882, said that antisemitism
was an inherited predisposition:
In the aftermath of
Kristallnacht,
Goebbels announced: "The German
people is anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights
restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the
Jewish race."
After
Hitler's fall from power, and
particularly after the extent of the
Nazi
genocide of Jews became known, the term
"antisemitism" acquired
pejorative
connotations. This marked a full circle shift in usage, from an era
just decades earlier when "Jew" was used as a pejorative term.
Yehuda Bauer wrote in 1984: "There are no antisemites in the
world... Nobody says, 'I am antisemitic.'" You cannot, after
Hitler. The word has gone out of fashion."
History
Ancient world
Examples of antipathy to
Jews and
Judaism during
ancient
times are abundant. Statements exhibiting prejudice towards
Jews and their religion can be found in the works of many pagan
Greek and Roman writers.
There are examples of Hellenistic rulers desecrating the Temple
and banning Jewish religious practices, such as
circumcision, Shabbat observance, study of
Jewish religious books, etc. Examples may also be found in
anti-Jewish riots in Alexandria
in the 3rd century BCE. Philo of Alexandria described an attack
on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews
died.
The Jewish diaspora on the Nile island Elephantine, which was
founded by mercenaries, experienced the destruction of its temple
in 410 BCE.
Relationships between the Jewish people and the occupying
Roman Empire were at first antagonistic and
resulted in
several rebellions.
According to
Suetonius, the emperor
Tiberius expelled from Rome, Jews who had
gone to live there.
The 18th century English
historian
Edward Gibbon identified a more
tolerant period beginning in about 160 CE.
According to
James Carroll, "Jews
accounted for 10% of the total population of the
Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors
such as
pogroms and
conversion had not intervened, there would
be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like
13 million."
Persecutions in the Middle Ages
From the 9th century CE, the
medieval
Islamic world classified Jews (and Christians) as
dhimmi, and were allowed to practice their
religion more freely than they could do in
medieval Christian Europe.
Under Islamic rule
, there was a Golden age of Jewish
culture in Spain that lasted until at least the 11th century,
when several Muslim pogroms against Jews took place in the Iberian
Peninsula
; those that
occurred in Córdoba
in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. Several decrees
ordering the destruction of synagogues were also enacted in
Egypt
, Syria
, Iraq
and Yemen
from the
11th century. Despite the Qur'an's
prohibition, Jews were also forced to convert to Islam or face
death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad
several times between the 12th and 18th
centuries. The
Almohads, who
had taken control of the
Almoravids'
Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147, were
far more fundamentalist in outlook, and they treated the
dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or
conversion, many Jews and Christians emigrated. Some, such as the
family of
Maimonides, fled east to more
tolerant Muslim lands, while some others went northward to settle
in the growing Christian kingdoms, where Jews were increasingly
forced to convert to Christianity from the 13th century.
During the
Middle Ages in Europe there
was persecution against Jews in many places, with
blood libels, expulsions,
forced conversions and
massacres. A main justification of
prejudice against Jews in Europe was religious. The persecution hit
its first peak during the
Crusades. In the
First Crusade (1096) flourishing
communities on the Rhine and the Danube were destroyed; see
German Crusade, 1096. In the
Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in
Germany were subject to several massacres. The Jews were also
subjected to attacks by the
Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The
Crusades were followed by expulsions, including in, 1290, the
banishing of all English Jews; in 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled
from France; and, in 1421 thousands were expelled from Austria.
Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.
As the
Black Death epidemics devastated
Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the
population, Jews were used as
scapegoats.
Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberately
poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish
communities were destroyed by violence.
Although Pope Clement VI tried to protect them by the
July 6, 1348, papal bull and an
additional bull in 1348, several months later, 900 Jews were burnt
alive in Strasbourg
, where the plague hadn't yet affected the
city.
Seventeenth century
During the mid-to-late 17th century the
Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the
Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million
people), and Jewish losses were counted in hundreds of thousands.
First,
the Chmielnicki Uprising when
Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern
areas he controlled (today's Ukraine
). The precise number of dead may never be
known, but the decrease of the Jewish population during that period
is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration,
deaths from diseases and
jasyr
(captivity in the
Ottoman
Empire).
Eighteenth century
In 1744,
Frederick II of Prussia
limited the number of Jews allowed to live in Breslau
to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families
and encouraged a similar practice in other Prussian cities. In 1750 he issued the
Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die
Judenschaft: the "protected" Jews had an alternative to
"either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin" (quoting
Simon Dubnow).
In the same year, Archduchess of Austria
Maria Theresa ordered Jews out of
Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on
the condition that Jews pay for their readmission every ten
years. This
extortion was known as
malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced the law
limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782,
Joseph II abolished most of
these persecution practices in his
Toleranzpatent, on the condition that
Yiddish and
Hebrew were eliminated from public records
and that judicial autonomy was annulled.
Moses Mendelssohn wrote that "Such a
tolerance... is even more dangerous play in tolerance than open
persecution."
In 1772, the empress of Russia
Catherine
II forced the Jews of the
Pale of
Settlement to stay in their
shtetls and
forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before
the
partition of Poland.
Nineteenth century
Historian
Martin Gilbert writes that
it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in
Muslim countries.
Benny Morris writes
that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of
stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th
century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old,
with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching
[them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with
the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon
his Jewish
gaberdine. To all this the Jew
is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to
offer to strike a Mahommedan."
In 1850
the German
composer
Richard Wagner published Das Judenthum in der Musik
("Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym
in the Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik. The essay began as an attack
on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries (and
rivals)
Felix Mendelssohn and
Giacomo Meyerbeer, but expanded to
accuse Jews of being a harmful and alien element in
German culture. Anti-Semitism can also be
found in many of the
Grimms' Fairy
Tales by
Jacob and
Wilhelm Grimm, published from 1812 to 1857. It
is mainly characterized by Jews being the
villain of a story, such as in “The Good Bargain
(Der gute Handel)” and “The Jew Among Thorns (Der Jude im
Dorn).”
The
Dreyfus Affair highlights
anti-semitism during the 19th Century. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish
artillery captain in the French army, was accused in 1894 of
passing secrets to the Germans. As a result of these charges,
Dreyfus was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's
Island. The actual spy Marie Charles Esterhazy was acquitted. The
event caused great uproar among the French and everyone chose a
side regarding whether Dreyfus was actually guilty or not. Émile
Zola accused the army of polluting the French Justice system.
However, general consensus held that Dreyfus was guilty: eighty
percent of the press in France condemned Dreyfus. This attitude
among the majority of the French population reveals the underlying
anti-semitism of the time period.
Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909), the
Lutheran court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, founded in 1878 an
antisemitic, antiliberal political party called The
Christian Social Party .
However, this party did not attract as many votes as the Nazi
party, which flourished in part because of The Great Depression
which hit Germany especially hard during the early 1930s.
Twentieth century
In the first half of the 20th century, in the USA, Jews were
discriminated against in employment, access to residential and
resort areas, membership in clubs and organizations, and in
tightened quotas on Jewish enrollment and teaching positions in
colleges and universities.
The Leo Frank
lynching by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta
, Georgia
in 1915 turned the spotlight on antisemitism in the
United States. The case was also used to build support for
the renewal of the
Ku Klux Klan which
had been inactive since 1870.
In the
beginning of 20th century, the Beilis Trial in Russia
represented
incidents of blood libel in Europe. Allegations of Jews
killing Christians were used as justification for killing of Jews
by Christians.
Antisemitism in America reached its peak during the interwar
period. The pioneer automobile manufacturer
Henry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his
newspaper
The Dearborn
Independent. The radio speeches of
Father Coughlin in the late 1930s attacked
Franklin D. Roosevelt's
New
Deal and promoted the notion of a Jewish financial conspiracy.
Such views were also shared by some prominent politicians;
Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the
United
States House Committee on Banking and Currency, blamed Jews for
president Roosevelt's decision to abandon the
gold standard, and claimed that "in the United
States today, the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews
have the lawful money."
In the 1940s the
aviator Charles Lindbergh and many prominent
Americans led The
America First
Committee in opposing any involvement in the war against
Fascism. During his July 1936 visit he wrote letters saying that
there was “more intelligent leadership in Germany than is generally
recognized.”
The
German American Bund held
parades in New York
City
during the late 1930s where Nazi uniforms were worn and flags featuring swastikas were raised alongside American
flags. The US House Committee on Un-American Activities
(HUAC) was very active in denying the Bund's ability to operate.
With the start of US involvement in
World
War II most of the Bund's members were placed in
internment camps, and some were deported at
the end of the war.
Sometimes, during race riots, as in Detroit
in 1943, Jewish businesses were targeted for
looting and burning.
In Nazi occupied Europe, oppressive discrimination of the Jews and
denial of basic civil rights, escalated into a campaign of mass
murder, culminating, from 1941 to 1945, in
genocide: the
Holocaust.
Eleven million Jews were targeted for extermination by the Nazis,
and some six million were eventually killed. This is seen by many
as the culmination of generations of antisemitism in Europe.
Antisemitism was commonly used as an
instrument for personal conflicts in Soviet Russia
, starting from conflict between Stalin and Trotsky
and continuing through numerous conspiracy theories spread by
official propaganda. Antisemitism in the USSR
reached new
heights after 1948 during the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (euphemism for
"Jew") in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers,
painters and sculptors were killed or arrested. This
culminated in the so-called
Doctors'
Plot. Similar anti-Jewish propaganda in Poland resulted in the
flight of the Polish Jewish survivors out of the country.
After the
war, the Kielce pogrom and "March 1968 events" in communist Poland
represented
further incidents of antisemitism in Europe. The common
theme behind the
anti-Jewish
violence in postwar Poland were
blood
libel rumours.
The cult of
Simon of Trent was
disbanded in 1965 by
Pope Paul VI, and
the shrine erected to him was dismantled. He was removed from the
calendar, and his future veneration was forbidden, though a handful
of extremists still promote the narrative as a fact.
Christianity and antisemitism
Religious antisemitism is also known as anti-Judaism. As the name
implies, it was the practice of
Judaism
itself that was the defining characteristic of the antisemitic
attacks. Under this version of antisemitism, attacks would often
stop if Jews stopped practicing or changed their public faith,
especially by
conversion to the
official or right religion, and sometimes, liturgical exclusion of
Jewish converts (the case of Christianized
Marranos or Iberian Jews in the late 15th and
16th centuries convicted of secretly practising Judaism or Jewish
customs).
New Testament and antisemitism
Certain historians have noted that the
New
Testament, although recognized as being largely authored by
Jews within a Jewish cultural context, has been singled out for its
progressively antagonistic tone and hostile attitude toward Jews.
Particularly, the
Gospel of John has
been singled out in antisemitic texts, because it includes many
anti-Jewish episodes , and it contains many references to Jews in a
pejorative manner.
has repeatedly been employed for antisemitic purposes . The verse speaks of violence suffered at the hands of one's own countrymen. It claims that the Churches in Judea had been persecuted by the Jews who killed Jesus and that such people displease God, oppose all men, and had prevented Paul from speaking to the gentile nations concerning the New Testament message. During the Second Temple period there were sectarian differences among Jewish religious groups regarding communication with Gentiles.The JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA entry Phinehas the Model Zealot states: 'Others threaten to slay any uncircumcised Gentile who listens to a discourse on God and His laws, unless he undergoes the rite of circumcision [comp. Sanh. 59a; Sifre, Deut. 345]; should he refuse to do so, they kill him instantly. From this practise they have received the name of 'Zealots' or 'Sicarii.' The verse has created significant debate among scholars because some feel it contradicts the other writings attributed to Paul, and because Paul did not have an attitude of revulsion toward his life as a Pharisee before Christianity.
The New Testament states that while on trial, Jesus was struck in
the face by a Jewish guard for allegedly speaking ill of the high
priest ( ). Such incidents were the source of the myth of the
wandering Jew, who was doomed to the
punishment of endless roaming and suffering fated to never
die.
The
death of Jesus,
according to the New Testament, was done in brutal mockery by the
Roman soldiers.
Pontius Pilate's
words ( ) imply that the Jews were entirely responsible for the
killing. When Jesus is nailed to the cross, the New Testament
states that those present mocked Jesus ( ); some have speculated
that the unnamed individuals were in fact Jews. Further speculation
states that the overall impression on
Christians was that the Jews controlled the
events that lead to the death of Jesus, although the Roman
involvement in the affair, specifically the form of execution, is
attested to within the New Testament text.
The process by which some believe that Christians began to see
Judaism first as a rival, and then as a scapegoat , is seen as
traceable through select passages in the New Testament, as well as
early Christian writings and of the Apostolic fathers . The
destruction of the
Second Temple was
seen as judgement from God to the Jews for the death of Jesus.
Parallel passages to this effect can be seen in the Old Testament
nevi'im (prophets), specifically
Book of Jeremiah, which speaks of the judgement,
destruction, and deportation of the Jewish nation from Jerusalem by
the Babylonians (under
Nebuchadrezzar
II in 587 BC ).
The majority of the New Testament was written by Jews who became
followers of
Jesus, and all but two books
(
Luke and
Acts) are traditionally attributed to
such Jewish followers. Nevertheless, there are a number of passages
in the New Testament that some see as antisemitic, or have been
used for antisemitic purposes, most notably:
Jesus speaking to a group of Pharisees: "I know that you are descendants of
Abraham; yet you seek to kill me, because my
word finds no place in you.
I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do
what you have heard from your father."
They answered him, "Abraham is our
father."
Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children,
you would do what Abraham did.
...
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to
do your father's desires.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing
to do with the truth, because there is no truth in
him.
When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature,
for he is a liar and the father of lies.
But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe
me.
Which of you convicts me of sin?
If I tell the truth, why do you not believe
me?
He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why
you do not hear them is you are not of God."
( , )
Stephen speaking before a
synagogue council just before his execution: "You stiff-necked
people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the
Holy Spirit.
As your fathers did, so do you.
Which of the prophets did not your fathers
persecute?
And they killed those who announced beforehand the
coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and
murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did
not keep it."
( , RSV)
"Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan
who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie — behold, I will
make them come and bow down before your feet, and learn that I have
loved you."
( , RSV).
"Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the
Christ?
He is antichrist who denies the Father and the
Son.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either;
he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also"( ).
Some biblical scholars point out that Jesus and Stephen are
presented as Jews speaking to other Jews, and that their use of
broad accusation against Israel is borrowed from
Moses and the later Jewish prophets (e.g. ; ; , ; ; ;
; ). Jesus once calls his own disciple Peter 'Satan' ( ).Drawing
from the Jewish prophet
Jeremiah ( ), the
New Testament taught that with the
death of Jesus a
new
covenant was established which rendered obsolete - and in many
respects seen as superseding - the first covenant established by
Moses ( ; ). Observance of the earlier covenant traditionally
characterizes
Judaism. This New Testament
teaching, and later variations to it, are part of what is called
supersessionism. However, the early
Jewish followers of Jesus continued to practice
circumcision and observe
dietary laws, which is why the failure to observe
these laws by the first
Gentile Christians
became a matter of controversy and dispute some years after Jesus'
death ( ; ; ).
The New Testament holds that Jesus' (Jewish) disciple
Judas Iscariot ( ), the
Roman governor
Pontius Pilate along with Roman forces ( ; )
and Jewish leaders and people of Jerusalem were (to varying
degrees) responsible for the death of Jesus ( ). Diaspora Jews are
not blamed for events which were outside their control.
After
Jesus' death, the New Testament portrays the Jewish religious
authorities in Jerusalem
as hostile to Jesus' followers, and as occasionally
using force against them. Stephen is executed by stoning (
). Before his conversion, Saul puts followers of Jesus in prison (
; ; ). After his conversion,
Saul is
whipped at various times by Jewish authorities ( ), and is accused
by Jewish authorities before Roman courts (e.g., ). However,
opposition from Gentiles is also cited repeatedly ( ; ; ). More
generally, there are widespread references in the New Testament to
suffering experienced by Jesus' followers at the hands of others (
; ; ; ; ; ; ).
See Joseph Atwill's interview on the
The Roots of Anti-Semitism
The
Codex Sinaiticus contains two
extra books in the New Testament - the
Shepherd of Hermas and the
Epistle of Barnabas. The latter goes out
of its way to claim that it was the Jews, not the Romans, who
killed Jesus, and is full of anti-Semitism. The Epistle of Barnabas
was removed from later versions of the Bible; Professor
Bart Ehrman said "the suffering of Jews in the
subsequent centuries would, if possible, have been even worse had
the Epistle of Barnabas remained".
Early Christianity
A number of early and influential Church works — such as the
dialogues of
Justin Martyr, the
homilies of
John Chrysostom, and the
testimonies of church father
Cyprian — are
strongly anti-Jewish.
During a discussion on the celebration of
Easter during the
First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE,
Roman emperor
Constantine
said,
...it appeared an unworthy thing that in the
celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice
of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous
sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of
soul.
(...) Let us then have nothing in common with the
detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a
different way.
Prejudice against Jews in the
Roman
Empire was formalized in 438, when the
Code of Theodosius II established Christianity as
the only legal religion in the Roman Empire. The
Justinian Code a century later stripped Jews
of many of their rights, and Church councils throughout the 6th and
7th century, including the Council of Orleans, further enforced
anti-Jewish provisions.
These restrictions began as early as 305,
when, in Elvira, (now Granada
), a Spanish town in Andalucia
, the first known laws of any church council against
Jews appeared. Christian women were forbidden to marry Jews
unless the Jew first converted to Catholicism. Jews were forbidden
to extend hospitality to Catholics. Jews could not keep Catholic
Christian
concubines and were forbidden to
bless the fields of Catholics.
In 589, in Catholic Iberia
, the Third
Council of Toledo ordered that children born of marriage
between Jews and Catholic be baptized by force. By the
Twelfth Council of Toledo (681) a policy of forced conversion of
all Jews was initiated (Liber Judicum, II.2 as given in Roth).
Thousands fled, and thousands of others converted to Roman
Catholicism.
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Antisemitism was widespread in Europe during the
Middle Ages. In those times, a main cause of
prejudice against Jews in Europe was the religious one. Although
not part of
Roman Catholic dogma, many Christians, including members of the
clergy, held the Jewish people
collectively responsible for the death of
Jesus, a practice originated by
Melito
of Sardis.
Among socio-economic factors were restrictions by the authorities.
Local rulers and church officials closed the doors for many
professions to the Jews, pushing them into occupations considered
socially inferior such as accounting, rent-collecting and
moneylending, which was tolerated then as a
"
necessary
evil". During the
Black Death, Jews
were accused as being the cause, and were often killed.
There
were expulsions of Jews from England
, France
, Germany
, Portugal
and Spain
during the
Middle Ages as a result of antisemitism.

18th century Frankfurt Judensau
German for "Jews' sow",
Judensau was the derogatory and dehumanizing
imagery of Jews that appeared around the 13th century. Its
popularity lasted for over 600 years and was revived by the Nazis.
The Jews, typically portrayed in
obscene
contact with
unclean animals such as
pigs or
owls or representing
a
devil, appeared on
cathedral or
church ceilings, pillars, utensils,
etchings, etc. Often, the images combined several antisemitic
motifs and included derisive prose or poetry.
"Dozens of Judensaus... intersect with the portrayal of
the Jew as a Christ killer.
Various illustrations of the murder of Simon of Trent blended images of Judensau,
the devil, the murder of little Simon himself,
and the Crucifixion.
In the 17th-century engraving from Frankfurt ... a
well-dressed, very contemporary-looking Jew has mounted the sow
backward and holds her tail, while a second Jew sucks at her milk
and a third eats her feces.
The horned devil, himself wearing a Jewish badge, looks on and the butchered Simon,
splayed as if on a cross, appears on a panel above."
In
Shakespeare's
"Merchant of Venice," considered to
be one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time, the villain
Shylock was a Jewish moneylender. By the end
of the play he is mocked on the streets after his daughter elopes
with a Christian. Shylock, then, compulsorily converts to
Christianity as a part of a deal gone wrong. This has raised
profound implications regarding Shakespeare and antisemitism.
During the Middle Ages, the story of Jephonias, the Jew who tried
to overturn Mary's funeral bier, changed from his converting to
Christianity into his simply having his hands cut off by an
angel.

A 15th century German woodcut showing
an alleged host desecration.
1: the hosts are stolen
2: the hosts bleed when pierced by a Jew
3: the Jews are arrested
4: they are burned alive.
On many occasions, Jews were subjected to
blood libels, false accusations of
drinking the blood of Christian children in mockery of the
Christian
Eucharist.Jews were subject to a
wide range of legal restrictions throughout the Middle Ages, some
of which lasted until the end of the 19th century. Jews were
excluded from many trades, the occupations varying with place and
time, and determined by the influence of various non-Jewish
competing interests. Often Jews were barred from all occupations
but money-lending and peddling, with even these at times
forbidden.
19th and 20th century
Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, the Roman Catholic
Church still incorporated strong antisemitic elements, despite
increasing attempts to separate anti-Judaism, the opposition to the
Jewish religion on religious grounds, and racial antisemitism.
Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) had the
walls of the Jewish
Ghetto in Rome rebuilt
after the Jews were
released by
Napoleon, and Jews were restricted to the Ghetto through the
end of the Papal States in 1870. Additionally, official
organizations such as the
Jesuits banned
candidates "who are descended from the Jewish race unless it is
clear that their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have
belonged to the Catholic Church" until 1946. Brown University
historian
David Kertzer, working from
the Vatican archive, has further argued in his book
The Popes Against the Jews
that in the 19th and early 20th centuries the
Roman Catholic Church adhered to a
distinction between "good antisemitism" and "bad antisemitism". The
"bad" kind promoted hatred of Jews because of their descent. This
was considered un-Christian because the Christian message was
intended for all of humanity regardless of ethnicity; anyone could
become a Christian. The "good" kind criticized alleged Jewish
conspiracies to control newspapers, banks, and other institutions,
to care only about accumulation of wealth, etc. Many Catholic
bishops wrote articles criticizing Jews on such grounds, and, when
accused of promoting hatred of Jews, would remind people that they
condemned the "bad" kind of antisemitism. Kertzer's work is not,
therefore, without critics; scholar of Jewish-Christian relations
Rabbi David G. Dalin, for example, criticized Kertzer
in the
Weekly Standard for
using evidence selectively.
The
Second Vatican Council,
the
Nostra Aetate document, and the
efforts of
Pope John Paul II have
helped reconcile Jews and Catholicism in recent decades, however.
According to Roman Catholic holocaust scholar
Michael Phayer the Church as a whole
recognized its failings during the council when it corrected the
traditional beliefs of the Jews having committed deicide and
affirmed that they remained God's chosen people.
The Nazis used
Martin Luther's book,
On the Jews and Their
Lies, to
claim a moral
righteousness for their ideology. Martin Luther in his
On the
Jews and Their Lies (1543) even went so far as to advocate the
murder of those Jews who refused to convert to Christianity,
writing that "we are at fault in not slaying them" In 1994, the
Church Council of the
Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America, the largest
Lutheran
denomination in the United States and a member of the
Lutheran World Federation publicly
rejected Luther's antisemitic writings. The controversial
document
Dabru Emet was issued by many
American Jewish scholars in 2000 as a statement about
Jewish-Christian relations. This document says, "Nazism was not a
Christian phenomenon. Without the long history of Christian
anti-Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology
could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out. Too
many Christians participated in, or were sympathetic to, Nazi
atrocities against Jews. Other Christians did not protest
sufficiently against these atrocities. But Nazism itself was not an
inevitable outcome of Christianity."
Accusations of deicide
Though never a part of
Christian dogma, many Christians, including members of the
clergy, held the Jewish people under an
antisemitic canard to be
collectively responsible for
deicide, the
killing of
Jesus, whom they believed to be the son of God.
According to this interpretation, the Jews present at Jesus’ death
as well as the Jewish people collectively and for all time had
committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing. The accusation has
been the most powerful warrant for antisemitism by
Christians.
Passion plays are dramatic stagings
representing the trial and death of
Jesus and
have historically been used in remembrance of Jesus' death during
Lent. These plays historically blamed the Jews
for
the death of Jesus in a
polemical fashion, depicting a crowd of Jewish
people condemning Jesus to
crucifixion
and a Jewish leader assuming eternal
collective guilt for the crowd for the
murder of Jesus, which,
The Boston
Globe explains, "for centuries prompted vicious attacks —
or
pogroms — on Europe's Jewish
communities".
Islam and antisemitism
Various definitions of antisemitism in the context of Islam are
given. The extent of antisemitism among Muslims varies depending on
the chosen definition:
- Scholars like Claude Cahen and
Shelomo Dov Goitein define it to
be the animosity specifically applied to Jews only and do not
include discriminations practiced against Non-Muslims in general.
For these scholars, antisemitism in Medieval Islam has been local
and sporadic rather than general and endemic [Shelomo Dov Goitein],
not at all present [Claude Cahen], or rarely present.
- According to Bernard Lewis,
antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged
according to a standard different from that applied to others, and
they are accused of "cosmic evil." For Lewis, from the late
nineteenth century, movements appear among Muslims of which for the
first time one can legitimately use the technical term
anti-semitic. However, he describes demonizing beliefs, anti-Jewish
discrimination and systematic humiliations, as an "inherent" part
of the traditional Muslim world, even if violent persecutions were
relatively rare.
- However, Bat Ye'or showed already in
1980 in an extensive anthology of Arabic and other Muslim sources
and accounts from the earliest times to the present (the revised
and enlarged English translation of the French original appeared in
1985) that such violent persecutions were anything but rare. More
recent scholarship has documented this further from Muslim
literature and history. In particular, Andrew G. Bostom has edited a huge (766 closely
printed pages) and authoritative collection of anti-Jewish passages
in the Qur'an, Hadith and Sira literature (which are the
traditional main sources for authoritative Muslim belief and
practice), along with hundreds of pages of the traditional
interpretation of these passages and other commentaries from
mainstream Muslim authorities up to the present time, and yet more
hundreds of pages of scholarly analyses and historical accounts of
violent persecutions down through the ages, leading to the
conclusion that fully antisemitic scriptural statements and
mainstream rulings about Jews have directly contributed to marked
systemic discrimination and too often violent persecution down
through the ages. This persecution has been far too intense,
consistent and widespread, too directed to Jews in general and as
such, and too regularly justified by religious authorities, to be
dismissed as mere localized events. This is further substantiated
on the literary and scriptural side by the analysis of Qur'anic
texts, Hadith traditions, and Sira normative biographies of
Muhammad, in Mohammed, Allah, and the Jews: The Foundational
Doctrine (2006)
Jews in Islamic texts
Leon Poliakov,
Walter Laqueur, and
Jane Gerber, suggest that later passages in the
Qur'an contain very sharp attacks on Jews for
their refusal to recognize
Muhammad as a
prophet of
God. There are
also Qur'anic verses, particularly from the earliest Qur'anic
surahs, showing respect for the Jews (e.g. see , ) and preaching
tolerance (e.g. see ). This positive view tended to disappear in
the later Surahs. Taking it all together, the Qur'an differentiates
between "good and bad" Jews, Poliakov states. Laqueur argues that
the conflicting statements about Jews in the Muslim holy text has
defined
Arab and Muslim attitude towards Jews
to this day, especially during periods of rising
Islamic fundamentalism.
During
Muhammad's life, Jews lived in the Arabian Peninsula, especially in and
around Medina
. They
reportedly refused Muhammad's offer for them to convert and accept
him as the Prophet. According to
F.E.
Peters, they also began to secretly to
conspire with Muhammad's enemies in Mecca to overthrow him (despite
having been forced by their conquerors to sign a peace treaty.)
After each major battle, Muhammad accused one of the Jewish tribes
of treachery and attacked it. Two Jewish tribes were expelled and
the last one, the Banu Qura was wiped out after it threw itself on
Muhammad's mercy. Samuel Rosenblatt states that these incidents
were not part of policies directed exclusively against Jews, and
that Muhammad was more severe with Arab pagans than with Jews. The
attitude towards Jews changed in the course of Muhammad's career,
as expressed in more positive teachings in the earlier Qur'anic
surahs, from the Mecca period, to increasingly hostile and negative
ones, characterizing Jews as such, in Medina as the Jewish tribes
there refused to submit completely to Muhammad's authority and
claims. This distinction of periods is crucial to assess the weight
of Qur'anic passages. According to traditional rules of Qur'anic
exegesis stipulated in the Qur'an itself (Surah 2:106, from the
later Medina period), the later passages must be taken as the last
and binding final word from God, rendering earlier passages merely
temporal expedients that no longer apply and are cancelled
outright. Thus the negative characterizations have become the
authoritative consensus. It may therefore be quite misleading to
equate the earlier more positive statements with the later ones as
some apologists do.
The words "humility" and "humiliation" occur frequently in the
Qur'an and later Muslim literature in relation to Jews. According
to Lewis, "This, in Islamic view, is their just punishment for
their past rebelliousness, and is manifested in their present
impotence between the mighty powers of Christendom and Islam." The
standard Quranic reference to Jews is verse : "And remember ye
said: "O Moses! we cannot endure one kind of food (always); so
beseech thy Lord for us to produce for us of what the earth
groweth, -its pot-herbs, and cucumbers, Its garlic, lentils, and
onions." He said: "Will ye exchange the better for the worse? Go ye
down to any town, and ye shall find what ye want!" They were
covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the
wrath of Allah. This because they went on rejecting the Signs of
Allah and slaying His Messengers without just cause. This because
they rebelled and went on transgressing. " Two verses later we
read: "And remember, Children of Israel, when We made a covenant
with you and raised Mount Sinai before you saying, "Hold tightly to
what We have revealed to you and keep it in mind so that you may
guard against evil." But then you turned away, and if it had not
been for Allah's grace and merecy, you surely would have been among
the lost. And you know those among who sinned on the Sabbath. We
said to them, "You will be transformed into despised apes." So we
used them as a warning to their people and to the following
generations, as well as a lesson for the Allah-fearing."(Qur'an )
The accusation that Jews will ultimately be transformed into apes
and pigs is traditionally understood literally and is derived from
such Qur'anic and other early Muslim sources.
The Qur'an associates Jews above all with rejection of God's
prophets including Jesus and Muhammad, thus explaining their
resistance to him personally. (Cf. Surah 2:87-91; 5:59, 61, 70, and
82.) It states that they are, together with outright idolators, the
worst and most inveterate enemies of Islam, and thus will not only
suffer eternally in Hell but in this world will be the most
degraded of the Peoples of the Book, below even Christians,
everywhere. (Cf. Surah 5:82; 3:54-56.) It also asserts that Jews
believe that they are the sole children of God (Surah 5:18), and
that only they will achieve salvation (Surah 2:111). According to
the Qur'an, Jews blasphemously claim that
Ezra
is the son of God, as
Christians claim
Jesus is, (Surah 9:30) and that God’s hand is fettered (Surah 5:64
- i.e., that they can freely defy God). Some of those who are Jews,
"pervert words from their meanings", (Surah 4:44), and because they
have committed wrongdoing, God has "forbidden some good things that
were previously permitted them", thus explaining Jewish
commandments regarding food, sabbath restrictions on work, and
other rulings as a punishment from God (Surah 4:160). They listen
for the sake of mendacity (Surah 5:41), twisting the truth, and
practice forbidden usury, and therefore they will receive "a
painful doom" (Surah 4:161). The Qur'an gives credence to the
Christian claim of Jews scheming against Jesus, "...but God also
schemed, and God is the best of schemers"(Surah 3:54). In the
Muslim view, the
crucifixion of
Jesus was an illusion, and thus the supposed Jewish plots
against him ended in complete failure. In numerous verses (Surah
3:63, 71; 4:46, 160-161; 5:41-44, 63-64, 82; 6:92) the Qur'an
accuses Jews of deliberately
obscuring and
perverting scripture.
Differences with Christianity
Bernard Lewis holds that Muslims were
not antisemitic in the way Christians were for the most part
because:
- The gospels are not part of the educational system in Muslim
society and therefore Muslims are not brought up with the stories
of Jewish deicide; on the contrary
the notion of deicide is rejected by the Qur'an as a blasphemous
absurdity.
- Muhammad and his early followers were not Jews and therefore
they did not present themselves as the true Israel nor felt
threatened by survival of the old Israel.
- The Qur'an was not viewed by Muslims as a fulfillment of the
Hebrew Bible but rather a restorer of its original messages that
had been distorted over time; Thus no clash of interpretations
between Judaism and Islam could arise.
- Muhammad was not killed by the Jewish community and he was
victorious in the clash with the Jewish community in Medina.
- Muhammad did not claim to have been Son of God or Messiah but
only a prophet; a claim to which Jews reproached less.
- Muslims saw the conflict between Muhammad and the Jews as
something of minor importance in Muhammad's career.
Status of Jews under Muslim rule
Traditionally Jews living in Muslim lands, known (along with
Christians) as
dhimmis, were allowed to
practice their religion and to administer their internal affairs
but subject to certain conditions. They had to pay the
jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult
non-Muslim males) to Muslims. Dhimmis had an inferior status under
Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such
as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts
in cases involving Muslims. Many of the disabilities were highly
symbolic.
The most degrading one was the requirement
of distinctive clothing, not found in
the Qur'an or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad
; its enforcement was highly erratic. Jews
rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change
their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of
residence and profession.
The
notable examples of massacre of Jews include the 1066 Granada massacre, when a Muslim
mob stormed the royal palace in Granada
, crucified Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred most
of the Jewish population of the city. "More than 1,500
Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day." This
was the first persecution of Jews on the Peninsula under Islamic
rule.
There was also the killing or forcibly
conversion of them by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus
in the 12th century. Notable examples of the
cases where the choice of residence was taken away from them
includes confining Jews to walled quarters (
mellahs) in Morocco beginning from the 15th century
and especially since the early 19th century. Most conversions were
voluntary and happened for various reasons.
However, there were
some forced conversions in the 12th century under the Almohad dynasty of North Africa and al-Andalus
as well as in Persia.
Pre-modern times
The portrayal of the Jews in the early Islamic texts played a key
role in shaping the attitudes towards them in the Muslim societies.
According to
Jane Gerber, "the Muslim is
continually influenced by the theological threads of anti-Semitism
embedded in the earliest chapters of Islamic history." In the light
of the Jewish defeat at the hands of Muhammad, Muslims
traditionally viewed Jews with contempt and as objects of ridicule.
Jews were seen as hostile, cunning, and vindictive, but
nevertheless weak and ineffectual. Cowardice was the quality most
frequently attributed to Jews. Another stereotype associated with
the Jews was their alleged propensity to trickery and deceit. While
most anti-Jewish polemicists saw those qualities as inherently
Jewish,
Ibn Khaldun attributed them to
the mistreatment of Jews at the hands of the dominant nations. For
that reason, says ibn Khaldun, Jews "are renowned, in every age and
climate, for their wickedness and their slyness".
Some Muslim writers have inserted racial overtones in their
anti-Jewish polemics.
Al-Jahiz speaks of
the deterioration of the Jewish stock due to excessive inbreeding.
Ibn Hazm also implies racial qualities in
his attacks on the Jews. However, these were exceptions, and the
racial theme left little or no trace in the medieval Muslim
anti-Jewish writings.
Anti-Jewish sentiments usually flared up at times of the Muslim
political or military weakness or when Muslims felt that some Jews
had overstepped the boundary of humiliation prescribed to them by
the Islamic law.
In Moorish Spain
, ibn Hazm and Abu Ishaq
focused their anti-Jewish writings on the latter allegation.
This was
also the chief motivation behind the 1066 Granada massacre, when "[m]ore
than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one
day", and in Fez
in 1033,
when 6,000 Jews were killed. There were further massacres in
Fez in 1276 and 1465.
Islamic law does not differentiate between Jews and Christians in
their status as dhimmis. According to
Bernard Lewis, the normal practice of Muslim
governments until modern times was consistent with this aspect of
sharia law. This view is countered by Jane
Gerber, who maintains that of all dhimmis, Jews had the lowest
status. Gerber maintains that this situation was especially
pronounced in the latter centuries, when Christian communities
enjoyed protection, unavailable to the Jews, under the provisions
of
Capitulations of
the Ottoman Empire.
For example, in 18th century Damascus
, a Muslim noble held a festival, inviting to it all
social classes in descending order, according to their social
status: the Jews outranked only the peasants and
prostitutes. In 1865, when the equality of all subjects of
the Ottoman Empire was proclaimed,
Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, a high-ranking
official observed: "whereas in former times, in the Ottoman State,
the communities were ranked, with the Muslims first, then the
Greeks, then the Armenians, then the Jews, now all of them were put
on the same level. Some Greeks objected to this, saying: 'The
government has put us together with the Jews. We were content with
the supremacy of Islam.'"
Some scholars have questioned the correctness of the term
"antisemitism" to Muslim culture in pre-modern times. Robert Chazan
and Alan Davies argue that the most obvious difference between
pre-modern Islam and pre-modern Christendom was the "rich melange
of racial, ethic, and religious communities" in Islamic countries,
within which "the Jews were by no means obvious as lone dissenters,
as they had been earlier in the world of polytheism or subsequently
in most of medieval Christendom." According to Chazan and Davies,
this lack of uniqueness ameliorated the circumstances of Jews in
the medieval world of Islam. According to
Norman Stillman, antisemitism, understood as
hatred of Jews as Jews, "did exist in the medieval Arab world even
in the period of greatest tolerance". Also see Bostom, Bat Ye'or,
and the CSPI issued text, supporting Stillman and cited in the
bibliography.
Nineteenth century
Historian
Martin Gilbert writes that
in the 19th century the position of Jews worsened in Muslim
countries.
There was
a massacre of Jews in Baghdad
in 1828 and in 1839, in the eastern Persian city of
Meshed
, a mob
burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed
the Torah scrolls. It was only by
forcible conversion that a massacre was averted. There was another
massacre in Barfurush in 1867.
In 1840, the
Jews of
Damascus were falsely accused of having murdered a Christian
monk and his Muslim servant and of having
used their blood to bake
Passover bread or Matza. A Jewish barber was tortured
until he "confessed"; two other Jews who were arrested died under
torture, while a third converted to Islam to save his life.
Throughout the 1860s, the
Jews of Libya were subjected to
what Gilbert calls punitive taxation.
In 1864, around 500
Jews were killed in Marrakech
and Fez
in Morroco
. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis
, and an
Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on
Jerba
Island
. In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in
Demnat
, Morocco;
elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in the streets
in broad daylight. In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem
asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople
to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from
Russia
. In
1897, synagogues were ransacked and Jews were murdered in
Tripolitania.
Benny Morris writes that one symbol of
Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by
Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th century traveler: "I have
seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers
of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew,
and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up
to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish
gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to
submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike
a Mahommedan."
According to
Mark Cohen in
The
Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that
Arab antisemitism in the modern world arose in the 19th century,
against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism,
and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically
minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it
"Islamized").
Twentieth century
The massacres of Jews in Muslim countries continued into the 20th
century.
Martin Gilbert writes that 40 Jews were
murdered in Taza
, Morocco in
1903. In 1905, old laws were revived in Yemen
forbidding
Jews from raising their voices in front of Muslims, building their
houses higher than Muslims, or engaging in any traditional Muslim
trade or occupation. The Jewish quarter in Fez was almost
destroyed by a Muslim mob in 1912.
There were Nazi-inspired pogroms in Algeria
in the 1930s, and massive attacks on the Jews in
Iraq
and Libya
in the
1940s (see Farhud). Pro-Nazi Muslims
slaughtered dozens of Jews in Baghdad in 1941.
George Gruen attributes the increased animosity towards Jews in the
Arab world to several factors, including
the breakdown of the
Ottoman Empire
and traditional
Islamic society; domination
by Western
colonial powers under which
Jews gained a disproportionately larger role in the commercial,
professional, and administrative life of the region; the rise of
Arab nationalism, whose proponents
sought the wealth and positions of local Jews through government
channels; resentment against Jewish
nationalism and the Zionist movement; and the
readiness of unpopular
regimes to
scapegoat local Jews for political purposes.
Antagonism and violence increased still further as resentment
against
Zionist efforts in the
British Mandate of Palestine
spread.
Anti-Zionist propaganda in the
Middle East frequently adopts the terminology and symbols of
the Holocaust to
demonize Israel and its leaders. At the same
time,
Holocaust denial and
Holocaust minimization efforts have found increasingly overt
acceptance as sanctioned historical discourse in a number of Middle
Eastern countries. Arabic- and Turkish-editions of Hitler's
Mein Kampf and
The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion have found an audience in the region with limited
critical response by local intellectuals and media. See
International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the
Holocaust.
According to
Robert Satloff, Muslims
and Arabs were involved both as rescuers and as perpetrators of the
Holocaust during Italian and German Nazi occupation of Morocco,
Tunisia and Libya.
Antisemitism has been reportedly found in Arab and Iranian media
and schoolbooks. For example, the Center for Religious Freedom of
Freedom House analyzed a set of Saudi
Ministry of Education textbooks in use during the current academic
year in Islamic studies courses for elementary and secondary school
students. Among the statements and ideas found against non-Wahhabi
Muslims and "non-believers" were those that teach Muslims to "hate"
Christians, Jews, "polytheists" and other "unbelievers," including
non-Wahhabi Muslims, though, incongruously, not to treat them
"unjustly"; teach the infamous forgeries
The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion, as historical fact and relate modern events to
it; teach that "Jews and the Christians are enemies of the [Muslim]
believers" and that "the clash" between the two realms is
perpetual; instruct that "fighting between Muslims and Jews" will
continue until Judgment Day, and that the Muslims are promised
victory over the Jews in the end; cite a selective teaching of
violence against Jews, while in the same lesson, ignoring the
passages of the Qur'an and hadiths that counsel tolerance; include
a map of the Middle East that labels Israel within its pre-1967
borders as "Palestine: occupied 1948"; discuss Jews in violent
terms, blaming them for virtually all the "subversion" and wars of
the modern world. A of Saudi Arabia's curriculum has been released
to the press by the
Hudson
Institute.
Twenty-first century
New York Times Critic-at-large
Edward Rothstein compares the
extent of antisemitic Islamic visions of Jews, "the historical
distortions they codify and the readiness with which they are
taught to children and are secularized into political action," with
the Nazi propaganda that led to the Holocaust.
According to
Newsweek, "Indeed,
anti-Semitism—the real stuff, not just bad-mouthing particular
Israeli policies—is as much part of Arab life today as the hijab or
the hookah. Whereas this darkest of creeds is no longer tolerated
in polite society in the West, in the Arab world, Jew hatred
remains culturally endemic."
Tesco Ireland, the country's largest
supermarket, had to apologise for allowing the
Protocols of the Elders of
Zion to be sold through its website. Sheikh Dr Shaheed
Satardien, head of the Muslim Council of Ireland, said this was
effectively "polluting the minds of impressionable young [Islamic]
people with hate and anger towards the Jewish community"
Racial antisemitism
Racial antisemitism is the idea
that the Jews are a distinct and inferior race compared to their
host nations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it gained
mainstream acceptance as part of the
eugenics movement, which categorized
non-"Europeans" as inferior. It more specifically claims that the
so-called Nordic Europeans are superior. Racial antisemites saw the
Jews as part of a
Semitic race and
emphasized their "alien" extra-European origins and culture. They
saw Jews as beyond redemption even if they converted to the
majority religion. Anthropologists discussed whether the Jews
possessed any Arabic-
Armenoid,
African-
Nubian or Asian-
Turkic ancestries. Since
World War II racial antisemitism has rarely
appeared outside of
Neo-Nazi and
white supremacist movements.
Racial antisemitism replaced the hatred of Judaism with the hatred
of Jews as a group. In the context of the
Industrial Revolution, following the
emancipation of the Jews, Jews
rapidly urbanized and experienced a period of greater social
mobility. With the decreasing role of religion in public life
tempering religious antisemitism, a combination of growing
nationalism, the rise of
eugenics, and resentment at the socio-economic
success of the Jews led to the newer, and more virulent, racist
antisemitism.
New antisemitism
In recent
years some scholars have advanced the concept of New
antisemitism, coming simultaneously from the left, the right, and radical
Islam, which tends to focus on opposition to the creation of a
Jewish homeland in the State of Israel
, and argue that the language of Anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel
are used to
attack the Jews more broadly. In this view, the proponents
of the new concept believe that criticisms of Israel and
Zionism are often disproportionate in degree and
unique in kind, and attribute this to antisemitism. The concept has
been criticized by those who argue it is used to stifle debate and
deflect attention from legitimate criticism of the State of Israel,
and, by associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, is intended to
taint anyone opposed to Israeli actions and policies.
Current situation
A report
from the U.S.
State Department
from March 14, 2008 detailed "an upsurge" across
the world of antisemitism—hostility and discrimination toward
Jewish people, accounting mostly from radical Islam.
On
August, 2005, the United
States
expressed 'serious concern' over anti-Christian and
anti-Jewish passages in Pakistani
textbooks and termed them as "unacceptable and
inciteful".
United States
In the
United
States
, in the context of the "Global War on Terrorism" there have been
statements by both the Democrat Ernest
Hollings and the Republican Pat
Buchanan that suggest that the George
W. Bush administration
went to war in order to win Jewish supporters. Some note these
statements echo Lindberg’s 1941 claim before the US entered World
War II that a Jewish minority was pushing America into a war
against its interests. During 2004, a number of prominent public
figures accused Jewish members of the Bush administration of
tricking America into war against
Saddam
Hussein to help Israel. U.S. Senator Ernest Hollings (D-South
Carolina) claimed that the US action against Saddam was undertaken
'to secure Israel.' Television talk show host Pat Buchanan said a
'cabal' had managed 'to snare our country in a series of wars that
are not in America’s interests.'" Both these statements were
labeled antisemitic by Dr.
Rafael
Medoff, director of the
David S.
Wyman
Institute for Holocaust Studies.
On April 3, 2006, the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
announced its finding that incidents of antisemitism are a "serious
problem" on college campuses throughout the United States. The
Commission recommended that the
U.S. Department of Education's
Office for Civil Rights
protect college students from antisemitism through vigorous
enforcement of
Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
further recommended that
Congress clarify that Title VI
applies to discrimination against Jewish students.
On July 28, 2006,
Naveed Afzal Haq
shot six women, one fatally, in the
Seattle Jewish Federation
shooting by Daniel Schwarz an infamous leader of the Aryan
Brotherhood who ordered the hid from the Florence ADMAX . Police
have classified the shooting as a
hate
crime based on Haq statements during a
9-1-1 call.
On
September 19, 2006, Yale University
founded The
Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism,
the first North American university-based center for study of the
subject, as part of its Institution for Social
and Policy Studies. Director
Charles Small of the Center cited the increase
in antisemitism worldwide in recent years as generating a "need to
understand the current manifestation of this disease".
According to an
Anti-Defamation
League survey 14 percent of U.S. residents had antisemitic
views. The 2005 survey found "35 percent of foreign-born
Hispanics" and "36 percent of
African-Americans hold strong antisemitic
beliefs, four times more than the 9 percent for whites".
A 2009 study published in
Boston
Review found that nearly 25% of non-Jewish Americans
blamed Jews for the
Global financial
crisis of 2008–2009, with a higher percentage among Democrats
than Republicans.
Europe
Antisemitism has increased significantly in Europe since 2000, with
significant increases in verbal attacks against Jews and vandalism
such as graffiti, fire bombings of Jewish schools, desecration of
synagogues and cemeteries.
In Germany
and Austria
, where
antisemitic incidents are highest in Europe, physical assaults
against Jews including beatings, stabbings and other violence
increased markedly, in a number of cases resulting in serious
injury and even death.. The Netherlands
and Sweden
have also
consistently had high rates of anti-semitic attacks since
2000.
Much of the new European antisemitic violence can actually be seen
as a spill over from the long running
Arab-Israeli conflict since the
majority of the perpetrators are from the large immigrant
Arab communities in European cities. However,
compared to France, the United Kingdom and much of the rest of
Europe, in Germany Arab and pro-Palestinian groups are involved in
only a small percentage of antisemitic incidents. Indigenous
Germans are more likely to commit violent antisemitic acts, attack
Jews verbally or vandalize Jewish property.
According to The
Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism
and Racism, most of the current antisemitism in Europe, with
exceptions to Germany
, Austria
, and
Sweden
, comes
from militant Islamic and Muslim groups, and most Jews tend to be
assaulted in countries where groups of young Muslim immigrants
reside.
The Interior Minister of Germany,
Wolfgang Schaeuble, points out the
official policy of Germany: "We will not tolerate any form of
extremism, xenophobia or anti-Semitism." Although the number of
right-wing groups and organisations grew from 141 (2001) to 182
(2006), especially in the formerly communist East Germany,
Germany's measures against right wing groups and antisemitism are
effective, despite Germany having the highest rates of antisemitic
acts in Europe.
According to the annual reports of the
Federal Office for the Protection of the
Constitution
the overall number of far-right extremists in
Germany dropped during the last years from 49,700 (2001), 45,000
(2002), 41,500 (2003), 40,700 (2004), 39,000 (2005), to 38,600 in
2006. Germany provided several million Euros to fund
"nationwide programs aimed at fighting far-right extremism,
including teams of traveling consultants, and victims' groups."
Despite these facts, Israeli Ambassador Shimon Stein warned in
October 2006 that Jews in Germany feel increasingly "unsafe,"
stating that they "are not able to live a normal Jewish life" and
that heavy security surrounds most synagogues or Jewish community
centers. Yosef Havlin, Rabbi at the Chabad Lubavitch Frankfurt does
not agree with the Israeli Ambassador and states in an interview
with
Der Spiegel magazine in
September 2007, that the German public does not support Nazis,
instead he has personally experienced the support of Germans, as a
Jew and Rabbi he "feels welcome in his (hometown) Frankfurt, he is
not afraid, the city is no-go-area". Despite this comment, on the
11th of September, 2007 an antisemitic incident occurred whereby
Frankfurt Rabbi, Zalman Gurevitch, was stabbed repeatedly, the
attacker subsequently threatening in German "I'll kill you, you
(expletive) Jew."
In 2005 the UK Parliament set up an all-party inquiry into
antisemitism, which published its findings in 2006. The inquiry
stated that "until recently, the prevailing opinion both within the
Jewish community and beyond [had been] that antisemitism had
receded to the point that it existed only on the margins of
society." It found a reversal of this progress since 2000. It aimed
to investigate the problem, identify the sources of contemporary
antisemitism and make recommendations to improve the situation. It
discussed the influence of the Israel-Palestine conflict and issues
of anti-Israel sentiment versus antisemitism at length and noted
"most of those who gave evidence were at pains to explain that
criticism of Israel is not to be regarded in itself as
antisemitic..The Israeli government itself may, at times, have
mistakenly perceived criticism of its policies and actions to be
motivated by antisemitism" On January 1,, 2006, Britain's chief
rabbi, Sir
Jonathan
Sacks, warned that what he called a "
tsunami of antisemitism" was spreading globally. In
an interview with BBC's
Radio Four, Sacks
said: "A number of my rabbinical colleagues throughout Europe have
been assaulted and attacked on the streets. We've had synagogues
desecrated. We've had Jewish schools burnt to the ground - not here
but in France. People are attempting to silence and even ban Jewish
societies on campuses on the grounds that Jews must support the
state of Israel, therefore they should be banned, which is quite
extraordinary because ... British Jews see themselves as British
citizens. So it's that kind of feeling that you don't know what's
going to happen next that's making ... some European Jewish
communities uncomfortable."
France is home to
Western Europe’s
largest
Muslim population (
about 4 million) as well as the continent’s
largest Jewish community (about 600,000).
Jewish leaders decry
an intensifying antisemitism in France, mainly among Muslims of
Arab or African
heritage, but also growing among Caribbean
islanders from former French colonies.
However, it is Muslims rather than Jews who can expect to suffer
more from bigotry in France, stated Holocaust survivor and former
French cabinet minister
Simone Veil.
"Let's not exaggerate," she said. While noting that radical
Islamists are behind some violent incidents against Jews in certain
French neighbourhoods, "Anti-Arab sentiment is much stronger in
France than anti-Semitism." France's Jewish community is much more
integrated than its 5 to 6 million Muslims, she noted, claiming
Muslim youth are moved by a militant and anti-Jewish hierarchy.
Former Interior Minister
Nicolas
Sarkozy denounced the killing of
Ilan
Halimi on 13 February 2006 as an antisemitic crime.
Independent voices, including leading Jewish
philanthropist Baron Eric de
Rothschild who received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew
University
, suggest that the extent of antisemitism in Europe
has been exaggerated. In an interview with the Jerusalem
Post he says that "some of the complaints emanating from Israel
about the treatment of French Jews amount to 'an element of
schadenfreude (taking pleasure at
another's misfortune) on the part of those who have already made
aliya: When the cousins come over, they say, It's terrible [in
France] - you have to come to Israel." About France he says:
"People are in fact philo-Semitic in the government, mayors, to an
extent which goes beyond pure electoral calculations" and "the one
thing you can't say is that France is an anti-Semitic
country."
Middle East
According to the
Pew Global
Attitudes Project released on August 14, 2005, high percentages
of the populations of six Muslim-majority countries have negative
views of Jews.
To a questionnaire asking respondents to
give their views of members of various religions along a spectrum
from "very favorable" to "very unfavorable," 60% of Turks
, 88% of
Moroccans
, 99% of Lebanese
Muslims and 100% of Jordanians
checked either "somewhat unfavorable" or "very
unfavorable" for Jews.
In the Middle East, anti-Zionist propaganda frequently adopts the
terminology and symbols of the Holocaust to demonize Israel and its
leaders.
In
Egypt
, Dar al-Fadhilah published a translation of
Henry Ford's antisemitic treatise,
The International
Jew, complete with distinctly antisemitic imagery on the
cover.
The
Saudi
Arabian
government website initially stated that Jews would
not be granted tourist visas to enter the country.It has
since removed this statement, and apologized for posting "erroneous
information". Members of religions other than Islam, including
Jews, are not permitted to practice their religion publicly in
Saudi Arabia;
Saudi Arabian government officials and state religious leaders
often promote the idea that "the Jews" are conspiring to take over
the entire world; as proof of their claims they publish and
frequently cite
The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion as factual.
CMIP
report: "The Jews in World History according to the Saudi
textbooks".
The Danger of World Jewry, by Abdullah
al-Tall, pp. 140–141 (Arabic).
Hadith and Islamic Culture,
Grade 10, (2001) pp. 103–104.
In 2001, Arab Radio and Television of Saudi Arabia produced a
30-part television miniseries entitled "Horseman Without a Horse",
a dramatization of
The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion.
One Saudi Arabian government newspaper suggested that hatred of all
Jews is justifiable.
Saudi textbooks
vilify Jews (and Christians and non-
Wahabi
Muslims): according to the May 21, 2006 issue of
The Washington Post, Saudi
textbooks claimed by them to have been sanitized of antisemitism
still call Jews apes (and Christians swine); demand that students
avoid and not befriend Jews; claim that Jews worship the devil; and
encourage Muslims to engage in Jihad to vanquish Jews.
Al-Manar recently aired a drama series, called
The
Diaspora, which observers allege is based on historical
antisemitic allegations.
BBC reporters who
watched the series said that correspondents who have viewed
The
Diaspora note that it quotes extensively from the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious 19th century
publication used by the Nazis among others to fuel race
hatred.
Muslim clerics in the Middle East have frequently referred to Jews
as descendants of apes and pigs, which are conventional epithets
for Jews and Christians.
Abdul
Rahman Al-Sudais is the leading imam of the
Grand
mosque
located in the Islamic holy city of Mecca
, Saudi Arabia
. The
BBC aired a
Panorama episode, entitled
A
Question of Leadership, which reported that al-Sudais referred
to Jews as "the scum of the human race" and "offspring of apes and
pigs", and stated, "the worst [...] of the enemies of Islam are
those [...] whom he [...] made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive
Jews and oppressive
Zionists and those that
follow them [...] Monkeys and pigs and worshippers of false Gods
who are the Jews and the Zionists." In another sermon, on April 19,
2002, he declared that Jews are "evil offspring, infidels,
distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers,
prophecy-deniers [...] the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed
and turned into apes and pigs [...]"
On May 5,
2001, after Shimon Peres visited
Egypt
, the Egyptian al-Akhbar internet paper stated that: "lies
and deceit are not foreign to Jews[...]. For this reason,
Allah changed their shape and made them into monkeys and
pigs."
In Israel,
Zalman Gilichenski has
warned about the spread of antisemitism among
immigrants from Russia in the last
decade.
See also
Notes
References
- Bat Ye'or The Dhimmi: Jews and
Christians under Islam, Revised and Enlarged Edition.
Translated from French by David Maisel, Paul Fenton and David
Littman. Associated Universities Presses. 1985.
- Bodansky, Yossef. Islamic
Anti-Semitism as a Political Instrument, Freeman Center For
Strategic Studies, 1999.
- Bostom, Andrew G.
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Text to Solemn
History, Prometheus Books, 2008.
- Carr, Steven Alan. Hollywood and anti-Semitism: A cultural
history up to World War II, Cambridge University Press
2001.
- Chanes, Jerome A. Antisemitism: A Reference
Handbook, ABC-CLIO, 2004.
- Cohn, Norman. Warrant for Genocide, Eyre &
Spottiswoode 1967; Serif, 1996.
- Falk, Avner. Anti-Semitism: The
History and Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Hatred. Wesport,
Connecticut, Praeger, 2008. ISBN 9780313353840.
- Freudmann, Lillian C. Antisemitism in the New
Testament, University Press of America, 1994.
- Gerber, Jane S. (1986).
"Anti-Semitism and the Muslim World". In History and Hate: The
Dimensions of Anti-Semitism, ed. David Berger. Jewish
Publications Society. ISBN 0-8276-0267-7
- Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the
European Jews. Holmes & Meier, 1985. 3 volumes.
- Johnson, Paul: A
History of the Jews (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1987)
ISBN 0-06-091533-1
- Laqueur, Walter. The Changing
Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times To The Present Day.
Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-530429-2
- Lewis, Bernard (1984). The
Jews of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN
0-691-00807-8
- Lewis, Bernard (1999). Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry
into Conflict and Prejudice. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN
0-393-31839-7
- Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying
the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,
Penguin, 1994.
- McKain, Mark. Anti-Semitism: At Issue,
Greenhaven Press, 2005.
- Michael, Robert and Philip Rosen. Dictionary of Antisemitism, The Scarecrow Press, Inc.,
2007
- Perry, Marvin and Frederick Schweitzer. Anti-Semitism: Myth
and Hate from Antiquity to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan.
2002.
- Poliakov, Leon (1997).
"Anti-Semitism". Encyclopedia
Judaica (CD-ROM Edition Version 1.0). Ed. Cecil Roth. Keter Publishing House. ISBN
965-07-0665-8
- Prager, Dennis, Telushkin, Joseph. Why the Jews?
The Reason for Antisemitism. Touchstone (reprint),
1985.
- Roth, Philip. The Plot
Against America, 2004
- Selzer, Michael (ed). "Kike!" : A Documentary
History of Anti-Semitism in America, New York 1972.
- Steinweis, Alan E. Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism
in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN
0-674-02205-X.
- Stillman, Norman (1979). The
Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society of America. ISBN 0-8276-0198-0
- Stillman, N.A. (2006). "Yahud". Encyclopaedia of Islam. Eds.:
P.J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P.
Heinrichs. Brill. Brill Online
- Anti-semitism entry by Gotthard Deutsch in the
Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901-1906
ed.
Further reading
- List of Anti-Semitic Attacks Worldwide in
2007
- List of Anti-Semitic Attacks Worldwide in
2006
- Anti-Semitism Multimedia AJC Survey of
Anti-Semitism, Roots and Responses
- Global Anti-Semitism (ADL compilation of modern
day anti-semitism happening around the world.)
- "Experts explore effects of Ahmadinejad
anti-Semitism", Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles,
March 9, 2007
- Arab Antisemitism
- Why the Jews? A
perspective on causes of anti-Semitism
- Stav, Arieh (1999). Peace: The Arabian Caricature - A Study
of Anti-semitic Imagery. Gefen Publishing House. ISBN
965-229-215-X
- Falk, Avner. (2008). Anti-Semitism: The History and
Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Hatred. Wesport, Connecticut,
Praeger, ISBN 9780313353840
- Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism (with
up to date calendar of anti-semitism today)
- Annotated bibliography of anti-Semitism hosted
by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Center for the Study of
Antisemitism (SICSA)
- Anti-Semitism and responses
- The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary
anti-Semitism and Racism hosted by the Tel Aviv University -
(includes an annual report)
- Jews, the End of the Vertical Alliance, and Contemporary
Antisemitism
- An Israeli point of view on antisemitism, by Steve
Plaut
- Council of Europe, ECRI Country-by-Country
Reports
- State University of New York at Buffalo, The Jedwabne
Tragedy
- Jews in Poland today
- Anti-Defamation League's report on International
Anti-Semitism
- The Middle East
Media Research Institute - documents antisemitism in
Middle-Eastern media.
- Judeophobia: A short course on the history of
anti-Semitism at [30] Zionism and Israel Information
Center.
- If Not
Together, How?: Research by April Rosenblum to develop a
working definition of antisemitism, and related teaching tools
about antisemitism, for activists.
- Vintage Postcards with an Anti-Jewish
theme
- What makes an anti-Semite? Dina Porat,
Haaretz, January 27, 2007
- "Post Modern"
- Post-Modern Anti-Semitism: Part I
- Judeophobia: Anti-Judaism, Anti-Semitism,
Anti-Zionism
- An Attempt to Identify the Root Cause of Antisemitism
by A.B. Yehoshua, Azure, Spring 2008.
External links