Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

JOURNAL for the
STUDY of
ANTISEMITISM
Volume 1 Issue #2 2009

JOURNAL for the
STUDY of
ANTISEMITISM
Volume 1, Issue #2, 2009

Dedicated to the memory of
Miep Gies
1909-2010

Advisory Board Members
Shimon Samuels, Simon Weisenthal Center, Chair
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, AHA Foundation, AEI, Washington DC
Michael Berenbaum, Sigi Ziering Institute, Los Angeles
Andrew Bostom, Brown University, Providence, RI
Israel W. Charny, Encyclopedia of Genocide, Jerusalem
Manfred Gerstenfeld, JCPA, Jerusalem
Sander Gilman, Humanities, Emory University, Atlanta
Walter Laqueur, Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University
Joanna B. Michlic, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University
Hon. Fiamma Nirenstein, Italian Chamber of Deputies, Rome
John Pawlikowski, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago
Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia
Dina Porat, Stephen Ross Institute, Tel Aviv University
Richard L. Rubenstein, President Emeritus, University of Bridgeport, CT
Pierre-André Taguieff, CNRS (Sciences Po), Paris
Robert Wistrich, SICSA, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Bat Ye’or, Independent Scholar, Switzerland
Editorial Board Members
Steven K. Baum & Neal E. Rosenberg, Editors
Joanie Eppinga, Copy Editor
Paul Iganski, Book Review Editor, Lancaster University, UK
Paul Bartrop, Historian, Bialik College, Melbourne
Robert Fine, University of Warwick, UK
Clemens Heni, Political Science, MEF Funded, Berlin
Dennis L. Jackson, Statistics, University of Windsor, Canada
Steven L. Jacobs, Judaic Studies, University of Alabama
Günther Jikeli, IIBSA, London, Berlin
Murray Kohn, Holocaust Studies, Stockton College of New Jersey
Kenneth Lasson, Law, University of Baltimore
Andrei Oi¸steanu, Ethnologist, Institute History of Religions, Bucharest
Milton Shain, History, University of Cape Town
Marcia Sokolowski, Ethics, Baycrest/University of Toronto
Philip J. Spencer, Helen Bamber Centre, Kingston University, UK
Executive Committee
Jeff Diamond, Esq., Chair
Philip Kirschner, Esq.
John G. Nettleton

JSA Submission Guidelines
The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA) is the work of a select
group of independent scholars who examine antisemitism in traditional and
emerging forms. This group is not affiliated with any institution or
financially dependent on a single source of funding. We have in common an
understanding of antisemitism as a social pathology that must be
eradicated. We are an educationally-based concern.
Email submissions should be original, either one hard copy or an electronic
copy in MS Word format. Citation should be in Chicago Manual of Style
format. Submissions and questions can be sent to the editors of JSA via
mail, telephone, or email.
Mailing address:
Editors, JSA
P.O. Box 726
Marlton, NJ 08053
Telephone (856) 983-3247
Electronic Journal Submissions: jsantisemitism@gmail.com
Electronic Book Reviews: Book reviews between 500-1000 words should
be sent c/o Book Review Editor: jsantisemitism@gmail.com
The ideas expressed in JSA are those of the contributing authors, and not
reflective of JSA, its board members, or the author’s institution. JSA
welcomes unsolicited manuscripts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume 1 Number 2
Preface
It Never Sleeps: A Note from the Editors ......................... 89
Antisemitic Incidents around the World:
July-Dec. 2009, A Partial List .................................... 93
Articles
Defeat, Rage, and Jew Hatred .............. Richard L. Rubenstein 95
Betraying Truth: Ethics Abuse in
Middle East Reporting ........................... Kenneth Lasson 139
When Fairy Tales Kill ........................... Steven K. Baum 187
“Jew” as a Slur in German and French Today .......Günther Jikeli 209
Traditional Catholicism and the
Teachings of Bishop Richard Williamson .....J. Christopher Pryor 233
Essays
What Really Happened in Mumbai? .............Alyssa A. Lappen 253
Money, Madoff, and the Jews .................... Mitch Wohlberg 269
When Doing Right Is Wrong—Israel Today . . Alan M. Dershowitz 281
LDS’s (Latter-day Saints)
Posthumous Baptisms ...........................Daniel N. Leeson 283
Reviews
The Other War Against the Jews: Jeffrey Herf’s
Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World ...........Neal E. Rosenberg 289
In Their Own Words: Andrew Bostom’s (Ed.)
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism..............Alyssa A. Lappen 293

Who Is Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham?:
Reflections on the Film
The Baader Meinhof Complex .....................Joanne Intrator 299
& Scott Rose
Antisemitica
Shrines, Holy Sites, and Festivals
“Honoring” the Jew of Legend ................................... 301

It Never Sleeps:
A Note from the Editors
Much has happened since the first issue of Journal for the Study of
Antisemitism (JSA) went to press. We have had an overwhelmingly positive
response from interested people from all four corners of the globe. Computer
hits were received from places ranging from Dhaka Bangladesh to
Buenos Aires, from Alaska to Australia.
That is the good news. The bad news is that the interest in the journal
speaks to the need to study antisemitism as never before. Much of what
goes on is an all-out frontal assault on the Jewish state since 2001. But what
starts with Israel ends with hating the Jew of social imagination. With the
exception of the U.S., rates of antisemitism increased globally. In
Helsingborg, Sweden, parishioners were sent fleeing as windows were shattered
and burning cloths were hurled during services. Eleven armed men
ransacked a Caracas synagogue and left slogans on walls: “We don’t want
Jews here” and “Jews get out”—several of the vandals were police. A guard
at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was killed in the process of
preventing an octogenarian racist with an AK-47 from entering and committing
mass murder. Antisemitism is a lethal passion, as Israeli historian
Robert Wistrich (2010, 12) would say, because “beneath the surface” are
“ancient myths, dark hatreds, and irrational fantasies [that] continue to
nourish antisemitism.”
By the time you have read Richard Rubenstein’s excerpt from Jihad
and Genocide, you may agree. The antisemitic myths that fuel Muslim
antisemitism are reflected in the history of Islam. Rubenstein’s point is well
taken by law professor Kenneth Lasson, who grapples with how journalistic
integrity has been compromised when it comes to reporting on Israel. The
social transmission of beliefs is key to understanding why you think what
you think. And the social myths seem to be key.
For Baum, his position is clear: the road to Auschwitz was not paved
with indifference as much as with deliberate dislike—and the dislike is
based on legend, myth, and social fantasy. He begins with a not-so-innocent
Mother Goose poem and winds his way through Grimm Brothers stories.
The contaminated antisemitic fairy tales stand in contrast to the recent
opening of Berlin’s pristine Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center at Humboldt
University. Such fairy tales reaffirm key antisemitic themes. Most frightening
is the transition from fantasy to reality. Two tables at the end of his
article say it all. The tables provide a brief history of antisemitic mass
murders throughout Christendom and Islam and juxtapose the precipitating
rumor that triggered the attack.
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Children’s fairy tales are one form of social transmission, but the
Church (and the Mosque) have been the key suppliers of antisemitic fantasy
throughout the ages. Catholic theologian J. Christopher Pryor addresses the
way in which the teachings of even one bishop (Bishop Williamson) can
infest traditional Catholicism to this day.
Finally, antisemitism expert Günther Jikeli presents original research
on how antisemitic myths infuse the daily language of people, which reinforces
the myths. We welcome Günther’s research in a field that is sorely
lacking when the need is great.
Great is the welcome we have in store for our Essays authors. We
begin by welcoming journalist Alyssa Lappen in what is the most comprehensive
report on last year’s Chabad House attack in India. The interview is
followed by a sermon by Mitch Wohlberg that addressed why, after financial
fraud Bernard Madoff was caught, antisemitic voices clamored to be
heard. Anti-Israeli sentiment is so pervasive, as law professor Alan Dershowitz
shows, that even when Israel does things right such as send rescue
teams to earthquake-devastated Haiti, it is censured simultaneously from
the political left and the right. Mathematician turned lay antisemitism
researcher Dan Leeson explores the Mormon practice of converting Jews
after death. Leeson is convinced that the practice is antisemitic; but is it
antisemitic, or simply disrespectful toward non-Mormon religions, given
that others, for example Oral Roberts, Miep Gies, and Pope John Paul II,
have been re-baptized alongside Anne Frank and Albert Einstein?
The social fantasy regarding the Jews has always been a hot topic, but
our book reviewers key in on the political manipulation of such fantasy in
Jeffery Herf’s Nazi Propaganda and Islamic Fundamentalism and Andrew
Bostom’s The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. For the filmgoer, we review
The Baader-Meinhoff Complex.
Finally, to point up the extent of the relationship between folk beliefs
and reality, we present the Antisemitica of legendary Jews and the shrines
throughout Europe (and one in the U.S.) that honor them.
That was 2009.
In 2010, we will offer a Special Topics issue of Muslim Antisemitism
co-edited by Richard Rubenstein and Andrew Bostom. The journal will
investigate the two competing narratives and folklores by experts—those
whose sympathies lie with the Palestinians are those who listen to the media
rhetoric and want a simple and easy-to-follow tale. For people who defend
Israel, the fear is that Israel will be obliterated. For those who defend the
Palestinians, the fear is of repressing an innocent people who are asking for
their own state. But factor in jihadism and history of Muslim antisemitism
and you see something different—a new antisemitic narrative, but one that

2009] A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS 91
incorporates fantasy not so different from that the Grimms presented. There
is much here to understand, investigate, and comprehend. Let’s get on with
it.
Steven K. Baum and Neal E. Rosenberg
Editors, Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

Antisemitic Incidents around the World:
July-Dec. 2009, A Partial List
Romania, July 21, 2009: Constanta mayor Radu Mazare expressed his
regret to people who were offended by his dressing up as a Nazi officer at a
fashion parade late Sunday at a Black Sea resort.
Jerusalem, August 2, 2009: The Swedish foreign ministry has retracted the
condemnation issued by its own embassy in Israel regarding an outrageous
Swedish newspaper report that IDF soldiers harvested Palestinian human
organs.
New Haven, CT, August 27, 2009: Yale University Press has banned the
scheduled publication of a book that includes 12 cartoon spoofing Mohammed
that appeared in a Danish newspaper four years previous.
Ukraine, August 3 2009: In a letter addressed to the regional prosecutor on
August 3, 2009, leaders of the Jewish community of Odessa requested an
investigation of ZUBR (for Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), which publishes
antisemitic articles on its website and in its other publications. It blames the
Jews, inter alia, for plotting the Chernobyl disaster and using Christian or
Muslim blood during the Jewish holidays of Purim and Passover.
Holland, August 8, 2009: De Telegraaf, the largest daily in the Netherlands,
published an interview with Desiree Rover, a 61-year-old journalist, who
linked the Jews to the H5N1 virus (bird flu), claiming that it was a conspiracy
to reduce the world’s population. Rover added that the conspiracy dated
back to descendants of the Khazars, who converted to Judaism 1200 years
ago. CIDI, the local antisemitism monitoring agency, was considering filing
a complaint against the journalist.
Columbia, SC, October 22, 2009: Two Republican county officials in
South Carolina are apologizing after they disparaged Jews in a newspaper
op-ed in support of a fiscally conservative U.S. senator. The county chairmen
were supporting Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
Chairmen Edwin Merwin and Jim Ulmer wrote in their op-ed: “There is a
saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars,
but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of
themselves.”
New Jersey, October 26, 2009: When Westboro Baptist Church arrives on
the Banks Wednesday at 8:45 a.m., Rutgers Hillel plans to greet them with
a sea of red. The Jewish student organization is joining with other organiza-
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tions around campus to counterprotest the Kansas-based antisemitic, anti-
Catholic, and anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, which is scheduled to
picket outside Hillel House for 30 minutes. “In the face of this kind of
assault, we will not stand idly by,” said Student Board President Hilary
Neher on behalf of Hillel. “We join with our brothers and sisters at
Rutgers—across ethnic, religious and gender lines—to condemn the blind
hatred spewed by these people.”
Los Angeles, October 29, 2009: A gunman entered the grounds of a North
Hollywood synagogue this morning and shot and wounded two men who
were going to a prayer service in an attack LAPD detectives are investigating
as a hate crime.
Dresden, November 9, 2009: Swastikas were daubed on the wall of the
New Synagogue in the eastern German city of Dresden on the eve of the
71st anniversary of the Nazis’ 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom.
Strasbourg, December 22, 2009: The European Court of Human Rights on
Tuesday slammed Bosnia for barring Jews and Roma from running for high
elected office in a ruling handed down Tuesday. The two plaintiffs in the
case, Dervo Sejdic, who is of Roma origin, and Jakob Finci, who is Jewish,
both prominent Romanian public figures, filed suit in 2006 claiming discrimination
and a breach of their human rights. According to the ruling,
Finci inquired about running for parliament or the three-part presidency and
was informed by Bosnia’s central electoral commission in 2007 that he was
ineligible because he was a Jew. The decision was based on a distinction
made in the Bosnian constitution between two categories of citizen: “constituent
peoples”—Bosniacs, Croats, and Serbs—and “others”: Jews,
Roma, and other minorities.
Tel Aviv, December 25, 2009: The British paper The Guardian issued a
correction on Tuesday, conceding that it should not have run the headline
“Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs” on a story that, according to
the correction, “did not match the article.” “We should not have put the
headline on a story about an admission, by the former head of the Abu
Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv, that during the 1990s specialists at
the institute harvested organs” the correction on the Guardian website read.
“That headline did not match the article, which made clear that the organs
were not taken only from Palestinians. This was a serious editing error and
the headline has been changed online to reflect the text of the story written
by the reporter.”

ARTICLES
Defeat, Rage, and Jew Hatred
Richard L. Rubenstein*
In Imperial Germany, the military used a legend of betrayal (Jews stabin-the-back)
to rally calls for Jewish destruction. In Islam, a military
defeat by Jews, who were historically regarded as inferior and contemptible,
provides justification for their eradication. Shame is key. For all too
many, the shame of defeat can be assuaged only by Muslim victory.
On November 6, 2009, in an outburst of cold rage, Major Nidal Malik
Hasan, a U.S. military psychiatrist, shot more than forty unarmed people at
Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding more than 30 others.
Almost immediately, the spin was in. In an otherwise moving speech
at Fort Hood, President Obama declared: “It may be hard to comprehend
the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know—no
faith justifies these murderous and craven acts.” 1
The president was simply in error. Two decades ago, Princeton historian
Bernard Lewis noted that rejection of the West by an important segment
of the Muslim world has generated emotions that could only be
characterized as rage. 2 In our times, Jews have been the principal object of
that rage.
In the history of religion, murder can be seen as a sacred act when
religious authorities characterize the victim as irretrievably evil. Such
indeed is the case for Islamic fundamentalists, by whom these massacres
are regarded as noble and sanctified acts of jihad in the path of Allah. 3 On
* Richard L. Rubenstein, the author of Jihad and Genocide, is President
Emeritus of the University of Bridgeport.
1. Remarks by the President at memorial services at Fort Hood, The White
House, Office of the Press Secretary, November 10, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.
gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-memorial-service-fort-hood.
2. Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” The Atlantic, September
1990.
3. See comment by Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, “Nidal Hasan Did the Right
Thing,” which was first posted on al-Awlaki’s blog on November 9, 2009. Subsequently,
the entire content of the blog was deleted at the source, presumably under
pressure from Yemeni authorities. The text was, however, reproduced almost
immediately by Jihad Watch: “U.S.-born Islamic cleric: Nidal Hasan ‘Did the
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one occasion, Hasan himself told Dr. Naomi Surnam, a supervisor in the
Department of Psychiatry at Walter Reed Hospital, that “she was an infidel
who would be ‘ripped to shreds’ and ‘burn in hell’ because she was not
Muslim.” 4 Another Walter Reed colleague reported that Hasan told him that
“non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire.” 5
Hasan’s views were fully in keeping with those expressed by Osama
bin Laden and Ayman al-Awahiri in their “Declaration of the World Islamic
Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders,” published in Al Quds
Al-Arabi on February 23, 1998. 6 The Declaration asserted that it “is an individual
duty for every Muslim” to “kill the Americans and their allies—
civilians and military.” As the Qur’anic proof text, the fatwa cites: “This is
in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah,” “and fight the pagans all
together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no
more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah.” 7
Moreover, in the aftermath of 9/11, a group of Saudi scholars stated in
a public exchange with a group of American scholars that “many in the
Islamic world” regard the September 11 attacks as “neither legitimate nor
welcome, due to all the values, principles, and moral standards that we have
learned from Islam.” 8 This statement aroused Bin Laden’s ire. He insisted
that the attacks were fully justified in Islamic law and that by denying the
legitimacy of the September 11 attacks, the scholars rejected offensive
jihad. By so doing, they reject the Prophet and his Rightly Guided Companions
as authoritative models of Muslim behavior. Bin Laden reproved the
scholars for “lying” when they claimed that “many in the Islamic world did
not welcome the attack of September [11].” He characterized such statements
as “repugnant bowing to the infidels” and declared:
This is the furthest from the truth. Indeed, happiness and joy have not
entered many Muslim homes in decades as it did after what befell the
RightThing,’” Jihad Watch, November 9, 2009, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/
11/us-born-islamic-cleric-nidal-hasan-did-the-right-thing.html.
4. “Officials: Major Hasan Sought ‘War Crimes’ Prosecution of U.S.
Soldiers,” ABC News, November 16, 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/officials
-major-hasan-sought-war-crimes-prosecution-us/story?id=9019904&page=1.
5. Nick Allen, “Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels
should have their throats cut,” Daily Telegraph (UK), November 8, 2009,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6526030/Fort-Hood
-gunman-had-told-US-military-colleagues-that-infidels-should-have-their-throatscut.html.
6. The text of the Declaration is available on the Web at http://fas.org/irp/
world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm
7. Qur’an, 2:193 (Al-Aqara).
8. Osama Bin Laden, in Ibrahim, Al Qaeda Reader, 47.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 97
Crusaders, thanks to these blessed strikes—and we implore Allah for
more like them. 9
Initially, most media and government sources had difficulty in accepting the
obvious, namely, that the Fort Hood massacre was a religiously motivated
act. Instead, they sought to explain the killer’s actions in terms of psychological
stress of one sort or another in which, willy-nilly, the killer became
one with his victims as a casualty of military life. 10 However, within a few
days it became clear that the killer was a radical Islamist and that many of
his colleagues had questioned his fitness to serve in the Armed Forces of
the United States. 11
It is not our purpose to consider that evidence, save for one detail. On
November 12, 2009, Hasan was charged with thirteen counts of premeditated
murder. 12 This means that, in a trial that is bound to attract international
attention, the prosecution is convinced that it can prove that Hasan
cold-bloodedly and deliberately set out to kill as many military personnel
and civilians as possible before being killed himself.
No outsider can be privy to the evidence available to the prosecution.
Nevertheless, federal law enforcement officials have told ABC News that
Hasan used an FN Herstal Five-Seven tactical pistol that was purchased
legally in August 2009 from the Guns Galore shop in nearby Killeen,
Texas. The same officials said that the weapon packs so much power that it
is known as the “Cop Killer.” 13 The store’s manager also said that that
particular firearm can hold twenty rounds in a standard clip and take a ten-
9. Ibrahim, Al Qaeda Reader, 49.
10. See, for example, Benedict Carey, Damien Cave and Lizette Alvarez, “Painful
Stories Take a Toll on Military Therapists,” New York Times, November 8,
2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/us/08stress.html?scp=1&sq=Painful%
20stories%20take%20a%20toll%20on%20military%20therapists&st=cse; see also
Erika Goode, “When Soldiers Snap,” New York Times, November 8, 2009, www.ny
times.com/2009/11/08/weekinreview/08goode.html. For an analysis of this phenomenon,
see Charles Krauthammer, “Medicalizing Mass Murder,” Washington
Post, November 13, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2009/11/12/AR2009111209824.html?hpid=opinionsbox1.
11. For a summary of the evidence of Major Hasan’s Islamist loyalties, see
Daniel Pipes, “Major Hassan’s Islamist Life,” Front Page Magazine, November
20, 2009, http://www.danielpipes.org/7763/major-nidal-hasan-islamist-life.
12. Philip Rucker and Ellen Nakashima, “Hasan charged with 13 counts of murder,”
Washingon Post, November 13, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/11/12/AR2009111208617.html.
13. Matthew Cole, Pierre Thomas, Jason Ryan, and Richard Esposito, “‘Cop
Killer’ Gun Used in Ft. Hood Shooting, Officials Said,” ABC News, http://abcnews
.go.com/Blotter/cop-killer-gun-thought-ft-hood-shooting/story?id=9019521.

98 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
round clip extension. With one clip and one round in the chamber, a person
could fire thirty-one rounds before reloading. In addition, federal officials
told ABC News that Hasan also had a 357 Smith & Wesson Magnum
revolver with him. 14 Hasan took the weapons into a hall filled with unarmed
military personnel preparing to deploy, determined to kill as many as possible.
Moreover, witnesses have testified that Hasan was calm and methodical
as he proceeded to shoot more than forty people.
As stated above, Hasan was clearly moved by rage—cold rage. Rage
itself has been characterized as a “shame-based expression of anger.” 15 To
experience shame, a person must compare his actions with some standard,
either his own or another’s, and he must regard himself as having failed to
meet that standard. Moreover, shame is the product of the very self that it
condemns. 16 In those societies in which the military caste enjoys dominant
status, defeat in war can result in shame so painful that death may be
deemed preferable to life after defeat.
Rage has also been understood as “anger out of control.” 17 Frequently,
this kind of anger is related to “a perceived loss of control over factors
affecting our integrity—our beliefs and how we feel about ourselves.” 18 Put
differently, rage is a response to the subject’s perception of his/her own
impotence. Guilt is different. Like shame, it involves recognition of the fact
that I have violated a standard, but, unlike shame, guilt focuses on those
undesirable actions I seek to end and for which I would make amends. 19 By
contrast, shame is not about specific actions, but about myself. In shame, I
judge myself to be without worth. Shame is thus a painful, narcissistic
injury in which corrective action is paralyzed and I am left with only an
anguished sense of self-contempt. 20
In the past, Muslim anti-Jewish hostility could be characterized as the
condescension or contempt of a dominant power toward a useful but powerless
inferior. Today, Muslim anti-Jewish hostility partakes of something
entirely novel in the history of Islam: the rage of the defeated in the face of
14. Ibid.
15. Jim Platt, “Crossing the Line: Anger vs. Rage,” Working@Dartmouth, http:
//74.125.95.104/search?q=cache:PviYnlwDmTAJ:www.dartmouth.edu/~hrs/pdfs/
anger.pdf+%22crossinghe+line:+anger+s.rage%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=
us (accessed September 8, 2008).
16. For the analysis of shame and guilt, I am indebted to Michael Lewis, “The
Role of the Self in Shame,” Social Research 70, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 1181-89.
17. W. Walter Menninger, “Uncontained rage: A psychoanalytic perspective on
violence,” Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 71, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 120.
18. Jim Platt, “Crossing.”
19. Michael Lewis, “The Role of the Self,” 1188.
20. Michael Lewis, “The Role of the Self,” 1188-89.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 99
an enemy’s military victories and economic success. The situation was difficult
enough when Christendom reversed centuries of Muslim dominance;
Jewish military victories were far less tolerable. Even Hezbullah’s ability to
hold its own against Israeli armed forces during the 2006 war in Lebanon
has not really dissipated that rage.
According to Bernard Lewis, in its heyday, the Muslim world saw
itself as “the center of culture and enlightenment, surrounded by infidel
barbarians whom it would in due course civilize.” 21 It was not until the
failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 that the world of
Islam found itself on the defensive vis-à-vis the world of Christendom. Particularly
humiliating to Muslims was the fact that Christian empires came to
dominate much of the world of Islam. In the nineteenth century, Britain,
France, Spain, Italy, and Holland divided up much of the Muslim world,
almost at will. The nineteenth-century efforts of the European powers to
secure equal rights for Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire were
especially galling. The world of Islam had been built upon a hierarchical
system of structured inequality in which the religious and social dominance
of Muslims over unbelievers was the uncontested first premise. Built into
the very structure of Muslim identity was the system of dhimmitude,
namely, “the comprehensive legal system established by the Muslim conquerors
to rule the native non-Muslim populations subdued by jihad
wars.” 22 No matter how brilliant, talented, or wealthy an unbeliever might
be, the humblest believing Muslim was regarded as superior to all unbelievers,
at least in the eyes of Allah.
In the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, Westerners
tended to regard their influence on Islam as essentially beneficial. The
French, for example, spoke of their colonial expansion as une mission civilatrice.
By contrast, traditional Muslims regarded Western influence as disorienting.
Confronted with the movement toward gender equality in the
West, traditional Muslim societies have tended to react harshly. For example,
the program of gender control under the auspices of the Taliban Ministry
for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (al-Amr bi al-
Ma’ruf wa al-Nahi ‘an al-Munkir) was one of the most draconian in modern
times. 23 Moreover, the Taliban Ministry was itself modeled after a simi-
21. Bernard Lewis, “The Roots.”
22. Bat Ye’or, “Dhimmitude Past and Present: An Invented or Real History?,”
C.V. Starr Foundation Lectureship, Brown University, October 10, 2002, http://
www.dhimmitude.org/archive/by_lecture_10oct2002.htm; see also Bat Ye’or,
Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, trans. Miriam Kochan and
David Littman (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002).
23. A list of Taliban restrictions and mistreatment of women supplied by the
Afghan organization by the Revolutionary Associations of the Women of Afghani-

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larly named Saudi agency, and the Islamic Republic of Iran has its own
version of religious police (Arabic, mutaween). One of the worst cases of
mutaween abuse occurred in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on March 11, 2002,
when members of the Saudi religious police prevented schoolgirls from
leaving their burning school building because they were not wearing headscarves
and black robes and were not escorted by a male guardian. Fifteen
girls died and fifty were injured in the incident. 24
Other examples of gender control include so-called “honor-killings.”
In April 2001, a representative of Human Rights Watch took note of this
phenomenon before the UN Commission on Human Rights:
Honor crimes are acts of violence, usually murder, committed by male
family members against female family members who are perceived to
have brought dishonor upon the family. A woman can be targeted by her
family for a variety of reasons including, refusing to enter into an
arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a
divorce—even from an abusive husband—or committing adultery. The
mere perception that a woman has acted in a manner to bring “dishonor”
to the family is sufficient to trigger an attack.
The ramifications for women of this impunity are significant. For
example, a woman in an abusive marriage must make the choice of staying
in the marriage, hoping that the violence will end, or leaving the
marriage, hoping that neither her husband nor any male relatives will kill
her. A woman who is raped, even if she can prove that she was the victim,
may be killed by her husband, father, son, brother or cousin. 25
Honor killings can thus be seen as an attempt to erase the stigma of shame
from a family by eliminating the allegedly offending member. No recon-
stan can be found at http://www.rawa.org/rules.htm. On gender discrimination by
the Taliban, see Ahmad Raschid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 105-116; see also
“Humanity Denied: Systematic Violations of Women’s Rights in Afghanistan,”
Human Rights Watch 13, no. 5 (Oct. 2001), http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/
afghan3/.
24. “15 girls die as zealots ‘drive them into blaze,’” Daily Telegraph, March 15,
2002, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/
1387874/15-girls-die-as-zealots-drive-them-into-blaze.html; see also “Saudi police
‘stopped’ fire rescue,” BBC News, March 15, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1874471.stm.
25. “Violence against Women and ‘Honor’ Crimes,” Human Rights News (April
2001), http://hrw.org/english/docs/2001/04/06/global268.htm (accessed August 31,
2008); see also James Emery, “‘Reputation is Everything’: Honor Killings Among
the Palestinians,” The World and I Online, May 2003, http://www.worldandi.com/
newhome/public/2003/may/clpub.asp.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 101
ciling act of contrition will do. Only the death of the alleged offender will
suffice. 26 Some of the “offenses” seem trivial by Western standards.
According to the Daily Telegraph (UK), a young Saudi woman was murdered
by her father for chatting on Facebook, a social networking website.
She was beaten and shot after her father found her in the middle of an
internet conversation with a man. 27 In a particularly bizarre case, a 16-yearold
Jordanian woman was murdered by her brother because another brother
had raped her. 28 The victim, not the rapist, was seen as having brought
shame upon the family. While such killings are not officially sanctioned
and cases of domestic violence are by no means confined to Islam, the official
penalties incurred for such crimes tend to be exceptionally light when
and if applied. Moreover, honor killing currently appears to be far more
prevalent among Muslims than among people of other faiths.
At the heart of all such behavior, there appears to be masculine fear of
loss of control, with all that such loss entails for personal identity. We need
not enter into psychoanalytic reflection about masculine fear of the feminine
to explain the need for control over women found in strongly patriarchal
cultures. When unable to control their women, some men in traditional
societies are likely to experience feelings of impotence and rage. Unfortunately,
impotent rage can often be sated, if only temporarily, by injury and
murder. All too often, men deny their impotence by using their power to
kill.
GERMAN DEFEAT AND THE BIRTH OF HITLER’S RAGE
In important respects, Muslim rage as characterized by Bernard Lewis
is not unlike what Adolf Hitler and many right-wing German nationalists
experienced in the face of Germany’s defeat in the First World War. Before
the war, Hitler had drifted for years without any definite vocation. The war
gave Hitler his calling by giving him a “chance to defend his beloved Motherland.”
29 In the early nineteen-twenties, Hitler described his feelings when
Germany declared war on Russia and France in August 1914:
26. See James Emery, “‘Reputation Is Everything.’”
27. Damien McElroy, “Saudi woman killed for chatting on Facebook,” Telegraph.co.uk,
April 1, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1583420/
Saudi-woman-killed-for-chatting-on-Facebook.html (accessed September 1, 2008).
28. “Jordan: Special Report on Honour Killings,” Reuters Foundation Alert Net,
April 18, 2005, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/6f6d5166f24330
a0e8edcb79796ca5cc.htm (accessed January 20, 2010).
29. Robert G. L. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (New York: New
American Library, 1977), 241.

102 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
To me these hours seemed like a release from the painful feelings of my
youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy
enthusiasm. I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing
heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live
at this time. 30
For Hitler, the stakes could not have been higher. As he put it, “Destiny had
begun its course. . .this time not the fate of Serbia or Austria was involved,
but whether the German nation was to be or not to be.” 31
Imperial Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914 and on
France two days later. On August 5, 1914, Hitler volunteered for service
and served with the Second Reserve Battalion of the Second Bavarian
Infantry, known as the List Regiment, for the duration of the war. The unit
first saw combat on October 29, 1914. After four days of fighting, the regiment
was reduced in number from 3,600 to 611. 32 The depressingly high
casualty rate did not dampen Hitler’s enthusiasm for combat. He identified
with Germany’s struggle in a deeply personal way. He found his niche in
his regiment and in the war itself. He was apparently content to serve as a
dispatch runner for the duration.
According to Ian Kershaw, one of Hitler’s most authoritative biographers,
“from all indications, Hitler was a committed, rather than simply
conscientious and dutiful, soldier, and did not lack physical courage.” 33
Wounded slightly by shrapnel in October 1916, he was hospitalized in Berlin
until December 1, 1916. He returned to his regiment on March 5,
1917. 34 On August 4, 1918, he received the Iron Cross, First Class, a rare
achievement for a corporal. On the night of October 13, 1918, Hitler was
painfully wounded in a British gas attack. By the next morning he was blind
and was shipped to a hospital in Pasewalk near Stettin. It was there that he
learned “the shattering news of defeat and revolution,” what he called “the
greatest villainy of the century.” 35 Hitler described his reaction upon learning
of the way the war ended:
I could stand it no longer. It became impossible for me to sit still one
minute more. Again everything went black before my eyes. I tottered and
groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk, and dug
30. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1943), 161.
31. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 161.
32. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999),
90.
33. Kershaw, Hitler, 92. See also Waite, The Psychopathic God, 243.
34. Kershaw, Hitler, 95.
35. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 202; Kershaw, Hitler, 97.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 103
my head into my blanket and pillow. I had not wept since the day when I
had stood at my mother’s grave. . .. The more I tried to achieve clarity on
the monstrous event in this hour, the more the shame of indignation and
disgrace burned into my brow. 36
Germany’s defeat was his personal defeat. For him, the war would never
end. He described his reaction when he first learned of the defeat:
And so it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations; in
vain the hunger and thirst of months that were often endless; in vain the
hours in which, with mortal fear clutching our hearts, we nevertheless did
our duty; and in vain the death of two million who died. 37
Unable to bear the shame of military defeat, Hitler concluded that Germany
had not been defeated, but betrayed:
I knew that all was lost. Only fools, liars, and criminals could hope in the
mercy of the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those
responsible for this deed.
According to Hitler, Jews and Marxists, the so-called “November
criminals,” were responsible for Germany’s ultimate disgrace: surrender.
Since Hitler had no intention of accepting the “Versailles Diktat” as the
permanent basis for Germany’s relations with its enemies, another war
would be inevitable were he ever to gain power, And, in such a war, there
would be no place for Jews once again to “betray” Germany.
Hitler’s response to Germany’s defeat in November 1918 was a private
matter. The official response of the German high command was not very
different. On March 3, 1918, Bolshevik Russia signed a peace treaty with
Imperial Germany. Less than three weeks later, General Erich Ludendorff
launched the first of four German offensives against the Allies in the west.
By July 1918, the German offensive had spent itself. 38 On September 29,
1918, Ludendorff summoned Germany’s political leaders and demanded
that they ask for an immediate armistice. 39 In seeking an armistice,
Ludendorff and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the Chief of the General
Staff, were partly driven by fear of the imminent collapse of German
arms and its likely consequences, the worst being a Russian-type revolution
36. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 204-06; Waite, The Psychopathic God, 244.
37. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 205.
38. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma,
Mourning, and Recovery (New York: Henry Holt, 2003), 190.
39. Schivelbusch, Culture of Defeat, 197.

104 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
in Germany. 40 Nevertheless, with the German army still in both northern
France and Belgium, and the former Tsarist Empire having been defeated in
March 1918, a number of senior officers strongly opposed the armistice
initiative. 41 Their resolve was strengthened after receiving Woodrow Wilson’s
uncompromising replies to the German armistice request between
October 10 and 14. Ludendorff and Hindenburg became convinced that the
Allies would never offer peace terms Germany would deem acceptable. 42
According to historian Michael Geyer, the High Command became
convinced that surrender was incompatible with German honor, which
could be saved only by an apocalyptic Endkampf (terminal struggle) involving
the systematic devastation of the population and infrastructure of occupied
French and Belgian territory, as well as a possible war to the death
involving the entire German population. The Endkampf would be both a
war of annihilation against the enemy and the self-annihilation of the German
nation. 43
German defeat did not result in an Endkampf because the government
of the newly appointed Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, and the Reichstag
majority rejected the High Command’s plans. Prince Max pointed out
that the first responsibility of the government was to assure the survival of
the nation. If that meant acknowledging defeat, the humiliation had to be
accepted. By contrast, the High Command insisted that the Allied terms
were dishonorable. Hence, total military catastrophe was to be preferred to
a humiliating surrender.
In late October, Hindenburg and Ludendorff attempted to persuade the
Kaiser to reject the armistice and call for a Volkskrieg, a total “people’s
war.” The Kaiser refused and sent them, with several other senior com-
40. Michael Geyer, “Insurrectionary Warfare: The German Debate about a
Levée en Masse in October 1918,” Journal of Modern History 73, no. 3 (September
2001): 464 and 467-68, http:www.jstor.org/stable/3079705 (accessed March 6,
2009).
41. Geyer, “Insurrectionary Warfare,” 470. These included Max von Gallwitz
and Bruno von Mudra.
42. Wilson stipulated that the Central Powers would be required “immediately
to withdraw their forces everywhere from invaded territories.” He further insisted
on “absolutely satisfactory safeguards and guarantees” for the maintenance “of the
present military supremacy of the armies of the United States and its allies in the
field.” And, Wilson explicitly demanded a new government in Germany because
“the nations of the world do not and cannot trust the word of those who have
hitherto been the masters of German policy.” The text of Wilson’s replies is to be
found in Oliver Marble Gale, Americanism: Woodrow Wilson’s Speeches on the
War (Chicago: Baldwin Syndicate, 1918), 141-44. This book was digitized and
made available by Google from the Harvard University Library.
43. Geyer, “Insurrectionary Warfare,” 475-502.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 105
manders, to meet with the Imperial Vice Chancellor Friedrich von Payer,
Prince Max being unavailable because of illness. Ludendorff sought to persuade
Payer to abandon peace negotiations and call for a popular insurrection.
The issue for both the military and the German ultra-right was no
longer victory or even territorial defense, but the “honor” involved in preferring
catastrophic national destruction to surrender.
Payer rejected Ludendorff’s demand for an end to peace negotiations,
whereupon Ludendorff declared, “Then, your Excellency, I throw the entire
shame of the Fatherland into your and your colleague’s faces.” 44 In his
memoir of the war years, Payer spelled out his fundamental disagreement
with Ludendorff:
An army commander with his entourage may well end his illustrious
career [Ruhmeslaufbahn] with a ride into death [Todesritt], but a people
of seventy million cannot make the decision about life and death according
to the terms of honor of a single estate [i.e., the military]. 45
Geyer recounts that Rear Admiral Magnus von Levetzow, Chief of Staff of
the Naval High Command, was also present at the meeting. In his memoirs,
Levetzow described Ludendorff as “a majestic man, a representative of
German honor” and described Payer as “a small, crappy party hack without
a sense of national dignity and honor . . .weighing everything only from a
petit bourgeois point of view . . . sitting there cowering, with his beady,
hate-filled eyes and clasped hands, under the powerful blows of the
general.” 46
Geyer comments regarding the encounter between Ludendorff and
Paver, “One could call this the pivotal scene in the formation of the stab-inthe-back
legend.” 47 Although Payer was not Jewish, von Levetzow used
classical anti-Semitic stereotypes to characterize him. According to historian
Peter Pulzer, “In the eyes of the extreme Right Payer had long counted
as an honorary Jew.” 48
Neither Hitler nor the World War I German High Command invented
44. Wilhelm Deist, ed., volume 2 of Militär und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg
1914-1918 (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1970), 1338-40; I am indebted to Geyer, “Insurrectionary
Warfare,” 506, for this citation.
45. Friedrich Payer, Von Bethmann Hollweg bis Ebert: Erinnerungen und
Bilder (Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, 1923), 142-43; I am
indebted to Geyer, “Insurrectionary Warfare,” for this citation.
46. Deist, Militär und Innenpolitik, 1338-40.
47. Geyer, “Insurrectionary Warfare.”
48. Peter Pulzer, Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority,
1848-1933 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 224.

106 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
the tradition of the ignoble betrayer who in stealth and treachery brings
defeat upon the German military. It was deeply embedded in their cultural
world. Although more Jews proportionally than their fellow citizens made
the supreme sacrifice for what they mistakenly thought was their Fatherland,
that sacrifice was invisible to Hitler, the German High Command, and,
increasingly, the German public. On the contrary, in October 1916, the German
High Command ordered a Judenzählung, a “Jew census,” to demonstrate
that Jews were less patriotic than what at the time were considered
their “fellow Germans.” The findings demonstrated the opposite. Approximately
eighty percent of the Jews in the German army served in the frontlines.
Over 100,000 Jews served out of a total German Jewish population of
550,000; 12,000 died in battle; 30,000 were decorated for bravery. 49 Disappointed,
German military officials suppressed the findings.
To repeat, a person who experiences guilt can make reparation for specific
acts, whereas a person who experiences shame cannot. In shame, reparation
seems impossible, as the whole person condemns him/herself as
worthless. Hence, the temptation to evade self-condemnation by projecting
one’s shame onto another is almost irresistible. Instead of punishing oneself,
one punishes another for one’s failings.
This was especially true of Imperial Germany, a society in which the
warrior caste stood at the very apex of the social hierarchy and military
prowess was the emblem of superlative masculine virtue. By failing to
achieve victory and by impotently standing by while Imperial Germany’s
civilian authorities consented to what amounted to unconditional surrender,
leaving the nation at the mercy of its enemies, the German warrior caste had
failed its ultimate test. Nothing could be more shameful than to have been
vanquished in a war in which approximately two million of their comrades
were killed and 4,814,557 reported wounded. 50
THE STAB-IN-THE-BACK LEGEND: PRELUDE TO GENOCIDE
As the war came to a close, Germany’s military leaders prepared to
reject responsibility for their catastrophic failure. It seemed inconceivable
to them that Europe’s most advanced industrial power, with the best univer-
49. Jacob Rosenthal, “Die Ehre des jüdischen Soldaten.” Die Judenzählung im
Ersten Weltkrieg und ihre Folgen (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2007), 63-89;
see also Deutsches Historisches Museum, “Die Judenzählung von 1916,” http://
www.dhm.de/lemo/html/wk1/innenpolitik/judenzaehlung/index.html (accessed
September 30, 2008).
50. Richard Bessel, Germany after the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 5-6.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 107
sities and scientific personnel, could collapse and surrender while the German
army, numbering in the millions, still occupied the soil of its enemies.
Moreover, the greatest humiliation was arguably yet to come. Article 231,
the “war guilt clause” of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919,
stipulated that
Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing
all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments
and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war
imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies. 51
During the nineteen-twenties, the Treaty of Versailles, especially Article
231, was viewed by the majority of Germans as a “dictate of shame”
whose purpose was to keep Germany from regaining the status of a great
European power. The compulsory signing was especially bitter because
Germans of all political persuasion “had rushed to arms in 1914 in the sincere
conviction that they were fighting a war of self-defense.” 52
The stab-in-the-back legend (Dolchstoss in den Rücken) offered an
enormously potent means of shifting responsibility so that German “honor”
could be preserved. It was not difficult to identify a suitable “betrayer.”
The legend had its roots in two powerful traditions: the Nibelungen Saga in
which Siegfried, the dragon-slaying hero, is stabbed in the back by Hagen
von Tronje; and the New Testament narrative in which Jesus is betrayed by
Judas Iscariot for money with a loving kiss. 53 Over the centuries, Jews have
been identified with Judas as the paradigmatic betrayer within Christendom.
More often than not, whenever the stronger community met with grave misfortune,
Jews were punished as calamity’s alleged authors.
Apart from its sources in myth and legend, the stab-in-the-back legend
gained enhanced credibility in the German Right from the presence of leftwing
Jews in the leadership of revolutionary movements that sought to end
the war and establish socialist or communist regimes in its aftermath.
51. “The Treaty of Versailles June 28, 1919,” Part VIII, Article 231, Avalon
Project of the Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/partviii.asp
(accessed October 4, 2008).
52. Wolfgang Mommsen, “Max Weber and the Peace Treaty of Versailles,” in
Manfred E. Boemeke, Gerald E. Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser, eds., The Treaty of
Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 535.
53. On the Niebelungen tradition, Siegfried and Hagen, see Geyer, “Insurrectionary,”
506, 517-20; for a discussion of the role of Judas in transforming the Jews
into the perennial betrayer of the Christian world, see Richard L. Rubenstein, After
Auschwitz, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 50-51.

108 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
Although Jewish loyalty to the Fatherland was real, it was all but invisible
to right-wing German nationalists. What was visible was the Jewish presence
in the Bolshevik leadership and in the left-wing regimes that managed
to seize power temporarily in Bavaria and Hungary. For example, on
November 7, 1918, Kurt Eisner, a socialist Jewish writer from Berlin, found
himself at the head of the provisional revolutionary government of
predominantly Catholic Bavaria. After Eisner’s assassination, a number of
other Jewish intellectuals, literati, and revolutionaries took highly visible
leadership roles in the succeeding revolutionary regimes in Munich. 54 At
the time, Munich was home to Adolf Hitler and the embryonic National
Socialist party.
As noted, advocates of peace negotiations came to be characterized as
either “Jewish” or influenced by “a Jewish mentality.” 55 By 1919,
Ludendorff was committed to the “destruction of the ‘internationalist, pacifist,
defeatists,’ namely, the Jews and the Vatican, people who ‘systematically
destroyed’ our ‘racial inheritance and national character.’” 56 Not
surprisingly, Ludendorff took part with Hitler in the Munich Beer Hall
Putsch of 1923. A year later, the general wrote that Germany must be made
Judenrein, “free of Jews,” before the next war. 57 The stab-in-the back legend
thus became a prelude to genocide. If, as the legend asserted, the Jews
had succeeded in bringing down the mighty German nation by treachery
and deceit, it was imperative to eliminate them if Germany were to achieve
success in the coming war.
Hitler saw the war’s outcome, as did Ludendorff. He had no doubt that
the cause of Germany’s defeat had not been the failure of German arms, but
betrayal by Jews and Marxists. He was resolved to enter politics to prevent
a repetition of the alleged betrayal. Thus, the Jews of Europe were ulti-
54. They included Gustav Landauer, Eugen Leviné, Ernst Toller, and Towia
Axelrod. On the red revolution in Munich see Allan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria,
1918-1919 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); Ruth Fischer, Stalin
and German Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948); Charles B.
Maurer, Call to Revolution: The Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1971); Rosa Leviné-Meyer, Leviné the Spartacist
(London: Gordon and Cremonesi, 1978); and Richard Grunberger, Red Rising in
Bavaria (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973).
55. Wolfram Wette, The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality, trans. Deborah
Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 45-46.
56. John Weiss, The Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 211-12.
57. Erich Ludendorff, Kriegführung und Politik, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Mittler &
Sohn, 1925), 141, 322, 339. For this citation I am indebted to Wette, The
Wehrmacht, 41.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 109
mately to pay with their lives for the monumental, and indeed cowardly,
evasion of responsibility by Germany’s World War I military leadership in
seeking to preserve their “honor.” In his Political Testament, written on
April 30, 1945, the day before he killed himself, Hitler persisted in that
evasion. “It is untrue,” he claimed, “that I or anyone else in Germany
wanted the war in 1939.” On the contrary, “It was desired and instigated
exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish
descent or worked for Jewish interests.” 58 From 1919 to 1945, a rageobsessed
Adolf Hitler gave powerful expression to that emotion for himself
and his followers. His rage unappeased even by genocide and his own
Endkampf, Hitler concluded his testament by charging “the leaders of the
nation and those under them . . . to merciless opposition to the universal
poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.” To the bitter end, Hitler saw
himself as the innocent victim of those who had conspired to bring him and
Germany down.
DEFEAT AND MUSLIM RAGE
Like the rage of Hitler and the German ultra-right, the rage of contemporary
Islamists and their fellow travelers against Jews, Zionism, America,
and, ultimately, the entire Western world, has its roots in military defeat. In
the case of rage against the West, the roots can be found in the Battle of
Lepanto (1571), the lifting of the Ottoman siege of Vienna by the Polish
King Jan III Sobieski on September 12, 1683, and the Treaty of Karlowitz
(1699). At Karlowitz, the Ottomans signed a peace treaty for the first time
on terms “basically determined by their victorious enemies.” 59 The treaty
set the pattern of Muslim retreat and defeat that continued until the middle
of the twentieth century.
As noted above, no defeat visited upon Muslims by unbelievers has
ever been as deeply offensive to Muslim honor as the twin defeats inflicted
upon the Arabs in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence and the Six-Day
War of 1967. This has been cogently expressed by the Israeli historian
58. Adolf Hitler, “My Political Testament,” United States, Office of United
States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and
Aggression (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1946-1948), vol. VI, 259-
63, Doc. No. 3569-PS, http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1945/450429a.html.
59. On Lepanto, see Michael Novak, “Remembering Lepanto: A Battle not Forgotten,”
National Review Online, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWVhYWJ
mMDJlNzQwZWFhYWViM2FmNjE3MDY3MjZmZWQ=#more (November 18,
2008); on the Siege of Vienna and the Treaty of Karlowitz, see Bernard Lewis, The
Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York: Scribner, 1995),
276-77.

110 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
Benny Morris in the concluding paragraphs of his book on the first Arab-
Israeli War:
But 1948 has haunted and still haunts, the Arab world on the deepest
level of collective identity, ego, and pride. The war was a humiliation
from which that world has yet to recover—the antithesis of the glory days
of Arab Islamic dominance. . . . The 1948 War was the culminating
affront, when a community of 650,000 Jews—Jews, no less—crushed
Palestinian Arab society and then defeated the armies of the surrounding
states. The Arab states had failed to “save” the Palestinians and failed to
prevent Israel’s emergence and acceptance into the comity of nations.
And what little Palestine territory the Arabs had managed to retain fell
under Israeli sway two decades later. 60
Since the 1930s there have been numerous attempts to “solve” the
Arab-Israeli conflict. In recent years, there has been much talk about a
“peace process.” Almost immediately after assuming office, President
Obama let it be known that he intended to pursue it energetically. Perhaps
in anticipatory compliance, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert,
gave an interview on September 21, 2008 to the Israeli daily newspaper
Yedioth Aharonoth outlining the territorial concessions he believed Israel
must make for the sake of peace with its neighbors. 61 Yet, no attempt to
resolve the conflict has ever succeeded.
I am convinced that a fundamental flaw in all such efforts is the failure
of both Western and Israeli policy makers to take into account the religious
dimension of the conflict. This is especially true in the Middle East, where
Islamists regard their ongoing struggle with Israel and, for that matter, the
entire non-Muslim Western world, as a jihad, a religiously sanctioned war
with ostensibly religious objectives. Although two Muslim countries, Egypt
and Jordan, have signed “peace” treaties with Israel, a critical mass among
both educated professionals and the “Muslim street” in both countries
remains completely unwilling to accept any “solution” to the conflict other
than Israel’s annihilation.
According to Gilles Kepel, a French authority on radical Islam, Anwar
Sadat’s address to the Israeli Kenesset on November 20, 1977 and the subsequent
signing of a peace treaty with Israel on March 26, 1979 marked a
decisive turning point for radical Islam. There was a widespread consensus
60. See Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2008), 419.
61. See the English translation, “The Time Has Come to Say These Things,”
New York Review of Books, 59, no. 19, December 4, 2008, http://www.nybooks.
com/articles/22112.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 111
among the Islamists that “a shameful peace with the Jews” must be
rejected. 62 Nor were they alone in rejecting peace. The treaty was hugely
unpopular throughout the Muslim world. For a time, it resulted in the expulsion
of Egypt from the Arab League. For having signed the treaty, Sadat
himself was gunned down by Lieutenant Khalid Al-Islambouli on October
6, 1981 during the annual parade commemorating Egypt’s 1973 “victory.”
Al-Islambouli, a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement, was
condemned to death by an Egyptian court and executed on April 15, 1982.
He has since been widely venerated by Islamists as a shaheed, a witness
and a martyr in the cause of Islam. A Teheran street has been named after
him.
Islamists make no secret of the religious dimension of the conflict. An
extraordinary range of sermons, essays, newspaper columns, TV broadcasts,
websites, and other material in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu-
Pashto has been translated into English, German, Hebrew, Italian, French,
Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese by MEMRI, the Middle East
Media Research Institute, and made available on the Institute’s website. 63
This site is an invaluable resource for both the professional researcher and
the informed layman.
Few of these sources convey the depth of uncompromising, religiously
legitimated hatred toward Jews and Israel as the Covenant of the Islamic
Resistance Movement, known by its acronym, HAMAS (Harakat al-
Muqāwama al-Islāmiyya). The Covenant has been made available on the
Web in a reliable translation by the Avalon Project of the Yale Law
School. 64 Hamas itself has been designated by the United States Department
of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. There is no doubt that the
designation is well deserved insofar as Hamas has used and continues to use
terrorism against civilians of all ages to achieve its political and diplomatic
objectives. 65 Nevertheless, while accurate, the designation may obscure the
degree to which Hamas’s long-term objective, the destruction of the State
of Israel and its people, is grounded in an unconditional religious imperative
it regards as binding on all Muslims.
In the preface to the Covenant, Hamas spells out the radical difference
62. Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh, trans.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 70-71.
63. MEMRI’s home page is http://www.memri.org/.
64. The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, August 18, 1988, The
Avalon Project of the Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/
hamas.asp.
65. For an analysis of HAMAS as a multi-faceted organization, see Matthew
Levitt, HAMAS: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

112 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
between Muslims and non-believers. Muslims are described as “the best
nation that hath been raised up unto mankind,” whereas non-Muslims are
depicted as “smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found” (Preamble).
The only exceptions are those who submit to Islamic domination as dhimmis,
thereby obtaining “security by entering into a treaty with Allah.” Hassan
al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, is then quoted
as promising the destruction of Israel, which “will continue to exist until
Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Lest there be
any illusion that Hamas could be induced to make peace with Israel, the
document explicitly asserts that “the Islamic Resistance Movement believes
that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [an inalienable religious
endowment] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment
Day” (Article 11, Hamas Covenant). Hence, “there is no solution for the
Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international
conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors” (Article 13).
Moreover, the Hamas Covenant rejects any distinction between anti-
Zionism and anti-Semitism. Although some contemporary writers allege
that Muslim anti-Semitism is a recent development fostered by National
Socialist influence, Hamas regards Muhammad himself as looking forward
to a genocidal ending of the Muslim-Jewish conflict. 66 The Covenant cites a
Hadith of Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari (810-870), the editor-collector
of what is considered one of the most trusted collections of oral traditions
concerning the life of Muhammad (810-870). In the Hadith, the Prophet is
depicted as declaring:
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews
(killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The
stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind
me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree (evidently a certain kind of
tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews. (Article
7)
In keeping with the spirit of al-Bukhari’s Hadith and in complete disre-
66. On the significance of the relevance of this Hadith for contemporary
antisemitism, see Andrew Bostom, “Why Islam’s Jew-Hating Hadith Matter,”
Front Page Magazine, October 3, 2008, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?
ARTID=32563. On the theory of the Nazi roots of Islamic antisemitism, see Matthias
Kuntzel, “Islamic Antisemitism and Its Nazi Roots,” April 2003, http://www.
matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/islamic-antisemitism-and-its-nazi-roots. For an
exchange on this issue between Bostom and Kuntzel, see “Debating the Islamist-
Nazi Connection,” Front Page Magazine, January 2, 2008, http://97.74.65.51/read
Article.aspx?ARTID=29361.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 113
gard for the truth, Hamas includes many of National Socialism’s most
vicious, anti-Semitic falsehoods in its Covenant:
With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world. . .
They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and
most of the revolutions we heard and hear about. With their money they
formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and
others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies
and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to
control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries
in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption
there. . .. They were behind World War I, when they were able to
destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling
resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of
Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind
World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading
in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It
was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with
the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the
world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having
their finger in it. (Article 22)
Hamas predicts that once the Zionists digest Palestine, “they will covet
expansion,” first “from the Nile to the Euphrates” and then “they will look
forward to more expansion.” As evidence, Hamas identifies the notorious
forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as its authoritative source. This
is hardly surprising. For those who have experienced defeat or identified
themselves with those who have, whether Germans after World War I or
Muslims after 1948, the claim that defeat came from a deceitful, underhanded
secret conspiracy rather than honorable combat mitigated the disgrace
and shame of defeat and was a source of enormous consolation.
The worldwide success of The Protocols as an antisemitic tract dates
from the post-World-War-I period. From 1919 to 1945, The Protocols was
taken by German right-wing nationalists as “proof” of the stab-in-the-back
legend, that the Jews were the hidden force that betrayed Germany and
brought about her downfall in World War I. The pamphlet was also used to
show that the Bolshevik revolution was the result of an alleged Jewish conspiracy
to enslave the world and destroy Christianity. Such beliefs gave a
delusional coherence to Germany’s shattering experience of defeat in World
War I. 67
67. Writing in the London Times in 1921, Philip Graves, an English journalist,
offered convincing evidence that The Protocols was a forgery. He pointed to the
close resemblance between the text of The Protocols and a mid-nineteenth-century

114 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
Put differently, then as now, The Protocols served as an ideal vehicle
by which decision-makers and those dependent upon them could evade
responsibility for disastrous decisions and blame others, especially but not
exclusively the Jews, for their catastrophic mistakes. In the case of the
Tsarist government in 1905, it was responsible for the first major defeat of a
European power by an Asian nation. The Protocols served as a relatively
cost-free means of deflecting the anger and bitter resentment of the victims
of those mistakes to a group unable to retaliate.
To make matters worse, The Protocols has historically served as a support
for the conviction that genocide is a moral imperative. It has rightly
been called a “warrant for genocide.” 68 Daniel Pipes has described the
political pamphlet, Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, ou la
politique au xixe siècle (Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu or
the Politics of the Nineteenth Century, 1864). The pamphlet ascribed to Emperor
Napoleon III the ambition to dominate the world. It contained no reference to Jews
or Judaism. However, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the pamphlet
was transformed into an antisemitic tract by an unknown author working for the
Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police. The “dialogue” became the “protocols” in 1905,
the year of Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the first Russian Revolution.
In its revised form, The Protocols described an alleged conference of the leaders
of world Jewry who claimed that, under the cloak of democracy, they already
controlled a number of European states and were close to their ultimate objective:
world domination. In his article in the London Times, Graves succinctly described
the Okrana’s motives in publishing The Protocols in 1905: “They were designed to
foster the belief among Russian conservatives and especially in court circles, that
the prime cause of discontent among the politically minded elements in Russia was
not the repressive policy of the bureaucracy, but a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
They thus served as a weapon against the Russian Liberals, who urged the Czar to
make certain concessions to the intelligentsia.”
The complete text of Graves’ article was published in the New York Times,
September 4, 1921, “London Times Publishes an Exposure Showing How They
[The Protocols] are a Paraphrase of a French Book Attacking Governmental
Abuses Under Napoleon III., Published 1865,” New York Times, http://query.
nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F05E1DE1431EF33A25757C0A96F9C9460
95D6CF&scp=1&sq=Protocols&st=p. The complete text of the original Dialogue
aux Enfers has been made available on the Internet by Google Books at http://
books.google.com/books?id=8B8JAAAAQAAJ&dq=Dialogue+aux+Enfers+ntre+
Machiavel+t+Montesquieu,+ou+la+politique+au+xixe+si%C3%A8cle&printsec=
frontcover&source=bl&ots=0_2PiRlT8c&sig=JeScUVFjGaPRNSQ2mG-ineTdBe4
&hl=en&ei=WlyMSeuLLtCCtwe_1-WUCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&
ct=result.
68. This is the apt title of an important study of The Protocols, Norman Cohn,
Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion (London: Serif, 2005). The belief that the Holocaust was
not only justified, but was also regarded as an urgent moral necessity, is discussed

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 115
power of The Protocols as a propaganda tool:
The great importance of the Protocols lies in its permitting antisemites to
reach beyond their traditional circles and find a large international audience,
a process that continues to this day. The forgery poisoned public
life wherever it appeared; it was “self-generating; a blueprint that
migrated from one conspiracy to another.” The book’s vagueness—
almost no names, dates, or issues are specified—has been one key to this
wide-ranging success. The purportedly Jewish authorship also helps to
make the book more convincing. Its embrace of contradiction—that to
advance, Jews use all tools available, including capitalism and communism,
philo-Semitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny—made it
possible for the Protocols to reach out to all: rich and poor, Right and
Left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese. 69
The fundamental objective of The Protocols was to depict the Jews—not
just Zionists, but all Jews—as the clandestine enemy of all humanity and
therefore the legitimate target of all attempts to eliminate them. This in
itself was an incitement to genocide. For example, Joseph Goebbels
reported a conversation about The Protocols with Hitler on May 13, 1943,
in which Hitler expressed the conviction that “the Protocols were absolutely
genuine” and drew the conclusion that “Es bleibt also den Modernen Völkern
nichts anderes übriges, als die Juden auszurotten” (“There is therefore
no other recourse left for modern nations except to exterminate the Jew”). 70
In the twenty-first century, The Protocols have again been put in the
service of a radical assault on Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel
throughout the Arab and Muslim world, this time on satellite TV and the
internet. The subtext remains the same: Jews, Judaism, and Israel must be
destroyed. On November 6, 2002, at the beginning of the holy month of
Ramadan, Egyptian State Television Channel 2, Dream TV (a privately
owned Egyptian satellite network), Abu Dhabi TV, Hizbullah’s al-Manar
TV, Yemen TV, and others, all began screening “Horseman Without a
Horse,” a 41-episode “historical” series covering the Middle East from
1850 to 1948. The entire series emphasizes The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion as “proof” of an alleged Jewish plot to dominate and enslave the world
at length by Peter Haas, The Nazi Ethic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). Fortress
Press is the publishing house of the American Lutheran Church.
69. Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It
Comes From (New York: The Free Press - Simon & Schuster), 85.
70. Louis P. Lochner, ed. and trans., The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943 (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1948), 377. The date of the entry is May 13, 1943.
German text in Elke Fröhlich, volume 2 of Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels
(München: K. G. Saur, 1993), pt. 8, 287 (accessed May 13, 1943).

116 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
and depicts the founding of the State of Israel as a major step toward that
end.
The unprecedented use of The Protocols in a television series, reaching
perhaps as many as 200 million Muslims continuously for 41 days, constitutes
a radical escalation of both the scope and intensity of anti-Jewish
propaganda in the Muslim world. No scholarly essay or newspaper article
exposing the lie can possibly match the power of a widely-promoted,
prime-time TV series scheduled immediately after the nightly meal that
breaks the fast of the holy month of Ramadan. The Nazis and other earlier
antisemites had recourse solely to widely circulated print editions. The producers
of “Horseman without a Horse” possessed a far more potent propaganda
medium that combines visual and dramatic power and is capable of
influencing millions possessed of varying degrees of literacy. The potential
of the series for hateful damage was understood by Samir Raafat, a writer
and chronicler of life in Cairo, who wrote: “Once it goes on television it
enters everyone’s living room, and that’s where the danger is. . .You are
spoon-feeding them more hate propaganda.” 71 By contrast, Nabil Osman,
an Egyptian government spokesman, rejected criticism of the series.
Although, like the original Protocols, the series deals with an alleged Jewish
conspiracy for world domination, Osman insisted that “there is a world
of difference” between anger at Israeli policies and antisemitism. He added
that the program had been reviewed by a government broadcasting committee
that vets all television programs for pornography or the “desecration of
religion.” 72
Both Adolf Hitler and National Socialism have long been held in high
esteem in the Arab world and after the war many of the most vicious Nazi
war criminals found a welcome haven in Egypt, Syria, and other Arab
countries, as well as new opportunities to attempt to finish Hitler’s assault
on the Jews. The objective of the Islamists was and remains genocidal.
GAZA 73
On December 18, 2008, Hamas declared an end to the six-month-old
71. Daniel J. Wakin, “Anti-Semitic ‘Elders of Zion’ Gets New Life on Egypt
TV,” New York Times, October 26, 2002, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.
html?res=9F00E1DE1F3CF935A15753C1A9649C8B63 (accessed December 9,
2008).
72. Wakin, “Anti-Semitic.”
73. This essay was largely completed before the publication on September 15,
2009 of the 575-page Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Commission on
the Gaza Conflict, known as the Goldstone Report. The report is not discussed
here. A PDF copy of the report is available at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 117
ceasefire with Israel. Six days later, it indiscriminately ratcheted up its mortar
and rocket fire against civilian targets in southern Israel. To end the
attacks, Israel launched air strikes on December 27 at targets in Gaza.
Almost immediately, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, speaking as president
of the European Union, criticized Israel for a “disproportionate use of
force.” 74 Often repeated, Sarkozy’s complaint failed to confront a crucial
issue in the conflict: What is the appropriate response of any community to
an enemy on its borders that has openly and unconditionally stated that it is
under a divinely-sanctioned mandate to destroy that community and its people?
Would any of the states condemning Israel for its alleged “disproportionate”
use of force tolerate such aggression? How indeed does one relate
to a group that uses hospitals as its military headquarters and mosques,
schools, refugee camps, and civilian housing to store and fire its weapons?
75 Would any other government add to the hazards facing its own people
by permitting the enemy’s civilian population, deliberately placed in
harm’s way by its own rulers, to dwell in safety? Just how many deaths and
injuries is Israel expected to sustain before retaliating?
The fundamental cause of the Gaza war of 2008-2009 was Hamas’s
use of its rockets to make normal life untenable in an ever-expanding area
of Israeli territory. Both the UN and the so-called “international community”
have acted as enablers by routinely condemning any serious Israeli
attempt to defend its citizens and its territory. In spite of having been
labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and other Western powers
and widely distrusted by many Sunni Arab governments, Hamas has
largely succeeded in garnering widespread, tacit international support for its
attacks against Israel. For example, on January 4, 2009, Sandro Magister,
an Italian authority on the Vatican, commented in Chiesa, his daily blog,
that while the Vatican had condemned the “massive violence” in Gaza, it
bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf. The UN Human
Rights Commission has created a website devoted to the report and the controversy
it has aroused, “Understanding the Goldstone Report,” at http://www.goldstone
report.org/.
74. Dore Gold, “Is Israel Using ‘Disproportionate’ Force in Gaza?” Jerusalem
Post, December 30, 2008, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=12304565356
26&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull.
75. On Hamas’s use of the basement of Gaza’s Shifa hospital, see Amos Harel,
“Sources: Hamas leaders hiding in basement of Israel-built hospital in Gaza,”
Haaretz, January 12, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054569.html;
for Hamas’s policy of using of civilians and civilian institutions as human shields,
see Steven Erlanger, “A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery,” New York Times,
January 11, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/middleeast/11hamas.
html?_r=1&hp.

118 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
did not exhibit a comparable concern for “the existence of Israel—which its
enemies want to annihilate, and is ultimately at stake in the conflict.”
Magister added that, in spite of having diplomatic relations with Israel,
“Every time a conflict erupts, the [Vatican’s] judgment is that the Arabs are
the victims. Even Islamist terrorism is traced back to this basic cause.” 76
Magister makes the seldom-discussed point that one reason for the
Church’s pro-Arab stand is that it believes Israel’s existence is “temporary”
and that only its military superiority guarantees its survival.
A similar, if not more hostile, attitude has long pervaded the halls of
the UN with its more than fifty Muslim member states as well as the foreign
offices, media, churches, and relief organizations of most Western European
countries. Implicit in their one-sided complaints is the conviction that
without Israel, there would be no Middle East conflict and the influence of
radical Islam would be greatly diminished. 77
When one compares the inaction of the West and the UN when actual
mass murder and genocide took place in Rwanda, where in 1994 an estimated
800,000 were killed in 100 days, and in Darfur, where 300,000 are
estimated to have been killed and 2,500,000 displaced, with the eagerness
with which Israel has been repeatedly singled out for condemnation and
vilification, it would appear that something other than rational political
behavior is operative. 78 At one level, such behavior seems to reflect the
fact that there are far more Muslims in the world than Jews and that close to
25,000,000 Muslims live in Western Europe.
Sandro Magister’s observation that the Vatican regards the existence
of the State of Israel as a transitory phenomenon may offer a clue concerning
the root of the issue, at least in the predominantly Christian world. I
would like to suggest that there is a religious element in this widespread
bias and that long after literal religious belief has lost much of its credibil-
76. Sandro Magister, “In Gaza, the Vatican Raises the White Flag,” www.
chiesa, January 4, 2008, http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/213171?eng=y.
77. This attitude has often been expressed, but seldom as crudely as it was by
the late Daniel Bernard, former French Ambassador to the Court of St. James, at a
London dinner party in December 2001. The diplomat said, “All the current troubles
in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel.” He added, “Why
should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?” See Tom
Gross, “Prejudice and Abuse,” National Review On Line, January 10, 2002, http://
www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross011002.shtml.
78. For a brief overview on Rwanda, see “Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened,”
BBC News, December 18, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1288230.
stm (accessed January 14, 2009). For the figures on Darfur, see “U.N.: 100,000
more dead in Darfur than reported,” CNN.com, April 22, 2008, http://www.cnn.
com/2008/WORLD/africa/04/22/darfur.holmes/index.html?eref=rss_topstories.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 119
ity, it can nevertheless retain a powerful subterranean influence on culture. I
would further suggest that this subterranean religious influence is especially
prevalent in the persistent tendency of European governments, civic institutions,
and media to ignore historical context and consistently to judge Israel
as guilty in its conflicts with the Palestinians and the larger Muslim world.
The work of the Protestant theologian Stephen R. Haynes may help us
to understand this phenomenon. In his book, Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and
the Christian Imagination, Haynes writes of the “witness-people myth,”
which he describes as “the belief that whatever happens to the Jews, for
good or ill, is an expression of God’s providential justice.” As such, it is a
sign “for God’s church.” 79 According to Haynes, the witness-people myth
is “a deep structure in the Christian imagination. . .a complex of ideas and
symbols that, often pre-critically and unconsciously, informs ideas about
Jews among persons who share a cultural heritage.” 80 Moreover, Haynes
argues that “Jews must always be special cases in products of the Christian
imagination, because of the uniquely ambivalent place which the Jewish
people inhabit there.” 81 He notes that this is also true of Israel as a nation
among nations.
Haynes’s insights go a long way to explain Christian and post-Christian
attitudes toward contemporary Israel. In the perennial Christian narrative,
the unbelieving Jewish community is destined sooner or later to lose
unless and until it accepts Christ as its Savior. In this narrative, which has
its roots in the religious thinking of St. Augustine, a remnant will “survive
but not thrive” as “witnesses to the prophecies which were given beforehand
[i.e., before Christ’s coming] concerning Christ.” 82 In addition, there
is one location where Jewish good fortune is especially problematic: the
Holy Land, known to the medieval Church as “Christ’s patrimony.” 83
From the time of the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., Jewish misfortune
and defeat have historically been understood in Christian thought as divine
chastisement for Jewish unbelief and as evidence that Christ is Lord and
Savior. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a number of Jewish leaders
became convinced that the Jews of Europe were fated for elimination
one way or another, the most influential leader being the journalist Theo-
79. Reluctant Witness, 8(ff).
80. Reluctant Witness, 8(ff).
81. Reluctant Witnesses, 3.
82. St. Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin
Books, 1972), Book XVIII, Ch. 45, 828. For this citation, I am indebted to James
Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2001), 216-17.
83. John Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987),16.

120 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
dore Herzl (1860-1904), the father of political Zionism. Herzl became convinced
that only mass emigration and resettlement in a territory of their own
could save Europe’s Jews. He devoted the rest of his life to the realization
of that goal. There was much that was problematic in Herzl’s thinking, but
his prescience concerning the impending doom of Europe’s Jews is
undeniable. 84
One of the earliest Christian responses to Herzl’s project was published
in the authoritative Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica four months
before the meeting of the First Zionist Conference in Basel, Switzerland,
August 29-31, 1897:
1827 years have passed since the prediction of Jesus of Nazareth was
fulfilled, namely that Jerusalem would be destroyed. . .that the Jews
would be led away to be slaves among all the nations, and that they
would remain in the dispersion till the end of the world. . .According to
Sacred Scriptures, the Jewish people must always live dispersed and wandering
among the other nations, so that they may render witness not only
by the Scriptures. . .but by their very existence. As for a rebuilt Jerusalem,
which would become the center of a reconstituted state of Israel, we
must add that this is contrary to the prediction of Christ Himself. 85
Civiltà Cattolica’s editorial is an important example of the witness
people myth. Pope Pius X expressed a similar sentiment in the audience he
granted Theodore Herzl on January 25, 1904. When Herzl requested the
Pope’s support for Zionism, the Pontiff replied:
We are unable to favor this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from
going to Jerusalem—but we could never sanction it. The ground of Jerusalem,
if it were not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of
Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church I cannot answer you otherwise.
The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize
the Jewish people. 86
Much of this theology is shared by traditionally oriented Protestant and
Orthodox churches. Even ardently pro-Israel Evangelicals concur, although
84. Herzl, for example, sought a top-down solution to the Jewish problem, seeking,
for example, the support of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Sultan Abdul Hamid II, as
well as that of such Jewish notables as Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Moreover, he
offered no realistic assessment of the possible response of the Islamic world to the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
85. Civiltà Cattolica, May 1, 1897, cited by Minerbi, 96.
86. Theodore Herzl, The Diaries of Theodore Herzl, trans. and ed. Marvin Lowenthal
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1962), 428.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 121
they add that the return of the exiles to Zion and the establishment of the
State of Israel are preconditions for the second coming of Christ. Save for
pro-Israel Evangelicals, there was not much theological support for the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, although some Christians did
support the creation of the State of Israel for humanitarian reasons, especially
in the years immediately after World War II.
The Vatican and the State of Israel finally entered into diplomatic relations
in 1993. The State of Israel had demonstrated its durability and it was
the political authority in a region of historical importance to the Church. As
it had accommodated itself to a wide array of regimes, not all to its liking,
so the Church finally accommodated itself to diplomatic relations with
Israel, but the theological rejection of a sovereign Jewish state never ceased.
In reality, there should be little reason for surprise at the growing chorus
of anti-Israel hostility. Latent attitudes and emotions can often surface
after relatively long periods of dormancy. One does not have to be a doctrinaire
Freudian to see the “return of the repressed” at work in the so-called
“new anti-Semitism,” especially in relation to the State of Israel and its
conflicts. I would like to suggest that what had been repressed for decades
was the darker side of Christian ambivalence toward Jews and Judaism that
resulted from knowledge of and horror concerning the Holocaust. Undoubtedly,
that is an important reason for the fostering of Holocaust denial by the
government of Iran and Islamist writers and thinkers, which also threatens a
new Holocaust. Holocaust denial facilitates the reawakening of that dark
side by alleging that the historical reality was a devilish Jewish hoax to
extort political and financial support for Israel and other Jewish causes from
unduly guilt-ridden Christian nations.
Implicit in the claim that Israel’s response to Hamas in Gaza was disproportionate,
if the criticism is serious, is the expectation that the Israeli
government will act as if Hamas were a rational political actor whose Covenant
does not mean what it plainly says when it declares that the destruction
of Israel and its people is a fundamental objective of the “Palestine Resistance
Movement.” Unfortunately, after Auschwitz, it is difficult to see how
such an explicitly stated threat can be dismissed, at least by those Jews who
are at all aware of their own history, especially when it is endlessly repeated
by the Muslim “street” and by some of Islam’s most prominent religious
leaders. We need not offer a complete catalogue. A representative sample
will have to suffice.
We take as examples of clerical concord with the Muslim “street,”
Sheikh Amin Al-Ansari, an Egyptian Sunni Islamist, and the better known
Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. On January 26, 2009, the day before International
Holocaust Remembrance Day, Al-Rahma (Mercy) TV, the Egyptian
Sunni Islamist channel, broadcast its own version of the Holocaust featuring

122 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
Al-Ansari. 87 Unlike Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Al-Ansari
makes no attempt to deny the Holocaust. On the contrary, he glorifies it as
Allah’s “way of wreaking vengeance” on the Jews and offers graphic film
images of the most inhuman Nazi cruelty as the behavior Allah expects
from pious Muslims. In Al-Ansari’s narrative, the Germans are the innocent
victims and the Jews the evil oppressors.
After cursorily examining alleged Jewish wickedness throughout history,
Al-Ansari offers his justification for the Holocaust: “The corruption
spread by the Jews was very great. Very great. It got to the point that the
rulers themselves had no solution but to annihilate them.” Some very gruesome
clips of death-camp scenes are exhibited as Al-Ansari comments:
“Let us watch how oppressors are killed by the people they oppressed.“
Skeleton-like Jews are shown awaiting their turn to be burned to death.
There are also horrific scenes of Jews being tortured, after which Al-Ansari
addresses the TV audience: “The [Jews] are oppressors. They are being
deported.” When a film clip shows mounds of Jewish corpses being bulldozed
into mass graves, Al-Ansari exults: “Ibn Mas’oud was right when he
said: ‘All the oppressors are killed by those they oppress.’” Close-ups of
dead bodies are shown. Al-Ansari tells his viewers: “These are bodies,
these are dead people, these are skulls. These are the bodies of the Jews
being loaded like animals. Watch this tractor clearing away the corpses of
the Jews, and these are the refugees awaiting their turn to be killed.” As a
Muslim religious leader, he expresses his pious wish: “This is what we hope
will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims.”
Al-Ansari’s Holocaust propaganda actually exceeds in viciousness
anything Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, ever contrived.
The Nazis were careful to hide their extermination program from public
view. By contrast, Al-Ansari and Al-Rahma TV offer for public viewing
some of the worst examples of the Nazi extermination program and torture
as models of Allah’s vengeance, along with the prayer that Muslims be
permitted to repeat and complete the Nazi performance. This is both an
expression of and an incitement to hatred, rage, and genocide as a holy act.
Unfortunately, the average Muslim does not possess the kind of knowledge
87. “To Mark ‘Holocaust Holiday,’ Egyptian Cleric Amin Al-Ansari Revises
History, And Comments On Footage of Prisoners Being Tortured in Dachau,
Mauthausen, and Belsen, Saying: ‘This Is What We Hope Will Happen But, Allah
Willing, at the Hand of the Muslims,’” MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 2215, January
27, 2009. Video clips with subtitles are available at the website http://www.
memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3051.htm. On International Holocaust Memorial
Day, see “General Assembly Designates International; Holocaust Remembrance
Day,” UN News Centre, November 1, 2005, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.
asp?NewsID=16431&Cr=holocaust&Cr1.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 123
with which to recognize the viciousness and mendacity of such TV programs,
while the politicians who talk of “peace in the Middle East” ignore
the power of this kind of propaganda.
When we turn to Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, we find a similar message without
the Nazi trappings. Al-Qaradawi is the author of over 100 books on
Islam and Islamism and is one of the most widely read contemporary
Islamic scholars. He also has had a weekly program on Al-Jazeera TV, al-
Shari’a wal-Hayat (Shari’a and Life), and is the co-founder and president of
the International Association of Muslim Scholars and the European Council
for Fatwa and Research. He has, however, been refused entry into the
United States and has been barred from entering the United Kingdom as a
“threat to peace and security.” 88 Although controversial, Al-Qaradawi is not
a fringe figure, but a major Islamic leader capable of influencing millions. 89
During the Israeli action against Hamas in Gaza, Qaradawi delivered a
TV sermon on Friday January 9, 2009, in which he called for the complete
extermination of the Jews:
Oh Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. Oh Allah, take the
Jews, the treacherous aggressors. . .. this profligate, cunning, arrogant
band of people. Oh Allah, they have spread much tyranny and corruption
in the land. Pour Your wrath upon them, oh our God. Lie in wait for
them. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people of Thamoud at the hand of a
tyrant, and You annihilated the people of ‘Aad with a fierce, icy gale. . ..
and You destroyed the Pharaoh and his soldiers—oh Allah, take this
oppressive, tyrannical band of people. Oh Allah, take this oppressive,
Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of
them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last
one.
Having implored Allah to destroy the Jews, Qaradawi urges his fellow
Muslims to join in Allah’s work:
We wait for the revenge of Allah to descend upon them, and, Allah willing,
it will be by our own hands: “Fight them, Allah will torment them by
your hands, and bring them to disgrace, and will assist you against them,
and will heal the hearts of the believers, and you will still the anger of
your hearts.” This is my message to the treacherous Jews, who have
88. Jenny Booth, “Muslim Outrage as Yusuf al-Qaradawi refused UK visa,”
TimesOnLine, February 7, 2008, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article
3325439.ece.
89. For a biographical essay on Qaradawi, see Ann Bélen Soage, “Shaykh
Yusuf Al-Qaradawi: Portrait of a Leading Islamic Cleric,” Middle East Review of
International Affairs 12, no. 1 (March 2008).

124 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
never adhered to what is right, or been true to their promises, who violate
each time the promises they make to you.
Qaradawi’s call to genocide was not an angry, momentary outburst. On the
contrary, the sermon was an Islamic legal argument that carefully leads to
the conclusion that the extermination of all Jews is not only justified, but
also mandatory under Islamic law. He begins the argument by reminding
his viewers:
The Islamic countries. . . Received [the Jews] with open arms [when they
were banished from Europe]. . . [but the Jews] turned their backs on [us],
and we have become their victims.
Qaradawi then characterizes the Zionist settlement in Palestine as the work
of “plunderers, who acted arrogantly toward the servants of Allah in the
land of Allah.” He reminds his listeners that Allah has already punished the
Jews for spreading “corruption in the land twice.” He first sent Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, “who. . . destroyed their homes, razed their temples,
and burned their Torah, and took them into captivity in Babylon for 70
years.” When they repeated their offense at a later date, Allah sent the
Romans “as masters upon them.”
He then complains of the Jewish ingratitude:
The Jews have lived as dhimmis in our land for a long time, and no
Muslim violated the covenant with them. . .. Despite this, they were not
faithful to the [covenant]. When they were banished from Europe, they
found no compassionate bosom, no cave to shelter them, except for the
lands of Islam. . . but when [the Jews] gained influence, they turned their
backs on them, and we have become their victims.
In essence, Qaradawi’s complaint is that the Jews have broken the
dhimma, the pact of surrender and submission that they or their ancestors
had concluded with their Muslim overlords in exchange for the right of
“protected” domicile. Since even minimal human rights for dhimmis in
Islam are conditional upon fulfillment of the conditions of the dhimma,
Muslims are no longer under obligation toward them. Their lives and property
are now forfeit.
In reality, none of the Jews who migrated to Palestine in the twentieth
century ever agreed to any pact of subordination by which they would have
become dhimmis. They came to the Land from Christian Europe to escape
the ever-more dangerous hazards of powerlessness and subordination.
Those who came from Muslim countries after World War II did so to
escape the persecution, pogroms, and expulsions that were visited upon

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 125
them. None of that mattered to Zaraqawi. In his narrative, all Jews were or
should have been dhimmis. Facts are of no importance. He wanted to give
the umma, the worldwide community of Muslim believers, a license to kill
all Jews. On January 9, 2009, he conveyed that message on Al Jazeera TV
to Muslims throughout the world. 90
JIHAD, RAGE, AND THE MUSLIM “STREET”
On September 30, 2005, the Jyllands-Posten, a Danish daily newspaper,
published twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted Muhammad.
The editors explained that they were attempting to contribute to the
debate concerning the limits of freedom of expression in dealing with criticism
of Islam. A discussion of that important subject is beyond the scope of
our inquiry, but many Muslims regarded the cartoons as an insult to their
religion and were enraged by their publication. Their sense of outrage intensified
as the cartoons came to be reprinted in newspapers in more than fifty
countries. 91 Many Westerners suspected that some Muslims were using the
incident to control what non-Muslims could write about Islam. The protests
simmered for a time, together with boycotts and threats of boycotts of Denmark
and other Western governments that insisted on the right of free
expression. The situation came to a head in London on February 3, 2006,
when Muslims marched through the city’s streets chanting and carrying
posters threatening Denmark, the Jews, and the West in general. Photographs
taken at the demonstration, and others like it, are available on the
internet. 92
The following is a brief description of a representative sample of such
photos:
• A woman wearing a hijab, a head cover, stands next to a London
90. It is interesting to note that Qaradawi has been cited by Georgetown University
professor John Esposito as among the eminent scholars who are engaging in
the “reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism
and human rights.” John Esposito, “Practice and Theory” (a response to the symposium
on “Islam and the Challenge of Democracy”), Boston Review: A Political and
Literary Forum, April/May 2003, http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.2/esposito
.html.
91. See “List of newspapers that reprinted Jyllands-Posten’s Muhammad
cartoons,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_that_
reprinted_Jyllands-Posten%27s_Muhammad_cartoons (accessed January 18,
2009).
92. Religion of Peace Demonstration London Google Image Search, http:
//images.google.com/images?ndsp=18&um=1&hl=en&q=religion+of+peace+Dem
onstration+London&start=36&sa=N (accessed January 18, 2009).

126 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
policeman holding a poster with the message, “Europe You Will
Pay; Your 9/11 Is On Its Way!!!”
• A person hidden behind two policemen holds up a sign reading,
“Kill Those Who Insult Islam.”
• A woman dressed in black with a black hijab carries a sign that
reads, “Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust!”
• A young man holds a sign that reads, “Islam Will Dominate the
World.”
• A poster carries the message, “Behead Those Who Insult Islam.”
• A woman wearing a hijab carries a sign reading, “Freedom Go To
Hell.”
• A group picture shows several signs. One sign reads: “Europe,
You’ll Come Crawling When the Mujahadeen [Muslims involved in
jihad] Come Roaring!’
• In a photograph taken at a Melbourne, Australia demonstration, a
woman in a hijab carries a sign that reads, “Cleanse the earth from
dirty Zionists.” 93
As chilling as the photographs are, they do not convey the atmosphere
of rage and visceral hatred nearly as well as do video clips taken at such
events and made available on YouTube. Most of the clips cited below were
taken at demonstrations that occurred during the Gaza war of December
2008 and January 2009. However, we begin with demonstrations protesting
the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Like the photographs, the video clips are representative
of Muslim “street” reaction in Western countries to the cartoons
and Israeli response to Hamas’s rockets in 2008-2009. In the West, the
Muslim “street” is, at least in appearance, solidly middle-class. The people
shouting threats and curses do not appear to be fringe people.
• London, February 24, 2006: Demonstration at the Danish Embassy.
Numbering several hundred, the crowd chants “Allah hu Akbar” in
front of the Danish Embassy. A poster is held high reading, “Europe,
You will pay. Your annihilation is on the way!!!” Other signs read:
“Death to you, by God, May Allah Bomb You, May Usamah bin
Laden Bomb You,” “We Love Usama. Usama bin Laden, we love
you!” “Usamah and [Ayman] al-Zawahiri—They Are Men. They
Will Bomb You. Allah Will Be With Them.” “[May they] bomb
Denmark so that we can invade their country and take their wives as
93. This photograph can be found in Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, “Genocidal Chants at
Anti-Israel Rallies Worldwide,” Arutz Sheva: IsraelNationalNews.com, January 6,
2009, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/129252.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 127
war booty,” “Annihilate Those Who Insult Islam,” “You have
Declared War against Allah and His Prophet.” Someone shouts,
“You have declared war against the Muslim ummah. . . for which
you will pay a heavy price. Take the lesson of Theo van Gogh. Take
the Lesson of the Jews of Khaybar for You will pay with your
blood.” The crowd responds by repeating, “With your blood, with
your blood” and “Down, down Denmark, Burn Burn Denmark,
Burn, Burn France, Burn, Burn Spain, Allah hu Akbar,” “Denmark,
Watch your back, Bin Laden’s coming back.” The crowd repeats,
”Kill, kill Denmark, UK you will pay, 7/7 [date of the London
bombings] On its Way. Jihad is on its way. We want Danish blood.”
A boy of about eleven shakes his fist and holds up a sign reading,
“Europe, you will pay, your 9/11 is on its way.” 94
• London, January 3, 2009: There is a disquieting series of video clips
taken during London demonstrations in which Muslims chase as
many as 50 policemen through the streets. The Muslims chant, “Free
speech, Palestine” and “Allah hu Akbar” as the police retreat, ceding
control of the streets to the demonstrators. A demonstrator leader
shouts at the retreating police, “Run you, f. . .ing cowards, kuffar,
and swine, pigs.” 95
• Washington D.C., January 10, 2009: Video clips taken at Lafayette
Park, opposite the White House, are followed by clips taken at other
locations. Thousands gathered at the Lafayette Park demonstration
sponsored by allegedly “mainstream” Muslim organizations, such as
the Muslim America Society and the Council on American Islamic
Relations. In the first clip, the crowd chants, “From the river to the
sea, Palestine will be free.” In another Washington clip taken the
next day, a typical sign reads, “The cancer of the Middle East, Israel
Must not Exist!” In a clip taken at a pro-Hamas rally in Manhattan
on January 11, 2009, a man holds a poster with the message, “Death
to the juice,” an intentional misspelling. In another clip taken at the
same demonstration, a woman in a hijab carries a large sign with the
94. YouTube, “Chilling Islamic Demonstration of Cartoons, London,” February
3, 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_kyNIevsIs.
95. YouTube, “Muslims Attack London Police (January 3, 2009),” http://video.
aol.com/video-detail/muslims-attack-london-police-jan-3-2009/2461411621/?icid=
VIDURVNWS04; see also “Police Battle Violence Gaza Demo (London, January,
2009), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVBAT90lCOU, and YouTube,
London, January 11, 2009, “Starbucks cafe smashed by protesters (opposite Israeli
Embassy),” http://video.aol.com/video-detail/starbucks-cafe-smashed-by-protesters-in-london-10th-jan-2009-national-demo-infront-of-the-israeli-embassy/23058
43011595498684/?icid=VIDURVNWS01.

128 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
message, “Zionism: Go back to the oven; we need another Hitler!”
In a clip taken in Washington on December 30, 2008, the message,
“Holocaust, It’s Time to Open the Ovens Again!” is painted on the
back of a male figure’s white outer garment while the crowd chants,
“Down, down Israel, free, free Palestine!” In other demonstrations in
Chicago, New York, Houston, and Oklahoma City, the crowd
chants, “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya, Yahud,” and “Khaybar, Khaybar ya
Yahud, jaysh Muhammad sauf ya’ud.” (“Khaybar, Khaybar, O You
Jews, the army of Muhammad shall return.” 96 In a Montreal clip,
children scream, “Palestine is ours; the Jews are our dogs.” In a Los
Angeles clip, January 6, 2009, the crowd chants repeatedly, “Long
live Hitler! Long live Hitler!” and “Put Jews in ovens.” 97
• Amsterdam, January 3, 2009: In one clip, the crowd, numbering several
hundred chants, “Hamas, Hamas, joden aan het gas!” (“Hamas,
Hamas, Jews to the gas!”) In the foreground, Harry van Bommel, a
Socialist member of Parliament, chants repeatedly, “Intifada,
Intifada!” The crowd repeats the chant in unison. 98
• Fort Lauderdale, Florida, December 30, 2008: A clip shows several
hundred people in the city center. A much smaller group of pro-
Israel counter demonstrators is on the sidewalk behind a police barrier.
A Muslim girl in hijab shouts out, “You’re losing, you’re losing,
you’re dead! Your mother is a whore! Yes, you’re losing!” She
then lifts up a sign: “Nuke Israel” and screams, “Nuke, nuke Israel.
Yes, there is no Israel!” Muslims shout at the pro-Israel demonstrators
who carry signs and Israeli flags, but do not answer them when
they shout, “Go to Hell, Go to Hell Israel!” 99
96. In this chant, Muhammad, the prophet and military commander, serves as
Islam’s sanctified role model. In 629 Muhammad and his followers launched
against the Jews of Khaybar in the Arabian peninsula. According to Robert Spencer,
“When modern-day jihadists invoke Khaybar, they are . . . recalling an aggressive,
surprise raid by Muhammad which resulted in the final eradication of the once
considerable Jewish presence in Arabia. To the jihadists, Khaybar means the
destruction of the Jews and the seizure of their property by the Muslims.” It is
what they have in mind for Israel. Robert Spencer, “Khaybar, Khaybar,” Jihad
Watch, August 9, 2006.
97. “War Protests or Pro-Hamas Hate Rallies?” an essay with video clips, The
Investigative Project on Terrorism, January 14, 2009, http://www.investigativeproject.org/972/gaza-war-protests-or-pro-hamas-hate-rallies.
98. YouTube, “090103 pro hamas intifada hezbollah expressions during antiisrael
demonstration,” January 3, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLlHP
PO25nM.
99. YouTube, “Pro-Hamas Demonstration - Fort Lauderdale FL,” December 30,
2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xl68kP4wo.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 129
• Copenhagen, January 10, 2009: “Pro-Arabisk Demonstration.” The
clip begins with a chant: “Down, down Israel, down, down USA,
down, down Denmark!” Later, the crowd chants, “Denmark: Heil!
Down with democracy. All the Jews should be killed, Allah hu
Akhbar!” As in many other demonstrations globally and over the
decades, the crowd repeatedly shouts, “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya,
Yahud,” and “Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud, jaysh Muhammad sauf
ya’ud.” (“Khaybar, Khaybar, O You Jews, the army of Muhammad
shall return.”) 100
• Montreal, Quebec, January 4 and 11, 2009: The crowd demands the
murder of the Jews and chants in French, ““Khaybar, Khaybar, Ô
Juifs, l’armée de Mohammad va revenir” and in Arabic, “Khaybar,
Khaybar, ya Yahud.” The scene is repeated the following Sunday.
The crowd is angrier and louder than during the previous week.
“Chavistas,” followers of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, join the demonstration
and chant in Spanish, “The people united will never be
defeated.” There are also Arabic chants addressed to Hezballah’s
leader, Hassan Nasrallah: “Oh Nasrallah, Oh beloved, Strike, Strike
Tel Aviv!” 101
There are laws prohibiting “hate speech” in the Netherlands, Canada,
France, and Italy, and for the past ten years the Saudi-based Organization of
the Islamic Conference has pushed the UN to adopt a universal ban on
defaming Islam. 102 The chief complainants demanding prosecution for what
they perceive to be hate speech have been Muslims, as in the Canadian
prosecution of serious writers such as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. 103 At
the same time, we see that a critical mass of Muslims feel free to call for
mass murder and genocide and, in the case of Amin Al-Asari, to show films
of the Holocaust as a model for Muslim behavior while public authorities
100. YouTube, “Pro-Arabisk Demonstration,” Copenhagen, January 10, 2009,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUzAk1nXy4.
101. “Appels au meurtre des Juifs au centre-ville de Montréal,” YouTube, January
4, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY4SjTGIL9Y&feature=channel;
and “Huit minutes de haine à Montréal,” YouTube, January 10, 2009, http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=-99WSxvt_uU.
102. Nina Shea, “Worldwide Hate Speech Laws,” The Weekly Standard 14, no.
10 (November 24, 2008), http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/
000/000/015/822stktc.asp and Glenn Greenwald, “The Noxious Fruits of Hate
Speech Laws,” Salon, January 13, 2008, http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
2008/01/13/hate_speech_laws/.
103. For an overview of Muslim use of “hate speech” legislation to constrain
legitimate discussion of Islam, see “Free Speech in an age of jihad,” The New
Criterion: A Special Pamphlet (Summer 2008).

130 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
are loath to enforce the same “hate speech” laws against Muslim offenders.
These scenes were reported neither by Britain’s mainstream media nor by
CNN. 104
MUSLIM RAGE IN ACTION
Between November 26 and 29, 2008, ten Islamist terrorists from Pakistan
murdered at least 195 people and wounded several hundred others in
Mumbai in a 60-hour rampage. 105 Mumbai is conservatively reckoned to
be the world’s second largest city, with a population in 2008 of
13,662,885. 106 Nine of the terrorists were killed; one, Ajmal Amir Kasab,
was captured. Kasab told the police that he was instructed to continue killing
until he himself was killed. He also said that the terrorists planned to
kill 5,000 people and completely destroy the luxurious, hundred-year-old
Taj Mahal, the city’s most prestigious hotel.
Whatever the strategic thinking of the Islamist leadership, the ten were
willing to go to their deaths in a sadistic orgy of indiscriminate murder and
mayhem perpetrated against people they did not know and who had done
them no personal harm. They were undoubtedly promised the heavenly
rewards of numerous female companions—72 virgins being the most frequently
cited estimate—a rich, other-worldly compensation for lives lived
“in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness
or even understanding from the opposite sex.” 107 Nevertheless, there were
other, more this-worldly rewards, some psychic, others material, awaiting
104. I discussed the behavior of the police in an e-mail communication with an
English colleague, who wrote: “The whole demonstration was totally unruly, menacing
and disorderly, and if the Police had stopped it they would have been accused
of breaking up a ‘peaceful’ protest. . . .and the YouTube footage would only have
showed the police reaction to the violence and ‘non-violent’ protesters being
‘attacked’ by ‘out of control cops!’” E-mail message to author, January 28, 2009.
105. One of the most harrowing hour-by-hour accounts of the Mumbai massacre
is Jason Motlagh, “Sixty Hours of Terror,” Virginia Quarterly Review ( November
16, 2009), http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/11/16/2611-ten-gunmen/.
106. World Gazetteer, “World’s Largest Cities and Towns,” http://world-gazetteer.com/wg.php?x=&men=gcis&lng=en&des=wg&srt=npan&col=abcdefghinoq&
msz=1500&pt=c&va=&srt=pnan (accessed December 29, 2008).
107. See the discussion by French filmmaker Pierre Rehov of suicide bomber
motivation on MSNBC’s Connected program, July 15, 2005, “The Psychology
Behind Islamic Suicide Bombings,” http://www.snopes.com/rumors/soapbox/
rehov.asp. For a discussion of the contemporary debate on virgins as a reward for
martyrdom in contemporary Islam, see “‘72 Black Eyed Virgins’: A Muslim
Debate on the Rewards of Martyrs,” MEMRI, Inquiries and Analysis 74 (October
31, 2001), http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/538.htm#_edn27.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 131
the terrorists. There is, for example, no greater assertion of power by one
individual over another than the ability to take a life, especially when,
rightly or wrongly, the attacker is convinced that he or she has been injured
by the victim or what the victim represents. In preparation for the assault,
Kasab and his companions received months of training in the use of weapons
and explosives. They were also drilled in close-quarter combat. 108
When captured, Kasab told his interrogators, “I have no regrets. . .I have
done right.” 109 Kasab’s pride in his murders is typical of all of the Islamist
killers we examine here below. They feel no guilt. They are not reluctant to
confess when apprehended, for their confessions are in their eyes the record
of divinely sanctioned achievements. They dwell in an utterly alien moral
universe.
Most of the victims in Mumbai were attacked at random, simply
because they were not Muslim and happened to be unlucky enough to be at
a location the killers planned to assault, such as the Taj Mahal and Oberoi
hotels. There was, however, nothing random about the torture and murder
of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his pregnant wife Rivka, and four other Jews
who were at Nariman House, the Chabad community center in Mumbai.
Before the rampage, Mumbai’s Jewish population was estimated to be
about 4,000. 110 Nariman House was hidden away on a narrow, remote side
street. It was, however, as deliberately targeted as the five-star Taj Mahal
hotel. Kasab is reported to have told police that, in order to familiarize
themselves with the building, some of the terrorists disguised themselves as
Malaysian students and rented rooms at the Chabad center before the
attack. 111 If, as seems likely, Kasab’s testimony is reliable, the terrorists had
the information necessary to take over the Chabad center and its inhabitants
well in advance of the attack.
According to Kasab, the Chabad group was singled out “to avenge
atrocities on Palestinians.” 112 Like many other Muslims, Kasab believes
that Jews have no right to be in Palestine save as dhimmis under Muslim
domination. Hence, they consider any warlike act by Israel, defensive or
108. Matt Wade, “Captured terrorist reveals plot to kill up to 5,000,” The Age
(Australia), December 1, 2008, http://www.theage.com.au/world/captured-terroristreveals-plot-to-kill-up-to-5000-20081130-6nrv.html.
109. Wade, “Captured terrorist.”
110. Jeremy Kahn, “Jews of Mumbai, a Tiny and Eclectic Group, Suddenly
Reconsider Their Serene Existence,” New York Times, December 2, 2008, http://
www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/world/asia/03jews.html?fta=y.
111. “Mumbai locals helped us, terrorist tells cops,” The Times of India, November
30, 2008, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3774106,prt
page-1.cms.
112. Ibid.

132 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
offensive, to be an atrocity. It is in that sense that we can understand
Kasab’s claim that the assault on the Chabad center was, in his mind, a
legitimate act of vengeance.
Moreover, the Chabad Jews were obscenely tortured before being
killed. Writing from Mumbai, Damien McElroy of the Daily Telegraph
(UK) reported, “Doctors expressed horror at the condition of the bodies
recovered from the Nariman building.” The mortician who examined the
bodies said, “I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was traumatized.
It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured.” 113 Regarded as
shaheeds, martyrs, by the Islamists, the killers were actually torturers in the
name of their God. Their behavior was consistent with that advocated by
Sheikh Amin Al-Ansari in his TV address discussed previously.
Seeking information and control, religious and political institutions
have used torture as an instrument of compulsion for centuries. This was
evident, for example, in the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), in which the
newly established Inquisition played a major role in the destruction of the
dualist Cathar sect in the Languedoc region of France. 114 The Inquisition
sanctioned torture to identify and rout out heresy. In our time, torture has
been used to extract information such as an enemy’s intentions or the identity
of his clandestine agents. Nevertheless, such torture was seldom an end
in itself and was normally terminated when the torturer achieved his objective.
One of the reasons the torture, degradation, and murder of prisoners at
Abu Ghraib elicited such widespread revulsion was that many, if not most,
of the abuses were acts of pure sadism with no purpose. The torture was an
end in itself perpetrated by military personnel who thought they could act
with impunity. This was also the case at the Chabad center in Mumbai.
Torture was inflicted on the young rabbi and his wife simply to intensify the
pain of their deaths. If nothing else, such sadism demonstrates dominance, a
dominance Islam has not achieved over the State of Israel. Moreover, as
painful as was the torture inflicted on the young rabbi, the worst pain may
have been watching helplessly as others, including his pregnant wife, were
tortured. A vengeful sadist enjoys a symbolic victory when genuine victory
is unattainable. Unable to defeat real enemies, he or she takes revenge on a
113. Damien McElroy, “Mumbai Attacks: Jews tortured before being executed
during hostage crisis,” Daily Telegraph (UK), February 12, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3539171/Mumbai-attacks-Jews-torturedbefore-executed-during-hostage-crisis.html.
114. On the Albigensian Crusade see, for example, Zoé Oldenbourg, Massacre at
Montségur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. Peter Green (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1961); see also Joseph R. Strayer, with an epilogue by Carol Lansing,
The Albigensian Crusades (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992).

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 133
defenseless surrogate. Nevertheless, such satisfaction is ephemeral and cannot
alter the shame of real defeat.
One of the most obscene cases of rage-induced sadism occurred in
Paris on January 21, 2006 when Ilan Halimi, a Jewish clerk, was abducted
by a predominantly Muslim gang who appropriately called themselves “the
Barbarians.” The gang demanded ransom money from Ilan’s family, who
were too poor to pay. Losing interest in money, the gang then used their
helpless victim to gratify their rage through three weeks of incessant beating,
burning, and other forms of torture in the basement of the eleven-story
apartment block in a predominantly Muslim area on the southern edge of
Paris. The gang’s treatment of Ilan was not unknown to many of the inhabitants
of the block. 115 Finally released on February 13 as he was about to
expire, Ilan was found naked by a railroad track with eighty percent of his
body covered with burn marks and knife wounds. He died on the way to a
hospital. Although mainstream French Muslims have often massed in protest
against perceived injustices, they showed no interest in the Halimi
case. 116
Other examples of the same phenomenon include ritualistic decapitation
and near decapitation of innocent victims in the name of Allah, such as
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, French-Jewish DJ
Sebastien Salem in Paris, Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, and Ariel Sellouk
in Houston, Texas. Pearl was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall
Street Journal, stationed in Mumbai. He came to Pakistan ostensibly to
investigate possible connections between Al Qaeda and Richard Reid, the
“shoe bomber,” who was arrested in December 2001 for attempting to
ignite explosives hidden in his sneakers while on a Paris-to-Miami flight.
There is some suspicion that Pearl’s real interest lay in investigating links
between Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence
agency (ISI). 117 Pearl was kidnapped on January 23, 2002 while seeking an
interview in Karachi with Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, a radical Muslim
cleric. On or about February 1, 2002, he was gruesomely murdered, an
event that was recorded on video by his captors and released on the internet
under the title “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.”
The video lasts 3 minutes and 36 seconds. It includes Pearl’s statement that
115. Sebastian Rotella and Achrene Sicakyuz, “Parisians Stare at the Evil
Within,” Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/
feb/26/world/fg-projects26.
116. See Nidra Poller, “The Murder of Ilan Halimi,” Wall Street Journal, February
26, 2006, http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008006.
117. Abdullah Iqbal, “Pearl was probing spy agencies’ role,” Gulfnews.com
(United Arab Emirates), March 25, 2002, http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/02/
03/25/45233.html.

134 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
he is a Jew and a Zionist. 118 One minute and fifty-five seconds into the
video, Pearl is shown with his throat slit. An unidentified man then decapitates
him. Pearl’s body, cut into ten pieces, was subsequently found in a
shallow grave. A copy of the video was delivered to the U.S. consulate on
February 21, 2002. On May 14, a 30-second clip of the beheading was
shown on CBS News in spite of appeals by the Pearl family and the Departments
of State and Justice to CBS to refrain from showing it. CBS News
reported obtaining the video from a dissident Saudi journalist who found it
on an anti-American Arabic website, where it was being used by jihadists as
a recruiting tool. 119
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “No one exemplifies the
model of the terrorist entrepreneur more clearly than Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed (KSM), the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.” 120 KSM
was arrested by the ISI in Pakistan on March 1, 2003 and has been in American
custody ever since. On March 10, 2007, KSM proudly declared at a
Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing at Guantánamo Bay:
I was the Operational Director for Sheikh Usama Bin Laden for the
organizing, planning, follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 Operation. . ..
I was the Military Operational Commander for all foreign operations
around the world under the direction of Sheikh Usama Bin Laden and Dr.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri. I was directly in charge, after the death of Sheikh
Abu Hafs Al-Masri Subhi Abu Sittah, of managing and following up on
the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and
others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American soil.
I hereby admit and affirm without duress that I was a responsible
participant, principal planner, trainer, financier (via the Military Council
Treasury), executor, and/or a personal participant in the following:
KSM then listed twenty-nine major operations, not all of which were
brought to fruition. Far from being a confession of wrongdoing, his admission
was in reality a boastful claiming of credit. The third item on his list
was his statement about Daniel Pearl:
118. For an interpretation of what transpired immediately before and during the
shooting of the video, see Bernard-Henri Lévy, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? trans.
James X. Mitchell (Hoboken, NJ: Melville House, 2003), 34-43.
119. “Government urges CBS, Web site host to refrain from airing Pearl murder
video,” The News Media and the Law, Summer 2002, http://www.rcfp.org/news/
mag/26-3/sct-cbspearl.html.
120. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on
Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States (Washington: U.S. Government Printing
House, 2004), 145.

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 135
I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew,
Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like
to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head. 121
This was clearly an operation that gave him great satisfaction. KSM could
make a claim because he was firmly convinced that his actions were those
of a faithful Muslim fulfilling Allah’s commandments. According to Ibn
Ishaq, one of Muhammad’s earliest biographers, at one point Muhammad
told his followers, “Kill any Jew that falls into your power.” 122
Jews have by no means been the sole objects of Muslim rage. Apart
from the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with its
huge loss of life, there have been other horrendous events on a smaller
scale, among them the murder and mutilation of fifty-eight foreign tourists
on November 18, 1997 at the site of Egypt’s Luxor temple by six armed
members of an Egyptian extremist Islamist group led by Ayman al-
Zawahiri, who was safely ensconced in Kandahar, Afghanistan at the
time. 123
Both rage and pride in sacralized sadism were also evident in videos
available for sale and viewing at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque. In 2002,
journalist Jason Burke reported on the sale and widespread distribution of
such videos at the mosque. One video, Algeria, was produced by the
Groupe Salafiste pour Prédication et Combat (Salafist Group for Preaching
and War or GSPC); a second, The Mirror of Jihad, was produced by a
group allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan. 124 According to Burke, the
Algerian film consists of “graphic footage of the deaths of more than 20
young conscripts in an ambush.” These were ordinary Muslims conscripted
for military service by the Algerian government. There was no way they
could have refused military service. The film shows the trucks that carried
121. Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for
ISN 10024 (Unclassified), www.defenselink.mil/news/transcript_ISN10024.pdf
(accessed January 3, 2009).
122. A. Guillame, trans., The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s
Sirrat Rasul Allah (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 369. For an explanation
of the context of this saying, see danielpipes.org, March 13, 2008, http://www.
danielpipes.org/comments/122533.
123. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 252-58: Douglas Jehl, “70 Die in Temple
Attack,” New York Times, November 18, 1997 and “At Ancient Site Along the
Nile, Modern Horror,” New York Times, November 19, 1997.
124. Jason Burke, “You have to kill in the name of Allah until you are killed,”
The Observer (UK), January 27, 2002, http://www.hvk.org/articles/0102/184.html;
and “Terror video used to lure UK Muslims,” The Observer, January 27, 2002,
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/islam/story/0,,640079,00.html.

136 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
the conscripts hitting a GSPC mine and exploding. The Salafists then slit
the throats of the survivors and shot them. Other pictures of dead soldiers
were shown, some with skulls shot away and brains exposed, followed by
images of joyful “Islamists congratulating each other and offering prayers
of thanks.” The murder scenes are preceded by the injunctions on the
screen: “Fight them until the sentence of God is carried out on Earth” and
“You have to kill in the name of Allah until you are killed. . . . The whole
Islamic world should rise up to fight all the sick unbelievers. The flag of
jihad will be forever held high.” There is further commentary: “God loves
people who kill in his name. The enemies of Islam are scared. The Jews and
the Christians know that they have lost [the war] and want to stop us from
spreading the truth.” The Taliban film was equally gruesome, featuring
Taliban warriors torturing and decapitating Northern Alliance troops in
Afghanistan. Far from disturbing the mosque’s faithful, the films were
freely available at the mosque for £l0 each and, like the video of Daniel
Pearl’s beheading, were used as a recruiting device by Islamists. The Finsbury
Park Mosque offered its believers multiple opportunities vicariously
to enjoy unmitigated sadism and an imagined victory over imputed enemies,
all in the name of God.
On March 3, 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, an American citizen
of Iranian origin and a graduate student at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, N.C., deliberately drove a rented four-wheel-drive Jeep
Grand Cherokee into a crowd in a pedestrian commons at the university at
11:45 A.M., a time and place where students customarily gather for lunch.
He struck nine people. When asked later by reporters whether he intended
to kill, he answered, “Yes.” He repeated his affirmation at his trial on
August 12, 2006. 125 The police reported that he told them he had been planning
the assault for two years and had rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle
because he could “run things over and keep going.” 126 Fortunately, none of
the victims were seriously hurt. Taheri-Azar also told the judge at the preliminary
hearing, “I am thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to
learn more about the will of Allah.” 127 In his value system, he had done
125. Jessica Rocha, “Suspect says he meant to kill,” The News & Observer
(Chapel Hill, NC), March 7, 2006, http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/
415421.html (no longer available); see also Jesse James De Conto, “Taheri-Azar
admits he tried to kill,” The News & Observer, August 13, 2008, http://www.news
observer.com/news/crime_safety/story/84420.html?storylink=mirelated.
126. “Suspect rented SUV to Maximize Injuries in UNC Attack,” Security-
InfoWatch.com, http://www.securityinfowatch.com/suspect-rented-suv-maximizeinjuries-unc-attack;
see Daniel Pipes, “The Quiet-Spoken Muslims Who ‘Turn to
Terror,’” New York Sun, March 14, 2006, http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3450.
127. Rocha, ”Suspect says.“

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 137
nothing wrong and saw the trial as an opportunity to instruct non-believers
in the true faith. He did, however, express some regret. He told the police
that he regretted that there were not more people in the commons area when
he struck and that he had not killed anyone, claiming that his attempt at
mass murder was a divinely sanctioned act to “avenge the deaths of Muslims
around the world.” 128 Such thinking is, of course, consistent with the
doctrine of jihad and with an Islamist tendency to see themselves as
victims.
As Taheri-Azar effectively hid his destructive intentions over a period
of several years, his outburst can be seen as an example of cold rage. At
Chapel Hill, he was an above-average student and had been admitted to a
doctoral program in Nova University in Miami while surreptitiously planning
the one event that, in his mind, would give his life meaning. Daniel
Pipes has characterized such behavior, often perpetrated by isolated individuals,
as terrorism and has identified it as “Sudden Jihad Syndrome.” Pipes
argues that Taheri-Azar “fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead
quiet lives before turning to terrorism” and that his behavior “represents the
ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose
religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims.” 129 I would
add that such behavior is sudden only from the point of view of its intended
victims, not from that of the perpetrators. Like 9/11 and the 2008 assault on
Mumbai, Taheri-Azar’s assault took time and planning. I would also add
that such acts are impelled by rage so consuming that the perpetrator is
more than willing to kill himself or herself in the process of killing others.
In yet another instance of what Pipes has identified as Sudden Jihad
Syndrome, on February 12, 2007, Sulejman Taloviæ, a 22-year-old Bosnian
Muslim with a United State Permanent Residence Card (green card), suddenly
began firing into a crowd at the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Before being stopped by two off-duty policemen, Taloviæ had
killed five people and wounded at least four others. Characteristically,
neither the police nor the FBI agent involved in the case could find reason
to label the attack as either a terror attack or religiously motivated. Indeed,
unless the perpetrator openly proclaims his deed an act of vengeance, all too
often, public officials in the West have preferred to characterize such
128. Brenda Goodman, “Defendant Offers Details of Jeep Attack at University,”
New York Times, March 8, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/national/08
carolina.html?scp=1&sq=defendant%20Offers%20Details%20of%20Jeep%20
Attack%20at%20University&st=cse.
129. Daniel Pipes, “The Quiet-Spoken Muslims Who Turn to Terror,” The New
York Sun, March 14, 2006, http://www.nysun.com/foreign/quiet-spoken-muslimswho-turn-to-terror/29080/
(accessed November 16, 2008).

138 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:95
attacks as isolated incidents for which no motive can be assigned. Moreover,
there has been a tendency on the part of the police and the FBI to deny
that random acts of homicidal violence perpetrated by Muslims are religiously
motivated, even though the assailants themselves often attributed
their deeds to such motives. 130
Such expressions of rage often serve the strategic interests of the larger
Muslim community in its relations with government and non-government
institutions concerned with the maintenance of public order. This was certainly
the case when angry Muslim mobs belatedly responded in February
2006 to the publication of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in September 2005
and to Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at the University of Regensburg on
September 12, 2006, in which he cited the negative opinions on Islam
offered in 1391 by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus. As noted
above, in response to the Danish cartoons, more than 200 people were
killed in rampages throughout the world. 131 Response to the Pope was of
shorter duration, but included the murder of an elderly Italian nun and her
bodyguards in Somalia. Western institutions have been given graphic examples
of the price to be paid for arousing Muslim ire. Unfortunately, Muslim
ire has been aroused. At least among Islamists, it will not be calmed until
they are convinced that the shame and disgrace of Muslim defeats ranging
from the Battle of Lepanto (1571) to the Israeli War of Independence
(1948) and the Six-Day War (1967) have been erased. If we take the
Islamists at their word, nothing less than genocide will suffice.
130. Robert Spencer, “Salt Lake Jihad?,” Front Page Magazine, February 15,
2007, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=110 (accessed January 20,
2010).
131. Over 100 were killed in Nigeria alone. See Lydia Polgreen, “Nigeria Counts
100 Deaths Over Danish Caricatures,” NewYork Times, February 24, 2006, http://
www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/international/africa/24nigeria.html (accessed January
5, 2009).
Addendum
Sample Images of Riots Protesting Danish Newspaper Cartoons and Israeli Move
into Gaza.
1. http://swordattheready.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/anti-semites.jpg
2. http://www.sosnews.org/news/pics3/islam-london1.jpg
3. http://www.thoughttheater.com/upload/2006/07/Riots_Muslim_Danish_Cartoon
_1_Edit.jpg
4. London Gaza protest—http://www.indymedia.org/images/2009/01/920066.jpg
5. Fort Lauderdale—http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/wp-content/images
2009/IMG_8567.JPG6. http://byfiles.storage.msn.com/y1pxXZkV9vk6iGa3am
5nVi521iA7yoF1hvsl-QvD_Rw_FERp6SNSNcLQ_Iyn1Z71E03cJ_bdAYyhZo

Betraying Truth:
Ethics Abuse in Middle East Reporting
Kenneth Lasson*
This article presents a brief overview of press freedom under the First
Amendment, attempts to create a working definition of media “objectivity,”
examines various codes of professional ethics for journalists, and
analyzes specific cases in which such standards have allegedly been
abused or abandoned in Middle East reporting.
The duty of the journalist is . . .seeking truth and providing a fair and
comprehensive account of events and issues.
— Preamble, Code of Ethics, Society of Professional Journalists
In a world at once increasingly chaotic and historically interconnected,
the news media have come to play unprecedented roles both in the virtually
instantaneous recording of fast-moving events and in influencing the occurrence
and evolution of those events themselves.
This phenomenon has been amply illustrated over the past half-century–often
with utter clarity and sometimes profoundly–in the protracted
conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which has been as much a
war of words as it has been of armed battles, suicide bombings, and other
brutally random acts of terror.
Thus has it become more essential than ever to require that the media
be encouraged toward professional responsibility while at the same time
being held accountable for ethical failures. How can this be accomplished
in a free society in which journalists are protected from recrimination for
what they speak and write–such as in the United States, where the First
Amendment both shields the press from governmental interference and
grants it broad power to disseminate information as it sees fit? 1
The media, of course, are not beyond reproach. Freedom of the press
does not mean immunity from criticism. Reputable journalists abide by
standards that, though largely self-imposed, are presumed to be honestly
applied. When these principles are abrogated, violators should be taken to
task.
Nowhere has this responsibility been more tested than in the Middle
* Professor of Law, University of Baltimore. Many thanks to Eric Easton and
Eric Rozenman for their thoughtful comments on the manuscript.
1. “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press.” U.S. Const. amend. I.
139

140 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
East, where for over a half-century Israel has been locked in a pitched battle
against its neighbors for recognition of its national legitimacy. Those who
feel that the Jewish state has been treated unfairly by the media have difficulty
fathoming how others might harbor a different perspective. Contrarily,
many in the Moslem world view the Western press as biased against
Arabs and other practitioners of Islam. 2
Critics of Mideast coverage are facile at ferreting out what they feel is
the widespread use of judgmental terminology, and accuse the media of
relying on language that nurtures ambiguity and confusion.
Is it fair, for example, to label Hamas a “militant” organization instead
of a “terrorist” one? Is there an inherent bias in declaring that “extremists
on both sides” contribute equally to a “cycle of violence”? Are there specific
and accurate definitions of words like “occupation,” “massacre,” and
“freedom fighter” by which the media should abide?
Or do journalists rightly reject the possibility that buzzwords can
quickly turn to bombast, or ignore the idea that words can wound? Terrorist
or militant? Occupied or disputed? Cycle of violence, or cause and
effect? The actors and their actions are news, but media descriptions can be
quite political–and consequential. 3
As George Orwell admonished in his 1946 essay Politics and the
English Language: “[P]olitical language–and with variations this is true of
all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists–is designed to make
lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind.” 4
This article presents a brief overview of press freedom under the First
Amendment, attempts a working definition of media “objectivity,” examines
various codes of professional ethics for journalists, and analyzes specific
cases in which such standards have allegedly been abused or
abandoned in Middle East reporting.
“OBJECTIVITY” AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT
The oft-stated and highly desired goal of modern journalism is objectivity,
the detached and unprejudiced gathering and dissemination of news
and information. . . . It’s a pity that such a goal is impossible to achieve.
2. See infra notes 155-177 and accompanying text.
3. See Yariv Safati, “Hostile Media Perceptions, Presumed Media Influence,
and Minority Alienation: The Case of Arabs in Israel,” Journal of Communication
57 (2007).
4. See http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2912.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 141
As long as human beings gather and disseminate news and information,
objectivity is an unrealizable dream.
– Richard Taflinger, Edward R. Murrow School of Communication
The First Amendment is virtually absolute in protecting freedom of
speech and press. Except for defamation suits, which occur frequently,
most of the other restrictions–for example, the protection of national security
or the prevention of an imminent danger–are rarely invoked. There are
also legal limitations related to invasion of privacy and using tainted
sources of information. 5
Some say that even defamation suits threaten the vitality of First
Amendment rights. Former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote
forcefully that “no law” abridging freedom of the press meant just that, and
that all libel laws therefore violate the First Amendment:
The only sure way to protect speech and press against these threats is to
recognize that libel laws are abridgments of speech and press and therefore
are barred in both federal and state courts by the First and Fourteenth
Amendments. . . . An unconditional right to say what one pleases about
public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First
Amendment. 6
But the majority of the Supreme Court has never adopted Black’s point
of view, instead staking out a middle ground by ruling that there must be a
proper accommodation between protecting reputations and ensuring
“breathing space” for First Amendment freedoms. If the press could be punished
for every error, a chilling effect would freeze publications on any
controversial subject. 7
Nevertheless, although it is well established that the First Amendment
protects journalists as well as common citizens against reproach for most of
what is spoken/written, the only protection for readers against biased or
false information is the good faith and objectivity of the media.
As is the case with other professions, the press’s independence has
been justified by its role in upholding the public good. A “social responsibility”
theory was articulated in the influential 1947 Hutchins Commission
5. See Amy Gajda, “What if Samuel D. Warren Hadn’t Married a Senator’s
Daughter?: Uncovering the Press Coverage that Led to the Right to Privacy,” Michigan
State Law Review 35 (2008) and Robert M. O’Neil, “Tainted Sources: First
Amendment Rights and Journalistic Wrongs,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
4 (1996): 1005.
6. Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U. S. 75, p. 95 (1966).
7. See website of First Amendment Center, http://www.firstamendmentcenter.
org/about.aspx?item’about_fac.

142 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
on the goals of journalism, entitled The Social Responsibility Theory of the
Press, that argued that the news media must be held accountable for this
particular liberty to survive, and that its “legal right will stand unaltered as
moral duty is performed.” 8
The report identifies six tasks as essential to the press’s political role in
a democracy, including “servicing the political system by providing information,
. . . enlightening the public,” so that it is “capable of self-government
. . . and serving as a watchdog on government.” The social
responsibility theory assigns a special role to the press in view of its recognition
as a First Amendment right. The self-same freedom that would permit
irresponsible conduct by the media is seen to impose a duty to act
responsibly. 9
Absolute objectivity may be unrealizable, but for any investigative
reporter or contemporary journalist, such a goal remains fundamental.
While often characterized as “the mother of all our liberties,” 10 the concept
of a free press had little or nothing to do with truth-telling when it was first
considered by the Founding Fathers. Most of the early newspapers were
partisan broadsheets attacking political opponents. Freedom of the press
meant the right to be just or unjust, partisan or non-partisan, true or false, in
news column or editorial column. 11
As to the First Amendment, much has been made of Thomas Jeffer-
8. Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press (University
of Chicago Press, 1947) (“Hutchins Report”). See also Robert E. Dreschel,
“Media Malpractice: The Legal Risks of Voluntary Social Responsibility in Mass
Communications,” Duquesne Law Review 27 (1989): 237, quoting Commission on
Freedom of the Press: A Free and Responsible Press (1947), p. 18, and Jeff Storey,
“Does Ethics Make Good Law? A Case Study,” Cardozo Arts & Entertainment
Law Journal 19 (2001): 467.
9. Todd F. Simon, “Libel as Malpractice: News Media Ethics and the Standard
of Care,” Fordham Law Review 53 (1984): 449.
10. Adlai E. Stevenson, “The One-Party Press,” in The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson,
ed. Walter Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown Company, 1974), 75, 78. (The
free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty.) See
also Junius, “Dedication to the English Nation,” in volume 7, The Letters of Junius,
ed. John Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) (1772), 8-9. (Let it be
impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the liberty of
the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights. . . . );
Edmund Randolph, “Essay on the Revolutionary History of Virginia,” reprinted in
Virginia Magazine of History & Biography 44 (1936): 43, 46 (stating that freedom
of the press was one of the fruits of genuine democracy and historical experience).
11. Charles Beard, “St. Louis Post-Dispatch Symposium on Freedom of the
Press” 13 (1938) (quoted in Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and
Responsible Press 131 [University of Chicago Press, 1947]).

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 143
son’s libertarian perspective on free speech: that the best way to deal with
error is to permit its correction by truth. 12 “The bar of public reason,” said
Jefferson, “will generally provide the remedy for abuses occasioned by the
unfettered dissemination of information. Only when security and peace are
threatened should the discussion of political, economic, and social affairs be
restrained.” 13
Historians appear to agree that the idea of objectivity has been an elusive
goal of American journalists since the appearance of modern newspapers
in the Jacksonian Era of the 1830s. By the 1890s it had emerged as a
guiding principle whose application was nurtured throughout much of the
twentieth century. 14 Newspapers were expected to be partisan in the eighteen
hundreds, but by the 1960s, objectivity was a hallmark of American
journalism. 15 It was viewed not as something “simple-minded and pallidly
neutral, but as a demanding, intellectually rigorous procedure holding the
best hope for social change . . . an antidote to the emotionalism and jingoism
of the conservative American press.” 16
Objectivity itself would soon be criticized because such reporting
reflected a vision of reality that failed to examine the basic structures of
power and privilege. The assault on objectivity gained momentum in the
1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy attacked “communist sympathizers”
in government, the entertainment industry, academia, and the media. Many
critics then and now blamed adherence to a strict interpretation of objectivity
as giving life to and prolonging McCarthy’s vendetta. On the other hand,
12. See, e.g., W.O. Douglas, An Almanac of Liberty (New York: Doubleday,
1954), 362, and David N. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson
(Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 166-84.
13. Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address” (Mar. 4, 1801), in The Life and
Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, eds. Adrienne Koch and William Peden
(New York: Random Houes, 1993). See also Douglas, supra note 12, p. 362. Justice
Douglas naturally interpreted Jefferson’s meaning as being in accord with his own
absolutist stance. But the argument made by the state in favor of any given abridgment
of speech is always that social peace and security is being threatened.
14. Gerald Baldasty, Objectivity and Journalism, alt.philosophy, http://groups.
google.com/group/alt.philosophy/browse_thread/thread/d0b7ca0d123c04c4. For a
critique of the consequences of objective journalism, see Ben H. Bagdikian, The
Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). See also Brent Cunningham, “Rethinking
Objectivity,” Columbia Journalism Review (2003), http://cjrarchives.org/
issues/2003/4/objective-cunningham.asp.
15. Linda L. Berger, “Shielding the Unmedia: Using the Process of Journalism
to Protect the Journalist’s Privilege in an Infinite Universe of Publication,” Houston
Law Review 39 (2003): 1371.
16. Streckfuss, R. “Objectivity in Journalism: A Search and a Reassessment,”
Journalism Quarterly 67 (1990): 973.

144 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
one could argue that it was the objective approach of Edward R. Murrow
and other journalists that ultimately brought McCarthy’s campaign to an
end. 17
By 1996, the Society of Professional Journalists had dropped “objectivity”
from its code of ethics. Some journalists began to replace the social
responsibility theory of the press with a theory of “civic” or “public” journalism,
suggesting that rather than stand outside the process, the press
should intervene in a way that would make citizens participants in it. 18
The common view is that there is no such thing as true objectivity,
because journalists reflect their cultures as much as anyone else. The news
story is a value-laden device structured according to preconceptions, not a
means to seek truth according to a professional canon of neutrality. All
reporting requires the reporter to make personal and subjective judgments. 19
In addition, objectivity has always been in tense competition with the
need to make profits, which was accomplished largely through the sale of
advertising. Publishers, not wanting to offend potential advertisers, thus
encouraged news editors and reporters to present all sides of an issue. The
emergence of wire services and other cooperative arrangements likewise
forced journalists to produce more “middle-of-the-road” coverage that
would be acceptable to newspapers of differing political persuasions. As
Jay Rosen put it in his book, What Are Journalists For?, “What is insidious
and crippling about objectivity is when journalists say: ‘We just present you
with facts. We don’t make judgments. We don’t have any values ourselves.’
That is dangerous and wrongheaded.” 20
Nevertheless, journalistic objectivity–an ambiguous term that can refer
to disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship–is a significant principle
of professionalism to which many in the Western media, particularly in
the United States and United Kingdom, subscribe. Objectivity is not only an
American journalistic goal, but a goal of foreign media as well, even in
countries without the broad jurisprudence afforded Americans via the First
Amendment. 21
While the goals of objectivity and accuracy may not always yield a fair
and balanced story, they are necessary components. Critics of an objective
17. See Michael Ryan, “Mainstream News Media, an Objective Approach, and
the March to War in Iraq,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 21 no. 4 (2006): 5, 24.
18. Berger, supra note 15.
19. Ryan, supra note 17.
20. Jay Rosen, What Are Journalists For? (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1999), 16. See also Matthew C. Ehrlich, “Hollywood and Journalistic Truthtelling,”
Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy 19: 519-39 (2005).
21. See infra notes 53-54 and accompanying text.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 145
approach have managed to change the culture of journalism so that it
obscured and devalued balanced reporting at the very time it is most
needed. 22
Although few journalists honestly lay claim to total neutrality, those
who are intellectually honest strive toward filtering biases from their reporting
of the news. At its core, objectivity requires an emphasis on eyewitness
accounts of events, corroboration of facts with multiple sources, and a “balancing”
of sources to present all important aspects of a topic. Journalists
are thus considered to be part of a “fourth estate”–an independent institution
separate and distinct from the three traditional estates of church, military,
and business, or (more broadly) private citizens, special-interest
groups, and government. 23 As such, journalists should adopt a reasonably
impartial point of view, simply reporting “both sides” or “all sides” of
issues and not taking positions on them. 24
This conception of objectivity has been criticized as failing to serve the
public by substituting “he-said-she-said balance” for truth. Moreover, such
objectivity is nearly impossible to practice because newspapers inevitably
take a point of view in deciding what stories to cover, what to feature on the
front page, and what sources to quote. 25
For others, objectivity itself is of limited value when the adoption of a
clear position becomes a moral imperative. During the 1890s, for example,
it was wrong for major newspapers like the New York Times to describe the
lynching of thousands of black people—the hanging, immolation, and
mutilation of men, women, and children by mobs—with clinical detachment.
Under the guise of objectivity, newsmen often attempted to balance
such accounts by recounting the alleged transgressions of the victims that
22. This has been the subject of much recent debate and discussion. See, e.g.,
RHETORICA (Fall, 2009), available at http://rhetorica.net/archives/3145.html. See
also Ryan, supra note 17 at 6.
23. The term is attributed to Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a British politician.
See http://www.campwood.com/FourthEstate.htm.
24. Some extend this standard to journalists’ personal lives, prohibiting them
from getting involved in political activities, which necessarily requires taking a
stand. For example, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr.
has stated that his newspaper maintains a code of ethics that forbids reporters and
editors from all political activities except voting. Downie himself says he decided
to stop voting when he became the ultimate gatekeeper for what is published in the
Post. See Leonard Downie Jr. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
A59087-2004Sep29.html.
25. Baldasty, supra note 14.

146 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
ostensibly provoked the lynch mobs, effectively normalizing the practice. 26
The more appropriate goals, the argument proceeds, should have been
fairness and accuracy, such that taking a position on an issue would be
acceptable so long as the other side was given a reasonable opportunity to
respond. 27 If objectivity is defined as simply presenting all sides of a dispute,
journalists abdicate what could and should be a moral obligation to
investigate the truth or validity of the published allegations.
*
If the First Amendment protects virtually all written communication,
what sanctions are available for abuses of journalistic discretion? It is relatively
difficult to prevail in defamation suits, invasion-of-privacy actions, or
intentional invasions of emotional distress, or at least to win substantial
damages in such cases. Nevertheless, although those remain the primary
legal recourses available under the First Amendment, journalists in a
democracy have a moral covenant with their audiences to provide thorough,
balanced reporting and commentary. 28
The theoretical framework for this requirement can be found in moral
philosophy through civilization, from Aristotle to Immanuel Kant to John
Rawls. Aristotle’s concept of the Golden Mean–the desirable middle
between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency–informs
the idea of journalistic balance, the notion of objectivity. 29 Kant believed
that morality necessarily involves a struggle against our emotional inclinations–or,
in this context, the need to divorce personal bias from the reporting
of events, in the service of accuracy and intellectual honesty. 30
The quality of foreign news coverage might be viewed from the perspective
of justice, relying upon Rawls’ iconic “Veil of Ignorance.” In his
Theory of Justice, Rawls offered such a metaphorical garment as a mental
device to enable individuals to formulate a standard of justice while remaining
ignorant of their place in or value to their society. His social contract is
one in which rational individuals would agree to just solutions if they were
each placed behind a veil of ignorance, permitting them to know ”the gen-
26. David Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American
Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
27. Examples of what has come to be called advocacy journalism are the writings
of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter Thompson.
28. See Michael Ryan, supra note 17.
29. See definition at Aristotle’s Golden Mean, available at http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Golden_mean_%28philosophy%29
30. See essay on Kantian ethics, available at http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/
kant.html.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 147
eral facts of human society” such as political affairs; it prevents them from
knowing any particular facts about themselves. 31
CODES OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS FOR JOURNALISTS
Though standards of conduct may not be imposed upon journalists by
the government, the profession itself has long recognized the importance of
abiding by certain core ethical principles. The code accepted by most of the
news media is that promulgated by the Society of Professional Journalists,
whose members, believing that “public enlightenment is the forerunner of
justice and the foundation of democracy,” pledge to pursue “seeking truth
and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” They
“strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty.” The cornerstone
of their credibility is professional integrity: “The duty of the journalist is
. . . seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events
and issues.” 32
The goals of the SPJ code are fourfold: To Seek Truth and Report It;
To Minimize Harm; To Act Independently; and To Be Accountable. 33 In
“seeking truth,” ethical journalists are required to be “honest, fair and courageous
in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.” 34 In “mini-
31. See definition of Kant’s veil of ignorance, available at http://www.answers.
com/topic/veil-of-ignorance-1.
32. See Preamble, Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, at
http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp. The SPJ Code of Ethics is voluntarily embraced
by thousands of writers, editors and other news professionals. The present version
of the code was adopted by the 1996 SPJ National Convention, after months of
study and debate among the Society’s members.
33. Id.
34. The code elaborates on this standard as follows: Journalists should –
test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to
avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible; diligently
seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to
respond to allegations of wrongdoing; identify sources whenever feasible.
The public is entitled to as much information as possible on
sources’ reliability; always question sources’ motives before promising
anonymity. Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in
exchange for information. Keep promises; make certain that headlines,
news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics,
sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify
or highlight incidents out of context; never distort the content
of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is
always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations; avoid misleading
re-enactments or staged news events. If re-enactment is necessary
to tell a story, label it; avoid undercover or other surreptitious

148 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
mizing harm,” they should treat sources, subjects, and colleagues as human
beings deserving of respect. 35 In “acting independently,” they should be
free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know. 36
Finally, journalists “are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and
each other.” 37
methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods
will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods
should be explained as part of the story; never plagiarize; tell the story
of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even
when it is unpopular to do so; examine their own cultural values and
avoid imposing those values on others; avoid stereotyping by race, gender,
age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability,
physical appearance or social status; support the open exchange of
views, even views they find repugnant; give voice to the voiceless; official
and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid; distinguish
between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary
should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context; distinguish
news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the
two; and recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public’s business
is conducted in the open and that government records are open to
inspection. Id.
35. Thus they must
show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news
coverage; use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced
sources or subjects; be sensitive when seeking or using interviews
or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief; recognize
that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort.
Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance; recognize that private
people have a greater right to control information about themselves
than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention.
Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s
privacy; show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity; be cautious
about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes; be
judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of
charges; and balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s
right to be informed. Id.
36. They must avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived; remain free of
associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility;
refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary
employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations
if they compromise journalistic integrity; disclose unavoidable conflicts; be
vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable; deny favored
treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence
news coverage; and be wary of sources offering information for favors or money;
avoid bidding for news. Id.
37. Thus they should

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 149
Major American newspapers have codified their own rules regarding
professionalism and ethics in reporting, but some do not specifically
address the issues of bias and balance. For example, the New York Times’
Code of Conduct revolves mostly around the avoidance of bias engendered
by personal relationships. But the general principle underlying its rules is
clear: “[I]t is essential that we preserve professional detachment, free of any
hint of bias.” 38
Similar ethical codes are in place in virtually all Western countries.
Britain’s National Union of Journalists also promulgates a code of
conduct, among whose pertinent provisions are that –
A journalist shall rectify promptly any harmful inaccuracies, ensure that
correction and apologies receive due prominence and afford the right of
reply to persons criticised when the issue is of sufficient importance. . . .
No journalist shall knowingly cause or allow the publication or broadcast
of a photograph that has been manipulated unless that photograph is
clearly labelled as such. Manipulation does not include normal dodging,
burning, colour balancing, spotting, contrast adjustment, cropping and
obvious masking for legal or safety reasons. 39
The National Syndicate of French Journalists adopted a code of conduct
that states in part, “A journalist worthy of the name . . . considers the
slander, unfounded accusations, alteration of documents, distortion of facts,
and lying to be the most serious professional misconduct.” 40 The German
Press Code likewise asserts that “respect for the truth, preservation of
human dignity and accurate informing of the public are the overriding principles
of the press.” 41 In Italy, a journalist “has to respect, cultivate and
clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public
over journalistic conduct; encourage the public to voice grievances
against the news media; admit mistakes and correct them promptly;
expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media; and abide
by the same high standards to which they hold others. Id.
38. See New York Times Code of Conduct, paragraph 25, available at http://
www.nytco.com/press/ethics.html
39. See National Union of Journalists Code of Conduct (paragraphs 4 and 12),
http://media.gn.apc.org/nujcode.html.
40. See National Syndicate of French Journalists (adopted by the National Syndicate
of French Journalists in 1918 and revised and completed by the Syndicate in
1938), http://www.ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P’Ethics&ID’8299&LID’1.
41. Section 1, German Press Code, EthicNet, http://ethicnet.uta.fi/germany/german_press_code.
In 2001, Germany hosted a conference on The Ethics of Journalism
. . .in the Islamic-Western Context, which noted many signs of a common
ground between journalists of Islamic and Western countries. See http://
www.journalism-islam.de/con_introduction.htm.

150 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
defend the right of information of all people; for these reasons he researches
and diffuses every piece of information that he considers of public interest
in observance of truth and with a wide accuracy of it.” 42
As clearly stated as such principles may be, a fair reading of the facts
demonstrates that they are frequently breached, with harmful consequences.
THE ABUSE OF JOURNALISTIC ETHICS IN MIDDLE EAST REPORTING
The word “terrorist” itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.
We should try to avoid the term without attribution.
— Editorial Guidelines, British Broadcasting Corporation
When the news media fail to abide by their own journalistic standards,
they should be called to account. Adherence to this code of ethics is
intended to preserve the bond of mutual trust and respect between journalists
and their audience. 43 That adherence, however, often requires journalists’
support and cooperation, which often appear to be lacking. On the
contrary, the media often seem to be either defensive about or non-responsive
to documented criticism. 44
This is particularly true regarding coverage of events that take place in
Israel and the surrounding Arab nations–where three primary abuses of
explicit journalistic standards are easily identifiable: clearly biased language/inappropriate
word choices, inaccurate reporting of facts, and nonreporting
of notable events.
To be sure, abuses are claimed by all sides of the long-running conflicts–both
by critics who perceive anti-Western/Israeli media bias, and by
those who see it running in quite the opposite direction. 45 Nevertheless,
42. Charter of Duties of Journalists, National Federation of the Italian Press,
http://www.ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P’Ethics&ID’8323&LID’1.
43. Code of Ethics (Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi 1973),
reprinted in W. Rivers, W. Schramm, and C. Christians, 291-94 app. A. See also
Todd F. Simon, “Libel as Malpractice: News Media Ethics and the Standard of
Care,” 53 Fordham Law Review 449 (1984).
44. Many commentators have commented upon this subject. See, e.g., Rodney
A. Smolla, “Report of the Coalition for a New America: Platform Section on Communications
Policy,” 1993 University of Chicago Legal Forum 149; Lillian R.
BeVier, “Some Anxious Thoughts about Utopian Dreams: A Reply to Professor
Smolla,” 1993 University of Chicago Legal Forum 187; and Lee C. Bollinger,
Images of a Free Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
45. See, e.g., http://agonist.org/ian_welsh/20060714/pro_israeli_bias_in_us_
media; http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2008/12/press-coverage.php; and http://
www.aim.org/media-monitor/pro-israel-media-bias. See also infra notes 169-177
and accompanying text.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 151
although everyone has a right to his or her own opinions, no one is entitled
to manufacture facts. 46 This should be especially true for journalists.
The examples below are necessarily selective, but are intended to be
representative.
Prejudicial Word Choices
Should we understand what is newsworthy by the words used to
describe events more than by the events themselves? News reports are supposed
to record action, not the pretexts of the actors. Word choices can be
highly prejudicial. If one person’s “terrorist” is another’s “freedom fighter,”
then like similarities can render a suicide bomber a martyr, or a tumor a
wart.
Both Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a momentous war of
words–a pitched battle for the public opinions of the outside world as much
as a struggle for territory. However, coverage of current events in the Middle
East presents serious dilemmas for both the international media and the
countries caught in this conflict.
“Moral Equivalency”
Journalistic integrity demands adherence to several basic and interrelated
principles: factual accuracy; reporting in a reasonably balanced (that
is, comprehensive) manner; and understanding the context of events and
code words used to define them. Moreover, the Western journalist’s traditional
search for objectivity and balance should be underscored and highlighted
whenever it is threatened by intimidation or otherwise compromised
in authoritarian societies. 47
In the Mideast, however, these rules have been substantially fogged by
what has come to be known as “moral equivalency”–that is, reporting the
positions of each side in a conflict as if they were of equal merit–effectively
obfuscating any distinction between aggressor and victim. Although the
quest for balance can reflect a genuine concern for accuracy, in this case
there is ample evidence to suggest that it may also be caused by fear and
46. The thought (“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own
facts.”) has been attributed to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. See http://
haecus.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/everyone-is-entitled-to-their-own-opinion-butnot-their-own-facts/
47. As Mark Twain once put it, “Get your facts first, and then you can distort
them as much as you please.” See http://www.best-quotes-poems.com/factsquotes.html

152 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
bias, as well as by the fatigue factor that sets in during coverage of such a
protracted conflict. 48
Over much of the past decade, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has
adeptly depicted its constituents as dispossessed and oppressed–effectively
eliciting widespread sympathy by way of effective sound bites and poignant
images. “You cannot shoot our children and get away with it?” exclaims PA
spokeswoman Hanan Ashwrawi in perfect English. Negotiator Saeb Erekat
decries the “daily massacre of Palestinians by Israel.” 49 The message thus
becomes, how can Israel want peace when its mighty army sends tanks
against impoverished stone-throwers?
Israel, on the other hand, has often assumed a defensive position–that
its military responses have been due solely to physical provocations and out
of the need for security. It has been slow to present in clear and simple
ways what many consider its best arguments: that it has been under siege by
Arab countries and movements for more than half a century. It has been
unable to focus attention on how the Palestinian leadership employs both its
educational system and its communications media as tools of incitement; on
how rock-throwing teenagers sometimes serve as camouflage for machinegun-firing
militia; and on how PA ambulances are used as command-andcontrol
vehicles to deliver troops and weapons to demonstration sites. 50
“Terrorists” v. “Militants”
Perhaps the single most problematic choice of words in Mideast journalism
concerns those used to describe the perpetrators of violence that
takes place frequently against non-combatants in Israel and elsewhere. Particularly
troublesome are the terms “terrorist,” “militant,” and “extremists
on both sides”–all of whom are said to contribute to a “cycle of violence,”
which itself is a phrase that strongly implies equivalency.
Terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens are often treated differently by
the media than are similar atrocities committed against other nationalities.
48. For examples of alleged “moral equivalency” in Middle East reporting, see
C.A.M.E.R.A. at http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/camera?domains’camera.org&sitesearch’camera.org&q’moral+quivalency.
49. See Stephanie Guttmann, “Lights, Camera, Intifada: The Violence in the
Mideast Has Become a War of Images, in Which the Press Is the Key to Victory,”
The Weekly Standard, January 1, 2001, p. 26.
50. See, e.g., Larry Derfner, “Tit for Tat, Mr. President,” Jerusalem Post, July
30, 2009, p. 15; Gershon Baskin, “Creating a Culture of Peace in Israel and Palestine,”
Jerusalem Post, April 8, 2008 at p. 15; and Yaakov Katz, “Haniyeh Operated
Command Center Inside Shifa Hospital,” Jerusalem Post, April 23, 2009 at p.
3.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 153
Murderers are assigned more benign labels, such as “gunmen” or “militants.”
For example, in October of 2003 when a Palestinian woman detonated
a bomb in a crowded beach restaurant in Haifa, killing 21 people
(including four children), the Reuters account said she had waged an
“attack” in retaliation for previous Israeli army actions and that the bombing
showed that Palestinian officials had failed to “rein in the militants.” 51
In fact, the word “terrorist” is firmly forbidden at several major newsgathering
organizations: the Associated Press, the British Broadcasting Corporation,
and Reuters. This protocol can have bizarre consequences, such
as when the AP published a list of countries afflicted by terrorism and conspicuously
omitted Israel. 52
According to the BBC’s official producer’s manual, “Our credibility is
severely undermined if international audiences detect a bias for or against
any of those involved. Neutral language is key: even the word ‘terrorist’
can appear judgmental in parts of the world where there is no clear consensus
about the legitimacy of militant political groups.” 53
But the BBC apparently does not question the damage done to its credibility
when its reporting goes a good deal further, occasionally assuming
the role of Palestinian advocate. In March of 2001, for example, correspondent
Judy Swallow interviewed both Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat
and Israeli Knesset member Yuval Steinitz. With Erakat she spoke courteously
and respectfully while discussing Palestinians who stone, shoot, and
bomb non-combatant Israeli men, women, and children. But her manner
changed abruptly when she addressed Steinitz. When he pointed out that
Israeli cities were suffering a wave of car bombs, she broke in sharply:
How is it that you make as a precondition of any talks . . .[that] the
Palestinians must end the violence. You know yourself that you were
never capable of ending the violence. You couldn’t contain Hamas,
Islamic Jihad. If an army the size of Israel’s cannot stop that violence,
51. Tom Fiedler, “Handle With Care: Words Like ‘Conflict,’ ‘Terrorist,’”
Miami Herald, January 4, 2004.
52. In November 2003 the Associated Press posted a list of “recent terror
attacks around the world,” which cited fifteen incidents during the previous five
years. In that period, more than 800 Israelis were murdered in terrorist attacks, but
not one of the incidents in Israel made the list. WorldnetDaily, (November 24,
2003). Similarly, when AP released its Year in Photos 2003, six of the 130 photos
chosen related to human suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All six were of
Palestinians.See Mitchell G. Bard, Myths and Facts Online: The Media, available at
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf23a.html#27.
53. See BBC Editorial Guidelines, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/advice/terrorismlanguage/ourapproach.shtm

154 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
how do you expect the small Palestinian Authority to do so? 54
Use of the term “terrorism”–which can be defined as “the use of violence
against non-combatants, civilians or other persons normally considered
to be illegitimate targets of military action for the purpose of attracting
attention to a political cause, forcing those aloof from the struggle to join in,
or intimidating opponents into concessions” 55 –should not depend on interpretative
consensus, but on violation of law. Arguably, there is no more
appropriate word to describe suicide bombings or other aggression against
civilians.
Yet National Public Radio likewise consistently refuses to call homicidal
attacks by Palestinian Arabs against Israeli civilians terrorism–although
it regularly uses the term to describe the activities of Al Qaeda and other
radical Islamic groups around the world. 56 NPR vigorously denies this criticism,
despite thoroughgoing documentation by various watchdog groups,
most notably the Committee on Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in
America (C.A.M.E.R.A.). 57 What NPR cannot deny is the reality of the
widespread perception in this context, including that by several members of
Congress. 58
A similar taboo appears to be firmly in place at both the Washington
Post and the New York Times, widely considered among the most respected
newspapers in the United States. Both choose to use the term “militant”
(occasionally preferring the somewhat more neutral “gunman” or “fighter”)
instead of “terrorist”–even when they refer to members of groups formally
designated as “terrorist organizations” by the United States State Depart-
54. Andrea Levin, C.A.M.E.R.A., Eye on the Media: The BBC Goes to War,
March 30, 2001, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context’4&x_outlet’12&x_
article’335.
55. CHARLES W. FREEMAN, THE DIPLOMAT’S DICTIONARY 379
(1994). For a list of other definitions, see Alex Schmid, War Crimes Research
Symposium: “Terrorism on Trial”: Terrorism - The Definitional Problem, 37 Case
Western Reserve Journal of International Law 375 (2005).
56. Alex Safian, “NPR’s Terror Problem: When Is a Terrorist a Terrorist?,”
National Review Online, June 10, 2003, available at http://article.nationalreview.
com/?q=NGRiNGEwOWQzYjhmY2VkMThjN2M4Y2UyZDdiZDM5YmM=./
57. See http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=28&x_article
=487.
58. NPR’s longtime reporter in the region, Linda Gradstein, has often been pilloried
as overly sympathetic to the Palestinian position. At first she appeared very
willing to be interviewed for an article by the author, to talk either on or off the
record; but in the end she was constrained by her bosses back in Washington.
They’re extremely sensitive about this.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 155
ment. 59 While the Post avoids the more accurate words “terrorism” and
“terrorist” in reporting attacks against Israeli non-combatants, it often uses
those terms in its coverage of similar events elsewhere, especially when
reporting such violence directed against Americans. Times reporters likewise
often dilute the deeds of Palestinian terrorist bombers by calling them
“militants”–while whenever possible labeling Israeli victims in the West
Bank as “settlers” (as opposed to “civilians”). 60
“Truces,” “Cease-fires,” and “Occupations”
In June of 2008, a number of Qassam rockets landed in Sderot, causing
injuries and considerable damage to buildings. A BBC report entitled
“Hamas, Fatah, Discuss Dialogue, Truce With Israel” led with allegations
of Israeli violations of the cease-fire and, three paragraphs later, noted the
Palestinian rocket and mortar fire that precipitated the Israeli response.
Even then the report reflected a moral equivalency between rocket and mortar
attacks on non-combatants in the western Negev and the firing of warning
shots by an Israeli Defense Force wary of potential terrorist activities
near the border fence. 61
Similarly, both the New York Times and the Washington Post have
habitually referred to Syria’s “presence” in Lebanon but to Israel’s “occupation”
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 62
59. See C.A.M.E.R.A., at http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/camera?
domains’camera.org&sitesearch’camera.org&q’%22terrorist%22+vs.+%22militant
%22.
60. See Eric Rozenman, C.A.M.E.R.A., Freudian Projection at the Washington
Post, July 11, 2008.
61. BBC Monitoring Service, June 18, 2008, http://w3.lexis.com/lawschoolreg/
researchlogin08.asp?t’y&fac’yes.
On the same incident, the Associated Press wired a story headlined “Israel
Closes Gaza, Palestinians Fire Mortars”–inaccurately implying that the mortars
were in response to the closure, instead of the other way around. Likewise omitted
were facts that may have provided context. For example, the cease-fire agreement
in question applied only to the Gaza Strip and not to the West Bank, where Israeli
forces were free to operate against Palestinian terrorists. The Guardian reported
that Palestinian “rockets were fired by the militant group Islamic Jihad, which said
it was acting in response to the killing of one of its commanders in the occupied
West Bank earlier that day.” The paper failed to make it clear that Israeli operations
in the West Bank were not in violation of the cease-fire.
62. Compare, e.g., Robert F. Worth and Nada Bakri, “Deal for Lebanese Factions
Leaves Hizbollah Stronger,” New York Times, May 22, 2008, p. A21 (Those
include Hezbollah’s weapons and Lebanon’s relations with Syria, which ended its
29-year military presence here in 2005) and Elias Khoury, “For Israelis, An Anni-

156 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
In July of 2008, immediately following an incident in which a Palestinian
Arab used a bulldozer to kill three Israelis on a public street in Jerusalem
and injure dozens more, many news outlets blamed the man’s outrage
on “the occupation.” The New York Times noted that “Caterpillar equipment
has a special resonance among Palestinians. Human rights activists have
lobbied the company to stop selling its heavy vehicles to the Israeli military
out of concern that they have been used to demolish Palestinian homes,
uproot orchards and construct Jewish settlements in occupied land.” 63
The Reuters news agency contrasted Israel’s supposed oppression of
West Bank and Gaza residents generally with its alleged maltreatment of
Jerusalem Arabs: “Unlike Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip and in
the occupied West Bank, those living in occupied east Jerusalem have free
access to the Jewish west of the city and to Israel.” 64
Can the word “occupied” be fairly applied to a territory from which
Israel made a unilateral withdrawal, as it did from the Gaza Strip in 2005?
Or to the West Bank, over which Israel still exercises extensive authority,
the result of a successful war of self-defense in 1967 and pending negotiations
to resolve its status according to U.N. Security Council Resolutions
242 and 338? 65
versary; For Palestinians, a Nakba,” New York Times, May 18, 2008, p. 13 (Israel’s
continued occupation of the remaining portions of Palestine, in the West Bank and
Gaza).
63. Isabel Kershner, “Palestinian Rams Construction Vehicle Into Traffic, Killing
3,” New York Times, July 3, 2008, p. 6.
64. The BBC’s coverage of the bulldozer attack elicited an apology from its
news editor, who explained his decision not to air footage that showed the killing of
the terrorist in the bulldozer, saying that the video images failed to strike the right
editorial balance. Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick noted that the bulldozer
attack was only the second Palestinian attack on Israelis to be preserved on
film—the first was the bloody lynching of two IDF reservists in the first days of the
second intifada in 2000. Both cases, she added, drew apologies from the networks
that showed them. “To maintain the narratives the right editorial balance between
the demands of accuracy and the potential impact on the program’s audience, is one
that engenders the belief that Israel is either morally indistinguishable from the
Palestinians, or that Israel is morally inferior to the Palestinians.” Caroline Glick,
“The Media and Enduring Narrative,” Jerusalem Post, July 8, 2008, p. 15.
65. According to both the League of Nations’ and the United Nations’ Palestine
Mandates, Israel is the legitimate military occupational authority on the West Bank.
It is also a legitimate claimant to disputed territory. See Evelyn Gordon, “Israel’s
Image–Why the All-Time Low?,” Jerusalem Post, June 8, 2006, p. 15.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 157
*
Between April and September of 2007, the media watchdog HonestReporting
undertook a detailed examination of Middle East coverage by the
New York Times, still one of the most influential newspapers in the world. 66
Its findings can be summarized as follows: Despite an evenly balanced
selection of stories on Israel and the Palestinians, the Times gave far more
weight to Israeli military incidents in its news reporting, text location, headlines,
and photograph selection than it did to unprovoked Palestinian
attacks. More than 60 percent of images sympathetic to one side or the
other favored the Palestinians. 67
Israeli and Palestinian actions were not treated consistently in choice
of language. Israel or its military forces were the subject of strongly
worded, direct headlines in eighteen out of twenty cases (90 percent). However,
in the twenty cases in which Palestinian combatants were responsible
for attacks, the language was mostly passive and the group responsible was
named only eight times. 68
Important context that would give readers a fuller picture of news
events was often omitted. Politicized terms such as “militants,” “occupied
territory,” and “illegal settlements” were used without explanation. For
example, “militants” in Western usage can apply to non-violent activists–militant
environmentalists or traditionalists; in the Middle East, it is
often a euphemism for terrorists. Israel is the military occupant and authority
of the West Bank, but the legal status of the land is disputed. The position
of the U.S. government is not that Jewish villages and towns in the
West Bank are illegal, but that they represent an obstacle to negotiations.
Israel has always insisted that the primary relevant international law, the
larger Mandate for Palestine, assumed by the United Nations, continues to
recognize Jewish rights to “close settlements.” 69
The Times tends to diminish the importance of violence against Israel
by virtue of the way it places stories on a page. For example, in 2001, when
a ten-month-old Israeli baby named Shalhevet Pass was shot and killed by a
Palestinian sniper in Hebron, the story was carried on the front page of
many American papers, but the Times put it on page ten. 70 Similar treat-
66. See http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/New
_York_Times_6_Month_Study.asp.
67. Id.
68. Id.
69. Id.
70. Compare, e.g., New York Times, March 26, 2001, p. A10, with St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, March 27, 2001.

158 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
ment was given a report of the brutal bludgeoning murders of two fourteenyear-old
Israeli boys (one an Israeli-American). Even those accounts were
“balanced” with the number of Palestinian Arabs killed by IDF gunfire–suggesting
an equivalency between the deliberate targeting of civilians
and soldiers shooting in response to being shot at. 71
The Times’ placement of editorial matter likewise betrays bias. In July
of 2001, the paper published a lengthy front-page opinion article by its
Israel bureau chief, Deborah Sontag, suggesting that all the parties to the
Camp David peace talks, not just Yasser Arafat, were to blame for their
failure. Although Ms. Sontag acknowledged that her article was based
solely on conversations with “peace advocates, academics, and diplomats”–and
not with the principals or with any participants from the Israeli
side–its prominent position on page one contributed to its impression of
gravitas and authenticity. Her views were immediately countered by
Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Barak, as well as by the Times’ own
William Safire–but their comments appeared on the opinion pages at the
back of the first section. 72
The Times also gives op-ed space to leaders of Hamas, which is designated
as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States State Department,
the United Kingdom, the European Union, Israel, and other
countries. 73 In so doing the Times relies on the argument that Hamas is the
“legitimate and democratically elected Palestinian government,”and that its
“political wing” should be distinguished from its “military wing.” 74
Would the Times grant the same editorial indulgence to al-Qaeda or
Osama bin Laden? In fact, no such distinction is made by Hamas itself–a
group whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction and is filled with unadulterated
antisemitism, and which has been responsible for the murder of U.S.
citizens in Israel. In the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier it captured in
2006, Hamas also claims that it is not bound by the Geneva Conventions
because it is not a state (and thus has no obligation to allow Red Cross visits
to Shalit). Although the Times has made numerous references to alleged
violations of international law by Israel, it has made no editorial mention of
71. Ricki Hollander, “Human Interest Stories in New York Times Skewed
toward Palestinians,” C.A.M.E.R.A., May 11, 2006. See also Honest Reporting,
“The New York Times: A Year-Long Analysis,” available at http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/The_New_York_Times_A_Year-
Long_Analysis.asp
72. Andrea Levin, Lobbyists With a Cause, C.A.M.E.R.A., August 20, 2001.
73. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have provided similar forums.
74. See Matthew Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service
of Jihad (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), noting that Hamas is a unitary
group, its “wings” part of the same whole).

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 159
such a gross violation of international law and human rights. 75
*
Biased reporting sometimes employs subtle innuendo. This is especially
true when political agendas seep into reportage. The Post’s coverage
of President Barack Obama’s brief visit to Israel in July of 2008 (when he
was still a candidate) exemplifies editorializing too often seen in its news
coverage. 76
The article reporting on the trip included the statement that “Palestinian
gunmen in Gaza have long fired makeshift rockets at Sderot, typically
after Israeli military operations in the strip or the Israeli-occupied West
Bank.” In fact, though, Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank are almost invariably counter-terrorism operations, either
responsive or pre-emptive, as compared to unprovoked Palestinian attacks
against Israeli civilians. Palestinian terrorists fired more than 2,000 rockets
from Gaza at the nearby Israeli town of Sderot in the four years between
2004 and mid-2008; after September 2005, Israel had withdrawn all settlers
from the Strip. 77
By inverting cause-and-effect, the Post’s report injects editorial comment,
essentially favoring the Palestinians. When the story also refers to
“the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” even though the legal status of that area
remains in dispute, it takes sides. 78
Regarding Senator Obama’s unequivocal support for Jerusalem as
Israel’s “eternal, undivided capital” in his speech to the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee in June of 2008, the Post reported that “that comment
drew sharp protest from Palestinians, and Obama quickly corrected
the statement at the time, saying that by undivided he meant a city not
75. See Kenneth Lasson, “Is Gilad Shalit on the Radar?,” Baltimore Jewish
Times, August 7, 2009, p. 32.
76. See Griff Witte and Dan Balz, “Obama Ends Mideast Swing With Vow to
Back Israel, Peace Talks,” Washington Post, July 24, 2008, p. A7.
77. See Bret Stephens, “The Sderot Calculus,” Wall Street Journal, February
26, 2008.
78. Israel has always maintained that its military presence is the legitimate
result of a successful war of self-defense, pending a final negotiated settlement, and
this position has been supported by, among others, the U.S. and British authors of
U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), the keystone of subsequent Arab-
Israeli negotiations. A noteworthy comparison: the Post has always referred to
Syria’s former military occupation of Lebanon as a presence. See, e.g., Alia
Ibrahim, “Presidential Election Has Lebanese Parties in a Bitter Struggle,” Washington
Post, September 24, 2007, p. A12.

160 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
carved up by barbed wire as it was at one time.” 79
Why use the word “corrected” instead of “changed,” “amended,” or
“clarified”? Moreover, the description of “a city not carved up by barbed
wire as it was at one time” obfuscates the contextual fact that Jerusalem had
been divided by barbed wire during its occupation by Jordan from 1948 to
1967–which division was removed when Israel reunified the city during the
Six-Day War of 1967. (The Post likewise chooses to ignore Jordan’s
expulsion of all Jewish residents from eastern Jerusalem in 1948, and its
destruction of more than fifty Jewish synagogues and institutions there.) 80
The Post reported that Obama’s trip to Ramallah took him “past the
system of checkpoints and barrier walls that Israel has built in what it says
is an effort to thwart suicide bombers and other would-be attackers from the
West Bank.” What Israel says? In fact–as has been widely reported, even
in the Post–after construction of Israel’s West Bank security barrier began
in 2002, terrorist attacks declined dramatically. 81
Similarly inconsistent are the Post’s avoidance of the words “terrorism”
and “terrorist” in reporting attacks against Israeli non-combatants, but
using those terms when covering similar events elsewhere–as well as its
longstanding references to Syria’s “presence” in Lebanon but to Israel’s
“occupation”of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 82
Meanwhile, the Post has consistently chosen not to report from the
besieged southern Israeli town of Sderot or to publish a detailed account
about the effects of incessant Palestinian terrorist rocket fire in that area. 83
So too, the foreign desk has shown a general indifference to the news
potential of the United Nations’ failure to police south Lebanon–Hezbollah’s
re-arming of its forces in violation of U.N. Security Council
resolutions; incessant Palestinian anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish incitement in
violation of numerous agreements; and the connections between Iran and
79. Dan Balz and Griff Witte, “Obama Ends Mideast Swing with Vow to Back
Israel, Peace Talks,” Washington Post, July 24, 2008, p. A7.
80. See Rozenman, One Land, Two People, and Dozens of Errors,
C.A.M.E.R.A., September 1, 2004, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context’
2&x_outlet’38&x_article’813.
81. Id.
82. See, e.g., Scott Wilson, “Hezbollah to Protest U.S. Stance on Lebanon,”
Washington Post, March 7, 2005. See also C.A.M.E.R.A., Now It Can Be Said:
Syria-Occpied Lebanon, available at http://blog.camera.org/archives/2006/07/
now_it_can_be_said_syria_occup.html
83. See C.A.M.E.R.A. Washington Post-Watch: Old Habits Die Hard, If At All,
available at http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=38&x_article
=1374

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 161
the Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas. 84
*
National Public Radio’s coverage of the Middle East regularly minimizes
or omits Palestinian incitement and aggression, blames Israel for
much of the violence, and repeats Palestinian grievances without challenge
or response. A few examples:
• In a story about Hamas, NPR declined to mention the group’s
stated aims to destroy Israel, Jews, and Judaism, besides its opposition
to the peace process. It characterized Sheik Ahmed Yasin (the
Hamas leader known to be responsible for numerous deadly terrorist
attacks) simply as “a spiritual leader.” 85
• Palestinian rioters were depicted as “lobbing stones at an Israeli
military outpost,” while Jewish rioters were described as engaging
in “mob-style aggression.” 86
• The Jewish neighborhood of Gilo is called “a settlement built in
occupied east Jerusalem” when in fact it is an integral part of the
city. 87
In a recent six-month period of intensive coverage on the Middle East,
not one of NPR’s 278 segments was devoted to the strategic significance of
the West Bank, and only one report discussed the military significance of
Golan Heights. 88
*
As noted earlier, on more than one occasion, the British Broadcasting
Company’s reportorial style has given the appearance of not-too-subtle
advocacy for the Palestinian point of view. 89 The Guardian likens Israeli
84. Eric Rozenman, Washington Post-Watch: Palestinians vs. Palestinians? The
Post Is Mute, C.A.M.E.R.A., August 5, 2008, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_
context’2&x_outlet’38&x_article’1520.
85. C.A.M.E.R.A., NPR Bias Persists, available at http://www.camera.org/
index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=28&x_article=281
86. C.A.M.E.R.A., A Record of Bias: NPR’s Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,
available at http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=75&x_context=4.
87. C.A.M.E.R.A., New CAMERA Study Blasts NPR Bias, February 19, 2001,
available at http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=28&
x_article=85.
88. C.A.M.E.R.A., A Study in News Manipulation, November 4, 1992, http://
www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print’1&x_context’6&x_article’212.
89. See supra note 54 and accompanying text. [Andrea Levin, Eye on the

162 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
society to that of apartheid South Africa without supplying context. The
Guardian could have noted, for example, that Israel is a parliamentary
democracy; that Arab parties serve in the Knesset where they freely attack
Israeli policies and leaders; that there are no bans on intermarriage; that
universities are open to Arab students; or that Israel’s Supreme Court has
forbidden discrimination in housing and jobs. 90
The Guardian’s online section titled “Israel and the Palestinians”
includes as one of its “useful links” a reference to “Hamas military
wing”–which is actually the English-language site of “Ezedeen Al-Qassam
Brigades,” which describes itself as “the armed branch of the Islamic Resistance
Movement (Hamas).” Members of this faction are actively involved
in terrorist acts, and some have the blood of innocent Israeli civilians on
their hands. 91
Checks, Lies, and Videotape
Inaccurate Reporting of Events
After the outbreak of the “al-Aqsa intifada” in September 2000, the
most striking initial image in Middle East news was that of a terrified
twelve-year-old Arab boy caught in the crossfire at a Gaza flashpoint. The
frightened youngster, reported the New York Times, named Muhammad al-
Dura, was seen “trapped by Israeli gunfire, and then slumping lifeless into
his father’s lap.” 92
The image quickly became iconic. Photographs of the shooting
appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world. The London
Guardian observed:
For all of the claims of the prime minister, Ehud Barak, and other officials
that their soldiers only fire to protect Israeli lives, Mohammed’s
death seems an irrefutable reply. The images of al-Durah and his son
cowering, vainly, behind a barrel would have been emotive enough if, as
first reports suggested, they were caught in the crossfire between Israeli
Media: The BBC Goes to War, C.A.M.E.R.A., March 30, 2001, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print’1&x_context’6&x_article’335.]
90. Liz McGregor, “Israel Should Learn from the Boers,” The Guardian
(London), May 17, 2001, p. 21.
91. Solomon, “Hamas Military Wing One of The Guardian’s Useful Links,”
Solomonia, August 13, 2008.
92. William A. Orme, Jr., “A Young Symbol of Mideast Violence,” New York
Times, October 2, 2000, p. 12. The incident occurred on September 30, 2000. See
also infra notes 124-142 and accompanying text.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 163
soldiers and Palestinian police or protesters. But by the end of the weekend
the evidence was pointing to a still more chilling conclusion: that the
12-year-old boy and his father were deliberately targeted by Israeli
soldiers. 93
A Palestinian cameraman working for a French television network
captured the incident on videotape, and over the next few days a snippet
was aired hundreds of times by local and regional stations and international
networks. A Saudi prince gave $100,000 to the boy’s father, saying that
“al-Durah was the spark which made the world know about the barbaric
acts being carried out by the Israeli aggressors against unarmed civilians.” 94
The newspaper photos and video clips left important questions unanswered:
How had the boy and his father come to be in the midst of the
shooting? Was it an Israeli or a Palestinian bullet that struck him? How did
one Palestinian stringer find himself so well situated to photograph it? If
any response was sought that day from the Israeli government or military,
none was published. A brief radio dispatch noted that the Israeli Defense
Forces expressed regret for the shooting, but said that none of its officers or
soldiers saw the father and son, who were hidden from the Israeli line of
sight by a concrete abutment protruding from a building. (The statement
made no reference to the fact that Palestinian gunmen were positioned
behind the father and son and were firing machine guns at the IDF–which
the video clip failed to show.) 95
Two months later, an official army investigation, which included schematic
diagrams of the lines of fire, second-by-second analyses of crucial
portions of the French videotape, and aerial photographs of the site, concluded
that there was “a very reasonable possibility” that the boy “was hit
by Palestinian gunfire.” 96 The IDF investigation was not widely reported in
the Western press.
In the following week, other killings related to the intifada occurred
that were just as shocking as the al-Dura case. Two Israeli reservists had
strayed into a Palestinian roadblock. They were seized and taken to the
Palestinian police headquarters in Ramallah. A mob learned of their presence,
stormed the small building where they were being held, murdered
93. Suzanne Goldberg, “Making of a Martyr,” London Guardian, October 3,
2000, p. 2.
94. Kahled Abdullah al-Fayez, “$100,000 Given to Father of Martyr Child,”
Saudi Gazette, October 20, 2000.
95. See James Fallows, “Who Shot Mohammad al-Dura?” The Atlantic, June
2003.
96. William A. Orme, Jr., “Israeli Army Says Palestinians May Have Shot Palestinian
Boy,” New York Times, November 27, 2000, p. 8.

164 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
them, and threw at least one bloodied body out of a second-floor window to
rioters below, who proceeded to rip it apart. 97
The incident had been videotaped by an Italian television network,
which released it to an international feed. The tape was shown on worldwide
television. A still photo of one of the demonstrators, raising his bloody
hands in exultation, was published widely. The Palestinian Journalists’
Union issued a stern reproach to the Italian network, which promptly apologized
to the Palestinian Authority. 98 The union also warned the Associated
Press bureau in Israel that if its coverage did not improve, the group would
adopt “all necessary measures against AP staffers.” 99
It was not long before the image of Muhammad al-Dura resurfaced.
The video of his apparent death continued to be televised throughout Arab-
Islamic countries and Europe, inciting anti-Israel hatred. The boy’s
wounded father, giving interviews from his hospital bed in Amman, Jordan,
became a regional celebrity. Arab poets and songwriters composed dozens
of tributes to his memory; postage stamps were issued in the boy’s honor;
streets were named after him. 100
Besides the fact that the murder of the Israeli reservists received much
less media attention, noticeably lost in the coverage of the al-Dura incident
was the surfacing of empirical evidence that strongly suggested that the boy
could not have been shot by the IDF.
In June of 2003, the Atlantic Monthly ran a cover story by James Fallows,
a respected investigative journalist, analyzing the incident in great
detail, and concluding that al-Dura–if he died at all–was most likely the
victim of an errant gunshot from Palestinian gunmen. Fallows reported that
Palestinian Arabs had staged some alleged shootings near the site of the al-
Dura incident, and only the Palestinian stringer for French television, of all
the cameramen nearby that day, got the footage. 101
Fiamma Nirenstein, a veteran Italian journalist and Jerusalem correspondent
(and now a member of Parliament), suggested that the failure
went well beyond simple media bias. Using the repeated images of the al-
Dura tragedy, certain intellectuals and journalists, she wrote, reflected contemporary
antisemitism:
97. See Barbara Demick, “Wrong Turn Took Soldiers Into Angry Crowd’s
Clutches,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 13, 2000, p. A1.
98. Judy Lash Balint, Journalists Describe Constant Palestinian Intimidation,
EretzYisroel.org http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/intimidation.html.
99. See Fallows, supra note 95.
100. E.g., the avenue in Cairo where the Israeli Embassy is situated was renamed
Muhammad al-Durrah Street. Orme, supra note 96.
101. Fallows, supra note 95.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 165
Europe could finally forget the famous picture of the boy in the Warsaw
ghetto with his hands raised. The meaning of this statement . . . is obliteration
of the Holocaust through the overlapping of Israel and Nazism. . . .
It means pretending to believe blindly, without investigation, the Palestinian
version of a highly disputed episode and of many, many others; it
means taking for granted the “atrocities” that the Palestinian spokespersons
always talk about, and ignoring every proof or fact that doesn’t
serve this position. 102
Perhaps even more egregious than the inaccurate reporting of the al-
Dura incident was the almost total non-reporting of the landmark libel case
to which it gave rise. 103
The “Massacre at Jenin”
In the Arab-Israeli media over the past five years, perhaps no phrase
has become more of a lighting rod than the “massacre at Jenin.”
In April of 2002, shortly after the Israel Defense Forces invaded a
Palestinian refugee camp area adjacent to the West Bank city of Jenin, a
report came out over the wire that Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN’s special
envoy in the region, witnessed the event, which he described as “horrific
beyond belief.” His views were quoted widely in the international press,
and trumpeted by Palestinian Arabs and their supporters as evidence of
Israeli brutality. PA leaders, among them Saeb Erekat, charged that Israel
had massacred at least 500 Palestinians. That figure made its way from the
Cable News Network to the UN Security Council, which immediately
demanded access to the site of the killings. 104
The harshest criticism appeared in the British press. The Independent,
the Telegraph, and the London Times all quoted the same lone Arab, who
said he saw Israeli soldiers heap thirty bodies beneath a half-wrecked
house: “When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing
its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank.” 105
The Telegraph reported that hundreds of victims “were buried by bulldozer
102. Fiamma Nirenstein, “A Former Communist on Jews, Israel, and Anti-Semitism,”
National Jewish Post & Opinion, September 3, 2003.
103. See infra notes 124-142 and accompanying text.
104. John Kifner, “Annan Picks Team to Examine Camp Attacked by Israel,”
New York Times, April 23, 2002, p. 12.
105. “Jenin Camp ‘Horrific Beyond Belief,’” BBC News, April 18, 2002, http://
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1937387.stm. Phil Reeves, “Amid the Ruins of
Jenin, the Grisly Evidence of a War Crime,” The Independent (London), April 16,
2002, p. 1.

166 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
in [a] mass grave.” 106 The Evening Standard asserted, “We are talking here
of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide.” 107 The Guardian called Israel’s
actions in Jenin “every bit as repellent” as Osama Bin Laden’s attack on
New York on September 11th. 108
Many of the reports of the supposed Israeli atrocities in Jenin came
from various Palestinian sources, but all were parroted by National Public
Radio, CNN, and others in the Western media. Typical was the description
of events by Nasser al-Kidwa, Palestinian representative to the United
Nations, on CNN:
There’s almost a massacre now taking place in Jenin. Helicopter gunships
are throwing missiles at one square kilometer packed with almost 15,000
people in a refugee camp. . . . Just look at the TV and watch, watch what
the—what the Israel forces are doing. . . . This is a war crime, clear war
crime, witnessed by the whole world, preventing ambulances, preventing
people from being buried. I mean this is an all-out assault against the
whole population. 109
In fact, there had been a pitched battle near but not in Jenin. It took
place in the refugee camp, over several days, during which there was houseto-house
fighting between Israeli troops and members of Palestinian militia.
Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were killed, as well as fifty-five Palestinans–of
whom fifty-two were armed gunmen. (These figures were later
confirmed by both the United Nations and, more recently, the Palestinian
Authority itself.) 110
When the facts finally did emerge a few days later, virtually no correction
or apology was made by the media that had reported a “massacre”;
there was no acknowledgment of the documented truth. Thus for many, the
image of a slaughter at the hands of the Israelis remains indelible.
The British press were the primary story-tellers. One of the few excep-
106. See BBC Monitoring International Reports, Israeli Media Group Gives Dishonest
Reporting Award to UK Media, January 1, 2003, http://w3.lexis.com/lawschoolreg/researchlogin08.asp?t’y&fac’yes.
107. A. N. Wilson, “A Demo We Can’t Afford To Ignore,” The Independent
(London), April 15, 2002, p. 13.
108. “The Battle for the Truth: What Really Happened in Jenin?,” The Guardian
(London), April 17, 2002, p. 17.
109. Paula Zahn, “In Mideast, Talk of Peace Does Nothing to Quiet Israel Military
Offensive,” CNN News, transcript #040814CN.V74, April 8, 2002.
110. The military casualties would have been much fewer and the civilian death
toll much higher had the IDF chosen to subject Jenin to aerial bombardment. See
Charles Krauthammer, “Decrying A Massacre That Wasn’t,” Cleveland Plain
Dealer, May 5, 2002, p. H3.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 167
tions was Richard Starr of the London’s Daily Standard. What had been
labeled “the massacre of the 21st century” was a lie, he wrote, “concocted
not only for local consumption–to keep the Palestinian people whipped up
in a patriotic, Israel-hating frenzy–but mostly for export to the West.” 111
“Collective Punishment”
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions (1949) established collective
punishment as a war crime, emphasizing individual responsibility:
“No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not
personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of
intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals
against protected persons and their property are prohibited.” Article 52 of
the Convention’s Additional Protocol I (adopted in 1977) similarly states,
“Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals.” 112
In the first five months of 2008, the non-governmental organization
known as Human Rights Watch issued thirteen statements condemning
Israel’s response to attacks against Israeli civilians launched from the Gaza
Strip. These statements–which to some observers reflect a political agenda,
misinterpret international legal terminology, repeat incomplete or false
analyses of international law, and omit or minimize deliberate Hamas
attacks at Israeli border crossings through which humanitarian aid is transferred
(as well as the diversion of this aid by Hamas) 113 –were picked up by
111. Richard Starr, “The Big Jenin Lie,” The Daily Standard (London), May 8,
2002. Sharon Sadeh of the Guardian was another exception: The Independent, the
Guardian and the Times were quick to denounce Israel and made sensational accusations
based on thin evidence, fitting a widely held stereotype of a defiant, brutal,
and don’t-give-a-damn Israel.
112. These conventions were engendered by various incidents in the 20th century.
On May 17, 1942, SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich was killed in the
suburbs of Prague, Czechoslovakia by a bomb thrown by Free Czech agents trained
in England. Although the killing of Heydrich (the commander of invading forces)
was clearly legal under international law, in response, the Gestapo and the SS killed
over 1000 people suspected of being involved in the plot. In addition, 3000 Jews
were deported from the ghetto at Terezin (Theresienstadt, created by Heydrich) for
immediate extermination. In Berlin, 152 Jews were ordered executed on the day of
Heydrich’s death. On June 10, 1942 Lidice was ordered destroyed. All 172 Czech
men and boys over 16 were shot. The village itself was then razed and its name
removed from German maps. These and similar atrocities were fresh in the minds
of international diplomats after the end of the War. See Michael I. Krauss, “Collective
Punishment and Newspeak,” The American Thinker, February 24, 2008.
113. See generally NGO Monitor, available at http://www.ngo-monitor.org/
search.php?query=Human+Rights+Watch&x=24&y=3.

168 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
the independent media. 114
Many Western newspapers and other media both misuse the term “collective
punishment” and apply it in a discriminatory way. For example,
editorials in the Boston Globe reserve the phrase almost exclusively for
Israeli actions, and not for frequent Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks
from the Gaza Strip or Hezbollah’s 2006 bombardment of Israeli cities and
civilian centers. While numerous Globe editorials over the years have criticized
the punishment of populations–non-Arabs in Sudan at the hands of
the Arab-controlled government, Serbians by NATO air-power, Iraqi
Kurds and Shiites at the hand of Saddam–none of the commentaries used
the phrase “collective punishment” in characterizing repeated, random
attacks on non-combatant populations by governments. 115
In fact, collective punishment by Arab governments or movements
against other Arabs is seldom noted by the media, let alone collective punishment
against non-Arab minorities. For example, the Algerian War
between the government and Muslim fundamentalists began in 1992 and
resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 people, mostly non-combatants.
Arab states expelled the majority of their Jewish populations in reprisal for
Israel’s successful self-defense in the 1948-1949 War of Independence. 116
Little of this was widely reported or editorially condemned.
These events can easily be distinguished from various Israeli actions
that have been labeled “collective punishment.” Israel’s reduction of fuel
and electricity exports to the Gaza Strip, for example, was called a contemporary
instance of collective punishment. In a lawsuit filed by Israeli and
Palestinian civil rights groups before Israel’s Supreme Court, these organizations
asked the Supreme Court to make Israel end fuel restrictions that
caused power blackouts in the Gaza Strip. Both the activists and representatives
of many state members of the Security Council charged that the
114. See, e.g., Alex Brummer, “Papers Are Too Quick to Accept NGO Reports,”
Jewish Chronicle (London), October 3, 2008, available at http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=2099.
115. While numerous Globe editorials over the years have criticized the punishment
of populations–non-Arabs in Sudan at the hands of the Arab controlled government,
Serbians by NATO air-power, Iraqi Kurds and Shiites at the hand of
Saddam–none of the commentaries used the phrase “collective punishment” in
characterizing repeated, random attacks on non-combatant populations by governments.
A search of Globe editorials going back to December 1992 reveals that the
phrase “collective punishment” has referred almost exclusively to Israel. Myron
Kaplan, Selective Use of Derogatory Terminology in Boston Globe Editorials,
C.A.M.E.R.A., July 22, 2006. See also Eric Rozenman, Washington Post Knotted
Up Over Terrorism, C.A.M.E.R.A., March 24, 2004.
116. Id.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 169
restrictions constituted collective punishment of Gaza’s estimated 1.4 million
people and violated the Fourth Geneva Convention. 117
This claim misleadingly conflates a failure to aid with active criminal
harm. Context is ignored: Acts of war are launched daily against Israel
from Hamas-run Gaza. Since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005,
more than 6000 rockets and shells have been fired against Israeli cities–first
especially at Sderot, about two miles from the Strip, and more recently at
Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Ben Shira, major Israeli population centers twenty
miles distant. The doctrine of collective punishment forbids the imposition
of criminal or military penalties (e.g., imprisonment or death) on some people
for crimes committed by others. The cessation of trade with a country
or hostile entity such as the Strip is not inflicting a criminal or military
penalty against all its residents, who have no entitlement to objects of trade
that they have not yet purchased. The electricity withheld from sale was a
military tool. (Israel continues to export approximately $500 million worth
of goods and services into the Gaza Strip each year.) 118
Israel’s response to the terrorizing, wounding, or murder of its civilians–a
kind of collective punishment in its own right–has been to target
perpetrators of such violations of international law. Yet the clear difference
between legal force and collective punishment is seldom reflected in media
coverage of the conflict.
Likewise unreported is the fact that Israel’s treatment of non-combatants
in a hostile populace is more consonant with international law than that
of many of its Arab neighbors. 119
Failure to Correct Misreported Facts
On December 20, 2007, the Washington Post published an article
headlined “For Israel’s Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion” by its Jerusalem
bureau chief, Scott Wilson, stating that Arabs other than Druze were
117. Id. Israel has made no effort to prevent Gaza from receiving electricity
from Egypt. Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions clearly does not outlaw acts
such as restriction of supplies to an enemy-controlled area.
118. Id. The United States legally froze trade with Iran after that country committed
an act of war against the USA during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Even prevention
of access of goods coming from third parties is not collective punishment:
the U.S. blockade of Cuba after it installed nuclear missiles was not a collective
punishment of the Cuban people, but a non-violent act of war in self-defense. Id.
119. See, e.g., U.S. Department of State, “2008 Human Rights Report: Israel and
the Occupied Territories” (Israel “generally respected the human rights of its citizens”),
available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/nea/119117.htm.

170 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
excluded from serving in the Israel Defense Forces. 120 A reader pointed out
that many Israeli Bedouins, who are Arab Muslims, have indeed been members
of the IDF, as have some Christian Arab volunteers. The reader asked
the newspaper’s foreign desk for a correction. The Post declined. Its
ombudsman, Deborah Howell, wrote an explanation in a column entitled,
“Was ‘Excluded’the Wrong Word?” 121
Reporting about Israel and the Middle East is an important but thankless
task; getting a Middle East reporting assignment means catching flak
from pro-Israel and pro-Arab groups who often see stories through their
own lenses. Although the Post had been informed that thousands of
Bedouin have served in the Israeli military as reconnaissance scouts and
trackers, the paper insisted only a few did so–as “spies.” Excluding
Bedouin (as somehow non-Arab and only “spies”), the Post asked that
Leibowitz “give . . . the name of one Arab.” She replied with the names of
three Israeli Arab soldiers killed in the line duty just since 2000, and
referred to five others. 122
C.A.M.E.R.A. subsequently published ads headlined “The Washington
Post Refuses to Correct Key Error on Israel” in the Washington Times and
the Washington Jewish Week. The ads noted that the Los Angeles Times
had corrected a similar error, and that other news media had reported the
matter accurately. In response, Ms. Howell acknowledged that the IDF does
have about 400 non-Druze Arabs “out of about 1.2 million Israeli Arabs,”
but still pointedly refused to print a correction. The Post’s ombudsman
concluded that “it would have been better if Wilson had qualified
‘excluded’ and mentioned the Bedouin.” 123
Yet the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, to
which the Post subscribes, requires journalists to “be accountable [and]
admit mistakes and correct them promptly.”
120. Washington Post, December 20, 2007, p. A1.
121. Eric Rozenman, Insisting on an Error: The Washington Post - Infallible, or
Just in Denial?, C.A.M.E.R.A., April 23, 2008.
122. Id.
123. The comparison between non-Druze/non-Bedouin Arab soldiers and Israeli
Arab society at large is inappropriate; the more relevant comparison would be
between the number of active non-Druze Arab soldiers and the entire standing
army–nearly 1,500 out of 170,000. Id.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 171
Non-Reporting of Events
The Landmark Case in France (“L’Affaire Enderlin”)
Perhaps the most noteworthy event to go virtually unreported was the
fallout from the al-Dura affair, particularly a landmark libel trial in
France. 124
In the case of Muhammad al-Dura, it was no surprise that Charles
Enderlin, the longtime Jerusalem correspondent for the state-run France 2
TV, who released the 59-second news report, appears to have hastily pieced
together sensational footage of the incident even though it had been supplied
by the channel’s regular Palestinian stringer. Given the nature of the
news business today, such haste might be explained as contemporary custom
of the trade. More disturbing, perhaps, was that Enderlin had not
sought to verify whose bullets had, in fact, killed the boy—if, indeed, the
event had not been staged (a possibility suggested shortly after the initial
news coverage). 125
In the ensuing eight years, the sympathetic figure of Muhammad al-
Dura cowering beside his distressed father became the defining image of
the second intifada, with photographs of the “child martyr” appearing on
posters, websites, postage stamps, and street signs throughout the Muslim
world.
Others, however, had their doubts. This was caused partly by Enderlin
and his superiors themselves, who flatly declined to provide the complete
twenty-seven minutes of footage taken that afternoon by the cameraman, or
to concede any possibility of error. It was two years before Enderlin
allowed himself to be interviewed, at which time he explained that he had
refused to provide the tape because he had wanted to protect his sources. In
fact, his decision had been supported by the French television hierarchy.
Moreover, his coverage of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (while regularly
criticized by pro-Israeli groups) was highly esteemed by his peers. 126
Several media watchdogs and bloggers, however, refused to let the
124. See Karsenty v. Enderlin, Court of Appeals of Paris, 11th Chamber, Section
A, available at http://www.debriefing.org/26492.html. See also supra notes 92-103
and accompanying text. The account that follows is adapted from Anne-Elisabeth
Moutet, “L’Affaire Enderlin,” The Weekly Standard, July 7, 2008. Ms. Moutet is a
political journalist based in Paris.
125. Even Israeli authorities at first took the French report at face value. See Bret
Stephens, “Eye on the Media: Department of Corrections,” Jerusalem Post, August
23, 2002.
126. To fully understand the scale of the journalistic failure here, it helps to keep
in mind that in France it is comparatively difficult to take responsibility for a mis-

172 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
story die, focusing specifically on the sources of inflammatory news and
video. It became clear that many, if not most, foreign correspondents covering
the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Israel relied on local stringers and
cameramen. Guidelines routinely endorsed by working journalists were
ignored, or honored in the breach–particularly the prohibition on staging
scenes for the benefit of photographers. 127
Among those who believed the entire al-Dura incident had been staged
was Richard Landes, a professor of medieval history at Boston University,
who compared the controversial al-Dura footage with photographs taken by
other cameramen on the scene that day. 128 Another was Philippe Karsenty,
a French Jew who spent several years publicizing what he called an “arrant
hoax” perpetrated by France 2. The television network sued Karsenty for
libel. A lower court found against him and ordered that he pay one euro in
damages to the plaintiffs, a fine of 1,000 euros, and another 3,000 euros in
costs. Karsenty appealed. The appellate court ordered France 2 to produce
evidence, in particular the infamous twenty-seven-minute unedited master
footage in the plaintiff’s possession–which not even Enderlin had seen
when he filed his report. (His Palestinian cameraman had sent him by
remote link about six minutes from which to make the segment.) France 2
eventually produced eighteen minutes of film. The judges called for the
rest. 129
That would prove to be the major turning point in the proceeding.
Karsenty was now able to come to court with a great deal of additional
documentation, including a ninety-page ballistics report. He was supported
by Luc Roxenzweig, the former chief editor of Le Monde, who was investigating
the evidence for the Egyptian-based Middle East News Agency
(MENA). Rosenzweig had persuaded France 2 to let him see the twentyseven
minutes of missing film. He described for MENA the scenes in the
tape that indicated purposeful staging just before the fatal shooting: “Palestinians
being carried on stretchers into ambulances, then coming out again
unharmed, all in a kind of carnival atmosphere, with kids throwing stones
and making faces at the camera, despite what was supposed to be a tense
situation.” Rosenzweig pointed out how the tape showed occasional gunshots,
not continuous firing. From the general horsing around captured on
take. To do so is considered to be, especially in cultural and academic circles, an
admission of weakness. Moutet, supra note 124.
127. Id.
128. Landes coined a word for Palestinian manipulation of the media: “Pallywood.”
See Ruthie Blum, “Framing the Debate,” Jerusalem Post, March 27,
2008, p. 13. See also the websites theaugeanstables.com and seconddraft.org.
129. Moutet, supra note 124.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 173
film by Abu Rahmeh, he concluded that the whole scene must have been
staged. 130
All those present at the original screening agreed that, while it was
impossible to determine precisely where the bullets had come from, it was
highly unlikely that they could have been fired from the Israeli garrison.
Further, what had been described as the child’s “unbearable agony” was
nowhere to be seen: a logical conclusion was that, rather than having been
edited out, it simply did not exist. 131
On May 21, 2008, the appellate court handed down its decision, noting
ruling. It noted “inexplicable inconsistencies and contradictions in the
explanations by Charles Enderlin” (whose appearance in court had been his
first sworn testimony in the matter). Judge Laurence Trebucq concluded
that Karsenty had not defamed France 2. On the contrary, the accumulated
evidence of multiple documentaries, articles, and books had proven that–in
the process of broadcasting a story that shocked and incited much of the
world–a veteran journalist, his cameraman, and a prestigious French media
institution had demonstrated gross dereliction and dishonesty. 132
The court had seen the un-broadcast footage from Netzarim Junction
showing Palestinian Arabs staging injuries, faking falls, and racing ambulances
to bogus rescues. It noted contradictions and omissions concerning
the Israeli military’s line of fire in relation to the al-Duras’ location, as well
as visible movement by the boy after he was pronounced dead. It questioned
the provenance of the injuries to the father, and the absence of blood
in the wake of ostensibly blistering gunfire. And it referred to Enderlin’s
repeated claim that he had cut the last seconds of footage of the boy’s death
to spare audiences from witnessing his final bloody “agony.” 133
The court concluded that Karsenty had acted in good faith as a media
commentator and that, although the hoax could not be definitively proven,
he had presented a “coherent body of evidence.” 134 Karsenty had won his
appeal, but the journalistic war was far from over. Despite the clarity and
definitiveness of the court’s ruling, the press rallied around Enderlin. In
less than a week, a petition on his behalf appeared in Le Nouvel
Observateur, a prominent French newsmagazine, which called Karsenty’s
130. See Backrounder: Muhammad al-Dura, C.A.M.E.R.A., available at http://
www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=855&x_context=3
131. Id.
132. Moutet, note 124.
133. “I edited out the child’s agony. It was unbearable. . .It would not have added
anything.”
See Andrea Levin, “The Silence of the Times,” Jerusalem Post, July 10, 2008.
134. Karsenty v. Enderlin, supra note 124.

174 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
exhaustively documented case a “seven-year hate-filled smear campaign”
aimed at destroying Enderlin’s “professional dignity.” It flatly declared that
Muhammad al-Dura had been killed “by shots coming from the Israeli position.”
It said that the court had granted “equal credibility to a journalist
renowned for his rigorous work, and to willful deniers ignorant of the local
realities and with no journalistic experience.” 135
The petition was signed by over 300 journalists. Among them was
Jonathan Randal, a 75-year-old former Washington Post foreign correspondent
based in Paris, who was quoted as saying he saw in this case a dangerous
American trend of “vindictive pressure groups interfering with news
organizations,” which had now unfortunately crossed the Atlantic:
Americans have been under the gun of such people for some time, but
France used to be free of this kind of thing. [These groups] are paranoid,
they’re persistent, they never give up, they sap the energy of good reporters.
I can’t imagine how much money France 2 has spent defending this
case. Charles Enderlin is an excellent journalist. I don’t care if it’s the
Virgin Birth affair, I would tend to believe him. Someone like Charles
simply doesn’t make a story up. 136
Similarly, Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte, two seasoned reporters
from Le Figaro, thought that Enderlin was still the best reporter currently in
the Near East. 137 Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist and expert on radical
Islam, was similarly dismissive of the criticism: “Guy sends him pictures
from Gaza, tells him the Israelis shot the kid, he believes him–I mean,
even the Israeli Defense Forces spokesman believed it?” 138
*
By virtually any traditional journalistic standards, this case was a
135. Moutet, supra note 124.
136. See Augean Stables, available at http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2008/08/
10/the-nouvel-obs-petition-signers-study-1-jon-randal/print/.
137. “These people, the ones attacking him, they’re extreme rightists . . . . You
can’t take anything they say seriously.” Moutet, supra note 124.
138. Id. And then there was Theo Klein, a former president of the official representative
body of French Jews, who that he was outraged by the court ruling. .
“Perhaps the bullets were not Israeli after all, but if something was set up, I’m sure
Charles had nothing to do with it. He is a remarkable journalist. I respect him, and
I’m sure this matters more than whether a bullet came from the right or from the
left. After all, many Palestinian children have been killed in the intifada. You
know, the Israelis haven’t made half the noise about this that some French Jews
have. Id.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 175
landmark decision that should have been reported and commented upon by
journalists and media lawyers around the world. Yet there was not a word
in any major American newspaper, including the New York Times—whose
masthead famously purports to publish “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”
(Ironically, when former Times executive director Abe Rosenthal was eulogized
two years earlier, he was lauded for his fierceness in confronting
entrenched institution–and for saying: “When something important is going
on, silence is a lie.”) 139
Was Karsenty’s stunning victory–in a case in which he had accused
Enderlin, a renowned journalist, of having aided and abetted the airing of “a
faked death,” a “hoax,” and a “fraud”–not worthy of publication? Was it
not worth an editorial about the global “anger and hate” sown by Enderlin
and his cameraman, in spawning the false, incendiary allegations in the al-
Dura case against Israel? Was it not “news that’s fit to print”? 140
The Times was not alone in ignoring Karsenty’s victory for free media
criticism, in what has been termed a blood libel against the state of Israel.
The mainstream media in France and elsewhere were conspicuously silent.
There was nothing in Le Soir, Le Monde, or Figaro, nor was there any
report on French television. ABC ran a short (190-word) story from
Reuters, but it was not even mentioned on FOX, CNN, or MSNBC, or in
the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles
Times. 141
The Wall Street Journal did comment in passing that it is “hard to
exaggerate the significance” of the court decision that “called the [al-Dura]
story into doubt.” 142
Antisemitic Incidents
Antisemitic incidents occur with such regularity in France today that it
might be understandable that not every one of them is widely reported.
Those that elicit comments from the government, however, should not
escape notice.
In June of 2008, a boy of seventeen named Rudy Haddad was walking
in a larger Jewish arondissement in Paris, wearing a skullcap, when he was
set upon by 15-30 “African immigrants” and beaten brutally. Although
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters that he was “particularly
139. See Editorial, “Abe Rosenthal of the Times,” New York Times, May 12,
2006, p. 32.
140. See Levin, supra note 133.
141. Id.
142. Editorial, Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2008.

176 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
shocked by what happened to a young French boy, on the pretext that he
was wearing a kipah” and various representatives of the French Jewish
community denounced the crime as antisemitic, other French officials
declined to characterize the incident as antisemitic. The case was ignored
by much of the media. 143
Palestinian Textbooks
Similarly, few Americans or Europeans are aware of the pervasive
anti-Israel propaganda to be found in Palestinian textbooks. Their ignorance
may be attributed at least in part to the paucity of coverage by major
elements of the Western press. Related stories, such as the fact that Arab
maps do not show Israel, are likewise unreported. Nor is there much comment
about the fact that young Arab students are fed a constant diet of anti-
Western propaganda, such as the heroic deeds of former Egyptian president
Gamal Abdel Nasser. No mention is made of Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day
War or of Nasser’s repressive rule. Palestinian youngsters are taught
instead that “the Jews are wickedness in its very essence.” 144
Maltreatment of Journalists
One might expect that the jailing of a fellow journalist for expressing
an opinion would receive ample media coverage–but that has not been the
case for Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, the Bangladeshi Muslim editor of
the Weekly Blitz, an English-language newspaper published in the capital
city of Dhaka. Choudhury had written critically about the rise of radical
Islamists in Bangladesh, urged the establishment of diplomatic relations
with Israel, and advocated interfaith dialogue based on religious equality.
143. Phyllis Chesler, Young Jewish Boy Savagely Beaten in Paris, Chesler
Chronicles - Pajamas Media, June 25, 2008. The paucity of media coverage was
similar to that in January of 2006, when a young Jewish boy named Ilan Halimi
was brutally tortured for three full weeks in Paris by gangs of African-Muslim
immigrants. The media did not describe them as “Muslims” but rather as “youth,”
“militants,” “gang-members,” “immigrants,” and “immigrants from Africa.” Some
neighbors took turns and joined in torturing Halimi; others heard his screams and
did nothing; some just watched. Halimi died a month later. Id. See also Bernard
Edinger, “Unsafe in the 19th,” Jerusalem Post, October 13, 2008, p. 24.
144. The Washington Post did carry an op-ed by a Harvard student about a textbook
called Al-Kitaab, which is used in beginner’s courses in Arabic at Harvard
and other American universities. The DVD that comes with Al-Kitaab includes
footage of Nasser’s mass rallies in Cairo, including slogans in Arabic and French
such as “Brother Nations in Struggle, We Are By Your Side.” Joel B. Pollak,
“Teaching Arabic and Propaganda [on Al-Kitaab],” Washington Post, July 5, 2008.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 177
He was arrested in November 2003 at Dhaka’s international airport just
prior to boarding a flight to the Holy Land, where he had been scheduled to
deliver an address on promoting understanding between Muslims and Jews.
Bangladesh does not recognize that Israel–Choudhury’s visit there would
have been the first by a Bangladeshi journalist–and authorities charged him
with anti-Islamic activity. 145
According to witnesses, the police ordered all employees out of the
newspaper’s offices, ransacked the premises, and interrogated Choudhury
without allowing him any communication with friends, family, or legal
counsel. He was repeatedly called a “Zionist spy and agent of the Jews.”
His protestations that this harassment was contrary to an understanding
between Bangladesh and the United States (which the Bangaldeshi government
had said it would honor) were ignored. For the next seventeen
months, he was held in prison, during which time he was tortured. 146
Choudhury was finally released after an intense campaign for his freedom
by Richard Benkin, an American activist from Chicago, who had solicited
the support of Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL). But he still faced charges that
included blasphemy, sedition, and espionage. For the past five years, he has
been subjected to various other forms of intimidation and harassment. (Two
years ago, the offices of his newspaper were the target of an attempted
bombing by unknown assailants.) 147
In 2005 the writers’ group PEN USA presented him with its “Freedom
to Write” Award “in recognition of his commitment to courageous journalism
under extreme adversity.” A year later the American Jewish Committee
gave him its Moral Courage Award. (The Bangladesh government
prohibited him from traveling to the United States to receive the honor.) 148
In August of 2008, after many delays, Choudhury’s trial began. He
had been accused of anti-Islamic activity for having “praised Jews and
Christians.” If convicted, he could be sentenced to death. 149
With but few exceptions, the story of Shoaib Choudhury has been
almost totally ignored by the Western press. 150 The reasons for this failure
145. Anti-Islamist Muslim Journalist Taken by Para-military Goons, http://
www.stephengill.ca/shoaibArrestedAgain.htm.
146. Id.
147. Id.
148. Presentation of Moral Courage Award to Shoaib Choudhury, http://www.
ajc.org/site/c.ijITI2PHKoG/b.1661861/k.BBCF/Presentation_of_the_Moral_Courage_Award_to_Shoaib_Choudhury.htm.
149. Michael Freund, “Pro-Israel Editor Goes on Trial in Bangladesh,” Jerusalem
Post, Aug. 8, 2008.
150. The few exceptions have been editorials mentioning Choudhury in the Wall
Street Journal, the Washington Times, and the now defunct New York Sun. See

178 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
to report are unclear, although the theory advanced by Benkin–that the
absence of coverage is a direct result of Choudhury’s pro-Israel slant–has
not been challenged. 151
Other Unreported Events
Other newsworthy events in the Middle East that have gone virtually
unreported include:
• The recent challenge in the United States Senate to an aid bill for
Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-
KY) questioned the wisdom of giving $75 million to Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza when there was no end in sight to their
violent confrontation with Israel. He noted that in Egypt, “government-sponsored
newspapers support Adolf Hitler and incite violence
against Jews and Israel. Is this kind of relationship worth the
request of $2 billion:” 152
• The U.S. State Department continues to offer rewards for the capture
of the Palestinian terrorists who have killed eighteen American
citizens and wounded many more in Israel, the West Bank, and
Gaza. No American newspaper has mentioned these rewards in
either editorial or news columns–or, in fact, that the State Department
itself has not publicized them. 153
• Former President Bush’s decision at the end of May 2005 to postpone
once again moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv
to the capital, Jerusalem–despite his explicit campaign promise that
he would begin the process of doing just that “the first day that I
am in office”–escaped any editorial notice. 154
The Arab View
Evaluating Different Perspectives
“Violence and terrorism,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
also Daya Gamage, “Wall Street Journal Urges Bush Administration to Protect
Bangladesh Journalist Choudhury From Persecution,” Asian Tribune, Oct. 12,
2006.
151. Telephone conversation with Richard Benkin, August 11, 2008.
152. Only one American newspaper (the Tulsa World) reported Sen. McConnell’s
remarks. Id.
153. Id.
154. Id.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 179
once said, “lead to a distortion of the truth.” 155 But both truth and perception
depend largely on the beholder. Although the views of Western media
held by Arab-American journalists are sharply different, they are mostly
negative.
In November of 2000, two months after the beginning of what has
come to be known as the “al-Aqsa intifada,” the Washington Association of
Arab Journalists convened a symposium to discuss how the U.S. media
were covering events in the Middle East. The young journalists in the audience
from Gaza and the West Bank felt “that the coverage had been
terrible.” 156
Especially resented was a USA Today report that Palestinian ambulances
had been observed delivering stones and fighters to the front lines,
and ambulance drivers initiating some of the shooting. But that was what
her reporter saw, said senior foreign affairs editor Barbara Slavin. She
added her view that no single story or television segment can present the
full history of the conflict and hope to do it justice, given the time constraints
and intensity of emotions on both sides. 157
Ms. Slavin was quickly challenged by the Arab-American journalists
on the panel. Hisham Melhem, the Washington-based correspondent for
several Middle East dailies, said that “many reporters covering the intifada
have allowed the Israelis to frame and conceptualize the issues, giving them
their own words, their own definitions, their own terminologies, their own
paradigms.” He asked why the Western media referred to Israeli soldiers in
the territories as “security forces” instead of “occupation forces.” He wondered
why words like “lynching” and “murder” and “barbaric” and “brutal”
were used to describe the scene in Ramallah (where the IDF reservists had
been murdered), 158 but no such words were used to describe “the Palestinians
who were killed and tortured by settlers.” He said, “You talk of Palestinian
mobs, but you rarely see any reference to Israeli settlers who do their
usual rampaging and acts of violence.” 159
When another panelist, John Alterman of the U.S. Institute of Peace,
offered his opinion that “fairness” doesn’t always mean giving equal weight
to all positions in a conflict, he was assailed by Hussein Ibish, the communications
director for the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee.
“There is a military occupation in place, a belligerent military occupa-
155. “Netanyahu Condemns Bombing,” AAP Newsfeed, August 10, 2001.
156. Symposium by the Washington Association of Arab Journalists, Federal
News Service, November 21, 2000.
157. Id.
158. See supra notes 96-97 and accompanying text.
159. Id.

180 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
tion. . . . The American press . . . does not recognize the occupation, and
balance is not enough. . . . We need fundamental commitment to honesty.”
Mr. Ibish also challenged the report of a bombing of a school bus in Israel:
“Well, it wasn’t in Israel. It was in occupied Gaza.” He decried what he
called the “outright hate speech against Palestinians” in the American
media. 160
The facts, however, appear to suggest otherwise.
In March of 2009, an Israeli-Arab journalist named Khaled Abu
Toameh toured American campuses to describe his experiences as a
reporter threatened for doing his job. 161 He was surprised by the responses
he met; he recalled, “Listening to some students and professors on these
campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman
or a would-be-suicide bomber.” 162 Toameh was told, for example, that
Israel had no right to exist; that its “apartheid system” is worse than the one
that existed in South Africa; that its Operation Cast Lead (December 2008-
January 2009) was launched not because of the rockets that the Islamic
movement had launched at southern Israeli communities, but because
Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace;
that talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist
propaganda”; and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people,
including the establishment of schools, hospitals, and universities. 163
On one campus Toameh was called a “mouthpiece for the Zionists”
because he had said that Israel has a free press. On another, posters promoting
his appearance were defaced by swastikas. Toameh noted:
What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the
people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had
the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children
and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem. I never imagined that I
would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I
have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone
shouted abuse at me. 164
160. Id.
161. See Khaled Abu Toameh, Telling the Truth About the Palestinians, available
at http://www.meforum.org/604/telling-the-truth-about-the-palestinians.
162. Khaled Abu Toameh, On Campus: The Pro-Palestinians’ Real Agenda,
Hudson Institute (New York), March 29, 2009, available at http://brumspeak.blogspot.com/search?q=toameh
163. Id.
164. Id.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 181
According to Toameh, in the Oslo Years Arafat didn’t build one housing
unit for refugees, one road, one university or college, one hospital or
clinic–he only managed to build a casino in Jericho (right across from a
refugee camp).
At various times during the intifada Palestinians have claimed that
Israel was strangling them by cutting off electricity to the Gaza Strip–a
charge widely reported in the world’s media and supported by photographs,
despite evidence to the contrary. 165 Toameh was one of few Arab journalists
who reported that Hamas staged blackouts to support their claims. He
said that he was frequently placed in life-threatening situations by Yasir
Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA). He noted that at least twelve Palestinian
journalists had been attacked by masked men in a four-month period in
early 2004 in what appeared to be an organized campaign to intimidate the
media. He told about a photographer working for Agence France-Presse
who had his arms broken by a masked man in Ramallah. He observed,
“Agence France-Presse did not do anything about this attack, but a great
outcry is raised when Israeli soldiers allegedly harass journalists in the
territories.” 166
While a student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Toameh
worked for the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s official newspaper Al
Fajr (“The Dawn”). There he saw firsthand the lack of journalistic freedom
in Gaza. Later he was censured for his outspoken and critical views of the
Palestinian media, 167
A controlled empirical study by Yariv Tsfati concluded that hostile
Arab perceptions of Israel were generated and nurtured by negative Palestinian
media. Exposure to mainstream Israeli media, on the other hand, did
not yield such a response. 168
Opposing Perceptions
The view propounded in this article–that the media often reflect subtle
and overt biases against Israel–is by no means universal. Various observers
suggest quite the opposite–that to ascertain the facts about what goes on in
165. See, e.g., Andy Soltis, “It Was Obvious the Whole Thing Was Staged,” New
York Post, Jan. 30, 2008, p. 25.
166. Khaled Abu Toameh, “Hamas Staged Some ‘Blackouts,’ Palestinian Journalists
Admit,” Jerusalem Post, Jan. 24, 2008.
167. Khaled Abu Toameh, Telling the Truth About the Palestinians, supra note
151.
168. Yariv Safati, “Hostile Media Perceptions, Presumed Media Influence, and
Minority Alienation: The Case of Arabs in Israel,” Journal of Communication 57
(2007).

182 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
Gaza, one should look at the Palestine News Network and Al Jazeera. 169
Readers, of course, must be able to judge credibility for themselves.
For example, a Palestinian-American (in the course of accusing American
media of being too pro-Israel) recently told Fox News that the al-Qaeda
organization should be regarded as no more than a “nuisance” that serves
the interests of Israel. The author of that statement is Neal AbuNab, whose
book The War on Terrorism and Democracy proclaims that “the road to
stability and peace in the Middle East starts with ending the occupation of
Iraq and Palestine.” 170
Greg Philo, a professor at Glasgow University, is the author of a book
entitled Bad News From Israel, which seeks to reveal how television viewers
in the UK have fallen victim to a dominant bias in favor of Israel, particularly
by the BBC. 171 The authors draw upon the writings of Avi Shlaim,
an Israeli historian who accuses Israel and Jordan of collaborating to prevent
the establishment of a Palestinian state, and whose work has been discredited
by scholars. 172
According to Palestine Media Watch, Palestinian newspapers often
publish heavily biased anti-American and anti-Israel articles. The attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September of 2001 were characterized
as an “earthquake” (implying they were a natural disaster) that
caused Americans to “revise their thinking about foreign policy and . . .
take a realistic look at what is happening on the planet. They view themselves
as its master, but actually they have discovered that there has been a
huge build-up of hatred against them.” 173 In 2002, political cartoons
depicted George Bush and Tony Blair as Nazis and portrayed the U.S. “War
169. See, e.g., http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2008/12/press-coverage.php.
170. AbuNab contributes to the Arab American News, based in Detroit, Michigan.
He also provides assistance to news reporters covering Middle East stories.
See Cliff Kincaid, “Pro-Israel Media Bias,” Media Monitor (2006, Sept. 13), available
at http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/pro-israel-media-bias/.
171. Greg Philo and Mike Berry, Bad News from Israel, Glasgow University
Media Group, reviewed in Palestineonlinestore.com, available at http://
www.palestineonlinestore.com/books/badnews.htm. (“Every journalist should read
this book; every student of journalism ought to be assigned it,” writes filmmaker
John Pilger. Id.) This conclusion appears to be supported by Leon Barkho, “The
BBC’s Discursive Strategy and Practices Vis-à-Vis the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,”
Journalism Studies 9, no. 2 (2008): 279, which concludes that the BBC’s
choice of language favors Israel.
172. See http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=12&x_article
=811.
173. Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, October 3, 2001.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 183
on Terror” as a cover for American policy aimed at controlling Arab oil. 174
If Americans Knew is a website that claims to expound the true history
of Palestine (expulsion of the Arabs), to document Israeli abuses of human
rights (including strip searches and human organ trafficking), and to analyze
the media coverage of “Israel/Palestine” (pro-Israel “deadly distortions”
by the Associated Press, the major American networks, and National
Public Radio). 175 The website is characterized by harsh anti-Israeli charges
that parrot long-discredited claims such as that Israel attacks Palestinians
with “mysterious poison gas,” call Israel an “apartheid nation,” describe
Palestinian violence as a “legitimate right and . . . moral duty,” and refer to
the founding of Israel as the start of a “holocaust.” 176
It is important to recognize that any analysis of media bias should
evaluate both reporters and protagonists in conflict, as well as measure
them against coverage by other media. 177
Responses from the Media
David Hoffman, the Washington Post’s assistant managing editor for
foreign news, has claimed that C.AM.E.R.A. “is an interest group which
lobbies for one point of view”–by which he meant pro-Israel news coverage.
Hoffman asserted that “if we covered the conflict as they
[C.A.M.E.R.A.] demanded, we would indeed be biased.” 178
National Public Radio host Robert Siegel responded with similar anger
to criticism of his coverage in a column by C.A.M.E.R.A.’s executive director
Andrea Levin that ran in the Jerusalem Post:
My sin is evidently acknowledging both the Palestinian and Israeli views
of the security barrier. To summarize my comments as she did is an
example of editing that is unworthy of a serious journalist. . . . Ms. Levin
is entitled to her opinions and to refrain from supporting public radio. She
is not entitled to publish defamatory lies about other people’s work in the
174. “WTC ‘Earthquake’ Shakes American Arrogance,” Palestine Media Watch,
available at http://www.pmw.org.il/.
175. See website If Americans Knew (What Every American Needs to Know
About Israel/Palestine), available at http://www.ifamericansknew.org/.
176. See “Study of New York Times Coverage Severely Flawed,” C.A.M.E.R.A.,
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_article=896&x_context=2
177. Barkho, supra note 171 at 279.
178. Eric Rozenman, WASHINGTON POST-WATCH: Freudian Projection at the
Washington Post, C.A.M.E.R.A., July 11, 2008. C.A.M.E.R.A. invited Hoffman to
supply examples of its seeking “point of view” reporting rather than accurate coverage.
None were forthcoming. Id.

184 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
name of “accuracy.” 179
In a lengthy exchange, Levin and Siegel took issue with various statements
made by each. Prominent among them were comments about Israel’s
“security fence.” Siegel had reported, “Around Gaza, there’s a fence and
there has been for several years, and the Israelis link their confidence and
disengagement to the presence of these barriers which they hope will limit
the possibility of people getting into Israel to commit violent acts.” 180
Levin responded in kind:
This is indicative of Siegel-talk. It tilts, dodges and omits. The Israelis
don’t merely “hope” the barriers will “limit the possibility” of attacks.
The fences have proven their effectiveness. As is well-known, the Gaza
fence has been highly successful in containing infiltrators from that area,
and even the partially constructed fence in the West Bank is credited with
helping to radically reduce terrorist penetrations into Israel. This is also
well-known. Why the obfuscation on an entirely clear cut point? Again,
for Israelis the fence has had an important, life-saving, beneficial impact,
but the Palestinians despise the structure. Siegel skews to the latter. 181
An academic case study of the Philadelphia Inquirer undertaken to
evaluate charges of anti-Israel bias found that the paper’s Mideast coverage
was generally balanced, in that both parties had a roughly equal percentage
of positive, neutral, and negative coverage. 182
In the absence of other legal remedies or sanctions for misleading
news and opinion, readers must rely on the integrity of journalists to abide
by their own ethical standards requiring fairness and balance.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The communications media play a central role in reporting and commenting
upon fast-moving events in the Middle East, even influencing the
occurrence and evolution of the events themselves. Thus they must be both
179. Id.
180. NPR’s Robert Siegel Reacts (Badly) to Bias Charge, C.A.M.E.R.A., April
12, 2005, available at http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=
28&x_article=880.
181. NPR’s Robert Siegel Reacts (Badly) to Bias Charge, C.A.M.E.R.A., April
12, 2005, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context’4&x_outlet’28&x
_article’880
182. H. Denis Wu, Judith Sylvester, and John Maxwell Hamilton, “Newspaper
Provides Balance in Palestinian/Israeli Reports,” Newspaper Research Journal 23
no. 2/3 (Spring 2002): 6.

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 185
countenanced and held accountable–especially in a democracy, where they
are accorded freedom and a great deal of latitude.
But editorial choices–of words, photographs, stories to cover, placement,
emphases–do matter. Reporters, editors, and publishers should at
once bear responsibility and exercise transparency. They should not hesitate
to apply the terms “terrorist,” “militant,” “settlements,” “occupancy,”
and “equivalency” fairly and in context. Newspapers ought to post on their
websites their sources and methodology for delivering information (similar
to the way that medical articles are supported by data and methodology).
All media should be subject to regular appraisals and evaluations.
While it may be difficult if not impossible to achieve total objectivity
in reporting the news, a sense of balance and fairness should be attainable.
Fairness does not mean avoiding giving offense to any party; it means
fairly–accurately–covering the substance of the news. Likewise, balance
does not mean a mandatory numerical equality of sources from each side,
but rather relying on relevant, authoritative sources to convey a balanced
view of the issues at hand. The same should be true of editorial comment.
Opinion worth publishing should be well-informed opinion. All reputable
journals and their contributors should abide by the standards that they themselves
promulgate. It is incumbent upon everyone in a free society to insist
that these standards be recognized, maintained, and met.

When Fairy Tales Kill
Steven K. Baum*
The author examines the link between social fantasies of Jews and
antisemitic attacks over the past millennia. He concludes that hundreds of
thousands of Jews have been killed largely based on social fantasy,
superstition, and legend.
When we first heard of the political myths, we found them so absurd and
incongruous, so fantastic and ludicrous, that we could hardly be prevailed
upon to take them seriously. By the end of the war, however, it had
become clear to all of us that this was a great mistake. . . The mythical
monsters were not entirely destroyed. They were used for the creation of
a new universe and they still survive in this universe.
— Ernst Cassirer, philosopher
Historian Ian Kershaw once said that the road to Auschwitz was paved
with indifference. That indifference may have reflected the community’s
negative feelings toward Jews. Such negative feelings may initially be
based on fantasy, but soon become all too real to those given to such fantasy
(Baum 2008). The transition from antisemitic fantasy to antisemitic act
may be an easy leap. Romanian researcher Andrei Oi¸steanu (2009, 4) likens
it to a ratio: “The greater the gap between the real Jew and the imaginary
Jew, the greater was popular Judeophobia.”
Freudians such as Bruno Bettelheim believed that folk tales prepared
children for maturation, but rarely mentioned the politics inherent in ethnic
tall tales. Among religious/ethnic groups, Jews were overly represented in
negative terms. The forms of legend varied, but made their way into Mother
Goose poems. Up until the 1930s, children could read Jack and the Beanstalk
with the following passage (Burnstein 1959).
* Steven K. Baum is a clinical psychologist who lives in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. He is co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.
Note: I would like to thank Steven L. Jacobs, Paul Bartop, Günther Jikeli, and
Frederick Schweitzer for their critiques. Additionally, I wish to note that I use
myth and legend interchangeably at times due to the fantasy aspect of both terms.
187

188 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:187
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack sold his gold egg
To a rogue of a Jew,
Who cheated him out of
The half of his due.
Then Jack went a-courting
A lady so gay,
As fair as the lily,
And sweet as the May.
The Jew and the Squire
Then came at his back,
And began to belabor
The sides of poor Jack.
They threw the gold egg
In the midst of the sea;
But Jack he jumped in,
And got it back presently.
The Jew got the goose,
Which he vowed he would kill,
Resolving at once
His pockets to fill.
Jack’s mother came in,
And caught the goose soon,
And, mounting its back,
Flew up to the moon.
(Mother Goose and the Golden Egg, J. Wrigley, c1830).
Exactly how antisemitic legend evolves remains uncertain, but the
gathering of folklore seems to be key. Traveling from village to village in
Germany, two attorney brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, began to
record multiple tales in what may have been the first marchen compilation
of its kind. Whether they were intentionally or unintentionally antisemitic is
not known. Jacob Grimm voted for Jewish emancipation. Critics say that

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 189
the Grimms’ stories reflect the folk beliefs of the times. Yet the Grimms’
efforts may have single-handedly transported antisemitic folktales into the
nineteenth century.
“Legend telling is often a fundamentally political act,” observes folklorist
Bill Ellis (1991, xiv). Kamenetsky (1992) observed that the Grimms
enhanced the lore to better reflect German values and social mores and
character, particularly emphasizing ordung, fleiss, and sparsamkeit (order,
diligence, and thriftiness) (Lipson 2001). Violence was not unknown, and in
general, themes favored poverty over wealth, peasant wisdom over sophisticated
outsiders. Conversely, all things non-German were lampooned,
degraded, or viewed as suspect (Zipes 2002). Consistent with the social
narrative of the times, Jews were portrayed as a negative, undermining
force. Six of the Grimm Brothers fables appear below.
The Good Cloth
A Jewish trader buys a magic cloth from a girl. Anything wrapped in the
cloth will turn to gold. He enters the scene with a street cry such as could
be heard in any town. “Fine new cloths fore sale or exchange against the
old ones, come and see my wares!” Then the Jew turns into a dog, the
two girls become hens, the hens turn into people once more and batter the
dog to death.
Judel, the Jew Ghost
If the Judel won’t let the children sleep, give him something to play with.
When children laugh in their sleep, or open and turn their eyes, we say
the Judel plays with them. Buy without bearing down the price asked, a
new little pot, pour into it out of the child’s bath and set it in the oven: in
a few days the Judel will have sucked every drop out. Sometimes eggshells,
out of which the yolk has been blown into the child’s pap and the
mother’s caudle, are hung on the cradle by a thread, for the Judel to play
with instead of with the child . . .in a lying-in room lay a straw out of the
women’s bed at every door, and neither ghost nor Judel can get in. . .
when cows growl in the night, the Judel is playing with them.
The Sun Will Bring It to Light—abridged
A tailor’s apprentice was traveling about the world in search of work, and
at one time he could find none, and his poverty was so great that he had
not a farthing to live on. Presently he met a Jew on the road, and as he
thought he would have a great deal of money about him, the tailor thrust
God out of his heart, fell on the Jew, and said, give me your money, or I
will strike you dead. Then said the Jew, grant me my life, I have no
money but eight farthings. But the tailor said, money you have, and it
shall be produced, and used violence and beat him until he was near
death. And when the Jew was dying, the last words he said were, the
bright sun will bring it to light, and thereupon he died. . . . but before

190 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:187
three days were over, the whole town knew it, and the tailor was brought
to trial, and condemned. And thus, after all, the bright sun did bring it to
light.
Jew in the Bush—abridged
Soon afterward he met a Jew with a long goatee, who was standing listening
to a bird singing high up in the top of a tree. “Rogue,” he said to
the Jew, “Go and fetch the bird out for yourself.” “My goodness,” said
the Jew, “don’t call me a rogue, sir, but I will be the dog and get the bird
out for you myself. After all, you’re the one who shot it.” Then he lay
down on the ground and began crawling into the thicket. When he was in
the middle of the thorns, the good servant could not resist the temptation
to pick up his fiddle and begin to play. The Jew’s legs immediately began
to move, and he jumped up. The more the servant fiddled the better went
the dance. However, the thorns ripped apart the Jew’s shabby coat,
combed his beard, and pricked and pinched him all over his body. “My
goodness,” cried the Jew, “what do I want with your fiddling? Stop playing,
sir. I don’t want to dance.” But the servant did not listen to him, and
thought, “You have fleeced people often enough, and now the thorn
hedge shall do the same to you.” He began to play all over again, so that
the Jew had to jump even higher, leaving scraps from his coat hanging on
the thorns. “Oh, woe is me!” cried the Jew. “I will give the gentleman
anything he asks, if only he quits fiddling, even a purse filled with gold.”
“If you are so generous,” said the servant, “then I will stop my music. But
I must praise the singular way that you dance to it.” Then he took his
purse and went on his way. The good servant listened to this, then took
his fiddle, hung it around his neck again, and climbed down the ladder.
He went up to the Jew, who was lying upon the ground gasping for air,
and said, “You rogue, now confess where you got the money, or I will
take my fiddle off my neck and begin to play again.” “I stole it. I stole it,”
he cried. “But you have honestly earned it.” With that the judge had the
Jew led to the gallows and hanged as a thief. (See Bottigheimer 1987 and
works by popular cartoonist Wilhelm Busch.)
The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews
In the year 1267 in Pforzheim, an old woman, driven by greed, sold an
innocent seven-year-old girl to the Jews. The Jews gagged her to keep her
from crying out, cut open her veins, and surrounded her in order to catch
her blood with cloths. The child soon died from the torture, and they
weighted her down with stones and threw her into the Enz River. A few
days later little Margaret reached her little hand above the streaming
water. A number of people, including the Margrave himself, soon assembled.
Some boatmen succeeded in pulling the child out of the water. She
was still alive, but as soon as she had called for vengeance against her
murderers, she died. Suspicion fell upon the Jews, and they were all summoned
to appear. As they approached the corpse, blood began to stream
from its open wounds. The Jews and the old woman confessed the evil

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 191
deed and were executed. The child’s coffin, with an inscription, stands
next to the bell rope near the entrance to the palace church at Pforzheim.
Children of the members of the boatmen’s guild unanimously pass the
legend from generation to generation that at that time the Margrave
rewarded their ancestors by freeing them from sentry duty in the city of
Pforzheim “as long as the sun and the moon continue to shine.” At the
same time they were given the right to be represented by twenty-four
boatmen, carrying arms and musical instruments, who parade and stand
watch over the city every year at the Carnival celebration. This privilege
applies even to this day.
The Good Bargain—abridged
A peasant had driven his cow to the fair and sold her for seven talers.
After that he went to an inn and counted out his money. The Jew had
crept after him and heard him muttering to himself, “That rascal of a king
has cheated me after all. If he himself had given me the money, then I
would know how much I have. Now how can I know if what I had the
luck to put into my pockets is right?” “God forbid,” said the Jew to himself,
“he is speaking disrespectfully of his majesty. I will run and report
him, and then I shall get a reward, and furthermore he will be punished.”
When the king heard what the peasant had said he fell into a rage, and
ordered the Jew to go and bring the offender to him. The Jew ran to the
peasant and said, “You are to go to his majesty the king at once, and just
as you are.” “I know better than that what is right,” answered the peasant.
“First let me have a new coat made for myself. Do you think that a man
with so much money in his pockets should go before the king in this
tattered old coat?” The Jew, seeing that the peasant could not be moved
without another coat, and fearing that if the king’s anger cooled, he himself
would lose his reward, and the peasant his punishment, said, “Out of
pure friendship I will lend you a handsome coat for a little while. What
people will not do for love!” The peasant was satisfied with this, put on
the Jew’s coat, and went off with him. The king confronted the peasant
with the evil things the Jew had accused him of saying. “Oh,” said the
peasant, “what a Jew says is always a lie. No true word ever comes out of
his mouth. That rascal there is even capable of claiming that I have his
coat on.” “What are you saying?” shouted the Jew. “Is that coat not
mine? Did I not lend it to you out of pure friendship, so that you could
appear before his majesty the king?” When the king heard this, he said,
“For sure the Jew has deceived one of us, either myself or the peasant.”
And once again he had the Jew paid out in hard talers. The peasant, however,
went home wearing the good coat and with the good money in his
pockets, saying to himself, “This time I made it.”
Theologian Paul Tillich used to say, never say something is only a myth;
say that it is nothing less than a myth. The imaginary Jews’ reputation was
always such an electric topic that if you lived in Romania at the turn of the
century, you probably knew the following tale.

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In Suceava, there was an old hag, a Jewess who sold devils. A man went
to buy and was shown one in the guise of a big snake and she wanted to
know whether the buyer was afraid. He said no. The Jewess turned him
into a frog and when it opened one fierce mouth at him, the man fled and
was cured of all his need of it. (Oi¸steanu 2009, 316)
The Nazis understood the power of myth to control and direct the
peasantry. As they seized power in 1933, a call went out to ban what they
termed folk-alien literature. Folk-alien tales were to be replaced with
“heroic literature”—Nordic myths and legends that depicted German racial
superiority, as in The Strongest One Always Wins. As a means of instilling
ideology, the revamped folktale was so important that teams of writers
would spend countless hours revamping the Nazi agenda to fit with fairy
tales and fables (Dow and Lixfeld 1994; Kamenetsky 1972, 1979; Mieder
1997; Proud 1997). Wolfgang Mieder (1982) further demonstrated the great
lengths Nazis went to in order to write out any references to Jews as part of
the bauernstand and update them as more alien. Censors would quickly
delete any references to pacifism, altruism, or peasant stupidity. The peasant
was upgraded to warrior status (Kamenetsky 1992). By 1938, the Workshop
for German Folklore had developed a bibliography that acted as a
guide for educators and leaders of Hitler Youth. Folklore—especially fairy
tales, legends, jokes, and proverbs—was to prove that the healthy volk
mind had long recognized the Jew’s negative qualities. Examining the Nazi
propaganda themes led historian Norman Cohn to conclude that “the drive
to exterminate Jews sprang from a quasi-demonological superstition”
(1996, xii). Then it was only a matter of spreading the superstition. Such
“inherited folk memory viewed Jews as evil children of Satan” (Perry and
Schweitzer 2002, 260; also see Perry and Schweitzer 2007), and blame was
correctly placed on the clergy; but it was more than that. Folklore and social
fantasy turned out to be natural transmitters of antisemitism, and people
were always hungry for a good tale and morality play.
What a creature is the Jew. Not even his own women he likes.
To share himself a German wife He thinks just cute. You bet your life!
Look at Jew and girl right here: ‘Tis sure he can’t be thought her peer!
Compare him with this German Frau. He cuts a pitiable figure now!
I would the Jew had sense to own. He’d best leave German girls alone.
Try his own “kalle” instead.
—From Bauer’s Don’t Trust a Fox in a Green Meadow or the Word of a Jew

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 193
From Bauer’s Don’t Trust a Fox in a Green Meadow or
the Word of a Jew
Traits of the Imaginary Jew
The so-called traits of The Jew are not consistent throughout history,
though they carry on the theme of undermining force. Gilman observes that
it was not until the eighteenth century that Jewish men were portrayed in art
with large noses; before that, none appeared. In general, the Jew’s body was
considered weak and impure, physically suspect and offensive (Hitler as
cited in Gilman 1991).
Dogs were said to howl and bark excitedly when a Jew approached.
More primal and ape-like, as well as decrepit, The Jew’s body was “small,
black, and hairy all over; his back is bent, his feet are flat; his eyes squint,
and his lips smack; he has an evil smell, is promiscuous, and loves to
deflower, impregnate, and infect blond girls” (Hitler 1923).
Jewish men were feminized. In 1648, Thomas Calvert reported that
Jewish men as well as females were capable of curso menstruo sanguinis
(menstruation) and that Jewish men were capable of breast-feeding (Shapiro
1997). In fin de siecle Vienna, the clitoris was termed “the jew,” and masturbation
was known as “fiddling the Jew.” Jewish women also were said to
deliver children sideways, similar to pigs.
The alleged Jewish traits appear to have evolved from a fusing of supposed
character traits and suspicious cultural practices as depicted in “The
Imprisoned Jew at Magdeburg” (also known as “The Jew of Tewkesbury”).
A Jew fell into a privy (toilet) on a Saturday. Because it was the Sabbath,
the Jews would not pull him out, nor would they allow Christians to do
so, because the Jew would have had to help by grabbing hold with his
hands. The Bishop was so outraged by this superstition that the following
day, Sunday—the Christian Sabbath, he decreed that the Jews would

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have to keep the Christian Sabbath as well. Thus the poor fool had to
spend two days and two nights stuck in a privy.
Key Antisemitic Legends
Antisemitic legends are not random. They have in common the idea of
Jew as underminer or betrayer. In that sense, the actions of “The Jew” are
Judas-like, directly implicating Jews in the deicide. The notions of the Wandering
Jew, Blood Libel, Host Desecration, and the Jew as money-lender
and devil have direct Christian linkage. The Jew as conspiring for planetary
takeover appears to have evolved in the nineteenth century soon after Jewish
emancipation and citizenship were secured throughout Europe.
1. Eternal Wanderers (Eternally damned for taunting Jesus on the road
to Calvary)
The Wandering Jew is a figure from Reformation Christian folklore
(Roditi 1979) who became a legend in the thirteenth century throughout
Europe. The original version concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way
to the Crucifixion (or refused to give him a drink of water). As a result, the
Jews were cursed to roam the earth until the Second Coming. Sometimes
The Jew is envisioned as a shoemaker or trader, with sightings having been
claimed up through the twentieth century. “The Eternal Jew on the Matterhorn”
demonstrates a negative portrayal.
Mount Matter beneath the Matterhorn in Valais is a high glacier from
which the Vispa River flows. According to popular legend, an imposing
city existed there ages ago. The Jew came there once and said: “When I
pass this way a second time there will be nothing but trees and rocks
where you now see houses and streets. And when my path leads me here
a third time, there will be nothing but snow and ice.” And now nothing
can be seen there but snow and ice.
In the most famous and first recognized version (in 1144), the wandering
Jew is thought to bring good fortune.
The Lost Jew
Once in my life I saw the lost Jew. One afternoon I was home alone when
a youthful Jewish man entered my house. He wanted neither to buy nor to
sell anything, but with his Jewish accent asked me for a bite of bread. I
said to him, “You won’t like our coarse peasant bread,” to which he
replied, “I will like it, if the lady would just give me some.” I then asked
him, “Have you come a long way?” He answered, “My way is long! I

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 195
must travel forever throughout the world!” With that he left, but a short
time later he returned and asked again for a bite of bread. I immediately
said to myself, “Today you have seen the lost Jew,” but to make sure I
asked the preacher. He listened to my story and said that he could not
prove it, but that the belief was there. This answer only strengthened the
woman’s opinion, which was further verified through an innkeeper’s wife
from a neighboring village, where the Jew had stayed overnight. She
reported that he had eaten nothing and that he had not slept. She had
prepared a place for him to lie down, but he paced back and forth in the
sitting room the entire night. Even in her old age, the woman who told
this story took great pleasure that she had had the good fortune to have
seen the lost Jew.
2. Blood Libel (Ritual murders/Symbolic killing of innocents/Jesus)
In his collection of scholarly essays on the subject of the Blood Libel,
folklorist Alan Dundes calls the legend
an assemblage of essays all treating one of the most bizarre and dangerous
legends ever created by the human imagination: the blood libel legend.
According to this legend, which goes back to at least the twelfth
century in Europe, Jews murder an innocent Christian infant or child for
the ritual purpose of mixing the victim’s blood with their matzo around
Easter time. Strange though this legend may sound to anyone who has not
encountered it previously, it has a sordid history, which has caused great
grief to countless numbers and generations of Jews. It continues to be
believed as true even in the twentieth century, and it has had a demonstrable
effect on the perpetuation of the worst kind of antisemitism, that
is, antisemitic behavior which has caused the death of Jews. (2007, vii)
Others suggest that the first recorded instance of a blood libel against
Jews is evident in the writings of Apion, who claimed that the Jews sacrificed
Greek victims in the Temple of Jerusalem. With various revisions, the
blood libel myth was revived throughout history. The most famous version,
called “Little William of Norwich,” occurred in northern England. Another
famous tale is the Damascus blood libel, perhaps because it contained a
Capuchin monk kidnapped and killed by The Jews. Though the kidnapped
monk was never identified or found, fifty-five Jewish children were murdered
in retributive justice for a fairy tale.
Reality rarely seems to be taken into account against the tide of superstition
and folklore. Supported by popular literature, for example in Geoffrey
Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales, and in the
nineteenth-century Jesuit Papal journal Civilta Cattolica, the alleged victims
were martyred and beatified, and in some instances sainthood was

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bestowed upon them, as with Hugh of Lincoln, Little St. Hugo, and Simon
as St. Simon. Related accusations against the malevolent Jew pervaded
Europe and may have influenced, for example, the Czech Republic’s Hilsner
affair, France’s Dreyfus, and Russia’s Beilis. Festivals and shrines in
Spain and throughout Eastern Europe continue to commemorate The Jews’
malevolence even today.
Americans were not immune either. Blood libels occurred in Clayton,
Pennsylvania (1913), Fall River and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Chicago
(1919), and Massena, New York (1928). In the Massena case, police were
called in to investigate, and the missing girl supposedly abducted by Jews
was found in a nearby woods (Perry and Schweitzer 2002).
Variations of the blood libel were acted out in Orleans, France, where
the Jewish community fended off allegations of a Jewish-run slave trade.
The authorities were brought in to investigate dress shop owners and found
no missing girls—though the police were believed to have been bought off.
Only after a high-profile bishop had been called in to dispel the rumor did
the allegations and threats aimed at Orleans’ Jewish families cease (Morin
1971; also see Campion-Vincent 2005).
The classic blood libel tale is excerpted from the Grimm Brothers’
“Judenstein” (Jew Stone).
In the year 1462 in the village of Rinn in Tyrol a number of Jews convinced
a poor farmer to surrender his small child to them in return for a
large sum of money. They took the child out into the woods, where, on a
large stone, they martyred it to death in the most unspeakable manner.
From that time the stone has been called the Jews’ Stone. Afterward they
hung the mutilated body on a birch tree not far from a bridge. The child’s
mother was working in a field when the murder took place. She suddenly
thought of her child, and without knowing why, she was overcome with
fear. Meanwhile, three drops of fresh blood fell onto her hand, one after
the other. Filled with terror, she rushed home and asked for her child. Her
husband brought her inside and confessed what he had done. He was
about to show her the money that would free them from poverty, but it
had turned into leaves. Then the father became mad and died from sorrow,
but the mother went out and sought her child. She found it hanging
from the tree and, with hot tears, took it down and carried it to the church
at Rinn. It is lying there to this day, and the people look on it as a holy
child. They also brought the Jews’ Stone there. According to legend, a
shepherd cut down the birch tree from which the child had hung, but
when he attempted to carry it home he broke his leg and died from the
injury.

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 197
3. Host Desecration (Symbolic Repetition of the Deicide)
Host desecration is a form of Christian sacrilege involving the malicious
use of the communion wafer, that is the consecrated Host and body of
Christ. Because of its religious significance and The Jews’ alleged complicity
in Jesus’ death, a mock murder of the Host was attributed to The Jews.
Multiple tales surrounded Host desecration. In one tale, The Jews buried the
Host in the ground, but a spring arose and betrayed them. In another version,
healing butterflies arose or the mark of Cain was discovered on their
heads. In still another variation, The Jews tried to burn the Host in the oven,
but were taken aback as angels and doves began flying out of the oven. And
when those Jews buried the Host in a cow field, the grazing cattle began to
genuflect in front of the Host and God was sending a message of their
malicious intent. A common Host tale is as follows.
In the year 1290 in Paris, a Jew to whom money was owed tempted a
poor Christian woman. The debt would be canceled if she would merely
bring him from Easter communion the Host (the sanctified bread). She
may have simply kept the Host in her mouth and removed it secretly. The
Jew, once he had the Host, applied to it various tests to see of what it was
made. He knew that Christians of the time believed that it had quite literally
transubstantiated into the body of Christ, but he wished to see
“whether the insane things which Christians prattle about are true.” He
stabbed at it with his knife, but it remained uncut. Even so, it began to
bleed. He tortured it in various ways, nailing it to a board, throwing it
into a fire, and boiling it. The Host remained whole and bleeding, until
the boiling, when it turned into a crucifix above the pot. The Jew may
have been amazed, but he was stubbornly unconvinced, although seeing
such a spectacle immediately converted his wife and children. (Rubin
2004, 14)
4. Conspiratorial Planetary Takeover
The New Testament’s implication of the Sanhedrin call for Jesus’
arrest may be one basis for Jewish conspiracy themes. However, the rumor
was also co-opted by medieval Islam, for example in Iberia. Once Jews had
left the shtetl (village) for larger cities and begun to compete in the business
world, the conspiracy theories proliferated.
One of the more damning indictments of conspiracy evolved was a
forgery that purports to explain the secrets of Jewish success. The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion explains the conspiracy of world domination. Written
in the third person and consisting of twenty-four insider tales, The Protocols
elucidates the Jewish plan to take over the world via media and the

198 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:187
financial institutions to undermine the social order. Protocol One appears
below.
1. Putting aside fine phrases we shall speak of the significance of each
thought: by comparisons and deductions we shall throw light upon
surrounding facts. 2. What I am about to set forth, then, is our system
from the two points of view, that of ourselves and that of the
GOYIM [i.e., non-Jews]. 3. It must be noted that men with bad
instincts are more in number than the good, and therefore the best
results in governing them are attained by violence and terrorization,
and not by academic discussions. Every man aims at power, everyone
would like to become a dictator if only he could, and rare indeed
are the men who would not be willing to sacrifice the welfare of all
for the sake of securing their own welfare. 4. What has restrained the
beasts of prey who are called men? What has served for their guidance
hitherto? 5. In the beginnings of the structure of society, they
were subjected to brutal and blind force; afterwards—to Law, which
is the same force, only disguised. I draw the conclusion that by the
law of nature, right lies in force. 6. Political freedom is an idea but
not a fact. This idea one must know how to apply whenever it
appears necessary with this bait of an idea to attract the masses of the
people to one’s party for the purpose of crushing another who is in
authority. This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself
been infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED LIBER-
ALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his
power. It is precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears; the
slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of life,
caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind
might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without guidance,
and the new authority merely fits into the place of the old already
weakened by liberalism. (Accessed November 28, 2009, from
www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion2.htm. For a critique, see Jacobs
and Wietzman 2003.)
The results of a 2007 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) poll are telling.
Candidates in each country endorsed as “probably true” the notion that Jews
in business have too much power, in the following proportions: Austria
37%, Belgium 36%, France 28%, Germany 21%, Hungary 60%, Italy 42%,
Poland 49%, Spain 53%, and Switzerland 41%.
5. Money Usurers
The First Council of Nicaea (325 CE) prohibited clergy from engaging
in usury. Lateran III further decreed that Christians who accepted interest
on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial. Jewish
groups had similar prohibitions, but no formal law. Precluded from entering

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 199
most guilds, some Jews began to money-lend and tax-collect, and became
the oppressor as collectors and innkeepers for the feudal elite. In The Cholera
Children, The Jews interface with money and “Jewish” attitude.
Three Jews carry gold, silver and precious stones which they hope to sell
at a profit. On the way they come across a horseman. “Don’t ride so fast,
sir,” they call to the horseman. “Let three poor Jews come with you, for
we fear for our lives on the road!” The young man takes pity on the Jews.
(The horseman, an orphan because of cholera, was brought up by a
merchant taken into the service of a sultan and offers them his protection.)
He saves them from robbers and in the end even rescues them from
the gallows when they are wrongly condemned to death. But then he
leaves them because they will not listen to his advice and by ignoring it,
always end up in trouble. Jews are obstinate.
6. Devil/Chimera/Subhuman/Biologically Determined (Magic and Moral
Weakness)
Polish social historians have observed that The Jew was a shapeshifter—one
who, like the Devil or a witch (Newell 1973), morphed into
something magical and contrary (Cala 1995; Michlic 2006). Sometimes The
Jew was directly the devil, as in Sir Thomas Browne’s seventeenth-century
account that the Jews smelled and emitted a devil-like odor that was medically
diagnosable (foeter Judaicus) (Dundes 1991). As historian Robert
Wistrich put it, “The Jew was not quite human. He was a creature of a
different order, not really human—at least not in the sense that Christians
were. Most significant of all, he was constantly linked with the Devil in
medieval Christian writing painting and sculpture” (1999, 4). A popular
Romanian tale delineates the chimerical aspects of The Jew: “Ion, who did
you chance on the road?” Answer: “A man and a Jew.” Joshua
Trachtenberg (1966/1983) similarly recounts the tale of a friend who visited
a small town in Quebec where children remarked, “Oh look, a Jew.”
Another said, “It is not a Jew, but a man.” A colleague of Trachtenberg
reported the same experience in South Africa. “Dit is geen mens, dit is een
Jude” (p. xiv).
Yet The Jew’s power to transform is also chimera-like (Langmuir
1990; Wistrich 1991, 1999), an “extraordinary elastic abstraction” (Wistrich
1995) with an “antithetical relation to truth”(Smith 1996, 225), yet somehow
believed. Jews are pure magic.
More to the point, Romanian anthropologist Andrei Oi¸steanu identifies
the Book of the Solomonar (Solomon)—a tome that reports on The Jew’s
sorcery from the Kabbalah. If one lives in the Carpathians, “the secret of the
school of solomonars is known only by the Jews from that book from which

200 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:187
they pray in autumn at their great feast” (Oi¸steanu 1999, 197). The black
magic theme is exemplified in the stories of “The Magic Ring” and “The
Magic Lock.”
There was once an old Jew who was a great magician. The magician
could raise a mountain, but he could not get at the treasure inside it, for
the burden of his sin was so great that the mountain would not let him
enter. So he found a peasant lad who performed this task for him. In the
mountain, the peasant lad found precious gems, huge stones, which his
father wanted to sell on his own account. When the peasant lad entered
the city, a Jew immediately came up to him and cried, “Farmer, anything
to sell, anything to barter?” “Not a lot, but something,” said the peasant,
and received more than a thousand for his stones. The Jewish magician
tried to get back the magic lock taken from him by the boy. But even the
three giants bound to do the sorcerer’s bidding expressed reservations
about obeying his commands. “What does the accursed Jew want from
us?” said the three giants, for they were angry at having to obey the
villain.
Invariably, the Jew was seen as a malady—a bacteria or virus that was
contagious. Spending any time with The Jew made a person vulnerable to
the ways of The Jew. Like the bite of a vampire, contact with The Jew
could leave a victim weak-willed. Such viral Jewishness knew no bounds.
During Russia’s and Poland’s presidential campaigns, opponents were
accused of having “Jewish” thoughts or a Jewish family member in their
background. Such traits could undermine the current social order with openness
to new ideas.
A contaminable social disease, The Jew was to be contained, killed, or
expelled from the social body. The Nazi documentary film The Eternal Jew
(1940) depicts Aryans living healthily, whereas rich Jews reside by choice
in bug-infested and dirty homes. In real life, containment took the form of
ghettoizing, from the streets of Italy to Russia’s Pale, from France’s Villejuif
to India’s Cochin and England’s Jew Town.
Dirty Jewish blood was believed to poison wells. Law affirmed the
social fantasy such that the “dirty Jew” (Dundes 1997) was banned from
German public swimming pools and quarantined during the typhus and
cholera epidemics of 1892 (Markel 1999). These untermenschen, contaminating
creatures (Clendinen 1999), sometimes were simply poison (Glass
1997). Such antisemitic legends continue to excite the social imagination
(Matard-Bonucci 2005; Mayo 1988).
Where The Jews were not magical, or disease-carrying, or the Devil,
they were simply pigs. Judensau (jew/pig) iconography still adorns several
European cathedrals. Tales of the Judensau abound.

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 201
A rabbi was arguing with his friends whether or not Christ was the Messiah
and met Jesus. “If you are truly the Messiah then you can surely see
what lies beneath this barrel next to me,” the skeptical rabbi said. (The
rabbi thought some pigs were napping there but the pigs had been
replaced by his own son.) When Jesus told him that it was his son, the
rabbi sneered, so Christ turned the son into a pig and walked away.
In several European areas, butchers renamed the most succulent part of
the pig the “damsel” or “Jewess.” Several provinces in Germany created a
“cloven foot tax” for Jewish visitors. In court, Jews were required to tell the
truth while standing on the flayed skin of a sow or swearing on their
mother’s body. If declared guilty, Jews were hung upside-down as a butchered
hog. Pig castrators in the Pyrenees adopted the uniform of the Jewish
mohel (circumciser) (Allen 2002). The link between Jew and pig would
continue up to pre-Third Reich times, when women who had intercourse
with male Jews wore signs declaring themselves pigs (Allen 2002) (see
Felsenstein 1995; Wistrich 2002, 2010).
Conversion from Judaism to Catholicism was no guarantee against
Jewish ways. Many Jews were forcibly converted to Catholicism, though as
early as 1598, the converso or marrano/pig was synonymous with infidel
and renegado. Suspicion that the converso/marrano was secretly a Jew is
depicted in “The Bloody Children of the Jews.”
Duke Bogislav of Pomerania was among those who expelled the Jews,
many of whom at that time were living at Damm near Stettin, at Bart, and
in all the small towns in the country. Among these Jews there were a man
and a woman who had themselves baptized. The Duke allowed them to
stay, and they moved to the vicinity of Lake Trieb. However, their baptism
was only for the sake of appearance, and in reality they remained
Jews. For this reason, they were visibly punished by God. Every time the
woman gave birth to a child, it came to the earth with a bloody hand.
Because the Christian women observed this, everyone shied away from
them, and no one wanted to have anything to do with them. Therefore the
Jew and his wife moved away from Lake Trieb, first to Lassahn, and then
to Usedom. But the curse followed them wherever they went, until they
finally underwent a spiritual conversion and confessed that previously
they had remained Jews in their hearts.
Most frightening is the lack of separation between social fantasy and
murderous reality. Indicative of the phenomenon are the antisemitic shrines
to Jewish malevolence (see Antisemitica), but more horrific are the actual
numbers of Jews killed due to Christian and Muslim folklore (see identified
myth and death toll in Tables 1 and 2).
In the social mind, Jews conspire, and plot, and ready themselves to

202 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:187
undermine and betray all that is good, godly, and orderly. The Jews the
fantasizing public is waiting for are not real people, but are imaginary social
ideas and superstitions based on legend, fable, and fantasy. Yet as long as
people are unable to separate fact from fiction, real Jewish lives will remain
in jeopardy—contingent upon, of all things, a fairy tale.
The author would like to thank Steven L. Jacobs, Paul Bartop, Günther
Jikeli, and Frederick Schweitzer for their critiques. Additionally, I wish to
note that I use myth and legend interchangeably at times due to the fantasy
aspect of both terms. Permission to reprint was granted by the following:
Randall Bytwerk’s German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College http://
www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/. Jonathan Lord of the American-Israel:
Cooperative Enterprise/Jewish Virtual Library for antisemitic fairy tales
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. For additional antisemitic fairy tales
see Catholic Kindergarten and Legends for Children (Freiberg: Herder,
1884).
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2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 205
TABLE 1 A MILLENNIUM OF ANTISEMITIC MYTH (CHRISTENDOM)*
REGION MYTH JEWISH DEATHS
Nazi, Europe (1939-1945) Underminers 6,000,000
Stalin’s Famine (1932) State underminers 500,000
Chmielnicki, Rus (1648-1656) Cossack Rebellion ‘The Deluge’ 100,000-300,000
Russian Wars (1917-1922) Nationalism 100,000-200,000
Ukraine (1918-1920) Multiple myths 30,000-60,000
Odessa (1941) Antonescu’s Judeo-Communism 30,000
Rindfleisch/Arm. (1298/1336) Host Desecration 20,000-100,000
Uman, Ukraine (1768) Haidamacks massacre 20,000
Seville/Cordova, Spain (1391) Multiple religious/state myth 10,000-50,000
Crusades, Europe (1096-1254) Antichrists and heretics 10,000
Iasi, Romania (1941) Pre-Nazi preparation 5,000+
Lisbon (1506) Conversos questioned a miracle 4,000
Prague (1389;1744) Easter Pogrom 3,000
St. Petersburg (1905) Bloody Sunday Pogrom 3,000
Hungary (1919) Bela Kun 3,000
Odessa (1905) Patriotism questioned 2,500
Europe (1348-1350) Black Death/Well poisoners 1,000s+
Inquisition (1288-1739) Limpieza de Sangre 1,000
Imperial Russia (1881-1884) Jews blamed for killing Tzar 1,000
Kiev (1113; 1736; 1768) Grand Duke favoritism 1000
Toledo, Sp (1355) Spanish Inquisition 1,200
Yalta/Lvov (1918) Myth Unknown 900
Seville (1481-1488) Crypto-Jews practicing Judaism 750
Aquitaine, Fr (1321) Jews as Christ’s enemies 500+
Nuremberg (1298) Host Desecration 628
Nuremberg (1349) Myth Unknown 562
Krakow-Kiecle (1945, 1946) Postwar Return/Blood Libel 500-1500
York, Eng (1190) Abbot Samson sermon 150
Palma, Majorca (1391 1435) Blood Libel 300
Poland (Minsk, Pinsk 1919) Myth Unknown 300
Baden (1332) Myth Unknown 300
Goa, Cochin, India (1513) Portuguese Inquisition 100
Vilnius (1826) Myth Unknown 100
Odessa (1821,1859, 1871) Nationalism 100
Pforzheim (1285) Myth Unknown 180
Chinon, Fr (1321) Blood Libel 160
Bucharest (1801) Blood Libel 128
Goa India Inquisition (1552) Portuguese Monks 121
Brat-sur-Seine Fr (1191) Blood Libel 100
Bray Fr (1191) Jews tried to execute a criminal 80+
Lima, Peru (1639) Conversos as underminers 80+
Soviet Union (1961-1963) Economic Jewish Crimes Trials 68
Kishinev/Gomel, Rus (1903-1905) Blood Libel, Money 9/49/339
Bury St Edmunds, Eng (1190) Palm Sunday 57

206 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:187
Schaffhausen, Switz (1401) Well Poisoning Ritual Murder 48
Bloise Fr (1171) Blood Libel 38
Lisbon (1517) Myth Unknown 35
Fulda, Ger (1235) Blood Libel 34
London (1189) Mob violence 30
Posing, Hun (1529) Blood Libel 30
Mecklenburg, Ger (1492; 1350) Host Desecration 24
Well poisoning
Lincoln, Eng (1255) Blood Libel 18
Odessa (1821; 1859; 1871;1881) Myth Unknown 17
Posen, Pol (1399) Jews desecrating Church property 13
Spain (1482) Trial for Jewish Black Magic 11
Vistula Region (1407-1816) Blood Libel 10+
*Excludes fewer than ten deaths. Excludes forced conversions, relocations, expulsions,
woundings, property damage, book burnings and rescue e.g. Ethiopia (1984, 1991). Excludes
Kristallnacht (Nov. 11, 1938, 91 dead). Excludes fewer than 10 killed e.g. Doctors Plot Soviet
Union and Hungarian Pogrom (1946) “Jews make sausage of Christian children” 2 killed. The
“Hep Hep” riots of Ger/Pol/Den (1819) triggered by emancipation fears. Killing and antisemitic
violence in Neustettin (1881), Konitz blood libel (1900), and Berlin (1923). Excludes multiple
Polish clergy blood libels (1598-1758). Excludes unknown death tolls e.g. Bialystock (1903);
Catalonia (1358); Vienna (1405); Lublin (1598, 1655); Brussels (1370); Cambrai (1402); Prague
(1305); Marmor (1843); Smyrna (1864); Corfu (1894); Seredina Buda (1918); Cochin (1662);
Sicily (1391, 1474); Changpu, China (1884); Thuringia (1303); Toulouse (1420); Sebastopol
(1918); Tizsaeszlar (1882); Xanten (1882). Spain (1473-1474) Marranos massacre. Excludes
other miscarriages of justice e.g. Prague’s Hilsner and the Polna Affair (1900).

2009] WHEN FAIRY TALES KILL 207
TABLE 2 A MILLENNIUM OF ANTISEMITIC MYTH (ISLAM)*
REGION MYTH JEWISH DEATHS
Fez; Marrakesh(1146) Racial Inferiority 100,000
Fez Mor (1033) Sultan favors Jews and angers mob 6,000+
Granada, Sp (1066) Jewish takeover themes 5,000
Cordoba, Sp (1010-1013) Pogrom instigated politically 1,000
Morocco (1100s) Jewish takeover themes 1,000
Fez, Mor (1276) Ruler Indris II eradicates Jews 1,000
Fez, Mor (1465) Jewish vizier offends Muslims 1,000
Marrakesh, Mor (1232) Myth Unknown 1,000
Marrakesh, Mor (1864-1880) Myth Unknown 300-500
Libya (1785) Pasha Ali Burzi 100
Algiers (1805); 1815;1830) “Black Sabbath” Jewish prosperity 100
Baghdad (1941) Nazi instigated Farhud 187-400
Tripoli, Libya (1945;1948;1967) Jewish statehood declared 140/12/18
Egypt (1945; 1948) Jewish statehood declared 20-70
Fez, Mor (1912) French takeover 60-200
Damascus (1840) Blood Libel 60
Aden, Yemen (1948) Jewish statehood declared 76
Buenos Aires (1994) Jewish Center AMIA 85
Kamishliye, Syr (1967) Myth Unknown 57
Djerada, Oujda, Mor (1948) Jewish statehood declared 43
Jaffe (1921) Plans for Jewish statehood declared 43
Tetuan, Mor (1790) Myth Unknown 40
Taza, Mor (1903) Myth Unknown 40
Casablanca (1907) Tribal rebellion 30
Buenos Aires (1992) Israeli Embassy 29
Constantine, Algeria (1934) Myth Unknown 25
Demnat, Morocco (1875;1884) Myth Unknown 20
Debdou, Morocco (1875) Myth Unknown 20
Tunis (1869) Jewish ghetto attack 18
Iraq (1969;1972) Accused as Zionist spies 16 + 9
Iran (1979-2000) Accused as Zionist spies 13
Shiraz, Iran (1910) Blood Libel 12
Damascus (1948;1949) Jewish statehood declared 12 + 30
Baghdad (1828) Myth Unknown 10+
Baghdad (1936) Antisemitic Myth 10
*Excludes fewer than ten deaths. Excludes injuries, rapes, lootings; forced conversions e.g Yemen
(1165, 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465, 1790), Baghdad (1333, 1344), ghettoizations (19thC Algeria,
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco); property damage e.g. destruction of synagogues Egypt and Syria
(1014, 1293, 1301) Iraq (845-859, 1344), Yemen (1676), book burnings and rescue/averted
genocide e.g. 45,000 Yemen (1950). Excludes unknown death tolls: Alexandria (1870, 1882,
1901-1907); Allepo (1810, 1850, 1875, 1948); Algiers (1805,1815, 1830); Antioch (1829);
Bahrain (1948); Basra (1776); Beirut (1824, 1862, 1874); Barfurush, Iran (1867, 1948);
Bayukdere (1864); Cairo (1844, 1890, 1901); Cochin, India (1524); Damanhur (1871, 1873, 1877,
1891); Damascus (1848, 1890); Dary al-Qamar (1847); Eyub (1868); Harma (1829); Istanbul
(1870, 1874); Jerusalem (1838, 1847); Kuzguncuk, 1866); Erdine (1872); Izmir (1872, 1874); Les

208 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:187
Nabeul, Tunisia (1880); Mansura (1877); Peshawar, Pakistan (1948); Port Said (1903, 1908);
Rhodes (1840); Settat, Morocco (1903, 1907); Tripoli (1834). Excludes 8th Century massacres by
Idris I. Excludes Allahad Incident (Meshed, Iran, 1839) when the synagogue was burned but a
massacre was averted via forced conversion. Excludes 4,000-5,000 in North African Nazi
concentration camps.
Memorial to 4,000 Conversos murdered April 19, 1506.
Neste Largo, Lisbon.
Permission to reprint was granted by the following: Randall Bytwerk’s German
Propaganda Archive at Calvin College http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/
Jonathan Lord of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise/Jewish Virtual
Library for antisemitic fairy tales http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. For additional
antisemitic fairy tales see Catholic Kindergarten and Legends for Children
(Freiberg: Herder, 1884).

“Jew” as a Slur in German and French Today 1
Günther Jikeli
The antisemitic dimension of the “Jew” is often downplayed. This paper
analyzes how the words for “Jew” are used as insult and in pejorative
ways in German and in French, drawing on in-depth interviews. The findings
largely confirm and add to previous studies from France and
Germany.
The Jew is one whom other men consider a Jew.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
The use of the word “Jew” as a slur or in a pejorative way is unacceptable
in Western public discourse today. In the compilation of Common
Errors in English Usage (Brians 2008), we find: “‘Jew’ as an adjective
(‘Jew lawyer’) is an ethnic insult; the word is ‘Jewish.’ . . . The expression
‘to Jew someone down’—an expression meaning ‘to bargain for a lower
price’—reflects a grossly insulting stereotype and should be avoided in all
contexts.” However, negative overtones of the word “Jew” have existed in
many languages for a long time, probably as a result of the despised status
of Jews and their demonization for centuries in the respective societies. 2
Some scholars claim that already at the end of the fourth century the term
“Jew” was used as an insult (Perednik 2001) 3 when church leaders such as
St. John Chrysostom agitated in unprecedented virulence against Jews
(Flannery 2004, 50-65). Similar claims have been made for Polish 4 (Lloyd-
Jones 2005) and Russian (Sacks 2003, 47; The Racial Slur Database 2009;
Petrovsky-Shtern 2009, 309) for the past centuries and anecdotally in recent
history, as well as for languages spoken in Maghrebian countries such as
Berber (Brenner 2004, 18; Wieviorka 2005, 15). In Nazi Germany, “Der
1. This article was first published in German in a different version in the
annual yearbook of the Center for Research on Antisemitism, published by
Wolfgang Benz (Jikeli 2009). We thank the editors for their permission to republish
the article. A different version was selected for publication in conflict &
communication online.
2. Alan D. Corré gives some examples in his discussion about the pejorative
use of the term “Jew” in the Lingua Franca. (Corré, n.d.) See also Hortzitz 2005.
3. A detailed summary of the book is available online in English (Perednik,
n.d.).
4. In recent history in Poland, the German term Jude has also been used as
insult (Tych 2000).
209

210 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
Jude” [The Jew] was demonized, 5 and after 1945, when open antisemitism
was banned in the public discourse, Jude was used in a pejorative way in
Germany in colloquial language (Benz 2008).
The usage of the terms for “Jew” as a slur against Jews and particularly
against non-Jews has reappeared today. There is mounting evidence
that these words are widely used as slang words in French and German, 6 as
well as in other languages such as Dutch (European Commission against
Racism and Intolerance 2008, 27). In Britain, the issue was discussed by
The Independent in 1999 (Margolis 1999), but such usage appears to be less
frequent in Britain today. 7
In France, three studies have dealt with the phenomenon. Didier
Lapeyronnie analyzed antisemitic language, largely as used by youths with
migrant backgrounds, by drawing on interviews and observations in conversations
and gatherings in a number of districts in the regions Ile de France,
Angoulême, and Bordeaux in 2003-2005 (Lapeyronnie 2005). Even though
the main focus of the study was on social life in working-class neighborhoods
and not on antisemitism, Lapeyronnie observed explicit antisemitic
vocabulary in everyday language, particularly with the use of the term
“feuj,” the translation for “Jew” or “Jewish” in the French slang verlan:
“The term “feuj” is in itself an insult or at least a pejorative attribute”
(Lapeyronnie 2005, 9, translation from French by the author). Lapeyronnie
found that “feuj” as an adjective [Jewish] is often used as a negative term
with the meaning of weak, broken, or bad. Antisemitism is inscribed in the
language of the group; thus, he argues, the words become responsible in a
sense and not the one who uses them. The individual can avoid this form of
antisemitism only by silencing him or herself or by protesting against it. In
both ways the individual puts him or herself out of the group. Protesting
even validates and highlights the antisemitic notion. Therefore, witnesses
such as teachers, youth workers, and, even more, Jewish victims, are
trapped between scandalizing and thereby acknowledging the antisemitic
meaning at a high emotional price and with consequences for the present
and future collaborations, or ignoring it. The blunt antisemitic language is
also an invitation for antisemitism: Those who do not react become confed-
5. The demonization of Jews by the National Socialists also is shown in the
language (Schmitz-Berning 1998).
6. Reports and studies on the issue from France and Germany are discussed
below.
7. Our interviews in London, which were similar to those in Paris and Berlin,
indicate that this usage of the word “Jew” in Britain is not as common as in France
and Germany among youths. Stenström et al. (2002) did research on common
insults among youths in London and did not report of the use of “Jew” as an insult.

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 211
erates. It creates a reciprocal recognition based on the exclusion and
devalorization of the other. Lapeyronnie concludes:
The vocabulary and the antisemitic insults create much more than a “climate.”
They construct a genuine “social order” which serves as a basis
for legitimacy for acts of violence. From this point of view, there is no
gap between verbal violence and physical violence as there is no gap
between the common “vocabulary” and the verbal violence. (Lapeyronnie
2005, 18, translation from French by the author)
An article in the daily newspaper Le Monde in March 2009 reported on a
game called “chat-feuj” [cat-Jew], played by students in a Parisian college.
It confirms the use of antisemitic vocabulary to establish a social order:
Whenever the “cat” would catch another student, he or she had to kneel
down and ask for forgiveness for being Jewish (Le Bars 2009; previously
reported by Brenner 2004, 37).
Michel Wieviorka and his team of researchers used the district Trois-
Ponts in Roubaix in the north of France and Sarcelles, a town close to Paris,
as case studies for their investigation of antisemitism in France (Wieviorka
2005). 8 Trois-Ponts is a neighbourhood characterized by social exclusion
and mainly Maghrebian immigrants, and has no visible Jewish community.
In contrast, Sarcelles has a strong and visible Jewish community. The
majority of the population, as well as the majority of the members of the
Jewish community in Sarcelles, are immigrants and their descendants. The
researchers observed open antisemitism in the language in both areas,
including the use of the terms “Juif” and “Feuj” [Jew] as insults, often without
an explicit intention of expressing antisemitic attitudes. However, they
noted that labeling someone as “Jew” is often synonymous with an accusation
of being stingy—a classical antisemitic stereotype. Similar to the findings
of Lapeyronnie, they observed that the use of antisemitic language
among youths puts pressure on individuals to use this very language and to
adopt the according discourse (Wieviorka 2005, 144-45).
Emmanuel Brenner and a number of teachers witnessed widespread
and open antisemitism in schools in all parts of France, including
antisemitic language such as the use of “Juif” and “Feuj” in a pejorative
sense. Brenner noted that “the noun ‘Juif’ [Jew] does not need to be
precedented by the attribute ‘sale’ [dirty], as in ‘sale Arabe’ [dirty Arab] or
‘sale nègre’ [dirty negro]; it has insulting significance in itself” (Brenner
2004, 37, translation from French by the author). The authors of all three
studies noted that these and other forms of open antisemitism among youths
are often ignored and diminished by teachers, youth workers, politicians,
8. The book has been translated into English (Wieviorka 2007).

212 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
and religious leaders, even though those open forms of antisemitism are
unacceptable in public discourse.
In Germany, the use of the expression “du Jude!” [you Jew!] as an
insult against non-Jews has been discussed in a study by Barbara Schäuble
and Albert Scherr based on twenty interviews with groups of youths in different
parts of Germany who had different religious and ethnic backgrounds
(Schäuble and Scherr 2007, 18, 32). These researchers argue that this form
of communication is antisemitic even if the intention is not necessarily
antisemitic and even if antisemitism is often not central in the worldviews
of those who use the term “Jew” as an insult.
Other recent reports on antisemitism in Germany affirm that “Jude” is
widely used as an insult (Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung 2009; amira 2008;
Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung 2008). Other reports mention
anecdotal evidence of the phenomenon (Stephen Roth Institute 2008;
apabiz 2007, 2008). The incidents include incidents of football fans and
Neonazis, showing that the phenomenon is not limited to youths with
migrant or Muslim backgrounds. Michael Reichelt (2009) analyzed fourteen
incidents of the use of the word “Jude” as a slur by football fans and
football players in Saxony.
In addition, experts such as Wolfgang Benz (2007), director of the
Centre for Studies on Antisemitism, Gottfried Kössler (Welt Online 2008)
from the Frankfurt-based Holocaust Research Institute Fritz-Bauer-Institute,
Juliane Wetzel (2008) of the Centre for Studies on Antisemitism, and
Volkhard Knigge (Weber 2008), director of the memorial site of Buchenwald
and Mittelbau-Dora, have acknowledged and commented on the
phenomenon.
Some scholars, however, have downplayed its antisemitic content. Nils
Bahlo, for example, argued that the word “Jew” may have another semantic
meaning in youth language, such as “idiot” or “loser.” He explains its pejorative
meaning as a function of degradation of others within the context of
the performance society and with the need of youths to test their limits. He
sees youths as the “movers and shakers” of language and concludes that
“eventually, adults always feel tread on their toes with the change of their
own language habits” (Radio Bremen 2009, translated from German by the
author).
METHODS, RESEARCH SETTINGS AND RESPONDENTS
This paper examines the forms and functions of the pejorative use of
the words for “Jew” in German and French, and particularly the question of
how this relates to antisemitic attitudes and to an antisemitic perception of
the terms for “Jew.” I made this examination on the basis of qualitative

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 213
interviews with seventy-seven male youths who identified themselves as
Muslim in Germany and France. The focus on young Muslims is due to the
fact that the interviews are part of a larger research project on patterns of
antisemitism among European Muslims. 9 However, reports show that the
phenomenon has spread far beyond religious or ethnic minorities in Germany
and France (see above). The guided semi-structured face-to-face
interview was chosen as the investigative method in order to produce data
material that allows for the discovery of specific arguments and stereotypes
of the subject group. It gave the interviewees the greatest possible freedom
to express their views and experiences. At the same time, the partly standardized
and structured interviews allowed comparisons between, and classification
of, the interviewees’ attitude patterns. The interviewers tried to
ask questions as outsiders (Young Jr 2004), not judging the interviewee, but
also not necessarily hiding the point of view of the interviewer (Wieviorka
2004). However, in the analysis of the interviews, it was kept in mind that
the responses of the interviewees are a reaction to the interviewer as well as
a self-presentation. After pre-tests with interviewers of different ethnic and
religious backgrounds and different genders that did not show major differences
in the way interviewees talked about the relevant issues, I conducted
most of the interviews in Berlin and all of the interviews in Paris myself. 10
The sample of interviewees was selected as follows: Potential interviewees
were approached randomly outdoors, except for eight participants
who were interviewed in a youth club. The interview was closed if the person
did not fall into the subject group: male, 14-27 years old, and selfidentifying
as Muslim. 11 Most of the participants were interviewed individually,
some in groups of two to four, allowing some observations of group
dynamics and influences from peers. The focus of the interviews was on
perceived discrimination, the perception of Jews, and international conflicts,
particularly in the Middle East.
The interviews were conducted in Berlin, in the districts Kreuzberg
and Neukölln, and in Paris, in the districts Belleville and Barbès, from 2005
9. The research project is conducted by the International Study Group Education
and Research on Antisemitism, funded by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la
Shoah and the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education,
Remembrance, and Research. My dissertation at the Center for Research on
Antisemitism, supervised by Professor Wolfgang Benz, also focuses on the analysis
of these interviews.
10. I have a German-Christian background, but converted to Islam for practical
reasons of marriage in 2003. I did not emphasize these backgrounds in the interviews,
but my German background can easily be deduced.
11. Two exceptions were made with 13-year-old interviewees, both of whom
gave interesting interviews.

214 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
to 2007. Many residents in these districts are immigrants or their descendants,
mostly from Muslim countries. Belleville and Kreuzberg in particular
have a long history of accommodating immigrants, including Jewish immigrants.
However, during the reign of National Socialism, almost all Jews in
Kreuzberg were murdered and Jewish presence was destroyed. As a result,
Jews and Jewish life are hardly visible in Kreuzberg and in the bordering
district Neukölln today, except for a synagogue with a small community, of
which many members are not local residents. In contrast, in Belleville
Orthodox Jews can be seen regularly, some local shops and cafés are owned
by Jews, and, although they are a minority, many Jews live there, and some
Jewish pupils attend local public schools, while others attend Jewish faith
schools. 12 In Barbès, Jewish life is far less visible than in Belleville, but
much more visible than in Berlin-Kreuzberg or Neukölln.
The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Relation between data
collection and analysis consisted mainly in coding and finding patterns in
the data. The analytical strategy is based on a five-stage method (Schmidt
2004). The analysis followed procedures of qualitative content analysis
using a standard procedure of inductive category formation (Mayring 2004;
Kelle 2004; Heinz et al. 1998). This paper focuses on the analysis of the
category of pejorative use and potential pejorative use of the words for
“Jew” including all relevant excerpts from the interviews. The paper largely
presents the description of its subcategories and their relations. Interview
excerpts are used to show this pejorative usage is expressed. The excerpts
were selected as representative examples of the particular subcategory, trying
to use examples from France and Germany equally.
The cross-national comparison poses a particular problem in the analysis
(Van de Vijver 1998; Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik and Harkness 2005) and was
met by applying special diligence regarding the influences of the national
contexts and a separate pre-analysis for each country. However, the major
differences of context do not allow for a completely satisfying comparative
strategy. We have to bear in mind the fact that the general language usage
concerning the words for “Jew” is influenced in fundamentally different
ways in France and in Germany, particularly as a result of the murder of
European Jewry by the German National Socialists. Commonalities
between the two languages regarding the pejorative use of the words for
“Jew” are therefore the more surprising.
In the following section, I present observations about the pejorative
usage of the terms for “Jew” from the interviews. Firstly, I examine forms
and functions of the phenomenon, revealing the mechanisms and effects of
12. Increasingly, Jewish parents send their children to Jewish faith schools, possibly
to avoid antisemitic harassment (Le Bars 2009).

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 215
trivialization and even the establishment of a norm of blunt expressions of
antisemitism. Secondly, I show how deeply the pejorative use of the terms
for “Jew” is connoted to Jews and antisemitic views about Jews. Then I
discuss the question of individual responsibility against the background of a
norm of antisemitic language in some social circles and differences from
other slurs that are offensive to minorities. I conclude with a summary of
the effects of the pejorative use of the terms for “Jew.”
FORMS OF PEJORATIVE USE OF THE TERMS FOR “JEW” IN
GERMAN AND IN FRENCH
The main formal-linguistic difference between the pejorative usage of
the words for “Jew” in German and in French is that the German adjective
“jüdisch” [Jewish] is rarely used in a pejorative way, in contrast to the
equivalent French adjective “juif” or, in the popular slang verlan, “feuj.” In
German, “Jude” [Jew] is used as a slur or accusation, often preceded by
“du” [you] and mostly without any further attributes, as “du Jude!” It is
usually directed against non-Jewish peers. The French noun Juif or Feuj is
also used as an insult in and of itself, sometimes in the form of: “T’es un
Juif, toi” [“You are a Jew”]. 13 Common attributes, if any are used, are
“sale” [dirty] in French and “scheiss” [literally: shitty] or “dreckig” [dirty]
in German. 14 Such negative adjectives are added more often if the slur is
applied against Jews than if it is applied against non-Jews. The words Jude,
Juif, and Feuj are often pronounced with disgust and voiced loudly. Their
pejorative usage is part of the normal vocabulary of the everyday colloquial
language of many interviewees.
TRIVIALIZING OPEN ANTISEMITISM IN THE LANGUAGE
Participants trivialize the pejorative use of the terms for “Jew” in three
primary ways: firstly, through widespread and frequent usage. Particularly
in group communication, the pejorative use of the terms for “Jew” can be
obsessive. Secondly, interviewees declare that the pejorative use of the
terms for “Jew” is nothing serious, that it is “just for fun,” and minimize it
13. Starting with a lower-case letter, the noun “juif” relates to Judaism. Starting
with a capital letter, the word “Juif” denominates a member of the Jewish people
(Larousse 2007, 565). In the following, I use the spelling “Juif,” starting with a
capital letter, even though I cannot know which of the two spellings the interviewees
would have used.
14. Insults are often used to distance oneself from the other and to purify oneself.
Therefore they are often related to dirt (Douglas, 1992).

216 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
by comparing it to other insults. Thirdly, participants substitute or report of
the frequent substitution of a number of negative attributes with “Jew.”
1. Widespread and Frequent Usage
Almost all interviewees are familiar with the pejorative use of the
terms for “Jew,” and some admitted to using it themselves or even used it
during the interview. The excerpt below from an interview with Sharif 15 in
Berlin is one of many examples showing the air of self-evidence for the use
of “Jew” as an insult:
Q: Have you ever heard that “Jew” was used as an insult on the street?
Yes, sure. Well, very often.
Q: In what kind of context, how does it come about?
Simply that it was said to somebody “you Jew” who then was
offended. . . that was in school, everywhere really.
(Sharif, Berlin, P16: 152-159) 16
The frequent usage leads to habituation and to the perception that it is nothing
scandalous; nobody is shocked by this form of antisemitic language,
even if not all agree on using it and many know that it is offensive. Consider
the statements of these two friends from Berlin:
Umur: Well, “you are a Jew,” like that. That is said everywhere.
Orhan: Yes, that’s everywhere and everybody uses it. But that doesn’t
mean that everybody hates Jews.
(Umur and Orhan, Berlin, P32: 371-372)
We will see what comes with its usage and what the effects are.
2. Denying or Minimizing Any Antisemitic Meaning
Frequently, participants consider the pejorative use of the terms for
“Jew” as “nothing serious”; they trivialize it as being “a little joke” and
“just for fun.” One interviewee explained, “Yes, I’ve heard it but usually
it’s for a laugh. . . . it’s not serious” (Hachem, Paris, P37: 269-275), while
another said, “‘Jew’ is an insult for fun, I’d say so, just for fun every now
and then” (Umur, Berlin, P32: 386). It is often used among friends: “Sometimes
we say it among us—but that’s for fun—I sometimes say to him
15. All names of interviewees are pseudonyms. The names are chosen from a
list of common names among people of their particular ethnic backgrounds.
16. All interview excerpts are translated by the author. The numbers indicate the
number of the interview and the paragraphs.

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 217
“You Jew,” or he says it to me; we do it for fun” (Murat, Berlin, P14: 215).
Acknowledging the expression’s widespread use often goes along with
pointing out that it is inconsequential or that it should not be equated with
hatred for Jews. Some of those who are largely unaware of the offensiveness
of such language regard it as a form of normal everyday racism that
should not be taken too seriously—as they also hate Nazis. Tunay
explained, “I hate Nazis, but all the same—well, Jews—I’ve nothing
against Jews—but to talk rubbish sometimes—everybody does it. But anyway,
there’s racism, sure” (Berlin, P30: 169).
Or, as in the example below, participants believe that the pejorative
use of the terms for “Jew” is similar to actions they perceive as anti-Muslim.
However, Haroun struggled to make that analogy and eventually came
up with cartoons of Mohammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten:
“Ah it’s a Jew [Feuj]. 17 ” If you say, “It’s a Jew” [Feuj] . . . These are
racist jokes . . . And then, you see, it’s true that . . . the Jews, they may
feel a little bit of racism from Muslims. But not very much. We personally,
then it’s up to them to, to to to be like us . . . . These are topics we
are going into. . . It’s not good. There’s a bit of everything, there is, I
don’t know, you could say the cartoons for example of Muhammad. . .
That’s racist.
(Haroun, Paris, P58: 1946-1991)
Massoud, another participant from Paris, contrasted the pejorative use of
“Juif” and “Feuj” with “what happens today to the Arabs” after a confirmation
from his friend Khalil that “Jew” is used as an insult:
Q : Have you heard about that also at school or on the street. . . that
people say “dirty Jew” [sale Juif] or “Jew” [Feuj] or something like that?
Khalil: Yeah, yeah, this also, yeah.
Massoud: But it’s less often. . . . It didn’t go as far as what happens today
with the Arabs. It’s, it’s far less frequent.
(Khalil and Massoud, Paris, P53: 939-947)
Others, like Fatin, simply do not feel concerned, arguing that they they do
not identify as Jewish:
I don’t care, well, to be honest I don’t give a shit, ok, I don’t think it’s
right but I don’t care, am I a Jew? No. You see. I don’t care and they
don’t mean it so seriously, you just say it like “you Jew,” for teasing, but
I don’t care.
17. The original term for “Jew” is put in brackets in the translation from French,
as the two different terms “Juif” and “Feuj” can only be translated as “Jew.”

218 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
(Fatin, Berlin, P6: 123)
Some have only a vague feeling that it is a “bad word” that should not be
used with strangers.
[This word] is not good.
Q: If you say that to a Jew, he’s going to take offense or . . .
Yeah, if I don’t know him. If I know him, we are used to this word.
(Cherif, Paris, P47: 220-223)
This kind of vague feeling for the abusive character of this slur and comparisons
to behaviors that are perceived as hostile against one’s own community
usually do not lead to a condemnation or to restraint from the use of it.
On the other hand, there are some who are not aware of the offensiveness of
this kind of vocabulary because they believe the underlying stereotypes to
be true. They do not understand why someone would be shocked regarding
the use of the very term for “Jew” as an insult, because for them “Jew” is
understood as being negative. Rather, they think that the person labeled as
such should be offended by this grave insult. A respondent explained:
Even among us, if there’s a guy with some cookies and he doesn’t share,
we tell him, “Fuck, you’re a Jew [Juif].”
Q: But don’t you find it upsetting, do you think that’s normal?
No but me, if someone says that to me I tell him, “Get lost, hook it, stop
calling me that.”
(Hakim, Paris, P34: 635-637)
The more Jews are seen in a negative way or even hated, the more seriously
the insults “Jude,” “Feuj,” or “Juif” are perceived.
Yes, in my class somebody once called an exchange student “Jew” and
he then just beat him, he didn’t want to be called that.
Q: Who beat whom then, the exchange student?
Yeah, he was offended by that.
Q: Was he a Jew?
No, it was a normal Muslim, an Arab.
Q: What do you think why he was so offended by someone calling him
“you Jew”?
I think he hates the Jews, he didn’t want to be called “Jew.”
(Necet, Berlin, P12: 166-172)
Necet has a Turkish background. He believes that “most Arabs hate the
Jews” (Necet, Berlin, P12: 153) and thus he thinks that it is only natural that
an Arab exchange student would be particularly offended by being labeled
“Jew.” Others relate the seriousness of the insult “Jew” to a Muslim iden-

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 219
tity: “For example, we are both Muslims; if I say to him, ‘Jew,’ then I’m
not a Muslim any more” (Salih, Berlin, P23: 135). Two friends explained
that there are different levels of seriousness between different insults, placing
“you Jew” somewhere between “you victim” and “fuck your mother”:
Ramzi: Well, that’s among friends, For example I say, “You victim, you
Jew, how are you doing?” And like, “Hey, fuck your mother”—that’s all
for example like among friends. Like a little bit of fun.
Ahmed: Well now, not “Fuck your mother!”, no . . . it doesn’t matter how
long you know him. If somebody says to me “I fuck your mother!”, I’ll
beat him up, I’m honest. Because that has something to do with my
honor.
Q: (laughs) If somebody says, “You Jew,” is that still ok?
Ahmed: No. . . . there are certain limits. . . . All my friends they know the
limits, they know it.
(Ramzi and Ahmed, Berlin, P33: 531-536)
Another way of trivializing the use of “Jew” as an insult is to compare it
with other ethnic insults in a way that wrongly suggests that it is a kind of
nasty but fair game in which everybody uses each others’ ethnic identity as
an insult:
If you’re quarreling with the guy, I mean, he says to me “sale Arabe”
[“dirty Arab”], I say to him, “sale Feuj” [“dirty Jew”].
(Masmud, Paris, P48: 398)
This kind of comparison misses the point that “Jew” is the term that is
applied to individuals of any ethnic identity. The discrepancy is even more
obvious in Sharif’s equivocal comparison:
That’s rather for fun if someone is called “Jew” or whatever. But naturally,
that’s an insult for an Arab. Just the same as it is an insult for a Jew
if he is called “Arab,” that’s just the same.
(Sharif, Berlin, P16: 169)
3. Substitutions for Other Words of the Term “Jew”
Last but not least, open antisemitism in the language is trivialized by
the substitution of negative attributes for the term “Jew,” which is discussed
in more detail further below to show which kind of attributes are replaced.
However, here is an apt example that summarizes this phenomenon. Sharif
explained that instead of a longer expression, or a “paraphrase,” it is easier
and shorter to use the term “Jew”:

220 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
There are always these. . .images one has of Jews: that he . . . . has a long
nose, that he has always a lot of money and that he’s stingy. That’s what
is meant by it in the end. You could circumscribe it but you just say
“Jew” for it.
(Sharif, Berlin, P16: 159)
ESTABLISHING A NORM OF OPEN ANTISEMITISM THROUGH
ANTISEMITIC LANGUAGE
The trivialization of antisemitic language and the frequent usage of
such language leads to a norm of open antisemitism through consensual
validation and repetition, particularly if no opposition is voiced. A norm of
antisemitic language is accompanied by antisemitic prejudices and the
establishment of a social order by labeling others as “Jews.” The threat of
exclusion is a crucial part of establishing a social order. Nabil remembered
that labeling someone as “Jew” had been used to exclude a student in his
school, saying, “In our school, in our class, it was rather like for fun, like,
‘Ugh, he is a Jew, don’t talk to him’” (Nabil, Berlin, P4: 55).
The threat of exclusion through labelling someone as “Jew” can also
be observed in some of the group interviews. In one group interview the
conversations turned to Jewish pupils in schools. Nazim stated that there are
no Jews in his school. This was used by another participant to label Nazim
himself as “Jew,” which he denied. He was acknowledged and the interview
continued only after he assured the group that he has the same ethnic identity
as the other group members: 18
Nazim: In our school there aren’t any.
Amir: You, you’re a Jew [Juif]!
Nazim: No, I’m not a Jew [Juif].
Amir: What are you then?
Nazim: I am an Arab!
Amir: Ah ok.
(Nazim and Amir, Paris, P50: 237-256)
Some interviewees exclude religious or ethnic minorities from their
collective community and label these minorities “Jews.” One interviewee,
for example, declared that Alevis are not Muslims, whereupon his friend
exclaimed that they are “Jews.” Another one told us that he has been
labeled “Jew” by Turks because of his Kurdish identity.
18. Most interviewees expressed the belief that an Arab and a Jewish identity
are exclusive even though, paradoxically, many interviewees know about the fact
that there are Arab Jews.

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 221
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR USING ANTISEMITIC LANGUAGE
If an antisemitic usage of language is established, then antisemitic
statements become part of the language. Lapeyronnie has described in detail
the mechanisms resulting in difficulties for individuals to oppose
antisemitic language, or even to abstain from it (see above). This leads to a
morally difficult question: Are those who use antisemitic language responsible
for its antisemitic content, or is the language totalitarian in a way that
takes all responsibility away from the individuals? Or, put in another way,
do individuals have a choice regarding the use of antisemitic language?
Generally, it can be said that all interviewees have learned a discourse, at
least in school, in which antisemitism is not the norm within the language.
Thus the question can be reduced to the impact of social circles: Is the norm
of antisemitic language within social circles and among peers so strong that
they cannot escape it? Inevitably, this depends on the particular social circles
and peers. The observations show that opposition to, or even abstention
from, antisemitic expressions within certain groups are difficult for some
interviewees and would quickly lead to exclusion, particularly if a social
order is established partly through antisemitic language. An interviewee in
Berlin was asked what he would do if his friends offended and attacked a
Jew. He declared:
I cannot hold back my friends, otherwise they would start taking the piss
out of me.
Q: What would they say then?
“Hey, Jew, why do you help him?” and therefore, I’ll just stay quiet.
(Ismail, Berlin, P22: 453-355)
However, for most interviewees, the social pressure regarding
antisemitism is less strong. What is more, all respondents have the option of
staying at a distance or leaving these groups, even though departure might
come at a high emotional price and demands intellectual effort. Therefore,
those who use antisemitic language have to be held responsible for its usage
and, as we shall see, for its antisemitic content.
Some respondents gave proof that they can distance themselves and
even speak out against the antisemitic attitudes of their friends and family.
One interviewee, for example, introduced himself “for fun” in a new school
as having been born in Beirut to a Jewish father. Hence, one of his classmates
wanted to hit him (and the interviewee eventually withdrew the claim
of having a Jewish father). He stated that his father would have “killed” him
if he knew of his statement. Another respondent did not understand why the
term “Jew” is used in a negative sense among his classmates. His statement

222 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
may serve as an example to show how youths can question antisemitism in
the language. On the other hand, the interviewee is also an example of how
naïve young people can be influenced by antisemitic language, searching
for a rational reason regarding Jews’ being portrayed in a negative way. He
said:
I also heard that in our school. . . . But I didn’t understand why they are
saying “you Jew.” They were persecuted in Germany, killed, but that was
also like religious discrepancy. Otherwise, in our school, in the chat
there’s always written “a Jew burns,” or something like that. There I have
seen it. . . like name-calling, I have also heard of.
Q: What do you think then?
Well if I haven’t experienced anything negative from the Jews, like they
didn’t harm me . . . I cannot abuse them if I don’t know them. But my
friends do it sometimes but . . . they just don’t know them, they don’t
know us, either. If they have abused us . . . I wouldn’t like it either. They
don’t know us and we don’t know them but we abuse them. What they do
to us, I don’t know but. . . (Tayfun, Berlin, P13: 223-231)
The question of the degree of individual responsibility and guilt for the
use of antisemitic language against the background of widespread
antisemitism within the communication of the social circle remains difficult,
as the group dynamics and functions of antisemitism need to be taken
into consideration. However, the antisemitic language goes far beyond simply
fulfilling group functions by voicing antisemitic resentments: The content
is antisemitic—as will be shown in the following.
ANTISEMITIC LANGUAGE AND ANTISEMITIC CONTENT
The insult expresses the disgust, a form of physical interiorization of
antisemitism.
—Lapeyronnie 2005, 17, translated from the French by the author.
We have seen that negative meanings of the terms for “Jew” are established
in various ways through its pejorative usage. The negative connotations are
trivialized and banalized to such an extent that one might think that the
terms for “Jew” and their negative meanings have nothing to do with “real
Jews,” and thus its usage is not antisemitic. The use of the terms for “Jew”
can be regarded as a metaphor. However, the choice of the metaphors we
use is far from meaningless, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have
shown on a general level. The metaphors we use both reveal and shape the
way we think (Lakoff and Johnson 2003). Therefore, the pejorative usage of
the words for “Jew” cannot be separated from the general meaning of terms
for “Jew” and thus reveal and transport antisemitic attitudes. Monika

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 223
Schwarz-Friesel and Holger Braune applied the cognitive theory of text
world model that is used in linguistics to an analysis of conceptualizations
of Jews in texts. The model allows the analysis of the implicit potential of
inferences of information in texts or statements drawn by the recipient.
According to the researchers, a univocal antisemitic conceptualization of
Jews in a text world is conceptually closed and does not allow inferences
opposing the patterns of thinking and worldview of the author (Schwarz-
Friesel 2009). I argue that the use of the words for “Jew” as an insult or in a
pejorative way does not allow positive inferences and is connoted to the
terms for “Jew.” The conceptualization of Jews is therefore closed and thus
antisemitic.
Five observations from the interviews support these general insights
into the close relationship between words, language, metaphors, and meaning
and content:
1. The pejorative meanings of “Jew” match typical antisemitic
stereotypes.
2. Those who use “Jew” in a pejorative way usually also show
antisemitic attitudes in other ways.
3. Many interviewees themselves connect the use of “Jew” as an insult
with Jews in many ways.
4. The use of “Jew” as an insult is understood by others as negative
attitudes against Jews.
5. Some interviewees directly insult Jews as “Jews” with an antisemitic
intention.
Let me delineate all five points.
1. The words for “Jew” take meanings which are close to typical antisemitic
stereotypes (Benz 2004): most prominently stingy and treacherous. Consider
the explanations interviewees gave for the meaning of the pejorative
use of the terms for “Jew.”
For example if, I don’t know, my mate, I ask him for a cigarette, he says,
“Wait a second.” After half an hour I have a look, I ask him again, “What
about the cigarette now?” He says, “Wait a second.” I say, “Jew, give me
the cigarette—how long should I wait?”
(Umur, Berlin, P32: 367)
Amir: For example if he does it to me or if he slaps me in the neck, I’ll
tell him,“dirty Jew” [sale Feuj], you know.
Nadem: If he does things of traitor as well. . .
Aswad: For a laugh, I go like, “Jew [Feuj], how’s it going.”
(Amir and Aswad, Paris, P50: 252-254)
Additionally, the general equation of “Jew” with “bad” and, particularly,

224 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
the use of labeling someone as “Jew” as a means of exclusion has striking
connotations to the history of demonizing Jews and to the exclusion of Jews
as the enemy from within. The following statement is an example of exclusionary
function of labeling someone “Jew.”
“You Jew” [means] that you are something worse, that you are not up to
our level so to say.
(Fatin, Berlin, P6: 124-125)
Labeling someone as “Jew” makes him or her a Jew—as conceptualized by
those who use the term—even if it is only temporarily: The antisemites
define who is a Jew. It also shows how illusionary and lunatic Jewishness is
in the mind of antisemites.
2. There is a correlation between the pejorative use of “Jew” and antisemitic
stereotypes: All but two interviewees who use “Jew” as an insult also
showed antisemitic attitudes in other forms, such as the conviction that “the
Jews” are rich and particularly influential in business or the media.
3. The interviewees themselves do not consistently make a distinction
between a pejorative use of the words for “Jew” and concrete Jews. In fact,
interviewees relate the pejorative use of the words for “Jew” directly to
antisemitic attitudes. This attitude can be observed in the interviewee’s
description below of the word’s pejorative usage and his immediate association
with the perception of Jews by others:
If you say, “dirty Jew” [sale Juif], I know many people who are, erm. . .
who don’t like the Jews [Juifs].
(Samed, Paris P38: 313)
But antisemitic attitudes can also be related to their own pejorative usage of
the words for “Jew.” One interviewee, for example, explained an
antisemitic proverb and stated that it is an allusion to Jews, portraying stereotypes
he actually believes in:
Eating Jewish [manger en juif], that’s hiding for eating . . . That’s an
expression that the Jew [Juif] doesn’t want to share . . . the misers. Often
the miser, it’s a Jew [Juif], “Ah you are a Jew [Juif], share it!,” you see?
. . . . There are often little connotations to Jews [Juifs] like that.
Q: And do you think that there is something true to it, in that?
Sure. . . I don’t know.
(Sabri, Paris, P57: 549-559)
Even if interviewees often do not have concrete Jews in mind when using
the word “Jew,” concrete Jews are always connoted in the use of the words
for “Jew.” Participants demonstrate this by expressing negative stereotypes

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 225
against Jews and a general negative view about Jews in different contexts.
The answer of an interviewee illustrates the confusion, ambiguity, and
eventually the conflation of the two interwoven meanings of “Jew.” Halil
was asked if he can imagine having a Jewish friend and responded,
“Well. . . yes, how can I say, if he’s all right, not such a Jew” (Halil, Berlin
P26: 199).
Another interviewee suggested that he once thought that labeling
someone as Jewish is not a serious insult. But now, he argued, he thinks that
it is an utter disgrace to be Jewish because of the way (some) Jews dress.
Thereby he clearly referred to Jewish people and linked the pejorative use
of the word “Jew” to Jews. The insult “Jew” against anybody is transformed
back into resentments against Jews. Consider his own words:
I have a friend and one day on the train someone said to him, “You’re a
Jew [Juif].” Afterwards he told me, “No, you are crazy, it’s a disgrace to
be Jewish [juif]”. . . And why do they put on caps, the Jews [Juifs]? Hats,
and then they all look the same. . . it’s strange.”
(Hakim, Paris, P34: 639)
Hakim also gave evidence of how closely related he sees the use of “Jew”
as an insult to violence against Jews:
Interviewer: Have you ever heard that somebody insulted Jews as “dirty
Jews” [“sales Juifs”] or “Jews” [“Feujs”]?
Hakim: Yeah, yeah, there are many! Jews [Feujs].
Friend: You hear that everywhere, “dirty Jew” [“sale Feuj”].
Hakim: In my college, a year ago, there was a Black who punched a Jew
[Juive].
(Hakim, Paris, P34: 608-614)
One respondent thinks that the way Jews behave has lead to the use of the
very term “Jew” as an insult and thereby links the pejorative use of “Jew”
to Jews:
They have played so many games and therefore they are a persecuted
nation from then until today. . . . Today, here in Berlin, the word “Jew”
has even become an insult. . . . If you’re in a group for example and
somebody talks bullshit, in the past you said: “Oh, shut up you asshole”
. . . . Today you say, “Man, shut up, you Jew.” . . . To say, “Jew” has
become an insult. . . That must come from somewhere. (Ümit, Berlin,
P27: 187-189)
Another one referred to the way in which a Jewish Holocaust survivor had
entered his classroom, saying, “He comes in like a Jew.” He expressed general
discontent about the fact that the Holocaust survivor had visited his

226 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
school, concurred with other students who had abused him verbally and
physically, and subsequently cursed the Holocaust survivor during the
interview:
What does he do in our school? He provokes us on purpose . . . . There
are many Palestinians. He walks in like a Jew, like a son-of-a-bitch. I
agree with them, fucking-Jew, hey.
(Suleiman, Berlin 28: 149)
The relation between antisemitic language and antisemitic attitudes can
culminate in the execration of Jews and the wish for their extermination
because “a Jew is a Jew,” as is bluntly expressed in the statement below.
If I am the boss?. . . . Then I would say . . .. that the damned Jews should
be burned. . . .
Q: And that is all Jews?
Well some Jews, maybe there are Jews who are nice, too. I don’t know.
Q: And those who are nice, they should also be burned?
Yes.
Q: Why?
Because they are Jews nevertheless. Jews are, a Jew is a Jew anyway.
(Bashir, Berlin, P19: 90-100)
4. The inferences from the pejorative use of the terms for “Jew” are negative
concerning Jews. This usage is understood by others as anti-Jewish,
and further antisemitic attitudes can easily be related to it. In the following
excerpt from the conversation of a group of youths, one of them denied any
significance of ethnic insults, whereas his friend’s response to the question
of the usage of “dirty Jew” was that he has problems with “the” Jews:
Q: You don’t say among yourselves, I don’t know, “dirty Jew” [“sale
Juif”] or something like that?
Kamel: No, it depends, just for fun we say “sale Arabe,” just for fun, but
we don’t think it.
Abib: They bother me, the Jews [Juifs].
(Kamel and Abib, Paris, P36: 515-517)
5. Interviewees use the terms for “Jew” in antisemitic intention also directly
against Jews, even though, usually, with an additional negative attribute,
such as “scheiss” [literally: shitty] or “sale” [dirty]. Kassim from Berlin, for
example, reported that he and his friends had shouted “scheiss Juden” in a
synagogue during a school trip. Others said that they or they schoolmates
had insulted Jewish pupils in Paris as “dirty Jews” [sale Juifs].
To conclude, the inferences of a pejorative use of “Jew” are always

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 227
negative and imply negative conceptualizations of Jews. Those who make
the inferences are not open to opposing views, even though the level of
negative inferences varies. The relationships among the pejorative use of
the words for “Jew,” negative conceptualizations of Jews, and antisemitic
attitudes are symbiotic. 19
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PEJORATIVE USAGE OF THE TERMS FOR
“JEW” AND OTHER MINORITY GROUPS
Many other popular insults such as “pédé” [French for faggot],
“Schwuchtel” [German for faggot], or ethnic insults such as “sale Arabe”
[dirty Arab] and “dreckiger Türke” [dirty Turk] are not only an offense
against those labeled as such, but they are also an offense in themselves
against the respective minorities. The main differences in regard to the
insult “Jew” are different ideological connotations. However, a phenomenological
particularity is the use of the same term, “Jew,” both as a neutral
term for self-identification and as an insult (often) without any further pejorative
adjectives against non-Jews and Jews. 20 This shows that in a discourse
in which “Jew” is used as a general insult, Jewish identity is
necessarily understood as negative in itself—otherwise the insult would not
be understood as an insult. Furthermore, it demonstrates the inherent repulsion
of abstraction and the contradiction of antisemitism: Everyone can
become a Jew; the insult is not attached to ethnic backgrounds, religion,
gender, or class. On the other hand, those who are ethnically identified as
Jews or who understand themselves as Jews cannot escape the antisemitic
effect of the discourse in which “Jew” is used as an insult. There are similarities
to labeling a person as “schwul,” “homo” [gay] or “Opfer” [victim],
21 terms that are not pejorative in other contexts. The pejorative use of
these words as insults fulfils similar functions of exclusion and the establishment
of a social order. However, these terms are not ethnicizing and
therefore possibly less essentialistic, and, what is more, they have different
ideological connotations. Differences in the underlying patterns and ideologies
surface when framing the observations as expressions of general atti-
19. However, not all respondents who unambiguously showed antisemitic attitudes
use “Jew” as an insult.
20. Elizabeth Stokoe and Derek Edwards (2007) observed that usually, racial
insults involve pairing national or ethnic identity categories with a pejorative word.
21. The term for “victim” is a common insult among youths in Germany, but
not in France: A person is victimized by labeling him or her “Opfer.” It might be
related to secondary antisemitism resulting in the wish of making the victims of the
Holocaust responsible for becoming victims. However, my data does not allow for
any conclusions on that matter.

228 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:209
tudes and patterns of thinking. 22 Despite serving a similar function, the slur
“victim” refers to different ideological connotations, namely to social Darwinism
rather than to antisemitic worldviews. The pejorative use of
“schwul” or “pédé” implies a sexist perception of masculinity, whereas the
use of “Jew” contains antisemitic inferences, as shown above. The abstraction
of labeling potentially anybody as Jewish and thereby demonizing and
excluding him or her fits into an antisemitic pattern of seeing Jews as the
lurking enemies from within. 23 Other ethnic insults rather suit a racist degradation
and hierarchization—a core pattern of racism. A fitting example is
the French expression “travail d‘arabe” [work of an Arab] with the meaning
of bad workmanship. The expression implies that the work of an Arab is
regarded as inferior.
CONCLUSIONS
The pejorative use of the words for “Jew” leads to negative and therefore
antisemitic connotations in the terms for “Jews” that are inseparable
from antisemitic perceptions of Jews. The effects of the pejorative use of
the words for “Jew” in German and French today are antisemitic in a number
of ways. It allows individuals to voice open antisemitism under the
cover of antisemitic language. Antisemitic language is trivialized through
its widespread and frequent usage, assertions of its irrelevance, and the substitution
of a number of negative attributes with the words for “Jew.” In
addition, its functions of exclusion, degradation, and establishing a social
order within youth groups impede opposition to it, particularly if an
antisemitic norm of communication has been established within the group.
Negative connotations about Jews are disseminated by making them selfevident
and part of everyday language through consensual validation and
repetition, even if those who share this language are not necessarily fervent
antisemites. The pejorative use of “Jew” necessarily implies negative inferences
and conceptualizations of Jews. It enhances a Manichean perception
of Jews and non-Jews in which Jews and those labeled as such are regarded
as negative or evil. Rationalizing antisemitic prejudices becomes obsolescent;
the negative connotation of the term “Jew” is sufficient to justify
hatred against Jews: “A Jew is a Jew anyway” (Bashir, Berlin, P19: 100).
22. General attitudes can be understood as influencing broad behavioral dispositions
that are “reflected equally well in verbal responses and overt actions” (Ajzen
and Fishbein 2005, 182).
23. Similar phenomena were observed more generally and interpreted by other
scholars. E.g., Werner Bonefeld stated with reference to Jean-Paul Sarte,
“Antisemitism does not ‘need’ Jews. . . . It is an abstraction that excludes nobody.
Anyone can be considered a Jew” (Bonefeld 2005, 158).

2009] “JEW” AS A SLUR 229
The exclusion and defamation of those who are, albeit temporarily,
labeled “Jews” effectively lead to the exclusion and defamation of Jews and
those labeled as such. This paper confirms and adds to results of previous
studies from France regarding a close relationship between antisemitic language
and verbal and physical violence within the French and the German
context.
Surprisingly, there are only minor differences between the pejorative
use of the terms for “Jew” in German and in French, such as the fact that
the adjective “Jewish” is used frequently in a pejorative way in French but
rarely in German. The German term “Opfer” [victim] is also used as an
insult and fulfils similar functions within youth groups as “Jew.” However,
the main differences between the slur “Opfer” and other in-itself-offensive
slurs such as “fag” and ethnic insults in comparison to the slur “Jew” are
the different ideological connotations that the respective terms hold. Interviewees
from France use and associate the insult “Jew” more directly
against Jews than do their counterparts in Germany, presumably because
Jews are more present among their social circles. However, the pejorative
use of Jude, Juif, or Feuj in German and French equally enhances the dissemination
and consolidation of antisemitic attitudes and worldviews and
prepares the grounds for verbal and physical violence against those depicted
temporarily as “Jews,” and particularly against Jews.
Günther Jikeli is completing his doctorate at the Center for Research on Antisemitism,
Technical University of Berlin, and is co-founder of the International Institute
for Education and Research on Antisemitism, Berlin/London. This paper was
presented at the 32nd Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of
Political Psychology, Dublin, July 14, 2009. Please address all correspondence to
g.jikeli@iibsa.org.
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Traditional Catholicism and the Teachings of
Bishop Richard Williamson
J. Christopher Pryor*
Bishop Richard N. Williamson recently attained global notoriety for
denying the Holocaust. The Bishop considers Jews to be evil masters of
the world, intent upon control and perversion. Williamson taught these
views to his seminarians and fellow Catholics around the world. The
implications for antisemitic transmission are discussed.
It is 1919. In internet chat rooms, on blogs, on college campuses, and
on late-night radio shows, the cultural clock has been re-set. A new form of
antisemitism is spreading in churches and within “pious” families. This is
not a “sensational” claim. I saw this phenomenon while attending the seminary
directed by Bishop Richard N. Williamson, of the Society of St. Pius
X (SSPX), in 1992-93. Bishop Williamson recently attained global notoriety
for denying Nazi use of gas chambers to murder Jews intentionally during
the Holocaust. The Bishop’s antisemitism, a key component of his
dangerous worldview, is both shocking and dangerous, because it masquerades
as part of the Roman Catholic faith. Catholics who approach the
Bishop with a sincere interest in doctrinal and liturgical orthodoxy are in
danger of becoming imbued with his erroneous worldview, a worldview
that has far more in common with the growing neo-fascist movement than it
does with Christianity.
I would like to begin by highlighting key experiences I had while studying
in Bishop Williamson’s seminary in Winona, Minnesota. These will
illustrate his process of indoctrination, the particular methodology that
ensured that his philosophy was thoroughly absorbed by the seminarians.
Understanding how antisemitism was presented in the context of our
formation will clarify why, taught as an element of faith, it was never contradicted
by us as students, and why certain people were more susceptible to
it than others. These first-hand experiences will also make it easier to
demonstrate how Bishop Williamson’s philosophy, as a whole system, logically
flowed from his antisemitism.
Identifying the similarity of Bishop Williamson’s worldview and the
centuries-old philosophy of Perennialism and organizations that embrace
Perennialism, will further help the reader to understand why so many
* J. Christopher Pryor is an attorney who currently resides in the Kansas City
metropolitan area with his wife, Jeanette, and five children.
233

234 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
Catholics, under the Bishop’s influence, have developed an affinity with
organizations that appear, on the surface, to be diametrically opposed to the
basic tenets of Christianity.
It will, finally, be easy to understand why the Traditional Catholic
Movement, having been primed by Bishop Williamson’s teaching, both personally
and through the priests he formed, is a prime target for subversive
and radical political organizations that promote the practical application of
Williamson’s philosophical ideology.
I will conclude by offering some practical ideas for developing a systematic,
updated plan for exposing and eradicating sanitized, pious
antisemitism. I hope this paper will spark a serious public discussion about
the emerging pernicious threat of religious antisemitism.
SOCIETY OF ST. PIUS X (SSPX)
I had the great fortune to grow up in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest
of nine Irish-Catholic children. My father, a very conservative man, was
dissatisfied with the modernized, Post-Vatican II Church, and was always
in search of an old-fashioned parish. In 1983, my aunt and uncle discovered
St. Michael’s Church, in Farmingville, New York, on Long Island, and
told my parents that this was a parish in which they could attend the Latin
Mass.
St. Michael’s is run by the SSPX, a congregation of priests founded by
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The Archbishop, like my own father,
objected to many of the doctrinal and liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican
Council, and wished to provide like-minded Catholics with an opportunity
to receive the Sacraments and the traditional teaching of the Church.
My father was happy to find the Latin Mass, and we frequented SSPX
chapels, both on Long Island, and in Hudson Falls when we moved upstate
in 1987.
I was an idealistic teenager and became very attached to the Traditional
Catholic Movement. Since I was considering the priesthood, I spent
my first year after high school living in an SSPX retreat center before entering
the English-speaking Society seminary in Winona, Minnesota, for formal
priestly training.
The spirit in the seminary at Winona was totally different from that of
the simple Catholicism I had grown up with. The source of the peculiar
orientation and ideology permeating the intellectual and spiritual life was
the rector of the seminary, Bishop Richard N. Williamson. His worldview,
his interpretation of history and politics, dictated the academic formation,
the books read in common, and the frequent guests invited to speak at the
seminary. Instead of directing us to concentrate on the writings of the

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 235
Popes, the Saints, and classic Catholic authors, he directed us toward the
ocean of politically subversive literature common among radicalized political
conservatives. Against the backdrop of the “International Jewish Banking
Conspiracy Theory” paraded anti-government paranoia, doomsday
propaganda, and an unending plethora of anti-establishment diatribes, all
designed to discredit the “official story” of every major historical event and
every noteworthy figure of the past five centuries.
First Day, First Class
The first class I attended as a seminarian was “Acts of the Magisterium,”
a class taught by Bishop Williamson himself. This class was originally
designed by Father Lefloch, the head of the French Seminary at Santa
Chiara, the seminary attended by Archbishop Lefebvre, in Rome, in the
early 1920s. The purpose of the class was to provide future priests with an
understanding of the major writings of the Popes of the last two centuries.
The class focused particularly on those Encyclicals containing explanations
of the philosophical trends popular since the Enlightenment. Bishop Williamson
used this class to introduce the new seminarians to his radicalized
worldview.
On this, our first day of class, Bishop Williamson walked into the
classroom in a semi-theatrical manner. He reminded me of Mr. Headstone,
the schoolmaster in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. The Bishop
scrutinized each seminarian, occasionally raising his eyebrows, as if to
express disbelief at the array of imbeciles sitting before him.
He tersely ordered, “Put away your pens and paper. I want you to
think!” Then he asked us to raise our hands if we had ever seen the movie
The Sound of Music. He made his question more specific: “How many of
you have seen it twice? Five times? More than ten times? Fifteen?”
With each question, his tone became more condescending. It was
obvious from his demeanor that the degree of our exposure to Julie
Andrews singing in the Alps was some sort of litmus test, a test I was going
to fail miserably. I remember being baffled by the importance he placed
upon this movie. To me, The Sound of Music was a relatively well-filmed,
simple story with decent music. As the Bishop continued with his inquisition,
I dejectedly calculated the number of times I had watched The Sound
of Music. NBC aired The Sound of Music once a year. I was nineteen, so I
must have seen it at least fifteen times that I could recall. With no small
trepidation, I wincingly left my hand in the air until the Bishop had completed
his foray into psychological profiling via Hollywood classics. How
would I fare if he began questioning us on The Wizard of Oz? Not until
years later did it dawn on me that the reason the Bishop detested The Sound

236 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
of Music was simply because, in this movie, the “bad guys” were Nazis and
the heroine was a woman.
Bishop Williamson continued the class by drawing a timeline on the
board. He explained that history is a series of cycles. God lifts men to a
new height of culture and then, within 500 years, civilization descends into
decadence. Following a “divine and necessary chastisement,” God once
again elevates new heroes, and society begins its next ascent. Modern society,
according to the Bishop, was at the end of one of these five-hundredyear
cycles, and he informed us that God would soon chastise humanity,
wiping out a large portion of civilization. This was necessary, he explained,
because Catholics had lost their faith and virtue, bringing about the disorder
of world-domination by the Jews.
So it was that, sitting in our first class on the first day of our formation
to the Catholic Priesthood, we were already being indoctrinated by the rector’s
antisemitism. The Bishop explained that, for thousands of years, God
had given the Jews many gifts in preparation for the coming Messiah. Once
Our Lord came, and the Jewish people rejected him, they began, and continue
now, to use their God-given gifts to pursue world-domination, in order
to destroy the Catholic Church and rule human society. “Europeans, left to
themselves, are not powerful enough to stand up the Jews,” the Bishop told
us. “Only when European Catholics return to tradition will the Jews again
be subservient to the Catholics, as in the Middle Ages.”
The Bishop explained that a Catholic Pope would come back to power,
destroy Modernism, and consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary. These acts of God would raise man to new heights and there would
be peace in the world—for about twenty-five years. After this, man would
reinvent computers. Once man began, again, to dabble in technology, he
would quickly descend, not in the 500 years it normally takes for a historical
cycle, but immediately, into the hands of the Anti-Christ. The Bishop
assured us that, although he probably would not live to see the Anti-Christ,
all of us would. So much for day one at the seminary.
Bishop Williamson’s Guest Speakers
Bishop Williamson reinforced his teaching by inviting guest speakers
who agreed with him to lecture at the Seminary. During the 1992-93 school
year, the seminary hosted Mr. Bryan Ellison, a doctoral student from Berkeley
University, whose theory was that AIDS is caused not by HIV, but
rather by excessive drug and antibiotic abuse among homosexuals.
While in the seminary, I came to understand that, for each news story
or historical event, there is always a “non-official explanation” – a conspiracy
theory, which differed from the story presented by the “vile media,” as

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 237
Bishop Williamson referred to the press. This “hidden truth” contradicted
observable reality. In the case of AIDS, Ellison claimed that there was a
plot created by the “homosexual mafia,” which had, itself, a vested interest
in arguing that a virus, and not their drug use, causes AIDS. I remember
thinking how irrational this theory was because homosexuals have nothing
to gain by being thought of as the source and carriers of a deadly, sexually
transmitted virus, instead of as simple drug users. Nevertheless, I did not
have the medical expertise to refute this theory, so I did not address the
problem in my mind at that time.
I would later realize that this is one of the tactics of the conspiracy
theorist: namely, to inundate the mind with specialized minutiae that cannot
be analyzed without a great deal of research. Even if the target of the propaganda
is disposed, as I was, to reject the conspiracy theory, he or she is not
necessarily equipped to do so at the time of the indoctrination. The individual
either gives in to the indoctrination, or, overwhelmed by its apparent
complexity, shrugs the whole discussion off and leaves the debate. Seldom
is the indoctrination immediately refuted by anyone, and this lack of contradiction
has a powerful psychological effect, especially on susceptible
minds. The subject is instructed didactically by an authority figure; no one
asks for substantiation, asks probing questions, or objects to the content.
Those who are concerned about inconsistencies, as I was, assume they are
the only ones who disagree. Instead of concluding that the instructor might
be wrong, the listener begins to doubt him or herself.
Dr. Jiri Vojta
In November of 1993, Dr. Jiri Vojta was invited to the seminary. 1
The seminary printed a long review of the Doctor’s conference regarding
the history of Hungary in the Verbum, its quarterly newsletter. I could not
help but notice, however, that the Verbum failed to mention much of what I
had actually heard during the Vojta discussion of the Jews of Europe, and
of Hungary in particular.
Dr. Vojta “clarified” for us that “Modern Jews” are not the Hebrews of
the Holy Land, but are, instead, the descendants of Asians who converted to
Judaism. Consequently, “Modern Jews” have no relation to Jesus, Abraham,
Isaac, or Jacob. According to Dr. Vojta, Jews living in European cities
were segregated into ghettos because the Jews actually demanded that
the Christians build walls around their quarters and allow them to live there,
apart. After many generations of living in these self-imposed ghettos, the
1. The Verbum 52 (1994 Winter), http://www.sspxseminary.org/files/
VERBUM/V052_WIN1994.pdf (accessed December 1, 2009).

238 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
Jews became so inbred that they needed to lure drunken Christian men into
the ghettos to impregnate the Jewish women. According to Dr. Vojta, this
perversion permitted the Jews to propagate without the genetic defects they
would have otherwise suffered from continued near-incestuous relations
resulting from generations of living in this segregated manner.
I found one point made by the doctor to be particularly shocking.
From time to time, Vojta stated, a Jewish woman would fall in love with the
Christian whom she had seduced. The two would leave the ghetto to be
married in the Church. Vojta insisted that no Jewish man was ever able to
seduce a Christian woman. When asked for clarification as to whether this
might have possibly happened, even once, he declared, “Never!”
Dr. Vojta informed us that his son, who works in the construction
industry, had recently traveled to Auschwitz and examined remains of the
gas chambers. Having found a small crack at the bottom of the door, he
determined that the chamber could never have been used to exterminate
human beings. Additionally, Dr. Vojta informed us that he had spoken to a
mortician who said that it took an average of forty-eight hours to cremate a
human cadaver. He asserted that the Nazis would have had to cremate a
body every two minutes in order for the Holocaust to have been carried out
as historians claim. From these two points, Vojta concluded that the reports
of the entire Holocaust were fraudulent.
The Fallout from Indoctrination
On October 13, 1992, an incredible feast day celebration in honor of
the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America took
place. Classes were canceled; we seminarians played ball games, staged
stand-up routines, and enjoyed a special dinner with wine and champagne.
Despite the festive atmosphere, Williamson’s obsession with the Jews
seeped into the day. Michael McMahon, now a priest of the SSPX, gave a
conference on Queen Isabella of Spain, the sponsor of Columbus’ voyages.
His thesis was that, before Columbus could come to the New World and
spread Christianity, Isabella had had to accomplish five feats, which
McMahon described as “diamonds in her five-pointed crown.” The “fifth
diamond” of her crown was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain!
The content of Bishop Williamson’s interpretation of the meaning of
history and the distortion of actual historical facts is significant. The reaction
of the other seminarians, the professors, and the superiors of the SSPX
to the rector’s instruction is also extremely significant. In the time I was in
the seminary, I never heard a single person object to him, to his “crusade.”
No matter what he said about the Jews, the U.S. government, or the Catholic
Church, everyone remained silent.

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 239
Why was everyone silent? Some believed in Williamson’s theories
immediately, because they were simple-minded, and he was a Bishop of the
SSPX. Others were certainly extremists themselves and were all too happy
about the affirmation of this ideology by a person of his standing. It even
appears that he may have recruited such seminarians. I remember one seminarian
telling me that he had approached the Bishop during a retreat and
asked if it were permissible to shoot abortion doctors, as he, the young man,
was considering the tactic to advance the pro-life cause. The Bishop’s reply
was, “Why don’t you come to the seminary?”
The majority of the seminarians were not extremists when they
entered. But even these, who perhaps harbored internal uneasiness, did not
object publicly to Williamson. The most common reaction by people who
did not whole-heartedly agree with the Bishop was to say, “He is eccentric.
He likes to stir the pot. He should stay out of politics and stick to what he is
good at.” I never heard anyone ask, “What if he really means what he
says?” The answer for them would have been too difficult. If the Bishop
really meant what he said, the more balanced seminarians would have had
to either leave the seminary, or speak of their objections to the superiors.
Objecting to the superiors appeared futile; because the Bishop was so public
in his extremism, the superiors were certainly aware of what he believed
and taught. The seminarian concluded, logically, that the superiors themselves
had either decided to put up with him rather than silence him, or,
worse, must actually agree with him. For seminarians aspiring to the traditional
priesthood, and believing this goal could only be realized within the
SSPX, they had nowhere else to go. Their only recourse was to formulate
excuses, give their own attenuated interpretation of what the Bishop actually
meant, minimize what the Bishop said, or call him eccentric, and move
on with life.
DECONSTRUCTING RICHARD
Multiple secondary errors orbit the antisemitic core of Bishop Williamson’s
philosophy. For example, he teaches that “women are not rational
creatures,” that “white men are created by God to rule the ‘bond-races,’”
that technology is evil, and that the United States government destroyed the
World Trade Center in order to advance the triumph of the “New World
Order.” It is important to look at these ancillary opinions, because they
shed light on his entire worldview. This worldview is not simply a set of
disjointed and offensive opinions, but rather a cohesive philosophy. Many
radical organizations share Williamson’s antisemitism, though they are
savvy enough to hide it while promoting one or more of the secondary
concepts.

240 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
Bishop Williamson is not alone in espousing the worldview he promotes.
His favorite ideas are strikingly similar to those that make up a
philosophy known as Perennialism, a philosophy very popular with members
of the European far-right. Those concerned with fighting the
antisemitism of Williamson and other religious figures should study the
philosophy of Perennialism because it is almost universally subscribed to
and promoted, in one form or another, by the rising radical neo-fascism.
Perennialism, or Traditionalism, as it is sometimes referred to, was formulated
by several European philosophers, including Julius Evola and Rene
Guenon. In many ways, Perennialism is a cousin to the religious philosophy
of Hitler.
Perennialism 2
Perennialism is, primarily, the belief that mankind possesses a body of
spiritual truths, known as perennial wisdom (sophia perennis). According
to the ideology, these truths are handed down by the various “traditional
religions” such Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and even some ancient rites of
Free-Masonry. Many Perennialists exclude Christianity and Judaism from
the list of traditional religions. The Perennialists distinguish between the
exoteric aspects of religion and their esoteric meanings. For example, each
faith has its own specific dogmas and rituals (exoteric) that differentiate it
from other traditional religions. However, according to the Perennialists,
all traditional religions hold in common the deeper esoteric meanings hidden
in those dogmas and rituals.
According to this school of thought, those who adhere to traditional
faiths can, through specific ascetic processes, arrive at the knowledge of the
“perennial wisdom” and a state of enlightened consciousness. This state is
for the “initiated”; hence the term “Gnosticism” is sometimes used to define
Perennialism.
Perennialism was a reaction against the rational, materialist spirit of
the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Its founders rejected modern
Western civilization because of what they considered its departure from
the traditional paths that led to wisdom and enlightenment. The central
2. This section is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the Perennialist
Movement, but rather a brief and rudimentary introduction into the basic tenets of
the movement, especially with regard to its relation to the Traditional Catholic
Movement. There are many internal academic debates between Perennialists. For
instance, many completely reject that Julius Evola is a Perennialist, claiming that
rather he is a Traditionalist, because he subordinates the religious aspect of man to
man’s political dimension.

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 241
focus of Perennialism is a fierce adherence to natural, human traditions and
a bitter rejection of modernity, which Perennialists perceive to flow from
the modern spirit. As Marxism embraced the idea of modern progress as
the antidote to Western modernity, Perennialism holds that the answer to
the problem of modernity lies with its rejection.
The Fathers of Perennialism
Rene Guenon was a French scholar of the early twentieth century.
Guenon was born to Catholic parents, but early in his youth he abandoned
his faith and turned to the study of the occult, which was then in vogue in
Paris. He became in turn a Free-Mason, an adept of Hinduism, and, finally,
a Sufi-Muslim. Guenon wrote prolifically about his Perennialist theories,
and his most important book was Crisis of the Modern World (1927).
The two other authors who contributed most significantly to the formulation
of Perennialist thinking were Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and
Frithjof Schuon. Coomaraswamy, an expert on Hindu art, was interested
primarily in the role of art and craftsmanship in culture, and their relation to
industrialized labor. Frithjof Schuon was responsible for giving to Rene
Guenon’s philosophical theories the more formal structure of a religious
movement. Schuon was also a convert to Islam.
The most politically radical of the Perennialists was Baron Julius
Evola. Julius Evola adapted many of the tenets of Perennialism to the
Aryan movement typified in the Third Reich. Many philosophical Perennialists
designate Evola as a Traditionalist, as opposed to a Perennialist.
Below is a brief summary of the principles of the Perennialists and of Julius
Evola. Many of these same ideas can be found in the new rise of radical
Islam, as well as among the extreme far-right.
Love of Tradition
Perennialists believe there is an original source of knowledge that is
esoteric and attainable by observing the customs found in “traditional” religions
and cultures. This love of “tradition” is the reason for their disdain for
modernity.
Hatred of Modernity
The Perennialists, in an effort to counter the evils of modern philosophies,
place an exaggerated importance on human custom or tradition. This
tendency is sometimes carried to such an extent that the Perennialists will
oppose modern technology, cities, the education of women, medicine, uni-

242 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
versal literacy, and so forth, merely because these things are “new” and the
product of human reason, and not the product of traditional customs or
nature.
History Is a Series of Cycles
History is considered by the Perennialist as a succession of cycles.
Each cycle begins with the spreading of a new ideal for civilization. As the
ideal becomes embodied in the culture, it loses its original purity, and the
culture begins to decay. In order for a new cycle to begin, the old order of
civilization must first disintegrate. This prepares the way for the next
rebirth. Julius Evola taught that the decline of society cannot and should
not be resisted. Rather, he believed that the corruption of society should be
carried out to its logical conclusion before any restoration could be
attempted. 3 This typifies the hope many Perennialists have: that the current
decaying society will not be repaired, but will be brought to an end by a
cataclysm. It is the duty of the “political soldier” to hasten the fall of the
dying civilization, in order to usher in the renewal.
The cyclic nature of history has some commonality with the Marxist
view of history, although on the surface, it appears very different. Both
views of history allow the followers to believe that the destruction of modern
society is inevitable and must be hastened by political action. Christian
Apocalyptic versions of history can serve a similar purpose.
Crisis Mentality
The crisis mentality flows from the idea that society is now at the end
of a cycle of decay, which will lead to the ultimate destruction of society
before the next rebirth. Perennialists appear almost gleeful with expectation
during events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the recent riots in France.
The crisis mentality keeps all the followers in a perpetual state of agitation
and desire to take political action against the evils of society.
Exaltation of the Male Gender
The Perennialists, under the guise of rectifying the excesses of modern
feminism, raise the masculine gender to an exalted level and subsequently
diminish the female nature to a subhuman level. Many have gone so far as
to deny the intellectual nature of women, believing that women are purely
3. Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for Aristocrats of the Soul,
trans. Joscelyn Godwin and Constance Fontana (n.p.: Inner Traditions, 2003).

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 243
emotive and need a man to provide intellectual thought and purpose for
their lives. This concept of women and their relation to men is eerily akin
to the teachings of radical Islam.
Belief in Conspiracy Theories
The followers of this ideology believe in every imagined antisemitic
conspiracy theory. Examples of these theories include the following: The
Jews were behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks; 4 the Holocaust never occurred;
no one was ever killed in a gas chamber; the Jews have omnipotent control
over all sectors of modern life; and the Jews run all the banks and control
all sectors of global politics and government. 5
Traditional Catholics and Perennialism
Traditional Catholics may be attracted to Perennialism because they
oppose some of the same effects of modernity as the Perennialists, such as
Modernism, Feminism, Materialism, and the effects of unchecked and
excessive industrialization.
Perennialists Seek the Destruction of the Modern World, Not Its
Conversion
The Perennialists assert that the modern world is beyond saving and
that its destruction must be hastened through revolution, a return to the
land, or a divine chastisement. It is believed by some that after the fall of
the modern governments, truly virile men will rise up and restore civilization
through their methods of education and the application of distributism.
Some Catholic followers of Perennialism will distort their religion in order
to serve these political agendas.
Conclusion of Overview of Perennialism
In modern political extremist movements, few have ever heard of the
word Perennialism. However, the tenets of Perennialism are widely held by
4. Bishop Richard N. Williamson, “Letters from Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas
Seminary” (October 1, 2002) This letter, written three weeks after 9/11, although
not a complete explanation of his beliefs concerning the Jews and 9/11, displays
Bishop Williamson’s views concerning the Jews’ control over the U.S. and even
partially exonerates the radical Muslim terrorists.
5. Bishop Richard N. Williamson, “Letters from Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas
Seminary” (September 1, 2003).

244 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
various extremist movements, whether they be Aryan Neo-Nazis, Catholic
Third-Positionists, or radical Islamists. Of the characteristics mentioned
above, the three that are most universal and the most central to the new rise
of extremism are the depreciation of women, the belief in antisemitic conspiracy
theories, and the rejection of modernity, especially with regard to
economics, culture, and technology.
POLITICAL EXTREMISTS CONNECTION
The purpose of this section is to provide some concrete examples of
ways in which the Traditional Catholic movement has become infected by
the agenda of Perennialist political extremists. Not every person mentioned
below is an extremist; however, it is clear that, when this movement is
viewed as a whole, it is moving quickly toward radicalization.
The International Third Position 6
In the early 1980s, an Italian named Roberto Fiore, recently a member
of the European Parliament, was forced to flee Italy because he was wanted
for questioning concerning the bombing of the Bologna Train Station in
1980. He was eventually acquitted of involvement in that crime, but was
convicted of associating with terrorists and was sentenced to a five-year
prison term. Upon arriving as a fugitive in England in the early ‘80s, he
came in contact with an organization named The National Front. It was
then that he met Nick Griffin, the founder of the British National Party and
a future member of the European Parliament, and Derek Holland, the cofounder
of IHS Press. The National Front, widely viewed as neo-fascist,
was a conglomeration of pagan and Catholic political ideologues who were
dissatisfied with modern European democracy and capitalism. This organization,
which was imbued with the ideology of Julius Evola, the neo-pagan
Perennialist and Nazi supporter during WWII, soon disbanded.
The Catholic members of the National Front broke away and founded
the International Third Position (ITP). The term “Third Position” refers to
their concept that socialism and capitalism are intrinsically evil and that a
“third way,” distributism, needs to become the economic system of the
world. Members of the ITP believed that capitalism is controlled by inter-
6. Roberto Fiore would go on to lead Forza Nuova, an Italian neo-Fascist
organization. Forza Nuova is also a member of a pan-European neo-Fascist
organization named the European National Front. It is believed that both Derek
Holland and Roberto Fiore are involved in that organization and its subsidiaries,
such as Poland’s NOP, along with their main magazine, Szczerbic, or Sword.

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 245
national Jewish bankers who force people to live in debt, to live in cities,
and to embrace “modern immorality.” The members of the ITP believed
that only by “going back to the land,” rejecting modernity, and abandoning
democracy would society be able to return to its Catholic foundations and
flourish.
Entryism
Entryism is a political tactic by which a small organization joins a
larger organization with which it has some commonality. This is done for
one of two purposes: either to completely take over the organization, or to
recruit new members. Shortly after the founding of the ITP, its members
began assisting at Mass in chapels of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).
The SSPX, like the ITP, promotes attachment to the concept of tradition.
By the late 1990s, the ITP had made serious progress in gaining support
within the SSPX for its radical political agenda. One Society bishop,
Bishop Williamson, several SSPX priests, and many of the faithful have
become deeply committed to the ITP philosophy and worldview.
Bishop Williamson has spent twenty years teaching seminarians, as
well as all the faithful, that “girls are not for ideas,” that “the use of reason
is for men,” and that women should neither obtain a higher education nor
exercise any position of authority over men. The Bishop, as I learned in the
seminary, has also written about the Jews. In the past he has written that
God is punishing Western civilization because the Christian governments of
Europe allow “free circulation of the enemies of civilization.” 7 The Bishop
also teaches that technology is evil and that the teachings of the Unabomber
are Catholic. It should be no surprise that Bishop Williamson has written
for Sharpe and Holland 8 and endorsed their books. 9
Holland and Sharpe Join Forces
Derek Holland, one of the co-founders of the ITP, started a publishing
house in England called St. George’s Education Trust (SGET). The SGET
founded another publishing house in the United States named the Legion of
St. Louis (Legion).
7. Bishop Richard N. Williamson, “Letters from Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas
Seminary” (February 1, 1991).
8. The Angelus Press, “The Rural Solution” 2009, http://www.angeluspress.
org/oscatalog/item/7094/rural-solution (accessed January 26, 2010).
9. Neo-Conned, “Neo-Conned Again Endorsements,” http://www.neoconned.
info/neo-conned-again-endorsements.html (accessed September 9, 2009).

246 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
The Legion was co-founded by John Sharpe, an active-duty U.S. Naval
Officer. 10 When Sharpe began this publishing house/movement he directed
his recruiting toward “Traditional Catholics,” many of whom were openly
at odds with Rome by this time. He readily acknowledged that some people
rejected the Pope, but believed that the organization should move forward
in uniting all Catholic Traditionalists. 11
Another insight into the Legion can be had by looking at the books and
authors promoted by it, such as The International Jew, by Henry Ford, and
the writings of E. Michael Jones. 12
The website run by the Legion also demonstrates Sharpe’s attitude
toward the United States. Below are the writings Sharpe posted the day
after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. 13
Readers will notice that we didn’t begin today’s special issue on yesterday’s
remarkable events with “America is attacked.” America wasn’t
attacked. America isn’t the World Trade Center, nor is it the Pentagon. At
least those things don’t represent our America, nor should they for our
readers. . . The media spin masters would have us think that those things
represent America, only to encourage a misuse of our Patriotic sentiments.
. .a misuse which has been going on for far too long and which is
bound, unfortunately, only to continue as a result of yesterday’s intentional
plane crashes. . .But in a sane world, assuming the tragic issue of
the loss of many innocent lives could be set aside for just a moment. . .in
a sane world, the elimination of most of the center of the world’s usurious
financial system would and should bring a breath of fresh air, a sigh
of relief, and a hope for a better day.
Although Sharpe, a former employee of the Pentagon and spokesman
for the Atlantic Fleet, founded the Legion, 14 he would later implicitly deny
knowledge of its existence once he began moving into more genteel circles
after his success with the Neo-Conned! series. 15
10. The Legion of St. Louis, http://www.legionofstlouis.com (accessed December
1, 2009).
11. John Sharpe, “The Legion of St. Louis,” E-mail to Traditional Catholics.
12. The Legion of St. Louis, “Booklist,” http://www.legionofstlouis.com/booklist.htm#FullList.
13. The Legion of St. Louis, “Special Feature, WTC and the Pentagon
Attacked,” September 12, 2001, http://www.legionofstlouis.com/bulletin.htm#
archive (accessed December 1, 2009).
14. Sharpe v. Landmark Communications, Inc. The April 7, 2009 summary
judgment ruling was reprinted in the Virginia Lawyers Weekly, http://valawyers
weekly.com/wp-files/pdf/009-8-082.pdf.
15. Against the Grain, “IHS Press, Potential Fascists and Antisemitic Connec-

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 247
IHS Press
At the same time Sharpe and Holland founded the Legion, they also
founded IHS Press. When looking at the books reprinted by IHS Press,
such as those written by Chesterton and Belloc, it appears that IHS Press is
more moderate than the Legion. However, it is when reading the forewords
to these books that it becomes apparent that this is not the case. IHS Press
has enlisted the following authors to write forewords for its books: Peter
Chojnowski, an SSPX professor; Kirkpatrick Sale, a Vermont separatist;
and Jean Ousset, who worked for the antisemitic Vichy Government and
was the secretary to Charles Maurras of Action Français. Action Français
was a political organization that promoted many Perennialist ideas and was
condemned by Pope Pius XI. Sharpe and Holland started another publishing
house that promoted a book called The Rural Solution (2004). The
Rural Solution included the writings of several authors, including Bishop
Richard N. Williamson, Dr. Peter Chojnowski, and Christopher McCann,
an employee of the Angelus Press, run by the SSPX. 16 It appears that
whenever Holland and Sharpe wish to cater to a different audience, they
found a new publishing house.
Neo-Conned and Neo-Conned Again
Sharpe and Holland’s greatest success was the Neo-Conned! series.
These books were written for circulation among the population at large, not
just for Traditional Catholics. The series dealt with the war in Iraq. Following
the pattern of their earlier enterprises, Holland and Sharpe opened
another publishing house with a new name, Light in the Darkness Press. In
addition to changing the name of the publishing house, they also altered
their own names. John Sharpe now advertised himself as “J. Forrest
Sharpe” and Holland became “Deric O’Huallachain.” 17
Neo-Conned! followed a format similar to that of the other books published
by IHS Press. Many of the writings contained in the book addressed
the war in Iraq in an acceptable and academic fashion. At the same time,
however, there were authors and supporters with extremist backgrounds or
tions, etc., a Chronicle of Disturbing Patterns,” February 27, 2006, http://www.
ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/2006/02/ihs-press-potential-fascist.html.
16. Supra.
17. Derek Holland has also written under the name of Liam Connolly. The
Legion sells one of “Connolly’s” books, Catholic Action: Uses, Abuses, and
Excuses. Supra.

248 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
opinions. It is the mixing of decent authors with extreme ones that makes
the Neo-Conned! books so objectionable.
Some of the authors whose writings were included in Neo-Conned! are
Father Juan Iscara of the SSPX, Dr. Peter Chojnowski, Noam Chomsky,
Hillarion Cappuci, John Rao (who writes for the Remnant and was condemned
by Cardinal Volk of Prague for speaking at an extreme-right meeting
in Europe), 18 and Eric Gill. Neo-Conned II follows the same pattern,
with authors such as Justin Raimondo, 19 E. Michael Jones, Patrick
Buchanan, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Mark and Louise Zwick. 20
Some of the endorsements touted by Sharpe and Holland on their Neo-
Conned promotional website are from Dr. David Allen White, public SSPX
supporter; Gerry McGeough, former member of the Irish Republican
Army; 21 Fr. Lawrence Smith and Fr. Peter Sommerville, both independent
priests friendly to the Traditional Catholic cause; Alassandra Mussolini,
Neo-Fascist-supporting granddaughter of Mussolini; 22 Bishop Richard N.
Williamson; Deidre Manifold; and Ron Paul. 23
Another shocking example of IHS Press’s collaboration with extremists
can be seen in an interview found on Neo-Conned’s website. It is an
interview with Ibrahim Ebeid. 24 The Neo-Conned editor conducting the
interview showed a clear working knowledge of Ibrahim’s activities. As
can be seen on Ibrahim’s website, he is the spokesperson for the Baath
Party in Iraq, and calls for the murder of U.S. Troops and Iraqis who support
the U.S. 25
18. Tisk Cirkev, “Cardinal Vlk’s Condemnation,” September 14, 2006, http://
tisk.cirkev.cz/z-domova/kardinal-vlk-odmitl-jakekoliv-projevy-extremismu.html
(accessed December 1, 2009).
19. Steven Schwartz, “Justin Raimondo: An American Neo-Fascist,” Front
Page Magazine (March 15, 2005), http://www.frontpagemag.com.
20. Two documents: 1. “Neo-conned Authors” and 2. “Neo-Conned Again
Authors.”
21. See J. Christopher Pryor, “Gerry McGeough: An Omen of the Future,”
April 29, 2009, http://christopherpryor.blogspot.com/2009/04/gerry-mcgeoughomen-of-future.html.
22. Alassandra Mussolini has formed a political alliance in Italy with Roberto
Fiore, the co-founder of the International Third Position with Derek Holland. (No
additional document).
23. neo-CONNED!, “Neo-Conned Authors,” http://www.neoconned.info/
neoconnedauthors.html. Also see http://www.neoconned.info/neoconnedagain
authors.html.
24. neo-CONNED!, “An Interview with Ibrahim Ebeid,” May 6, 2006, http://
www.neoconned.info.wstub.archive.org/al-mohar%20editor.html (accessed July 7,
2009).
25. Al-Moharer, http://www.al-moharer.net/.

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 249
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
In order to combat the rise of antisemitism in Traditional Catholic circles,
and in conservative circles in general, it is necessary to broaden the focus
with which watchdog groups search for evidence of antisemitism. Instead
of just looking for evidence of hatred of Jews, they must look for erroneous
political and historical opinions concerning Jews and Israel. At the same
time, an intensive education effort must begin among the Jewish community
to alert members to this possible shift in the antisemitic threat. Jewish
groups must defend themselves against public slanders and detractions emanating
from radical organizations and speakers.
An Error
Many people not familiar with the growing rise of antisemitism equate
antisemitism with skinheads desecrating Jewish graves and spray-painting
synagogues. Such activity is real and needs to be prohibited, of course.
However, with the spread of the new antisemitism, there is a trend away
from radical, overt, and hate-filled expressions of antisemitism. The new
threat is from false indoctrination that strives, not to make radical people
into more obvious, and therefore marginalized radicals, but rather, to take
ordinary, caring people and turn them into political agents and antisemites
in the name of defending their religion that they believe is at risk of attack
by the Jews.
The effects of this radicalization in the Traditional Catholic communities
of the United States are striking. Twenty years ago, I knew most Traditional
Catholics in the United States as typical, conservative, flag-waving
Americans. Today, because they have been so taught by their Bishop and
his priests, they believe that a small group of Jewish bankers runs the world,
and that the U.S government is a tool of Israel. Many believe that the Holocaust
did not occur, and that, if Hitler did expel some Jews from public life,
he was merely trying to rid his country of, as Bishop Williamson put it,
“Jewish debt money.”
The main promoters of the new antisemitism are not neo-Nazis, but the
conspiracy theorists. People like Bishop Williamson, the directors of Loose
Change, Alex Jones, and members of the John Birch Society have made it
acceptable to accuse innocent people of horrendous collective crimes. If
you are a Bilderberger, a Jew, a Mason, or a member of the Trilateral Commission,
the conspiracy theorist will impugn your name and accuse you of
any crime.
The new spread of antisemitism has to be investigated and researched
before it can swell the ranks of the truly radicalized. We need to stop con-

250 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:233
sidering conspiracy theorists as “crazy,” but rather, as very dangerous people,
just like people who scream “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater.
Investigations Must Include Ancillary Positions as Well
When Derek Holland and the Third Positionists wanted to spread their
organization within the SSPX, they did not use hatred of the Jews as the
main focus of their propaganda. Many Catholics, especially in the early
1980s, would have recoiled at Holocaust denial. The ITP’s main focus was
the excesses of capitalism and correcting those excesses through distributism
or the “Third Way.” Only after positioning themselves as Catholic
authorities on economics did they begin to speak of the “Jewish Banking
conspiracy theories, which claim that the Jews are working against the
Catholic Social Order.
Since radical organizations will likely downplay their antisemitism
until their target audience is sufficiently radicalized, it is crucial to investigate
the spread of the ancillary ideologies mentioned above.
Victims of Slander Education
The rise of the new antisemitism cannot be combated until the victims
of the conspiracy theorists take the problem seriously. Most Jews are aware
of the role that The Protocols of the Elder of Zion played in the Holocaust.
But how many Jews consider what the future effects might be of the conspiracy
theory that no Jews died on 9/11because, warned by their leaders,
they all stayed home? 26 Do they take this calumny as a serious threat? If
there is to be an organized opposition to propaganda of the neo-fascists and
conspiracy theorists, it must begin with victims of the slander. Jews and
other targeted organizations must confront their detractors.
Aggressive Action Against Detractors
Detraction and libel are illegal in the United States. It is not permitted
to name a person and spread lies about him or her, especially lies as grave
as the lies spread about the Jews. One possible strategy that could be used
against organizations spreading antisemitism would be to sue them for libel.
A bank, for instance, theoretically could sue any number of conspiracy theorists
for suggesting that they are run by an international group of Jews
intent on destroying America. The Bilderbergers, Rothschilds, and Rockefellers
would have an equally worthy claim.
26. See http://www.snopes.com/rumors/israel.asp.

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 251
Economic pressure must be brought to bear against conspiracy theorists
who spread notions that dispose people to antisemitic thinking. For
instance, when the neo-fascists target a new organization or a new recruit,
they seldom come right out with their view that the Jews rule the world and
are the cause of all evil. They usually start by maligning bankers, Masons,
and the Trilateral Commission. The growing following of Alex Jones is
another indicator that people are more and more susceptible to the same
mindset that is contained in the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. A great
deal could be done to thwart the progression of extremism if the promoters
of this lesser form of conspiracy theory were put out of business.
CONCLUSION
Antisemitism is growing, and it is spreading in ways not seen before.
This ideology will not go away by itself, and will continue to spread among
groups of people previously free from antisemitism. If this movement is
going to be combated, serious research must be undertaken regarding these
organizations. This research must look beyond neo-Nazi vandalism and
skinhead activity and look into the ancillary ideologies espoused by radicals,
which in many cases are used to predispose their followers to
antisemitism. Once this is done, Jews need to be educated in terms of the
new threat, and then this threat needs to be combated using all legal means,
such as the courts and economic pressure.

ESSAYS
What Really Happened in Mumbai?*
Alyssa A. Lappen
On Thanksgiving 2009, as police worldwide continued arresting Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LeT) 1 collaborators 1 and Home Box Office 2 plan[ned] to
release a film quoting a Pakistani terrorist mastermind—victims, 3 families 4
and others mourned 5 the massive Mumbai terrorist attacks precisely one
year earlier 6 on Nov. 26, 2008. Doubtless few Americans realized that in
July 2008 a Chicago Pakistan-born jihadist had posed as Jewish 7 to case
LeT’s key target, Nariman Chabad House. That David Coleman Headley
and his Chicago peers, arrested in a giant October FBI Muslim slaughter-
* I am grateful to Jeff Baird and RightSideNews who commissioned me to
produce this four-part series. A slightly different version of this article first
appeared in RightSideNews under the title “The Evils of Islamic Political Ideology:
The Conceptual Drivers for Mumbai.”
1. “2 linked to Mumbai terror attacks arrested in Italy,” CNN World, November
21, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/21/italy.terror.arrests/
index.html#cnnSTCText (accessed November 24, 2009).
2. Home Box Office, “Terror in Mumbai,” Home Box Office synopsis, http://
www.hbo.com/docs/programs/terrorinmumbai/synopsis.html (accessed November
25, 2009).
3. Amy Teibel, “Mumbai Survivor Celebrates 3rd Birthday,” Associated Press,
November 18, 2009, http://news.aol.com/article/mumbai-massacre-survivormoshe-holtzberg/773776
(accessed November 24, 2009).
4. “He caught Kasab—only to go away forever, says family (One year after
26/11),” Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), http://news.armoks.com/he-caughtkasab-only-to-go-away-forever-says-family-one-year-after-2611/26042/
(accessed
January 25, 2010).
5. “Mumbai: One Year Later,” Neovatara: Rebirth of Intellectualism for the
Next American Century, n.d., http://neoavatara.com/blog/?p=8958 (accessed
November 25, 2009).
6. Erika Kinetz, “Mumbai Still Vulnerable 1 Year After Terror Attack,” Associated
Press, November 22, 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?
id=9147280 (originally accessed at http://in.news.yahoo.com/210/20091121/317/
tnl-mumbai-still-vulnerable-1-year-after.html November 24, 2009).
7. Samyabrata Ray Goswami, “Headley mapped all ‘26/11 targets’ – U.S. Suspect
posed as Jew: Police,” November 14, 2009, The Telegraph, November 14,
2009, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091115/jsp/nation/story_11742894.jsp
(accessed November 24, 2009).
253

254 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:253
house raid, 8 planned to bomb Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten news offices too. 9
That they allegedly attempted to assassinate Kurt Westergaard, 10 whose
satirical 2005 Mohammed cartoons 11 lent Islamic radicals an excuse to
launch worldwide riots actually planned months earlier. 12 Or that Hafiz
Masood, 13 while imam Boston’s Islamic Center of New England, 14 had
raised funds for LeT. 15
The consuming desire of Mumbai’s Muslim attackers to specifically
target Jewish people (and Chabad’s Nariman House) was exposed January
5, 2009, by reporter Shomendra Sharma in India’s daily e-paper, DNA
India. 16 The terrorists intended to send “a message to Jews across the world
by attacking the ultra orthodox synagogue.” Imprisoned LeT predator
Fahim Ahmed Ansari 17 corroborated the report—but only ten months after
8. Pamela Geller, “Hush Hush: Huge Fed/FBI Raid on Chicago Halal Goat
Meat Slaughterhouse,” AtlasShrugs.com, October 20, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.
typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/10/hush-hush-huge-fedfbi-raid-on-chicago-halalgoat-meat-slaughterhouse.html
(accessed November 20, 2009).
9. Natasha Korecki, “Two Chicago men charged in terror scheme,” Chicago
Sun Times, October 28, 2009, http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1848431,terrorplot-denmark-chicago-newspaper-102709.article
(accessed November 22, 2009).
10. Diana West, “I Would Draw It Again Given the Chance,” October 1, 2009,
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1047/-I-Would-Draw-It-Again-
Given-the-Chance.aspx (accessed November 22, 2009).
11. Alyssa A. Lappen, “The Eternal Danish Optimist,” Right Side News, January
3, 2009, http://www.rightsidenews.com/200901043173/culture-wars/the-eternal-danish-optimist.html,
(accessed November 24, 2009).
12. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, “Europe’s Last Chance,”
FrontPageMagazine, February 16, 2006 http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?
ARTID=5519 (accessed November 25, 2009).
13. “Man accused in Boston terror plot is son of former Muslim American Society
leader,” Americans for Peace & Tolerance, October 3, 2009, http://www.peace
andtolerance.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100:fact-sheetunreported-facts-in-the-boston-terror-plot-&catid=7:our-statements&Itemid=39
(accessed November 25, 2009).
14. Indrani Bagchi, “In U.S., LeT chief’s kin raised funds for jihad,” Times of
India, January 12, 2009, http://newshopper.sulekha.com/in-us-let-chief-s-kinraised-funds-for-jihad_news_1022267.htm
(accessed January 25, 2010).
15. Geller, “Boston Muslim Terrorist Son of MAS (Muslim American Society)
Leader,” AtlasShrugs.com, October 26, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/
atlas_shrugs/2009/10/boston-muslim-terrororist-son-of-mas-muslim-american-society-leader.html
(accessed November 20, 2009).
16. Somendra Sharma, “Nariman House, not TAJ, was the prime target on 26/
11,” DNA India, January 5, 2009, http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_
nariman-house-not-taj-was-the-prime-target-on-26-11_1218869-all (accessed October
12, 2009).
17. Praveen Swami, “Lashkar man’s arrest averted strike on BSE,” The Hindu,

2009] WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MUMBAI? 255
his February 2008 capture for bombing a Rampur Central Police Reserve
training camp—so as not to jeopardize the terrorists’ most secret and
important Nariman House attack.
Unlike any mainstream U.S. journalists, AtlasShrugs founder and publisher
Pamela Geller ran the story that morning. 18 JihadWatch followed her
lead early on January 6. 19 Few others reported it at all.
The blackout was particularly shocking given the clarity of the news:
LeT’s Pakistani handlers “were clear this operation [Nariman] should not
fail under any circumstances,” DNA reported. The Taj Mahal, Oberoi, and
Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus targets, however, “were [merely] intended to
amplify the effect.” After landing their dinghy, terrorist leader Ismail Khan
again “intensely” briefed the assigned Nariman perpetrators—Imran Babar
(a.k.a. Abu Akasha) and Nasir (a.k.a. Abu Umer)—personally instructing
them on what to do. The results were intensely barbaric and bloody. 20 Bodies
were horrifically mutilated and eyes were gouged out. But for Atlas
Shrugs, still fewer Americans would know these salient facts. 21
While appalling, such revelations would hardly surprise those familiar
with Islamic theocratic texts. Brown University’s Andrew Bostom published
the most complete collection 22 of Islamic texts, demonstrating the
weighty evidence of Islamic Jew-hatred contained throughout foundational
Islamic holy books, jurisprudence, and historical accounts—as propagated
by Mohammed himself.
Islam’s founder began his anti-Jewish campaigns with his respective
March 27, 2008, http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/27/stories/2008032759291200.
htm (accessed October 31, 2009).
18. Geller, “Mumbai: Muslim Terrorist Admits Islam’s Prime Target: The
Jews,” AtlasShrugs.com, January 5, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas
_shrugs/2009/01/mumbai-muslim-t.html (accessed October 29, 2009).
19. Robert Spencer, “Mumbai jihadists’ prime target was Jewish center,”
JihadWatch.com, January 6, 2009, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/01/mumbaijihadists-prime-target-was-jewish-center.html
(accessed October 29, 2009).
20. Alistair Gee, “Mumbai terror attacks: And then they came for the Jews,”
The Sunday Times, November 1, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
world/asia/article6896107.ece; see also, Krishnakumar, P. and Vicky Nanjappa,
“Doctors shocked at hostages’s torture,” Rediff India Abroad, November 30, 2008,
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/30mumterror-doctors-shocked-at-hostagesstorture.htm
(both accessed November 4, 2009).
21. Geller, “Islamic Jew Hatred in Mumbai: They Came for the Jews. . . . Eyes
Gouged Out,” AtlasShrugs.com, November 4, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.
com/atlas_shrugs/2009/11/islamic-jew-hatred-in-mumbai-they-came-for-the-jewseyes-gorged-out.html
(accessed November 4, 2009).
22. Andrew G. Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred
Texts to Solemn History (Prometheus Books: 2008).

256 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:253
624 and 625 expulsions of the Quaynuqa and Nadir Jewish tribes from
Medina. He continued in 627 with the slaughter of all Qurayza Jewish men
and enslavement of their women and children. 23 In 628, he besieged and
banished the Jews of the Khaybar oasis. 24 On his deathbed, Mohammed
instructed his heirs to ban Jews from Arabia—a goal consummated in 643
and 644 by Caliph Umar. 25
Bostom is not alone in observing essential facts concerning this foundational
hatred. Hebrew University’s Robert Wistrich had previously noted
that the Koran contains “notably harsh passages in which Muhammad
brands the Jews as enemies of Islam and depicts them as possessing a
malevolent, rebellious spirit.” Wistrich cites verses that purport to justify
the Jews’ “abasement and poverty” and describes them as “laden with
God’s anger” for disobeying Allah. Mohammed instructed Muslims to
humiliate Jews, Wistrich observes, “because they had disbelieved the signs
of God and slain the prophets unrightfully” (Sura 2:58/61). The Koran also
claims that both David and Jesus cursed “the unbelievers of the Children of
Israel” (Sura 5:78/82). The penalty for disbelieving God’s supposed signs
and the miracles of Mohammed, Wistrich notes, was to be transformed into
apes and swine (Sura 5:60/65). Moreover, Islamic oral tradition—the deeds
and sayings of Mohammed (hadith)—claims that the Jews, in accordance
with their purportedly perfidious nature, deliberately poisoned Muhammad,
causing his painful, protracted death. Finally, Wistrich notes that according
to tradition, the “malevolent, conspiratorial Jews are to blame for the sectarian
strife in early Islam, for heresies and deviations that undermined or
endangered the unity of the umma (the Muslim nations).” 26
Indeed, even modern Muslim clerics often cite these historical Islamic
data in statements, judicial texts and charters, despite frequent attempts to
whitewash that history. In June, 2009, at Cairo’s Al-Azhar university, for
23. Bostom, “Muhammad, the Qurayza Massacre, and PBS,” FrontPageMagazine.com,
December 20, 2002, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=
20581 (accessed Oct. 29, 2009).
24. James M. Arlandson, “Muhammad and the Jews,” Answering-islam.com, as
revised from American Thinker, June 30, 2005, http://www.answering-islam.org/
Authors/Arlandson/jews.htm (accessed Nov. 20, 2009).
25. Yosef Tobi, The Jews of Yemen: Studies in Their History and Culture (Brill:
1999), 21, http://books.google.com/books?id=GobE2eQx8gUC&pg=PA21&lpg=
PA21&dq=umar+xpells+jews+rom+arabia+643&source=bl&ots=SRdF6l8pfP&sig
=pE9BVlbXVEWX1SW4C_F835Gk300&hl=en&ei=-v4NS_DaCszPlAfh0tGSBA
&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBMQ6AEwBA#v=one
page&q=&f=false (accessed Nov. 25, 2009).
26. Robert Wistrich, as quoted in Bostom, “Muhammad, the Qurayza Massacre,
and PBS,” ibid.

2009] WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MUMBAI? 257
example, President Barack Obama described the thousand-year-old institution
as “a beacon of Islamic learning” that had “carried the light of learning”
throughout the centuries. 27
Yet, the Islamic paragon of tolerance 28 and nearest Muslim
“equivalent to a Pope,” 29 Al-Azhar grand imam Mohammed Sayyid
Tantawi, recently apologized 30 for shaking hands with Israeli president
Shimon Peres 31 —in far better keeping with his character than the handshake.
As Bostom has often noted, 32 Tantawi genuinely considers Jews
“enemies of Allah, and descendants of apes and pigs;” 33 actively supports
Islamic “religious law” (his words) suicide bombings to kill Israeli civilians,
women and children; 34 and, after his 1997 meeting with Israeli chief
Rabbi Israel Lau, urged Muslims to meet Jewish “enemies” in order “to
counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes.” 35 Moreover,
27. Barack H. Obama, “Remarks by the President on a New Beginning,” at
Cairo University, The White House, June 4, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_
press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/ (accessed
June 7, 2009).
28. Robert Spencer, “Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh outraged at being depicted in
Christian garb: ‘Tolerance has its limits’.” JihadWatch.com, December 2, 2008,
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/12/al-azhar-grand-sheikh-outraged-at-beingdepicted-in-christian-garb-tolerance-has-its-limits.html
(accessed June 7, 2009).
29. Alan Johnson, “Islam and Antisemitism: An Interview with Dr. Andrew
Bostom,” Democatiya 15 (Winter 2008), http://dissentmagazine.org/democratiya/
article_pdfs/d15Bostom.pdf (accessed November 20, 2009).
30. Elder of Ziyon, “Al-Azhar sheikh gets Jew cooties,” December 1, 2008,
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/12/al-azhar-sheikh-gets-jew-cooties.html
(accessed November 20, 2009).
31. “Al-Azhar Sheikh: I Shook Peres’s Hand by Chance,” December 1, 2008,
http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/11776.htm (accessed November
24, 2009).
32. Bostom, “Antisemitism in the Qur’an: Motifs and Historical Manifestations,”
excerpted from Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, at JihadWatch.com, April 7,
2008, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/04/antisemitism-in-the-quran-motifs-andhistorical-manifestations.html
(accessed November 20, 2009).
33. “Based on Koranic Verses, Interpretations, and Traditions, Muslim Clerics
State: The Jews Are the Descendants of Apes, Pigs, and Other Animals,”
Memri.org, Special Report No. 11, November 1, 2002, http://www.memri.org/
report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/754.htm (accessed November 24, 2009).
34. “Leading Egyptian Government Cleric Calls for: ‘Martyrdom Attacks that
Strike Horror into the Hearts of the Enemies of Allah’,” Memri.org, Report #363,
April 7, 2002, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/641.htm (accessed
November 24, 2009).
35. “Resolution 181 Chronology: Statements in the Palestinian Media,” May 13,
1999, Memri.org, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/272.htm (accessed
November 24, 2009).

258 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:253
Tantawi derived this hatred directly from the Koran, “more than one-third
of which deals with the Jews,” as he readily admits.
Indeed, Tantawi’s 1966 Ph.D. thesis, Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-
Sunna [The Children of Israel in the Koran and the Sunna], which Bostom
excerpted in English, 36 states that the Jewish people “were cursed from
aforetime and were exiled from his [Allah’s] mercy, and miserable wretchedness
al-dhullah wal-maskana was decreed as their lot, for horrible punishment
became their dominant trait” (p. 391). As hateful a 700-page screed
as one is ever likely to read, the dissertation undoubtedly also earned
Tantawi his Pope-like Islamic position. It further states,
[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate
characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/3:112], corrupting
His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the
people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil
they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness.
. . only a minority of the Jews keep their word. . .. all Jews are
not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad
ones do not. 37
As historian David Littman heroically began to note at the UN Human
Rights Commission in January 1989, 38 the Hamas Charter 39 in the same
36. Bostom, “A Study in Contrasts: Benedict, Tantawi, and the Jews,” National
Review Online, April 23, 2008, http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MGNjN
GU4OGE2OWVjMDQ1NDY3NmM1OGRlNGI4ZDBjMmY= (accessed November
24, 2009); see also Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 391-401.
37. Bostom, “Jew Hatred from the ‘Muslim Pope’,” AtlasShrugs.com, July 29,
2006, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/07/atlas_exclusive_2.
html (accessed November 24, 2009).
38. Bostom, “Heeding David Littman: Confronting Hamas’ Genocidal Jew-
Hatred (Part 1),” AndrewBostom.org, http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2009/01/
01/heeding-david-littman-confronting-hamas’-genocidal-jew-hatred-part-1/
(accessed November 24, 2009).
39. Written statement of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, an NGO on
the [U.N.] Roster, “Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
including policies of racial discrimination and segregation, in all countries,
with particular reference to colonial and other dependent countries and territories:
report of the sub-commission under Commission on Human Rights Resolution 8
(XXIII),” Specific human rights issues, U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Subcommission
on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, 55th session, item
2 and 6 of the provisional agenda, July 23, 2003, http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/
Huridoca.nsf/e06a5300f90fa0238025668700518ca4/99cdd287d4323f56c1256d78
0034ba6f/$FILE/G0315092.pdf (accessed November 24, 2009).

2009] WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MUMBAI? 259
spirit is a genocidal decree. Moreover, (as Bostom has also noted), 40 even
before its preamble, the Hamas document opens by quoting the most sacred
of all Islamic texts, 41 the Koran:
You [Muslims] are the best nation that has been brought out for mankind.
You command good and forbid evil and believe in Allah. If only the
people of the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians] had believed, it would have
been well for them. Some of them believe, but most of them are iniquitous.
They will never be able to do you serious harm, they will only be an
annoyance. If they fight you, they will turn their backs and flee, and will
not be succored. Humiliation is their lot wherever they may be, except
where they are saved from it by a bond with Allah or by a bond with
men. They incurred upon themselves Allah’s wrath, and wretchedness is
their lot, because they denied Allah’s signs and wrongfully killed the
prophets, and because they disobeyed and transgressed. (3:110-112). 42
Only within the context of the above information can one fully appreciate
Right Side News’ exclusive fourth and final interview of Atlas, by this
author, an investigative reporter. I have queried Atlas on her tireless efforts
to expose the Muslim wars within the U.S. and Western world—on free
speech, human rights of women, and non-Muslims generally [the series
began Feb. 16, 2009]. 43 In this last segment, I concentrate on the November
28, 2008 Islamic terror attacks in Mumbai, which consolidated in all
respects every front in the global Islamic jihad, through its special focus on
the Jewish people.
40. Bostom, “Confronting Hamas’ Genocidal Jew-Hatred,” American Thinker,
January 2, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.
americanthinker.com/2009/01/confronting_hamas_genocidal_je.html (accessed
November 24, 2009).
41. “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas,” translated
by Memri.org, February 14, 2006, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/
1609.htm (accessed November 24, 2009).
42. A.J. Arberry, trans. 1955, Koran Chapter 3, vs. 112, http://www.quranbrowser.com/cgi/bin/get.cgi?version=arberry&layout=auto&searchstring=003:112
(accessed November 24, 2009).
43. Lappen, “The Evils of Islamic Political Ideology,” RightSideNews.com,
“Part I: The Muslim War on Free Speech,” February 16, 2009, http://www.rightside
news.com/homeland-security/the-evils-of-islamic-political-ideology.html, “Part II:
How Muslim Theory Suppresses Women,” February 26, 2009, http://www.right
sidenews.com/homeland-security/the-evils-of-islamic-political-ideology-suppression-of-women.html
and “Part III: Oppression of non-Muslims,” May 31, 2009,
http://www.rightsidenews.com/200906014988/homeland-security/the-evils-ofislamic-political-ideology-oppression-of-non-muslims.html
(accessed November
24, 2009).

260 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:253
Finally, the full meaning of these attacks has come home to roost in
the U.S.—with the discovery that Pakistan-born, U.S.-based Islamic terrorists
were involved in their planning. Indeed, on Tuesday, November 24,
even a mainstream newspaper—in Barack Obama’s former Chicago political
environs, no less 44 —informed readers of the troubling roles of U.S. terrorists
in Mumbai.
Surprisingly, three days earlier, on November 21, the ultra-liberal
Christian Science Monitor similarly had headlined an article on the
“Islamic terror motive” of the November 5 Muslim massacre of thirteen
people at Ft. Hood. CSM actually emphasized underlying Islamic facts—
albeit while claiming they present an essentially “partisan divide.” 45 Still,
this too represented vastly improved mainstream reporting, in record time
after a jihad strike, for on November 5 and 6, major news networks and
newspapers 46 (excepting Fox News and the New York Post) 47 almost universally
toed the politically correct line on the second such attack on U.S.
soil since Sept. 11. They termed U.S. Army psychiatrist Major Nadal Malik
Hasan a “suspect,” “shooter,” or “gunman” 48 —and studiously avoided ref-
44. Jeff Cohn and Hal Dardick, “Two accused of Danish newspaper plot investigated
for ties to Mumbai attacks,” Chicago Tribune, November 24, 2009, http://
archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/nov/24/local/chi-terrorist-suspects-mumbainov
24 (accessed November 25, 2009).
45. Patrik Jonsson, “Fort Hood shooting splits America over Islamic terror
motive,” Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 2009, http://www.csmonitor.
com/USA/Politics/2009/1121/fort-hood-shooting-splits-america-over-islamic-terror-motive
(accessed November 25, 2009).
46. “Profiles of Ft. Hood Shooter’s Victims,” November 6, 2009, CBS News
and AP, November 6, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/06/national/
main5552521.shtml (accessed November 24, 2009); Gordon Lubold, “What is
known about Nidal Malik Hasan and Fort Hood shooting,” Christian Science Monitor,
November 5, 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/1105/whatis-known-about-nidal-malik-hasan-and-fort-hood-shooting
(accessed November 24,
2009).
47. “Troubling Portrait Emerges of Ft. Hood Shooting Rampage Suspect,” Fox
News, November 6, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572509,00.html;
“Terrorism or Tragic Shooting? Analysts Divided on Ft. Hood Massacre,” Fox
News, November 7, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/07/terrorismtragic-shooting-analysts-divided-fort-hood-massacre/;
Ralph Peters, “Fort Hood’s
9/11,” New York Post, November 6, 2009, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/
opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ (all accessed November 24,
2009).
48. “‘Good doctor’ stressed out by deployment?” MSNBC, November 6, 2009,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33722143/; “What was Fort Hood Shooter’s
Motive?” CBS and AP, November 5, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/
11/05/national/main5541916.shtml; Robin Abcarian, Ashley Powers, and Josh

2009] WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MUMBAI? 261
erences to Islam or terrorism.
Since February 2009, Atlas increasingly has received well-merited
public recognition for her ardent contributions to protecting U.S. Constitutional
rights, including the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, which
inherently assume and include freedom from terror. In May 2009, Atlas
began contributing frequently to American Thinker. Since August 2009, she
has also often contributed articles at Newsmax, which recently granted her a
Newsmax blog.
With this interview, Right Side News and I hope to demonstrate that
ultimately, the fervor of Islamic attacks on the Jewish people reflect the
fervor of Islamic hatred for all women and non-Muslims—and the universal
freedoms49 of men and women that the Muslim leaders are determined to
replace with Islamic law. 50 But the exposure Atlas provided to the level of
hatred expressed at Nariman House has all the better focused the ordinary
eye on the depth of depravity dictating Islamic attacks of all kinds. Thus
can mankind help summon a will exceeding that of its foes, a steel will,
strong enough to utterly demolish jihad.
Alyssa A. Lappen: When did you first understand that the Jewish people
and Chabad’s Nariman House were the focal point of the Mumbai attacks?
Atlas: Most of the details were out there, but not publicized. It wasn’t public
that Chabad was targeted first—that according to the LeT central command
in this operation, that was the most important. The terrorists had also
targeted the Taj Mahal, Oberois, and Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus. But
Chabad was central because of Islamic hatred of Jews. In late December, it
came out that Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka Holtzberg, were
sexually mutilated. 51 I was one of the few to report that.
Then on January 5, Somendra Sharma at the DNA India e-paper
reported that the Pakistani fanatics had wanted to send a message to the
Meyer, “Army psychiatrist blamed in Fort Hood shooting rampage,” Los Angeles
Times, November 6, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-fort-hood-shootings
6-2009nov06,0,4341651.story (all accessed November 24, 2009).
49. United Nations General Assembly Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
December 10, 1948, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ (accessed November
24, 2009).
50. “The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam,” 19th Islamic Conference
of Foreign Ministers, Cairo, August 5, 1990, http://www.religlaw.org/
interdocs/docs/cairohrislam1990.htm (accessed November 24, 2009).
51. Santosh Mishra, “Terrorists sexually Humiliated guests before killing
them,” Mumbai Mirror, December 25, 2008, http://www.hvk.org/articles/1208/357.
html (accessed January 26, 2010).

262 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:253
world. 52 It was central to that operation. Everything besides Chabad was
intended to amplify the effect, but they were not the central targets. A
senior police official told the DNA on the condition of anonymity. Mohammed
Ajmal, also known as Kasab, 53 told them that Chabad House was their
primary focus.
AAL: That is truly depraved. So these people murdered at least 166 people
in at least six locations, 54 just to amplify the message that “any Jews killed
were worth fifty times as much as anyone else.” It boggles the mind. Why?
Atlas: You need to understand. At this point, U.S. Muslims mention Jews
seventeen times a day in their daily prayers. Seventeen times a day, they
invoke hatred against “those that incur the wrath of God,” that is, Jews.
Even Jewish leaders in Israel have no idea of Dr. Bostom’s seminal work.
People do not understand what these [jihadists] are doing. They do not
understand.
AAL: You are saying that seventeen times a day, Muslims pray to kill
Jews?
Atlas: Yes. I’m telling you about the prayers. 55 I found this in researching a
separate issue, from conversations with [JihadWatch director] Robert Spencer56
and Dr. Andrew Bostom. Robert reported that U.S. mosques have
tacked on the dua qunoot57 —a prayer to destroy Allah’s enemies—to regular
daily prayers. That dua qunoot prayer ends with a plea for “torment . . .
to overtake infidels.” And it’s been added to every raka’ah, as it is called,
the sub-unit of Islamic prayers, or salah. So Robert reports that pious U.S.
Muslims pray seventeen times a day to destroy Allah’s enemies, which
means Israel. But in this context, it also means Jews.
52. Sharma, “Nariman House, not Taj, was the prime target on 26/11,” DNA
India, January 5, 2009, http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_nariman-housenot-taj-was-the-prime-target-on-26-11_1218869-all
(accessed October 12, 2009).
53. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajmal_Kasab.
54. Raakhee Mirchandani, “Chilling phone calls of the Mumbai terror attack,”
New York Post, November 15, 2009, http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/
opedcolumnists/chilling_phone_calls_of_the_mumbai_fxbDj4X5V7N6aFr3gYMC
eI (accessed November 20, 2009).
55. Geller, “Muslims in American Mosques Praying for Destruction of Israel,”
AtlasShrugs.com, January 1, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_
shrugs/2009/01/muslims-in-amer.html (accessed October 15, 2009).
56. Spencer, “Muslims in American mosques praying for destruction of Israel,”
JihadWatch.com, December 31, 2008, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/12/muslims-in-american-mosques-praying-for-destruction-of-israel.html
(accessed October.
15, 2009).
57. Dua Qunott prayer, Islamic Academy, n.d., http://www.islamicacademy.org/
html/Dua/Qunoot.htm (accessed October 15, 2009).

2009] WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MUMBAI? 263
AAL: So, you’re saying that in the context of Mumbai, the terrorists’ message
was, what, “We are coming to get you”?
Atlas: Yes. That’s the message that Jews are supposed to glean from this.
This is what they were saying, by targeting a couple who do good work,
who provided a force for good in the world. They brutally murdered Rabbi
Holtzberg and his wife Rivki and seven other Jews there. 58 And a fact little
discussed is that the Rabbi and his wife were sexually mutilated. It wasn’t
in the mainstream media. The Mumbai Mirror reported this. Their genitalia
were mutilated. 59
When they landed in Mumbai, Ismail Kahn told the two Nariman perpetrators
not to allow a single minimal glitch in finding and capturing the
Chabad House. They wouldn’t even plant a bomb in a taxi to go there—in
case the bomb exploded before they reached the target. 60 They wanted to
make sure Nariman House was destroyed and the people there were
destroyed. Period.
The photos of the enormous amount of blood is one indication of how
brutal those murders were. Another is the horrific torture sustained by
Israeli captives at Nariman House before their murders. I’m pointing out
that no one talks about it. Only one line in the Mumbai Mirror discussed the
disturbing photos at the Taj Mahal or mentioned that the terrorists sexually
assaulted their Jewish victims and then mutilated their genitalia. Some of
the other guests were forced to strip, but the Rabbi and his wife were sexually
assaulted. And that was from an official who refused to be identified. 61
AAL: What overarching message do you take from this?
Atlas: These people do not believe in “Give me liberty or give me death.”
The terrorists themselves were in no doubt that Nariman House was the
58. Anshei Pfeffer, “9 dead in Mumbai Chabad house attack; Israel to help identify
bodies,” Haaretz, November 30, 2008, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/
1041834.html (accessed October 15, 2009).
59. Mishra, http://www.hvk.org/articles/1208/357.html, ibid.
60. Sharma, DNA India, http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_narimanhouse-not-taj-was-the-prime-target-on-26-11_1218869-all,
ibid.
61. Geller, “Mumbai: Muslim Terrorist Admits Islam’s Prime Target: The
Jews,” AtlasShrugs.com, January 5, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas
_shrugs/2009/01/mumbai-muslim-t.html, ibid. Gee, “Mumbai terror attacks: And
then they came for the Jews,” November 1, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/
news/world/asia/article6896107.ece, ibid; Krishnakumar and Nanjappa, “Doctors
shocked at hostages’s torture,” Rediff India Abroad, November 30, 2008, http://
www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/30mumterror-doctors-shocked-at-hostagess-torture.htm,
ibid; Mishra, “Terrorists sexually humiliated guests before killing them,”
Mumbai Mirror, December 25, 2008, http://www.hvk.org/articles/1208/357.html,
ibid.

264 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:253
central target. It housed a Jewish center, and the fanatic Pakistani Muslims
wanted to send a message to the world from there. And at all the locations,
more Israelis were murdered than any other nationality. 62
When he was asked why, Mohammed Ajmal, the one surviving terrorist,
told police they wanted to send a message to the Jews across the world
by attacking an Orthodox synagogue. So look, no matter how the press
might try to twist this, it’s not about Israel. This is a message to all Jewish
people of the world.
AAL: In answer, Chabad has sent Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz there to
rebuild. 63 We’ve obtained photos of Nariman House’s new Torah Ark, of
memorial services at Chabad House, and of students wrapping Tefilin, Jewish
prayer phylacteries enclosing parchments with portions of Exodus and
Deuteronomy. But most important, Chabad will rebuild.
Atlas: That is the Jewish way. Until forced to leave, we Jewish people keep
on keeping on. Maybe it is stupid in the context of the world we live in. We
live in a culture of death. And by this I mean—everything. Look at the sides
our president takes—in reaching out to Hamas, and Hezbollah. He supports
the ethnic cleansing of Jews with this disgusting phrase, “no natural
growth.” So if Jewish people in Judea and Samaria give birth to a baby,
Grandma has to move out.
Islam is a culture of death also. And at the UN, here is the U.S. letting
the world powers side with the evil forces.
However, not to rebuild is victory for Islam, and a victory for death.
Judaism is a culture of life.
Chabad has to rebuild with heavy weaponry in the house, though. I’d
never tell them not to build. I’m not Obama. However, God expects us to
have brains. I believe in God. I believe God loves me and my children. But
I still have to worry about them. We have to be responsible. Rabbi
Holtzberg was very worried about security. And Chabad cannot rely on the
[Indian] government to protect them. They have to rebuild a secure building.
They should rotate retired IDF officers there at all times.
AAL: Do you believe Israeli leaders understand the importance of these
Mumbai attacks?
Atlas: I don’t know. In February 2008, the Mumbai antiterrorism squad
arrested Fahim Ansari64 for his role in a previous bombing at Lucknow.
62. Ronen Medzini, “Mumbai horror: Rescue workers shocked by Chabad massacre
site,” Ynetnews.com, November 29, 2008, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/
0,7340,L-3630601,00.html (accessed October 15, 2009).
63. Gee, ibid.
64. “India questions citizen over Mumbai attack,” Pakistan Daily Times,

2009] WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MUMBAI? 265
This came at a high price for the Mumbai anti-terrorist squad, but Ansari
also had some connection with the Mumbai terrorist attacks. He was
arrested for his role in other bomb blasts, but had surveyed the Chabad
house. And Ansari did not divulge that information because it would have
compromised the most important operation of the Lakshar . . . He was
warned by the LeT that Nariman house was their most secret operation and
must not be compromised at any cost.
So if Israeli Jews are drinking [poisonous] Kool-Aid and believe that
Islam will live peacefully with them, in a two-state genocide solution, then
pass me the bomb water. Pass me the Kool-Aid too. Engaging in those
conversations is like trying to rationalize the irrational. It’s impossible. It’s
an impossible goal.
For Israel, the so-called two-state solution is a suicide pact. There can
be no two-state solution. It’s in the Hamas charter. 65 I don’t know what
Islam would do without this hate. Muslims die for this hate. It’s their reason
for living and their reason for dying.
AAL: Why don’t the general public, never mind only Jewish leadership,
seem to understand the stakes?
Atlas: Here’s an example. Concerning Mumbai, last June, Britain’s Daily
Mail got their hands on police intercepts from the LeT central command in
Pakistan. Of course they invoked Allah every few sentences. But more
importantly, the Daily Mail took down the posted transcripts66 almost
immediately. The Daily Mail had it posted for a few hours, tops. I happened
to have kept the whole article. It might jeopardize their outreach efforts.
AAL: (Laughs at irony.)
Atlas: You’re laughing. But in the U.S., outreach [to Muslims] has now
become more important than investigating crimes.
There are days I feel like I am just shoveling shit against the tide. But
look what will happen if [the government] shuts me down. Here, when they
were on the phone, they intercepted and recorded the conversations. Wasi
December 6, 2008, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C12%
5C06%5Cstory_6-12-2008_pg1_6 (accessed January 8, 2010).
65. Hamas Charter, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1609.htm, ibid.
66. Geller, “The Chilling Words of the Muslim Mumbai Killers Recorded During
Their Murder Spree: ‘Keep Killing, Keep Killing, the Dogs.’ ‘Insh’Allah’ ‘The
Manner of Your Death Will Instill Fear in the Unbelievers. This Is a Battle
Between Islam and the Unbelievers,’” June 28, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.
typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/06/the-chilling-words-of-the-muslim-mumbai-killers-recorded-during-their-murder-spree-keep-killing-keep.html
(accessed November
20, 2009).

266 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:253
[the Pakistani controller] says to the killers, “The manner of your death will
instill fear in the unbelievers. This is a battle between Islam and the unbelievers.”
67 Later on, Wasi tells them, “You are very close to heaven now.
You will be remembered for what you have done here. Stretch it out as long
as possible.”
There is no question this is Islamic jihad. This is Islam.
AAL: No of course, it’s not funny at all.
Atlas: No, you had the killers on the Rabbi’s phone, talking to Pakistan.
Wasi in Pakistan told them, “Just shoot them now. Get rid of them now.
You could come under fire at any time.” The killers replied, “Sure, we’ll
shoot as soon as we come under fire.” Wasi tells them, “No, now, you never
know when you might come under attack.”
What more can we say. Is there anything that could more stunningly
indict Islam? When will people talk about this, that they always target synagogues?
That a lone jihadi went into a Seattle Jewish center, 68 shot up the
place, and killed a Jewish woman? 69
AAL: But you’re saying it’s actually much more than that.
Atlas: Right. Mumbai was not the exception. Mumbai is the rule, and I
don’t think America will escape that kind of attack. That it has not already
happened [in the U.S.] does not mean it will not happen. I do not believe
that for a second.
Maybe the mainstream media is starting to communicate the reality.
Starting. A new Home Box Office film quotes a Mumbai attack mastermind,
who controlled the November 26, 2008 terrorists by cell phone.
“This was just the trailer,” he said. “Just wait till you see the rest of the
film.” The LeT projected their intention of “liberating” Muslims. They’ll
conduct global jihad against “infidels,” beginning with Jews. “‘Just shoot
them now,’ says the controller, adding, ‘Go on! I’m listening. Do it.’” 70
There are dozens of Islamic training camps in the U.S. with caches of
arms. The Central Islamic command worldwide is the Organization of the
67. Ibid.
68. Phoung Cat Le, Brad Wong, John Iwasaki, and Amy Rolph, “Six shot, one
killed at Jewish federation,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, July 26, 2006, http://www.
seattlepi.com/local/279302_shooting28ww.html (accessed October 15, 2009).
69. Daniel Pipes, “More Incidents of Denying Islamist Terrorism,”
danielpipes.org, February 8, 2005, http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/02/moreincidents-of-denying-islamist-terrorism;
“Seattle killing not a hate crime,”
JihadWatch.com, July 30, 2006, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/07/seattle-jihadkilling-not-a-hate-crime.html
(both accessed October 15, 2009).
70. Home Box Office, “Terror in Mumbai,” Home Box Office synopsis, http://
www.hbo.com/docs/programs/terrorinmumbai/synopsis.html.

2009] WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MUMBAI? 267
Islamic Conference (OIC). 71 And these people insist that non-Muslims
“respect” Islam and subdue themselves before Islamic supremacism. And
when Obama speaks to the Islamic world, he validates everything I’m saying:
There is an ummah [Muslim nation]. They are just part of an ummah,
not citizens of any country. And for non-Muslims to join, they have to follow
Islamic law.
AAL: So, what’s the bottom line? What lesson should we take from
Mumbai to help overcome this madness?
Atlas: That Mumbai happened—and why it happened. That this war is a
reality. It will not go away. And that Islamic Jew hatred is very real and part
of their basic doctrine. It cannot be ignored.
The other lesson is, don’t lose heart. You go knowing that you fought.
You must fight. There is no other way. If you are not fighting this insanity,
then you are part of the problem. And individuals can change parts of
human history. [Edmund] Burke said evil prospers when good men do nothing.
72 All that’s necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.
And Ayn Rand says that only its sanction is what makes evil
possible. 73
71. Lappen, “The Evils of Islamic Political Ideology, Part III,” http://www.right
sidenews.com/200906014988/homeland-security/the-evils-of-islamic-political-ideology-oppression-of-non-muslims.html,
ibid.
72. Edmund Burke, http://www.finestquotes.com/author_quotes-author-
EdmundBurke-page-0.htm (accessed November 25, 2009).
73. Ayn Rand, http://ayn-rand-quotes.blogspot.com/2009/08/quote-of-day-0810
09.html (accessed November 25, 2009).

Money, Madoff, and the Jews
Mitch Wohlberg
This essay is based on a sermon given by Rabbi Wohlberg on Rosh
Hashana, September 19, 2009, at Beth Tfiloh Congregation in Baltimore,
Maryland.
For Queen Elizabeth it was 1992. With troubles from Prince Charles
and Princess Anne, as well as a fire at Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth
called 1992 an “annus horribilis”–a horrible year. For us as Americans and
as Jews, that’s what this past year has been! Thank God . . . thank God, with
today the old year is over. Today I want you to take your minds off the
problems of the past year. Today I want to focus on only one subject: the
subject of money.
Now, well do I know that money has been on the minds of all of us
this year: as Americans in terms of the economy, as Jews in terms of Bernard
Madoff. This is the year when we saw things happen that we never
thought possible—from the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers,
to our pensions and net worth dipping lower, to General Motors going
broke. And although he had nothing to do with the desperate shape of our
economy, Bernard Madoff became the face associated with the financial
crisis. Last year nobody knew who Bernard Madoff was . . . now we all
know! And we—and everybody else—know that he is one of our own.
So what is the Jewish perspective on all this? Our perspective needs to
be heard, for who is more qualified to speak about money than we Jews are!
It was Jesus who taught in the New Testament that the chance of a wealthy
person getting into heaven was like that of a camel passing through the eye
of a needle. In the church, the religious leader takes a vow of poverty. No
religious leader in Judaism takes such a vow. God forbid! It might work out
that way, but not as a religious requirement. No, there’s a vastly different
attitude between Christianity and Judaism when it comes to money, perhaps
best expressed in the sign hanging over a Jewish-owned bank: “Jesus
saves–Moses invests!”
The fact is, in the eyes of the world Jews have always been associated
with money. Christian society stopped Jews from engaging in what were
considered honorable professions, like farming, and forced them into
“dirty” professions that involved money. So it was our people who became
experts in trade and banking and business. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing
to be ashamed of when twenty-one Jews have been winners of the
269

270 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:269
Nobel Prize in economics. We constitute 0.25% of the world’s population,
but we’ve won 41% of the world’s Nobel Prizes in economics!
Some Jews may know something about money. The world has always
accused us of knowing too much about money! And if that be the case, then
a Jewish perspective on money and the current situation is certainly appropriate.
Certainly this year–and yes, certainly on the High Holidays. For
those who think that money is not a topic for the sanctity of the synagogue,
tell it to the High Priest. The High Priest in the Temple did not speak about
money on Rosh Hashana. He waited until Yom Kippur, the holiest day of
the year, when he stood in the Holy of Holies and said, “May it be your
will, Lord our God, and God of our forefathers, that this year that is coming
upon us, and upon all your people, the family of Israel, be a year in which
you open your treasury for us; a year of abundance, a year of blessing, a
year of beneficial decrees from before you, a year of grain and wine and oil
. . . a year of expansiveness, success, and permanence, a year of assembly in
your holy temple, a year of affordable prices.” The High Priest felt it appropriate
to talk about money on Yom Kippur, so you will understand why I
am discussing it today on Rosh Hashana, and why it has to be this year.
This year all of America has been challenged economically. Monetarily,
most all of us are not worth as much as we were last year. Many of us
are really hurting! But as Jews we took a double hit this year. First, during
the Depression Jews were not established and invested in Wall Street, and
so their losses, while bad, were more limited. But not this time around! And
last time around there was no Bernard Madoff. And like it or not, Bernard
Madoff is a Jewish problem! I know that it is said that it is not fair that
everyone highlights Madoff’s Jewishness; when Enron’s Ken Lay and
others were caught, no one wrote about their religious affiliation. That may
be true, but that doesn’t get away from the fact that Madoff was able to pull
off his Ponzi scheme because he was a Jew . . . taking advantage of his
Jewish connections. There are many Jewish organizations, foundations, and
individuals who lost fortunes because of him. And their losses are having a
profound, negative effect on countless Jewish institutions whose givers
have seen their portfolios decimated.
And it’s not just Jewish institutions. The fallout from Bernard
Madoff’s Ponzi scheme showed the world a Jew at his worst, but also Jews
at their best. It is not just Jewish institutions that are suffering because Jews
have lost money. Across our country medical institutions, institutions of
science, of the arts, are facing a budget crisis because Jews had been such
prominent supporters of these institutions.
Jerome Fisher, the founder of the Nine West shoe store chain, lost
millions in the Madoff scam. He and his wife pledged $50 million last year
to the University of Pennsylvania for a new biomedical research center.

2009] MONEY, MADOFF, AND THE JEWS 271
Leonard Feinstein, the co-founder of Bed, Bath & Beyond, helped build a
$50 million addition to a research institute at the North Shore-Long Island
Jewish Health System. Mortimer Zuckerman, another Madoff victim,
pledged $100 million to New York’s Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Carl
Shapiro, founder and Chairman of Kay Windsor, personally lost $400 million
in the Madoff scam. He was a major supporter of Harvard-affiliated
hospitals in Boston, and two years ago pledged $27 million to the Dana-
Farber/Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center. The list goes on and on . . .
lymphoma research, bone marrow, Parkinson’s disease, hospitals, research
centers . . . on and on and on. It was we–the Jewish people–who were the
major supporters helping America heal itself. And all this should be kept in
mind when one considers that just as the recession was heating up and just
as the Madoff scandal was really bursting on the scene, Christianity
Today–a major Christian magazine–featured a front-page article bemoaning
the fact that Christians are so uncharitable.
Yes, there were aspects of this crisis that showed us at our best and
continue to do so.
Elie Wiesel tells of the children who are sending five and ten dollars to
him to help replenish his foundation. The truth is, it was in response to the
Great Depression in the 1930s that so many of the Jewish social service
agencies that we still have today began in earnest. We Jews care . . . we
Jews share . . . always have, always will. But somewhere along the way we
have forgotten who we are, and have forgotten what we stand for.
During the last week of August, 2009, the following news items came
out of Israel: Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was indicted for corruption;
former Finance Minister Avrohom Hirschson was convicted of stealing;
former Health & Welfare Minister Shlomo Benizri began a prison term
for accepting bribes; and former President Moshe Katsav went on trial for
rape. One week in the life of the homeland of the Jewish people.
The President of the state of Israel is indicted for rape? The Prime
Minister of the Jewish state is forced out of office for taking bribes and
money laundering? The Chasidim who run the largest kosher meat factory
in America are charged with violations of immigration and child labor laws,
money laundering, and unsafe working conditions? The Spinka Rebbe, head
of a Chasidic dynasty, is convicted of money laundering? A Jewish school
is found guilty of accepting federal funds for non-existent students? One
thing’s for sure: Bernard Madoff is not an aberration! And if you think that
he is:
There was Mark Dreier. Mark Dreier had a New York law firm which
he built up to 250 people. To celebrate, some of his toys included an Aston
Martin, a 121-foot yacht, and to pay for all of this, he allegedly swindled
$380 million out of investors by selling fake promissory notes. Then there

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were the shocking arrests of Syrian rabbis, including one considered their
Chief Rabbi, for money laundering. And if that wasn’t bad enough, one of
the rabbis was also accused of trafficking in kidneys!
And let’s not forget Dina Wein Reis, who was living a high lifestyle
that included a lushly renovated townhouse in New York, an impressive art
collection, and vacation homes in Westhampton, Bal Harbor, and Jerusalem.
She accomplished all this by running a years-long large-scale con
game: tricking marketing executives at major companies. Dina Wein Reis is
a Yeshiva girl, originally from Brooklyn . . . and you know how religious
she is? According to Fortune Magazine, she “enlisted her rabbi in her bid to
convince a judge that she should not be required to wear an electronic monitoring
ankle bracelet. Orthodox practice, the rabbi said, forbids women
from wearing slacks or pantsuits . . . summer was coming and Wein Reis’
lawyer noted any skirt or dress shorter than ankle length would reveal the
bracelet, which would complicate her efforts to get a new job.” Dina
reminds me of Red Levine. He was a Jewish “hit man” for Murder, Inc., but
he was so religious he wouldn’t kill anyone on Shabbos!
Let me drop this one on you! You all know that Bernie Madoff was
sentenced to 150 years in jail. That’s a long time! But that is not a record.
The record right now is held by someone who was sentenced in February of
2000 . . . a man who was found guilty of dozens of criminal counts. He was
sentenced to the longest federal prison sentence ever imposed–845 years!
His release date is November 23, 2874! And his name is Shalom Weiss. I
know that there are lots of “gonovim” who are not Jewish. Fraud and greed
and cheating are not distinctly Jewish traits, but there sure seems to be a lot
of it going on amongst our people.
Now, if I were an antisemite . . . if I hated everything about the Jewish
people in reading the list of the names I just mentioned, I would certainly be
tempted to say that there is something really wrong with the Jewish people!
But I am not an antisemite, and I love the Jewish people. So in reading all
these names, I have to say that there is something wrong with the Jewish
people! We can’t say it is just a handful, because it’s more than a handful!
And if we take collective pride when a disproportionate number of Nobel
Prize winners have Jewish names, and we say that this is because there is
something in the Jewish tradition and Jewish culture that brings out the best
when it comes to learning and education, then we have to be prepared when
we see so much crookedness and greed amongst people with Jewish names
that we have to say: Something has gone wrong in the tradition and culture
of the Jewish people. As the Jewish novelist and journalist Anne Roiphe put
it, “Are Jews more prone to financial crimes than Protestants or Catholics?
My head tells me: Of course not! My anxiety, however, whispers in my

2009] MONEY, MADOFF, AND THE JEWS 273
ear:‘Then why are so many Jews in prominent positions under indictment,
house arrest or in jail?’”
I’ll tell you one reason why! We Jews have fallen victim to a mindset
that Israelis express in the two Hebrew words magiya li, but which I
learned as a child in Yiddish in the three words es kumt mir, which means
“I am entitled . . . it’s coming to me.”
Ehud Olmert, as Prime Minister, spent so much time with rich Americans
that he began to feel that if these “schnooks” can have it all, why can’t
he? After all, he’s a Prime Minister! And so, all of a sudden he was flying
first-class, staying at upgraded hotel suites, taking Italian vacations, and
smoking fancy cigars . . . all with other people’s money . . . because he felt
es kumt mir.
Moshe Katsav, Israel’s President, obviously felt that as President he
could have his way with his underlings . . . after all, magiya li . . . it’s
coming to me, I’m the President. The Chassidic rabbis who play fast and
loose with government laws feel that for centuries governments took advantage
of us; now it is payback time! Es kumt mir . . . we’re entitled.
The Syrian Jewish community is one of the wealthiest in our country,
but their rabbis saw nothing wrong in laundering money, especially if they
could feel some is being used for religious schools, which receive no federal
money like public schools. We have it coming to us.
Don’t think this is just a problem with Jews. Here in America we have
a whole segment of our society that lives by these words of es kumt mir–“I
am entitled.” You know which segment that is? It’s our children! Of course,
all children start off with a sense of entitlement, a sense of instant gratification
. . . but rather than helping them outgrow it, these days more and more
of us continue to feed it as they get older. Our kids are made to feel that
everything is coming to them; how else to explain that 50% of college
seniors possess four credit cards? And they didn’t get it by working! We’ve
created a whole generation of welfare recipients—in our homes—who think
all of this is coming to them. Magiya li—es kumt mir.
Before we lay this all at the feet of our children, let’s remember that
many of us adults suffer from this syndrome as well. David Brooks wrote a
wonderful op-ed column in the New York Times entitled, “The Great Seduction,”
in which he pointed out that credit card debt in America was then up
to nearly a trillion dollars. That’s not from college students . . . we put
ourselves into debt. Why? “Because we are entitled!” If our next-door
neighbor has it, why shouldn’t we? “We are just as good! We are just as
deserving! We work just as hard!” Think about it! Do you know people
who are like that? And if you really think about it, you might realize that
you’re one of them . . . the kind of person who says: “I’m entitled to a

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three-car garage just like my friend across the street. He only has it because
his father is wealthy, but I’m just as entitled,” or “What’s she got that I ain’t
got? She only looks that good because of the clothing she buys. I’m entitled
to it just as much as she is. I work hard, while she just sits at home.” J.J.
Goldberg, the editorial director of New York’s Jewish Forward newspaper,
writes, “The Village Voice publishes an annual investigating feature listing
New York’s ‘ten worst landlords.’” The author once told me that the liberal
weekly went to great lengths every year to include at least a few Gentiles on
the list, so as to avoid the appearance of antisemitism. You tell me why that
should be! And then, Goldberg goes on to write, “What do those ‘worst
landlords’ do that gets them on this list? Not much, really. They try to
squeeze a few extra dollars out of buildings they own in neighborhoods that
most of us would never visit. They save a little on heating and maintenance,
they pay bottom dollar to their janitors and repairmen. They look for a deal
on elevator parts. It’s their property and they are entitled to make a living.”
Yes, es kumt mir. This is a mentality that you find amongst people covering
the entire economic strata. No matter what they have, they don’t simply
want more, they think they are entitled to more.
Let me tell you the story of Ezra Merkin. When I grew up there were
very few Orthodox Jews associated with wealth. Most were first- or secondgeneration
Americans who were the employees, not the employers. I
remember in my father’s shul the annual Kol Nidre Appeal, with ushers
calling out from the audience the pledges congregants wanted to announce.
Most of the pledges were for $10, some for $18. But there was one man in
shul who sat in the first row, and he was known as one of the wealthiest
members of the synagogue. He owned a liquor store. And every year it
would be announced: Joe Weinstein—$100! And the entire congregation,
as if as one, went “Wow!” And yet, there were some names in the Orthodox
community that stood out for their affluence and philanthropy . . . names
like Max Stern, Max Etra, and Ludwig Jesselson, and Herman Merkin.
Merkin I remember because he was not only a major contributor to Orthodox
causes and to Jewish causes, but in New York there is a concert hall
bearing his name. Merkin is gone, but his son, Ezra Merkin, is still around,
and he made it big as a money manager, financier, and the head of GMAC,
and he made it into the news this year. It seems that all the people who
invested with him, he in turn, had invested their money with Bernard
Madoff. Included in all those “people” was Yeshiva University. Ezra
Merkin, as his father was, is a major contributor to Yeshiva University, so
much so that he served on its Board of Directors and he was the Chairman
of their Endowment Fund. He was the one who recommended where
Yeshiva University should place its money. And, of course, he recommended
placing it in his fund, which it did. And he, in turn, then went and

2009] MONEY, MADOFF, AND THE JEWS 275
placed it in Bernard Madoff’s fund. And there went more than $100 million
dollars of Yeshiva University’s future. Bad . . . very bad. What made matters
even worse was the discovery that Ezra Merkin was charging Yeshiva
University a percentage every year for the money he invested in his fund.
He—the contributor, the Board member was making money off of the institution
he advised and contributed to! Even worse was the fact that he was
doing nothing to watch this money . . . he had given it all to Bernard
Madoff!
That’s not enough. Let me tell you what really bothers me about this
story. It is estimated that the fees he received for investing with Madoff put
three-quarters of a billion dollars in his pocket! He was so wealthy that his
Park Avenue duplex is lined with Mark Rothko paintings. He is considered
to own the largest collection of Rothko paintings. So, you tell me: What
motivates a man like that . . . what makes him tick? $750 million wasn’t
enough, he had to make more money off of the very institution he claimed
to be a supporter of? For what? So that he could have the largest Rothko
collection in his house? This is not greed! Greed doesn’t explain this! This
is a mindset of es kumt mir: “I’m entitled . . . They’ve made money off of
me . . . They got money from me . . . There is nothing wrong in my making
money off of them!”
Oh, yes there is! We as Jews are paying a bitter, bitter price for this
mindset. There used to be a time when this kind of behavior evoked concern
within our people because it was a “shande fahr di goyim,” it made us
look bad in the eyes of the non-Jewish world. But I have an even greater
concern. This kind of behavior is a “shande fahr di Yidden”–it makes us
look bad in front of our own people . . . in front of our own children! Sit in
my office and listen to a conversation I might have with a Jewish boy or girl
who is contemplating intermarriage. Or, with a Jewish boy or girl who says
that they are “turned off” to Judaism. And the response I get, not one time
but many times, they tell me: “I’ve dated Jewish guys or girls . . . I grew up
in this community. I see all of them having this or that characteristic; they
are all greedy or Jappy and self-centered and materialistic and acquisitive
and overindulged.” My reaction to them on hearing all this:
1. You have swallowed antisemitic stereotypes of the Jewish people.
2. You are libeling us collectively. Sure, some of us are like that.
There are some like that in every group, but how dare you say
“all”?
3. You’re just trying to find any excuse or rationalization to justify
your behavior.
BUT . . . because we hear these things said so many times, and it is
being said by our kids . . . you and I have got to ask ourselves: Why? Is

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there a kernel of truth about some of these characteristics, which we are
unknowingly passing on? You will say it’s not fair—other religious and
ethnic groups also have their share of overindulgent, materialistic youth.
But that’s no excuse! We’re supposed to be “a light unto the nations!”
We’re supposed to set a higher standard.
Of all the things I have read about Bernie Madoff, the most painful
was not as much about him as about what he represented. It is found in a
book, Madness Under the Palms, where the author describes Madoff’s
home base, the primarily Jewish Palm Beach County Club:
People in Palm Beach sort themselves out into the group in which they
belong largely on how much they have. Even the poorest of the islanders
seem to have everything yet joy proves elusive, even for the country club
members, because there is always someone richer or better socially connected.
Joy is driving out of your 35,000 sq. foot mansion in your Bentley
and tooling up to the entrance of Mar-a-Lago for your fifteenth ball of
the season, the valet parkers salivating at the chance to take your car and
the prospect of a $20 tip. Joy is having a wife younger and thinner than
any of the other wives at your table. Joy is subtly announcing during
dinner that your hedge fund scored 33% last year, while that of the arrogant
SOB across the table with the fat wife scored only 17%.
Is that our people? I quote writer Ann Roiphe again when she writes,
“I admit to squirming when I read about mega-swindler Bernard Madoff’s
boats, or Mrs. Madoff’s fur coats. It feels as if there are too many Jews who
rise to the top and then skim the cream for themselves . . . or bend the laws
. . . or run away to far-off countries with the loot.”
In our heart of hearts, we know that she’s right, and we better do
something about it! What to do? If we Jews have gotten ourselves into this
bind because we’ve bought into the concept of es kumt mir, the only way
we’ll be able to get out of it is if we buy into an age-old concept of our
people that is also expressed in three Yiddish words: Es past nit. When my
father would say those words, you didn’t have to understand Yiddish to
know what he meant. You could see it with a look of disgust on his face.
“Es past nit . . . such behavior is not appropriate for a Jew!” It’s not even a
matter of right or wrong, legal or illegal. It’s a matter of es past nit – there
are certain things you just don’t do because a Jew doesn’t behave like that!
We’ve lost our whole sense of shame. We’ve gone from es past nit to “anything
and everything goes!” Newspapers reported that Bernie Madoff hired
a veteran prison consultant to help him find the best possible jail in which
to serve his 150-year sentence. After all that has unfolded, Madoff is still
playing games . . . still trying to beat the system! And he didn’t pick just
any veteran prison consultant; the newspaper reported that the consultant he

2009] MONEY, MADOFF, AND THE JEWS 277
hired had previous clients including “the jailed Sotheby’s Chairman, Alfred
Taubman, and financiers Michael Miliken and Ivan Boesky.” And just in
case you didn’t notice, they are all Members of the Tribe. No sense of
shame . . . no sense of propriety!
People like Tuvia Stern, who picked quite a location for his son’s Bar
Mitzvah . . . no big splash . . . only about sixty people were present; a small,
intimate group. It took place at a prison in New York where Tuvia Stern is
incarcerated, after having fled the country when released on bail, facing
charges of stealing millions in financial scams. When word of the Bar Mitzvah
got out, the warden was criticized, the chaplain was criticized, the person
who “ratted” was criticized. Only Stern wasn’t criticized. No one
seemed to see anything wrong with a child being taken into the adult congregation
of Israel in a prison where his father is a convict!
And it not only when it’s in prison where es past nit. It’s also the
flashy, ostentatious displays at our parties and Bar and Bat Mitzvah receptions,
the way we carry ourselves and conduct ourselves, the way we dress
or undress. In February when Bar Refaeli, an Israeli, was chosen to be the
cover on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, I spoke about it in a sermon.
And I held up this picture of the cover . . . obviously feeling a need to
cover the uncovered parts of her for display in the synagogue. But now
comes July and she is on the cover of Esquire Magazine. And this is the
way I have to show you the cover! You see, now she’s wearing nothing!
That’s what happens! Forgive me for saying it, but that’s what happens to
our daughters . . . and we are allowing it! I see it almost every day of every
week . . . I see the kids in our school in the fourth and fifth grade–nice, cute
kids–and then as they get closer to the Bat Mitzvah the skirts keep getting
higher and higher, and then as they get closer to sweet sixteen, the tops start
getting lower and lower! When are we going to remind ourselves: es past
nit. It is our tradition that teaches, “Blessing is only found upon something
which is hidden from the eye.”
Up until recent times, over the centuries we Jews realized that is was
in the best interest of all concerned not to draw attention to ourselves, not to
cause envy . . . that when it came to flaunting things or being too showy, es
past nit. Daphne Mirkin, sister of Ezra Mirkin, describes the home in which
she and her brother grew up. She writes: “The Mirkin gene for excessive
discretion embraced frugality and disdains visible displays of riches.” She
goes as far as to say that she grew up believing that her father sold chairs on
Wall Street–not shares. But that didn’t stop her brother from needing an
eighteen-room, seven-bedroom, seven-bath apartment at 740 Park Avenue,
where the Bronfmans and the Rockefellers live; a condo dubbed the “most
lusted after address in the world.”
We Jews have changed, there’s no getting away from it! And saying

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we are no worse than anyone else is no source of comfort. For if that is true,
you tell me: What makes us special? What makes us unique? Why should
our kids marry Jewish? Why should our kids remain Jewish . . . when there
is no difference in the way we dress or in the way we act or in the way we
conduct our business affairs?
Being Jewish has to mean something! And it means a lot more than
keeping kosher and keeping the Shabbos. Judaism is meant to be a way of
life showing us how to approach health care, crime, employer/employee
relations, taxes, fair trade, dress, gossip, cheating, and everything else that
goes into molding the character of a mensch. In the Talmud, when asked
how to identify one as being Jewish, the Talmud responds: “They are modest,
compassionate, and perform acts of loving kindness.” That’s what a
Jew is supposed to be! In the Talmud we are told there is a series of questions
that we are going to ultimately be asked before the Heavenly Throne,
and the first question is: “Did you conduct your business affairs ethically?”
This lesson I learned when I was a little kid. I learned the lesson at Macy’s.
One of the most formative experiences of my youth–I couldn’t have
been more than eight or nine years old–was one day when my brothers took
me with them to Macy’s in New York City. The three of us were wearing
our yarmulkes–that was not as common a sight as it is today. One of my
brothers bought a tie—a cheap, shmattah (I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing
it!), and when we were paying, the salesman turned to us and said, “I
see you have a yarmulke on your head. I too always have a yarmulke, but I
don’t keep it on my head. I keep it someplace more important.” And he
opened up the cash register and took out his yarmulke. And he said to us,
“I’m dealing with other people’s money all day; that yarmulke reminds me
to behave myself.” That yarmulke, representing our Judaism, must do the
same for us.
We are privileged to be identified as part of a people whose record of
family life and philanthropy and menschlichkeit has been the envy of the
nations of the world down through the generations. As American Jews, the
most successful Jewish community in history, we have the responsibility to
conduct ourselves in a manner that reflects well upon our Jewish heritage.
Let us be honest with ourselves and true to our calling. Our major threat
comes not from the antisemites from without . . . but sometimes in the
immortal words of Pogo: “We have met the enemy and they is us.” And
yes, es past nit.
So, on this Rosh Hashana, let’s ring out the old and let’s ring in the
new! Let there be a new way that we as Jews do business and live our lives.
The story is told of a rabbi getting a call from an IRS agent asking: “Rabbi,
I am calling in regard to so-and-so who says that he has given $50,000 to
your synagogue. Did he?” And the rabbi said, “He will!” The truth is, we

2009] MONEY, MADOFF, AND THE JEWS 279
are all vulnerable. Religious and irreligious, Chasidim and Misnagdim,
rabbis and laymen, rich and poor . . . we are all tempted to think “es kumt
mir . . . I’m entitled.” We are all just one step away from doing crazy things
when it comes to money . . . in the way we make it, spend it, and use it. But
remember, God is watching us from a distance. Perhaps even more important,
our children are watching us up close. Es past nit.

When Doing Right Is Wrong—Israel Today
Alan M. Dershowitz*
As most objective observers throughout the world marvel at Israel’s
efficiency and generosity in leading the medical aid efforts in Haiti, some
bigots insist on using these efforts as an occasion to continue their attack on
the Jewish state. Both the neo-Nazi hard right and the neo-Stalinist hard left
cannot help but to demonize Israel, regardless of what Israel does.
The neo-Nazi Web site ReportersNotebook.com features a blog entitled
“The Zionization of Disaster Relief.” It accuses Israel of “exploiting
the suffering of poor, defenseless Haitians on behalf of Israeli Triumphalism.”
It complains that Israel is rendering medical aid to Haiti only to
deflect attention from its crimes against the Palestinians.
The hard left, even in Israel, complains that Israel should not be sending
medical assistance to such a faraway place. Instead it should be sending
it to nearby Gaza.
Even The New York Times, in an otherwise thoughtful analysis of the
controversiality of the aid among some Israelis, failed to note the difference
between Israel sending its limited resources to faraway Haiti and to nearby
Gaza. Haiti is not at war with Israel. Haiti has not pledged itself to Israel’s
destruction. Haiti has not fired 8,000 rockets at Israeli civilians. Gaza, on
the other hand, has a popularly elected government that has done and continues
to do all of the above. Moreover, there is no comparison between the
tens of thousands of Haitians who have died from a natural disaster, and the
people of Gaza who suffer far less from what is, essentially, a self-inflicted
wound.
Nor do the perennial enemies of Israel emphasize the comparison
between tiny and resource-poor Israel, on the one hand, and the enormous
and resource-rich Arab and Muslim nations, on the other hand. While Israel
digs deeply into its treasury and manpower to send medical assistance a
quarter of the way around the world, Arab and Muslim nations are generally
missing in action when it comes to relief efforts. This is true not only in
Haiti, which is a Catholic nation, but it was equally true when tsunamis and
other natural disasters have devastated Muslim nations.
For those who argue that Israel is sending this aid to Haiti for its own
selfish reasons, there are two answers. First the realpolitik answer: All
* Alan M. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard University and author of
several books on Israel. His latest is The Case for Moral Clarity. Camera
Monograph, 2009. Originally published as “For bigots, Israel can do no right.” J-
Post blog 1/24/10.
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nations have interests; and all act, at least in part, out of self-interest. When
the United States government is asked by Americans to justify its multibillion-dollar
foreign aid grants, it generally responds by arguing that these
grants are serving the interests of the United States. When it comes to
Israel, however, a double standard is always applied. Israel must act only
out of altruistic motives, while all other countries are entitled to leaven
altruism with self-interest. The second answer is that Israel is doing far
more in Haiti than would be required to satisfy its self-interests. It is sending
more aid per capita than any country in the world. It is doing it with
extraordinary efficiency and real impact. Isn’t it at least possible that the
millennia-long Jewish tradition of tzadakah—that is, charity based on justice—is
at least part of the explanation for Israel’s generosity?
The fact that so many Israelis are advocating medical and other assistance
to Gaza, certainly supports this latter theory. Has any other country in
the history of the world ever provided medical and other assistance to a
people with whom it is at war—to people who continue to support rocket
attacks and other forms of terrorism against its own civilians? Again, a
double standard. The reality is that Israel will be extremely generous to the
people of Gaza if and when they stop supporting attacks on Israeli civilians,
stop making martyrs of their suicide murders, and stop encouraging their
children to don suicide vests. Contrast Gaza with the West Bank, which
today has an improving economy, better travel conditions, and among the
best health care available in any Arab or Muslim country in the area. The
peace dividend the Palestinian people will reap from making peace with
Israel is incalculable.
So continue to criticize Israel when it fails to live up to generally applicable
international standards, but praise it when it exceeds those standards
in rendering aid that has saved and will continue to save many lives. Israel
will continue to send disaster relief regardless of how the world reacts to it
because Israelis understand how it feels to be subject to disasters. But fairness
requires that Israel not be condemned for its humanitarian efforts, and
that its rendering of aid to Haiti not be used as yet another occasion for
applying a double standard to its actions.

LDS’s (Latter-day Saints) Posthumous Baptisms
Daniel N. Leeson*
While the era when well-meaning Catholics forcibly baptized Jews has
been over for some time, 1 Mormons continue the effort with a parallel practice
of forced baptism of the dead. 2
This Mormon activity became apparent when a broad array of Jews
developed an emotional need to immerse themselves in genealogical study
following the Holocaust. Many soon learned to use the Mormon Church’s
publicly available database, The International Genealogical Index (IGI),
which can be searched online with a personal computer. 3 The IGI is more
than a collection of names. It is an index to individuals posthumously baptized
in formal Mormon ceremonies and who are decreed by the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) as having accepted Jesus Christ.
Posthumous, proxy, vicarious, or temple baptism began c. 1840 and was
instituted to provide baptism for those who died without having received
the ritual. It is practiced by several groups in the Latter-day Saints movement.
4 In a second and follow-up ceremony, the deceased are confirmed as
members of LDS. 5 Since the author easily found several pre-1900 entries in
the IGI under the name “Cohen,” it appears that Jews and other non-
Mormons have been included in the Mormon rituals of proxy baptism since
the practice began.
Soon irregularities were discovered in the IGI. The Mormon Church’s
rules for its members dictated that only a Mormon who was a direct descendant
of an individual was authorized to baptize that antecedent posthumously.
Yet the IGI included the names of infants and children murdered in
the Holocaust. How was it possible for Jewish offspring who did not survive
their childhood to be the ancestors of Mormons?
* Daniel Leeson is retired from IBM and holds degrees in mathematics. He
resides in Los Altos, California and is a musician for several symphony orchestras.
1. For a discussion of what was a particularly egregious case of forced baptism,
see David Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New York: Alfred
Knopf, 1977).
2. For a chronicle of the Jewish-Mormon controversy, see http://www.jewishgen.org/infoFiles/ldsagree.html,
and also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_Judaism.
3. The link to the IGI is http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp.
4. See http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/mormon/baptism/.
5. For the specific rituals of the baptismal process, including the details of the
usurpation of the deceased into the body of the Mormon Church, see http://www.
lds-mormon.com/veilworker/rituals.shtml.
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Consider the experience of Ernest Michel, a survivor of Nazi concentration
camps, who discovered that his dead parents—both religious Jews—
were listed in the IGI. 6 His demand that they be removed from the listing
was eventually accomplished, but the Mormon behavior in this respect is
difficult and not forthcoming. While LDS will, upon request, sometimes
remove a name from the IGI, that action is not synonymous with undoing
the baptism. Instead, the name of the baptized party is eliminated from public
view, becomes a hidden part the body of LDS, and remains a permanent
part of the database of the Mormon Church. Because the ultimate goal of
this Mormon effort is the elimination of Jews, it constitutes an act of purest
antisemitism.
Mormons assert that their baptismal acts are not forced. Instead they
suggest that the dead are given an opportunity to accept or reject baptism.
While communicating with the dead in this fashion is foreign to Jewish
thinking, Mormons engage in it. However, there is no place in the Mormon
baptismal ritual where the dead are given the opportunity to reject the offer.
A 1995 joint agreement between the Mormon Church and a broad
swath of the Jewish community called for a cessation of the practice of
posthumous baptism of Jews. Formalized at the highest level of the Mormon
Church, the document included the signature of Monte J. Brough, at
that time Presidency of the Seventy, Executive Director of the LDS Family
History Department, and President of the Genealogical Society of Utah. 7
This hand of friendship was extended in an attempt to resolve the conflict
6. Ernest W. Michel is Chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust
Survivors, as well as a former executive vice president of UJA-Federation of
New York.
7. An impressive cast represented the Jewish community. There were Benjamin
Mead, President of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors; Ernest
W. Michel, Chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors;
Lester Pollack and Malcolm I. Hoenlien, respectively the Chairman and Executive
Vice Chairman of The Conference of Presidents of Major American-Jewish Organizations;
Miles Lerman, the Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Council; and George Klein and Robert M. Morgenthau, the joint Co-Chairmen of
the New York Holocaust Memorial Commission. Additionally present and signing
were Abraham H. Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League; Sarrae Crane of the
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Robert A. Kaplan of the Workmen’s
Circle; Rabbi Gilbert S. Rosenthal, representing the New York Board of Rabbis; an
unreadable signature representing the Movement of Working Women and Volunteers
(NA’A MAT USA); Martin Hochbaum of the American Jewish Congress;
Libby Lieberman of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism; Susan Katz of
the National Council of Jewish Women; Carol Kahn Strauss of the Leo Baeck
Institute; an illegible signature representing the Rabbinical Council of America;
another illegible signature representing the Jewish War Veterans of the USA;

2009] LDS’S POSTHUMOUS BAPTISMS 285
that arose from LDS’ activities in this arena, which came face-to-face with
Jewish revulsion toward baptism of any kind. Accepting the responsibility
of representing the Jewish Community in the negotiations was Ernest
Michel, previously identified as Chairman of the American Gathering of
Jewish Holocaust Survivors.
Yet, following the joint agreement, Mormons accelerated their posthumous
baptismal activities. Names that previously had been removed from
the IGI as a part of the agreement reappeared in the same database from
which they had been removed, while other Holocaust victims who had initially
escaped the baptismal process were now being baptized in large
numbers.
The 1995 agreement has been violated repeatedly, acts that continue to
this day, and with no end in sight. When those debasements were brought to
LDS’s attention, the Mormon authorities suggested, as one possible reason
for the violations, that overzealous Church members were doing name submissions
in defiance of the formal agreement. 8 In this respect, Mormon
forced posthumous baptism of the dead and Catholic forced baptism of the
living have a similar administrative flaw: i.e., while three Papal bulls dating
from 1217, 1365, and 1727 stated explicitly that no party should be baptized
against their will, no mechanism existed to undo a forced baptism
even when it contravened the theological authority that forbade it. In effect,
in both Catholic and Mormon theology, the waters of baptism cannot be
washed away even when the ritual was performed in violation of Church
doctrine.
Today, Holocaust victims from Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia,
France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova,
Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine are subjected to forced
posthumous baptism, along with the seven hundred Roman Jews taken from
Rome, sent to Auschwitz in October 1944, and posthumously baptized in
May 1999. 9 The names of the baptized are most often taken from public and
private databases, such as Yiskor books, published family genealogies,
internment records kept by the Nazis, and governmental vital records, with
a special emphasis on marriage records where both the bride’s and the
Hirsch Altusky of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization; and Roman Kent of
the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.
8. Remarks about overzealous Mormons were offered by LDS only as a possible
explanation for the situation, and do not constitute either a formal or even necessarily
accurate Church statement on the matter.
9. In November 2006, Salt Lake City researcher Helen Radkey, who
researches Mormon violations of their own rules, discovered more than 700 records
in the IGI that documented the 1999 posthumous baptisms for the Jews of Rome,
all of whom were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in October 1943.

286 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:283
groom’s names are found. In all cases, the victims are herded into the baptismal
font. The names of the Jews are mingled with the names of their
murderers; Hitler, Mengele, Eichmann, and many other Nazi leaders are
part of the same database.
Mormons cite the Establishment Clause of the American Constitution
as justification and authority for their posthumous baptismal activities. 10
Yet LDS performs posthumous baptisms around the world, in nations
devoid of American First Amendment rights. Thus, the claim that they have
the right to perform these acts outside of United States authority is disputable.
Furthermore, there are a number of allegedly religious activities not
included under the umbrella of the First Amendment. They include, for
example, the use of hallucinogenic drugs in religious rites as well as the
impermissibility of plural marriages. So the law may not support LDS’
claims. Only a test case would establish or reject that Mormon assertion.
Ernest Michel, who had negotiated the 1995 agreement, re-entered dialogue
with LDS because of the continual violations of that agreement.
However, little was accomplished. A small committee of Jews selected by
Michel had a single meeting with a corresponding group of Mormons. The
meeting ended with an LDS announcement establishing that any “relative”
could now submit names for forced posthumous baptisms, which nullified
their previous restraint of allowing only direct descendants to submit
names. The change of LDS’ threshold policy was meaningless in any case,
as there had been no previous enforcement of the earlier and stricter rule.
One can only wonder why.
The hostility to posthumous baptism is also found in the Armenian
Church, among Native Americans, in the Catholic Church, 11 and among
other well-defined groups such as Atheists. However, beyond these few
exceptions, there appears to be little resistance to the Mormon practice. Personal
communication with a variety of Baptist denominations as well as
other Protestant organizations was met with disinterest. 12 As far as is
10. The “Establishment” clause refers to the first constitutional amendment,
which notes that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Together with the “Free Exercise” clause, these two fundamental principles
make up what are commonly known as the “religion clauses” of the first amendment.The
Mormon claim of first amendment protection for their activity is not a
formal part of LDS theology, but arises only when an argument is made that
Mormons have no authority to forcibly and posthumously baptize anyone they
wish.
11. See http://www.catholic.com/library/Mormonism_Baptism_for_the_Dead.
asp, and also http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=27825.
12. The author visited a variety of Protestant churches in order to discuss this
matter and obtain a consensus of opinion. The effort was not well received.

2009] LDS’S POSTHUMOUS BAPTISMS 287
known, no effort was made to establish the Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist
groups’ positions on the Mormon activities. 13
From the twisted viewpoint of the antisemite, cemetery tombstone desecration
is an entirely rational act, because its intent is to eliminate even the
memory of Jews. The Mormon acts of posthumous baptism are only a more
sophisticated way of desecrating our tombstones.
13. In November 2009 newspaper coverage of the resettlement of Yemenite
Jews to Monsey, New York, it was reported that several of the Jews were subjected
to a forced conversion to Islam at an earlier and unspecified time. A Muslim man
who ordered Jews to convert killed a Yemenite Jew. See http://tinyurl.com/ylzhku9.
In addition, an August 10, 2009 sermon delivered on MEMRITIV (Number 20268)
by Egyptian cleric Mahmoud Al-Marsi proposed that tricking Jews into converting
was permissible. See http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2268.htm.

REVIEWS
The Other War Against the Jews:
Jeffrey Herf’s Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World
[New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009, 335 pp., $30]
Neal E. Rosenberg*
Jeffrey Herf, author of The Jewish Enemy (Belnap, 2006), now turns
his attention to the Arabs. Every picture tells a story, and the cover photo is
picture perfect. The body language shows Hitler, the animated teacher, lecturing
to his ardent pupil Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of
Jeusalem. On one level we have no idea what the two are talking about.
Then again, we know—there are very few topics on which teachers from
the Master Race and non-Aryan students can agree.
Herf has investigated the social transmission of Nazi propaganda in
ways that are only now coming to light. The long arm of Nazi rhetoric was
achieved partially via printed leaflets and short-wave radio broadcasts from
Berlin (Axis Broadcasts in Arabic) utilizing the Qur’an and Arab folklore
(Mein Kampf was avoided because it was anti-Arab, and The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion was Eurocentric though its conspiratorial focus on Inter-
* Neal E. Rosenberg is an attorney practiciing law in New Jersey.
289

290 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:289
national Jewry remained central), with no less than a full-time staff of
slightly less than a hundred working ‘round the clock. And, of course, an
avid listening audience wanting to act on the 700,000 Jews living throughout
the Islamic lands.
Berlin in Arabic and the Voice of Free Arabism mixed music and news
commentary 24/7, often throughout café and key public venues. So after a
popular Arab song, the following would be broadcast:
You must kill the Jews, before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews who
have appropriated your wealth and who are plotting against your security.
Arabs of Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, what are you waiting for? The Jews
are planning to violate your women, to kill your children, and to destroy
you. According to the Muslim religion, the defense of your life is a duty
which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews. This is your best
opportunity to get rid of this dirty race which has usurped your rights and
brought misfortune and destruction on your countries. Kill the Jews,
burn their property, destroy their stores. . .your sole hope of salvation lies
in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you. 1
With such broadcasts, antisemitism writ large becomes the truth for
those who listen. Goebbels understood the principle: “The most brilliant
propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle
is borne in mind constantly—it must confine itself to a few points and
repeat them over and over.” So Berlin repeated the message of international
Jewry and its evil intent–much the same way repeated television commercials
and catchy ad slogans work today.
Even if we understand the source of transmission and the catchy message
of the menacing Jews, we remain mystified about another key aspect
of effective propaganda: the audience receptiveness. Here is the focus of
Herf’s analysis, which explains how Islam’s antisemitism was a natural
transmitter of Nazi antisemitism, in much the same way those directors of
Sweden’s Radio Islam and Palestinian propagandists have figured out
today.
But how do you get from willing listeners to willing executions?
The Third Reich’s Arabic language broadcasts vaulted over the seemingly
insurmountable barriers of Aryan superiority 2 and an antisemitic
religion turned political. 3 For instance, broadcasts included:
• Charges that World War II was a Jewish war whose purpose in the
1. Herf, 126.
2. Herf, 1.
3. Herf, 35.

2009] THE OTHER WAR AGAINST THE JEWS 291
Middle East was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine that would
expand into and dominate the entire Arab and Muslim world. 4
• Convincing the Arab and Muslim world that the Nuremberg racial
laws were between German and Aryan peoples and Jews rather than
Aryans and non-Aryans.
- To convince Arabs that the racial laws were not aimed at the Arabs
but against the Jews. 5
- To increase antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
- To emphasize the paranoid and delusional theme that international
Jewish power through the Allies was the controlling factor in the
Allies’ war against the Nazis—paralleling Jewish Allied control to
threaten the entire Middle East. 6
- To claim that Islam was a non-Western ally in Germany’s war
against the Jews—paralleling Jews and Nazi Germany. 7
- To assert that Jews could achieve a Zionist state if there was an
unjustifiable sympathy for their plight in Europe. 8
This was tribalism elevated to paranoia only to be remedied by partisanship,
solidarity, simplicity, and hatred over objectivity, complexity, and factual
reporting. 9 Here is one more example of nightly news:
The Jews aim at monopolizing all the economics of the Arab countries
surrounding them . . . The Jews are the enemy of Islam; if Mohammed
and the Caliphs could not live with the Jews in one country, how can we
do the same today? No, we shall never live in peace with the Jews. They
will never be our masters; they will never be our partners. Either Palestine
will be liberated or all the Arabs will perish to the last man in our
fight for freedom. We shall live an honorable free life or die an honorable
death—for then we can meet our God as martyrs. 10
In advertising, the message is better retained when a spokesperson who
is famous is doing the announcing. Sexy, slim women would be out, but
established leaders who convey power and a link to God could add to the
integrity of the product. For an Arab audience, who better than Grand Mufti
Haj Amin Husseini to convey truth and understanding of the people? So
when the Grand Mufti speaks of God’s ineradicable Muslim-Jewish conflict,
11 why shouldn’t anyone believe him?
4. Herf, 35.
5. Herf, 21-22.
6. Herf, 13.
7. Herf, 170.
8. Herf, 172.
9. Herf, 191.
10. Herf, 175
11. Herf, 170-71.

292 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:289
The only criticism of the book is minor, in that it leaves the reader
wanting more. Herf concludes that the link between Nazism and Islamist
ideology “should be an important item on the agenda of scholars whose
expertise lies in the study of Arab and Islamic politics.” 12
But it never ended in the Middle East. During the 1950s, conspiracy
theories of al-Banna, Qutb, and the Muslim Brotherhood-based Radio Berlin
continued to infest the politics of the Arab nationalists. Nasser hired
former Nazi propagandist Johann von Leers to work for the Egyptian information
agencies. Antisemitism became the lubricant for any mechanical
failure in the body politic.
The Third Reich was short-lived, observes Herf. “Tragically, traces of
the ideological diffusion examined in these pages have had a much longer
life” (p. 266).
The effects continue well into this day.
12. Herf, 266.

In Their Own Words: Andrew Bostom’s
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism:
From Sacred Texts to Solemn History
[Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008, 766 pp., $39.98]
Alyssa A. Lappen*
Particularly since the late, lifelong Muslim Brother, 1 Yasser Arafat,
shifted anti-Israel jihad into fifth gear in September 2000, several Middle
East and Islamic scholars have repeatedly asserted that twentieth- and
twenty-first-century Islamic antisemitism sprang solely from Nazi and
European Christian influence.
Even now, Islamophiles like Bernard Lewis preach (as it were) that
virulent Jew-hatred is not inherent to Islam, but rather, antisemitism
migrated to the Middle East with European colonialism. The Qu’ran uses
“hard words . . . about the Jews,” even Lewis admits. Yet under Islamic
* Alyssa A. Lappen, a freelance investigative reporter and prize-winning poet,
is a former senior editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman, and Corporate
Finance and former associate editor of Forbes.
1. In 1947, Cairo-born Arafat enrolled in an engineering course at University
of King Faud I (later renamed Cairo University). His textile merchant father was a
Muslim Brother. Arafat followed his example and joined the MB in 1948 following
his thwarted attempt to join Arab forces that entered war after Israel’s Declaration
of Independence. Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/
jsource/biography/arafat.html (accessed May 1, 2008).
293

294 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:293
rule, he claims they were “only rarely subject to persecution” and “their
situation was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst.” 2
Andrew G. Bostom’s extensive, scientific, and largely unprecedented
new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn
History, 3 definitively disproves such claims. (Full disclosure: I copyedited
several of these first-time English translations and proofread many
chapters.)
Publication of this landmark book informs self-respecting scholars that
they can no longer shamelessly blame Christianity as the sole source of
antisemitism—or more importantly, that Islam does not and never had its
own innate brand of loathing for the Jewish people.
Islam detests non-Muslims generally—whom sharia laws institutionally
oppress and tax as underclass “dhimmis”—but inveighs especially
intense odium against Jews.
Indeed, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, a sort of continuum of
Bostom’s groundbreaking Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate
of Non-Muslims, 4 proves that profound Islamic hatred for the Jewish people
originated with the religion’s founder, Muhammad. Moreover, his companions,
successor “rightly guided” Caliphs and Islamic jurists, over the next
1,400 years maintained that hateful overarching passion.
Bostom’s evidence is impossible to ignore, wave off, or attribute to
anti-Islamic bias. Most of the book’s double-columned 766 pages contain
primary source material: excerpts from Islamic sacred texts, jurisprudence,
and historical accounts (by Muslims and non-Muslims alike) across the
span of Islamic history.
The opening 171-page review (and 962 citations) breathtakingly maps
the roots of Islamic antisemitism—within the religion’s unique theological
and judicial traditions, and its historical record.
This alone should convince even skeptics that Islamic antisemitism
began in the seventh century.
The Qur’an refers to Jews as apes and swine (2:65, 7:166, 5:60),
themes that were repeatedly exploited in incitements to murder, including a
1066 “anti-Jewish ode containing the line, ‘Many a pious Muslim is in awe
of the vilest infidel ape.’” Letters from the Cairo Geniza, from up to one
millennium ago, further explode “the common assumption” that a unique
Islamic strain of antisemitism was “absent” at that time (950-1250 C.E.).
2. Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (London: Phoenix, 1997), 121-22.
3. Andrew G. Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred
Texts to Solemn History (Prometheus: 2008), 766 pp.
4. Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims
(Prometheus: 2006), 759 pp.

2009] IN THEIR OWN WORDS 295
S.D. Goitein’s six-volume A Mediterranean Society reports two special
words coined and much-used in the geniza era to describe Islamic hatred of
Jews: “sin’úth, ‘hatred,’ [and] a Jew-baiter being called sóné, ‘a hater.’” 5
All other texts cited also refer to “stubborn malevolence” as the defining
Jewish “worldly characteristic,” leading them to reject Muhammad and
refuse “to convert to Islam out of jealousy, envy, and even selfish personal
interest.” These traits allegedly induce typical Jewish treachery: “sorcery,
poisoning, assassination,” archetypes sanctioning “Muslim hatred toward
the Jews, and the admonition to, at best, ‘subject [them] to Muslim domination,’
as [contemptible, humiliated] dhimmis.”
Having whetted reader interest, Bostom leaves nothing open to doubt.
In the next five sections—252 more two-column pages—he unveils the
antisemitic contents of the Qur’an and its interpretations (Part 2); Hadith
(sayings and deeds of Muhammad, Part 3); Sira (early Muslim biographies
of Muhammed, Part 4); and fatwas (religious rulings) and laws prescribed
by Islam’s most “luminary” judges, both classical and pre-modern (Part 5)
and modern (Part 6).
In Part 2, one twelve-page chapter contains fifty-five antisemitic
Quranic verses, each translated three times to avoid confusion or denial
regarding their toxicity. For the “Children of Israel” the Qur’an mandates
God’s anger, as expressed in their “abasement and poverty;” curses “by the
tongue of David, and of Jesus, son of Mary;” and their hastening “about the
earth to do corruption there.” The Jewish people, moreover, are accursed as
liars, confounding the truth, murderers of their prophets, perverse creatures,
and thieves. 6
Haggai Ben-Shammai’s 1988 essay on Quranic literature and interpretations
notes that they likewise cursed Jews through history, frequently citing
the very passages Bostom quotes in the previous chapter—for example,
that describing Jews as cursed disbelievers, “laden with God’s anger” and
having “abasement and poverty pitched upon them.” 7
Bostom, in Part 3, continues exposing traditional Islamic enmity for
Jews, with a brief collection of forty-five accounts from the voluminous
5. S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, Vol. II (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2000), 278, as cited in Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,
31.
6. Bostom, Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, ibid., 209-20.
7. Haggai Ben-Shammai, “Jew Hatred in the Islamic Tradition and the Koranic
Exegesis,” from Antisemitism through the Ages, ed. Shmuel Almog (Oxford: Pergamon,
1988), 161-69, as reproduced in Bostom, Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,
221-25.

296 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:293
Hadith. 8 These include some of its most odious passages, accepted “narrations,”
as reported by three revered Islamic sources—Sahih Bukhari, Sahih
Muslim, and Sunan Abu Dawud—characterizing Jews as the ultimate of
thieves, murderers, liars, idolaters, accursed and fully worthy of God’s primordial
anger. 9 Indeed, every Jew who does not convert to Islam, Muslim
reports Muhammad as saying, “shall be but one of the denizens of Hell-
Fire” (Book 1, no. 284). 10
A Jewish woman, Bukhari reports, murdered Muhammad when she
“brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from it” (Vol.
3, book 47, no. 786). 11 He also records Muhammad saying that Muslims
“will fight the Jews ‘til some of them will hide behind stones. The stones
will (betray them) saying, ‘O ‘Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew
hiding behind me; so kill him’” (Vol. 4, Book 52, no. 176). 12 The Hamas
Charter features the latter Bukhari tradition prominently in Article 7—and
contains many more unadulterated Quranic passages and hadiths.
Next, Bostom features one of his collection’s crown jewels: a 1937
Georges Vajda essay on Jewish and Muslim relationships in the Hadith
(translated from French for the first time). Vajda worked from hadiths
reported by twelve accepted Islamic sources, including seven primary
source volumes published from 1279 to 1333, in Cairo or Bulak, and two
published from 1904 to 1915 in Leyden, Germany.
Vajda attributes discovery of the hadiths’ animating principle to
Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher (the first non-Muslim permitted to study at
Cairo’s al-Azhar). Cementing “prescriptions and recommendations regarding
the customs of non-Muslims” is what “boils down to a single word:
khálifúhum, meaning ‘do not like them.’” Vajda brilliantly excavates the
remarkable effects of that dislike on daily Jewish life in Muslim lands
through the centuries. 13
Based on hadiths, Jews were forced to wear ankle boots rather than
8. “Part III: Anti-Jewish Motifs in the Hadith,” Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,
Bostom, ed., 227-60.
9. Ibid., 229-34.
10. Ibid., 231; see also Sahih Muslim, Hadith, Book l. 1, no. 284, http://muttaqun.com/unityofreligions.html
(accessed Jan. 8, 2010).
11. Ibid., p. 229; see also Sahih Bukhari, Hadith, Vol. 3, Book 47, no. 786,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2463581/Sahih-Bukhari-Vol-3 (accessed May 1, 2008).
12. Ibid, 229-230; see also Sahih Bukhari, Hadith, Vol. 4, Book 52, no. 41,
http://www.muslimaccess.com/sunnah/hadeeth/bukhari/052.html (accessed May 1,
2008).
13. Georges Vajda, “‘Adversos Judaeos’: A Treatise from Maghrib—“Ahka,
ahl al-Dhimmia” by Sayh Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Karim al Magaili,” ibid., Chapter
25, 345-51, from a G. Vajda chapter in volume 2 of the anthology, Études

2009] IN THEIR OWN WORDS 297
sandals, mustaches rather than beards, and various other identifiers (including
unmatched-colored shoes in Yemen, and yellow patches in thirteenthcentury
Iran). Hadith encourages Muslims to curse rather than greet Jews,
moreover, since Jews reportedly address others with “al-sám ‘alaykum
[may poison be upon you], a word that is glossed by ‘death’ or ‘disgust,
annoyance.’” 14 Several hadiths accuse Jews of falsifying their holy Torah
to erase Muhammad’s name. Significantly, the Hadith describes the Dajjâl—the
Antichrist—as Jewish; its Islamic apocalyptic traditions also envision
70,000 saber-waving Jews vanquished beside the Dajjâl during Islam’s
last bloody triumph over all non-Muslims and the establishment of a universal
Islamic empire, a reference to which appears in the Hamas charter. 15
In Part 8, Bostom assembles twenty-four essays detailing the dire conditions
and atrocities that Jews suffered under Muslim rule during many
eras, in many regions. Part 9 concludes the book with nine documents and
eyewitness accounts attesting to effects of the overwhelming hatred evidenced
earlier.
U.S. legislators and policy makers—and journalists, Middle East
scholars, and Islamic scholars—take note: As Stanford University’s Victor
Davis Hanson observes, conclusions adduced from Bostom’s tome may surprise
critics insofar as this “vast literature of Middle Eastern Islamic
antisemitism” confounds all attempts “to refute his carefully compiled
corpus of evidence.”
d’Orientalisme dédiées a la mémoire de Lévi-Provençal, trans. Michael Miller
(Paris: G.S. Maison-neuve et Larose, 1962), 805-13.
14. Bostom, 59, 241, citing Vajda, “Juifs et musulmans selon le hadit,” trans.
Susan Emanuel, Journal Asiatique 229 (1937): 57-127.
15. Ibid., 63, 166, 642.

Who Is Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham?:
Reflections on The Baader Meinhof Complex
[2008, Vitagraph Films, Dir. Uli Edel]
Joanne Intrator*
Scott Rose*
What lessons might we, vigilant against antisemitism, learn from Eli
Edel’s 2008 film The Baader Meinhof Complex? This cinematic exercise is
based on German journalist Stefan Aust’s eponymous book, twice revised
since its initial publication in 1985. It purports to present the history of the
Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the Red Army Faction, which, after
terrorizing West German society through the 1970s, did not cease fully to
exist until the 1990s. Movies commercially released, however, often are
inflected by a perceived need for them to serve, on some level, as entertainments.
Sure enough, The Baader Meinhof Complex showcases actors physically
far more glamorous than the terrorists they supposedly portray.
Baader lisped; his character in the movie does not. And while the film
shows the barbarity of certain RAF attacks, its soundtrack employs music
ambiguously, right up to the final credits, which are accompanied by Bob
Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
One of that song’s verses asks, “How many times can a man turn his
head, pretending he just doesn’t see?” Let us not now pretend that the RAF
did not have antisemitism as a central animus, despite, ironically, its stated
rebellion against what its members referred to as their parents’ “Auschwitz
generation.” Here, it is not irrelevant to mention that Dylan’s Jewish paternal
grandparents escaped Russia to the United States after the 1905
pogroms. Ideologically, the Red Army Faction hitched a ride, in the international
arena, on the student-led American peace movement of the Vietnam
War era. Yet its members, pathological all, saw nothing incongruous
in protesting a war by killing innocent civilians in German department
stores. Remarkably, the RAF’s less murderous, but still violent radical
American counterparts, the Weather Underground Organization, took their
name from a Bob Dylan lyric. Like the RAF, the Weathermen were not
free from antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is really a hatred of capitalism.” Such was the illogical,
unnuanced belief of the real-life Ulrike Meinhof. Given that belief, and as
* Joanne Intrator is a psychiatrist and Scott Rose is a writer. Both live in New
York City.
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300 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:299
she considered herself at war with capitalism, there was no contemporaneous
anti-Jewish lunacy she would not seek to justify. With other RAF
members, she trained in Al Fatah military centers in Jordan. She applauded
the Palestinian-led massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The woman even attempted to transfer her two children to a Palestinian
camp, a move her estranged husband intercepted with Stefan Aust’s
assistance. Additional connections between Palestinian and RAF terrorists
included the Entebbe hijacking, in which non-Jewish passengers were let
free while Jewish ones were held hostage to death threats.
A main reason extremists are so readily able to demonize present-day
Israel and, by extension, Jews everywhere, is the prevalent suppression of
the irrefutable documentation of Arab complicity in the Holocaust. The
world should not be allowed to turn its head, pretending it just doesn’t see
the history of The Grand Mufti al-Husanyi recruiting Arab support for Nazi
Germany and the extermination of Jews. That history includes detailed
plans for the extermination of all Jews from Morocco across northern African
and throughout the Middle East. Aust has admitted that the revisions of
his book to date do not take that history into account. Meanwhile, a surviving
RAF member, Horst Mahler, is today a vociferous Holocaust denier.
Aust should be persuaded to publish an article examining the RAF’s
antisemitism, and subsequently into incorporating a chapter dedicated to
that topic into his book. And it would not be out of place for him to publicly
acknowledge as grotesque any positive association between the RAF
and the music of Bob Dylan, whose Hebrew name is Shabtai Zisel ben
Avraham.

ANTISEMITICA
Shrines, Holy Sites, and Festivals
“Honoring” the Jew of Legend
—Anderl (Oxner) von Rinn (Judenstein Austria) (d. 1462): “They [The
Jews] cut throat of the martyr and take all blood from him.” A cultus began
in 1621. [Feast Day July 12] Officially banned in 1994; some devout still
make pilgrimage (See Judenstein aka JewStone).
—Arna Christi (England): Display of The Passion includes “The Jews”
spitting at a dying Christ.
—Bertesgarten, Germany: Annual visitation of 150,000. Hitler’s birthday
celebrated.
—Bury St. Edmunds, England (d. 1181): Robert, a Christian child, was
murdered by “The Jews.” (Benedictine shrines at Norwich, Gloucester,
Bury, Lincoln.) The Bury or Cloisters’ Cross, a twelfth-century ivory relic
depicting the Jews as killers of Christ, is displayed at St. Edmundsbury
Cathedral, Suffolk, UK.
—Brussels, Belgium, St. Michael and Gudula Cathedral: Stained glass and
tapestry of antisemitic folklore.
—Conrad of Weissensee, Germany (d. 1303): Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Deggendorf, Germany (1338). Host Desecration festival honored until
1992, when Bishop Muller of Regensburg extinguished it and erected a
plaque correcting the falsified history. Visitations still occur.
—Dominic of Val/San Domenichino de Val, Spain (d. 1250): Altar boy of
Saragossa was allegedly ritually murdered by Jews. His body glowed in Seo
Cathedral, displayed in a brightly lit chapel for pilgrim visits. [Feast Day
August 31] The Little Dominic feast is celebrated throughout Aragon,
Spain. Sevilla’s St. Nicholas Church altar reads “Dominguito del Val, murdered
by Jews in 1250.“
—Deggendorf, Germany. Holy Sepulchre Church: Bleeding Host, believed
to be intact from 1137 to 1900. Display of tin plaque over crucifixion relief
of “godless Jews” removed in 1968. Host art has been removed from
Iphofen and morphed into a spiderweb grate since 1984. The Bishop of
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Regensburge discontinued the pilgrimage in 1992, though some still unofficially
continue to visit.
—Herbert of Huntingdon, England. (d. 1180): Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Heiligengrabe, Germany (1532): Host desecration painting.
—Hugh of Lincoln, England (d. 1255): A boy disappeared and his body
was found a month later in a well. Upon being threatened with torture, a
local Jewish man “confessed” to the murder and stated that it was the custom
of Jews to engage in a ritual murder once each year. Hugh was considered
a Christian martyr, and songs and poems were written about him. In
the early twentieth century, a well was built in what was once a Jewish
neighborhood; it was alleged to be the one in which the boy’s body was
found, and tourists flocked to the city. [Feast Day: July 27]
—Joanniken von Siegburg, Germany (d. 1287): Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Judenberg, Austria: The stone mortared into the wall on the southwest
corner of a large brick Gothic church in Sternberg, Germany bears prints of
two bare feet, on the edges of which chisel marks are visible. The stone,
which was incorporated into the wall in 1496, is one on which the wife of
the Jew Eleazar is said to have stood when she tried to sink a desecrated
Host in the nearby creek. Unable to cast away the Host, she sank into the
stone. Sixty-five Jews were later tortured and confessed to the Host desecration.
Twenty-seven were executed by burning (Bynum 2004).
St. Mary’s Church, Wittenberg, Germany
—Judensau (Jew Pig): Currently displayed in Aarschot, Belgium (Notre
Dame Church); Bamberg (Cathedral); Basel, Switzerland (Cathedral);
Brandenburg (Cathedral); Bayreuth (town church); Cadolzburg; Vabe (Stephanie
Chuch); Colmarer (St Martin Cathedral) ; Cologne (Chorgestuehl in
the Cathedral and St. Severin); Eberswalde (Maria Magdalena); Erfurt

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(Cathedral); Frankfurt; Freising; Gnesner; Holy City; Heilsbronner;
Lemgoer; Magdeburger(Cathedral); Metz, France; Nuremberg (St Sebaldus
Church); Regensburg; Remagen (Gate elbow);Theilenberg; Uppsala, Sweden
(Cathedral); Wiener Neustadt, Austria; Wimpfen (Church of St. Peter);
Wittenberg (Town Church) Xantener; Zerbst (St. Nicolas Church).
—Judenstein, Austria: Ceiling fresco in the church commemorating
Andrew of Rinn murder-pilgrimage. When city of Linz Jews protested,
Bishop Rusch responded, “The Jews have not up to the present time ever
proved that they never committed a parallel crime [of ritual murder]”
(Dundes 1991, 343). By 1961, Pope John XXIII had had a plague installed
stating that the case of Andrew of Rinn was a legend that had “nothing to
do with the Jewish people.” The village was defiant and left the statue
intact.
—Korneuberg Austria: Church sanctuary of “The Jews.”
—La Alberca, Spain: Summer Festival celebrates the time when, to escape
the Inquisition, newly converted Jews ate pork to prove their loyalty. A pig
(“El Morrano”—the original label for Jewish convert) is released into the
streets. Legend has it that anyone who is cruel to him will be cursed
forever.
Leon Province Spain: During Easter, cafeterias offer special lemonade in
bottles that ”will be used to kill Jews“ (Gonzales Arpide 1999).
—Louis or Ludwig of Ravensburg, Germany (d. 1429): Easter. [Feast Day
April 30]. Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Lorenzino Sossio, Italy (d. 1485): At age 5, was killed on Good Friday.
[Feast Day.April 15) Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Marina di Masia, Italy: Annual blood libel poetry contest.
—Ootmarsum, Overijssel province, Holland: On Easter, young men chant
of Jews culpable for Jesus’s death as they walk in a procession through their
village. The OJEC has asked the Archbishop of Utrecht to publicly
denounce the ceremony. Provisional answers from the Board of the Diocese
were inconsistent.

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Nicadeah Shrine La Crosse Wisconsin
Nicadeah Shrine (La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA): From the 1950s to the mid-
1980s, Mary Ann Van Hoof (1909-1984) received antisemitic “visions”
from the Virgin Mary telling her that the Rothschilds were “mongrel Yids”
bent on world domination, and that in everything from poverty to world
wars, the Jews and their satanic secret society were involved. The Necedah
Shrine is not recognized by the Catholic Church, but is open to the public.
The shrine currently runs a private primary school and a Visitors Center.
—Niño de La Guardia, Spain (d. 1491): “Little Nino” was allegedly
martyred by “The Jews.” No body was found, supposedly because it had
been taken directly up to heaven. The blind mother of Nino was said to
have had her sight miraculously restored at the moment that the child died.
A 1992 Israeli television series entitled “Out of Spain 1492” conducted
local interviews. Several La Guardia residents interviewed for Israeli TV
claimed that the story was true or could have been true. The town celebrates
an annual pageant honoring Santo Niño and a commemorative statue has
been erected in the town plaza. http://www.cryptojews.com/
Santo_Nino.htm
—Passau, Germany: Holy Savior Church Bleeding Host pilgrimage.
Passion Plays are theater performances representing the trial and death of
Jesus; they have been traditionally performed during Lent. These plays
depict a crowd of Jews condemning Jesus to death and a Jewish leader
assuming guilt. Violence against Jews often occurred. According to James
Shapiro, author of Oberammergau (Vintage, 2001), the play has been performed
every decade since 1634. Hitler praised the 1930s production. At
times, crowds torched nearby Jewish communities.
—Poland/Eastern Europe: Alina Cala (1995) cites folk festivals in which
ceremonial Jews are displayed or people join the procession wearing Jew

2009] SHRINES, HOLY SITES, AND FESTIVALS 305
masks and clothing. The Corpus Christi Church in Poznan Poland has a
crypt of the well where Jews allegedly threw a desecrated Host. At the Feast
of Booths, Jews are celebrated as rainmakers.
Jews seeking Christian blood. St. Paul’s church, Sandomierz, Poland
—Pulkau, Austria: Altarpiece commemorating Man of Sorrows, called by
some the patron of pogroms. Host desecration allegations triggered the massacre
of Pulkau’s Jewish community of 150 on April 23, 1338, via drowning,
burning, decapitation, and evisceration. “The mythical Jew posed an
existential peril to the empire—a peril from which the altar’s celestial
patron offered protection and deliverance,” noted historian Mitchell
Merback (2005). The wings depicting the Host desecration are currently not
on display and Nuremburg’s museum painting of the Regensburg Host is
not either, but the Nicolas Brue altar is available.
—Richard of Pontoise, France (d. 1179): Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Robert (see Bury St. Edmunds): Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Rudolf of Berne, Switzerland (d. 1294): Murdered by “The Jews.”
—Regensburg, Germany: Frustrated by economic competition and a 1476
blood libel, popular uprisings in 1493 and 1513 brought new levels of anti-
Jewish politics. In 1519, Regensburg expelled the Jews and celebrated by
demolishing the synagogue. During the demolition, stonemason Jacob Kern
was seriously injured and was taken to his home to receive last rites. Kern’s
wife meanwhile prayed to the Virgin Mary to spare her husband’s life.
Miraculously, Kern recovered and returned to work. He said that throughout
the ordeal the Virgin Mary had held him in her hand. Anti-Jewish violence
increased as a result and within a month a wooden chapel was erected
on the ruins of the synagogue to receive a flood of pilgrims seeking aid of
the Virgin of Regensburg. Several Marian sightings were noted (Creasman
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—Segovia, Spain. Annual festival commemorating the confiscated synagogue
(its leaders executed) after the earthquake of 1415 was interpreted as
divine retaliation for Jewish blood rituals.
—Simon of Trent, Italy (d. 1475): Patron Saint of Antisemitism. The cultus/
beatification occurred in 1588 by Pope Sixtus, but was invalidated by Pope
Paul in 1965. In 2001, the local authorities of the Autonomous Province of
Trento promoted a common Catholic and Jewish prayer at the site.
Synogoga, Notre Dame, Paris
—Notre Dame, Paris: At the central door west is Synogoga, the statue of a
blindfolded woman looking down (away from heaven), unable to see the
light of Christianity. In some settings, the downturning Synogoga is juxtaposed
with the Christian Ecclesia, who looks up toward the heavens.
(Depicted as well at cathedrals in Canterbury, Lincoln, Rochester, Peterborough
(UK), Strausbourg (France) (Bale 2006).
—Werner of Oberwesel, Germany (d. 1287): Employed by “The Jews” and
received Communion when they [“The Jews”] killed him. [Feast Day,
April 19]
—William of Norwich, England (d. 1144): The boy’s body was allegedly
found mutilated in ways that resembled the wounds of Christ, causing people
to suspect that “The Jews” had killed him in a ritual murder. Until the
sixteenth century, offerings were made at his tomb.

2009] SHRINES, HOLY SITES, AND FESTIVALS 307
—Urbino, Italy: Paintings by Paolo Uccello on the predella for the altarpiece
of the Communion of the Apostles in the Ducal Palace. In one scene,
a Jewish family stands transfixed as a Christian mob batters down the door
to their house, alerted to a Host desecration by the miraculous flow of blood
through the walls of the house. One of the two Jewish children weeps in
terror, while a younger sibling clings to the mother’s skirts. A subsequent
panel shows the same family, bound together at the stake, as the flames
consume them.
—Vièrge de Valreas, France (d. 1247): Murdered by “The Jews.”
REFERENCES
Bale, A. 2003. Fiction of Judaism in England before 1290. In Jews in medieval
Britain, ed. P. Skinner. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press.
Bynum, C.W. 2004. The presence of objects. Common Knowledge 10: 1-32.
Creasman, A.F. 2002. The Virgin Mary against the Jews: Anti-Jewish
polemic in the pilgrimage of the Schone Maria of Regensburg, 1519-
25. Sixteenth Century Journal 33: 963-80.
Merback, M.B. 2008. Beyond the yellow badge. Boston: Brill.
Merback, M.B. 2005. Fount of mercy, city of blood: Cultic anti-Judaism
and the Pulkau Passion altarpiece. The Art Bulletin 87: 589-642.

From Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s
Instead of Excessive Apology (1911)
We ourselves have acquainted our neighbors with the thought that for every
embezzling Jew it is possible to drag the entire ancient people to answer, a
people that was already legislating at the time when the neighbors had not
even invented a bast shoe. . .Yes, we do have provocateurs and draft dodgers,
and it is even strange that we have so few of them under current conditions.
Other people have also these kind of “good,” and, in addition, they
have embezzlers, and pogrom-makers, and torturers—so what—the neighbors
live and are not ashamed. . . Do our neighbors blush for the Christians
in Kishinyov who hammered nails into Jewish babies’ eyes? Not in the
least—they walk with head raised high and look everybody in the face; they
are absolutely right. . . We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to
sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to
answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we
are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change and we do not want to.
Also see Vanessa Hidary, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubdGjzzJiVs
309