JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

JOURNAL for the 

STUDY of 

ANTISEMITISM 

Volume 3 Issue #1 2011

JOURNAL for the 

STUDY of 

ANTISEMITISM 

Volume 3, Issue #1, 2011 

Latin American Antisemitism 

Guest Editor, Shimon T. Samuels

Dedicated to those who perished in the Buenos Aires bombings of 

the Israeli Embassy, March 17, 1992, 

the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, July 18, 1994, 

and all victims of antisemitism and terrorism across the globe.

Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA) 

Steven K. Baum and Neal E. Rosenberg, Editors, Marlton, NJ 

Steven L. Jacobs, Associate Editor; Judaic Studies, University of Alabama 

Lesley Klaff, Associate Editor/Book Review Editor; Sheffield Hallam Univ., UK 

Shimon Samuels, Guest Editor; Chair, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Paris 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, AHA Foundation, AEI, Washington, DC 

Paul Bartrop, Historian, Bialik College, Melbourne, Australia 

Hadassah Ben-Itto, Author/Judge (Ret.), Tel Aviv 

Michael Berenbaum, Sigi Ziering Institute, Los Angeles 

Andrew Bostom, Brown University, Providence, RI 

Jonathan Boyd, Jewish Policy Research, London 

Israel W. Charny, Encyclopedia of Genocide, Jerusalem 

Florette Cohen, Social Psychology, College of Staten Island 

Richard L Cravatts, Education, Boston University 

Bernie Farber, Canadian Jewish Congress, Toronto 

Robert Fine, Sociology, University of Warwick, UK 

Manfred Gerstenfeld, JCPA, Jerusalem 

Sander Gilman, Humanities, Emory University, Atlanta 

Ari Goldberg, AIPAC, Washington DC 

Clemens Heni, Political Science—MEF Funded, Berlin 

Paul Iganski, Sociology, Lancaster University, UK 

Dennis L. Jackson, Statistics, University of Windsor 

Andras Kovacs, Sociology, Central European University, Budapest 

Neil J. Kressel, Psychology, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ 

Richard Landes, Department of History, Boston University 

Walter Laqueur, Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 

Kenneth Lasson, Law, University of Baltimore 

Marcia Littell, Holocaust Studies, Stockton College of NJ 

Hubert G. Locke, University of Washington, Seattle 

Kenneth L. Marcus, Inst. for Jewish & Community Research, Washington, DC 

David Matas, Hon Counsel-B’nai B’rith Canada, Winnipeg 

Joanna B. Michlic, HBI, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 

Fiamma Nirenstein, Italian Chamber of Deputies, Rome 

Darren O’Brien, Australian Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Sydney 

Andrei Oisteanu, Institute History of Religions, Bucharest 

John Pawlikowski, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago 

Winston Pickett, Communications, Brighton, UK 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia 

Dina Porat, Stephen Roth Institute, Tel Aviv University 

Lars Rensmann, Political Science, University of Michigan 

Richard L. Rubenstein, President Emeritus, University of Bridgeport 

Frederick Schweitzer, Manhattan College, NYC 

Milton Shain, History, University of Cape Town, South Africa 

Marc I. Sherman, Index/Bibliography, Jerusalem 

Philip J. Spencer, Helen Bamber Center, Kingston University, UK 

Pierre-Andre Taguieff, CNRS (Sciences Po), Paris 

Dina Siegel Vann, American Jewish Committee, Washington, DC 

James E. Waller, Cohen Chair, Keene State College, NH 

Shalva Weil, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

Robert Wistrich, Sassoon Center/SICSA Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

Bat Ye’or, Independent Scholar, Switzerland

JSA Submission Guidelines 

The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA) is the peer-reviewed 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. 

E-mail submissions should be original, either on hard copy or an electronic 

copy in MS Word format. Citations should be in Chicago Manual of Style 

format. Send submissions and questions to the editors of the JSA via mail, 

telephone, or e-mail. 

Mailing address: 

Editors, JSA 

P.O. Box 726 

Marlboro, NJ 08053 

Telephone (856) 983-3247 

Electronic journal submissions: jsantisemitism@gmail.com 

Electronic book reviews: 

Send book reviews, between 500-1000 words, to 

c/o Book Review Editor: jsantisemitism@gmail.com. 

The ideas represented in the JSA are those of the contributing authors, and 

not reflective of the JSA, its board members, or the author’s institution. The 

JSA welcomes unsolicited manuscripts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Volume 3 Number 1 

Guest Editor.................................. Shimon T. Samuels 1 

A Note from the Editors ......................... Steven K. Baum 3 

and Neal E. Rosenberg 

Special Envoy, U.S. State Department ..........Hannah Rosenthal 7 

Antisemitism in Latin America: 

Regional and Global Trends .....................Dina Siegel Vann 13 

Antisemitic Incidents from Around the World: 

January–June 2011 .......................................Editors 19 

Articles 

Mexico in a Region under Change.......... Judit Bokser Liwerant 27 

México, en una Región bajo Cambio ............................. 39 

Latin America and the Middle East: 

The Political Background ...................Julián Schvindlerman 51 

América Latina y El Oriente Medio: El Trasfondo Político ........ 61 

The New Judeophobia on the Left ............... Patricio Brodsky 71 

La Neojudeofobia en la Izquierda ................................ 99 

The Conversos ........................................Seth Ward 129 

El Conversos .................................................... 135 

Latin America and Iranian Terror Networks .........Sergio Widder 141 

América Latina y las Redes del Terror Iraní ...................... 149 

Antisemitism in Brazil ..........................Alberto Milkewitz 157 

Antisemitsmo en Brasil .......................................... 167 

Postcard from Venezuela ............................Sammy Eppel 179 

Tarjeta Postal de Venezuela ...................................... 181

Essays 

A French Intifada................................... Nidra Poller 183 

Israel’s Intent ..................................... Yehuda Bauer 199 

Delegitimizing the Jewish State ........................ Bat Ye’or 203 

Doing the Yale Flip-Flop ..........................Amitai Etzioni 219 

Arab Spring Sprung .......................... Fiamma Nirenstein 221 

The Murder of Hugo Bettauer .....................Martin Kitchen 225 

Antisemitism in Wagnerian Opera .................... Dan Leeson 243 

The Mosque at Rachel’s Tomb ....................... Shalva Weil 263 

Journal of Contemporary Leftist 

Antisemitism? .....................................Mark Gardner 267 

Reviews 

Schnabel’s Miral ..................Joanne Intrator and Scott Rose 271 

Fatah’s The Jew Is Not My Enemy ............Khaleel Mohammed 275 

Lindemann and Levy’s Antisemitism .............. Leon Rosenberg 281 

Patterson’s A Geneology of Evil .................. Steven K. Baum 285 

Dekel-Chen et al.’s Anti-Jewish Violence ......... Paul R. Bartrop 289 

Bard’s The Arab Lobby ...................... Samuel M. Edelman 293 

Mallman and Cüppers’ Nazi Palestine ................David Sokol 295 

Deutsch’s Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation ....... Donna Guy 305 

From the Conference Floor.....................Neal E. Rosenberg 309 

Antisemitica..................................................... 313

Déme su reparten de las profundidades sembradas por sus dolores. 

Give me your hand, out of the depths sown by your sorrows. 

—Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet (1904-1973)

Special Issue: Latin American Antisemitism 

Guest Editor, Shimon T. Samuels* 

As a British-born honorary Latino by marriage with four decades of 

affection and interaction with Latin America, I feel privileged to have the 

opportunity of editing this special edition of the JSA. 

A watershed experience, in the region, began in 1971 with a visit to 

Sosua, the moshav-style cooperative founded by the JDC for fugitives from 

Nazi Germany in 1940. Recall that at the 1938 Evian Conference, the 

Dominican Republic was the only voice to welcome desperate Jews. From 

the north coast of Sosua I was invited to Azua, the Israeli rural settlement 

assistance project, 50 miles to the south. Watching the Israeli team build a 

small Catholic church for Dominican peasants sharpened the poignancy of 

the moment—those 50 miles represented the decade from utter powerlessness 

in 1938 to the Jewish return to sovereignty in 1948. 

Post World War II, Latin America figured on our radar screen as the 

principal haven for Nazi war criminals, marked by the abduction of Adolf 

Eichmann in 1960. It was followed less than two decades later by the disproportionate 

number of disappeared Jews—victims of the junta and 

Argentina’s military dictatorship. 

This ended with the Falklands War in 1982. The politics of the day 

interrupted our routine as my ten-year-old granddaughter posed a moral 

dilemma to my Argentine-born wife and me: “What happens if grandpa’s 

planes in London bomb Grandma’s house in Buenos Aires?”—a concern 

characteristic of Jewish history but not posed since World War I. 

The 1990s brought the greatest post-Holocaust pogrom to the South 

American continent: the 1994 Buenos Aires Jewish Centre (AMIA) bombing, 

leaving 85 dead and over 300 maimed. The Iranian perpetrators, identified 

by Interpol, are still at large; the atrocity served as the prelude to the 

seeds of Hizbollah sowed from Venezuela to the Argentina–Brazil–Paraguay 

triple frontier. As this issue goes to press, former 

U.S. Under-Secretary for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega reported 

to a congressional committee on the “80 operative Hizbollah cells in the 

region.” In addition to those active cells, a Shahab-3 Iranian missile base is 

being built on the Venezuelan coast with a range of 2,000 km. 

Iran states that it wishes to cooperate with all investigations of AMIA. 

If Iran wishes to cooperate, it must agree to dismantle its terror and arms 

networks in Latin America. Its only duty regarding the AMIA must be to 

hand over its implicated citizens for trial under Argentine rule of law. As I 

told a senior Argentine official at the AMIA commemoration, quoting Win- 

1

2 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 3:1 

ston Churchill on appeasing tyranny: “Democracies feed the beast, hoping 

to be eaten last.” In the case of Iran, the beast is alive and living among us. 

The collection of pieces delineates a broad sweep of antisemitism 

across the Americas, from Mexico to the Southern Cone, from Seth Ward’s 

focus on the conversos to the terrorism nexus and hostility to Israel 

addressed by Julian Schvindlerman and Sergio Widder. Country profiles by 

Judit Liwerant on Mexico, Alberto Milkewitz on Brazil, Patricio Brodsky 

on Argentine intellectuals, and Sammy Eppel’s Postcard from Venezuela 

attest to national specificities and commonalities. Dina Siegel Vann’s message 

brings these strands together. 

May this special edition of the JSA be the first in a series of regional 

analyses and that the voices of Latin American Jews be heard. 

*Shimon T. Samuels is the director of international relations for the Simon 

Wiesenthal Foundation, Paris, and a Board member of the Journal for the Study of 

Antisemitism.

A Note from the Editors 

There is clear joy that the JSA has finally put Latin American 

antisemitism on the map. This joy is juxtaposed against the advances 

extremist Islam has made throughout Latin America. It is also joyless 

against people who support anti-Israel agendas. Lately, it’s UK’s Sue 

Blackwell who tries to have the EUMC definition of antisemitism rejected 

from the University and College Union (UCU). The focus is to have the 

anti-Israeli provision removed from antisemitism. That definition, she said, 

was “created by Zionist organizations in order to conflate anti-Zionism with 

antisemitism.” Perhaps the Zionist elders did gather and force the EUMC’s 

hand to include anti-Israeli rhetoric. Possibly their tentacles twisted Martin 

L. King’s as well when he said: “So know also this: Anti-Zionist is inherently 

antisemitic, and ever will be so.” Why is this? “You know that Zionism 

is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning 

to live in their own land.” 

But forget Dr. King. Forget that Israel Arabs are never targeted and the 

objects of such derision. Forget as well that non-Israeli Jewish students are 

intimidated and threatened and physically assaulted on campuses around the 

globe by Muslim activists. Forget that British Jewish professors are leaving 

the universities and college unions, including JSA associate editor Lesley 

Klaff and others. (See the last page of this issue for Ronnie Fraser’s 

resignation.) 

Recall instead that Islamic jihad existed well before the State of Israel 

and continues with two Arab states marginally recognizing Israel’s right to 

exist. Now take a look at the above photo and then read what Jewish scholars 

in Latin America are trying to tell us about the problem. 

3


The Latin American scholars are concerned that Islamist ideology has 

become so well entrenched that when a synagogue is desecrated, it is seen 

as justified for Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. Yet, fear of militant 

Islam is what these scholars are writing about, and they should know—they 

live with it. In Caracas, they witnessed the city’s main synagogue vandalized 

with spray-painted messages that read “Death to the Jews,” and “Jews 

Get Out.” In Buenos Aires, they knew the 29 who were killed and the 85 

who died at the hands of Iranians two years later. In Santiago, they knew 

that Chile’s Jewish community president, Gabriel Zaliasnik, was afforded 

police protection when a spate of eight antisemitic attacks occurred last 

year. “I am 43 years old, and I don’t recall something like this,” Zaliasnik 

said. Neither does anyone else—except perhaps those who lived in Berlin in 

1933. 

This is a large volume, guest edited by Shimon Samuels, with the articles 

in both Spanish and English. The content of the essays are large as 

well. We have contributions from Italian minister the Honorable Fiamma 

Nirenstein on the Arab Spring, Amitai Etzioni on Yale’s politics and their 

closing the antisemitism program, Yehuda Bauer on Israel’s intentions, and 

Bat Ye’or’s notions of delegitimization. Nidra Poller’s essay tracks thorny 

Middle East politics as they arrive in France, and Shalva Weil observes the 

politics of shrines in Israel. And just when you thought it was safe to swim 

in the academy’s politics, Routledge announces the creation of a new journal 

dedicated to leftist anti-Zionist ideology; Mark Gardner of Britain’s key 

antisemitism monitoring group, the Community Security Trust (CST), 

ponders the new journal’s purpose. 

From a historical perspective, we have essays by musician Dan Leeson 

re-examining Wagnerian antisemitism. There is Martin Kitchen, Simon Fraser 

University, exploring the mystery surrounding German journalist Hugo 

Bettauer. 

New York reviewers Joanne Intrator and Scott Rose take another look 

at Julian Schnabel’s film Miral. San Diego State’s Khaleel Mohammed 

examines Tarek Fatah’s The Jew Is Not My Enemy. SPME’s Sam Edelman 

explains why Mitchell Bard’s The Arab Lobby is so worthwhile. From 

down under, Paul Bartrop tells us more about pogroms than we probably 

knew from his review of Dekel-Chen et al.’s Anti-Jewish Violence. There 

are Jersey shore psychiatrist Leon Rosenberg on Lindermann and Levy’s 

Antisemitism: A History, and Steve Baum’s examination of David Patterson’s 

fine work and his concern for academic incivility for all things Israeli. 

Finally, and in keeping with the Latin American theme, Ohio State historian 

Donna Guy reviews Sandra Deutsch’s Crossing Borders, Claiming a 

Nation—a book documenting Argentina’s pioneering Jewish women. 

A word about resources. The original seven manuscripts were com-

2011] A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS 5 

pleted in Spanish and translated into English. Some of the footnotes did not 

transfer into English well, and I ask the reader’s indulgence and to contact 

the author for original references. In terms of book references and 

expanding the reader’s knowledge, good resources are the Web page for the 

Latin American Jewish Studies Association, http://www.utexas.edu/cola/ 

orgs/lajsa/, and their annual congress as well; Raanan Rein’s Argentine 

Jews or Jewish Argentines? (Brill, 2010) and Judit Bokser Liwerant, 

Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yosef Gorny, and Raanan Rein (Eds.), Identities in an 

Era of Globalization and Multiculturalism (Brill, 2008). 

We welcome our Latin American readership and want to encourage 

future scholarly papers and extend our appreciation to our contributors. 

Whether it’s Latin America antisemitism or any other place in the world, let 

the scholars get busy; there is much work to be done. 

Steven K. Baum 

Neal E. Rosenberg, Editors

Special Envoy, U.S. State Department 

Hannah Rosenthal* 

I want to share with you the strong commitment of the Obama administration 

to combat hate and promote tolerance in our world. The president 

began his administration speaking out against intolerance as a global ill. In 

his historic speech in Cairo, he talked about a new beginning and a vision of 

a world based on mutual interest and mutual respect, a world that honors 

the dignity of all human beings. 

We are attempting through diplomacy, public messaging, and on-theground 

programs all over the world to confront and combat hatred in all its 

ugly forms—whether it is hatred directed against people on account of their 

religion, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, differences of political opinion, 

or due to their country of origin. Antisemitism is one such form of hatred. 

As a child of a Holocaust survivor, antisemitism is something very personal 

to me. My father was arrested—on Kristalnacht, the unofficial pogrom that 

many think started the Holocaust—and sent with many of his congregants 

to prison and then to Buchenwald. He was the lucky one—every other person 

in his family perished at Auschwitz. I have dedicated my life to eradicating 

antisemitism and intolerance with a sense of urgency and passion 

that only my father could give me. 

President Obama and Secretary Clinton have honored me with this 

appointment and have elevated my office and integrated it into the workings 

of all other parts of the State Department. I have been on the job for more 

than a year now—and I have seen six significant trends in antisemitism 

around the world: 

Antisemitism is not history; it is today’s news. I run into people who 

think antisemitism ended when Hitler killed himself. More than six decades 

after the end of the Second World War, antisemitism is still alive and well, 

and evolving into new, contemporary forms of religious hatred, racism, and 

political, social, and cultural bigotry. 

FORMS OF ANTISEMITISM 

Traditional forms of antisemitism persist in societies worldwide, 

passed from one generation to the next, and updated to reflect current 

events. The first manifestations are the ongoing hostile acts such as the 

defacing of property and desecration of cemeteries with antisemitic graffiti. 

There are still accusations of blood libel, which are morphing from the centuries-old 

Church accusations that Jews killed Christian children to use their 

7


blood for rituals, to accusations that Jews kidnap children to steal their 

organs. Conspiracy theories continue to flourish, such as supposed Jewish 

control of the U.S. media and the world banking system, or that Jews were 

involved in executing the September 11 attacks. The Protocols of the Elders 

of Zion continues to be a best-seller in many, many countries, and taught to 

religious students as truth. The “old fashioned” antisemitism is alive and 

well. On a visit to Chile in 2010, I saw swastikas spray-painted on university 

campuses. When I addressed an American Jewish Committee gathering 

of Jews from Latin America, Chileans present told me they feel uncomfortable 

wearing kippot and other outward symbols of Judiasm. And despite an 

Interpol Red Notice since 2007 that Argentina is seeking to arrest the Iranian 

Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi for the 1994 bombing of AMIA, 

Bolivia ignored Interpol and hosted Vahidi in early June. In April, the staterun 

radio in Venezuela urged everyone to buy and read The Protocols of the 

Elders of Zion. In May, the official was fired, a positive outcome. 

A second phenomenon is Holocaust denial. It is coming from religious 

leaders in some places, including some heads of state, such as in Iran; in 

academic institutions in some places; and is a standard on hateful Web sites 

and other media outlets. As the generation of Holocaust survivors and death 

camp liberators reaches their eighties and nineties, the window is closing on 

those able to provide live, eyewitness accounts and a heightened urgency to 

promote Holocaust education, create museums and memorials, and carry 

the memory and lessons of the Holocaust forward. 

A third disturbing trend is Holocaust glorification—which can be seen, 

for example, in parades honoring soldiers who fought in the Waffen SS— 

which glorifies Nazism under the guise of fighting the Soviets and obscures 

their roles in the Holocaust. After that March commemoration in Latvia, a 

notorious neo-Nazi made blatantly antisemitic statements, including incitements 

to violence against Jews, on a television talk show. Holocaust glorification 

and the growth of neo-Nazi groups is especially virulent in Middle 

East media—including some that are state owned and operated—calling for 

a new Holocaust to finish the job. Truly bone-chilling. 

A fourth concern is Holocaust relativism, in which some governments, 

museums, academic research, and the like are conflating the Holocaust with 

other terrible events that entailed great human suffering, like the Dirty War 

or the Soviet regime. No one wants to get into dueling atrocities. But to 

lump together these horrific chapters of history is not only historically inaccurate, 

but also misses opportunities to learn important lessons from each 

historic event even as we reflect on universal truths about the need to 

defend human rights and combat hatred in all of its forms. History must be 

precise: it must instruct, it must warn, and it must inspire us to learn the 

particular and universal values as we prepare to mend this fractured world.

2011] SPECIAL ENVOY 9 

The fifth trend is the increasing tendency of opposition to the policies 

of the State of Israel to cross the line into antisemitism. In what I hear from 

our diplomatic missions around the world, and our close relationships with 

NGOs in the United States and in other nations, we know that this happens 

easily and often. I want to be clear: criticism of policies of the State of 

Israel is not antisemitism. But we record huge increases in antisemitism 

whenever there are hostilities in the Middle East. This form of antisemitism 

is more difficult for many to identify. But if all Jews are held responsible 

for the decisions of the sovereign State of Israel, when governments like 

Venezuela call upon and intimidate their Jewish communities to condemn 

Israeli actions—this is not objecting to a policy, it is antisemitism. When 

individual Jews are held responsible for Israeli policy, this is not objecting 

to a policy, it is antisemitism. Natan Sharansky identified the “three Ds” 

that cross the line: “It is antisemitic when Israel is demonized, held to different 

standards, or delegitimized.” The United States is often the only “no” 

vote in international bodies where countries seem to have an obsession with 

singling out Israel for disproportionate condemnation. 

The sixth trend is the growing nationalistic movements that target “the 

other”—be they immigrants or religious and ethnic minorities—in the name 

of protecting the identity and “purity” of their nation. When this fear or 

hatred of the “other” occurs or when people try to find a scapegoat for the 

instability around them, it is never good for the Jews. The history of 

Europe, with Russian pogroms and Nazism, provides sufficient evidence. 

And when government officials talk about protecting a country’s purity, 

we’ve watched that scenario before. 

The State Department monitors these trends and activities and reports 

on them in 194 countries—in two major annual reports: International Religious 

Freedom and Human Rights. I am now involved in developing a major 

training initiative for State Department employees so they can better monitor 

what is happening in their countries, and sensitize them to the various 

forms of antisemitism; this will make our annual reports more comprehensive, 

and allow us to do an even better job of monitoring and confronting 

antisemitism in all its forms. If we don’t chronicle it, if we don’t name it, 

we can’t fight it. 

ACTIVE RESISTANCE TO ANTISEMITISM 

Of course, it isn’t enough to study and monitor these deeply troubling 

trends. It is critical that we act to reverse them. 

My approach to combating antisemitism is not just to preach to the 

choir, so to speak, but to join in partnership with non-Jews in condemning


it—government, civil society, international institutions, business leaders, 

labor unions, and media—in condemning it. 

Last summer, Secretary Clinton launched an initiative to strengthen 

civil society across the globe, instructing all of us in the State Department 

and all our overseas posts to treat civil society as strategic partners. Partnering 

with opinion leaders from civil society and government—as well as 

building bridges among ethnic and religious groups—is the way to change a 

culture from fear and negative stereotyping to acceptance and understanding, 

from narrow-mindedness to an embrace of diversity, from hate to 

tolerance. 

Educating our young is a priority. They are our future; their values and 

opinions form at a very early age. No government should produce materials 

that are intolerant of members of any religious, racial, or ethnic group, or 

teach such intolerance as part of its educational curriculum. The State 

Department continues to focus on this important issue and express our concern 

to the governments about using such hateful lessons and textbooks, 

calling Jews the children of apes and pigs or promoting the Protocols of the 

Elders of Zion. Around the time of this journal’s publication, I am scheduled 

to travel to Saudi Arabia to discuss that issue. We sponsor teacher 

training on the Holocaust through the Organization for Security and Cooperation 

in Europe—both its uniqueness and its universal lessons. 

The United States provides training to foreign law enforcement officials 

that covers crimes against vulnerable groups, including Jews, because 

these issues are of prominent concern in this country. We use old and new 

technologies to communicate with the public about human rights, tolerance, 

and democracy. We strongly support the freedoms for all people to express 

their views, even distasteful ones, both offline and online—but we also 

work to promote tolerance and to eradicate ignorance. We are enhancing 

our cultural and educational exchanges to showcase our civil society organizations, 

and to learn from the successes of other countries in confronting 

and combating hate in all of its forms. 

I want to mention two examples of efforts I am engaged in to combat 

the forms of antisemitism I have mentioned. 

BRINGING IMAMS TO THE DEATH CAMPS 

To combat the Holocaust denial, I went with eight leading imams, two 

of whom had been deniers, to Dachau and Auschwitz. My goal was to have 

them issue a statement condemning Holocaust denial. When we arrived at 

Dachau, Germany’s first concentration camp, the imams were overcome 

with the pictures they saw and immediately went to the ground in prayer at 

the sculpture commemorating the six million Jews exterminated. At that

2011] SPECIAL ENVOY 11 

moment, I knew I was watching history being made. All passers-by—tourists, 

docents—stopped in their tracks to witness this spontaneous prayer of 

these leading imams. And when we got to Auschwitz, it was overwhelming 

for them, and for some transformational. We were walking amid ash and 

bone fragments from the 900,000 Jews exterminated there—solely because 

of who they were. We were facing the fact that unfettered and unanswered 

hatred can indeed create an Auschwitz. All the imams had their own catharsis 

there, and together they produced a statement strongly condemning Holocaust 

denial and all other forms of antisemitism. They are now urging 

colleagues and schools to join their statement. Some are planning to take 

their youth on the same trip, to become witness to history, to teach the 

power of hatred, and the power that condemnation can have to stop the 

hatred. 

INVOLVING YOUNG PEOPLE 

My colleague Farah Pandith, the special representative to Muslim 

communities, and I have just launched a virtual campaign called “2011 

Hours Against Hate.” We are asking young people around the world to 

pledge a number of hours to volunteer to help or serve a population different 

from their own. We ask them to work with people who may look different, 

or pray differently, or live differently. For example, a young Jew might 

volunteer time to read books at a Muslim pre-school, or to Russian Orthodox 

at a Jewish clinic, or to a Muslim at a Baha’i food pantry. It is important 

to walk in another person’s shoes. 

We are using Facebook (the third largest country in the world) and 

other social media to connect the youth globally, and to engage them to go 

beyond words, speeches, or even lectures—providing a vehicle to do something 

to promote tolerance and practice mutual respect. 

We began meeting with hundreds of young people—students and 

young professionals—in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Spain—countries that in 

their histories celebrated Jews and Muslims co-existing and thriving 

together. These countries are seeing a different culture these days and the 

youth we met with don’t like the direction in which things are going. They 

want to do something. They embraced the campaign, and we have already 

reached our goal of 2011 hours pledged against hate many times over. And 

we really have just begun. 

FIGHTING HATE 

So while I fight antisemitism, I am also aware that hate is hate. Nothing 

justifies it—not economic instability, not international events, not an


isolated pastor burning a Koran. Together, we must confront and combat 

the many forms of hatred in our world today. Where there is hatred born of 

ignorance, we must teach and inspire. Where there is hatred born of blindness, 

we must expose people to a larger world of ideas and reach out, especially 

to youth, so they can see beyond their immediate circumstances. 

Where there is hatred whipped up by irresponsible leaders, we must call 

them out and answer as strongly as we can—and make their message totally 

unacceptable to all people of conscience. 

When history records this chapter, I hope it will reflect our efforts to 

build a peaceful, fair, just, free world where people defend universal human 

rights and dignity. This is not a vision to be dismissed as kumbaya or naïve 

idealism—it is a real goal that should never be far from our thoughts. 

Hate has been around since the beginning of humankind, but since 

then, too, good people of all faiths and backgrounds have striven to combat 

it. The Jewish tradition tells us that “you are not required to complete the 

task, but neither are you free to desist from it.” 

*Hannah Rosenthal is the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, 

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State.

Antisemitism in Latin America: 

Regional and Global Trends 

Dina Siegel Vann* 

Most Latin American countries today are full-fledged democracies, 

embracing a culture of human rights, diversity, and inclusiveness. Many 

key Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, have 

adopted forward-looking anti-racist legislation to curb hate speech and violence 

against minorities. Jewish communities were able to act as catalysts 

of these initiatives. Together with other segments of society, they worked to 

have them introduced and ratified by national legislatures and remain as 

watchdogs to ensure that they are implemented when warranted. Not long 

ago, the expression of antisemitism was allowed in public circles. Today, 

barring Venezuela, not only has antisemitism become “politically incorrect” 

but also is characterized as a crime sanctioned by law. Unfortunately, cyber 

antisemitism continues to be a problem in the region with the proliferation 

of Web sites in Spanish. Because of its global nature, however, this issue 

requires a global solution. 

The Organization of American States (OAS), the main multilateral 

regional forum, is in the process of adopting an Inter-American Convention 

against Racism to include antisemitism. This tool will aim to discourage 

those who insist on using prejudice to sow the seeds of discord among peoples 

and nations in the hemisphere. 

The Latin American Catholic Church, despite its conservative bent, 

has adopted the conclusions emanating from the Second Vatican Council 

and slowly but surely has introduced transformation in its teachings regarding 

attitudes toward Jews and in its relations with local Jewish communities. 

In addition, interfaith programs that involve outreach to the growing 

evangelical denominations and are sympathetic in general terms to Jews 

and to Israel, and more limited to Moslems, have multiplied. 

World War II and the Holocaust are hardly perceived as a central chapter 

in Latin America’s contemporary history, although Bolivia, El Salvador, 

and the Dominican Republic opened their doors to Jewish refugees, and 

there are even a few cases of Latin American “righteous among the 

nations.” Holocaust awareness has increased over the last 20 years through 

institutional activity, the establishment of new memorials and museums, 

international days of remembrance, and growth in media coverage. 

In Argentina and Ecuador, the topic of the Holocaust is being taught in 

depth in public and private schools. Argentina remains to date the only 

Latin American country on the UN International Holocaust Task Force, 

13


although there are attempts to expand regional membership. The two terrorist 

attacks against Jewish targets in 1992 and 1994 in Buenos Aires 

increased the topic’s relevance. The issue of the articulation of memory is 

seen not only as a Jewish, but also as a national, imperative to recall Argentina’s 

own dark, authoritarian chapters 

As part of a global trend, Jews generally seem to be losing their status 

as a persecuted minority subject to historical discrimination. Paradoxically, 

there seems to be a diminishing empathy or understanding of the pernicious 

and ingrained nature of antisemitism concurrently with a generalized recognition 

of the horror of the Holocaust as a pillar of the Jewish and universal 

contemporary collective experience. In some extreme cases, the victims 

become victimizers and Holocaust images and terminology become associated 

with Israel’s alleged treatment of Palestinians as part of ongoing efforts 

to question Israel’s moral compass. 

In contrast to other parts of the world, most antisemitic expressions 

and episodes in Latin America are tied mainly to the Middle East conflict. 

Chapters of violence in the region have been capitalized by the radical left 

and marginal groups that espouse rabid anti-American positions and seek to 

delegitimize Israel. Latin America’s historic ambivalence toward the United 

States—and Israel as its main ally—were strengthened by the Iraq War. 

During the 2006 Lebanon War and the 2009 Gaza Operation the quantity 

and intensity of anti-American/anti-Zionist rhetoric significantly increased, 

more in the published rather than in public opinion. 

During these instances, Latin American media was rife with negative 

anti-Israel coverage and with biased editorial comments reflecting a clear 

black-and-white attitude and little concern for the nuances of a most complex 

confrontation. Classic antisemitic stereotypes and prejudices were part 

of the narrative. Language, cartoons, and images that alluded to the analogy 

between Nazi behavior under the Holocaust and Israel’s were prevalent. 

Political parties and groups in civil society reacted according to their 

traditional positions and alignments. The most disturbing development was 

the confrontation between members of local Arab and Jewish communities 

and the ensuing fractures in society as a whole, importing a political conflict 

alien to regional and national agendas. The growing presence of Iran 

and its proxies, underestimated by many and heavily supported by Venezuela 

and its allies, contributed much to this heated climate. 

In general terms, though, physical violence is practically absent in the 

region, although threats of violence and vandalism of Jewish institutions do 

occur. This was recently the case with the Mariperez synagogue in Caracas, 

which was sprayed with antisemitic slogans during a demonstration the first 

week in June 2011 by ultra-leftists and President Húgo Chávez’s supporters. 

Two attacks against Caracas’ Hebraica Jewish community center in

2011] TRENDS IN LATIN AMERICAN ANTISEMITISM 15 

2004 and 2007 also took place on the eve of popular referendums. In February 

2009, the Tiferet Israel synagogue in Caracas was vandalized as a side 

effect of Chávez’s virulent anti-Israel/antisemitic rhetoric, which nurtured a 

permissive climate leading to the attack. 

Shortly after, at an OAS special session, several countries denounced 

these troublesome developments and several key countries played an important 

role in conveying to Chávez that he should refrain from attacking the 

Jewish community. Lately, Venezuela’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs 

Temir Porras tweeted that “it’s alien for revolutionaries to attack religious 

institutions,” editorializing on the vandalism against the Mariperez synagogue 

and echoing Fidel Castro’s comments on antisemitism during an 

interview with American Jewish journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. 

Latin American Jewish communities remain deeply traumatized after 

the two unresolved attacks in Argentina in 1992 and 1994, sanctioned and 

executed by Iran and Hezbollah. These feelings of vulnerability and outrage 

became strengthened after the government of Evo Morales welcomed the 

current Iranian Minister of Defense Ahmad Vahidi in La Paz at the beginning 

of June 2011. Vahidi has an Interpol red alert for his capture; he is 

accused of masterminding the 1994 attack against the AMIA Jewish community 

center in Buenos Aires. After protestations from the government of 

President Cristina Kirchner, Vahidi left the country without being extradited 

to stand trial in Argentina. 

President Húgo Chávez’s use of antisemitism/anti-Zionism as a political 

tool has certainly acted as the prime catalyst for the expression of 

antisemitism at the regional level. He has also worked systematically to 

import the Middle East conflict into the region. The attacks in the official 

media—70% of which is owned by the government—facilitating permanent 

and systematic channeling of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish diatribes, the 

mobilization of state and political structures, and vandalism against Jewish 

institutions as measures of intimidation, and of course his growing alliance 

with Iran and the latter’s expansion in the region, are of grave concern. 

Venezuela’s and Bolivia’s severing of relations with Israel in 2009 brought 

this chapter to new lows. Venezuela remains today one of a few countries 

worldwide with state-sanctioned antisemitism. Until Chávez’s arrival, 

antisemitism was negligible. 

A crucial element that should be front and center in assessing the current 

state and future trends of antisemitism in Latin America is the growth 

of Iranian presence and influence, with Húgo Chávez as its chief patron. 

In 2005, the Venezuelan president established a strategic alliance with 

Iran that became an important turning point not only for Israel and for local 

Jewish communities but for the hemisphere as a whole. For the first time, 

the Middle East conflict is introduced and positioned as part of the regional


and national agendas and as an indicator of the desire for an independent 

foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States. Chávez has traveled to Iran many 

times; Iranian President Ahmanidejad has also visited on several occasions. 

This partnership and shared world views, including Ahmadinejad’s perspective 

on Israel, have undoubtedly played a role on the state of affairs in the 

region. 

Aided and abetted by Venezuela, Iran has pursued an aggressive policy 

of outreach to other countries in Latin America, particularly Nicaragua, 

Bolivia, and Ecuador, exploiting anti-American sentiment and offering 

sorely needed funding. Iran’s activities in the region are not confined to 

economic investment but extend to cooperation in the political, military, 

and cultural arenas. 

In the past several years, the Iranians inaugurated, reestablished, and 

increased their diplomatic representation in eleven nations. Some of the latter 

have strengthened their political ties with Iran despite its continued pursuit 

of nuclear weapons in defiance of the UN Security Council’s sanctions 

and the pleas of the international community, its grim human rights record, 

and its unequivocal involvement in planning and supporting two terrorist 

attacks against Latin Americans on Latin American soil. Brazil, Uruguay, 

and Chile exhibit outstanding regional and international profiles; all of them 

have positioned the issue of human rights as most relevant on their national 

agendas. 

Finally, in the last few months, Latin America has been on the global 

and Jewish radar screens more than usual not only due to news coming out 

from Venezuela and the tense dynamics that have been established between 

the Chávez administration and the local Jewish community, but also 

because there has been a spate of unilateral recognitions of an independent 

Palestinian state by several countries. As mentioned, the Middle East peace 

process is today very much part of the regional and national agendas and 

local constituencies are vying for influence. The global campaign is 

targeted to culminate at the UN General Assembly this coming September, 

where the Palestinians will ask the world community to accept their membership 

in this body, a step that will thwart future bilateral peace negotiations 

in the Middle East. This will probably affect Israel’s legitimacy and 

image significantly and as usual will be reflected in the regional media. 

This wave of recognitions was initiated by Brazil, the unquestioned 

South American leader, who is seeking an increased role as a global player. 

Several of the countries from the Mercosur trade block followed suit. 

Bolivia and Ecuador, both members of the Alba block led by Venezuela, 

made a pronouncement. Guyana, a close ally of President Chávez, joined 

the crowd. 

Chile is the most dramatic example. The media—mostly owned by

2011] TRENDS IN LATIN AMERICAN ANTISEMITISM 17 

local Palestinians—widely reflected the debate. The Chilean Congress, with 

vocal Palestinian and Jewish legislators, also witnessed this confrontation. 

There were attacks by an influential Palestinian legislator labeling the president 

of the Jewish community, Gabriel Zaliasnik, and Chile’s Interior Minister 

Rodrigo Hinzpeter, who happens to be Jewish, as Israeli agents. 

Important hemispheric leaders such as Mexico and Colombia, plus 

most of the Central American countries, have refused to join this group, 

reaffirming their support for multilateral resolutions at the UN and different 

agreements upholding direct negotiations as the only realistic road to peace. 

Pressure by local Palestinian and Arab communities is also felt 

strongly in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, and Central American countries 

such as El Salvador. This is a new reality the region will increasingly be 

facing in the coming years—one that can translate into the expression of 

anti-Zionist themes in Latin America’s published and public opinion. 

*Dina Siegel Vann is director of AJC’s Latino and Latin American Institute. She 

can be contacted at siegelvannd@ajc.org.

Antisemitic Incidents from Around the World— 

A Partial List 

January–June 2011 

JANUARY 

Montreal, January 18: Jewish community leaders say they are alarmed by 

six attacks on Jewish institutions over the weekend, emphasizing that the 

incidents can’t be dismissed as simple acts of vandalism. “This [is not] vandalism 

perpetrated by teenagers out on a Saturday night binge,” said Rabbi 

Reuben Poupko, who serves as chairman of the Jewish Community Security 

Coordinating Committee. “This is a concentrated assault, not just on the 

Jewish community, but on the diversity and harmony of the city of Montreal. 

All Montrealers should take this seriously.” Five synagogues and a 

Jewish school were targeted by vandals, who hurled rocks through windows 

between 2 and 3 a.m. Sunday. Beth Rambam, Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem, 

and Beth Zion synagogues in Cote St. Luc, Dorshei Emet synagogue in 

Hampstead, and Congregation Shaare Zedek in Notre Dame de Grace were 

targeted. The Academie Yavne in Cote St. Luc was also hit. 

FEBRUARY 

Tunis, February 1: A synagogue was set on fire in Tunisia overnight and 

gangs rampaged through schools in the capital on Tuesday, prompting the 

army to fan out to calm fears of chaos after the revolt that toppled Zine al- 

Abdine Ben Ali. Major street protests have dried up in Tunisia in recent 

days, after a reshuffle purged the interim government of most Ben Ali loyalists 

and appeased public opinion. But sporadic acts of intimidation and 

sabotage have broken out after weeks of protests forced Ben Ali to flee the 

country on January 14, ending 23 years of strict police rule. Peres Trabelsi, 

the spokesman for Tunisia’s Jewish community, said he did not know who 

was behind the attack on the synagogue, which is in the southern city of 

Gabes. “I condemn this action and I believe those who did it want to create 

divisions between Jews and Muslims in Tunisia who have lived for decades 

in peace,” Trabelsi said. Muslim Tunisia has one of the largest Jewish communities 

in North Africa, but attacks are rare. The last attack came in 2002, 

when al Qaeda killed 21 people in a synagogue attack on the island of 

Djerba. In a further sign of deteriorating security, witnesses said gangs 

marauded through several schools in Tunis, terrifying students. The army 

fired in the air in Carthage to disperse gangs that stormed two schools, they 

said. On Monday, youths armed with knives and sticks marauded through 

the streets of Gassrine, burning government buildings and intimidating 

residents, the state news agency said. 

19


London, February 3: A total of 21 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 

Leeds last year, a Jewish security charity has said. More than 639 reports of 

bigoted violence and abuse were received in total by the charity. They 

included street attacks, hate mail, threats, and the vandalism and desecration 

of Jewish property. The charity, which monitors antisemitism in Britain, 

said the figures marked the second worst year since records began in 1984. 

They were a significant fall on 2009, when 926 antisemitic incidents were 

recorded, fueled by the ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces. But 

researchers said the incidents continued a long-term trend of rising numbers 

of physical and verbal attacks against Jews. There were 219 incidents in 

London, 216 in Manchester, and 40 in Hertfordshire. 

MARCH 

Tokyo, March 2: Sony Music and MTV Japan have issued apologies after a 

Japanese pop group sported Nazi uniforms during a prime-time television 

appearance in the country. The all-male band, Kishidan, which is known for 

wearing motorcycle-gang-inspired schoolboy uniforms, donned the SS gear 

during an interview on MTV Japan’s Mega Vector show last month. The 

appearance prompted backlash from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los 

Angeles-based organization that monitors antisemitic activity. “There is no 

excuse for such an outrage,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at 

the SWC, in a statement issued last week. “I am fully aware that many 

young Japanese are woefully uneducated about the crimes against humanity 

committed during World War II by Imperial Japan in occupied Asia, let 

alone about Nazi Germany’s genocidal ‘Final Solution’ against the Jews in 

Europe. But global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better.” 

MTV Japan issued an apology on Monday, promising not to broadcast 

images or clips from the offending broadcast. “We have duly received the 

words of advice from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and take them very 

seriously. Kishidan will never again use this costume and it will be disposed 

of immediately,” states a letter, signed by Sony Music Artists chairman 

Kimikazu Harada and president Akira Takahashi, on behalf of the company 

and the band. They said Kishidan’s costume “was not meant to carry any 

ideological meaning whatsoever.” MTV also apologized and removed the 

images from its Web site. 

London, March 3: Private Eye editor Ian Hislop has written that he received 

a rambling phone call from Wikileak’s boss Julian Assange, claiming that 

British journalists, including the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, 

were engaged in a Jewish-led conspiracy to smear WikiLeaks. The Guardian 

reports on it here. Hislop said that Assange was especially angry about a 

Private Eye report that Israel Shamir was a Holocaust denier, and com-

2011] ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 21 

plained that the article was part of a campaign by Jewish reporters in 

London to smear WikiLeaks. Assange told Hislop he should be ashamed of 

himself for joining in the international conspiracy to smear WikiLeaks. He 

claimed that the article was an obvious attempt to deprive him and his 

organization of Jewish support and donations. When Hislop pointed out that 

Rusbridger was not Jewish, Assange backtracked and said that Rusbridger 

was ‘”sort of Jewish” because he and Leigh, who is Jewish, were brothersin-law. 

Ottawa, March 3: Pro-Israel students at Carleton University say they were 

harassed and intimidated by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) 

members after the group’s anti-Israel motion was shelved at a student council 

meeting last month. “People were banging on the doors, screaming, calling 

us names . . . We had to wait until campus [security] sent more officers 

to make sure students could get safely from the council room out to the 

elevators,” said Emile Scheffel, 21, a fourth-year political science student 

who isn’t Jewish but is involved in the Israel Awareness Committee (IAC) 

at Carleton. 

London, March 10: “A few months ago,” recalls historian Ian Johnson, “I 

observed a fatwa council meeting and heard a Syrian-born German speaker 

explain the perceived moral lapses of young European Muslims by quoting 

from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, believing that the antisemitic tract 

was a reputable source. No one hooted him down; instead, his speech was 

published as one of the council’s working papers.” (See Ian Johnson, “Our 

Secret Connections with the Muslim Brotherhood,” The New York Review 

of Books [March 10, 2011, 15]). 

Jerusalem, March 13: The Simon Wiesenthal Center has labeled a neo-Nazi 

march of approximately 1,000 participants held this past Friday in the heart 

of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius “the worst type of antisemitic and xenophobic 

incitement against Lithuania’s minorities” and harshly criticized the 

failure of the country’s political, intellectual, and religious leadership to 

condemn the march unequivocally. In a statement issued here today by its 

Israel director, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the center called 

upon Lithuanian elected officials to denounce such demonstrations and 

upon the leaders of the ruling Homeland Union party to sanction their MP, 

Kazimieras Uoka, who was among the marchers. 

Montreal, March 16: A McGill University student is under investigation by 

police after he allegedly made death threats using his Twitter account. The 

student, Haaris Khan, was watching a documentary screened by the Con-


servative Party’s campus arm, Conservative McGill, when he appeared to 

become increasingly agitated and expressed himself on Twitter using his 

BlackBerry. “I’ve infiltrated a Zionist meeting. I feel like I’m at a Satanist 

ritual,” he allegedly wrote at the March 8 screening. “I want to shoot everyone 

in this room,” another tweet said. “Never been this angry.” The tweets 

call the documentary a “Zionist/Conservative propaganda film” and the 

gathering, which attracted about 20 students, “a secret Zionist convention.” 

Then: “I should have brought an M16.” A spokesperson for the Montreal 

Police Service said the force is still investigating. It’s not clear what charges 

could be laid, if any. “We take the case very seriously,” the spokesperson 

said. “We don’t go with half-measures on this.” 

London, March 20: A pro-Israel protester has been taken to the hospital 

after being bitten on the cheek outside the School of Oriental and African 

Studies (SOAS) today. Police arrested two men on suspicion of public 

fighting. They have been bailed without charges for dates in April. Four 

activists had decided to go to SOAS after learning that a Celebrate Palestine 

event was taking place as part of Israel Apartheid Week. Two of them, 

Tony Coren and Gili Brenner (of Stand with Us), went inside the university 

and had a number of conversations with the student participants. Coren 

said: “We had placards and some information packs, and we had some very 

interesting and civilized discussions.” 

Cairo, March 21: Accident, prophetic, or wishful thinking? Those are the 

questions swirling after it was discovered Egyptian airline Egypt Air does 

not include Israel on a destination map on its Web site. According to the 

outlet, looking past Israel’s existence is odd considering one of its subsidiaries, 

Air Sinai, regularly flies to the tiny country. “On the map are the 

names of the Mideast capitals—Amman, Beirut, and Damascus—but Israel 

is nowhere to be found,” the Israeli Web site YNet says. “The omission is 

especially odd seeing as the company continues to fly to Israel four times a 

week.” 

London, March 31: Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has apologized for 

saying “Here we are, the Jews again” when a fellow Labour MP stood up in 

the Commons. He made the remark when Louise Ellman rose to make an 

intervention during the report stage of the Police Reform and Social 

Responsibility Bill. Mrs. Ellman and Sir Gerald are both Jewish but hold 

differing views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The Manchester Gorton 

MP said he was sorry for any offense he had caused. Mrs. Ellman has not 

publicly commented on the remark, but the Conservative MP for Hendon, 

Matthew Offord, said he intended to make a complaint about the use of


“unparliamentary language.” In a statement released by the Labour Party, 

Kaufman said: “I regret if any remarks I made in the chamber caused 

offense. If they did, I apologize.” The comments were made during a debate 

over plans to change the law on universal jurisdiction. 

APRIL 

Los Angeles, April 14: Police in Hollywood are looking for a suspect after 

a fire was intentionally set in a classroom at a temple and Jewish school. 

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime because it took place at a 

place of worship, fire officials said. Police arrived at Temple Israel of 

Hollywood shortly before school started Thursday morning after receiving 

reports of a suspicious package. School officials were forced to notify parents 

and evacuate the school for several hours. While parents and students 

were asked to refrain from speaking to the media, one young boy told 

KTLA he was scared and that “we were thinking that we might die or that 

the school might burn down.” Authorities swept the school for evidence and 

carried out the suspicious package in a brown paper bag. 

Pew Poll, April 26: Most Egyptians are in favor of annulling a peace treaty 

with Israel, according to a Pew Research Center poll released on Monday. 

The U.S.-based think tank polled 1,000 adults throughout Egypt between 

March 24 and April 7, finding that only 36 percent would maintain the 

treaty, while 82% of Egyptians view the United States unfavorably; the poll 

also noted that military leader Mohamed Tantawi is most popular man in 

Egypt. The percentage of Egyptians who support annulling the treaty (54%) 

does not vary among those who sympathize with Islamic fundamentalists 

and those who do not. Those with lower incomes, however, are less likely 

to support the peace with Israel than are those with higher incomes. 

MAY 

Buenos Aires, May 9: An Argentinian man is to be prosecuted to the fullest 

extent following the brutal assault on a headmaster of an Orthodox Jewish 

school in Buenos Aires. Moshe Cohen, director of Heichal Hatora, was hit 

in the head with an iron bar on May 9 as he was leaving the school. He was 

hospitalized with a serious head injury. The assailant, who was arrested a 

few blocks from the scene, allegedly shouted “Jew, Jew” during the assault. 

The incident took place on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day. 

New York, May 12: Two men allegedly trying to buy weapons, including 

three pistols and hand grenades, as part of a plot to attack Manhattan synagogues 

were arrested in New York City, averting a terror threat, law 

enforcement sources said. This is the 13th plot against the city thwarted


since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. The men were arrested as part of a 

police operation that had begun prior to Osama bin Laden’s death and was 

not a result of any retaliatory plan, sources said. 

Glasgow, May 24: A Scottish municipality has banned from its libraries 

books by Israeli authors and that were printed or published in Israel. The 

West Dunbartonshire Council, consisting of towns and villages west of 

Glasgow, ordered new books by Israeli authors to be banned from the council’s 

libraries, according to reports. “A place that boycotts books is not far 

from a place that burns them,” said Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Ron 

Prosor. European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor called the banning 

of Israeli books and the marking of Israeli products in Scotland “eerily 

reminiscent of darker times, and perhaps there is a level of hatred that connects 

them.” In a statement released Tuesday, Kantor noted that “While 

those behind the boycott will claim that this is not antisemitic, targeting the 

only Jewish state, a democracy, while ignoring serial human rights-abusing 

nations tells us that this is indeed antisemitic in intent and in effect.” 

Leicester, UK, May 26: The house and car of the rabbi of the Leicester 

Hebrew Congregation have been targeted by antisemitic vandals in three 

nocturnal attacks over the past three weeks. Bricks twice shattered windows 

of Rabbi Schmuli Pink’s shul-owned property, half a mile from the citycenter 

synagogue. On another occasion, a brick was thrown through his car 

window. Rabbi Pink said that although no one was injured, “this was not a 

pleasant experience. However, we are remaining strong.” The rabbi, who 

lives with his wife, Rifki, and their seven children, praised the efforts of the 

local police. “We are very happy with what the police are doing. They are 

responding excellently,” he said. Rabbi Pink has served the Midlands community 

for nearly 10 years. 

JUNE 

San Francisco, June 6: A cartoon called “Foreskin Man” has gained notoriety 

after an anti-male circumcision proposition was brought to San Francisco’s 

November ballot. The cartoon, created by Matthew Hess, president 

of the MGMbill.org group against what it calls male genital mutilation, features 

the handsome young Foreskin Man doing battle with Monster Mohel, 

an old, hook-nosed character, over a baby laid out on a blanket on a pool 

table in a billiard hall. The comic has been around for at least a year. A 

Foreskin Ma“ card set also is also being sold on the Internet. 

Channel Islands, UK, June 10: A legislator on Jersey, a British crown 

dependency off the coast of France, will not run for reelection because of


antisemitic threats. “My family have been very upset by recent events and I 

feel that it would therefore be better not to stand for re-election at the end of 

the year,” said Sen. Freddie Cohen, who is also the island’s planning minister; 

he was quoted on June 7 by the London Jewish Chronicle. Cohen and 

his family received antisemitic threats after the Jersey Evening Post criticized 

one of his decisions. Cohen is a past president of the island’s 65family 

Jewish community. Jersey was the sole British territory occupied by 

Nazis during World War II. 

Rome, June 14: On the day of Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Rome, a 

member of the capital’s Jewish community, Raffi Coen, was stabbed 

through the heart. Coen was 74 years old and well loved in the Jewish 

community. The murderer did not steal his money, so there must be some 

other motive for the crime. Over the last few days in Italy there have been 

some disturbing episodes of propaganda against Jews and Israel, over 

Netanyahu’s visit, but also because of the “Unexpected Israel” festival in 

Milan. There may well be antisemitic motives surrounding this tragedy, and 

it is feared that the authorities will not take into account the hypothesis of 

racist murder, because that is their usual policy when such crimes are suspected. 

We believe a commitment against antisemitism (often in the form of 

exasperated anti-Zionism) is one of the top priorities in Italy and throughout 

the EU. 

Jerusalem, June 22: Jews and Israelis, or passengers carrying any non- 

Islamic article of faith, will not be able to fly code-share flights from the 

United States to Saudi Arabia under Delta Air Line’s new partnership with 

Saudi Arabian Airlines, which is set to begin in 2012. Although Delta 

announced in January that the Saudi airline would join its SkyTeam network 

next year, the implications of the deal only came to light recently, 

according to people who have scrutinized the details. Saudi Arabia bans 

anyone with an Israeli stamp in his or her passport from entering the country, 

even in transit. Many Jews believe the kingdom has also withheld visas 

from travelers with Jewish-sounding names. 

Oslo, June 22: Earlier this month, a survey by the Oslo municipality found 

that 33% of Jewish students in the town are physically threatened or abused 

by other high school teens at least two to three times a month. The group 

that suffered the next highest amount of bullying was Buddhists at 10%. 

“Others” were at 7% and Muslims at 5.3%. Furthermore, the survey found 

that 51% of high school students consider “Jew” a negative expression and 

60% had heard other students use the term.


Turin, June 22. It could be a picture from a Nazi textbook, but this hooknosed 

caricature of Israeli President Shimon Peres, with hands clasped 

around a Magen David and a pocketful of bleeding babies, was part of an 

Italian “cultural festival” last month. The sinister funfair game, in which 

Turin students paid one euro to throw shoes at the gurning (distorting one’s 

face) puppet, is one of a recent catalogue of incidents causing a climate of 

fear among Italy’s Jews. 

Cupertino, California, June 22: Apple pulled an app called “The Third 

Intifada” from its App Store. The app encouraged attacks on Israel and 

highlighted anti-Israeli news and opinion from around the Web. On Tuesday, 

the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement urging Apple to 

immediately withdraw the app from its collection. Apple complied, citing a 

policy that apps that are “defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited or likely to 

expose the targeted group to harm or violence will be rejected.” 

Courtesy of ADL, www.adl.org 

Please send your nominations for Book of the Year to 

Lesley Klaff, Book Editor—l.d.klaff@shu.ac.uk

Mexico in a Region under Change 

Judit Bokser Liwerant* 

Latin America is a region undergoing radical and contradictory changes: 

an increasingly expansive force of democracy amid global cycles of economic 

crises and social conflicts and the emergence of new political and 

cultural scenarios that account for diversified outcomes. The recognition 

of differences, the politics of identity, and the emphasis on heterogeneity 

as well as the search for civic commonalities act as a substratum that 

widens the scope of the public sphere. Democratization has created 

favorable conditions for greater legitimation and visibility of the Jewish 

communities. However, channels for civic participation are accompanied 

by changing expressions of antisemitism. This article argues that 

antisemitism in Mexico, like most of the countries in the region, has seldom 

manifested itself through physical violence. It can be traced basically 

to the level of the narrative and the discursive realm. It is mainly 

through media discourses that negative representations are built, transmitted, 

and recreated. Classical expressions of antisemitism, anti-Israelism, 

and anti-Zionism converge and overlap through complex axes of argumentative 

articulation and chains of meanings. 

Key Words: Mexico, Jews, Latin America 

TRENDS AND DEMOCRATIZATION IN LATIN AMERICA 

Changes follow non-linear trends. When noting commonalities that cut 

across the different Latin America societies, one should be aware of the 

inner differentiations within the continent. Neo-liberal and growing institutionalized 

citizenship regimes coexist with corporatist political forms, popular 

mobilization, and plebiscitary democracy. Both the prevalence of 

historically complex relations with the United States and the widespread 

dissatisfaction with the effects of globalization opened new opportunities 

for radical movements in the region, including the neo-populist versions of 

Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. Thus, the region experiences 

contradictory trends: increasing civic participation of social and political 

actors coexists with the tendency of hegemonic sectors to substitute grassroot 

democratic participation. Processes of democratization develop along 

with trends of de-democratization. 

Pluralism today is related to culture as well as to political and institutional 

arrangements that provide the framework to resolve differences and 

to build consensus. The widening of the public sphere and the consolidation 

27


of civil society have allowed the emergence of new actors and unprecedented 

forms of participation. Opportunities for collective recognition and 

new interactions between majorities and minorities are part of the prevailing 

scenarios. Different social movements attract vast middle-class sectors, 

including Jews and the Jewish community, as civic participants of the 

national arena. Jewish individuals have increasingly entered the political 

sphere by assuming high-ranking public roles. Simultaneously, Jewish communities 

have acquired more visibility and legitimacy, derived from a twofold 

complex process: the erosion of a national ethnic narrative, which 

provided the criteria for national belonging, and the increased recognition 

of minorities on religious grounds. Liberal policies have acknowledged the 

relevance of middle- and high-class social sectors as players in the public 

arena, thus creating favorable conditions for a stronger presence of Jewish 

communities in the national landscape. 1 

Paralleling these processes in countries like Mexico, in the Southern 

Cone, changes have enhanced the search for civic commonalities through a 

shift from the automatic valorization of cultural and ethnic differences to a 

renewed concern with integration into civil society and the public sphere. 

However, one cannot dismiss the centrality of the bombing of the communal 

building AMIA in Buenos Aires, Argentina; it brought to the forefront 

the convergence of old and new expressions of antisemitism. It also fostered 

the visibility of transnational Jewish links and solidarity and the affirmation 

of collective identity. New institutional channels of participation 

point to new sources and expression of the dynamics of acceptance and 

rejection and therefore to equally changing expressions of antisemitism. 

Thus, one has to approach antisemitism as part of a broader parameter of 

inclusion-exclusion. 

The overall picture in Latin America of democratization as well as 

economic crises, political instability, high levels of public violence, and 

lack of security has increasingly exposed the region and its Jewish communities 

to waves of migration. Although Latin American Jewry has historically 

grown out of large-scale immigration, during the last decades, 

migration patterns have tended to be outward. The number of Jews in Latin 

America dropped from 514,000 in the 1970s to 390,000 in 2010. Mexico’s 

community has maintained a stable demographic profile, due mainly to a 

relative equilibrium of emigration and immigration coming from other 

1. Judit Bokser Liwerant, “Los judíos de América Latina. Los signos de las 

tendencias: juegos y contrajuegos,” en Haim Avni et al. (eds.), Pertenencia y Alteridad. 

Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios (Madrid-Berlin: 

Iberoamericana), 2011:115-164.

2011] MEXICO IN A REGION UNDER CHANGE 29 

countries in the region. Its current Jewish population totals 39,500. 2 In a 

country with a population of 112, 336,538 people, the Jewish community 

has a visible presence that outreaches its numbers. 3 

When analyzing antisemitism, one has to take into account that concern 

has been voiced about an excessive focus on it as the primary characteristic 

of the region, warning against a simplistic and reductionist 

identification of Latin America with intolerance and anti-Jewish expression. 

This concern has led to calls for balance, demanding more nuanced distinctions 

between different times, places, and modalities of expression. 

Certainly, the interfacing between national, regional, and global 

antisemitism, its inner differentiation, and contemporary expressions have 

to be considered. Diffuse and latent prejudices, veiled and structural, as 

well as those rejected in the official semantics but evident in the rhetoric of 

individuals and of collective sectors are part of new, complex societies both 

in Latin America and elsewhere. The historical course of this rhetoric, 

which does not necessarily translate into discriminatory practices, needs to 

be contextualized within each country’s political culture and status of 

human rights. Understanding its manifestations emerges as a sine qua non 

when attempting to account for the actual extent of antisemitic danger as 

opposed to the symbolic violence of its expressions in the media. 

Antisemitism can be seen as a phenomenon that to a large extent is produced 

and reproduced discursively. 4 

Both at the level of attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices on the one 

hand, and at the behavioral level manifest in acts, practices, and actual normative 

arrangement on the other, antisemitism had and has a broad impact 

on the representation of the “other.” It is precisely this dimension that 

acquires new relevance amid the changing trends of cultures that historically 

had expressed serious difficulties facing heterogeneity. This question 

is directly related to the dimension of the public sphere as the space for 

constructing shared civic-national foundations for the legitimate expression 

of difference. 

2. Sergio DellaPergola, “¿Cuántos somos hoy? Investigación y narrativa sobre 

población judía en América Latina,” Ibid.:305-340. 

3. 2010 Total Population, “México en Cifras” (Mexico in Numbers). INEGI 

(Mexican National Institute for Statistics and Geography), http:// 

www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/mexicocifras/MexicoCifras.aspx?e=0&m=0&sec=M. 

4. See Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetoric 

of Racism and Antisemitism (New York: Routledge), 2001.


ANALYZING ANTISEMITISM 

We still face the challenge of linking indicators and formalized criteria 

to comprehensive approaches that can account for the changing meanings 

of the phenomenon. This challenge becomes even more urgent in light of 

the new significance and connotations of antisemitism that are constructed 

in Latin America as well as in the Jewish world. By this we mean the convergences 

of its classic expressions with processes such as criticism of the 

Israeli government’s dealing with the Israel-Palestinian conflict and of 

Israel as a whole—beyond particular governments—the framing of an anti- 

Zionist language with antisemitic content. 

There are differences between antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti- 

Israelism; simultaneously, though, they overlap, carrying mutually referring 

meanings and significance. The socio-political, religious-cultural, and economic 

historical dimensions of antisemitism interact with the current political 

and ideological contexts. Latin America’s historical and ideational 

trajectory has articulated through the components of anti-Americanism, 

anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism a specific dynamic that reinforces the 

mutually referring meanings. 5 The fluid overlapping acts as a “cultural 

code” that identifies wide sectors of public thought and media. 6 

ECONOMICS AND DEMOCRACY IN MEXICO 

Mexico’s integration into the international economic system has been 

fragmented. In the framework of growing inequalities, the search for inclusive 

political forms parallels strong and persistent trends of exclusion, thus 

hindering democracy itself. The impact of economic crises on the Jewish 

community in Mexico, while not as acute as in the Southern Cone (e.g., 

Argentina), has also been a determinant of radical changes concerning 

organized Jewish life. Globalization processes, while deteriorating the economic 

standing of various sectors, have brought different segments of the 

higher- to-middle classes into the most dynamic venues and advantageous 

positions for tapping into transnational commerce, high technology, services, 

the sciences, academia and its institutions, and the financial sectors. 

Thus, Jews’ interaction with diverse sectors of society widens. 

5. Cf. Robert S. Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (London: Thames 

Methuen), 1991; Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict 

and Prejudice (New York: Norton), 1986. 

6. Shulamit Volkov, “Readjusting Cultural Codes: Reflections on Antisemitism 

and Anti-Zionism,” in Jeffrey Herf (ed.), Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in 

Historical Perspective: Convergence and Difference (New York: Routledge), 2007: 

39-43.


Mexico’s transition to democracy was signed by the end of seven 

decades of the ruling PRI party (Institutional Revolutionary Party) in 2000, 

and the arrival to power of the center-right PAN (National Action Party). 

The country’s consolidation of democracy is still an ongoing process. Vectors 

as essential as rule of law, transparency, and accountability still need to 

be fully established. In the realm of human rights, Mexico experienced both 

significant progress and setbacks. The National Commission of Human 

Rights (federal and state) has gained a progressive presence. In April 2010, 

the Mexican senate unanimously approved reforms that give human rights a 

constitutional status, widen their recognition and protection, and provide the 

commission with the resources to investigate serious violations to individual 

rights. According to the commission, however, a high percentage of its 

recommendations were not implemented within the deadlines specified and/ 

or were not accepted by public officials because of weaknesses endemic in 

the Mexican judicial system. The World Economic Forum warned that the 

cost of corruption in Mexico equals 9% of the national gross domestic product 

(PIB), while businesses need to spend 10% of their income on bribes. 

The so-called war against drugs and organized crime has resulted in a spiral 

of violence that has not been directly connected to ethnic or religious 

motives. 

ANTISEMITISM IN MEXICO 

While historically the national culture has faced difficulties dealing 

with the “other,” antisemitism has been mainly associated either with the 

most conservative forces or with extreme left-wing actors. 

In contemporary Mexico, antisemitism was initially prompted by 

debates surrounding immigration policies during the late 1920s. Groups 

such as the Anti-Chinese and the Anti-Jewish National League, founded in 

1930, and the Honourable Traders, Industrialists and Professionals lobbied 

the government to restrict the immigration of Jews. 7 

In the 1930s, Mexico experienced outbursts of antisemitism focused 

on economic and racial grounds. Gradually, the racial theme became dominant 

amid right-wing groups. Among them, Mexican Revolutionary Action, 

founded in 1934, operated through its paramilitary units, the Golden Shirts. 

The antisemitic Pro-Race Committee and the Middle Class Confederation 

exerted pressure on the government and waged antisemitic campaigns, 

7. Judit Bokser Liwerant, “El México de los años treinta: cardenismo, inmigración 

judía y antisemitismo,” en Xenofobias y Xenofilia en la Historia de México 

Siglos XVIII y XIX, Delia Salazar (Coordinadora), Dirección de Estudios Históricos, 

México, 2006: 379-416.


which reached their peak in 1938-9. But they were not the only antisemitic 

protestors; trade unions and left-wing labor organizations also became a 

platform for antisemitic expressions that were related mainly to immigration 

and exile policies. 8 

Thereafter, expressions of antisemitism associated mainly with economic- 

and class-related stereotypes were incorporated into political codes 

related to Israel and Zionism. The latter reached its maximal expression in 

1975, when Mexico supported UN Resolution 3379, equating Zionism with 

Racism, condemning Zionism as a form of racism and discrimination while 

entering the international dynamics of delegitimization of Israel; due to the 

local circumstances, it also projected the stereotype of the Jewish community 

as lacking national loyalties. 9 (The resolution was revoked in December 

1991.) 

In the early 1990s, the Gulf War consolidated an intellectual atmosphere 

censoring Israel as an instigator of the war and a spearhead of Western 

imperialism. Moreover, the inversion of the victimizer-victim argument 

that was widespread in the seventies was further reinforced. 10 Its dynamics 

continued to be closely associated with the gap between a bilateral relationship 

with the United States and the multilateral forum of ascription. In 

December 1991, changes in the bilateral relationship led to the revocation 

of the 1975 resolution. 

Progressively, the anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli discourse gained argumentative 

weight, as it was essentially connected to the ups and downs of 

the peace process in the Middle East. As such, it reflected a number of 

issues: the First and Second Intifada, the Gulf War, the Lebanon Wars, 

Operation Cast Lead, or the Gaza War, as well as the Oslo Accords, the 

Camp David Summit, and the Road Map for Peace negotiations. 

Antisemitism has not been a central issue for political parties and 

movements in Mexico’s modern history. The diversified organizational pattern 

within the extreme right has diminished in its public visibility and the 

intensity of its activities. Organizations such as the LaRouche-inspired Partido 

Laboral Mexicano (Mexican Labor Party), the Federación Mexicana 

Anticomunista (Anti-Communist Federation), and Los Tecos have taken a 

8. Ibid. 

9. Judit Bokser Liwerant, “Fuentes de legitimación de la presencia judía en 

México: El voto positivo de México a la ecuación sionismo = racismo y su impacto 

sobre la comunidad judía,” Judaica Latinoamericana, No. III (Jerusalem: AMILAT 

and Magnes Press), 1997: 319. 

10. Luis Roniger, “Latin American Jews and Processes of Transnational Legitimization 

and De-Legitimization,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 9 no. 2 (July 

2010).


back role. The exception to this low-key approach has been the former Partido 

de las Águilas Mexicanas (Party of the Mexican Eagles), which in 1996 

changed its name to Consejo del Pueblo de las Águilas Mexicanas (The 

People’s Council of Mexican Eagles). Its ideology, dubbed as “neo-Mexicanism,” 

promotes an idealized image of Mexico’s Indian past and scorns 

Europe’s role in forging the national identity. Its open activity declined and 

the Tribunal Federal Electoral (Federal Electoral Tribunal) denied its petition 

to be registered. The Instituto Federal Electoral (Federal Electoral Institute) 

issued an open letter condemning the group’s antisemitic, racist, and 

intolerant views. 

Mexican antisemitism, which has seldom manifested itself through 

physical violence, can be traced basically to the level of the narrative and 

the discursive realm. It is through media discourses that negative representations 

are built, transmitted, and recreated. 

The yearly report by Tribuna Israelita 11 shows a significant decline 

from 2009 to 2010 in Mexico in the number of published notes (from 

10,721 to 6,624, or –38.21%), including news reports, op eds, and newspaper 

editorials related to Jewish and Israeli issues. When looking at each 

classified category separately, only the number of cartoons increased (from 

12 in 2009 to 64 in 2010). 12 

This pattern seems to be related to the decreased impact on Mexican 

public opinion that the “Flotilla Affair” had in comparison to the impact of 

Operation Cast Lead, which appears to be consistent with the 2010 World 

Report by the Stephen Roth Center at Tel Aviv University. 13 

According to the criteria developed by Tribuna Israelita, 11.37% of the 

classified published notes in 2010 were negative. 14 In contrast, only 1.23% 

were positive (while 87.65% were considered neutral). The percentage of 

negative news in the corresponding section was far lower than the percentage 

of negative editorials (including opinion and newspaper editorials), 

cartoons, and letters (1.54% for news compared to 46.54% for editorials, 

23.44% for cartoons. and 47.92% for letters). Here again there is a gap 

between the percentage of negative news reported and the percentage of 

11. I thank Yael Siman for her valuable collaboration, Renée Dayán and 

Tribuna Israelita for the data provided. 

12. Report on Antisemitism, 2010, México, Tribuna Israelita. 2010. 

13. Cf. “General Analysis. Overview” in Antisemitism Worldwide 2010. General 

Analysis. The Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities, The Stephen Roth 

Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, and The Kantor 

Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry. Tel Aviv University, European 

Jewish Congress. http://www.tau.ac.il/Antisemitism/. 

14. In this classification, there is no explicit differentiation between antisemite, 

anti-Israeli, and anti-Zionist arguments.


negative editorials, cartoons, and letters—that is, few negative news regarding 

Jews and/or Israel have a significant, and disproportional, impact on 

Mexican public opinion. 

Regarding the contents of the media discourse, 2010 has shown both a 

continuation of previous patterns as well as changing trends. Zionism, 

which, as stated, has been identified with racism, colonialism, and imperialism, 

became an incorporated and implicit argument of the major focus— 

i.e., the State of Israel portrayed as a belligerent and war-prone state, 

oppressive and genocidal. The axis of human rights violation has gained an 

increased presence among the critical arguments; the Arab-Israeli conflict 

continued to be portrayed as part of the clash between the imperialist West 

and the Arab and Muslim Third World. 

Editorials published in the Mexican press in 2010 put emphasis on 

Israel’s conduction of “war crimes” in Lebanon and Gaza; Israel’s “terrorist” 

traits, and its implementation of “massacre,” “genocide,” and “collective 

punishment” in Gaza to a million and a half Palestinians; the building 

of a wall in the West Bank that seeks to “exterminate” 4.5 million Palestinians; 

Israel’s “violation” of international law in the occupied territories and 

worldwide; the Zionist Jewish state as a racist one on nationality and citizenship 

issues; and Israel as an “apartheid” state. 15 

Prejudice also may be found or revealed by omission of relevant information 

that could show Israel’s perspective as an actor/active player. While 

this omission differs from explicit prejudice association, it also has a meaningful 

impact. 

Insofar as the State of Israel became the main focus of the arguments, 

the fluid interconnections established between anti-Israelism and historical 

antisemitism, rather than between anti-Israelism and dilution of the Holocaust, 

became the radicalized point of departure of the dispute. 

To exemplify fluid interconnections of meanings, we may point to the 

overlapping of anti-Israelism/the Holocaust through analogies, parallels, 

15. Andres Pascoe Pierce, “La década del terror” (A Decade of Terror), Crónica, 

January 2, 2010; Xavier Caño Tamayo, “Sobre una bomba de violaciones de 

derechos humanos” (About a human rights violations bomb), Rumbo de México, 

January 4, 2010; José Steinsleger, “¿Cuándo caerá el muro?” (When will the wall 

fall?), La Jornada. January 6, 2010; Héctor Delgado, “ONU monosabia, ignora la 

autodeterminación” (Mono-wise United Nations ignores self-determination), Uno 

más uno, February 11, 2010; Manu Dorberier (newspaper editorial), “El que se 

somete a la infamia, se convierte en infame” (He who puts himself under infamy 

becomes infamous), El Sol de México, February 20, 2010; “Lula en Israel” (Lula in 

Israel), La Jornada, March 16, 2010; José Steinsleger, “¿Israelíes o judíos?” (Israelis 

or Jews?), La Jornada, April 21, 2010; Juan Gelman, “Prohibido y ya” (Forbidden, 

that’s it), Milenio Diario, May 29, 2010.


and metaphors: according to José Steinsleger, the West Bank Wall was conceived 

out of a great strategic plan, the slow and sustained “extermination; 

. . . this time, without gas chambers.” 16 The naqba, Steinsleger says, Israel’s 

“expulsion” of 700,000 Palestinians—which was preceded by “ethnic 

cleansing”—has a straightforward parallel with the Holocaust: the word 

naqba denotes the “oldest and most prolonged Holocaust” in contemporary 

history as a result of the creation of an “illegal Zionist State.” 17 In his 

words, “Nazi-fascist wall, locked up alive Palestinians in ‘ghettos.’ ” 

Intermingled with the national/regional anti-American and anti-imperialist 

discourse that recurrently emphasizes the alliance between the United 

States and Israel, both the wall at the West Bank and at USA-Mexico border, 

were equated, yet differentiated: only the former was seen as a “genocide 

wall.” 18 

As stated, the Flotilla Affair reflected the ebb and flow of the conflict 

in the Middle East and its implications for antisemitic expressions. 19 Its 

negative image reached an apex in this episode, which conveyed its “genocidal” 

and “anti-humanitarian” nature and an illegitimate code of action. 20 

One must also assess the impact on the national media of the transnational 

dynamics that feed information. Specifically, La Jornada and Uno 

más Uno—newspapers of the left—systematically reproduced editorial articles 

of The Guardian and Independent, and their own editorial perspective 

reinforced this stand. 

Also in the mainstream press—particularly in Milenio, El Financiero, 

and Excélsior—there has been an increased presence of articles critical of 

Israeli actions, mainly of Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlement policy. 21 This 

heightened criticism certainly points to varying degrees of symbolic violence 

and its implications through the interplay of meanings and motivations 

(prejudice vs. critical voice). 

In contrast, the links of the Jewish community with Israel and other 

Jewish centers have gained legitimacy in the public sphere—reinforced by 

16. José Steinsleger, “¿Cuándo caerá el muro?” (When Will the Wall Fall?), La 

Jornada, January 6, 2010. 

17. José Steinsleger, “Palestina: orígenes de la nakba” (Palestine: origins of the 

nakaba) La Jornada, May 5, 2010. 

18. Héctor Delgado, “¡Bienvenida Señora Michelle Obama!” (Welcome, Ms. 

Michelle Obama), Uno más uno, April 15, 2010. 

19. Esteban Beltrán (director, Amnesty International, Spain), “El asfixiante bloqueo 

de Gaza” (The suffocating blockade of Gaza), El País, June 1, 2010. 

20. Héctor Delgado, “Israel asesina marinos civiles en Gaza” (Israel assasinates 

civil marines in Gaza), Uno más uno, June 1, 2010. 

21. Emilio Menéndez del Valle, “Imponer la paz en Palestina” (Imposing peace 

in Palestine), April 9, 2010. Milenio and El Financiero have other examples.


the visible recognition of the existence of a Mexican diaspora—and have 

thus diminished the questioning of the transnational character of Jewish life. 

Arguments critical of the nexus between the Jewish community and Israel 

or the North American Jewish community have been largely absent in the 

public discourse. 

Though concrete political episodes awakened the argument of the particular 

interest over the national well-being, traditional stereotypes such as 

the control of the national or international financial system or the self-segregated 

group tropes have been minimal. 

As stated, antisemitism in Mexico has not reflected violence. While 

there were 67 antisemitic incidents in 2010 (mostly consisting of harassment 

actions: verbal threats and insults), there were only two incidents of 

physical aggression and one bomb threat. 

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 

Anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism and their interconnection of meanings 

with antisemitism are components of a “cultural code” around which influent 

exponents of the progressive camp and leftist intellectuals identify. This 

theoretical and practical convergence fluctuates in consonance with the Palestinian-Israeli 

conflict. 

The globalization of this conflict reveals an interplay of international, 

regional, national, and local circumstances. The process involving the problematic 

social representation of Israel has acquired a new shared pattern in 

Latin America, although with national variations. 

In early December 2010, several Latin American countries announced 

their formal recognition of a Palestinian state based on borders in existence 

prior to the 1967 war. Brazil took the initiative, followed shortly by Argentina, 

Bolivia, and Ecuador. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian 

Authority, laid the cornerstone for a Palestinian embassy in Brasilia on 

December 31, 2010. On January 28, 2011, Paraguay also announced its 

recognition of Palestine. Earlier that month, Chile and Peru stated that they 

would recognize a Palestinian state but that borders had to be mutually 

agreed upon by both sides of the conflict. Chile’s position followed strong 

pressure from its powerful Palestinian community, as revealed by motions 

introduced in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies at the end of 2010 

and the conduction of top-level meetings in the presidential palace with 

Palestinian diplomats, representatives of the Arab League in Chile, and 

members of the Palestinian communities and congressional groups. In its 

declaration, however, there was no formal reference to the 1967 borders. 

Colombia has said it will not recognize a Palestinian state until a 

mutual peace agreement is reached. Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala,


Panama, and Belize have not indicated their positions. Several Latin American 

countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, had 

already recognized a Palestinian state prior to the most recent lobbying 

efforts. Mexico has not yet taken an official stand on this matter. 

It is likely, however, that the globalization of the Palestinian-Israeli 

conflict will continue if these conditions are present: the stagnation of the 

peace process; the eruption of new cycles of violence in the Middle East; 

the strengthening of Islamic radical groups in countries that now experience 

political turmoil; the presence of neo-populist governments in the region; 

and the particular interaction between strategic decisions of international, 

regional, national, and local activists. 

*Judit Bokser Liwerant is a professor of political science at the Universidad 

Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where she is the director of the Graduate 

School of Political and Social Sciences. She has published numerous books as 

author and editor and many scientific articles and chapters in the field of political 

theory, collective identities, and contemporary Latin American Jewry. She is a 

member of the Mexican Academy of Science.

México, en una Región bajo Cambio 

Judit Bokser Liwerant* 

México, al igual que la mayoría de los países de América Latina, está 

experimentando profundas transformaciones de signo contradictorio: la 

creciente fuerza expansiva de la democracia convive con ciclos globales 

de crisis económicas y conflictos sociales y la aparición de nuevos 

escenarios políticos y culturales diversificados. El reconocimiento de las 

diferencias, la política de la identidad y el énfasis en la heterogeneidad 

actúan como un sustrato que amplía el ámbito de la esfera pública. 

Simultáneamente, nuevas expresiones de esencialismos y de identidades 

primordiales actúan como fuente de exclusión. 

Los cambios siguen tendencias no lineales. Al tiempo que hay claros 

denominadores comunes que atraviesan las diferentes sociedades de 

América Latina, resulta evidente la diferenciación interna dentro del continente. 

Regímenes neoliberales y crecientemente institucionalizados coexisten 

con formas políticas corporativistas, movilizaciones populares y 

democracias plebiscitarias. Tanto la trayectoria de las relaciones históricas 

con los Estados Unidos, que han sido complejas, como la insatisfacción 

generalizada con los efectos de la globalización han abierto nuevas oportunidades 

para los movimientos radicales de la región, incluyendo las versiones 

neo-populistas de Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador y Nicaragua. Por lo 

tanto, la región experimenta tendencias contradictorias: el aumento de la 

participación cívica de los actores sociales y políticos se junto a la 

tendencia de los sectores hegemónicos de sustituir la participación 

democrática de base. Los procesos de democratización se desarrollan junto 

con tendencias de des-democratización. 

La transición de México a la democracia fue marcada por el fin de 

siete décadas de gobierno del PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) en 

el año 2000 y la llegada al poder del PAN (Partido Acción Nacional), de 

centro-derecha. La alternancia y el pluralismo han incidido en la cultura, así 

como en los ordenamientos políticos e institucionales que constituyen el 

marco en cuyo seno se busca canalizar las diferencias y construir consensos. 

La ampliación de la esfera pública y el fortalecimiento de la sociedad civil 

han permitido el surgimiento de nuevos actores y formas de participación 

sin precedentes. Nuevas oportunidades para el reconocimiento colectivo y 

nuevas interacciones entre las mayorías y las minorías forman parte de los 

escenarios actuales, al tiempo que diferentes movimientos sociales atraen a 

sectores de la clase media, entre los que se ubica la comunidad judía como 

39


actor del ámbito nacional. A su vez, sus miembros han incursionado de 

manera creciente en la esfera pública asumiendo cargos públicos. 

La comunidad judía ha adquirido una mayor visibilidad y legitimidad 

derivadas de un complejo proceso: por una parte, de la erosión de una narrativa 

nacional que definió la pertenencia nacional a partir de criterios étnicos 

y, por la otra, de un creciente reconocimiento de las minorías en términos 

tanto religiosos como étnicos. El reconocimiento constitucional a la personalidad 

jurídica de las iglesias y la tradición clerical del partido 

gobernante, aún en un contexto público de laicidad, explican en parte este 

proceso. También la necesidad del nuevo régimen de entablar relaciones 

con importantes sectores de la sociedad—grupos empresariales, industriales, 

comerciales y profesionales- no mediadas por las estructuras en las 

cuales el PRI era hegemónico operó en este sentido. De este modo, y en el 

marco del proceso de ciudadanización que acompañó la transición política, 

las comunidades organizadas, entre ellas la judía, asumieron un nuevo 

protagonismo. A su vez, las políticas neo-liberales le han conferido 

importancia pública a las clases medias y altas como actores de la escena 

nacional, todo lo cual ha creado condiciones favorables para una mayor 

presencia de la comunidad judía en la esfera pública. 1 

Nuevos canales institucionales de participación apuntan a nuevas fuentes 

de expresión de la dinámica de aceptación y rechazo y, por tanto, a 

manifestaciones igualmente cambiantes del antisemitismo. Este, por tanto, 

debe abordarse como parte de un parámetro más amplio de relaciones de 

inclusión-exclusión. 

El panorama general de la democratización en América Latina así 

como las crisis económicas, la inestabilidad política, altos niveles de 

violencia pública y la falta de seguridad han expuesto cada vez más a la 

región y a sus comunidades judías a flujos de emigración. A pesar de que 

las comunidades judías del continente han tenido su origen en la inmigración, 

en las últimas décadas los patrones migratorios han revertido su dirección 

y has sido hacia el exterior. La población judía de América Latina se 

redujo de 514.000 en 1970 a 390.000 en el 2010. La comunidad de México 

ha mantenido un perfil demográfico estable, debido principalmente a un 

equilibrio relativo entre la emigración y la inmigración procedente de otros 

países de la región. Su población actual asciende a 39.500 judíos. 2 En un 

1. Judit Bokser Liwerant, “Los judíos de América Latina. Los signos de las 

tendencias: juegos y contrajuegos”, Pertenencia y Alteridad. Judíos en/de América 

Latina: cuarenta años de cambios, Haim Avni et al (eds), Madrid-Berlin, Iberoamericana, 

2011: 115-164. 

2. Sergio DellaPergola, “¿Cuántos somos hoy? Investigación y narrativa sobre 

población judía en América Latina”, en Ibid.:305-340.

2011] MÉXICO, EN UNA REGIÓN BAJO CAMBIO 41 

país con una población de 112, 336 538 personas, su presencia, que es 

significativa, rebasa su alcance numérico. 3 La representación social que de 

ella tiene la sociedad le confiere l la imagen y refuerza la percepción de ser 

sensiblemente más numerosa. 

Por su parte, la integración de México en el sistema económico internacional 

ha sido fragmentada. En el marco de crecientes desigualdades, la 

búsqueda de formas políticas inclusivas se ha dado de manera paralela a 

fuertes y persistentes tendencias de exclusión, lo que dificulta los procesos 

de construcción democrática. El impacto de la crisis económica en la 

comunidad judía en México, aunque no tan agudo como en el Cono Sur 

(Argentina), también ha sido un factor determinante de cambios radicales 

en el perfil de la vida comunitaria. Paralelamente al deterioro de la situación 

económica de diversos sectores sociales, los procesos de globalización 

han llevado a que diferentes segmentos de las clases altas y medias a posiciones 

que les permiten insertarse en los ámbitos más dinámicos del comercio 

transnacional, la alta tecnología, los servicios, las ciencias, la academia 

y sus instituciones y los sectores financieros. Por lo tanto, junto a su diferenciación 

interna, las interacciones de la comunidad judía con diversos 

sectores de la sociedad también se diversifica. 

La consolidación de la democracia en México sigue siendo parte de un 

proceso en marcha. Vectores tan esenciales como la vigencia del derecho, la 

transparencia y la rendición de cuentas distan todavía de ser plenamente 

establecidos. En el ámbito de los Derechos Humanos, México ha experimentado 

importantes avances así como retrocesos. Las Comisiones de Derechos 

Humanos (nacional y estatales) han ganado presencia progresiva. En 

abril de 2010, el Senado de la República aprobó por unanimidad las 

reformas que les confieren a los Derechos Humanos un rango constitucional, 

amplían su reconocimiento y protección y le dan a la Comisión 

Nacional de Derechos Humanos las facultades para investigar violaciones 

graves a los derechos individuales. Sin embargo, de acuerdo a esta última, 

un alto porcentaje de sus recomendaciones no se llevaron a cabo en los 

plazos previstos y/o no fueron aceptadas por los funcionarios públicos, 

debido a las deficiencias mismas que caracterizan al sistema judicial. El 

Foro Económico Mundial advirtió que el costo de la corrupción en México 

es igual al 9% del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB), mientras que las empresas 

deben gastar el 10% de sus ingresos en sobornos. La llamada guerra contra 

las drogas y el crimen organizado se ha traducido en una espiral de 

3. 2010 Total Population , “México en Cifras” (Mexico in Numbers). INEGI 

(Mexican National Institute for Statistics and Geography). http:// 

www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/mexicocifras/MexicoCifras.aspx?e=0&m=0&sec=M


violencia que, por otra parte, no se ha visto relacionado directamente con 

motivos étnicos o religiosos. 

Al analizar el antisemitismo, es necesario tomar en cuenta que voces 

muy serias han expresado la preocupación de que se ha puesto un énfasis 

excesivo en éste en lo que pretendidamente sería la principal característica 

de la región, advirtiendo los riesgos de una identificación simplista y reduccionista 

de América Latina con la intolerancia y con expresiones antijudías. 

Esta preocupación ha llamado a mantener un equilibrio analítico, 

con deslindes y distinciones más matizada entre los diferentes tiempos, 

lugares y modalidades. 

Ciertamente, hay que considerar la interconexión entre las expresiones 

nacionales, regionales y globales del antisemitismo, su diferenciación 

interna y sus expresiones contemporáneas. Prejuicios difusos y latentes, 

velados y estructurales, así como los rechazados en la semántica oficial, 

pero evidentes en la retórica de los individuos y de sectores sociales son 

parte de las nuevas sociedades complejas, tanto en América Latina como en 

otras regiones del mundo. El curso histórico de esta retórica, que no 

necesariamente se traduce en prácticas discriminatorias, tiene que ser contextualizado 

en la cultura política de cada país y la situación de los derechos 

humanos. La comprensión de sus manifestaciones aparece como un 

requisito sine qua non cuando se trata de dar cuenta de la magnitud real del 

peligro antisemita de frente a la violencia simbólica de sus expresiones en 

los medios de comunicación. El antisemitismo puede ser visto como un 

fenómeno que en gran medida se produce y reproduce discursivamente. 4 

Tanto en el ámbito de las actitudes, estereotipos y prejuicios, por una 

parte, como en el nivel de comportamiento manifiesto en actos, prácticas y 

los marcos normativamente, por el otro, el antisemitismo ha tenido y tiene 

un gran impacto en la representación de “Otro.” Es esta dimensión precisamente 

la que adquiere nueva relevancia en el marco de los cambios en los 

patrones de culturas que históricamente han enfrentado serias dificultades 

par dar cuenta de la diversidad y de la heterogeneidad. Ello está directamente 

relacionado con la concepción de la esfera pública como espacio para 

la construcción compartida de bases cívico-nacionales que permitan la 

expresión legítima de la diferencia. 

Aún nos enfrentamos al desafío de vincular los indicadores y criterios 

formales de medición del antisemitismo con enfoques integrales que den 

cuenta de sus significados cambiantes. Este desafío se hace aún más urgente 

a la luz de los nuevos significados y las connotaciones del antisemitismo 

que se construyen hoy en América Latina, así como en el resto del mundo. 

4. See Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, Discourse and discrimination: rhetoric 

of racism and anti-Semitism. New York: Routledge, 2001.


Con esto nos referimos a la convergencia de sus expresiones clásicas con 

procesos tales como la crítica al gobierno israelí por su manejo del conflicto 

Israel-Palestina, a la crítica de Israel como un todo-más allá de tal o cual 

gobierno particular, y el enmarcar un lenguaje anti-sionista con contenidos 

antisemitas. 

Existen diferencias entre el antisemitismo, el antisionismo y antiisraelismo; 

simultáneamente, se superponen y traslapan en un proceso de 

reenvíos de sentidos y significados. Las dimensiones históricas socio-política, 

religiosa, cultural y económica del antisemitismo interactúan con las 

actuales dimensiones políticas e ideológicas. En este sentido, la trayectoria 

histórica e ideológica de América Latina ha configurado alrededor de los 

ejes del anti-americanismo, el anti-colonialismo y el anti-imperialismo una 

dinámica específica en la cual se ha visto reforzado el reenvío de significados 

de uno a otro. 5 Este traslape fluido actúa como un “código cultural”, 

que identifica a amplios sectores del pensamiento público y de los medios 

de comunicación. 6 

EL ANTISEMITISMO EN MÉXICO, PASADO Y PRESENTE 

Si bien históricamente la cultura nacional se ha enfrentado a 

dificultades para lidiar con el “Otro”, el antisemitismo ha estado asociado 

principalmente con las fuerzas más conservadoras o con actores de extrema 

izquierda. 

En el México contemporáneo, el antisemitismo se vio inicialmente 

impulsado por los debates en torno a las políticas de inmigración durante la 

década de 1920. Grupos como La Liga Nacional Anti-China y Anit-Judía, 

fundada en 1930, y la Agrupación de Honarables Comerciantes, Industriales 

y Profesionales presionaron al gobierno para restringir la inmigración judía 

al país. 7 

5. Cfr. Robert S. Wistrich, Antisemitism. The Longest Hatred (London: 

Thames Methuen, 1991); Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into 

Conflict and Prejudice. New York: Norton, 1986. 

6. Shulamit Volkov, “Readjusting Cultural codes: Reflections on Antisemitism 

and Anti-Zionism” in Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Historical Perspective: 

Convergence and Difference, edited by Jeffrey Herf (New York, Routledge, 2007), 

39-43; Orly Haimovich, “Between Local and Global Representations: Israel and 

Diaspora Jewish Communities . . .” Propuesta de Investigación Doctoral, Universidad 

Hebrea de Jerusalén, 2011. 

7. Judit Bokser Liwerant, “El México de los años Treinta: Cardenismo, 

Inmigración Judía y Antisemitismo” en Xenofobias y Xenofilia en la historia de 

México siglos XVIII y XIX, Delia Salazar (Coordinadora), Dirección de Estudios 

Históricos, México, 2006: 379-416.


En la década de 1930, México experimentó brotes de antisemitismo 

con móviles y argumentaciones que se focalizaron en el terreno económico 

y racial. Poco a poco, el tema racial se convirtió en dominante entre los 

grupos de derecha. Entre ellos, Acción Revolucionaria Mexicana, fundada 

en 1934, operó a través de sus unidades paramilitares, las Camisas Doradas; 

Comité Pro-Raza y Confederación de la Clase Media ejercieron presión 

sobre el gobierno y llevaron a cabo campañas antisemitas que alcanzaron su 

pico en 1938-9. Pero no sólo ellos actuaron así. También sindicatos y 

organizaciones sindicales del ala izquierda se convirtieron en plataformas 

para las expresiones antisemitas relacionadas principalmente, como 

señalamos, con las políticas de inmigración y de exilio. 8 

En una mirada panorámica, las expresiones de antisemitismo posteriores 

han estado asociadas principalmente con estereotipos económicos y de 

clase y progresivamente se catalizaron a través de códigos políticos relacionados 

con Israel y el sionismo. Este último alcanzó su máxima expresión 

en 1975, cuando México dio su voto positivo en la ONU a la equiparación 

de sionismo con el racismo. La resolución 3379 que condenó al sionismo 

como una forma de racismo y discriminación, al tiempo que formó parte de 

la dinámica internacional de la deslegitimación de Israel, debido a las circunstancias 

locales, esencialmente relacionadas con las relaciones con el 

vecino del norte y el boicot turístico, también proyectó sobre la comunidad 

judía argumentos de falta de lealtad nacional, reforzando estereotipos de 

extranjería. 9 

En la década de 1990, la Guerra del Golfo consolidó una atmósfera 

intelectual de censura a Israel como un instigador de la guerra y una punta 

de lanza del imperialismo occidental. Más aún, la inversión del argumento 

de víctima- victimario, que comenzó a extenderse en los años setenta, se vio 

reforzada. 10 Su dinámica continuó asociada a la brecha y tensión existentes 

entre la relación bilateral con los Estados Unidos y los foros multilaterales 

en los que México gravita. 

Progresivamente, el discurso anti-sionista y anti-israelí ganó peso, ya 

que estaba conectado a los altibajos del proceso de paz en el Medio Oriente. 

Como tal, reflejó los proceso y episodios de la región: la primera y la 

segunda Intifada, la guerra del Golfo, las guerras del Líbano, la Operación 

8. Ibid. 

9. Judit Bokser Liwerant, “Fuentes de legitimación de la presencia judía en 

México: El voto positivo de México a la ecuación sionismo=racismo y su impacto 

sobre la comunidad judía,” Judaica Latinoamericana, No. III. Jerusalem: AMILAT 

and Magnes Press, 1997, 319. 

10. Luis Roniger, “Latin American Jews and Processes of Transnational Legitimization 

and De-Legitimization,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, vol. 9 No. 2 

(July 2010).


Plomo Fundido o la guerra de Gaza, así como los Acuerdos de Oslo, la 

Cumbre de Camp David y la Hoja de Ruta para las negociaciones de paz. 

En la historia del México moderno, el antisemitismo no ha sido un 

tema central para los partidos y movimientos políticos. La extrema derecha, 

con su patrón de su organización diferenciada, ha disminuido en su 

visibilidad pública y en la intensidad de sus actividades. Organizaciones 

como el Partido Laboral Mexicano, inspirado en LaRouche, la Federación 

Mexicana Anticomunista y Los Tecos han asumido una existencia latente. 

La excepción a este patrón de bajo perfil ha sido el ex Partido de las Águilas 

Mexicanas, que cambió en 1996 su nombre por el de Consejo del 

Pueblo de las Águilas Mexicanas. Su ideología, apodada como “neo-mexicanismo” 

promueve una imagen idealizada del pasado indígena de México 

y cuestiona el papel de Europa en la formación de la identidad nacional. Sin 

embargo, su actividad abierta se redujo y el Tribunal Federal Electoral le 

negó su solicitud de registro. El Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) ha condenando 

el grupo por sus opiniones antisemitas, racistas e intolerantes. 

El antisemitismo en México raras veces se ha manifestado a través de 

la violencia física, y su desarrollo puede verse fundamentalmente a través 

de su narrativa. Es en el ámbito discursivo, principalmente a través de los 

discursos mediáticos, que las representaciones negativas se construyen, 

transmiten y recrean. 

El Informe Anual sobre Antisemitismo en México-2010 elaborado por 

Tribuna Israelita, muestra una disminución significativa en el número de 

notas de prensa publicadas del 2009 al 2010 en relación con temas judíos e 

israelíes, (de 10.721 a 6.624 o –38,21%), incluyendo informes, artículos de 

opinión y editoriales de los periódicos Cuando se observa cada categoría 

clasificada por separado, sólo el número de dibujos animados ha aumentado 

(de 12 en 2009 a 64 en 2010). 11 Este patrón parece estar relacionado con el 

menor impacto en la opinión pública mexicana que el “asunto de Flotilla de 

la Paz” tuvo, en comparación con el impacto de la “Operación Plomo 

Fundido”, tendencia que parece ser consistente con el Informe Mundial para 

el 2010 del Centro Stephen Roth de la Universidad de Tel Aviv. 12 

De acuerdo con los criterios desarrollados por Tribuna Israelita, el 

11. Reporte sobre el Antisemitismo-2010, México, Tribuna Israelita. 

12. Cfr. “General Analysis. Overview” in Antisemitism Worldwide 2010. General 

Analysis. The Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities, The Stephen Roth 

Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism and The Kantor 

Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry. Tel Aviv University, European 

Jewish Congress. http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/


11,37% de las notas publicadas en el 2010 fueron “negativas”. 13 En contraste, 

sólo el 1.23% era “positivo” mientras que un 87,65% son clasificadas 

como “neutrales”. El porcentaje de noticias negativas en el apartado correspondiente 

fue mucho menor que el porcentaje de editoriales negativos 

(incluyendo la opinión y editoriales de los periódicos), dibujos animados y 

las cartas (1,54% para las noticias en comparación con el 46,54% de los 

editoriales, 23,44% de los dibujos animados y 47,92% para las cartas). Una 

vez más, existe una brecha entre el porcentaje de noticias negativas 

reportadas y el porcentaje de editoriales, caricaturas y cartas negativas. Es 

decir, pocas noticias negativas relacionadas con Judíos y o Israel tienen un 

impacto significativo y desproporcionado sobre la opinión pública 

mexicana. 

En cuanto al contenido del discurso de los medios de comunicación, 

2010 se ha caracterizado por una continuación de las pautas anteriores, así 

como ciertas tendencias de cambio. El sionismo, que, como se dijo, se ha 

identificado con el racismo, el colonialismo y el imperialismo se convirtió 

en un argumento implícito y dependiente del foco temático principal, que es 

el Estado de Israel, mismo que es presentado como un Estado beligerante y 

propenso a la guerra, opresivo y genocida. El eje de la violación de los 

derechos humanos ha adquirido una mayor presencia entre los argumentos 

críticos. El conflicto árabe-israelí sigue siendo presentado como parte del 

enfrentamiento entre el Occidente imperialista y el Tercer Mundo árabe y 

musulmán. 

Editoriales publicados en la prensa mexicana a lo largo del año han 

utilizado argumentos como los “crímenes de guerra” perpetrados por Israel 

en Líbano y Gaza; el carácter “terrorista” de Israel; en su puesta en práctica 

de la “masacre”, “genocidio” y “castigo colectivo” en Gaza a un millón y 

un medio de palestinos; la construcción del muro en la Margen Occidental, 

que trata de “exterminar” a 4,5 millones de palestinos; la “violación” del 

derecho internacional en los territorios ocupados; y el Estado sionista judío 

como un Estado racista en materia de nacionalidad y ciudadanía, y como un 

Estado de “apartheid”. 14 

El prejuicio también se puede revelar por la omisión de información 

13. En esta clasificación no hay una diferenciación explícita entre los argumentos 

antisemitas, anti-sionistas y anti-israelíes. 

14. Pascoe Pierce, Andrés. “La década del Terror”, en Crónica. 2 de enero, 

2010; Caño Tamayo, Xavier. “Sobre una bomba de violaciones de derechos humanos” 

en Rumbo de México. 4 de enero; Steinsleger, José. “¿Cuándo caerá el muro?” 

en La Jornada. 6, Delgado, Héctor. “ONU monosabia, ignora la autodeterminación” 

en Uno más uno. 11 de febrero; Dorberier, Manu. “El que se somete a la 

infamia, se convierte en infame” en El Sol de México. 20 de febrero,; Editorial 

“Lula en Israel” en La Jornada. 16 de marzo; Steinsleger, José. “¿Israelíes o


relevante que podría mostrar la perspectiva de Israel como un actor y 

jugador activo. Mientras que este recurso difiere de la asociación explícita 

de prejuicios, tiene también un impacto significativo. 

En la medida en que el Estado de Israel se convirtió en el foco principal 

de la argumentación, las interconexiones fluidas entre el anti-israelismo 

y el antisemitismo histórico, o entre el anti-israelismo y la dilución del 

Holocausto, se dieron a partir de él Las conexiones de sentido y los reenvíos 

de significado pueden ser ejemplificados en la superposición y traslape 

entre anti-Israelismo y Holocausto a través de analogías, metáforas y 

paralelismos: el Muro de Cisjordania habría sido concebido como parte de 

un gran plan estratégico que persigue el “extermino” lento y sostenido del 

pueblo palestino “exterminio”, “Esta vez, sin cámaras de gas”. 15 La Nakba 

es concebida como la expulsión por parte de Israel “de los 700.000 palestinos, 

precedida por l “limpieza étnica”, lo que tiene un paralelo directo con 

el Holocausto: la palabra Nakba denota el “Holocausto más antiguo y prolongado” 

de la historia contemporánea, como resultado de la creación de un 

“Estado ilegal sionista”. 16 El muro nazi-fascista habría sido un recurso para 

encerrar a los palestinos en “guetos”. 

Entrelazado con el discurso nacional/regional anti-estadounidense y 

anti-imperialista que recurrentemente hace hincapié en la alianza entre los 

EE.UU e Israel, el muro construído por Israel ha sido equiparado con el 

que divide la frontera de Estados Unidos con México pero también diferenciado: 

sólo el primero es calificado como un “muro de genocidio”. 17 

Tal como hemos afirmado, el episodio de la Flotilla refleja el modo 

como las expresiones anti-israelíes y antisemitas fluctúan acorde a los 

altibajos del conflicto en Oriente Medio. 18 La imagen negativa de Israel 

llegó al pico durante este episodio que transmitió y reforzó una imagen de 

un Estado cuya naturaleza es “genocida” y “anti-humanitaria” y su código 

de acción, ilegítimo. 19 

También se debe evaluar el impacto en los medios de comunicación 

judíos?” en La Jornada. 21 de abril, Gelman, Juan. “Prohibido y ya” en Milenio 

Diario. 29 de mayo, 2010. 

15. Steinsleger, José. “¿Cuándo caerá el muro?” en La Jornada. 6 de enero, 

2010. 

16. Steinsleger, José. “Palestina: orígenes de la nakba” en La Jornada. 5 de 

mayo, 2010. 

17. Delgado, Héctor. “¡Bienvenida Señora Michelle Obama!”en Uno más uno. 

15 de abril, 2010. 

18. Beltrán, Esteban (Director de Amnistía Internacional en España). “El asfixiante 

bloqueo de Gaza”, en El País. 1 de junio, 2010. 

19. Delgado, Héctor. “Israel asesina marinos civiles en Gaza”, en Uno más uno. 

1 de junio, 2010.


nacional de la dinámica transnacional que alimenta y hace fluir la información. 

En concreto, La Jornada y Unomás Uno—periódicos de la 

izquierda—reproducen regularmente los artículos editoriales de The Guardian 

y The Independent y sus propios artículos de opinión refuerzan esta 

posición. 

También en la prensa mainstream—especialmente en Milenio, El 

Financiero y Excélsior—ha habido una mayor presencia de artículos críticos 

de las acciones israelíes, principalmente la política de asentamientos 

del gobierno de Benjamin Netanyahu. 20 Ciertamente refleja el mayor o 

menor grado en que las posturas de análisis interactúan con la violencia 

simbólica y sus consecuencias a través del juego de significados y motivaciones 

( voces críticas vis-a-vis prejuicio). 

Por el contrario, los vínculos de la comunidad judía con Israel y con 

otros centros judíos han ganado legitimidad en la esfera pública - reforzada 

por el reconocimiento y visibilidad de la existencia de una diáspora mexicana, 

negada en el pasado, y, por tanto, ha disminuido el cuestionamiento 

del carácter transnacional de la vida judía. Argumentos críticos de los nexos 

entre la comunidad judía e Israel o la comunidad judía de América del 

Norte han estado ausentes en el discurso público. 

Estereotipos tradicionales, como el control del sistema financiero 

nacional o internacional o el tropos de grupo auto-segregado han sido 

mínimos, a pesar de que episodios políticos concretos despertaron el argumento 

del interés particular o grupal por sobre el bienestar nacional. 

Como se ha dicho, el antisemitismo en México no ha reflejado 

violencia. Mientras que hubo 67 incidentes antisemitas en 2010 (en su 

mayoría compuesto por acciones de acoso: amenazas verbales e insultos), 

sólo hubo dos incidentes de agresión física y una amenaza de bomba. 

CONSIDERACIONES FINALES 

El anti-sionsimo y al anti-Israelismo y su conexión de significados con 

el antisemitismo son componentes de un “código cultural” en torno al cual 

exponentes del campo progresista y los intelectuales de izquierda se identifican. 

Esta convergencia teórica y práctica fluctúa en consonancia con los 

altibajos del conflicto palestino-israelí. 

La globalización de este conflicto pone de manifiesto la interacción de 

las circunstancias internacionales, regionales, nacionales y locales. El 

proceso de la representación social de Israel ha adquirido un nuevo patrón 

común en América Latina, aunque con variaciones nacionales. 

20. Menéndez del Valle, Emilio. “Imponer la paz en Palestina”, 9 de abril 2010.


A principios de diciembre de 2010, varios países de América Latina 

anunciaron su reconocimiento formal de un Estado palestino basado en las 

fronteras existentes antes de la guerra de 1967. Brasil tomó la iniciativa y 

fue seguido poco después por Argentina, Bolivia y Ecuador. El presidente 

de la Autoridad Palestina, Mahmoud Abbas, puso la primera piedra de una 

embajada palestina en Brasilia el 31 de diciembre de 2010. El 28 de enero 

2011 Paraguay también anunció su reconocimiento de Palestina. A 

principios de ese mes de enero, Chile y Perú manifestaron que reconocerían 

un Estado palestino, aunque explicitando que las fronteras puedan ser 

negociados y pactadas por ambas partes del conflicto. La posición de Chile 

fue seguida por una fuerte presión de la comunidad palestina que es muy 

amplia en ese país, tal como se dejar ver en las mociones presentadas en el 

Senado y la Cámara de Diputados a finales de 2010 y la realización de 

reuniones de alto nivel con diplomáticos palestinos, representantes de la 

Liga Árabe en Chile, y miembros de las comunidades palestinas. Sin 

embargo, en su declaración no hubo referencia explícita a las fronteras de 

1967. 

Colombia ha dicho que no va a reconocer un Estado palestino hasta 

que un mutuo acuerdo de paz sea alcanzado. Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, 

Panamá y Belice no se han pronunciado. Cabe recordar que varios 

países de América Latina ya habían reconocido un Estado palestino con 

anterioridad a los recientes esfuerzos, entre ellos Cuba, Venezuela (2009), 

Nicaragua y Costa Rica (2008). México aún no ha tomado una posición 

oficial. 

Es probable que la globalización del conflicto palestino-israelí, continúe 

expandiéndose y seguirá siendo así se es que permanecen ciertas condiciones, 

tales como el estancamiento del proceso de paz, la irrupción de 

nuevos ciclos de violencia en el Medio Oriente, el fortalecimiento de los 

grupos islámicos radicales en los países que ahora experimentan agitación 

política, la presencia de neo-populista de los gobiernos de la región y la 

interacción particular entre las decisiones estratégicas de las organizaciones 

internacionales y regionales y actores políticos nacionales y locales. 

*Agradezco a Yael Siman su valiosa colaboración y a René Dayan, por el acceso a 

la información de Tribuna Israelita.

Latin America and the Middle East: 

The Political Background 

Julián Schvindlerman* 

Latin America does not have a geostrategic weight hitting strongly globally. 

With the exception of Brazil, it can leave its mark in the international 

community through votes. In the Western hemisphere, however, 

Latin America strives to expand its ideologies, to receive problematic 

countries and questioned groupings, and to affect the political climate and 

regional security. Latin America contains very different ideologies, and 

its destiny will depend much on the direction that, collectively, their 

inhabitants permit their leaders to give. 

Key Words: Latin America, Antisemitism, Hizbullah, Jews, Arabs, Iran 

Throughout Latin America, the flood of participation in oriental subjects 

was recently in evidence with the several expressions of formal support 

granted by all South America, minus Colombia, to a possible unilateral 

declaration of a Palestinian state. Brazil, by surprise, started up the response 

to a Palestinian key interest in obtaining formal recognition to a hypothetical 

reality that arose like fruit out of the bilateral negotiations. “I always 

have the hope of having the best form to solve the problems between the 

negotiating countries,” said the Argentine chancellor, Héctor Timerman, 

when explaining his justification for taking an action—facilitating the 

attainment of a political objective for the Palestine Authority but eluding 

the dialogue with the government of Israel—that in fact caused the 

opposite. 

Although the diverse official notices varied in some degree in their 

content—essentially about the stipulation of the final borders of the 

future—the certain thing is that altogether they constituted an important 

Latin American endorsement of the Palestine diplomacy. For February initially, 

soon delayed until March or April, and finally postponed indefinitely 

due to the massive protests in the Arab world, the Summit of Government 

and Chiefs of State was due to be held in Lima III of the America Forum of 

the Arab South-Countries (ASPA), where it was considered a collective 

expression of recognition of the Palestinian state. By the end of March, a 

meeting under the auspices of the UN “in support of La Paz Palestinian- 

Israeli,” attended by delegates of Latin America and the Caribbean, 

occurred in Montevideo, in which Palestinian representatives announced 

51


that they will present/display for consideration in the General Assembly 

next September the approval of a resolution in favor of a Palestinian state. 

The official notices surely foretell the strategy that the Latin American 

nations in the UN will use if the Palestinians carry out their ambition. 

Another recent event that showed the regional involvement in Middle 

East concerns was the response of the Latin American nations to the crisis 

in Libya. Peru not only assumed a role of exemplary leadership when cutting 

diplomatic ties with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, going ahead not 

only of its Latin brothers but also most of the entire world. If in this way 

Lima longed to produce a dominating effect, however, it did not obtain it. 

Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and Paraguay, among others, quickly condemned 

the repression of the Libyan government but didn’t do much more than that. 

The Argentine Republic delayed its pronouncement, finally issuing a 

laconic official notice in a restrained judicial tone, later reinforced by a 

message in Twitter sent by the chancellor: “Libya: Deep preoccupation of 

the Argentine government. Official notice.” 

Once the rebel military action against Libya began, it was endorsed by 

Liga Arab (the Arab League) and validated by a resolution of the Security 

Council of the United Nations, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de 

Kirchner revealed her opposition when affirming “the great centers of presumed 

civilization continue solving differences with explosions and with 

violence.” De Kirchner chose the occasion of a reception given to the president 

of Venezuela, when he visited Argentina, to make her statement. (During 

a trip to Libya, in November 2008, the Venezuelan president had 

indicated his admiration of the Libyan leader, saying that “we have 

embraced very strong ideas and convictions . . .”). 

As anticipated, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua supported Colonel 

Gaddafi. It was even speculated that the Libyan dictator would flee to 

Caracas. It must be remembered that presidents Daniel Grouse, Húgo Chávez, 

Fidel Castro, and Evo Morales were recipients of the Al-Gaddafi International 

Prize for Human Rights ($250,000 US) granted by Tripoli in recent 

years. While Gaddafi sent tanks and airplanes to repress the population— 

which, according to him, loved it and was prepared to die in the defense of 

its country, and alleged that Al-Qaeda was behind the protests—Húgo Chávez 

chanted “the alive Libya and lives Gaddafi”; Daniel Grouse telephoned 

the colonel to support him; and Fidel Castro accused NATO, not Gaddafi, 

of causing the violence. With Gaddafi blaming Islamists and castrating 

forces of the North Atlantic, the commentator Moisés Naím ironically 

lamented the dilemma of the presidents of Nicaragua and Venezuela, saying 

that “To avoid having Fidel or Muammar taking over the party, the conclusion 

must be that the destabilization of Libya is a combined-arms operation 

of NATO and Al-Qaeda.”

2011] THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND 53 

Even if Latin American attention to the Middle East were restricted to 

the scope of diplomacy, the impact of the occasional patetismo would still 

be felt. There are many moments when the interrelation between these two 

zones shines real and dangerous. 

At the beginning of April, a note published in the Brazilian magazine 

Veja achieved world-wide notoriety. The note denounced the presence of 

members of Muslim extremist groups in Brazil. According to the publication, 

members of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizbullah operate on Brazilian 

ground, collect money, spread propaganda, recruit militants, and plan 

attacks. Based on documents of the local police, Interpol, and Veja, one of 

the people in charge of the propaganda apparatus of Al-Qaeda stated that 

Lebanese commander Khaled Hussein Alí has resided in Brazil for two 

decades. 

From San Pablo, Veja coordinates members in seventeen countries 

through the Mediatic Battalion Jihad and translates messages from Al- 

Qaeda. The magazine accounts for the presence of Hesham Amhed Mahmoud 

Eltrabily and Mohamed Alí Abou Elezz Ibrahim Soliman, both 

wanted by the Egyptian authorities for colluding in the Luxor tourist attack 

of 1997, which left sixty-two dead. One Lebanese and two Egyptians were 

taken into custody and later released. The Supreme Federal Court also 

denied the Egyptian extradition orders, alleging that the tests were insufficient 

and that errors of translation blocked the extradition. 

Veja indicated that in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, there are 

Hizbullah and Hamas cells that falsify passports for militants who arrived 

from the Middle East. They note that two Brazilians, Alan Cheidde and 

Anuar Pechliye, were Islamists trained in Afghanistan and returned to Brazil 

for passport falsification. In 2005, the federal police arrested twenty Foz 

do Iguaçu extremists and confiscated thousand two hundred false passports. 

Led by the Lebanese Chaim Baalbaki and the Jordanian Sael Basheer 

Yahya Najib Atari, the group also had fixed marriages of Arab terrorists 

with Brazilian single mothers for $500 US, which, by recognizing the children, 

allowed the terrorists to avoid extradition. 

The magazine also denounced the frequent trips to Brazil by Mohsen 

Rabbani, former cultural advisor to the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires. 

Interpol’s “red notification” includes participation in the AMIA massacre of 

1994, which killed and maimed Jews. Rabbani is believed to have recruited 

twenty young people from San Pablo, Pernambuco, and Parana for religious 

indoctrination in Tehran. The general solicitor of Brazil has apparently not 

noticed that “without anybody perceiving this, a generation is arising from 

Islamic extremists in the country.” 

Veja’s expose has not done more than adding a drumbeat of legitimate


alarm to the existing preoccupation with the noticeable Iranian presence in 

the zone. The Israeli academic Ely Karmon has been a pioneer in documenting 

the strong ties of the Islamic Republic of Iran with Latin America. 

Although Iran and the region enjoyed previous cordial relations, it was from 

the ascent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power that these bonds were 

strengthened, especially with countries that conform to the armor-piercing 

core of populism and of anti-occidentalism—but not only with them. As of 

2005, Iranian foreign policy favors a regional approach to Latin America, 

expanding from the bilateral. In his article “The Mideast Axis of 

Destabilization,” Karmon talks about the bond between “Tehran and 

Damascus” and cites its agenda: propagating Shi’ism (the Wayuu tribe in 

Venezuela and the Totxiles in Mexico were recruited), extending the operational 

base of Hizbullah (from the Opposite Triple toward Bolivia, Venezuela, 

Brazil, and other places); gaining diplomatic support in international 

forums for its illicit nuclear program (e.g., some Latin American nations 

have abstained or favored Iranian interests in UN votes); obtaining uranium, 

an essential raw material for its nuclear development (in May of 2009, The 

New York Times reproduced an Associated Press cable referring to Israeli 

denunciation of the provision of uranium from La Paz and Caracas to Iran); 

limiting the impact of worldwide economic sanctions when creating an 

alternative market (as it can be assessed from the multiple joint ventures 

between Iran and several countries of the region); and, generally, erecting a 

counterbalance to the United States—i.e., installing troops in border countries 

of Iran in a zone in retaliation for U.S. presence in the Middle East. 

Forums, congresses, and conferences have been focus points for the interrelation. 

Thus, the 2007 International Conference on Latin America in 

Tehran, titled “Development in Latin America: Its paper and its status in the 

future international system,” counted on the participation of Argentina, Brazil, 

Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela (two children of 

Ernesto “Che” Guevara were invited). The same year the conference took 

place, the International Conference of Latin American Literature was held 

in Iran, in which the Iranian chancellor announced the opening or re-opening 

of Iranian embassies in several Latin American nations. In 2009, the 

forum was realized via the International Forum for Resistance, Anti-Imperialism, 

Solidarity between Peoples and Alternatives, which was held in January 

2009. 

The event, organized by Hizbullah, included four hundred Latin American 

delegates. The forum may have been inspired by anti-globalization 

assemblies held in Jakarta, Bombay, Beirut, and Porto Alegre between 2003 

and 2005; 2005 marks the first time that Hizbullah was invited to a meeting 

of this type. The Iranian president has also visited Venezuela, Bolivia, Nic-


aragua, Ecuador, and Brazil. High-ranking Latin American civil servants 

traveled to Tehran reciprocally. 

Of all the Latin American nations, Venezuela has been the most hospitable 

host of Iran. In addition to the hundreds of signed economic agreements 

throughout the years, it is possible to mention other areas of 

cooperation. A transoceanic flight between Tehran and Caracas exists, with 

stops in Damascus. The flight is not commercially profitable, does not 

admit ordinary passengers, and is not subject to regular customs control. 

Some Venezuelan universities teach Farsi. Iranian factories, clearly dedicated 

to bicycles and tractor manufacture or to uranium processing, were 

built in the remote countryside and are guarded by Iranians. Recall that 

Chávez intended to support the nuclear program of ayatollahas and Hizbullah, 

while the extremist groups like the CRAF and Spain’s ETA receive 

Venezuelan state sponsorship. 

Last year, leaders of Hamas, Hizbullah, and the Islamic Jihad Palestine 

met with Húgo Chávez in Caracas’s Venezuelan military intelligence 

center. Hizbullah’s Tarek el-Aissami was placed in charge of the Venezuelan 

passport agency and named its minister of justice and interior and vice 

chancellor; his father has praised Sadam Hussein and Osama Bin-Laden 

publicly, and his brother is linked to Walid Makled, a Syrian-Venezuelan 

dealer. In 2008, Washington identified the Venezuelan diplomat in Damascus 

and Beirut, Ghazi Nasr al-Din, as an agent of Hizbullah, whereas Nawaf 

Musawi, director of international relations of the Party of Allah, participated 

that same year in the Venezuelan embassy in Beirut commemorating 

the failure of a coup d’etat against Chávez. (Recall that Chávez was the first 

world leader to congratulate Ahmadinejad’s electoral victory in 2009.) The 

island of Daisy, once a tourist paradise, has become a zone for training 

Islamist operatives. By the end of last April, The Arab Times reported that 

citizens of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia are being trained in Venezuela 

in armed violence, committing murders, kidnappings, and transporting 

hostages by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. 

Venezuela, which has expelled ambassadors from the United States 

and Israel, officially promotes antisemitism and anti-Zionism; close to 50 

anti-Zionist or antisemitic items can be found daily in the Venezuelan press. 

“Damn you, State of Israel!” Chávez said on television just a short time 

back. In 2006, he accused Israel of being Nazi, called Colombia “the Israel 

of Latin America” in 2009, and in 2005, speaking to on an anniversary of 

the discovery of America, proclaimed that “You were expelled from your 

mother country like the heroic Palestinian town.” The Venezuelan Jewish 

community, lacking access or otherwise ignored by the government, has 

suffered the harassment of the chavista regime. In Caracas, a major Hebrew


institution in the capital was entered and searched under the pretext of looking 

for arms, and Tiferet Israel synagogue was profaned. 

In June 2008, the Venezuelan ambassador in Moscow denounced a 

coup d’etat against his government and blamed the Mossad and “Venezuelan 

but Jewish citizens” as participants in the plot. On Christmas 2005, Chávez 

expressed public regret that “some minorities, among them the 

descendants of the assassins of Christ, have seized the wealth of this 

world.” Ever since Chávez assumed power, nearly 50 percent of the Jewish 

community has emigrated from Venezuela. 

The relationship of Brazil with Iran has caused great surprise in some 

corners. Like other emergent world-wide regional powers, such as China, 

India, Russia, and South Africa, Brazil has positioned itself as a nexus 

between the First and Third Worlds, able to play a constructive global role. 

Between 2005 and 2010, Brazil gave millions in worldwide aid: million in 

loans and cancellations of debt to poor countries and millions in humanitarian 

aid, scholarships for study and technical qualification, and other supportive 

acts. Domestically, it has reaped appreciable profits: Brazil will host 

the 2014 World Cup, the world’s most highly anticipated and watched tournament, 

and the 2016 Olympic Games; its economy has grown remarkably, 

and Lula da Silva and his successor Dilma Rousseff have enjoyed high 

approval ratings (Lula had 80% of popular support when leaving office, and 

Rousseff, the first woman president of the country, is endorsed by 73% of 

Brazilians). Walt Disney Company even set one of his last animated 

films—River in Brazil—in this prospering environment! 

Nevertheless, toward the end of his second mandate, President Lula 

seemed to defy the interests of the United States in the region in several 

areas and consolidating a bond with Iran that seemed inconceivable just a 

short time before. Like Chávez, Lula endorsed the doubtful electoral results 

of Iran, invited the Iranian president to its country, and he himself visited 

Tehran. In addition, he supported the right of Iran to have a civil nuclear 

program. The ayatollah opposed the application of sanctions against the 

regime and opened a dialogue with Tehran that was seriously questioned by 

several global leaders. During the meeting of the Annual Assembly of 

Interpol in Morocco, in 2007, Brazil abstained in the voting that validated 

the emission of “red notifications” against prominent figures of the Iranian 

government for its role in the attack against the AMIA in Argentina, brother 

republic of Brazil, which had initiated the order. 

Again Brazil abstained, in the 2009 International Atomic Energy 

Agency (IAEA) conference in Vienna, when the Iranian nuclear question 

came up about the favorable votes of Argentina; the United States struggled 

with Russia, China, and the European Union. In May 2010, Brazil joined 

Turkey in an attempt to protect Iran, through diplomacy, from the imminent


adoption of international sanctions sponsored by Washington. Even in symbolic 

aspects, there were broken ties with the Iranian question, such as visiting 

the tomb of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, but refusing to visit the tomb of 

Theodor Herzl in Jerusalem, during a visit to the region in 2010. The ideological 

direction that Lula had given its foreign policy can be inferred. Brazil, 

through Lula, had also abstained in voting in the Commission of Human 

Rights against Sri Lanka, Congo, and North Korea, although it had voted 

against Sudan in the Security Council. 

Lula described Chávez as “without a doubt the best Venezuelan president 

in one hundred years.” His last visit to Fidel Castro was remembered 

as a great shame when he agreed with the death of an opponent jailed in a 

hunger strike. Lula, creator of the social forum Antiglobalización de Porto 

Alegre, avoided receiving the Global Statesmanship Award in Davos by 

alleging at the last moment that a medical impediment prevented him from 

traveling. In addition, Lula was in opposition to the White House when he 

supported the restoration of Cuba to the Organization of American States 

(OAS), whose explicit charter stated that only democracies can be a member; 

he gave diplomatic shelter to the demoted president of Honduras and 

Chávez ally Manuel Zelaya; he protested the agreement between the United 

States and Colombia for the American use of military bases in the Central 

American country; and he adopted a more intense, Third World tone in 

public that contrasted with his more moderate previous image. 

When assuming the presidency at the beginning of 2011, Dilma Rousseff 

aroused doubts given her guerrilla and Marxist past. Her closeness with 

Lula, who chose her as his successor, could suggest a continuation of the 

controversial policies of her mentor. But her first ventures in the international 

sand have turned out to be much more centrist than those of her 

predecessor, at least for the moment. Her past history of feminist commitment 

and being tortured as a guerilla moved her to condemn the practices of 

human rights in Cuba and Iran. In the last UN voting, Rousseff led Brazil to 

vote in favor of creating a representative of human rights for Iran, naming 

Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, a former and respected ambassador to Washington, 

as the minister of external relations. For its part, the United States 

indicated that it no longer had an interest in restoring Lula’s legacy in Brazil. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was present in the January 1 ceremony 

marking Rousseff as president, which surely meant that New Year 

celebrations were limited. 

President Barack Obama traveled to Brazil in the middle of March, 

even though the warlike fight in Libya was already initiated. The visit, part 

of a program that also included Chile and El Salvador, was interpreted as a 

sign of the friendliness of Washington toward Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. 

Lula, incidentally, was unique as a former Brazilian president in not attend-


ing the lunch in honor of Obama in Itamary Palace. Rousseff condemned 

the bombing of NATO on Libya, and Obama did not support the Brazilian 

aspiration to obtain a permanent seat in the Security Council, which 

together with pending commercial disagreements suggest that there will be 

tension in the relationship. It is evident, however, that Rousseff has separated 

from the whistle-blowing, populist diplomacy of last year, particularly 

around Tehran. 

Argentina as well has maintained an ambivalent policy toward Iran. Its 

relationship with the Islamic theocracy changed considerably from earlier 

times, when Hizbullah agents perpetrated the first Islamist attack in Latin 

America (the blast of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, in 1992; 29 died) 

and the worst antisemitic attack in the diaspora from the time of World War 

II—the AMIA attack, two years later, in which 85 died. Taking its direction 

from the government of Carlos Menem, who obstructed the progress of the 

investigation; the marriage of Néstor and Christina Férnandez de Kirchner 

gave a considerable impulse to the same, by denouncing Iran in international 

forums, asking for Interpol to capture Iranian suspects, and designating 

a Jewish public prosecutor, equipping him to make an effective judicial 

investigation. 

Some facts, however, have created a frame of doubt about the positioning 

of bureaucracy before Tehran, i.e.: 

a) The ideological proximity of Kirchner with countries allied to 

Iran—Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua especially; 

b) The suspicions of the political use of the AMIA attack to insult the 

Kirshner predecessor, Carlos Nemen—although Menem supporters 

and Kirchner supporters belong to the same political movement of 

Peronism, the little mutual love is public knowledge; 

c) The peculiar relationship of government officials with Luis D’Elía, 

the popular anti-Zionist leader situated extremely near the Iranian 

embassy; 

d) The fact that under the presidency of Cristina Kirchner bilateral 

commerce has grown 10,000 percent in less than a year; 

e) The Argentine delegation before the UN in Geneva had not left the 

room when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began to speak within the 

framework of the denominated meeting Durban II, in April of 2009; 

f) The lack of government support for Argentine diplomat Rogelio 

Pfirter in his nomination for an appointment in the Foreign Ministry; 

Washington was in favor, but Tehran was not. 

By the end of last March, the Argentinian daily Profile published a 

story that generated widespread controversy. One of its leading columnists, 

mentioning secret documents, denounced the existence of negotiations con-


ducted by Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman between Buenos 

Aires and Tehran that would set aside investigations into the embassy and 

AMIA attacks in exchange for increased commercial ties with Iran. The 

Israeli government reacted angrily, labeling this news as “very serious” and 

warning that the Argentine conduct would constitute “a manifestation of 

infinite cynicism and dishonor to the dead,” thus putting in doubt the invitation 

previously extended to Timerman to visit Jerusalem. 

The public prosecutor of the AMIA cause, Dr. Alberto Nisman, joined 

by prominent Argentinians, denied the Profile story, but the government 

remained silent. The Israeli ambassador in Buenos Aires, Daniel Gazit, 

requested explanations from the Argentinian Ministry of Foreign Relations, 

but ten days later, he informed the Jerusalem Post, he had not received an 

official answer. Interrogated by the press, Timerman initially eluded the 

entire topic, invoking Talmudic rules and invoking the memory of his 

father, the famous journalist Jacobo Timerman. Finally, however, Timerman 

issued the following statement as a refutation of the Profile story: 

“There is no evidence that Argentina has changed its course of action, 

which began in 2003 with the election of Néstor Kirchner and in which the 

objective of our country is to investigate the attacks to the AMIA and the 

Israeli embassy.” 

Profile, by denying access to the documentation it used, further compromised 

the story. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued an order to release 

the documentation, but Profile did not comply. In this atmosphere of doubts 

and serious denunciations, it was a situation that called for the written text, 

which would eliminate all ambiguity. Unfortunately, this text was never 

provided. 

The government also kept silent about another, related serious denunciation. 

Federal judge Daniel Rafecas revealed that the repeated attacks in 

front of the Israeli embassy were being organized by Luis D’Elía with 

financing from the Iranian embassy. Despite the profound implications of 

such a denunciation, the government chose not to comment on the matter; 

in fact, it made a video endorsement of the launching of a demonstration in 

Luna Park led by D’Elía. D’Elía had conducted a radio interview with Mohsen 

Rabbani, who is on Interpol’s list of terrorists, thus giving him—a fugitive 

from Argentine justice—a public platform to deny his trips to Brazil on 

a false passport. 

The Argentina of the Kirchners also disturbs in other ways. Néstor was 

able to organize a competing summit in 2005 with a U.S. president, George 

W. Bush, during his official visit (45,000 leftist activists crowded the stage 

for the occasion); Cristina ordered an “operation sweepings” when North 

American authorities indicated the existence of a chavista clandestine 

financing of her electoral campaign; the chancellor can preach to the United


States to bomb Libya at the same time as the official Argentinian news 

agency Télam makes an agreement to exchange information with the Syrian 

Arab News Agency while the regime of Bashar el-Assad militarily 

represses pro-democracy demonstrators; and the government can applaud a 

freedom of the press award given to Húgo Chávez by the University of La 

Plata—when Chávez is fiercely combatting freedom of expression in his 

country. 

These facts give an account of the ideological vision of a government 

for whom, benignly, the foreigner usually is characterized as 

“unclassifiable.” 

*Julian Schvindlerman is a political analyst and the author of Rome and Jerusalem 

(Random House Mondadori/Debate, 2010) and Land by Peace, Land by War 

(Ensayos del sud, 2002). He has spoken at conferences on contemporary political 

subjects throughout Latin America and is regularly interviewed in the region. His 

commentary can be read in Communities and heard on Radio Jai.

América Latina y el Oriente Medio: 

El Trasfondo Político 

Julián Schvindlerman* 

América Latina no tiene un peso geoestratégico golpear fuertemente a 

nivel mundial. Con la excepción de Brasil, puede dejar su marca en la 

comunidad internacional a través de los votos. Sin embargo, en el hemisferio 

occidental, América Latina ejerce para expandir sus ideologías, para 

recibir los países problemáticos y agrupaciones cuestionadas y afectar a 

todo el clima político y de seguridad regional. América Latina alberga 

muy diferentes ideologías y su destino dependerá mucho de la dirección 

que, colectivamente, sus habitantes permite a sus dirigentes a dar. 

Palabras Clave: Latinoamérica, Antisemitismo, Hezbolá, Judíos, Árabes, 

Irán; Primero: America Latina, Judio, Israel 

América Latina la participación de las inundaciones en temas 

orientales fue recientemente en evidencia con las varias expresiones de 

apoyo formal concedida por toda América del Sur, menos Colombia, a una 

posible declaración unilateral de un Estado palestino. Brasil, por sorpresa, 

puso en marcha la corriente que responde a un interés clave palestino en 

obtener reconocimiento formal a una hipotética realidad que tuvo que 

surgen como fruto de las negociaciones bilaterales. “Siempre tengo la 

esperanza de que se está negociando la mejor forma para resolver los 

problemas entre los países,” explicó el canciller argentino Héctor Timerman 

al querer extrañamente para justificar una acción que causó, en realidad, 

todo lo contrario, al facilitar a la Autoridad Palestina la obtención de un 

objetivo político eludir el diálogo con el Gobierno de Israel. 

Aunque los diversos comunicados variaban en cierto grado en su contenido—esencialmente 

sobre la estipulación de las fronteras finales del 

futuro Estado lo cierto es que, en conjunto, constituyen un importante 

respaldo a América Latina a la diplomacia Palestina. Para febrero inicialmente, 

pronto retrasaron para marzo o abril, y finalmente pospuesto 

indefinidamente debido a las masivas protestas en el mundo árabe, la Cumbre 

de Gobierno y jefes de estado fue debido a realizado en Lima III del 

Foro América del sur-países árabes (ASPA) donde se consideró que ser 

incluidos en la declaración final una expresión colectiva de reconocimiento 

del Estado palestino. A finales de marzo una reunión bajo el auspicio de las 

Naciones Unidas “en favor de La Paz israelo-palestino” con asistencia de 

61


delegados de América Latina y el Caribe tuvo lugar en Montevideo, en que 

representantes palestinos anunciaron que se presentan a consideración de la 

Asamblea General el próximo mes de septiembre la aprobación de una 

resolución en favor de un Estado palestino. El funcionario avisos seguramente 

presagiar el papel que desempeñarán las Naciones de América Latina 

en la ONU si los palestinos realizan su ambición. 

Otro acontecimiento reciente que mostró la participación regional en 

temas de Oriente Medio, fue la respuesta de las Naciones de América 

Latina a la crisis en Libia. Perú no sólo asumió un rol de liderazgo ejemplar 

al cortar lazos diplomáticos con el régimen de Muammar Gaddafi, seguir 

adelante a sus hermanos latinos pero prácticamente a todo el mundo. Si de 

esta manera Lima anhelado para generar un efecto dominado, no consiguieron 

lo. Brasil, Chile, Costa Rica y Paraguay, entre otros, rápidamente 

condenaron la represión del Gobierno Libia, pero no eran mucho más allí. 

La República Argentina retrasa su pronunciamiento finalmente a emitir un 

comunicado lacónico y de tono judicial, posteriormente reforzada por un 

mensaje en Twitter enviada por el Canciller: “Libia: profunda preocupación 

del Gobierno argentino. Notificación oficial.” 

Una vez que la acción militar contra Libia comenzó a pedido de los 

rebeldes libios, con aval de la Liga Árabe y validado por una resolución del 

Consejo de seguridad de las Naciones Unidas, el presidente argentino Cristina 

Fernández de Kirchner deja entrever su oposición al afirmar “los 

grandes centros de civilización presunto continúan le resolver las diferencias 

de las explosiones y con violencia.” El Presidente escogió la ocasión 

de una recepción dada al Presidente de Venezuela, de visita en el país, para 

llevar a cabo su declaración de condena. (Durante un viaje a Libia, en 

noviembre de 2008, el Presidente indicó su admiración por el líder libio 

cuando diciendo que ambos “hemos abrazado ideas muy fuertes y convictions 

. . .”). 

Como se preveía, Venezuela, Cuba y Nicaragua apoyaron a coronel 

Gaddafi. Incluso se especuló con Caracas como destino de posible vuelo de 

dictador libio. Hay que recordar que los presidentes Daniel Grouse, Húgo 

Chávez, Fidel Castro y Evo Morales fueron los destinatarios del Premio 

Gadafi internacional para los derechos humanos ($250.000 dólares) concedida 

por Trípoli en los últimos años. Mientras que Gaddafi envió tanques 

y aviones para reprimir a la población—lo que según él amaba, y estaba 

preparado para morir en su defensa y afirmó que Al-Qaeda estaba detrás de 

las protestas—Húgo Chávez coreaba “Libia vivo y vidas Gaddafi” Daniel 

Grouse telefoneó el coronel en su apoyo a él y Fidel Castro acusó a la 

OTAN, no a Gaddafi, en relación con la violencia. Con Gaddafi culpar a los 

islamistas y castró fuerzas del Atlántico Norte, el comentarista Moisés 

Naím irónicamente lamentó el dilema de los presidentes de Nicaragua y

2011] EL TRASFONDO POLÍTICO 63 

Venezuela, “para evitar tener que tomar partido por Fidel o Muammar, concluirá 

que la desestabilización de Libia es una operación combinada de 

armas de la OTAN y Al-Qaeda.” 

Si la atención de América Latina a Oriente Medio se limitan al ámbito 

de la diplomacia, el impacto de su patetismo ocasional todavía podría 

anotarse. Por momentos, la interrelación entre estas dos zonas brilla incluso 

real y peligroso. 

A principios de abril, una nota publicada en el brasileño revista Veja 

tomó notoriedad en todo el mundo y denunció la presencia de miembros de 

grupos extremistas musulmanes en Brasil. Según la publicación, los miembros 

de Al-Qaida, Hamas y Hezbolá operan en suelo brasileño, recaudan 

dinero, propagación y reclutan militantes y planean ataques. Según documentos 

de la policía local y la Interpol, Veja, una de las personas a cargo 

del aparato de propaganda de Al-Qaeda informó que libanés Khaled Hussein 

Alí resida allí durante dos décadas. 

Desde San Pablo coordinates miembros en 17 países a través de la 

Yihad mediática de batallón y traduce el mensaje de Al-Qaeda. La revista 

representa la presencia de Hesham Amhed Mahmoud Eltrabily y Mohamed 

Ali Abou Elezz Ibrahim Soliman, buscado por las autoridades egipcias por 

colusión en el ataque de turística de Luxor de 1997, que dejó 62 muertos. 

Una dos egipcios y libaneses fueron detenidos y posteriormente puesto en 

libertad. La Corte Suprema Federal negó también los pedidos de extradición 

de Egipto alegando que las pruebas eran insuficientes y errores de traducción 

bloquearon la extradición. 

Veja indicó que en Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay, existen células de 

Hezbolá y Hamas que falsifiquen pasaportes para militantes llegados del 

Medio Oriente. Tenga en cuenta que dos brasileños Alan Cheidde y Anuar 

Pechliye fueron los islamistas entrenados en Afganistán y regresó a Brasil 

por falsificación de pasaporte. En 2005, la policía federal detuvo a veinte 

Foz do Iguaçu extremistas y decomisados pasaportes falsos de doscientos 

mil. Liderados por el Baalbaki Chaim libanés y el jordano saele Basheer 

Yahya Najib Atari, el grupo también había fijado los matrimonios de terroristas 

árabes con las madres de la mujer brasileña, por 500 dólares y 

pronto reconoció los niños evitando así la extradición. 

La revista también denunció los frecuentes viajes a Brasil por Mohsen 

Rabbani, ex Consejero cultural de la embajada iraní en Buenos Aires. 

Interpol’s “notificación roja” incluye la participación en la masacre de la 

AMIA de 1994, que asesinado y había mutilado a los judíos. Rabbani se 

cree que han contratado veinte jóvenes de San Pablo, Pernambuco y Paraná 

para el adoctrinamiento religioso en Teherán. Por nada, el procurador general 

de Brasil no ha notado que “sin que percibe a nadie, una generación es 

derivadas de los extremistas islámicos en el país.”


Exposición de Veja no ha hecho más que para ya agregar una cuota de 

alarma legítimo a la preocupación existente por la apreciable presencia iraní 

en la zona. El académico Karmon Ely israelí ha sido pionera en documentar 

los arcos fuertes de la República Islámica de Irán con América Latina. Aunque 

Irán y la región disfrutan de relaciones anteriores, fue desde el ascenso 

de Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a la potencia que se fortalecieron los lazos, 

sobre todo con los países que conforman el núcleo perforante del populismo 

y de anti-occidentalism; VUT no sólo con ellos. En el 2005, la política 

exterior iraní asiente hacia América Latina bajo un enfoque regional, ya no 

sólo bilateral. Entre Teherán, Karmon menciona su interés en la propagación 

del chiísmo (tribus wayuu en Venezuela y totxiles en México colectivamente 

se volcaron), ampliar la base de operaciones del Hezbolá (de la 

Triple opuesto hacia Bolivia, Venezuela, Brasil y otros lugares), para 

obtener el apoyo diplomático en foros internacionales para su programa 

nuclear ilícito (por ej., algunos naciones de América Latina se han 

abstenido o favorecidos los intereses iraníes en Naciones Unidas vota), para 

obtener uranio, la materia prima esencial para su desarrollo nuclear (en 

mayo de 2009, El New York Times reproduce un cable de la Associated 

Press que denuncia israelí para el suministro de uranio a Irán por parte de 

La Paz y Caracas), para limitar el impacto de todo el mundo las sanciones 

económicas, al crear un mercado alternativo (como puede apreciarse por 

varias empresas conjuntas entre Irán y varios países de la región), y generalmente 

para erigir un contrapeso a Estados Unidos—que tiene tropas en los 

países fronterizos de Irán en una zona de tradicional influencia de Washington 

ya ha sido históricamente Latino América. 

Foros, congresos y conferencias han sido marcas para la interrelación. 

Así, en el acuerdo de investigación israelí ha indicado al este, la Conferencia 

Internacional sobre América Latina en Teherán, titulado “desarrollo 

en América Latina: su papel y su estado en el futuro sistema internacional” 

en 2007, contó con colaboradores de Argentina, Cuba de Brasil, Colombia, 

Ecuador, Uruguay y Venezuela (dos hijos de Ernesto “Che” Guevara fueron 

invitados). El mismo año el primer Congreso tuvo lugar, el internacional de 

literatura latinoamericana en Irán, ocasión en que el Canciller iraní anunció 

la apertura o reapertura de las embajadas de su país en varias naciones de 

América Latina. En 2009 el Foro se realizó a través de la Internacional de 

Beirut de la resistencia, el antiimperialismo, la solidaridad entre pueblos y 

alternativas. 

El evento, organizado por Hezbolá, incluidos a 400 delegados de 

América Latina. Estos encuentros pueden tener Asambleas de antiglobalización 

inspirados celebradas en Yakarta, Bombay, Beirut y Porto Alegre, 

entre 2003 y 2005—2005 marca la primera vez que Hezbolá fue invitado a 

una reunión de este tipo. Así, el Presidente iraní ha visitado Venezuela,


Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador y Brasil. Alto ranking funcionarios de Latinoamericano 

viajó a Teherán mutuamente. 

De todas las Naciones de América Latina, Venezuela ha sido un mejor 

host de Irán. Agregado a los cientos de acuerdos económicos suscritos a lo 

largo de los años, es posible mencionar otras áreas de cooperación. Existe 

un vuelo transoceánico entre Teherán y Caracas, con escala en Damasco. El 

vuelo no es rentable comercialmente, no admite a pasajeros comunes y no 

está sujeto a control aduanero regular. Algunas universidades venezolanas 

enseñan Farsi. Fábricas iraníes fueron montadas en zonas rurales remotas y 

estarán protegidas por Irán. Obviamente, dedicada a la fabricación de 

bicicletas, tractores o uranio. Recordemos que fue Chávez apoyar el 

programa nuclear de ayatollahas y Hezbolá, mientras los grupos extremistas 

como el CRAF y ETA de España reciben patrocinio del Estado venezolano. 

De todas las Naciones de América Latina, Venezuela ha sido un mejor host 

de Irán. Agregado a los cientos de acuerdos económicos suscritos a lo largo 

de los años, es posible mencionar otras áreas de cooperación. Existe un 

vuelo transoceánico entre Teherán y Caracas, con escala en Damasco. El 

vuelo no es rentable comercialmente, no admite a pasajeros comunes y no 

está sujeto a control aduanero regular. Algunas universidades venezolanas 

enseñan Farsi. Fábricas iraníes fueron montadas en zonas rurales remotas y 

estarán protegidas por Irán. Obviamente, dedicada a la fabricación de 

bicicletas, tractores o uranio. Recordemos que fue Chávez apoyar el 

programa nuclear de ayatollahas y Hezbolá, mientras los grupos extremistas 

como el CRAF y ETA de España reciben patrocinio del Estado venezolano. 

El año pasado, los líderes de Hamas, Hezbollah y la Palestina Yihad 

Islámica se reunieron con Húgo Chávez en el centro de inteligencia militar 

venezolano de Caracas. Tarek el-Aissami de Hezbolá fue puesto a cargo de 

la Agencia venezolana de pasaportes, Ministro de Justicia e interior y vice 

canciller; su padre ha elogiado públicamente a Sadam Hussein y Osama Bin 

Laden y está vinculado a su hermano Walid Makled, un distribuidor de 

Siria-venezolano. En 2008, Washington solicitó al diplomático venezolano 

en Damasco y Beirut, Ghazi Nasr al-DIN, como agente del Hezbolá, mientras 

que Nawaf Musawi, director de relaciones internacionales del partido 

de Alá, participó ese mismo año en la Embajada de Venezuela en Beirut 

conmemorando el fracaso de un golpe de Estado contra Chávez. (Destitución 

de Chávez fue el primer líder mundial para felicitar a la victoria electoral 

de Ahmadinejad en el 2009. La isla Margarita, una vez paraíso turístico 

se ha convertido en zona de entrenamiento de islamistas parte dispositiva. A 

finales de abril pasado, el Times árabe informó que el ciudadano de Kuwait, 

Bahrein y Arabia Saudita están siendo entrenados en Venezuela en el 

armado de bombas, la Comisión de asesinatos, secuestros y transporte de 

rehenes por miembros de la Guardia Revolucionaria iraní.


En Venezuela, se promueve que años expulsadas a los embajadores 

copia de América y el israelí, el antisemitismo y antiZionism oficialmente. 

Alrededor de cuarenta y cinco antiZionist o menciones antisemitas pueden 

ser diariamente en la prensa venezolana. “Joder que son Estado de Israel” el 

propio Presidente dijo poco tiempo atrás por televisión. Chávez etiquetados 

a Israel como un Nazi en el 2006 castigar a los definió a Colombia como “el 

Israel de América Latina” en el 2009 y en 2005, va a los nativos en ocasión 

de un aniversario del descubrimiento de América, Chávez afirmó “lo que 

fueron expulsados de su patria como el heroico pueblo palestino.” La propia 

comunidad judía, de acceso limitado o nulo para el Gobierno, ha sufrido el 

acoso del régimen chavista. Dos veces se suaviza una institución central de 

hebrea, en el calor de la capital, bajo el pretexto de la búsqueda de armas. 

La sinagoga Tiferet Israel fue profana. 

En junio de 2008, el embajador venezolano en Moscú denunció un 

golpe de Estado contra su Gobierno y culpó de la Mossad y “ciudadanos 

venezolanos pero judíos” a participar en el complot. En la Navidad de 2005, 

Chávez fue perdón públicamente que algunas minorías, entre ellas los 

descendientes de los asesinos de Cristo, han incautado de las riquezas de 

este mundo.” Desde que Chávez asumió el poder, cerca del 50% de la 

comunidad judía emigraron de Venezuela. La relación de Brasil con Irán ha 

causado una gran sorpresa en algunas esquinas. Como emergente mundial 

regional y refiriéndose poder junto a China, India, Rusia y Sudáfrica, Brasil 

han posicionado como un nexo entre el primero y el tercer mundo capaz de 

un constructivo papel global. 

Sólo entre 2005-2010, Brasil dio millones en asistencia de todo el 

mundo: millones en préstamos y la cancelación de la deuda a los países 

pobres y millones en ayuda humanitaria de ayuda, becas de estudio y 

capacitación técnica. En el país ha cosechado beneficios apreciables: Brasil 

será sede del Mundial de fútbol en 2014 y de los Juegos Olímpicos de 2016, 

su economía ha crecido notablemente, y tanto Lula da Silva como su 

sucesora Dilma Rousseff ha disfrutado levantó los índices de aprobación 

popular (Lula tenía un 80% de apoyo popular al dejar el poder que la 

primera mujer Presidente del país es visada por el 73% de los brasileños). 

Walt Disney Company incluso una de sus últimas películas animadas—ha 

aclimatados río en Brasil! 

Sin embargo, durante las secciones finales de su segundo mandato, 

Presidente Lula parece girar en O, a desafiar a los intereses de los Estados 

Unidos en la región en varias áreas y consolidar un vínculo con Irán que 

poco tiempo antes parecía inconcebible. Al igual que Chávez, Lula hizo 

suya los dudosos resultados electorales de Irán, invitada al Presidente iraní 

para su país y él mismo visitó Teherán. También apoya el derecho de Irán a 

tener un programa nuclear civil, ayatolá fue contra la aplicación de san-


ciones contra el régimen y abrió un diálogo con Teherán que fue seriamente 

cuestionada por varios actores globales. Durante la reunión de la Asamblea 

anual de Interpol en Marruecos, en 2007, Brasil se abstuvo en la votación 

que valida la emisión de “notificaciones rojos” con prominentes figuras del 

Gobierno iraní por su relación con el ataque contra la AMIA en Argentina, 

hermano República del Brasil que había iniciado el orden. 

Otra vez Brasil se abstuvo, en el 2009, la Agencia Internacional de 

Energía Atómica (OIEA), en Viena, cuando surgió la cuestión nuclear iraní 

de los votos favorables de Argentina, Estados Unidos luchó, Rusia, China y 

la Unión Europea. En mayo de 2010, Brasil se unió a Turquía en un intento 

de proteger diplomáticamente a Irán de la inminente aprobación de las sanciones 

internacionales, patrocinado por Washington. Incluso en aspectos 

simbólicos roto lazos con la cuestión iraní, que sea para visitar la tumba de 

Yasser Arafat en Ramallah, pero negándose a visitar la tumba de Theodor 

Herzl, en Jerusalén, durante una visita a la región en 2010, la dirección 

ideológica puede apreciarse que Lula había dado a su política exterior. Brasil 

de Lula también abstenido en las votaciones en la Comisión de derechos 

humanos contra Sri Lanka, el Congo y Corea del Norte, aunque votó contra 

Sudán en el Consejo de seguridad. 

Lula describió a Chávez como “sin duda el mejor presidente venezolano 

cien años.” Su última visita a Fidel Castro fue recordada como una 

gran vergüenza al llegar a un acuerdo con la muerte de un opositor encarcelado 

en huelga de hambre. Lula, creador del Foro Antiglobalización de 

Porto Alegre, evita el premio en Davos, alegando un impedimento médico 

para viajar a último momento. Además, Lula en oposición a la Casa Blanca 

al apoyo a la restauración de Cuba a la organización de Estados Americanos 

(OEA), cuya Carta Magna explícita que las democracias sólo pueden ser 

miembros; dio refugio diplomático el Presidente degradado de Honduras y 

chavista aliado Manuel Zelaya; protestaron por el acuerdo entre Estados 

Unidos y Colombia para el uso estadounidense de bases militares en el país 

centroamericano. y adoptó un tono público del tercer mundo que contrasta 

con su imagen anterior más moderado. 

Al asumir la Presidencia a principios de 2011, Dilma Rousseff 

despertó dudas dadas su guerrilla y pasado marxista. Su proximidad con 

Lula, que eligió como sucesor, podría sugerir una continuación de las controvertidas 

políticas de su mentor. Pero sus primeros pasos en la arena internacional 

han resultado para ser mucho más centristas que las de su 

predecesor, hasta el momento al menos. Su pasado feminista y de militante 

torturado por la llevó a los militares a condenar las prácticas de los derechos 

humanos en Cuba e Irán y en un giro con respecto a la última votaciones en 

las Naciones Unidas, Dilma causó que su país votaron a favor de la creación 

de un relator de derechos humanos de Irán. Se nombró como Canciller a


Antonio Patriótico, un buen famoso ex-Embajador en Washington. Por otra 

parte Estados Unidos marcó claramente su interés por rescatar a Brasil de la 

herencia de Lula. La Secretaria de Estado Hillary Clinton estuvo presente 

en la Asunción de Dilma como Presidente, un 1 de enero, lo que seguramente 

obligó a limitar las celebraciones del año nuevo. 

Presidente Barack Obama ha viajado a Brasil a mediados de marzo, a 

pesar de que ya se inició la lucha guerrera en Libia. Fue interpretado como 

un signo de acercamiento de Washington a Brasilia, primera capital visitada 

en un programa que incluía sólo a Chile y El Salvador además. Por cierto, 

Lula fue el único ex presidente brasileño en no asistir al almuerzo ofrecido 

en honor de Obama en el Palacio de Itamary. Dilma condenó el bombardeo 

de la OTAN a Libia y Obama no apoyaba las aspiraciones brasileñas para 

obtener un banco permanente en el Consejo de seguridad, que junto con 

pendientes desacuerdos comerciales sugiere será la tensión en la relación. 

Sin embargo, es evidente que Brasil de Rousseff se ha separado de la 

diplomacia populista de da silbidos de su último año, sobre todo en 

Teherán. 

Así, Argentina, ha mantenido una política ambivalente con respecto a 

Irán. Su relación con la teocracia islámica cambiado considerablemente 

desde épocas anteriores cuando agentes del Hezbolá perpetraron el primer 

ataque islamista en América Latina (explosión de la Embajada de Israel en 

Buenos Aires, en 1992, 29 murieron) y atacar la peor antisemita en la diáspora 

desde el fin de la Guerra Mundial atacar—the AMIA, dos años más 

tarde, en el que murieron 85. Tomando distancia del Gobierno de Carlos 

Menem, acusado de obstaculizar el progreso en la causa de la investigación, 

los Kirchner matrimonio dio un impulso considerable de los mismos, 

denunciando a Irán en los foros internacionales, pidiendo a la Interpol la 

captura de los sospechosos iraníes y designar a un judío fiscal y equipar con 

los medios para poder llevar adelante una investigación judicial efectiva. 

Sin embargo, algunos hechos han creado un marco de duda con 

respecto a la posición de la burocracia antes de Teherán, es decir: un) la 

cercanía ideológica de Kirchner con los países aliados a Irán—Venezuela, 

Bolivia, Ecuador y Nicaragua especialmente; b) las sospechas del uso político 

de la causa AMIA insultar a predecesor—aunque el menemismo y el 

kirchnerismo pertenecen al mismo movimiento político, el peronismo, el 

poco amor mutuo es de conocimiento público; c) la peculiar relación de 

figuras del Gobierno con Luis D’Elía, el líder popular de antiZionist muy 

cerca de la embajada iraní; d) el hecho de que bajo el Gobierno de Cristina 

el comercio bilateral ha crecido en apenas un año el % de 10.000; e) que la 

delegación Argentina ante la ONU en Ginebra no ha retirado de la sala 

cuando Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comenzó a hablar en el marco de la 

denominada reunión Durban II, en abril de 2009; y e) que el Gobierno no


apoya al diplomático argentino Rogelio Pfirter en su nominación como 

Director General del OIEA, finalmente siendo él entonces vista favorablemente 

por Washington y desfavorablemente por Teherán, entre otras 

consideraciones. 

A finales de marzo pasado, el diario perfil publica la noticia que 

generó una controversia de propagación. Uno de sus principales columnistas, 

mencionando un documento secreto, denunció la existencia de negociaciones 

en curso entre Buenos Aires y Teherán donde primero dejaría la 

causa judicial abierta contra el segundo a cambio de mejoras en el intercambio 

comercial. El Gobierno israelí reaccionó airadamente, etiquetado 

como “muy grave” a la noticia, advirtiendo que, para confirmar, el Argentina 

conducta constituiría “una manifestación de cinismo infinito y 

deshonor a muertos” y poniendo en duda la invitación extendida previamente 

el canciller argentino a visitar Jerusalén. 

El fiscal de la causa AMIA, Dr. Alberto Nisman, negó la petición periodística 

plenamente y líderes comunitarios añadió a la denegación. El 

Gobierno, sin embargo, permaneció en silencio. El embajador israelí en 

Buenos Aires, Daniel Gazit, pidió explicaciones al Ministerio de Relaciones 

Exteriores del país, pero todavía diez días más tarde, informó el Jerusalem 

Post, “no recibió ninguna respuesta oficial.” La primera reacción pública 

dio el canciller argentino desde Israel. Interrogado por la prensa, inicialmente 

eludió tocar el espinoso tema invocar las reglas de la Torá y apelando 

a la memoria de la murió el padre, el famoso periodista Jacobo, en parábolas 

inusuales que trajeron acerca de desacuerdo. Por último, Timerman 

afirmó lo siguiente repudia lo, que fue interpretada como el informe de 

perfil: “No hay ninguna prueba de que Argentina ha cambiado su curso de 

acción, que comenzó en 2003 con la elección de Néstor Kirchner, en el que 

el objetivo de nuestro país es investigar el tema de los atentados a la AMIA 

y la Embajada de Israel.” 

Por otra parte, perfil no contribuyó a aclarar las cosas cuando se 

deniega el acceso a la documentación que se utilizó básica para la noticia 

antes de un pedido del Centro Simon Wiesenthal, que llevó a esta organización 

internacional judía al lamentar la decisión del diario porque ella 

“puede desacreditar la validez de las señales.” En esta atmósfera de dudas y 

ante una denuncia tan grave, era expectable oficial denegado contundente, 

acreditado en un comunicado cuyo texto escrito podría disipar toda 

ambigüedad. Lamentablemente nunca sucedió. 

El Gobierno también mantiene silencio antes otro relacionado con la 

grave denuncia. El juez federal Daniel Rafecas reveló que las repetidas 

manifestaciones que se producen delante de la Embajada de Israel pueden 

ser organizadas por D’Elía con financiación de la embajada iraní. A pesar 

de las graves consecuencias de la denuncia, el Gobierno prefirió no


comentar el asunto. Es posible observe en ocasión del lanzamiento de un 

movimiento que conduce a D’Elía, en el Luna Park, el Presidente ofreció su 

respaldo en un video. Entre los contendientes la ley era el representante de 

Irán en Argentina, y para esos mismos días, D’Elía había entrevistado radialmente 

a Mohsen Rabbani, le ha dado una plataforma pública a un fugitivo 

de la justicia Argentina para negar sus presuntas viajes a Brasil. 

La Argentina de los Kirchner también perturba en otras áreas. Néstor 

fue capaz de organizar una Cumbre concurrentes a un Presidente estadounidense 

de visita oficial en el país, como ocurrió con el Presidente George 

W. Bush en 2005 (45.000 activistas de izquierda hacinados en un escenario 

para la ocasión); Cristina llegó a acusar a la empresa para llevar a cabo una 

“basura de operación” cuando las autoridades norteamericanas indicaron la 

existencia de un chavista clandestinos financiación de su campaña electoral; 

el Canciller puede predicar a EE.UU a bombardear Libia a la vez que la 

agencia oficial de noticias Télam suscribe un acuerdo de información con la 

Agencia árabe de la noticias de Siria (SANA), mientras que el régimen de 

Bashar el-Assad militarmente reprime a manifestantes pro democracia; y el 

Gobierno puede aplaudir un premio periodístico dado por la Universidad de 

la Plata a Húgo Chávez, mientras este un combate ferozmente a la libertad 

de expresión en su país. Estos hechos dan cuenta de la visión ideológica de 

un Gobierno a quien, obediencia, desde el extranjero suele ser caracterizado 

como “inclasificable.” 

*Julián Schvindlerman es un analista político internacional y autor de Roma y 

Jerusalén (Random House/Debate: 2010) y De la Tierra de Tierra de Paz para la 

Guerra (Ensayos del Sud, 2002) y la introducción para el nuevo antisemitismo 

(B’nai Brith Latinoamérica 2010). Sus columnas han aparecido en las 

comunidades, Miami Herald, Oriente trimestral, así como Jai Radio. http:// 

www.julianschvindlerman.com.ar/index-entrevistas.html.

The New Judeophobia on the Left 1 

Patricio Brodsky* 

Brodsky investigates the left’s merging of anti-Zionism with Latin American 

antisemitism. 

Key Words: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, Israel, Judeophobia 

Argentine intellectuals Sergio Bagu, Gregorio Klimovsky, Ernesto 

Sabato, Leon Rozitchner, David Viñas, Noe Jitrik, Bernardo Verbitsky, 

Inda Ledesma, Gregory Selser, Abelardo Castillo, and Cesar Tiempo 

endorsed the 1967 manifesto. The manifesto stated: 

. . . [It] is the unquestionable right of the State of Israel to its existence. 

The independence of the Jewish people in Israel was the result of their 

effort of their sectors’ pioneers and Vanguard was a response to the 

inability of the world to solve the Jewish problem; it responds to the 

legitimate aspirations of national liberation, and was supported in this 

opportunity for worldwide progressive . . . 

I am from Argentina. I am Jewish. And I want to reflect on some 

events in this country and region. There is a long tradition of Judeophobia/ 

antisemitism dating back almost to the origins of the Jewish immigration to 

Argentina. 

Antisemitism was deeply rooted in the upper classes at that time. Some 

examples: In 1890, a furious antisemitic novel by Julián Martel called The 

Bag appeared; in January 1888 (only eight months before dying), Domingo 

Faustino Sarmiento published several anti-Jewish articles in The National; 

the newspaper La Prensa, on various occasions, expressed its opposition to 

the Jews’ forming agricultural communes in Entre Ríos and Santa Fe; and, 

above all, the “action” of May 15, 1910, ten days before the Centennial, 

when upper-class young people, coming out of the very exclusive “society 

Sportive Argentina” under the leadership of Baron Demarchi, stormed the 

headquarters of the Avangard, the body of the Bund, the Jewish Socialist 

Workers Group, and the so-called “Russian library,” then burning its books 

1. I’ve decided to explicitly avoid working on the speeches of President Húgo 

Chávez and Fidel Castro because they are the most well known. Instead, I have 

focused, above all, though not exclusively, on intellectual referents and political 

speeches of the Argentinian radical left. 

71


at Congress Plaza. Referring to the antisemitic phenomenon of the repressors 

of the “tragic week,” the writer Juan José Sebreli (in the book The 

Jewish Question in Argentina, published in 1968 by Modern Times) 

presented an interesting thought to explain the xenophobia of the oligarchy 

of that time: the same racial hatred that the liberal bourgeoisie felt toward 

the mestizo, who tried to replace the European immigrant, later turned 

toward that immigrant when he unexpectedly revealed a dynamic element 

of social unrest. 2 

Among the direct background of the facts we could list, there are some 

that stand out for their qualitative importance: 

• During the tragic week of January 1919 until today, in the only 

pogroms of America, there were attacks on the Jewish neighborhoods 

in Buenos Aires, leaving dozens of dead and a large number 

of injured; this kind of violent event did not occur in any other 

country on our continent. 

• Identity cards issued to Jews by Argentina Federal Police during 

the 1910s and 1920s were stamped with a Star of David. 

• In 1937, Marcos Savon, Argentine Consul in Gdynia, Poland, sent 

several notes to Consul Carlos Saavedra Lamas under the title 

“Cemita problem.” In the note of July 14, 1937, on the eve of the 

Nazi invasion, Savon wrote: “The attacks on people and Jewish 

property continue . . . On the other hand, and along the lines of 

what you style in Germany, a conference of professionals will meet 

next September and discuss the inclusion of a clause in the statutes 

prohibiting Jews from entry into Christian associations. All these 

measures fester tempers, and reach the pogroms against war. 

Harassed, the Jew is driven to emigrate . . . I am of the opinion that 

it would oppose more barriers to immigration from that part of 

Poland animated by the deepest grudge against the Christian, and 

willing to commit the greatest excesses. In addition, no week 

passes without the Polish government finding centers of Communist 

organizations in which the majority are Jewish, which keeps 

alarming the authorities . . .” 

• The existence of a “secret instruction” prohibiting entry into Argentina 

for anyone persecuted by the Nazis (almost all of them Jews). 

In fact, the discovery of secret circular No. 11, signed by the then 

Argentinian Minister for Foreign Affairs José María Cantilo on 

July 12, 1938, is a clear example of how the Foreign Ministry handled 

these requests, by requiring that the consuls, without prejudice 

2. Herman Schiller, “The First Pogrom in Argentina.” Published January 3, 

1999; see http://www.salta21.com/+El-primer-pogrom-en-la-Argentina+.html.

2011] THE NEW JUDEOPHOBIA 73 

to other provisions laid down for the selection of the travelers that 

come to this country, and with “special orders” from the Ministry 

of Foreign Affairs, were to “deny visas to tourists or transit passenger 

to any person reasonably believed to have left his or her country 

of origin as undesirable or banned, whatever the reason for the 

expulsion.” (Then, after the war, the policy of “closed borders” to 

the survivors of the Shoah and the massive entry of Nazi war 

criminals and accomplices, i.e., Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Mengele, 

Erich Priebke, Ante Pavelic, Josef Schwammberger, Gerhard 

Bohne, Walter Kutschmann, Dinko Sakic, Radislaw Ostrowsky, 

Ferdinand Durcansky, Albert Ganzenmueller, and Hans 

Fischboeck.) 

• Subsequent to the capture of Eichmann in Argentina, a wave of 

antisemitic attacks (carried out primarily by the right-wing terrorist 

organization and the Tacuara nationalist movement; the two most 

serious cases of antisemitism from Tacuara were: 1) The abduction 

of Graciela Sirota, June 21, 1962. The 19-year-old girl was beaten, 

dumped into a car when she expected the group to go to the Faculty 

Lounge, grossly tortured with cigarette burns all over her body, and 

had a swastika carved on her chest (this case caused great indignation 

in society and many reviews on the impunity with which 

Tacuara had acted); and 2) In 1964, as revenge for the deaths of 

two militants of the MNRT and for one of the Peronist youth in a 

confusing incident of association with the whole of the CGT in 

Rosario, Raul Alterman, a young militant Jewish leftist, was killed 

at the door of his home. It was never very clear why Alterman was 

chosen as the target of the attack, although it is assumed that his 

selection was because he was both a Jew and a socialist. After the 

murder, the Tacuara Organization sent a letter to Alterman’s parents, 

saying: “No one just kills without a reason; your son was 

killed because he was a Communist Jewish dog. If all dogs and 

Jewish exploiters do not return to their native Judea, what do they 

do in our country?” 

• Argentina is the only country in the world that was “fabricated”—a 

Creole version of the infamous myth of the “Jewish conspiracy for 

universal domination.” I refer to the “Andean Plan,” a vernacular 

fantasy built on the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

• Then, during the military dictatorship of 1976, as reported in Never 

Again, the missing Jews had endured a heightened round of torture 

and humiliation by the profoundly antisemitic character of Argentine 

torturers. 

• Finally, in the early 1990s, Argentina suffered two of the worst


antisemitic attacks of the postwar period—the attacks against the 

Embassy of Israel (1992) and the headquarters of the AMIA 

(1994). In both cases, the perpetrators could not have acted without 

local support, and would remain unpunished helped by the concealment 

provided by certain sectors of the state. 

Antisemitism is characterized by a perennial process of adapting 

beliefs and prejudices to changing situations, rather than analysis, and 

results in blaming the Jews for their failures. For example: 

The messianic eschatology of Christianity from the first century of 

the Common Era postulated that in a few years the Messiah would return 

and begin the messianic era of the redemption of mankind. When this 

prophecy failed to come to pass through several centuries, the leaders of 

the Catholic Church began to blame the “uncompromising stubbornness” 

of the Jews, who do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, as the main 

cause for the postponement of the return of Jesus. Similarly, some of the 

founding fathers of socialism hoped that Judaism would disappear by 

melting into the internationalist Socialist humanism. On the contrary, 

however; instead of disappearing, Jewish identity revitalized with the 

development of the movement of Jewish national identity. Zionism, at its 

birth, developed and strengthened the Jewish people’s national liberation 

movement, a party of the left-wing attitude is boycotting him, and finally 

(instead of following the rest of the movements of national liberation) 

end up unfairly accusing him of being racist and genocidal. 

In the 19th and 20th centuries, some saw the Jews as creators of capitalism; 

they understood this social system as the triumph of a supposed 

“mercantilist spirit” of the Jew who would have migrated to Christianity 

(Marx)—a virtual “judenization” of Christianity. Today, others (heirs and 

later descendants of the first) changed their views and understand the Jews 

(embodied in Israel) as the power driver of globalization through the Jewish-American 

lobby (Petras), and others understand that the normalization 

of the Jews through the Israeli state and the government of that state’s adoption 

of neoliberal policies in the economic sector to be a Christianization of 

the Jews (Rozitchner). As you can see, the essence of the process is the 

same but the meaning of the equation is the reverse; the evil is that in both 

equations the Jews are placed as evil and holding conspiratorial attitudes. 

We see that this mechanism is repeated over and over again in Argentina. 

Yesterday, the Jews were convicted in the same way that Israel is 

convicted there today (regardless of its actions). What characterize the critical 

judeophobia are hubris, its disproportion, and its injustice. Today, anything 

is valid and credible in the case of Israel (the Jews); yesterday, it was 

said that Jews killed Christian children to knead bread for Easter, now,


Israel is a murderer of women and children. They said yesterday that the 

Jew had horns and a tail; today they argue that Israel is a colonialist and 

genocidal state. So we see that Argentina is a leading country when we 

draw the roadmap of antisemitism. It is a country with a particular importance 

in this regard. 

THE CURRENT JUDEOPHOBIA 

Four decades after the Declaration that I quote at the beginning of this 

article, the vision of its signers has varied substantially; today, some of 

them, as for example León Rozitchner, have had a radical change in their 

sights on Israel. What has happened so that the general progressive climate 

has become so hostile to Israel? 

This change of position comes at the point that everywhere we see the 

rise of statements and manifestos of famous intellectuals condemning Israel 

and appeals calling for sporting, social, political, academic, artistic, and cultural 

boycotts against the Jewish State, invoking, in many cases, the boycotts 

that were held during the 1970s and 1980s against the racist apartheid 

regime in South Africa, implying that Israel would be heir to the segregationist 

policies. 

In extreme cases, we are faced with the unusual reappearance of atavistic 

hatred, e.g., the religious myth of the Deicide, recycled as a political 

tool from Israel. An example of this is the use by the prestigious Marxist 

sociologist James Petras of the myth of the Deicide 3 in a story of December 

21, 2001, called “Christmas in the Occupied Territories”: 

Israeli radio announced that three suspected Arab terrorists who fled 

Afghanistan had been killed in a hideout in Bethlehem after having 

crossed the border. The Israeli Government apologized that there had 

been no civilian victim. The media in the United States repeated the same 

story at the time that Washington welcomed the Israeli government for its 

role in the fight against international terrorism. Jesus had lived only a 

day. 4 

Even renowned and respected Jewish intellectuals of the left, e.g., Hermann 

Schiller—who make statements explaining they do not demonstrate 

3. In the Vatican II encyclical Nostra Aetate it was determined that the Jewish 

people did not have responsibility for the death of Christ, but the positions of the 

Marxist Petrás are as reactionary as Catholics. 

4. See CSCA Web site, http://www.nodo50.org/CSCA/palestina/petras-21-12- 

01.html.


to repudiate the actions of Israel in the Gaza Strip—are by nature 

antisemitic. 

Again and again, I repudiate the Gaza massacre. But I am not going to 

go with those who wield the same arguments (e.g., “international Judaism,” 

“rats,” “stateless”) used by Felipe Romero in El Caudillo and very soon 

thereafter by the military dictatorship when it tortures many Jews via the 

ERP and Montoneros and other organizations’ combatants. 5 

The key question that could be asked here is what could be the reason 

a rational atheist Marxist sociologist such as Petras calls for an irrational 

myth as that of the Deicide—which has only served to justify hundreds of 

massacres of Jews throughout history—as a political tool against Israel? 

The brutal and honest answer is that it is a consciously assumed radical 

hatred, and Petras has become what the sociologist Gino Germani termed 

an ideological antisemite. 

This is the route we have traveled since the outbreak of the Second 

Intifada. During the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbolla, Argentina produced 

a series of incidents that marked the strengthening of this trend: some 

demonstrations by the radical left with the insignia of Hezbolla; the threat 

of violence against Jewish youngsters who wanted to speak out against the 

Iranian Embassy from the patriotic revolutionary Quebracho movement 6 ; 

and the appearance of “Stop the genocide of the State of Israel,” which was 

endorsed by León Rozitchner, Alejandro Horowicz, and Elsa Drucaroff and 

affirmed by dozens of intellectuals, including José Pablo Feinmann, Juan 

Gelman, Beatriz Sarlo, Horacio Verbitsky, Eduardo Grüner, Atilio Boron, 

Abelardo Castillo, and Eliseo Subiela, among others, stating that: 

The current massacre exceeds all known. Data are not with its overwhelming 

evidence, but the repetition in the midst of the silent accomplice 

of the so-called civilized world. It is necessary to stop that Jew and 

butcher did not become synonyms . . . Need to make the democratic, 

popular, and progressive forces around the world know that sooner or 

later the crimes against humanity will not go unpunished, that the military 

victory over the Palestinian people has an unambiguous name: genocide 

and the massacres only opened the new massacres . . . 7 

5. Herman Schiller, The other Israel. See EUTSI–left Anti-authoritarian–Palestinian 

http://eutsi.org/kea/pueblos/ page/the other–Israel.html. 

6. Despite the flagrant contradiction between self-definition as a “revolutionary 

Patriot” and objectively, act as “shock strength” of a reactionary theocracy. 

7. Argentine Jewish intellectuals appeal: stop the genocide of the State of 

Israel. Initiative of León Rozitchner, Elsa Drucaroff, and Alexander Horowicz, 

Buenos Aires, 07/20/06. Published online 9-8-2006 at http://www.iade.org.ar/ 

modules/noticias/article page.dophp?storyid=829.


As we shall see below, there in this statement and in similar positions 

an evident overstatement of Palestinian suffering that is nothing more than 

the indicator of a high degree of irrationality in the treatment of this issue. 

This trend has been even stronger and more in depth during the war 

between Israel and Hamas that ended in 2008 and early 2009. The indicators 

that alerted us were several social and trade union organizations, articles 

and statements of intellectuals, and, for the first time, mobilizations of 

repudiation of Israel toward the Jewish community—institutions showing 

that, despite denying the relationship between Judaism and Zionism, in 

practice their speeches are binding and indivisible. 

What happens is that intellectuals who study social phenomena use in 

an arbitrary fashion concepts they are well aware ignore manipulating and 

trivializing categories—historical, sociological, political, and economic. 

And why is it that this arbitrary use happens when you analyze the Middle 

East conflict and only when it refers to Israel? 

What could be happening are two things: a) a prejudiced view that 

distorts the image of Israel; or b) a conscious choice to trivialize in order to 

delegitimize the state. In both cases, the objective result is a discriminatory 

situation against Israel, which ends up being considered unfairly (in relation 

to the facts produced by other states and social groups) and disproportionately 

(under facts for which this state is responsible). 

These two forms of undeserved treatment can be linked to the two 

forms of antisemitism that sociologist Gino Germani addressed: the first 

relates to unconscious antisemitism and implies a traditional antisemitism, 

while the second is more a voluntary and conscious disqualification and not 

merely a mechanical reproduction of stereotypes, and refers to what 

Germani defined as ideological antisemitism. 

If a part of the intelligentsia—supposedly the most critical social 

group—uncritically used concepts whose significance they know perfectly 

and without considering the consequences decides to use them to produce a 

banal distortion of its true meaning with the intention of forcing the interpretation 

of certain historical fact, then something profound is happening. If 

the criticism is one of the central intellectual characteristics, it makes a 

powerful call to the fact that academics, scientific enterprises, and social 

companies used Manichaean reductionism analysis techniques, messianic 

polar dualism, and the same uncritical thinking, creating as a result a 

demonization of Israel, shaping an image of this tranquilized, unconscious 

state of functioning (I hate Israel not because I am antisemitic but because 

Israel does “bad” or “evil” things) and creating a mental representation of 

Israel that needs to be justified. It is a before-the-event condemnation that 

works like self-justification.


Certainly, it is surprising to see renowned specialists in the social sciences—academics 

extremely serious and rigorous in their analyses and 

studies—but when they have to apply their knowledge to explain the conflict 

of the Middle East, employ instead badly used categories of emptied 

meaning, using them uncritically as jargon in the sense proposed by Theodor 

Adorno 8 in his criticism of the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, 

using this conceptual language in a sense that it is intended with the clear 

purpose of generating political effects instead of other, more appropriate 

categories that can be used to describe a situation objectively. There is an 

implicit code that sets the politically correct in the thinking of the progressive 

intelligentsia. This code has crystallized a number of clichés that form 

a monopoly in representing the space formerly occupied by reflective 

praxis—the coherence between theory and practice (Gramsci). This standardized 

thought is expressed in two clearly defined axes: 

The Intertwined Interests of Israel and the United States 

This is due to the close political and commercial relationship between 

the two states (although this relationship is between us and many other 

states in the world, only Israel is linked indivisibly to that state). This axis 

will be presented in two ways: to (a) the heirs of the worst paranoid traditions 

of classic antisemitism (the explicit vision in the myth of the so-called 

“Jewish conspiracy” to the domination of the world, today expressed in the 

denunciation of the alleged “Jewish lobby” that would dominate the United 

States through its partnership with evangelists; and (b) the modern and progressive, 

who must subscribe to the myth that “Israel is the advanced imperialist 

in the Middle East.” These forms of expression are conflicting and 

mutually exclusive. While at first the dominant factor in the equation are 

Jews (Zionism, Israel), the second key factor would be the United States— 

and Israel a mere puppet of the designs of such a power. 

The Urgent Need to Break the Jewish Association of Jews as Victim 

This step is essential to produce a rupture of empathy with the Jews 

and power, which would allow living without guilt and hatred against “the 

Jew,” especially before his state and the ideology behind it (Israel and Zion- 

8. “. . . the nature of slang would be extremely formal: it is responsible for 

what you want is felt and accepted by his exhibition, largely without taking into 

account the words’ content. Preconception and Mimetic element of language takes 

her under his direction, for the desired effect by it . . . .” Theodore Adorno, The 

Ideology as a Language. Taurus editorial: Madrid, 1992, 12, 13, 14.


ism). This axis has two components: (a) minimizing the true dimension of 

the Shoah through banal comparison; in this respect, remember the words 

of the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, José Saramago, who 

affirmed that Ramallah is Auschwitz, or the comparison of the anti-terrorist 

fence with the wall of the Warsaw Ghetto, etc.; and (b) comparing the 

“Nazi car” to Israel; this is a technical discursive developed in the North to 

not only break the association of Jews as victims, but also to move toward 

the opposite, motivating the perpetrator to generate a reverse of his alleged 

victims—Arab movement of Palestinians—to the place of absolute radical 

evil, causing a reinforcement of the empathy with the victims of a contemporary 

Nazi state. In reality, this partnership that makes the link between 

Jew/Israel on one side and Nazism on the other a rhetorical device and 

oxymoron. 9 

These two axes, then, set up a series of discursive myths that this “reality” 

is built from mere rhetoric and that it would constitute the jargon of the 

“politically correct” intellectual. This is expressed in many empty slogans, 

such as: 10 

• Israel is colonialist • Israel is the imperialist in the Middle East • Israel 

is racist, e.g., Zionism = racism • Israel is a Nazi state • Israel is a terrorist 

state • Israel is warmongering and expansionistic 

All these so-called “revealed truths” operate under the mode of religious 

dogma and progressive welfare. These categories were constructed to 

explain other social relations. The use of mechanical force banalizes them 

and empties them of content. Today, many intellectuals embark on this 

“adventure” with the intention of demonizing Israel and Zionism. The 

objective result of this is a double crime, because it not only assumes 

clearly antisemitic positions—something that undoubtedly does not worry 

the intellectuals—but that also goes against the historical memory of the 

crimes committed against the peoples really colonized, exploited, segregated, 

and subject to genocide. 

Intellectuals, particularly the progressives on the left, have always 

acted as the moral conscience of society, denouncing abuses and injustices 

of the powerful to the most vulnerable; Today, at least in relation to Israel, 

this mission seems to be modified. In Israel, in the speeches of the “politically 

correct,” progressivism is shifted to the place of “sinister,” a field of 

radical evil; this is apparent in the categories assigned to it. The categories 

9. Footnote translation missing. 

10. For amplification of this concept, see Patricio Brodsky, “Los Mantras del 

Antisionismo” (The Mantras of Anti-Zionism).


are the representation of all the bad things of modernity—e.g., colonialism, 

imperialism, racism, Nazism—that haunt the progressive fantasy. 

But not all the criticism of Israel should be considered part of the new 

Judeophobia. We must avoid falling into a position equivalent to the intellectuals 

here, criticizing and trivializing the antisemitic concept. We must 

avoid using criticism flippantly because, in the long run, this category loses 

its effectiveness to account for real-life situations. If you are using the 

antisemitic concept as a tool to avoid any criticism, it becomes meaningless 

in that if everything is antisemitism, then nothing is. 

In certain hard-core attacks, there is a tendency to label antisemitic 

criticism as anti-Israeli, but not all is. There are certain conditions that must 

be met for a valid criticism to become an open declaration of prejudice. 

Several authors raise these conditions that help us to draw the boundaries 

between the two. We must weigh each statement carefully to avoid falling 

into banal generalizations that render both as equally critical. 

To avoid these counterproductive accusations, we should establish 

clearly that Jew phobias, whatever their origin, have common qualitative 

elements that can synthesize a number of characteristics that define, 

namely: 

a) The “objective” nature: The Judeophobe will always find an excuse 

to make a hatred appear objective (detach from it and live it not as 

himself but as something objective—i.e., a bad thing in Jews that 

legitimizes the bitterness toward them). It is a mental process that 

sits the quality of the hatred in the hated object, leading to hatred is 

experienced as something generated by the object of hatred (“The 

Jew” “El Zionism” “Israel”) because of some objective fact—e.g., 

the Deicide, the desecration of the body of Christ, the global domination 

conspiracy, the cosmopolitan betrayal, racial pollution, Palestinian 

genocide. 

b) The unconscious character: Rarely and only in extreme cases does 

Jew phobia appear as a conscious element. It will generally form as 

hidden (repressed) consciousness and discomfort that generates as 

an unconscious manifestation; as such, it competes to emerge in 

consciousness through “flashes” that will assume an increasingly 

violent nature and become increasingly difficult to suppress. 

c) Suffering: A characteristic of the presence of Jew phobia is the 

compulsive obsession with those who suffer. The Jewish problem, 

e.g., an obsession with Israel, grows to occupy all space with its 

reasoning; there are only anti-Israel demonstrations, and solidarity 

is not motivated to confront tremendous humanitarian tragedies. 

d) The obsessiveness: It follows from the above that Jew phobia


reaches the degree of being a unhealthy obsession that atrophies 

and blurs the rational capacity. 

e) Their Manichaean character: The reality is seen in mutually exclusive 

polar oppositions—on the one hand the object of hatred as evil 

and on the other, the collective to which it belongs, such as the 

heavenly representation of the good. 

All of these features indicate the presence of a strong and deeply 

rooted prejudice; therefore, it will be hostile to any empirical evidence. 

Speeches in which you can see how these intellectuals operate is shown in 

this example: 

The Jewish people in Israel still bend to the strategy of the Empire whose 

model implemented in all aspects of life. Now the Palestinians do what 

Western Christendom did with us. . . . To do what they are doing in 

Palestine, Jews who are in power must maintain the moral secret of the 

origin of its right to a homeland and prolong their inhumane values of 

their own ancient pursuers. Hide, for example, that began with the Christian 

cross—ended with the European Shoah. They must hide the truth 

about the historical experience of his life in the West. To become accomplices 

of their murderers, not denounce them, already not say more than 

Christianity and capitalism were never their exterminators because now 

they had become his model and its allies. In the religious fundamentalists 

were made and ecumenical; economically, became globalizing capitalists; 

in politics, became a theocratic state colonialist; in the scientific 

field, they took as a model neutral logic of objectivity without the struggle 

enlightenment subject and in international, argue with their services 

the most sinister causes of Christian and imperial oppressors. 11 

Barbarism perpetrated by the Tel Aviv regime recognizes few in recent 

times: the American bombardment with napalm to the village’s peasant 

Vietnamese, “ethnic cleansing” of Milosevic, and other aberrations. It is 

difficult to find similar examples. What looks like more is the description of 

the infamous and cowardly aggression of the Nazi regime and its fascist 

ally in Italy downloaded on Guernica. In a small Basque town, Gaza produces 

an indiscriminate killing of women and children, under the false 

accusation that they were all terrorists, denied a thousand times; the 

thousands of photographs that afterward circulated around the world produced 

eternal condemnation of their perpetrators. Note that the Israeli 

regime learned very well the American pattern and art of lies and the 

tricks. . . . It is not an exaggeration to qualify evil and unworthy rulers of 

Israel as genuine heirs of Nazi barbarity, which also killed indiscriminately 

to terrorize the population. It also sought to ensure its “vital space” to 

11. Footnote translation missing.


ensure impunity for their actions; they slaughtered defenseless populations 

with their superior military to and also lied, as Göring recommended 

(SIC!), 12 because both do believe those lies become truths. . . . It is painful 

to observe the evolution of the State of Israel so far from the dreams of 

great Jewish thinkers, such as Martin Buber, who envisioned it as the completion 

of an original socialist model. A state whose illegitimacy of origin is 

now added to an illegitimacy even greater, emanating from the practiced 

carnage on a defenseless civilian population, elicits doubts about how democratic 

a state that perpetrated such crimes can be. Illegitimacy of origin, it 

is said—not because the Jewish people have no right to their state, since 

that right is unquestionable and Hamas must recognize it without further 

delay—but illegitimacy because it was stealing land from people who also 

claim it. The agreement between British colonialism and American imperialism 

that in the final days of WW II resulted in the creation of the State of 

Israel was possible because it was done before the Arab world could take 

over an Israeli territory that was claimed by both the Israelis and the Palestinians 

. . . these cowardly hawks, pathetic disciples of Hitler, are the worst 

enemies of the Jewish people. 13 

A good example to illustrate the irrational and contradictory features 

of common sense in terms of the criticism Israel receives can be seen in the 

quote from the economist Claudio Katz: 

Those who exalt the existing religious tolerance in this country against 

the closed the Hamas Islamic tend to forget the denominational character 

of the Jewish State. Also omitted the biblical basis, used to justify the 

extent of the territory to the sacred boundaries of Samaria and Judea . . . 

The painful legacy of the Holocaust is often used to silence the denunciation 

of a militarist state that humiliates the neighboring peoples. This censorship 

is exercised in identifying Judaism with Zionism and Israel, or in 

performing any criticism as an act of antisemitism. In reality, these three 

concepts differ significantly. Judaism is a religion, culture, or tradition of 

a people spread around many countries, whose tenure as a differential 

segment has varied in each time and region. Israel is a state built on the 

explicit primacy of the Hebrews, but currently includes several groups 

disconnected from that origin. Anti-Zionism is an ideology of colonial 

appropriation based on ancient and pragmatic bases. These differences 

allow us to distinguish the anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish positions. 

The first attitude is racist, the second anticolonial, and the third 

does not present a sharp meaning. As the only anti-Americanism 

12. Footnote translation missing. 

13. Footnote translation missing.


expresses a generic rejection of imperialist oppression. 14 

This statement not only shows a capricious interpretation of Judaism 

(there is a Judaism, but that there are in Judaism rites of religion, culture, 

and traditions that are not the same among Ashkenazi Jews, the sefardim, 

the mitzrahim, etc.) and Zionism (which has nothing to do with colonialism 

but on the contrary is a political-ideological movement that assumes the 

representation of national interests of the Jewish people, and therefore has 

perspectives ranging from the Zionism Marxist borojoviano to right-wing 

jabotinskiano, passing through expressions of religious Zionism—and even 

taking politico-military shapes such as those assumed during the fighting 

for national liberation against the British colonial occupation of Israel first 

and then against the Arab invasion during the War of Independence). It is 

also a clear example of what he is capable of mobilizing at this conflict 

level, without being aware of the flagrant break with tradition that occurred 

between two different paragraphs from this same text. This inconsistent and 

insurmountable contradiction holds, on the one hand, that Israel is a state of 

a Jewish denominational character and uses a biblical basis to justify the 

occupation, but on the other hand, then conflates Judaism with Zionism and 

Israel identification (or perhaps Katz does not endorse this identification to 

characterize Israel as a Jewish state?). This contradiction on the one hand 

criticizes Israel as a religious state (undoubtedly the author sees the religion 

with a negative connotation, so its description seeks to bestow negative 

meaning to the Jewish state), while on the other hand tries to divide Jewish 

Zionism and Israel (to neutralize a possible critique of antisemitism). So 

serious is this that Katz (similar to many others today) is not aware of this 

contradiction. For him it is coherent: both schemes co-exist on the same 

plane (this is an indicator of the lack of critical reflection as he assumes the 

contradictory characteristics in themselves that Gramsci gives to “common 

sense” by opposition here to the good sense and the philosophy of praxis). 

Katz also addresses a crucial issue when he says that any criticism 

against Israel is interpreted as an act of antisemitism. This is a common one 

to use with those who know that their criticisms against Israel, in many 

cases, are unfounded and lacking an empirical basis, and that they comply 

with the conditions that we have stated as inherent to the basic thoughts of 

antisemitism. 

The fact is that they can’t be categorized as antisemitic because they 

criticize Israel, not even because they distort historical categories to demon- 

14. Claudio Katz, Raids to Bury the Peace. Published January 19, 2009, on the 

Internet: http://www.lahaine.org/index.dophp?p=35547.


ize this state; they have earned that distinction because they do this exclusively 

with Israel. 

Katz’s humanism, his solidarity, and his concern for the weak only 

occurs with the alleged victims of Israel. The result of this is the jump of 

this conflict to other conflicts where there is infinitely greater killings. 

Another collateral outcome, as mentioned above, is the exaggeration of Palestinian 

suffering, his elevation to the rank of “universal victim,” the paradigm 

of suffering (and all this “effort” is just a mere game of discursive 

representations that deform the real dimension of the conflict). 

An example as brutal as it is meaningless in this sense is the afirmation, 

assumed today as a “truth revealed,” that Jews (Israel) would do to the 

Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews. An example of this is the intellectuals’ 

urgent demand to “Stop the genocide of the State of Israel,” which 

we refer to above. 

When we contrast this empty rhetoric with historical facts comparing 

them both (the Shoah and the situation of the Palestinians under Israeli 

“occupation”), we found that during the six years of Nazi occupation the 

Jewish population of Europe, according to the estimates of Karady, 15 

declined from 9,480,000 people in 1939 to 3,780,000 afterward. This 

implies that during this period 5,700,000 Jews perished—60.1% of pre-war 

Jews. If we make an apportionment of the number of murders, we see that 

the Jewish victims totaled 950,000 per year; 79,166 per month; 2,602.7 per 

day; 108.5 per hour; 1.8 per minute. This represents a –10.5% negative 

demographic rate, a relative loss of 10.1% of the Jewish population of 

Europe during each year of war. In contrast, look at the status of the Palestinian 

population of the “occupied territories” by Israel, which, according to 

claims of some of these banalizing intellectuals, would represent a genocide 

(at least) equivalent (if not worse) to that suffered by European Jews. We 

find that the Palestinian population in the “occupied territories” (Gaza Strip 

and West Bank—a.k.a. Judea and Samaria), according to Palestinian 

sources, was 1,045,000 people around 2967, 16 while in the year 2007, 

according to Palestinian sources, the population of the “occupied territories” 

was estimated at 4,000,000. 17 These figures show a population growth 

15. Victor Karady, The Jews in European Modernism. Madrid: Editors Spain 

21st century. 2000, 294-295. 

16. Source: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/ 

story559.html. 

17. Source: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/ 

story559.html. #table 1; some estimates raise this figure up to 5,000,000 (data for 

year 2001 of the Palestinian academic society for the study of international affairs, 

which resulted in one greater number, cited in the article demographics of Palestine 

in the Wikipedia Encyclopedia: http://www.es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demografia-de-


of 2,955,000 over a period of 40 years between 1967 and 2007—a growth 

of 73,875 new settlers every year; 6,156.25 new settlers per month; 205.21 

new settlers per day; 8.5 new people per hour. The population of the “occupied 

territories” multiplied by 400% in 40 years; this involves a monthly 

growth rate of 10% per year during these 40 years. It’s really amazing to 

find such immeasurable blindness; an example of someone (an intellectual 

yet) comes to mind who doesn’t see a problem with both situations (the 

killing of 10% per year from a population against a growth rate of 10% per 

annum of other populations). 

For another example, we can still say that if Europe’s Jewish population 

had grown at the same rate as the Palestinian demographic (10% for the 

past 64 years), today this population would be 70,280,000 people, while the 

current world Jewish population is just over 13,000,000 people. If the 

Palestinians had suffered an extermination equivalent to that suffered by 

European Jews (a population decrease of 10% a year), they would have 

completely disappeared by 1977. 

Adolf Eichmann states that 100 deaths are a tragedy, while 100,000 

dead only are statistical. In view of the data compared above, the true progressive 

intellectual sector asserts that an average annual population growth 

of 73,000 new people in the Palestinian territories is a genocide. Truly 

absurd. 

There is no doubt that both situations are unique in a mental exercise 

of the virtualization of historical facts (worthless, as counterfactual exercises 

are nonsense). Despite this, too many intellectuals fall into the trap of 

uncritically repeating the propaganda slogan raised by Jews, who impose on 

the Palestinians what the Nazis previously did to them; moreover, it is even 

true that Israelis are implementing a genocide of Palestinians as they face 

their detractors. We need to understand genocide, as defined in 1948 at the 

convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide in a 

resolution, adopted under the number 260 (III), that was approved by the 

General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, and came 

into force on January 12, 1951. 

Article II says: 

In the present Convention, genocide any of the acts referred to below 

means perpetrated with the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a 

national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such: • Massacre of members 

Palestina), and even 5,500,000 (according to the article: Palestinians Se Han Multiplicado 

Por 7 times from the Nakba [catastrophe] of 1948.) Internet: http:// 

www.palestinalibre.org/articulo(php?a=8171). We decided to take the most conservative 

estimate, which is enough to show the absurdity of the comparison 

between two historical facts.


of the group; • Serious injury to the physical or mental integrity of members 

of the group; • Intentional submission of the group conditions of life 

and have calculated to bring about its physical destruction, total or partial; 

• Measures intended to prevent births within the group; • Transfer of 

children of the group to another group 

Those who do address these types of statements do not know what 

they are talking about; they do not speak from ignorance but from the irrationality 

of prejudice, not knowing the meaning of the concepts that arbitrarily 

distort meaning when applied capriciously; most of them not users 

with the explicit intention of demonizing Israel, but because they have a 

prejudiced view in their mental representations that deforms only the state 

of Israel. Despite this particular manifestation of the Jew phobia in some 

intellectuals, the majority of the intellectuals who think in this way can be 

considered antisemitic. 

And we speak not only of intellectuals who are not specialists in the 

field, as the example of the comparison between Ramallah and Auschwitz 

that caught the attention of the Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, but also 

of academic specialists in contemporary history who should know better but 

do this same kind of disproportionate and unfair comparison. 

It is distressing that in the beginning of the 21st century, we observe a 

similar situation to the one the Jews fought against the Nazis in the Warsaw 

ghetto, but on this occasion, the victims are Palestinians isolated in camps 

surrounded by Israelis, where there are many descendants of the 

Holocaust. 18 

. . . We are with the people of Palestine, at a time when Zionism exerts 

the most brutal campaign of military aggression that mankind can imagine, 

comparable only with the atrocities of Nazism and its racial policy of 

extermination against non-Aryans, during the Government of Adolf 

Hitler. 19 

. . . What terrible irony of history that the survivors and descendents of the 

victims of the Holocaust who carried out the Nazi-fascist dictatorship in 

18. Beinusz Szmukler and Vanessa Ramos, Statement of the American Association 

of Jurists before the Israel mass attacks against the Palestinian people published 

on 3/18/2002 on the WebIslam.com Web site: http://www.webislam.com/ 

?idt=2491. 

19. In a statement called the Declaration of Principles and Solidarity with Venezuelan 

Palestine of Artists and Intellectuals, signed by more than 100 Venezuelan 

intellectuals. Published on the Internet 1/13/2009 at the LaClase site. Info at http:// 

laclase.Info/national/statement-of-principles-and-solidarity-with-Palestinian-of-theartists-e-intellectuals.


Europe and the former Soviet Union played the sinister methods of their 

tormentors, for decades in Palestine, and now again in Lebanon. 20 

. . . Once again, as always, those who condemn the atrocities of Israel are 

accused by the Zionists as being antisemitic. Since the glorious bourgeois 

liberal revolution of 1789, the right to freedom of expression is sacred, 

but the Zionist movement would establish a rigid censorship to avoid 

convicting the Jews-Nazi Israel government. Poor devils. This evil prevents 

them from seeing who the new Nazis are, and to the horror of 

Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor, there is need to add the names of 

Sabra, Shatila, and Qana, among others. Citizens, who defend liberal values, 

human rights, and respect for international legality, on top of any 

ideology, religion, nationality or ethnic group, have an obligation to condemn 

the German-Nazi horror on the Jews and the Israel-Nazi [horror] on 

the Palestinians. 21 

The quotes from these speeches is not knowledge or reason; on the 

contrary, this kind of arbitrary comparison is a symptom of a deep-rooted 

prejudice that “generated” a monster called Israel. It is a historical atrocity 

(which, I confess, I never thought to see) that a historian accused Israel of 

being a Nazi state (absurd contradiction, because the definition of Nazism 

was its radical antisemitism). 

There are intellectuals who build an anti-Israeli common sense with 

“subtlety,” and try to visualize the story creating “alternative realities” from 

the speeches that should be decoded between the lines; an example is the 

quote from Osvaldo Bayer: “From the first Israel war against Lebanese and 

Syrians, in May 1948, there is but the search for solutions through 

weapons.” 22 

Bayer’s statement is against the facts. He speaks of a first Israel war 

against the Syrians and Lebanese, but it seems to deliberately ignore that 

war broke out on the same day of the British withdrawal, May 15, 1948, 

when the armies of five countries (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan)—backed 

by Libyan volunteers, Saudis, and Yemenis—began the invasion 

of the newly proclaimed state of Israel. On the other hand, it seems a 

joke in bad taste when he says that there was no search for solutions that 

20. Gilberto López y Rivas, Israel: State Terrorist, La Jornada of UNAM, July 

28, 2006, http://www.jornada.UNAM.MX/2006/07/28/026a1pol.PHP. 

21. José Girón Garrote (professor of contemporary history, University of Oviedo): 

The Nazi Government of Israel, August 17, 2006, WebIslam http:// 

www.webislam.com/?idt=5521. 

22. Osvaldo Bayer, If You Want Peace . . . Fight for It. Posted July 29, 2006, in 

Diario, 12; see http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/index-2006-07- 

29.html.


were not armed, since the call for coexistence in the Declaration of the 

independence of Israel through the 1967 Khartun Conference, when the 

Arab League, as a response to the Israel peace proposal, launched the slogan 

of the triple no (no to the recognition, no to the negotiation, no to 

peace), linking with the treaties of peace with Egypt, Jordan, and their own 

Palestinian national authority. 

Only someone very alienated in his prejudices can deny Israel’s negotiations. 

Peace will not be achieved through actions that lead to the destruction 

and slaughter of a people struggling to regain the land that was 

stripped by force and caught in a lock between the sea and an inhumane 

wall that isolates it from the world, deprives it of essential subsistence 

goods, prevents the free exercise of their sovereignty. 23 

Another sample of interventions from ignorance is the fragment of the 

statement cited above, in which the members of the South project say that: 

. . . they will not reach peace with actions that led to the destruction and 

slaughter of a people struggling to regain the land taken from them. What 

is referred to is the conflict in 2009 after more than 1,000 missile attacks 

on Israeli territory from a territory that Israel yielded in August 2005 

(unless you consider that Israel must be removed from Israel, the statement 

doesn’t make sense). On the other hand, a claim that being subject 

to a lock between the sea and an inhumane wall isolates it from the world 

and deprives it of essential subsistence goods is more enigmatic, especially 

if we bear in mind that the war was in the Gaza Strip, which borders 

the Mediterranean Sea, Israel, and Egypt (a country that also 

maintains a blockade, which nobody is talking about). It not only wasn’t 

deprived of any goods, but on the contrary, despite the war, it received 

energy, water, medicines, food, etc.; otherwise, not clear who had died 

from starvation in a territory in which the only product is terrorists. 

Finally, we must say that preventing the free exercise of its sovereignty ts 

a claim that you have to make of Hamas, who took power in January 

2006 after a bloody coup and imposed an Islamic dictatorship on the 

population by preventing democratic exercises. All such statements are 

flawed with prejudices and commonplaces that are clear indicators of the 

degree of superficiality in opinion on these issues. Some try to use subtle 

techniques, e.g., disqualification, in an attempt to portray Gaza as genocidal. 

In this respect, we can see the example of Jeanette Becerra-Acosta, 

who in her article “300 million dead, victims of power,” makes a point in 

referring to the classification of the types of genocide made by Professor 

Rudolf Rummel: 

23. Claudio Lozano, Fernando Solanas, and Mario Mazzitelli, Fragment of a 

statement issued by the three members of the South project during the 2009 war 

against Hamas in Gaza.


. . . The mega-genocide: the former Soviet Union, China and Nazi 

Germany, responsible for the extermination of more than 150 million 

people; under the genocidal seven Governments with a balance of 22 

dead in set millions; the suspects Korea North, Mexico and Tsarist 

Russia with 4 million 145 thousand victims, and those accused of murdering 

less than a million people, as is the case of Israel, which since 

1948 realized thousands of Palestinians in Shabra and Shatila, killing is 

16 years.” 24 

In this paragraph, on the one hand, the author defines, when it concerns 

the 40,000 25 or 59,000 26 Arabs killed by Israel, these 54,900 victims 

(averaging two figures) and alchemy transforms them, in his own words, 

into “centiasesinos,” accused of murdering less than a million people, as it 

is the case of Israel, of course missing the truth that 54,900, less than one 

million people, represent exactly 5.49% of the million; clearly that is not 

the same, politically, as claiming that 54,900 is “less than a million.” In 

addition, he asserts the open, shameless, and infamous libel that “ . . . Israel, 

which since 1948 realized thousands of Palestinians in Shabra and Shatila, 

killing is 16 years”—an apparent act of propaganda, lying about the massacres 

in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982 in Lebanon, which 

were not carried out by Israel but by the Maronite Christian Falangist 

militia. 

These things said in passing, lightly and with impunity, will be incorporated 

into the imagination as if they were real and true; the collection and 

iteration ad infinitum of this propaganda technique eventually manages to 

affect the image of Israel presented to the public. Some authors need to 

build a Palestinian movement that justifies their positions, full of hollow 

rhetoric that has no basis in reality; an example of this is the following 

quote from Néstor Kohan, who asks: 

Why do the Palestinians hate us so [to the Jews, NB]? It is not true. It is a 

grave mistake to confuse Judaism with Zionism. Confusion is obviously 

false, if it wields in defense of the State of Israel as if makes it against 

Israel. The Palestinian resistance—at least on its slopes and more lucid 

organizations, which comes from a secular and socialist anti-imperialist 

24. Jeanette Becerra-Acosta, 300 million dead, victims of power, originally 

published in El Excelsior Mexico, January 31, 1999, and reproduced on the Internet 

site analytics weekly. Venezuela analytical publications, at http://www.analitica 

.com/VAS/1999.02.1/Internacional/06.htm. 

25. Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes, The Verdadera Dimension of the Arab- 

Israeli War. October 23, 2007. 

26. Piero Scaruffi, Wars and Genocides of the 20th Century. http:// 

www.scaruffi.com/politics/massacre.html.


branch—fights against the policy of State Israel, not against all the Jews 

in general. 27 

Then look at statements by some of the leaders that Kohan defines as: 

“. . . Palestinian resistance—at least on its slopes and more lucid organizations, 

which comes from a secular and socialist anti-imperialist branch.” 

The best way to dismantle these speeches of fantasy is to confront them 

with the direct words of the protagonists, and any development of fiction is 

disrupted. The following statements are by Anwar Raja, a representative of 

the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine in Lebanon. 28 Raja claims 

that: 

Let’s be realistic—Jews have been able to falsify the story, using a 

shameless mentality that sees the story according to the interests of one. 

Jews have been able to put pressure on the world, to bring history back to 

write as they wish. They extorted to the Pope during his recent visit to 

Palestine, mentioning the figure of six million of Palestinians . . . Jews in 

the Holocaust. I do not know who was standing at the gates of the crematorium 

and counted. I don’t know who proposed this figure. All that the 

facts point to is inflated, forged, and exaggerated. 29 

Another of the abundant examples of academics recklessly expressing 

an opinion on this subject from the place of the no-saber is found in Emilio 

Cafassi, who, speaking of the conflict in the Middle East, is of the view 

that: 

In the current ghetto of the Gaza Strip, the most important of all time by 

27. Néstor Kohan: Antisemitism? To the memory of Simón Radowitzky and 

Raymundo Gleyzer. May 23, 2009, http://www.otromadrid.org/articulo/7814/ 

antisemitismo-memoria-simonradowitzky/. 

28. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is a political 

organization and military Marxist-Leninist, secular, nationalist Palestinian movement 

founded in 1967 by George Habash, also the founder of the Arab nationalist 

movement. PFLP had usually been the second organization of size of the Organization 

for the liberation of Palestine (the largest being Fatah). Today PFLP is a political 

party in the Palestinian national authority. Usually, PFLP has hard-line policies 

with respect to the national aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs, in contrast to the 

more moderate Fatah. He opposed the Oslo accords, and for a long time opposed 

the proposal for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict through the creation of two 

states, but in 1999, he made an agreement with the PLO leaders giving their agreement 

to negotiate with Israel. 

29. Anwar Raja, Fragments of an interview broadcast by Al-Alam TV on May 

15, 2009. May 28, 28, 2009, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3319.htm 

(10/17/2009).


the magnitude of the concentration population, after his monumental wall 

guarded by compulsory militia of the State of Israel, the defenseless Palestinian 

population is again massacred in the name of peace and the 

future coexistence. “Some of the successors of the ancient inhabitants of 

the ignominious ghettos of Nazism have believed, as their former torturers, 

the solution for peace would be first in the running of the bulls and 

later extermination and terror.” 30 

Cafassi shows an absolute ignorance of reality when he starts 

affirming a prejudice established as truth when he says that: “in the current 

ghetto of Gaza Strip, the most important of all time by the magnitude of the 

concentration population . . .” 31 

If we proceed to distort the facts, we make a dubious assumption that 

the Gaza Strip is a ghetto in which approximately 1,551,859 people live 

(July 2009 estimate). 32 The total surface of the Gaza Strip is 360 square 

kilometers, which gives an approximate figure of a population density of 

4,310 people per square kilometer. In the Warsaw ghetto 33 more than 

400,000 Jews lived in an area of 3.37 Km 2 , which makes it a population 

density of 118.694 inhabitants per Km 2 , a population density 27,54 times 

greater than that of the Gaza Strip; in the Lodz ghetto, 34 a population of 

164,000 Jews was overcrowded in an area 10.36 Km 2 , of which only 2.4 

Km 2 was developed and habitable 35 —a population density of 15,830 persons 

per Km 2 , or 68,333 persons per Km 2 if you look at only the habitable 

area. This is 3.67 (15.86) times the density of the Gaza Strip. We quote 

these examples as a sign of a system of institutions of confinement of Nazi 

Germany covering more than 400 ghettos. These places of confinement 

were designed with the aim of annihilating the majority of its population 

through hunger, cold, and disease; hence, the trivialization that makes 

Cafassi relate, from the left, with the denial of the Shoah. It has nothing to 

do with the historical facts. Then, to continue with Cafassi: “In the current 

ghetto of Gaza . . . Strip after his monumental wall guarded by compulsory 

militia of the State of Israel, the defenseless Palestinian population is again 

30. Emilio Cafassi, Extermination After the Wall. The Republic, January 11, 

2009, http://www.larepublica.com.uy/contratapa/348506-el-exterminio-tras-elmuro. 

31. Emilio Cafassi, Extermination After the Wall. 

32. Data source: http://www.indexmundi.com/gaza_strip/population.html. 

33. Data source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId= 

10005069. 

34. Data source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodz_ghetto http://en.wikipedia. 

org/wiki/Lodz_ghetto 

35. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodz_ghetto.


massacred in the name of peace and the future coexistence.” 36 

It is really surprising that someone is issuing opinions so superficial 

about this conflict or any other social event. Talk about the wall of Gaza 

and ignoring that there are no walls in Gaza—there is a woven wire fence at 

other borders and the wall referred to is located in the West Bank. Only an 

ignoramus can issue such nonsense. But against Israel it is easy to say; it is 

free and gives “prestige.” On the other hand, calling the Defense Army of 

Israel (EDI) “compulsory militia” is a crude attempt to lower the category 

to delegitimize it, because in a consolidated statement, the use of the “militia” 

concept refers to a situation opposite an army of regular (as is the case 

of EDI) paramilitary types (armed civilians). As a contradiction, an example 

of the double standard of “Palestinian militias” is one of the euphemisms 

that critics of Israel use to “legitimize” murderous terrorists of 

civilians, because the absence of a state justifies the existence of armed 

“civilians” who “fight against ‘occupation’ and its ‘national liberation.’ ” 

Finally, Cafassi concludes that: “Some of the successors of the old 

inhabitants of the ignominious ghettos of Nazism have believed, as their 

former torturers, the solution for peace would be first in the running of the 

bulls and later extermination and terror,” 37 which is the logical extension of 

his willful exaggeration about the alleged ghetto of the Gaza Strip, that this 

territory is “the largest Ghetto of history.” Then it is logical to blame the 

Jews (successors to the ancient inhabitants of the ignominious ghettos of 

Nazism) to be (or think) as the Nazis (have believed, as their former torturers), 

that the solution for peace would be first in the “running of the bulls” 

(and later in extermination and terror). This is simply illiteracy or malicious 

intention (whatever the situation is the militant year of the bias). 

This criticism of Israel quickly exaggerates and goes beyond the limits 

of the rational. In an interesting article, which I quote an excerpt from 

below, a professor at the Autonomous National University of Mexico 

described as “ideological discourse” the process that attends a part of the 

intelligentsia in relation to the actions of Israel: 

. . . I am concerned that, in the spirit of defending the Palestinian people, 

our intellectuals of the left end up supporting the Islamic fundamentalists. 

He does not, then, accept the bombardment or invasion of the Gaza Strip, 

nor much less justify the deaths of civilians. This is, to my taste, not 

forgetting the international and regional context in which these actions 

involved and not to fall into the ingenuity in the analysis . . . It is natural 

that the abuse in the use of force is sentenced. It is also natural that if one 

sees shelled unarmed populations and innocent victims, the first thing 

36. Emilio Cafassi, Extermination After the Wall. 

37. Emilio Cafassi, Extermination After the Wall.


that comes to mind is an immediate condemnation and unquestionable 

. . . The sentence is also easily overblown. He immediately speaks of 

“genocide” and even intellectuals in beginning serious reveal assumptions 

plans to empty the West Bank and Gaza of Palestinians. The issue 

reaches antisemitic dyes with equal ease. Our leftist intellectuals can only 

see one side to the shameful state of Israel and the other to the unarmed 

victimized Palestinian people . . . The problem is that Hamas, like Iran, 

has vowed to take to the sea of Israel Jews and disappear from the map. 

That is, they did preach genocide and it is not difficult to know what you 

would do if they had the strength to carry out their plans . . . Many 

intellectuals of the left dislike the American imperialism that doesn’t care 

that it is aligned with whoever is opposed, even if these are octogenarian 

dictators with 50 years in power, populists bordering on insanity or 

Islamic fundamentalists. In any case, some positions end up defending 

Hamas, in order to oppose the United States and Israel. This mixes the 

just demands of the Palestinian people with the claims of Muslim extremists. 

They forget that the ideal of these groups is not the formal states that 

are democratic, tolerant, and peaceful; these intellectuals, secularized 

generally, would not survive even a month in a regime of this. Israel may 

have many flaws, but at least is a democracy, that defends the same values 

as we do. In his Parliament there are Arab representatives that speak 

for the million and a half of Israeli Arabs, and the press has freedom of 

expression. Its intellectuals may or may not be according to what their 

Government is doing and are free to say so. This is impossible in most of 

the Arab countries and Iran. Indeed, Israel is a piece of the West, with all 

its values, in the Middle East. That does not mean, of course, that we 

have to be in agreement and justified car what does the Israeli government, 

which holds a majority in favor of their acts of war. But at least this 

circumstance we should prevent a naive support of groups of Islamic 

fundamentalists. 38 

Israel, in the constructs of some intellectuals, would seem to be 

equivalent to the black hole in physics as a place with laws that may not be 

governed by the same universal laws that apply to the rest of the universe of 

the nations. There, everything acquires its own dimension and deserves a 

unique status. When we see this exclusive irrational obsession in relation to 

the conduct of the State of Israel, along with demands for its pristine conduct 

and monitored closely for its actions and unequal treatment in relation 

to what it gives to the other 200 nations of the world, we are led to the idea 

that the cause of antisemitism not must be sought in the Jew but in the 

antisemite. 

Israel is thus transformed into one of the most criminal states of history 

by an exercise in rhetoric that assigns adjectives to concepts that pro- 

38. Roberto Blancarte, Politically incorrect; Hamas and Israel. iglhrc January 

13, 2009, http://www.milenio.com/node/146603.


gressive discourse considers the embodiment of radical evil (Nazi, 

genocidal, colonialist, imperialist, terrorist state, racist, segregationist, etc.). 

But this cannot magically materialize these social relationships (even 

though for the “progressive,” Jew phobia has as much reality as did the 

“Jewish threat” to the Nazi or the “Jew-vampire” consumer ritual of human 

blood perpetrated by the medieval Jew phobia). 

“Christ killers” to “murderous rituals”; “murderous rituals” to 

“genocidaires,” collective fantasies about the Jews have the power to 

“translate,” and to assume a “credible” appearance. The fact is that the irrational 

fantasies of Jew phobia are reproduced and recycled. “Conspirators to 

kill Christ” to “plotters to betray the nation that the blanket”; “plotters to 

betray the nation that the blanket” to “conspirators to dominate the world”; 

“usurers” to “stars of the Holocaust.” These discursive axes are maintained 

throughout history and are recycled and adapted according to the new social 

conditions. The main characteristic of the new Judeophobia is the confluence 

of the three main antisemitic groups: radical left, Islamic fundamentalism, 

and extreme right wing, all present at a discursive level. 

THE “JEW-ZIONIST CONSPIRACY” MYTH 

According to U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: “It 

is marked as the operator of the companies of the Jewish lobby in the business 

of the wars and the ‘reconstruction,’ and so union as the main introducer 

of the techniques of torture in Iraqi prisons of the occupation.” 39 

“Bush won and so did the Zionist lobby, which keeps him in each of 

its actions in support of the criminal Israeli premier Sharon”; “Lost Kerry 

and the Zionist lobby, which also handed out millions of dollars in their 

electoral basket, knows that he has an ally of iron to hinder any departure of 

self-determination of the Palestinian people, at the time the invaded, the 

attacked, the exile, but never defeated . . .” 40 

Personal current fundamentalism, among which is Zionism or Jewish 

fundamentalism interested in pushing through its Jew American lobby to 

the Bush administration, which carried out the war of imperialist aggression 

39. Anonymous, Wolfowitz: Jewish Lobby “to the World Bank,” on the Web 

site of the Communist Party of Peru, http://www.patriaroja.org.pe/html/colaboraciones/wolfowitz_del_lobby_judio_al_banco_mundial.htm 

40. Carlos Aznárez, When Bush and nearly 60 million reasons to not sleep 

peacefully on the web site of Gramma (official organ of the Communist Party of 

Cuba), http://www.granma.cu/espanol/2004/noviembre/sabado6/razones-e.html on 

January 22, 2002.


against Iraq to make this the Palestinian Holocaust background . . . 41 

The Israeli lobby, through the media that controls in the United States 

and other “Western” countries, tries to hide what a professor at the University 

of Jerusalem, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, expressed starkly as “the Jewish 

fist force comes from the glove of steel which covers, and the money to 

quilting.” 42 

The ambiguity in the application by the United States military means 

that in Somalia or Haiti, Panama or Iraq, for the exit policy negotiated, 

recalls largely—saving joints—the episode of Vietnam. Not reached many 

times to be the “strongest” to overcome. And this is especially true in this 

phase of total hegemony of the Jew American lobby. His extraordinary 

apparent power is his great weakness, since the foreign policy of this sui 

generis rule depends on the viability of a microstate: that of Israel. There is 

no possible analogy with Rome. The absence of strategic clarity is undoubtedly 

the greatest current enemy of the American nation. 43 

The Israeli lobby has many think tanks, which provide future advisers 

in various administrations, Republican and Democrats . . . It was a constant 

policy—part of the Israeli state and long before its independence as a state 

in May 1948—to maintain various pressure groups within us, and based on 

a large and often wealthy, Jewish collectivity. 44 

DENIAL/TRIVIALIZATION OF THE HOLOCAUST 

“Holocaust” is a word of biblical connotations that serves very well to 

the Zionist purposes, although it misrepresents the historical meaning of 

Nazi barbarism. Despite the apocryphal of much of the diary of Anne 

Frank, still presenting it as “historical documents.” As the Nazi repression 

against the Jews, “genocide” (“genocide” means the extermination of a people 

or an ethnic community, and the Jewish community was not exterminated 

but from 1945, met an extraordinary boom), and talk of the “greatest 

genocide in history” is used to delete the attention of major genocide that 

41. Edward Nuñez, The Criminal State of Israel: A danger for the peace of the 

world, http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2003/07/3114.shtml 7 22, 2003. 

42. Article philosopher Roger Garaudy alleged Zionist collaboration with the 

Nazi regime. Document of the “national left,” http://www.geocities.com/ 

izquierda_nacional/mundo004.html. 

43. Norberto Ceresole (Argentine neo-Nazi now deceased; was advisor to the 

Jew-phobic Venezuelan President Húgo Chávez), Jewish Power in the West and 

East, Radio Islam, http://abbc2.com/islam/spanish/sion/poder/poder1.html. 

44. Horacio Ricchiardelli, Report on Condor, May 2003, published on a Web 

site linked to the coup leader Mohammed Ali Seineld, http://documentos.seineldin. 

8m.com/cn06052003.html.


pollutes the memory of the victors of the war: the decimated Indian in 

America, the killing of African slaves, the savage repressions of Stalin . . . 

60 million indigenous people (out of a total of 80 million) were killed in 

South America since the conquest. And the second world war itself caused 

50 million dead, 20 of whom were Soviet and almost 10 million German! 

Who remembers today the killing of Dresden on February 13, 1945, when 

Anglo-American phosphorus bombs claimed 200,000 civilian casualties in 

a few hours? 45 

Maneuvers that seem almost science fiction, especially to stifle any 

serious attempt to demonstrate their falsity, have been used to protect the 

sacred six million lie. Thus, when in 1995 the Japanese economy and business 

magazine Marcopolo published an innocent comment pointing out that 

“each time were less reason to believe that the Nazi Germany would have 

occurred in a Holocaust” of Jews and Gypsies, the all-powerful world of 

Judaism moved its threads and won. Both the magazine and the respective 

journalist were punished without invoking any existing legislation, and 

Marcopolo can cite, for the rest of its existence, any other reference on the 

Holocaust . . . 46 

THE “NAZIFICATION” OF ISRAEL 

Israel is behaving (with the Palestinians, I have to say), as Nazi Germany 

behaved in its time with the Jews. And I am not referring only to the 

Israeli government, presided over by the military right-wing Ariel Sharon— 

but also to the Israel people as a whole. 47 

“The Israel State is a State criminal, genocidal and terrorist, and their 

very existence is a problem for world peace.” 48 

“They can never claim Jews around the world, as well as his sponsor, 

did not know what was happening.” It’s Holocaust-like ancestors who suffered 

by the fact of belonging to a people. Palestinian citizens suffer this 

extermination today. The silence of people who hold to the Israeli state 

make them accomplices of a system of death with terrible consequences. 49 

45. Roger Garaudy, Denouncing Zionist Collaboration. 

46. Anonymous, The evidence that the Holocaust Jew is a fantasy, http:// 

www.resistenciaria.org/revisionismo/MENTIRAS.htm. 

47. Antonio Caballero, Human Nature, Semana.com Internet, http:// 

semana.terra.com.co/opencms/opencms/semana/articulo.html?id=74630. 

48. Edward Nuñez, The Criminal State of Israel: A danger for the peace of the 

world, http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2003/07/3114.shtml 7 22, 2003. 

49. José Carlos García Fajardo, Holocaust of the Palestinian people, published 

on the page of the Complutense University of Madrid, in http://www.ucm.es/info/ 

solidarios/ccs/articulos/oriente_med/holocausto_del_pueblo_palestino.htm


“It is sad to see the almost parallel similarity between the treatment of 

Nazis dispensed to the Jews and that Jews dispense today ‘to the Palestinians 

and Arabs in general.’” 50 

“Israel is a militarized and genocidal people that want the expulsion of 

all Palestinians: a terminator attitude of these neo-Nazis with kaftan, that in 

spite of this new ‘road map’ is not vigilant in its efforts to seize the territory 

is continuing.” 51 

This discursive confluence, expression of the emergence, and consolidation 

of a common political space (anti-globalization movement) have 

delivered a new form of Judeophobia, giving form to what we might call 

neo-Judeophobia. 

The current situation between antisemitic groups gives reason to 

assert, paraphrasing Marx and Engels, in view of the events in recent years, 

that it seems as if “a ghost travels the world”—the Phantom of the Jew 

phobia. Antisemites of the world, unite! 

*Patricio Brodsky (b. 1962) is an Argentinian sociologist and former professor and 

researcher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. A scholar in genocide, antisemitism, 

the Shoah, and discrimination, he is a contributor to several periodicals, 

including the Spanish Israeli daily Aurora, and the author of five books, the latest 

entitled Deconstruyendo la (Neo) Judeofobia (Deconstructing the New Judeophobia). 

Brodsky is completing doctoral studies at the Universidad de General 

Sarmiento, Argentina, with a dissertation, Social Representations of Jews in the 

Argentinian Print Media (1947-2007). 

50. Anonymous, The False Hebrew Democracy, http://diosesdeburja.iespana.es/ 

la_falsa_democracia_hebrea.htm. 

51. Anonymous, Freedom for Palestine, http://diosesdeburja.iespana.es/ 

libertad_para_palestina.htm.

La Neojudeofobia en la Izquierda de América 

Latina: Algunos Elementos Para la Reflexión 1 

Patricio Brodsky 

De un manifiesto de Intelectuales Argentinos de 1967 firmado entre otros 

por: Sergio Bagú, Gregorio Klimovsky, Ernesto Sábato, León 

Rozitchner, David Viñas, Noe Jitrik, Bernardo Verbitsky, Inda Ledesma, 

Gregorio Selser, Abelardo Castillo y César Tiempo. 

“ . . . es incuestionable el derecho del Estado de Israel a su existencia. 

La independencia del pueblo judío en Israel fue resultado del 

esfuerzo de sus sectores pioneros y de vanguardia, fue respuesta a la 

incapacidad del mundo de resolver el problema judío; responde a legítimos 

anhelos de liberación nacional, y fue respaldada en su oportunidad 

por todo el mundo progresista . . .” 

Soy de Argentina, soy judío, y para iniciar una reflexión acerca de 

algunos acontecimientos en este país (y en esta región) no puedo eludir que 

existe una larga tradición de antisemitismo/judeofobia que se remonta prácticamente 

a los orígenes de la inmigración judía a la Argentina. 

El antisemitismo estaba muy arraigado en las clases altas de entonces. 

Algunos ejemplos: en 1890 apareció en La Nación, en forma de folletín, 

una furiosa novela antisemita llamada La bolsa de Julián Martel; en enero 

de 1888 (apenas ocho meses antes de morirse), el mismísimo Domingo 

Faustino Sarmiento publicó varios artículos antijudíos en El Nacional; el 

diario La Prensa, en distintas oportunidades, manifestó su oposición a que 

los judíos formen comunas agrarias en Entre Ríos y Santa Fe; y, sobre todo, 

la “acción” del 15 de mayo de 1910, diez días antes del Centenario, cuando 

jóvenes de clase alta, salidos de la muy exclusiva “Sociedad Sportiva 

Argentina” bajo la conducción del barón Demarchi, asaltaron las sedes del 

Avangard, órgano del Bund, agrupación obrera socialista judía, y la 

denominada Biblioteca Rusa, para quemar luego sus libros en la xenofobia 

de la oligarquía de aquélla época: “El mismo odio racial que la burguesía 

liberal sentía por el mestizo, al que trató de sustituir por el inmigrante 

europeo, se volcó después hacia el propio inmigrante cuando éste se reveló 

1. He decidido expresamente evitar trabajar sobre el discurso de Hugo Chávez 

y de Fidel Castro pues son los más conocidos, me he enfocado, sobre todo, aunque 

no exclusivamente en los discursos de intelectuales, referentes y políticos de la 

izquierda radical argentina. 

99


inesperadamente con un dinámico elemento de agitación social.” 2 

Entre los antecedentes directos de los hechos que podríamos enumerar, 

hay algunos que se destacan por su importancia cualitativa: 

• Durante la Semana Trágica de Enero de 1919 se produjeron los, 

hasta hoy en día, únicos pogromos de América, hubo ataques a los 

barrios judíos en Buenos Aires dejando varias decenas de muertos 

y un número grande de heridos; en ningún otro país de nuestro 

continente se produjeron este tipo de asaltos. 

• Las cédulas de identidad emitidas a judíos por la Policía Federal 

Argentina en las décadas de 1910 y 1920 llevaban estampada una 

Estrella de David. 

• En 1937, Marcos Savon cónsul argentino en Gdynia, Polonia, envió 

varias notas al Cónsul Carlos Saavedra Lamas, bajo el título 

“Problema Semita”. En la nota del 14 de julio de 1937, en vísperas 

de la invasión nazi, escribió: Los ataques a personas y propiedades 

judías, continúan . . . Por otra parte, y a semejanza de lo que se 

estila en Alemania, se reunirá en setiembre próximo, un congreso 

de profesionales, en el que se discutirá la inclusión de una cláusula 

en los estatutos, por la que se prohíba a los judíos la entrada a las 

asociaciones de cristianos. Debo agregar que en los trenes el judío 

tiene lugar reservado. Todas estas medidas enconan los ánimos, y 

fatalmente se llegará a los pogroms de ante guerra. Acosado, el 

judío trata de emigrar . . . soy de opinión que convendría que se 

opusieran más trabas a la inmigración de esa raza, que parte de 

Polonia animada del más profundo rencor hacia el cristiano, y dispuesto 

a cometer los mayores excesos. Además, no pasa semana sin 

que el gobierno polaco no allane centros de organizaciones 

comunistas, en las que la mayoría son judíos, cosa que mantiene en 

alarma a las autoridades. 

• La existencia de “instrucciones secretas” vedando el ingreso a 

Argentina a perseguidos por el nazismo (la casi totalidad de ellos 

judíos), en efecto, el descubrimiento de la circular secreta N° 11 

firmada por el entonces Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores José 

María Cantilo el 12 de julio de 1938, es un claro ejemplo de ello, 

en esta circular se instruía a los funcionarios de Cancillería que: 

“sin perjuicio de las demás disposiciones establecidas para la 

selección de los viajeros” que venían a este país, y “salvo orden 

especial” de la Cancillería, los cónsules debían “negar la visa aún 

2. Schiller, Herman: El primer “Pogrom” en la Argentina. Publicado el 3 de 

enero de 1999 en el diario Página 12. Reproducido en Internet http://www.salta 

21.com/+El-primer-pogrom-en-la-Argentina+.html.

2011] LA NEOJUDEOPHOBIA 101 

a título de turista o pasajero de tránsito a toda persona que 

fundadamente se considere que abandona o ha abandonado su país 

de origen como indeseable o expulsado, cualquiera sea el motivo 

de su expulsión.” 

• Luego en la postguerra la política de “fronteras cerradas” a los 

sobrevivientes de la Shoá y el ingreso masivo de criminales de 

guerra nazis y cómplices como por ejemplo Adolf Eichmann, 

Joseph Mengele, Erich Priebke, Ante Pavelic, Josef 

Schwammberger, Gerhard Bohne, Walter Kutschmann, Dinko 

Sakic, Radislaw Ostrowsky, Ferdinand Durcansky, Albert 

Ganzenmueller y Hans Fischboeck 

• Con posterioridad a la captura de Eichmann se vivió en Argentina 

una ola de atentados antisemitas (realizados fundamentalmente por 

la organización terrorista ultraderechista y “nazionalista” el 

Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara; los dos casos más graves de 

antisemitismo de Tacuara fueron: 1) el secuestro de Graciela Sirota, 

el 21 de junio de 1962. La joven de 19 años fue golpeada, subida a 

un auto cuando esperaba el colectivo para ir a la facultad y torturada 

groseramente con quemaduras de cigarrillos por todo el 

cuerpo. Para terminar, le grabaron con una navaja una esvástica en 

el pecho. Este caso provocó gran indignación en la sociedad y 

muchas criticas por la impunidad con la que contaba Tacuara y 2) 

En 1964, como venganza por la muerte de dos militantes del 

MNRT y uno de la Juventud Peronista en un confuso incidente 

sindical en el Plenario de la CGT en Rosario, fue asesinado en la 

puerta de su casa Raul Alterman, un joven militante judío de 

izquierda. Nunca quedó muy claro por qué fue elegido Alterman 

como blanco del ataque, aunque se supone que su elección, fue solo 

por su condición de judío y socialista. Luego del asesinato, la 

organización Tacuara envió una carta a los padres de Alterman, 

diciendo: Nadie mata porque sí nomás; a su hijo lo han matado 

porque era un perro judío comunista. Si no están conformes que se 

retiren todos los perros y explotadores judíos a su Judea natal 

¿Qué hacen en nuestro país?. 

• Argentina es el único país del mundo en el que se “fabricó” una 

versión criolla del infame mito del “complot judío para la dominación 

universal”, me refiero al “Plan Andina”, fantasía vernácula 

construida sobre los infames “Protocolos de los Sabios de Sión”. 

• Luego durante la Dictadura Militar de 1976, como se relata en el 

Nunca Más, los desaparecidos judíos, tuvieron que soportar un 

“plus” de torturas y humillaciones debido al carácter profundamente 

antisemita de los torturadores argentinos.


• Finalmente, en la década de 1990, Argentina sufrió dos de los 

peores atentados antisemitas de la postguerra; los atentados contra 

la Embajada de Israel (1992) y contra la sede de la AMIA (1994), 

en ambos casos no se hubieran podido realizar sin apoyo local, y no 

permanecerían impunes sin el encubrimiento brindado desde ciertos 

estamentos del estado. 

El antisemitismo se caracteriza por una mutación perenne adecuando 

las creencias y los prejuicios a situaciones cambiantes, en vez de adaptar el 

análisis, terminan por culpar a los judíos de sus fracasos, por ejemplo: 

La escatología mesiánica del cristianismo del siglo I de la era común 

postulaba que en pocos años se produciría el retorno del mesías y 

comenzaría la era mesiánica de redención de la humanidad. Al transcurrir 

los siglos y ver fracasada esta profecía, los dirigentes de la iglesia 

católica comenzaron a culpar a la “tozudez intransigente” de los judíos en 

no reconocer a Jesús como el mesías como principal causa de postergación 

del retorno de Jesús. En forma análoga algunos de los padres 

fundadores del socialismo pronosticaron que la “cuestión judía” sería 

resuelta el día que los judíos se asimilaran y el judaísmo desapareciera; 

esperaba que el judaísmo desapareciera fundiéndose en el humanismo 

socialista internacionalista. Cuando, por el contrario, en vez de 

desaparecer, la identidad judía se revitaliza con el desarrollo del 

movimiento de identidad nacional judía: el sionismo, al nacer, desarrollarse 

y fortalecerse el movimiento de liberación nacional del pueblo 

judío, la actitud de una parte de las izquierdas es oponérsele y, finalmente 

(en vez de sostenerlo como al resto de los movimientos de liberación 

nacional) terminan acusándolo injustamente de ser racista y genocida. 

En los siglos XIX y XX hubo algunos pensadores que veían a los 

judíos como los “responsables” del capitalismo, mientras que entendían a 

este sistema social como el triunfo de un supuesto “espíritu mercantilista” 

del judío que habría impregnado al cristianismo (Marx), una virtual 

“judeización” del cristianismo. Hoy en día, otros (herederos y tributarios de 

los primeros) modificaron su mirada y entienden a los judíos (encarnados 

en Israel) como el poder impulsor de la globalización a través del lobby 

judeo-norteamericano (Petras), y otros entienden que la “normalización” de 

los judíos a través del estado de Israel y la adopción (por parte del gobierno 

de dicho estado) de políticas neoliberales en lo económico serían una virtual 

“cristianización” de los judíos (Rozitchner). Como se ve, la esencia del 

proceso es la misma pero el sentido de la ecuación es inverso; lo perverso 

es que en ambas ecuaciones se coloca a los judíos en el lugar del mal y en 

actitud conspirativa. 

Vemos que este mecanismo se repite una y otra vez ya que ayer los 

judíos eran condenados por existir de igual manera que hoy Israel es con-


denado por existir (independientemente de sus acciones). Lo que caracteriza 

a las críticas judeófobas es su desmesura, su desproporción y su injusticia. 

Cualquier cosa es válida y creíble tratándose de Israel (los judíos); ayer se 

decía que los judíos asesinaban niños cristianos para amasar pan ácimo para 

pascuas, hoy plantean que Israel es un estado asesino de mujeres y niños. 

Ayer decían que el judío tenía cuernos y cola, hoy plantean que Israel es un 

estado genocida y colonialista. 

Por lo tanto vemos que Argentina es un país destacado cuando 

trazamos la “hoja de ruta” del antisemitismo, es un país con una 

importancia particular al respecto. Aclarado este punto pasaré a desarrollar 

el tema de la judeofobia actual. 

Cuatro décadas después de la declaración que cito a modo de epígrafe 

el imaginario de algunos de los firmantes de estos manifiestos ha variado 

sustancialmente, hoy algunos de ellos, como por ejemplo León Rozitchner 

ha tenido un cambio radical en su mirada sobre Israel. ¿Qué es lo que ha 

ocurrido para que el clima general de la intelectualidad progresista hacia 

Israel se haya vuelto tan manifiestamente hostil? 

Este cambio de postura llega a tal punto que por todos lados vemos 

aflorar declaraciones y manifiestos de renombrados intelectuales condenando 

a Israel y llamamientos convocando al boicot deportivo, social, político, 

académico, artístico y cultural contra el estado judío invocando, en 

muchos casos, la campaña de boicot que se realizara durante los ’70 y los 

’80 contra el régimen racista de apartheid en Sudáfrica (dando así por 

sentado, implícitamente, que Israel sería el heredero de sus políticas 

segregacionistas). 

En casos más extremos e irracionales nos hallamos con la insólita 

aparición de odios atávicos, mitos de origen religioso (como la acusación de 

deicidio) reciclados como “herramienta política” de descalificación de 

Israel. Ejemplo de esto que decimos es la utilización por parte de un 

prestigioso sociólogo marxista, James Petrás, del mito del deicidio 3 (los 

judíos asesinos de Cristo), en un cuento fechado el 21 de diciembre de 2001 

llamado “Navidad en los Territorios Ocupados” afirma: 

La radio israelí anunció que tres supuestos terroristas árabes que habían 

huido de Afganistán habían sido asesinados en un escondite de Belén 

tras haber cruzado la frontera. El gobierno israelí pidió disculpas en 

caso de que hubiera habido alguna víctima civil. Los medios de comunicación 

en EE.UU. repitieron la misma historia, al tiempo que Washing- 

3. Dado que en la Encíclica “Nostra Aetate” el Concilio Vaticano II, deslindó a 

la totalidad del pueblo judío de responsabilidad por la muerte de Cristo, posturas 

como la del “marxista” Petrás son tan reaccionarias como la de los católicos 

preconciliares.


ton felicitaba al gobierno israelí por su papel en la lucha contra el 

terrorismo internacional. Jesús había vivido solamente un día. 4 

Inclusive en nuestro medio, renombrados y respetados intelectuales 

judíos de la izquierda progresista como Hermann Schiller han llegado a 

tener que hacer declaraciones explicando que no participan de las manifestaciones 

de repudio a las acciones de Israel en la Franja de Gaza por el 

carácter marcadamente antisemita que asumieron algunos de los actores 

involucrados. 

Repudio una y otra vez la masacre de Gaza. Pero no voy a marchar 

con quienes esgrimen los mismos argumentos (“ judaísmo internacional”, 

“sinarquía”, “ratas”, “apátridas”) que utilizaba Felipe Romero en la 

revista “El Caudillo” (órgano de la Triple A) y que muy poco tiempo 

después usaron los militares de la dictadura cuando torturaban a los 

muchos judíos que pertenecían a ERP, Montoneros y demás organizaciones 

combatientes. 5 

La pregunta clave que cabría hacerse aquí es ¿cuál es el motivo por el 

cual un sociólogo como Petras (por lo tanto racionalista) marxista (por lo 

tanto ateo) apela a un mito (por lo tanto irracional) como el del deicidio 

(por lo tanto de carácter religioso)—que ha servido para justificar cientos 

de matanzas de judíos a lo largo de la historia—como una “herramienta 

política” en su “cruzada’ = “ contra Israel? La respuesta más honesta y 

“brutal” que podemos dar es que si alguien como este autor utiliza argumentos 

antisemitas no seremos tan ingenuos de creer que no sabe de lo que 

habla. Por el contrario, lo hace pues, concientemente asume un odio radical, 

se ha tornado en lo que Gino Germani llamó un antisemita “ideológico”. 

Sin llegar a este extremo este es el derrotero que vemos recorrer, al 

menos desde el estallido de la Segunda Intifada, parte de la intelectualidad 

“progresista”. Durante la guerra entre Israel y Hezbolla del año 2006 en 

Argentina se produjeron una serie de incidentes que marcaron el 

fortalecimiento de esta tendencia, como algunas movilizaciones de la 

izquierda radical con presencia de insignias de Hezbolla, la amenaza de 

violencia contra jóvenes judíos que querían manifestarse frente a la 

Embajada de Irán por parte del Movimiento “Patriótico Revolucionario” 

Quebracho 6 ; y finalmente, la aparición de una solicitada que se llamó: 

4. Petras, James: Navidad en los Territorios Ocupados en la página de 

Internet: CSCA Web, http://www.nodo50.org/CSCA/palestina/petras-21-12-01 

.html 

5. Schiller, Herman: La Otra Israel. Artículo publicado en Internet el 10/2/ 

2009 disponible en el sitio EUTSI—Página de Izquierda Antiautoritaria, http:// 

eutsi.org/kea/pueblos/palestina/la-otra-israel.html. 

6. A pesar de la contradicción ?agrante entre autode?nirse como “patriota


“Paremos el genocidio del Estado de Israel” que fue redactada por León 

Rozitchner, Alejandro Horowicz y Elsa Drucaroff y que fue firmada por 

decenas de intelectuales, entre los que se encuentran José Pablo Feinmann, 

Juan Gelman, Beatriz Sarlo, Horacio Verbitsky, Eduardo Grüner, Atilio 

Borón, Abelardo Castillo y Eliseo Subiela que entre otras cosas dice: 

La masacre actual excede todo lo conocido. No son los datos con su 

abrumadora evidencia los que horripilan, sino la repetición en medio del 

silencio cómplice del mundo llamado civilizado. Es preciso detenerla 

para que judío y masacrador no se vuelven sinónimos . . . Es preciso que 

las fuerzas democráticas, populares y progresistas del mundo entero 

hagan saber que más tarde o más temprano los crímenes contra la 

humanidad no quedarán impunes, que la victoria militar sobre el pueblo 

palestino tiene un nombre inequívoco: genocidio, y que las masacres 

solo abren el curso de nuevas masacres . . . 7 

Como veremos abajo existe en esta frase y en posturas similares, un 

evidente sobredimensionamiento del sufrimiento palestino el cual no es más 

que el indicador de un alto grado de irracionalidad en el tratamiento de esta 

cuestión. 

Esta tendencia se ha visto aún más fortalecida y profundizada durante 

la guerra entre Israel y Hamas a fines de 2008 y principios de 2009. Los 

indicadores que apreciamos de esto fueron varias solicitadas de organizaciones 

sociales y gremiales, artículos y declaraciones de intelectuales, y, por 

vez primera movilizaciones de repudio a Israel encolumnadas hacia instituciones 

de la colectividad judía mostrando como, a pesar de negar en sus 

discursos la relación entre judaísmo y sionismo, en la práctica, los ligan 

inescindiblemente. 

Qué es lo que ocurre para que intelectuales que estudian los fenómenos 

sociales, utilicen en forma arbitraria conceptos que conocen perfectamente, 

desvirtuando, manipulando y banalizando categorías históricas, sociológicas, 

políticas y económicas. Y a qué se debe que este uso arbitrario ÚNICA- 

MENTE acontece cuando analizan el conflicto de Medio Oriente, 

SÓLAMENTE cuando se refieren a Israel. Lo que podría estar aconteciendo 

son dos cosas: a) o bien tienen una visión prejuiciosa que deforma la 

imagen de Israel ante sus ojos, b) o bien apelan a la banalización en forma 

revolucionario” y, objetivamente, actuar como “fuerza de choque” de una teocracia 

reaccionaria. 

7. Llamamiento de intelectuales judíos argentinos: Paremos el genocidio del 

Estado de Israel. Iniciativa de León Rozitchner, Elsa Drucaroff y Alejandro 

Horowicz, Buenos Aires, 20/07/06. Publicado en Internet el 9/8/2006 en la página 

http://www.iade.org.ar/modules/noticias/article.php?storyid=829.


consciente con el objetivo de deslegitimar a ese estado. En ambos casos 

objetivamente se produce una situación discriminatoria contra Israel, el cual 

termina recibiendo un trato injusto (en relación a los hechos producidos por 

otros estados y grupos sociales) y desproporcionado (en virtud de los 

propios hechos por los que este estado es responsable.) Estas dos formas de 

tratamiento inmerecido pueden ser ligados a las dos formas de antisemitismo 

de las que habló el sociólogo Gino Germani ya que el primero—la 

visión prejuiciosa—se relaciona con las formas de judeofobia más insconcientes 

esto implica una remisión a lo definido por este autor como 

“antisemitismo tradicional” mientras que la segunda—la banalización consciente—al 

tratarse de una descalificación voluntaria y consciente (y no la 

mera y mecánica reproducción de estereotipos) nos remite a lo que Germani 

definió como “antisemitismo ideológico”. 

Si una parte de la intelectualidad—supuestamente el grupo social más 

crítico—utiliza acríticamente conceptos cuyo signifi cado conoce perfectamente 

y, sin medir las consecuencias, decide darles un uso banal, desvirtuando 

su verdadero sentido con la intención de forzar la interpretación de 

determinado hecho histórico, entonces algo profundo está sucediendo. Si la 

crítica es una de las características centrales del intelectual, entonces llama 

poderosamente la atención el hecho que académicos, científi cos sociales, 

empleen como técnicas de análisis el reduccionismo maniqueísta, el dualismo 

polar mesiánico y el simplismo acrítico creando como resultado una 

demonización de Israel perfilando una imagen de este estado que funcione a 

modo de bálsamo “tranquilizador” de sus inconcientes (no odio a Israel 

porque soy antisemita, sino porque Israel es “malo” o hace cosas 

“malvadas”). Crean la representación mental de Israel que necesitan para 

justificarse. Una condena “ex-ante” que funciona como autojustificación. 

Sinceramente es sorprendente ver a reputados especialistas de las 

ciencias sociales, académicos sumamente serios y rigurosos en sus análisis 

y estudios pero que cuando tienen que aplicar sus saberes para explicar el 

conflicto de Medio Oriente, mal emplean categorías vaciándolas de contenido, 

empleándolas acríticamente como una “jerga”—en el sentido 

propuesto por Theodor Adorno 8 en su crítica del filósofo nazi Martin 

Heidegger—utilizando este lenguaje conceptual en un sentido forzado con 

8. . . . el carácter de la jerga sería sobremanera formal: ella se encarga de 

que lo que desea sea sentido y aceptado por su exposición, en gran parte sin tener 

en cuenta el contenido de las palabras. El elemento preconceptual y mimético del 

lenguaje lo toma ella bajo su dirección, a favor de los efectos por ella deseados . . . 

Adorno, Theodore: La Ideología como lenguaje. Editorial Taurus: Madrid, 1992, 

Págs. 12, 13 y 14.


el evidente propósito de generar efectos políticos en lugar de utilizar otras 

categorías más adecuadas para describir una situación objetiva. 

Existe un código implícito que marca lo ‘políticamente correcto’ en el 

pensamiento de la intelectualidad progresista. Este código ha cristalizado 

una cantidad de clichés (frases hechas) que asumen monopólicamente la 

representación del espacio que antes ocupaba la reflexión praxística (Gramsci). 

Este pensamiento estandarizado se expresa en dos ejes discursivos 

claramente definidos: 

Inescindibilidad del “Tandem” Sionismo (Israel)—EE.UU. 

Esto se debe a la estrecha relación comercial y política entre ambos 

estados (a pesar que esta relación existe entre EE.UU. y muchos otros 

estados en el mundo sólo Israel es ligado inescindiblemente a dicho estado). 

Este eje se presentará de dos maneras: a) la heredera de las peores tradiciones 

paranoicas del antisemitismo clásico (la visión explícita en el mito 

de la supuesta “conjura judía” para la dominación del mundo, hoy 

expresada en la denuncia del supuesto “lobby judío” que dominaría los 

EE.UU. mediante su alianza con sectores evangelistas) y b) la “moderna” y 

“progresista” que se expresará en el mito que “Israel es la avanzada imperialista 

en Oriente Medio”. Estas formas de expresión son contrapuestas y 

excluyentes, ya que mientras en la primera el factor dominante en la ecuación 

son los judíos (el sionismo, Israel), en la segunda el factor dominante 

sería EE.UU. mientras que Israel apenas sería un mero títere de los 

designios de dicha potencia. 

Apremiante Necesidad de Romper la Asociación Judío = Víctima 

Este paso es indispensable para que se produzca la “ruptura” de la 

empatía con los judíos y poder, entonces, vivir sin culpa el odio ante “lo 

judío”—en especial ante su estado y la ideología que lo sustenta (Israel y el 

sionismo). Para la ruptura de esta asociación se deben construir dos mitos 

contrapuestos pero complementarios: a) Minimizar La Verdadera Dimensión 

De La Shoá Mediante Su Comparación Banal: Al respecto debemos 

recordar los dichos del Premio Nóbel de Literatura José Saramago cuando 

afirmó que Ramalá es Auschwitz, o la comparación de la valla antiterrorista 

con el muro del Ghetto de Varsovia, etc. y b) “Nazificar” a Israel: Esta es 

una técnica discursiva desarrollada con el norte de generar repulsa sobre 

dicho estado y por el otro, no sólo quebrar la asociación judío-víctima, sino 

ir mucho más allá y desplazarlo hacia lo opuesto, colocándolo en el lugar 

del victimario (lo que por oposición genera un movimiento inverso de sus 

supuestas víctimas—los árabes palestinos—al lugar de las víctimas


absolutas—del mal radical—provocando un reforzamiento de la empatía 

con las “víctimas” del “estado nazi” contemporáneo). En realidad esta 

asociación que se hace (entre judío, Israel o sionismo por un lado, y nazismo 

por el otro) es un recurso retórico llamado oxímoron 9 . 

Sobre estos dos ejes, luego, se montarán una serie de mitos discursivos 

que actuarán retroalimentando esta “realidad” construida desde la mera 

retórica y que constituirán la “jerga” del intelectual “políticamente correcto”. 

Esta se expresará en muchas consignas vacías, algunas de ellas las 

colocaremos a continuación 10 : 

° Israel es Colonialista; 

° Israel es la “avanzada imperialista” en Oriente Medio; 

° Israel es racista (sionismo = racismo); 

° Israel es un estado nazi; 

° Israel es un estado terrorista; 

° Israel es una potencia belicista y expansionista. 

Todas estas “verdades reveladas” operan a modo de “dogma religioso” 

del progresista “bienpensante”. Estas categorías fueron construidas para 

explicar otras relaciones sociales. Su uso forzado y mecánico las banaliza y 

vacía de contenido. Hoy muchos intelectuales se embarcan en esta “aventura” 

con la intención de demonizar a Israel y al sionismo. El resultado 

objetivo de esto es un doble crimen pues no sólo asumen posturas evidentemente 

antisemitas (cosa que indudablemente no les preocupa) sino que 

además atentan contra la memoria histórica de los crímenes cometidos contra 

los pueblos realmente colonizados, explotados, segregados y 

genocidados. 

Los intelectuales, particularmente los progresistas de izquierda siempre 

han actuado como la “conciencia moral” de la sociedad denunciando los 

abusos y las injusticias de los poderosos hacia los más débiles; hoy la cosa, 

al menos en relación con Israel, la cosa parece haberse modificado. Israel, 

en los discursos del progresismo “políticamente correcto” es desplazado al 

lugar de “lo siniestro”, ámbito del mal radical; esto se aprecia claramente en 

las categorías que se le asignan a modo de adjetivo calificativo. Ellas son la 

9. Oxímoron es un recurso retórico-literario que consiste en armonizar dos 

conceptos opuestos en una sola expresión, formando así un tercer concepto. Dado 

que el sentido literal de un oxímoron es “absurdo” (por ejemplo, «silencio 

atronador»), se fuerza al lector a buscar un sentido metafórico. 

10. Para ampliar este concepto ver mi artículo “Los Mantras del Antisionismo” 

en Brodsky, Patricio: Deconstruyendo la (Neo)Judeofobia. Crítica A Los Fundamentos 

Del Antisemitismo Actual (Mitos Y Realidades De Un Odio Reciclado). 

Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2010.


representación de todo lo malo de la modernidad (colonialismo, imperialismo, 

racismo, nazismo) y que fantasmagóricamente atormenta al 

progresista. 

Pero no todas las críticas a Israel deben ser consideradas parte de la 

neojudeofobia. Debemos evitar caer en una postura equivalente a la de los 

intelectuales que aquí criticamos banalizando el concepto “antisemita”. Hay 

que evitar utilizarlo frívolamente ante cualquier crítica que no sea de nuestro 

agrado ya que al hacerlo esta categoría, a la larga, pierde su eficacia para 

dar cuenta de situaciones reales. Si se utiliza el concepto “antisemita” como 

una “herramienta” para eludir toda crítica el mismo se vuelve banal ya que 

si “todo” es antisemitismo, finalmente “nada” lo es ya que no se puede 

distinguir situaciones en forma objetiva y todo termina siendo cuestión de 

interpretación. 

En ciertos “núcleos duros” existe esta tendencia a rotular de antisemita 

cualquier crítica a Israel, pero no todas lo son. Existen ciertas condiciones 

que se deben cumplir para que una crítica válida se transforme en una 

descalificación abierta. Varios autores plantean estas condiciones que nos 

ayudan a trazar los límites entre ambas. Hay que sopesar cuidadosamente 

cada declaración para evitar caer en las generalizaciones banalistas que 

tanto criticamos. 

Para evitar caer en estas canalizaciones contraproducentes debemos 

establecer claramente que la judeofobia, cualquiera sea su origen, tiene elementos 

cualitativos comunes que se pueden sintetizar una serie de características 

que la definen, a saber: 

a. Su carácter “Objetivo”: Los judeófobos siempre hallarán una 

excusa “válida” para “objetivar” su odio (despréndelo de sí y 

vivirlo no como algo propio sino como algo “objetivo”, algo negativo 

en los judíos que legitime el encono hacia ellos). Es un 

proceso mental mediante el cual se “coloca” la cualidad del odio 

en el objeto odiado, esto conduce a que el odio sea vivido como 

algo generado por el propio objeto de odio (“El Judío”, “El Sionismo”, 

“Israel”) a causa de algún “hecho objetivo” (el “asesinato” 

de Jesús, la “profanación” del cuerpo de Cristo—a través de las 

hostias—la conspiración global para la dominación, la traición 

cosmopolita, la contaminación racial, el genocidio palestino, etc.). 

b. Su carácter inconsciente: Raramente (sólo en casos extremos) la 

judeofobia se le aparece al judeófobo como un elemento consciente. 

Generalmente aparecerá como oculta a la consciencia 

(reprimida) y por el malestar que genera al ser una manifestación 

del inconsciente—que como tal pugna por aflorar a la consciencia 

a través de retoños—asumirá un carácter cada vez más violento en 

los crecientes e infructuosos esfuerzos por reprimir dichos retoños.


c. Su sobredimensionamiento: Una característica de la presencia de 

la judeofobia es la obsesión compulsiva que posee quien la sufre. 

El “problema judío” (la obsesión con el sionismo e Israel) “crece” 

hasta ocupar todo espacio de su raciocinio; de allí que sólo se 

hagan movilizaciones antiisraelíes y su solidaridad no se vea 

motivada ante tremendas tragedias humanitarias. 

d. Su obsesividad: De lo anterior se desprende que la judeofobia 

llega al grado de ser una obsesión malsana que atrofia y obnubila 

la capacidad racional. 

e. Su carácter maniqueo: La realidad es vista en oposiciones polares 

mutuamente excluyentes, de un lado el objeto de odio (como 

encarnadura del mal) y del otro el colectivo al que se pertenece 

(como representación “celestial” del bien). 

Todas estas características indican la presencia de un fuerte y arraigado 

prejuicio, por lo tanto será refractario a cualquier evidencia empírica. 

A continuación mostraremos algunos discursos en los que se puede 

apreciar cómo operan estas características en la palabra de algunos intelectuales, 

de igual forma el lector puede acudir a ver los discursos que 

exponemos: 

El pueblo judío en Israel sigue doblegado en su mayoría a la estrategia 

del Imperio cuyo modelo han aplicado en todos los órdenes de la vida. 

Hace ahora a los palestinos aquello que la cristiandad occidental hizo 

con nosotros . . . Para hacer lo que hacen en Palestina los judíos que 

están en el poder deben mantener el secreto moral del origen de su derecho 

a una patria y prolongar allí los valores inhumanos de sus propios 

perseguidores milenarios. Ocultar, por ejemplo, que lo que comenzó con 

la Cruz cristiana terminó con la Shoá europea. Deben esconder la 

verdad sobre la experiencia histórica de su vida en Occidente. Debieron 

convertirse en cómplices de sus asesinos, no denunciarlos, ya no decir 

nunca más que el cristianismo y el capitalismo fueron sus 

exterminadores porque ahora ambos se habían convertido en su modelo 

y en sus aliados. En lo religioso, se hicieron fundamentalistas y ecuménicos; 

en lo económico, se hicieron capitalistas globalizadores; en lo 

político, se hicieron un Estado teocrático colonialista; en lo científi co, 

tomaron como modelo la lógica neutral de la objetividad sin sujeto del 

iluminismo antijudío y, en lo internacional, sostienen con sus servicios 

las causas más siniestras de los opresores cristianos e imperiales. 11 

La barbarie perpetrada por el régimen de Tel Aviv reconoce pocos 

11. Rozitchner, León: ¿Podemos seguir siendo judíos? Artículo publicado en 

Diario Página 12 el 23/7/2006, disponible en Internet: http://www.pagina12.com 

.ar/diario/elmundo/470359-2006-07-23.html


antecedentes en los últimos tiempos: el bombardeo estadounidense con 

napalm a las aldeas campesinas vietnamitas, la “limpieza étnica” de 

Milosevic y algunas pocas aberraciones más. Es difícil encontrar ejemplos 

parecidos. A lo que más se parece es a la infame y cobarde agresión que el 

régimen nazi y su aliado fascista en Italia descargaron sobre Guernica. 

Como en esa pequeña ciudad vasca, en Gaza se produce una matanza 

indiscriminada de mujeres y niños, bajo la falsa acusación de que eran 

todos terroristas, desmentida una y mil veces, para eterna condena de sus 

perpetradores, por las miles de fotografías que circulan por todo el mundo. 

Se nota que el régimen israelí aprendió muy bien de su patrón estadounidense 

las malas artes de las mentiras y los engaños . . . No es exagerado 

calificar a los indignos y malignos gobernantes de Israel como auténticos 

herederos de la barbarie nazi, que también asesinaban indiscriminadamente 

para aterrorizar a la población; que también buscaban asegurarse 

su “espacio vital” para garantizar la impunidad de sus acciones; que 

también masacraban con su superioridad militar a poblaciones indefensas, 

y que también mentían, como recomendaba Goering (¡SIC!) 12 , porque de 

tanto hacerlo creían que esas mentiras se convertirían en verdades . . . Es 

doloroso constatar la involución del Estado israelí, tan lejos hoy de los 

sueños de grandes pensadores judíos, como Martín Buber, que lo 

imaginaron como la realización de un original modelo socialista. Un 

Estado a cuya ilegitimidad de origen se le agrega ahora una ilegitimidad 

aún mayor, emanada de la carnicería practicada sobre una población civil 

indefensa que obliga a preguntarse cuán democrático puede ser un Estado 

que perpetra tales crímenes. Ilegitimidad de origen, decíamos, no porque el 

pueblo judío no tenga derecho a tener su Estado, pues ese derecho es indiscutible 

y Hamas debe reconocerlo sin más dilaciones. Pero ilegitimidad 

porque se erigió robando tierras a otro pueblo al que también le asiste el 

mismo derecho. El acuerdo entre el colonialismo británico y el imperialismo 

norteamericano que al final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial se tradujo 

en la creación del Estado de Israel fue posible porque, ante la debilidad del 

mundo árabe, pudo apropiarse para Israel de un territorio que no era sólo 

suyo sino que se compartía con los palestinos . . . sus cobardes halcones, 

patéticos discípulos de Hitler, son los peores enemigos del pueblo judío. 13 

Un buen ejemplo para ilustrar lo irracional y contradictorio (carácterísticas 

del sentido común en términos gramscianos) de las críticas que recibe 

12. Suponemos aquí que se re?ere al Ministro de Propaganda de Hitler (Joseph 

Goebbels) y no a su lugarteniente (Hermann Göering). 

13. Borón, Atilio: Gaza es Guernica. Artículo publicado en Diario Página 12 el 

16/1/2009. Disponible en Internet: http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4- 

118324-2009-01-16.html.


Israel lo podemos apreciar en la cita del economista Claudio Katz que 

coloco debajo; dice Katz: 

Quienes exaltan la tolerancia religiosa vigente en ese país frente al cerrado 

islamismo del Hamas suelen olvidar el carácter confesional del 

estado judío. También omiten el fundamento bíblico, utilizado para justificar 

la extensión del territorio a los sagrados límites de Samaria y 

Judea . . . El doloroso legado del holocausto es frecuentemente utilizado 

para acallar la denuncia de un estado militarista que humilla a los pueblos 

vecinos. Esta censura se ejerce identificando al judaísmo con el 

sionismo e Israel, o interpretando cualquier crítica como un acto de 

antisemitismo. En realidad esos tres conceptos difi eren significativamente. 

. . El judaísmo es una religión, una cultura o una tradición de un 

pueblo diseminado por muchos países, cuya permanencia como segmento 

diferenciado ha variado en cada época y región. Israel es un estado construido 

con la explícita preeminencia de los hebreos, pero actualmente 

incluye varios grupos desconectados de ese origen. El sionismo es una 

ideología de apropiación colonial basada en fundamentos milenarios y 

pragmáticos. Estas diferencias permiten distinguir las posturas antijudías, 

anti-sionistas y anti-israelíes. La primera actitud es racista, la 

segunda anticolonialista y la tercera no presenta un significado nítido. Al 

igual que el antinorteamericanismo solo expresa un genérico rechazo de 

la opresión imperialista. 14 

No sólo muestra una interpretación caprichosa de judaísmo (no existe 

un judaísmo, sino que existen judaísmos ya que los ritos religiosos, la cultura 

y las tradiciones no son las mismas entre los judíos ashkenazim, los 

sefaradim, los mitzrahim, etc.) y del sionismo (el cual nada tiene que ver 

con el colonialismo sino que por el contrario, es un movimiento políticoideológico 

que asume la representación de los intereses nacionales del 

pueblo judío—y por ello tiene expresiones que van desde el sionismo marxista 

borojoviano hasta el derechismo jabotinskiano pasando por expresiones 

del sionismo religioso—y teniendo inclusive formas político-militares 

como las asumidas durante los combates por la liberación nacional de Israel 

contra la ocupación colonial británica primero y luego contra la invasión 

árabe durante la guerra de independencia). Además es un claro ejemplo de 

lo que es capaz de movilizar este conflicto a nivel inconsciente ya que, sin 

darse cuenta de la flagrante contradicción en la que incurre entre dos párrafos 

diferentes de este mismo texto, plantea la incoherente e insalvable 

contradicción que, por un lado, Israel es un estado que tiene un carácter 

confesional judío y que tiene un fundamento bíblico utilizado para justifi- 

14. Katz, Claudio: Incursiones para sepultar la paz. Publicado el 19/1/2009 en 

Internet: http://www.lahaine.org/index.php?p=35547 (los destacados son míos 

P.A.B.).


car la ocupación pero, por otro lado, luego critica la identificación del judaísmo 

con el sionismo e Israel (¿acaso el mismo autor no avala esta 

identificación al caracterizar a Israel como un estado confesional judío?). 

Esta contradicción nace, por un lado de criticar a Israel como un estado 

religioso (indudablemente el autor ve a la religión con una connotación 

negativa por lo tanto su adjetivación busca investir de sentido negativo al 

estado judío) mientras que por otro intenta escindir judaísmo de sionismo e 

Israel (esto lo haría para neutralizar una posible crítica de antisemitismo), lo 

grave de esto es que este autor (al igual que muchos otros hoy) no es consciente 

de esta contradicción y para él es coherente que ambos planteos 

coexistan en un mismo plano (este es un indicador de la falta de una reflexión 

crítica ya que asume las características contradictorias en sí mismas que 

Gramsci le asigna al “sentido común” por oposición, en este punto, al buen 

sentido y la Filosofía de la Praxis). 

Katz aborda también un tema crucial cuando afirma que cualquier crítica 

contra Israel es interpretada como un acto de antisemitismo, este es un 

lugar común que utilizan quienes saben que sus críticas contra Israel, en 

muchos casos, son desmedidas y carentes de base empírica y que cumplen 

con las condiciones que enunciamos más arriba como inherentes al pensamiento 

de base antisemita. 

El hecho concreto es que no se los cataloga de antisemitas porque critican 

a Israel, ni siquiera porque desvirtúan categorías históricas para 

demonizar a este estado, sino que se han hecho acreedores de esa “distinción” 

porque hacen esto EXCLUSIVAMENTE con Israel. Todo su humanismo, 

toda su solidaridad y su preocupación por los débiles se da sólo con 

las supuestas víctimas de Israel. El resultado de esto es el sobredimensionamiento 

de este conflicto en relación a otros conflictos donde hay matanzas 

in?nitamente mayores. 

Otro resultado colateral, al cual nos referimos más arriba es la exageración 

del sufrimiento palestino, su elevación a la categoría de “víctima universal”, 

el paradigma del sufrimiento (y todo este “esfuerzo” se realiza sólo 

por un mero juego de representaciones discursivas que deforman la dimensión 

real del conflicto). 

Un ejemplo tan brutal como carente de sentido de esto que venimos 

sosteniendo es la afirmación, asumida hoy como una “verdad revelada” que 

los judíos (Israel) le harían a los palestinos lo que los nazis, antaño, le 

hacían a los propios judíos. Ejemplo de esto es la solicitada de intelectuales 

llamada “Paremos el genocidio del estado de Israel” a la que nos referimos 

arriba. 

Cuando contrastamos esta retórica vacía con los hechos históricos 

comparando vis a vis ambos hechos históricos (la Shoá y la situación de los 

palestinos bajo la “ocupación” israelí), hallamos que durante los 6 años de


ocupación nazi la población judía de Europa—según las estimaciones de 

Karady 15 —descendió de 9.480.000 personas en 1939 a 3.780.000 luego de 

la misma, esto implica que en este período perecieron 5.700.000 judíos. Un 

60,1% de los judíos de la preguerra. Si hacemos un prorrateo de la cantidad 

de asesinatos, vemos que las víctimas judías ascendieron a 950.000 por año; 

79.166 por mes; 2.602,7 por día; 108,5 por hora; 1,8 por minuto. Esto 

representa una tasa demográfica negativa del orden del –10,1%; esto es una 

pérdida relativa del 10,1% de la población judía de Europa durante cada año 

de guerra. En contraste, veamos cual es la situación de la población palestina 

de los “territorios ocupados” por Israel, la cual, según afirmaciones de 

algunos de estos intelectuales banalistas, estaría viviendo un genocidio 

(como mínimo) equivalente (sino peor) al sufrido por los judíos europeos. 

Hallamos que la población palestina de los “territorios ocupados” (Franja 

de Gaza y Cisjordania—a.k.a. Judea y Samari—), según fuentes palestinas, 

alrededor de 1967 era de 1.045.000 personas. 16 Mientras que en el año 

2007, también según fuentes palestinas, la población de los “territorios 

ocupados” se estimaba en 4.000.000. 17 Estas cifras indican un crecimiento 

poblacional de 2.955.000 en el lapso de los 40 años transcurridos entre 

1967 y 2007, esto implica un crecimiento de 73.875 nuevos pobladores 

cada año; 6.156,25 nuevos pobladores por mes; 205,21 nuevos pobladores 

diarios; 8,5 nuevos pobladores por hora. La población de los “territorios 

ocupados” se multiplicó en 400% en 40 años; esto implica una tasa mensual 

de crecimiento demográfico del 10% anual durante estos 40 años. Es realmente 

increíble, síntoma de una ceguera inconmensurable, que a alguien (y 

a un intelectual más aún) se le ocurra establecer equivalencias entre ambas 

situaciones (la matanza del 10% anual de una población con una tasa de 

crecimiento del 10% anual en otra población). 

Para mayor ilustración aún podemos decir que si la población judía 

15. Karady, Víctor: Los Judíos En la modernidad Europea. Madrid: Siglo XXI 

de España Editores. 2000. Pág. 294-295. 

16. Fuente: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/ 

story559.html#table1 

17. Fuente: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/ 

story559.html#table1; algunas estimaciones elevan esta cifra hasta 5.000.000 (datos 

para el año 2001 de la Sociedad Académica Palestina para el Estudio de Asuntos 

Internacionales—lo cual resultaría en una cifra mayor—citados en el artículo 

Demografía de Palestina en la Enciclopedia Wikipedia: http://www.es.wikipedia 

.org/wiki/Demogra?a-de-Palestina), y hasta 5.500.000 (según el artículo: Palestinos 

Se Han Multiplicado Por 7 Veces Desde La Nakba (Catástrofe) de 1948. En 

Internet: http://www.palestinalibre.org/articulo. php?a=8171). Decidimos tomar la 

estimación más conservadora ya que de todas formas ella basta para mostrar el 

absurdo de la comparación entre ambos hechos históricos.


europea hubiese crecido al mismo ritmo de crecimiento demográfico de los 

palestinos (10% anual durante los últimos 64 años), hoy esta población 

sería de 70.280.000 personas, mientras que la población judía mundial 

actual apenas supera los 13.000.000 de personas. En oposición, si los palestinos 

hubieran sufrido un exterminio equivalente al sufrido por los judíos 

europeos (un decrecimiento poblacional del 10% anual) hubiesen 

desaparecido por completo en 1977. 

Adolf Eichmann afirmó que 100 muertos son una tragedia, mientras 

que 100.000 muertos sólo son estadística, en vistas a los datos comparados 

de más arriba debiéramos afirmar que para cierto sector de la intelectualidad 

progresista un promedio anual de crecimiento poblacional de 

73.000 nuevas personas en los territorios palestinos “ES” un 

“GENOCIDIO”. Un verdadero absurdo. 

No cabe ninguna duda que ambas situaciones sólo tienen parangón en 

un ejercicio mental de virtualización de los hechos históricos (sin valor 

alguno ya que los ejercicios contrafácticos son un sinsentido). A pesar de 

ello muchos (demasiados) intelectuales “caen en la trampa” de repetir acríticamente 

la consigna propagandística que plantea que los judíos le “hacen” a 

los palestinos lo que antes los nazis le hicieron a ellos; más aún, ni siquiera 

es cierto que los israelíes estén implementando un genocidio de palestinos 

como plantean sus detractores. No al menos si entendemos por genocidio la 

definición que en el año 1948 la Convención para la Prevención y la Sanción 

del Delito de Genocidio aprobó en una resolución que, bajo el número 

260 (III) A, fue aprobada por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas 

el 9 de diciembre de 1948 y que entró en vigencia el 12 de enero de 1951. 

En su Artículo II dice: 

“Artículo II: En la presente convención, se entiende por genocidio 

cualquiera de los actos mencionados a continuación, perpetrados con la 

intención de destruir, total o parcialmente, a un grupo nacional, étnico, 

racial o religioso, como tal: 

Matanza de miembros del grupo; 

• Lesión grave a la integridad física o mental de los miembros del 

grupo; 

• Sometimiento intencional del grupo a condiciones de existencia e 

que hayan de acarrear su destrucción física, total o parcial; 

• Medidas destinadas a impedir los nacimientos en el seno del 

grupo; 

• Traslado por la fuerza de niños del grupo a otro grupo”. 

No se puede afirmar que intelectuales como los que realizan este tipo 

de declaraciones forzando conceptos no saben de lo que hablan; no hablan 

desde la ignorancia sino desde la irracionalidad del prejuicio pues ellos no


desconocen el significado de los conceptos que utilizan arbitrariamente 

tergiversando su significado en su caprichosa aplicación, más—la mayoría 

de ellos—no los utilizan con la intención explícita de demonizar a Israel, 

sino porque tienen una mirada prejuiciosa la cual en sus representaciones 

mentales deforma a Israel y sólo a este estado. A pesar de la judeofobia 

presente en esta permanente segregación que sufre este estado, en el caso de 

la mayoría de los intelectuales que opinan de esta manera, uno no puede 

afirmar que se ha tornado antisemita, sino que más bien sería más correcto 

afirmar que han perdido el pudor en expresarlo (o han hallado una justificación 

“valida” para ejercerlo desembozadamente). 

Y no hablamos sólo de intelectuales que no son especialistas en el 

tema como el ejemplo de la comparación entre Ramalá y Auschwitz que 

realizó el Premio Nóbel de Literatura José Saramago, sino que hoy 

podemos hallar que académicos especialistas en historia contemporánea que 

se supone saben del tema realizan este mismo tipo de desproporcionada y 

abusiva comparación. 

Es desolador que en los comienzos del siglo XXI, observemos una 

situación similar a la que los judíos enfrentaron contra los nazis en el 

guetto de Varsovia, pero en esta ocasión, las víctimas son los palestinos 

aislados en campos de refugiados rodeados por israelíes, en muchos casos 

descendientes del holocausto. 18 

. . . NOS SOLIDARIZAMOS CON EL PUEBLO DE PALESTINA, en 

momentos que el sionismo ejerce la más brutal campaña de agresión 

militar que la humanidad pueda imaginar, comparable solo con las 

atrocidades cometidas por el nazismo y su política racial de exterminio 

contra los no arios, durante el gobierno de Adolfo Hitler . . . 19 

Qué terrible ironía de la historia que los sobrevivientes y 

descendientes de las víctimas del Holocausto que llevó a cabo la dictadura 

nazi-fascista en Europa y la antigua Unión Soviética reproduzcan los 

métodos siniestros de sus victimarios, por décadas en Palestina, y ahora 

otra vez en Líbano. 20 

18. Szmukler, Beinusz y Ramos, Vanesa: Declaración de la Asociación Americana 

de Juristas ante los ataques masivos de Israel contra el pueblo palestino 

publicada el 18/3/2002 en el sitio WebIslam.com en Internet: http://www.web 

islam.com/?idt=2491 

19. De una declaración llamada Declaración de Principios y Solidaridad con 

Palestina de los Artistas e Intelectuales venezolanos rubricada por más de 100 

intelectuales venezolanos. Publicada en Internet el 13/1/2009 en el sitio LaClase. 

info en http://laclase. info/nacionales/declaracion-de-principios-y-solidaridad-conpalestina-de-los-artistas-e-intelectuales-ven 

20. López y Rivas, Gilberto: Israel: Estado Terrorista, publicado el 28 de julio


. . . Una vez más, como siempre, los que condenamos las atrocidades de 

Israel somos acusados por los sionistas como antisemitas. Desde la 

gloriosa revolución liberal burguesa de 1789, el derecho a la libertad de 

expresión es sagrada, pero el movimiento sionista desearía establecer 

una rígida censura para evitar que el Gobierno judío-nazi de Israel sea 

condenado. Pobres diablos. Su maldad les impide ver que ahora los 

nuevos nazis son ellos y que al horror de Auschwitz, Treblinka, y 

Sobibor, hay que añadir los nombres de Sabra, Chatila, y Qana, entre 

otros. Los ciudadanos que defendemos los valores liberales, los derechos 

humanos, y el respeto a la legalidad internacional, por encima, de cualquier 

ideología, religión, nacionalidad o etnia, tenemos la obligación de 

condenar el horror alemán-nazi sobre los judíos, y también el israelí-nazi 

sobre los palestinos. 21 

Lo que “habla” en los discursos de las citas arriba no es el saber, la 

razón; sino que, por el contrario, este tipo de comparación arbitraria es 

síntoma de un profundo y arraigado prejuicio que “genera” un monstruo 

llamado Israel. Es una barbaridad histórica (que, confieso, nunca creí llegar 

a ver) que un historiador acuse a Israel de ser un estado nazi (contradicción 

absurda ya que lo definitorio del nazismo fue su antisemitismo radical). 

Hay intelectuales que construyen un sentido común antiisraelí con 

“sutileza”, intentan virtualizar la historia creando “realidades alternativas” 

desde los discursos que deben ser decodificados entrelineas, un ejemplo es 

la cita de debajo de Osvaldo Bayer: “Desde aquella primera guerra de Israel 

contra sirios y libaneses, en mayo de 1948 no hubo sino la búsqueda de 

soluciones por medio de las armas.” 22 

Esta frase de Bayer es, por un lado, contrafáctica pues habla de una 

primera guerra de Israel contra sirios y libaneses, parece ignorar deliberadamente 

que la guerra se desata el mismo día de la retirada británica, el 15 de 

mayo de 1948, cuando los ejércitos de cinco países (El Líbano, Siria, Irak, 

Egipto y la Legión Árabe de Transjordania—hoy Jordania—apoyadas por 

voluntarios libios, saudíes y yemeníes, comenzaron la invasión del recién 

proclamado Estado de Israel; mientras que por otro lado parece una broma 

de mal gusto cuando dice que no hubo búsqueda de soluciones que no 

fueran armadas, desde el llamamiento a la convivencia en la propia declara- 

de 2006 en el periódico La Jornada de la UNAM http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ 

2006/07/28/026a1pol.php 

21. Girón Garrote, José (profesor titular de Historia Contemporánea de la 

Universidad de Oviedo): El Gobierno nazi de Israel, publicado en WebIslam el 17 

de agosto de 2006 http://www.webislam.com/?idt=5521 

22. Bayer, Osvaldo: Si Quieres La Paz . . . Lucha Por Ella. Publicado en Diario 

Página12 el 29 de julio de 2006, disponible en http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/ 

contratapa/index-2006-07-29.html


ción de Independencia de Israel pasando por la Conferencia de Khartun 

cuando la Liga Árabe en 1967 como respuesta a la propuesta de paz de 

Israel lanzó la consigna del triple no (no al reconocimiento, no a la negociación, 

no a la paz) pasando por los tratados de paz con Egipto, Jordania y la 

propia Autoridad Nacional Palestina, sólo alguien muy alienado en sus 

prejuicios puede negar la vocación negociadora de Israel. 

No se alcanzará la paz con acciones que llevan a la destrucción y 

masacre de un pueblo que lucha por recuperar la tierra de la cual fue 

despojado por la fuerza, sometido a un bloqueo entre el mar y un muro 

inhumano que lo aísla del mundo privándolo de los bienes esenciales para 

la subsistencia, que lo encierran y que se le impide el libre ejercicio de su 

soberanía. 23 

Otra muestra de las intervenciones desde el desconocimiento es el 

fragmento de declaración que reproducimos arriba, en ella los diputados del 

Proyecto Sur afirman que: 

No se alcanzará la paz con acciones que llevan a la destrucción y 

masacre de un pueblo que lucha por recuperar la tierra de la cual fue 

despojado por la fuerza a qué tierra se refieren si el conflicto de 2009 se 

produce luego de más de 1.000 ataques con misiles sobre territorio israelí 

desde un territorio del cual Israel se retiró en agosto de 2005 (a menos 

que consideren que Israel debe retirarse de Israel no se entiende su 

declaración). Por otro lado afirman que: sometido a un bloqueo entre el 

mar y un muro inhumano que lo aísla del mundo privándolo de los bienes 

esenciales para la subsistencia esta frase es de lo más enigmático, sobre 

todo si tenemos en cuenta que la guerra fue en la Franja de Gaza, lindante 

con el Mar Mediterráneo, Israel y Egipto (país que también mantiene un 

bloqueo del que nadie habla), que no lo priva de ningún bien, sino que 

por el contrario, a pesar de la guerra le provee energía, agua, medicamentos, 

alimentos, etc.; de lo contrario hace rato que hubieran 

desaparecido muertos por inanición en un territorio que lo único que produce 

es terroristas, y por último afirman: que se le impide el libre 

ejercicio de su soberanía ese es un reclamo que le tienen que hacer a 

Hamas, quien tomó el poder en enero de 2006 luego de un cruento golpe 

de estado e impuso una dictadura islámica a la población impidiendo el 

ejercicio democrático. Todo este tipo de declaraciones están viciadas con 

este tipo de prejuicios y de lugares comunes que son claros indicadores 

del grado de liviandad con que se opina sobre estas cuestiones. 

Algunos intentan utilizar técnicas muy “sutiles” de descalificación de 

Israel en su intento de construirlo (discursivamente) como genocida (o 

23. Lozano, Claudio; Solanas, Fernando; Mazzitelli, Mario: Fragmento de una 

Declaración emitida por los tres diputados del Proyecto Sur durante la guerra de 

2009 contra Hamas en Gaza.


democida), al respecto podemos ver el ejemplo de Jeanette Becerra Acosta, 

quien en su artículo “300 Millones de Muertos, Víctimas del Poder”, hace 

un “sutil’=” comentario refiriéndose a la clasificación de los tipos de 

genocidios que realizó el Profesor Rudolf Rummel: 

Los “mega-genocidas”: la ex Unión Soviética, China y la Alemania nazi, 

responsables del exterminio de más de 150 millones de personas; los 

“genocidas menores”: siete gobiernos con un saldo de alrededor de 22 

millones de muertos en conjunto; los “sospechosos”: Corea del Norte, 

México y la Rusia zarista con 4 millones 145 mil víctimas, y los “centiasesinos”, 

acusados de asesinar a menos de un millón de personas, 

como es el caso de Israel, que desde 1948 dio cuenta de miles de palestinos 

en matanzas como las de Shabra y Chatila, hace 16 años. 24 

En este párrafo, por un lado, la autora hace toda una definición cuando 

se refiere a los 40.000 25 ó 59.000 26 árabes muertos por Israel, estos 54.900 

víctimas (promediando ambas cifras) y por alquimia las transforma, según 

sus propias palabras, en ““centiasesinos”, acusados de asesinar a menos de 

un millón de personas, como es el caso de Israel”, claro, no falta a la 

verdad, 54.900 son menos que un millón de personas, representan exactamente 

el 5,49% de ese millón, claro que no es lo mismo, políticamente, 

afirmar 54.900 que “menos de un millón”; asimismo, afirma la abierta, 

desvergonzada e infame calumnia que “. . . Israel, que desde 1948 dio 

cuenta de miles de palestinos en matanzas como las de Shabra y Chatila, 

hace 16 años.”, en un evidente acto de propaganda goebelsiana, miente 

acerca de las matanzas de los Campos de Refugiados de Sabra y Chatila de 

1982 en El Líbano las cuales no fueron llevadas a cabo por Israel sino por 

las milicias falangistas de cristianos maronitas. 

Estas cosas dichas al pasar, a la ligera e impunemente van a quedar 

incorporadas al imaginario como si fueran reales, la acumulación, la iteración 

ad-infinitum de esta técnica de propaganda, logra, a la larga, afectar la 

imagen de Israel ante la opinión pública. 

Algunos autores necesitan construirse un movimiento palestino que 

justifique sus posturas, plenos de una retórica hueca que no tiene asidero en 

24. Jeannette Becerra Acosta: 300 Millones de Muertos, Víctimas del Poder. 

Publicado originalmente en El Excelsior de México, el 31 de enero de 1999 y 

reproducido en Internet en el sitio Analítica Semanal. Venezuela Analítica Publicaciones, 

en http://www.analitica.com/vas/1999.02.1/internacional/06.htm. 

25. Según Gunnar Heinsohn y Daniel Pipes: La Verdadera Dimensión de la 

Guerra Árabe-Israelí. Publicado el 23 de octubre de 2007 en http://www.gees.org/ 

imprimir.php?id=4612. 

26. Según Piero Scaruf?: Wars and Genocides of the 20th Century. http:// 

www.scaruf?.com/politics/massacre.html.


la realidad, sino que son fantasías necesarias para justificar sus posturas, 

ejemplo de esto es la frase siguiente de Néstor Kohan, quien afirma que: 

¿Los palestinos nos odian? [a los judíos, N.B.] No es cierto. Gravísimo 

error confundir judaísmo con sionismo. Confusión que resulta falsa a 

todas luces, si se la esgrime en defensa del estado de Israel como si se lo 

hace en contra de Israel. La resistencia palestina —al menos en sus vertientes 

y organizaciones más lúcidas, las que provienen de un tronco 

antiimperialista laico y socialista—lucha contra la política de estado de 

Israel, no contra todos los judíos en general. 27 

A continuación veamos declaraciones de algunos de los líderes de lo 

que Kohan mismo define como: “. . . resistencia palestin —al menos en sus 

vertientes y organizaciones más lúcidas, las que provienen de un tronco 

antiimperialista laico y socialista”, la mejor forma de desarticular estos discursos 

de fantasía es confrontarlos con las palabras directas de los 

protagonistas, con esta prueba cualquier elaboración ficticia es desbaratada. 

Las siguientes declaraciones son de Anwar Raja, representante del Frente 

Popular para la Liberación de Palestina 28 en el Líbano, este político afirmó 

que: 

“Seamos realistas—los judíos han podido falsificar la historia, usando la 

desvergonzada mentalidad que ve a la historia según los intereses de 

uno. Los judíos han podido ejercer presión sobre el mundo, para que la 

historia se vuelva a escribir tal como lo deseen. Ellos extorsionaron al 

papa durante su reciente visita a Palestina, para que mencione la cifra 

de seis millones de palestinos . . . judíos en el Holocausto. Yo no sé quién 

estuvo de pie a las puertas del crematorio y contó. Yo no sé quién 

propuso esta cifra. Todos los hechos apuntan a que es infiada, a la fal- 

27. Kohan, Néstor: ¿Antisemitismo? A la memoria de Simón Radowitzky y 

Raymundo Gleyzer. Publicado el 23 de mayo de 2009 en Internet http://www.otro 

madrid.org/articulo/7814/antisemitismo-memoria-simon-radowitzky/(17/10/2009). 

28. El Frente Popular para la Liberación de Palestina es una organización política 

y militar marxista-leninista, secular, nacionalista palestina fundada en 1967 por 

George Habash, también fundador del Movimiento Nacionalista Árabe. FPLP había 

sido habitualmente la segunda organización de tamaño de la Organización para la 

Liberación de Palestina (Fatah siendo la más grande). Hoy en día FPLP es un partido 

político en la Autoridad Nacional Palestina. Generalmente FPLP tiene políticas 

de línea dura en respecto a las aspiraciones nacionales de los árabes palestinos, en 

contraste de la tendencia más moderada de Fatah. Se opuso a los Acuerdos de Oslo, 

y por mucho tiempo se opuso a la propuesta de solucionar el Con?icto árabe-israelí 

mediante la creación de dos estados, pero en 1999 hizo un acuerdo con los líderes 

de la OLP dando su acuerdo en negociar con Israel. De la de?nición de Wikipedia, 

en Internet: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frente_Popular_para_la_Liberaci%C3% 

B3n_de_Palestina) (17/10/2009)


sificación y la exageración.” 29 

Otro de los abundantes ejemplos de académicos que temerariamente se 

lanzan a opinar sobre este tema desde el lugar del no-saber, desde los 

prejuicios, lo hallamos en la pluma de Emilio Cafassi, quien, hablando del 

conflicto en Medio Oriente opina que: 

En el ghetto actual de la Franja de Gaza, el más importante de toda la 

historia por la magnitud de la concentración poblacional, tras su monumental 

muro custodiado por las milicias obligatorias del Estado de 

Israel, la población palestina indefensa es nuevamente masacrada en 

nombre de la paz y la futura—convivencia. Algunos de los sucesores de 

los antiguos habitantes de los ghettos ignominiosos del nazismo han 

creído, como sus antiguos verdugos, que la solución para la paz se 

encontraría primero en el encierro y posteriormente en el exterminio y el 

terror.” 30 

Cafassi, haciendo gala de una desconocimiento absoluto de la realidad 

cuando comienza afirmando, un prejuicio establecido como verdad cuando 

dice que: “En el ghetto actual de la Franja de Gaza, el más importante de 

toda la historia por la magnitud de la concentración poblacional . . . 31 

Si procedemos a desvirtuar los hechos suponiendo, como afirma 

temerariamente, que la Franja de Gaza es un Ghetto, allí viven aproximadamente 

1.551.859 personas (estimación de julio de 2009) 32 . La superficie 

total de la Franja de Gaza son 360 kilómetros cuadrados, lo que da una cifra 

aproximada de una densidad poblacional de 4.310 personas por kilómetro 

cuadrado. En el Ghetto de Varsovia 33 vivían más de 400.000 judíos en un 

área de 3,37 Km 2 , lo que hace una densidad poblacional de 118.694 habitantes 

por Km 2 , esto es una densidad poblacional (un hacinamiento) 27,54 

29. Raja, Anwar: Fragmentos de una entrevista emitida por Al-Alam TV el 15 

de Mayo de 2009. Publicada el 28/5/2009 en http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/ 

0/0/0/0/3319.htm (17/10/2009). 

30. Cafassi, Emilio: Exterminio Tras El Muro publicado en el Diario La República 

AÑO 1—Nro. 3146, Montevideo, Uruguay el 11 de enero de 2009, disponible 

en Internet: http://www.larepublica.com.uy/contratapa/348506-el-exterminio-trasel-muro. 



en Internet: http://www.larepublica.com.uy/contratapa/348506-el-exterminio-trasel-muro. 

32. Fuente de los datos: http://www.indexmundi.com/gaza_strip/population 

.html. 

33. Fuente de los datos: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId= 

10005069.


veces mayor que la de la Franja de Gaza; en el Ghetto de Lodz 34 una 

población de 164.000 judíos fue hacinada en un área de 10,36 Km 2 , “de los 

cuales sólo 2,4Km 2 estaban desarrollados y habitables” 35 , lo que hará una 

densidad poblacional de 15.830 personas por Km 2 (ó 68.333 personas por 

Km 2 si contemplamos sólo el área habitable), esto es 3,67 (15,86) veces la 

densidad de la Franja de Gaza; citamos estos dos ejemplos como muestra de 

un sistema de instituciones de encierro de la Alemania nazi que abarcó más 

de 400 ghettos, estos lugares de encierro estaban pensados con el objetivo 

de aniquilar a la mayoría de su población, de hambre, de frío y de 

enfermedades, de allí que la banalización que hace Cafassi se relaciona, por 

izquierda, con el negacionismo de la Shoá, no tiene nada que ver con los 

hechos históricos. 

Luego seguirá Cafassi: “En el ghetto actual de la Franja de Gaza . . . 

tras su monumental muro custodiado por las milicias obligatorias del 

Estado de Israel, la población palestina indefensa es nuevamente 

masacrada en nombre de la paz y la futura-convivencia.” 36 . 

Es realmente sorprendente que alguien que se lance a emitir opiniones 

tan superficiales sobre este conflicto o sobre cualquier otro hecho social. 

Hablar del Muro de Gaza ignorando que en Gaza no hay ningún muro, hay 

un cerco de alambre tejido como en otras fronteras y que el muro al que se 

refiere se encuentra en Cisjordania. Sólo un ignorante puede emitir semejante 

disparate. Pero contra Israel es fácil opinar, es gratis y da “prestigio”. 

Por otro lado, llama “milicias obligatorias” al Ejército de Defensa de Israel 

en un burdo intento de rebajar la categoría del Ejército de Defensa de Israel 

(EDI), de des-legitimarlo, ya que en un estado consolidado, el uso del concepto 

“milicia” refiere a una situación opuesta a un ejército regular (como 

es el caso del EDI) de tipo paramilitar (civiles armados). Contradictoriamente, 

y como ejemplo del doble estándar “Milicias palestinas” es uno de 

los eufemismos que los detractores de Israel utilizan para “legitimar” a los 

terroristas asesinos de civiles, ya que al no existir un estado se justifica la 

existencia de “civiles” armados que “luchan contra la ‘ocupación’ y por su 

‘liberación’ nacional”. 

Finalmente Cafassi concluye que: “Algunos de los sucesores de los 

antiguos habitantes de los ghettos ignominiosos del nazismo han creído, 

como sus antiguos verdugos, que la solución para la paz se encontraría 

34. Fuente de los datos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodz_ghetto. 

35. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodz_ghetto. 



en Internet: http://www.larepublica.com.uy/contratapa/348506-el-exterminio-trasel-muro


primero en el encierro y posteriormente en el exterminio y el terror” 37 . Lo 

que no es más que la prolongación lógica de su intencionada exageración 

acerca del supuesto carácter ghéttico de la Franja de Gaza, si este territorio 

es “el mayor Ghetto de la historia”, entonces es lógico acusar a los judíos 

(sucesores de los antiguos habitantes de los ghettos ignominiosos del nazismo) 

de ser (o pensar) como los nazis (han creído, como sus antiguos 

verdugos, que la solución para la paz se encontraría primero en el encierro 

y posteriormente en el exterminio y el terror) esto es lisa y llanamente 

analfabetismo o malintención (sea cual fuere la situación es el ejecicio militante 

de los prejuicios). 

La crítica a Israel rápidamente se sobredimensiona y cruza los límites 

de lo racional. En un interesante artículo—del cual cito una parte abajo—un 

profesor de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México describe correcta 

mente cual es el proceso “ideológico-discursivo” que recorre una parte de la 

intelectualidad en relación a las acciones de Israel: 

. . . me preocupa que, en el ánimo de defender al pueblo palestino, nuestros 

intelectuales de izquierda terminen apoyando a los fundamentalistas 

islámicos. No se trata, entonces, de aceptar el bombardeo o la invasión 

de la Franja de Gaza, ni mucho menos de justificar las muertes de 

civiles. Se trata, para mi gusto, de no olvidar el contexto internacional y 

regional en el que estas acciones se desenvuelven y de no caer en la 

ingenuidad en el análisis . . . Es natural que el abuso en el uso de la 

fuerza sea condenado. Es natural también que si uno ve a poblaciones 

inermes bombardeadas y víctimas inocentes, lo primero que venga a la 

mente sea una condena inmediata e incuestionable . . . La condena es 

además fácilmente exagerada. Se habla inmediatamente de “genocidio” 

e incluso intelectuales en principio serios develan supuestos planes para 

vaciar Cisjordania y Gaza de palestinos. El asunto alcanza con igual 

facilidad tintes antisemitas. Nuestros intelectuales de izquierda sólo 

alcanzan a ver de un lado al oprobioso Estado de Israel y del otro al 

inerme y victimado pueblo palestino . . . El problema es que Hamas, al 

igual que Irán, ha jurado echar al mar a los judíos de Israel y 

desaparecerlos del mapa. O sea, ellos sí predican el genocidio y no es 

difícil saber lo que harían si tuvieran la fuerza necesaria para llevar a 

cabo sus planes . . . A muchos intelectuales de izquierda les disgusta 

tanto el imperialismo estadounidense que no les importa terminar 

alineados con quien sea que se le oponga, aún si éstos son dictadores 

octogenarios con 50 años en el poder, populistas rayando en la locura o 

fundamentalistas islámicos. En el caso que nos ocupa, algunas posi- 



en Internet: http://www.larepublica.com.uy/contratapa/348506-el-exterminio-trasel-muro.


ciones terminan defendiendo a Hamas, con tal de oponerse a Estados 

Unidos e Israel. Se mezclan así las justas demandas del pueblo palestino 

con las pretensiones de los extremistas musulmanes. Se les olvida que el 

ideal de estos grupos no es el de constituir Estados democráticos, tolerantes 

y pacíficos; que ellos (estos intelectuales, generalmente secularizados) 

no sobrevivirían ni un mes en un régimen de ese tipo . . . Israel 

puede tener muchos defectos, pero por lo menos es una democracia, que 

defiende los mismos valores que nosotros. En su parlamento hay 

representantes árabes, que hablan por el millón y medio de árabes israelíes, 

y la prensa tiene libertad de expresión. Sus intelectuales pueden 

estar o no de acuerdo con lo que su gobierno está haciendo y tienen 

libertad para decirlo. Eso es imposible en la mayor parte de los países 

árabes y en Irán. Israel es, en efecto, un pedazo de Occidente, con todos 

sus valores, en el Medio Oriente. Eso no quiere decir, por supuesto, que 

tengamos que estar de acuerdo y justificar todo lo que hace el gobierno 

israelí, el cual se sostiene en una mayoría favorable a sus actos de 

guerra. Pero por lo menos esta circunstancia nos debería prevenir contra 

un apoyo ingenuo a los grupos fundamentalistas islámicos. 38 

Israel, en el imaginario de cierta intelectualidad, parecería asumir un 

topos equivalente al del agujero negro en la física, esto es, un lugar con 

leyes propias que no puede ser aprehendido por las mismas leyes universales 

que se aplica al resto del “universo” de las naciones. Allí todo 

adquiere una dimensión propia, merece un estatus único. Cuando vemos 

esta exclusiva obsesión irracional en relación a las conductas del estado de 

Israel, las exigencias de una conducta prístina, el monitores estrecho de sus 

acciones y el tratamiento desigual en relación al que se le brinda a los otras 

200 naciones del mundo nos remite necesariamente a aquella idea que la 

causa del antisemitismo no hay que buscarla en el judío sino en el 

antisemita 

Israel es transformado en uno de los estados más criminales de la historia 

por un ejercicio de retórica consistente en asignarle a modo de adjetivos 

los conceptos que el discurso progresista considera la ‘encarnación’ 

del mal radical (nazi, genocida, colonialista, imperialista, terrorista de 

estado, racista, segregacionista, etc.) Pero esto no logra mágicamente que se 

materialicen esas relaciones sociales (a pesar que para el judeófobo 

‘progresista’ tienen tanta realidad como lo tenía la ‘amenaza judía’ para el 

nazi o el ‘judío-vampiro’ consumidor ritual de sangre humana para el judeófobo 

medieval). 

De “asesinos de Cristo” a “asesinos rituales”; “de asesinos rituales” a 

38. Blancarte, Roberto: Políticamente Incorrecto; Hamas e Israel. Publicado en 

el sitio de Internet Milenio.com el 13/1/2009 en http://www.milenio.com/node/ 

146603.


“genocidas”, las fantasías colectivas acerca de los judíos tienen el poder de 

“materializarse”, de “asumir” una apariencia “creíble”. El hecho es que las 

fantasías irracionales de los judeófobos se reproducen y se reciclan. De 

“conspiradores para asesinar a Cristo” a “conspiradores para traicionar a la 

nación que los cobija”; de “conspiradores para traicionar a la nación que los 

cobija” a “conspiradores para dominar al mundo”. De “usureros” a “rentistas 

del Holocausto”. Estos ejes discursivos se mantienen a lo largo de la 

historia y se reciclan y adaptan según las nuevas condiciones sociales. La 

base de estos mitos siempre es la misma: la perenne judeofobia. 

La principal característica de la neojudeofobia es la confluencia de los 

tres principales grupos antisemitas de la actualidad (izquierda radical, 

integrismo islámico y extrema derecha) en espacios comunes a nivel discursivo 

(tres ejes judeofóbicos). 

MITO DE LA “CONSPIRACIÓN JUDEO-SIONISTA” 

El subsecretario de Defensa de Estados Unidos, Paúl Wolfowitz: “Está 

señalado como el operador de las empresas del lobby judío que actúan en 

el negocio de las guerras y de la “reconstrucción”, y se lo sindica como el 

principal introductor de la técnicas de tortura en la prisiones iraquíes de la 

ocupación.” 39 

Ganó Bush y también lo hizo el lobby sionista que lo sostiene en cada 

una de sus acciones de apoyo al criminal premier israelí Sharon. Perdió 

Kerry y el lobby sionista que también repartió millones de dólares en su 

canasta electoral, sabe que cuenta con un aliado de hierro a la hora de 

entorpecer cualquier salida de autodeterminación del pueblo palestino, a la 

sazón el invadido, el agredido, el desterrado, pero jamás el vencido . . .” 40 

. . . las corrientes fundamentalistas, entre las cuales está el sionismo o 

fundamentalismo judío interesado en presionar mediante su “lobby” 

judeoamericano a la Administración Bush en que lleve a cabo la guerra de 

agresión imperialista contra Irak para que así el holocausto palestino pase a 

un segundo plano . . . 41 

39. Anónimo: Wolfowitz: del lobby judío “al Banco Mundial” en el sitio web 

del Partido Comunista del Perú http://www.patriaroja.org.pe/html/colaboraciones/ 

wolfowitz_del_lobby_judio_al_banco_mundial.htm. 

40. Aznárez, Carlos: Cuando Bush y casi 60 millones de razones para no 

dormir tranquilos en el sitio web del periódico Gramma (órgano oficial del Partido 

Comunista de Cuba) en http://www.granma.cu/espanol/2004/noviembre/sabado6/ 

razones-e.html el 22 de enero de 2002. 

41. Nuñez, Eduardo: El Estado Criminal De Israel: Un Peligro Para La Paz 

Del Mundo, publicado en http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2003/07/3114.shtml el 

22/7/2003.


. . . el lobby israelí, a través de los medios de comunicación que controla 

en EEUU y otros países “occidentales”, pretende ocultar lo que el 

profesor de la Universidad de Jerusalén Yeshayahou Leibowitz expresó 

descarnadamente: “La fuerza del puño judío proviene del guante de acero 

que le recubre, y de los dólares que le acolchan.” 42 

El equívoco en la aplicación por parte de los EEUU de la vía militar en 

Somalía o en Haití, en Panamá o Irak, por sobre la salida política 

negociada, recuerda en buena medida—salvando coyunturas—el episodio 

de Vietnam. No alcanza muchas veces con ser el “más fuerte” para vencer. 

Y ello es especialmente cierto en esta fase de total hegemonía del lobby 

judío-norteamericano. Su extraordinaria potencia aparente es su gran 

debilidad, ya que la política exterior de este imperio sui generis depende de 

la viabilidad de un micro-Estado: el de Israel. No hay ninguna analogía 

posible con Roma. La ausencia de claridad estratégica es, sin dudas, el 

mayor enemigo actual de la misma nación norteamericana. 43 

El lobby israelita tiene muchos “tanques de pensadores” que proveen 

los futuros consejeros a las varias administraciones, republicanas y 

demócratas . . . Fue una política constante—por parte del Estado de Israel y 

desde mucho antes de su independencia como Estado en May.48, el 

mantener distintos grupos de presión dentro de EEUU, y con base en una 

numerosa, y muchas veces adinerada, colectividad judía. 44 

NEGACIÓN/BANALIZACIÓN DEL HOLOCAUSTO 

“Holocausto” es una palabra de connotaciones bíblicas que sirve muy 

bien a los propósitos sionistas, aunque tergiversa el sentido histórico de la 

barbarie nazifascista. A pesar del carácter apócrifo de gran parte del Diario 

de Ana Frank, sigue presentándoselo como “documento histórico”. 

Presentar como “genocidio” a la represión nazi contra los judíos 

(“genocidio” significa el exterminio de un pueblo o una comunidad étnica, 

y la comunidad judía no fue exterminada sino que a partir de 1945 conoció 

un auge extraordinario), y hablar del “mayor genocidio de la historia”, sirve 

42. Del artículo El filósofo Roger Garaudy denuncia la colaboración del Sionismo 

con el régimen Nazi. Documento de la “Izquierda Nacional” en http://www. 

geocities.com/izquierda_nacional/mundo004.html 

43. Ceresole, Norberto (neonazi argentino ya fallecido, fue asesor del judeófobo 

presidente venezolano Hugo Chavez): El poder judío en Occidente y en Oriente 

publicado en un sitio neonazi de Internet llamado Radio Islam en la dirección http:/ 

/abbc2.com/islam/spanish/sion/poder/poder1.htm. 

44. Ricchiardelli, Horacio: Informe Cóndor Mayo 2003 publicado en un sitio 

web vinculado al golpista Mohammed Alí Seineldín http://documentos.seineldin 

.8m.com/cn06052003.htm.


para borrar la atención de los grandes genocidios que ensucian la memoria 

de los vencedores de la guerra: la diezma de indios en América, la matanza 

de esclavos africanos, las represiones salvajes de Stalin . . . ¡60 millones de 

indígenas (sobre un total de 80 millones) fueron asesinados en Sudamérica 

desde la conquista! ¡Y la propia segunda guerra mundial causó 50 millones 

de muertos, 20 de los cuales eran soviéticos y casi 10 millones alemanes! 

¿Quién se acuerda hoy de la matanza de Dresde del 13 de febrero de 1945, 

cuando las bombas de fósforo anglonorteamericanas se cobraron 200.000 

víctimas civiles en pocas horas? 45 

Para proteger la sagrada mentira de los seis millones, se ha utilizado 

maniobras que parecen casi de ciencia ficción, especialmente para ahogar 

cualquier intento serio de demostrar su falsedad. Así, cuando en 1995 la 

revista japonesa de economía y negocios “Marcopolo” publico un inocente 

comentario señalando que “cada vez eran menos las razones para creer que 

en la Alemania Nazi habría tenido lugar un Holocausto” de judíos y gitanos, 

el todopoderoso judaísmo mundial movió sus hilos y consiguió que tanto la 

revista como el periodista respectivo fueran sancionados sin ajuste a 

ninguna legislación existente, y que la revista Marcopolo no pueda hacer 

por el resto de su existencia, cualquier otra referencia sobre el 

Holocausto . . . 46 

“NAZIFICACIÓN” DE ISRAEL 

Israel se está comportando con los palestinos, siento tener que volverlo 

a decir, tal como la Alemania nazi se comportó en su tiempo con los judíos. 

Y no me refiero sólo al gobierno de Israel, presidido por ese militar 

ultraderechista que es Ariel Sharon. Sino también al pueblo de Israel en su 

conjunto. 47 “El Estado de Israel es un Estado criminal, genocida y terrorista, 

y su misma existencia es un problema para la paz mundial.” 48 

“Nunca podrán alegar los judíos del mundo entero, así como su 

45. Del artículo El filósofo Roger Garaudy denuncia la colaboración del Sionismo 

con el régimen Nazi. Documento de la “Izquierda Nacional” en http:// 

www.geocities.com/izquierda_nacional/mundo004.html. 

46. Anónimo: Las Pruebas De Que El Holocausto Judío Es Una Fantasía publicado 

en el sitio neonazi Resistencia Aria, http://www.resistenciaria.org/revisionismo/MENTIRAS.htm. 

47. Caballero, Antonio: La Naturaleza Humana publicado en el sitio de Internet 

de La Semana.com, dirección en la red http://semana.terra.com.co/opencms/ 

opencms/semana/articulo.html?id=74630. 

48. Nuñez, Eduardo: El Estado Criminal De Israel: Un Peligro Para La Paz 

Del Mundo, publicado en http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2003/07/3114.shtml el 

22/7/2003.


patrocinador EEUU, que no sabían lo que estaba sucediendo. Se trata de un 

holocausto semejante al que padecieron sus antepasados por el hecho de 

pertenecer a un pueblo. Como hoy padecen ese exterminio los ciudadanos 

palestinos. El silencio de las personas que sostengan al Estado de Israel los 

hará cómplices de un sistema de muerte con terribles consecuencias.” 49 

“Es triste ver la similitud casi paralela entre el trato que los nazis dispensaron 

a los judíos y el que dispensan hoy los judíos a los palestinos y 

árabes en general.” 50 

“Israel es un pueblo militarizado y genocida que quiere la expulsión de 

todo palestino: es continua la actitud exterminadora de estos neonazis con 

caftán, que a pesar de esta nueva “hoja de ruta” no cejan en su empeño de 

apoderarse de todo el territorio.” 51 

Esta confluencia discursiva, expresión del surgimiento y consolidación 

de un espacio político común (el movimiento antiglobalización), han parido 

una nueva forma de odio judeofóbico, han dado entidad a lo que podríamos 

llamar neojudeofobia. 

La situación actual de afluencia entre los grupos antisemitas nos da pie 

para afirmar, parafraseando a Marx y a Engels, que en vistas de los hechos 

acontecidos en los últimos años parecería que: “un fantasma recorre el 

mundo”, el fantasma de la judeofobia . . . ¡Antisemitas del mundo, uníos! 

49. García Fajardo, José Carlos: Holocausto Del Pueblo Palestino, publicado en 

la página de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, http://www.ucm.es/info/ 

solidarios/ccs/articulos/oriente_med/holocausto_del_pueblo_palestino.htm. 

50. Anónimo: La Falsa Democracia Hebrea, http://diosesdeburja.iespana.es/ 

la_falsa_democracia_hebrea.htm. 

51. Anónimo: Libertad Para Palestina en el sitio, http://diosesdeburja. 

iespana.es/libertad_para_palestina.htm.

The Conversos 

Seth Ward* 

In the 14th and 15th centuries, many Iberian Jews were forced to convert 

to Catholicism. These Jews, called conversos, were loyal to their new 

faith, although some retained Jewish beliefs or practices and passed them 

along to their descendants. While memory of Jewish ancestry faded, there 

was a reawakening of interest in Judaism, including what was seen as a 

return to the Judaism of their ancestors in the late 20th century. Three 

elements are key to understanding the conversos phenomenon: genetic 

and genealogical considerations, the canon of evidence of survival of 

crypto-Judaic practices and beliefs, and a major shift in attitudes toward 

Judaism, which includes identification with the Judaic past. 

Key Words: Converso, Jew, Catholic, Spain 

Judaism flourished in medieval Spain, but after the riots of 1391, Jews 

came under increasing pressure to convert to Christianity. When Ferdinand 

and Isabella expelled their Jewish populations from Aragon and Castile in 

1492, many chose to convert to Christianity; others moved to Portugal, 

where they essentially were forced to accept Christianity in 1497. Many 

persons in the Iberian peninsula in 1500 had Jewish ancestry, although it is 

hard to assess how many of them were forcibly baptized, and how many 

had freely chosen Christianity or had ancestors who had. 1 More to the point, 

it is not possible to ascertain how many were ardent, believing Catholics. In 

some cases, Catholics who were confirmed Christians, rejecting Jewish 

belief and practice, nevertheless were proud of their Jewish heritage, by 

which they were linked to Christ in the flesh, as well as in faith. Nevertheless, 

Spanish anti-Jewish sentiment was extended to the New Christians, 

and Spain adopted blood purity laws, e.g., limpieza de sangre, requiring 

proof of pure Christian ancestry, increasing the likelihood of Spaniards suppressing 

any knowledge of their Jewish roots. 

1. Estimates range from 100,000-200,000 of Jews converted to Christianity in 

the Iberian Peninsula. 

129


Moshe Maimon’s The Marranos (1893) 

In the 16th and 17th centuries, there were opportunities for converso 

descendants to live openly as Jews—in the Americas, in the Ottoman 

Empire, and in some European countries. In some of these places, these 

returnees to Judaism were often called Spanish-Portuguese Jews. But open 

practice of Judaism was not possible in Spain or Portugal or areas controlled 

by them. Indeed, the Spanish Inquisition, adopted in 1480, and the 

Portuguese Inquisition, founded in the 1530s, were often particularly vigilant 

about Judaizing among persons known to have converso ancestry. 

These inquisitions were perhaps most concerned with Judaizing in the first 

decades of their existence. Although later they more often prosecuted Protestants, 

blasphemers, and other heretics, they turned their attention to Jews 

from time to time; in New Spain, for example, most notably in 1591 and 

1640. The last Spanish Inquisition persecution for secret Jewish practices 

was in the 19th century. Except in isolated communities, practices among 

New Christians and their descendants reflecting ancient Jewish customs or 

strategies adopted to avoid inquisitorial suspicion vanished; those that differed 

in any way from the typical Catholic practice of the region were kept 

private and generally were maintained without specific reference to any 

connection to Judaism. 

In the first three quarters of the 20th century, there were a few reports 

of Jewish identity retention among converso descendants, and some 

attempts to revive some form of Judaism. Among the more notable of such 

campaigns was that of Portugal’s Barros Bastro. 2 Indeed, a few remote 

communities in Portugal retained distinctive elements of belief, liturgy, and 

practice from their Jewish heritage, although Barros’ endeavors did not 

meet with much success. In North and South America there were individual 

families of largely Spanish colonial or mestizo heritage who maintained 

2. Capt. Artur Carlos de Barros Basto (1887-1961) was a decorated Portuguese 

military hero and leader of the return to Judaism movement for the crypto-Jews.

2011] THE CONVERSOS 131 

they had Jewish ancestry, had practices considered consistent with a Jewish 

heritage, or reported traditions about only marrying with certain families 

(historian Cecil Roth, for example, was aware of only faint echoes and individual 

persons who claimed Marrano ancestry). 

For the most part, persons of converso heritage were unaware of any 

Jewish practices or beliefs in their families, and if they had unusual practices 

would not have described them as Jewish, at least in public, nor did 

they establish formal communities. Venta Prieta in Mexico was a rare 

exception. Raphael Patai published two important studies on the Indian 

Jews of Venta Prieta; he discounted converso heritage in his first published 

study, although he modified his views in a later study. Otherwise, there was 

little general awareness of the survival of any Jewish elements of belief, 

practice, or identity among populations that might have included descendants 

of conversos. 

In the final quarter of the 20th century, persons of Hispanic heritage in 

general came into more contact with Jews and more into the American 

mainstream. There was a growing acceptance of multiculturalism in 

America, television programs such as Roots emphasized the search for heritage, 

and, perhaps most relevant for readers of this journal, the level of 

antisemitism appears to have declined among Hispanos and everyone 

else—at least in the United States. It is hardly surprising that there was a 

major change in attitudes and openness: The persistence of Jewish heritage 

among persons of Hispanic heritage began to be discussed more frequently 

with outsiders, at first only behind closed doors, and appeared in popular 

accounts and in research. Hispanos who came into contact with Jewish families 

wondered whether some of their own family practices had a Jewish 

source. 3 

One component of this phenomenon involves the discovery or determination 

of Jewish ancestry. It seems to me that the sheer number of conversos 

and their descendants’ eventual intermarriage with all ranks of Spanish 

society make it statistically improbable that any person of predominantly 

Spanish heritage alive today is totally devoid of Jewish ancestors. This 

fact—or at least the high likelihood of common ancestry between modern 

Jews and Spaniards or Hispanos—is not only indicated by research suggesting 

a high preponderance of common Y-chromosome haplotypes, but 

also somewhat obscured by this research. Suppose there are some 20 generations 

since the late 1300s—and thus 2 20 , or over one million, distinct possi- 

3. I discussed the literature up to the mid-1990s and noted its growth elsewhere. 

See Seth Ward, “Converso Descendants in the American Southwest: A 

Report on Research, Resources, and the Changing Search for Identity,” Proceedings 

of the 6th EAJS Toledo, 1998.


ble strands; male-only genetic heritage examines only one of these lineages. 

Interest in crypto-Judaism has also been sparked by advances in the availability 

of genealogical resources, making it easier to trace ancestry to specific 

persons of known Jewish heritage. There has also been research 

suggesting some possible converso-descendant communities have a higher 

incidence of genetic defects often associated with Jewish communities, 

such as the autoimmune Pemphigus vulgaris and the breast cancer gene 

mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2. 

Another issue sparking much debate is what may be termed the canon 

of evidence of practices said to reflect Jewish ancestry in such populations. 

These include reports about lighting candles on Friday nights, avoidance of 

pork (in some cases only on special occasions), prayer meetings on Saturdays, 

objects or symbols thought to be Jewish, or even the transmission of 

family traditions that “we are Jews.” In most cases, it is possible to explain 

these traditions in various ways—even the transmission of Jewish family 

identification. Nevertheless, these practices, symbols, and transmissions 

occur in a well-defined population, which has been demonstrated to have at 

least some crypto-Jewish ancestry. 

A third component—to this author the most important—is a sense of 

increased identification with a Jewish heritage among Hispano populations. 

Until the first generation born after World War II came of age, there was 

little interest in claiming this heritage. On the contrary, more frequently the 

foundation story was that Jews and Muslims were intruders who were 

active in Spain for eight centuries, and, thankfully, expelled or converted 

without a trace. In Jewish circles, also, it was usually assumed that the 

descendants of conversos who had not managed to escape to places such as 

Amsterdam, Salonica, or New York had lost any traces of the memory of a 

Jewish past. The publication and broadcast of accounts of crypto-Judaism 

starting in the 1970s, increasing substantially in the 1980s, changed this 

assumption both among Jews and Hispanos. Jews were fascinated by stories 

of Jewish persistence in the face of antisemitism, assimilation, and 

prejudice. Individuals of Spanish ancestry, having more contact with Jews, 

a more positive attitude toward them, and becoming part of a society that 

valued multiculturalism, also were drawn to consider the possibility that 

their heritage was more complex than they might have thought. 

Some converso descendants have chosen to practice Judaism openly. 

In some populations, rabbinic authorities have decided to the communities 

were sufficiently endogamous to allow those wishing to live as Jews to be 

accepted as such without worrying about conversion or ceremonies of 

return; such a decision has been rendered about the Chuetas of Majorca, 

according to news reported as this article is being written. In other cases, 

converso descendants have chosen to formally convert to Judaism, or to

2011] THE CONVERSOS 133 

identify as Jews without the conversion requested by rabbinic authorities. In 

some communities, Spanish speakers in Mexico and the United States have 

chosen to identify with Messianic congregations, explaining their mixture 

of Jewish and Christian beliefs and customs as reflecting their converso 

heritage. 

CONCLUSION 

Recently, Latin American and Hispano-American identity has included 

the “return” of Judaism. Studies by anthropologists and sociologists preserve 

the anonymity of the statements of their subjects, so sometimes it is 

difficult to assess the extent to which the attitudes and choices expressed in 

the studies reflect a small number of respondents or the views of a larger 

group. But there seems little doubt that many persons of Hispanic background 

have been attracted to Jewish beliefs and practices, and in some 

cases have undergone formal conversions, in others asserting that their families 

have always been Jewish—and thus they identify as Jews and have 

adopted lifestyles based on Judaism. Some communities have sought 

rabbinic guidance, adopting practices more like those of mainstream Judaism. 

Other communities adopted a crypto-Jewish tradition, reflecting primarily 

practices reported in these communities, or have asserted an identity 

they see as both Jewish and Christian by joining messianic congregations. 

In many more cases, there is an openness to the element of Jewish and 

Islamic heritage among Hispanics, even when this is not their primary religious 

or community identity. 

Half a century ago, persons of Hispanic heritage would have argued 

that the Jewish and Muslim presence on the Iberian peninsula was an 800year 

aberration. They might have acknowledged some mestizo or European 

ancestors but would have made antisemitic statements. Today, it would 

seem that many of those with an Hispanic heritage are proud of Jewish 

contributions to Spain and value this contribution as part of their own heritage. 

They openly identify themselves as descendants of conversos, in ways 

unthinkable a generation or two ago. 

*Seth Ward teaches in the religious studies at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. 

He is a research associate of the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East 

at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, a Coolidge 

Fellow at the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, and vice president 

for programs of the Society for Crypto Jewish Studies.


REFERENCES 

Carvajal, Doreen, “Majorcan Descendants of Spanish Jews Who Converted Are 

Recognized as Jews,” New York Times, July 10, 2011, http://www.nytimes. 

com/2011/07/11/world/europe/11iht-conversos11.html. 

Hordes, Stanley M., To the Ends of the Earth. New York: Columbia University 

Press, 2005. 

Patai, Raphael, “The Jewish Indians of Mexico” [originally published 1950], Jewish 

Folklore and Ethnology Review 18 1-2 (1996): 2-12, and “Venta Prieta 

Revisited” [originally published 1965], Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 

18:1-2 (1996): 13-18. 

Roth, Cecil, A History of the Marranos, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 

1975. 

Ward, Seth, “Converso Descendants in the U.S. Southwest: A Report on Research, 

Resources, and the Changing Search for Identity,” Proceedings of the 1998 

Conference of the European Association for Jewish Studies, ed. Angel Saenz- 

Badillos. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999, 677-86.

El Conversos 

Seth Ward* 

Los judíos y el judaísmo florecieron en la España Medieval, pero 

judíos llegaron bajo una creciente presión para convertir al cristianismo, 

especialmente después de disturbios en varias ciudades en 1391. Cuando 

Fernando e Isabel expulsaron a sus poblaciones judías de Aragón y Castilla 

en 1492, muchos decidieron convertirse al cristianismo. Muchos se trasladaron 

a Portugal, donde esencialmente fueron obligados a aceptar el cristianismo 

en 1497. Muchas personas en la Península Ibérica en 1500 han 

tenido ascendencia judía, aunque es difícil evaluar cuántos de ellos por la 

fuerza fueron bautizados y cuántos habían elegido libremente cristianismo, 

o tenían antepasados que tenían. Más al punto, no es posible determinar 

cuántos eran ardientes, creyendo que los católicos. En algunos casos, 

católicos que fueron confirmaron a cristianos, rechazando la creencia y la 

práctica, sin embargo fueron orgullosos de su herencia judía, por que ellos 

estaban vinculados a Cristo “de carne y hueso”, así como en la fe. Sin 

embargo, sentimiento antisemita español se extendió a los cristianos 

nuevos, y España una serie de normas sobre limpieza de sangre “pureza de 

sangre,” que requieren prueba de puro viejo cristiano ascendencia, y que 

hizo españoles más probable serían suprimir conocimiento de raíces judías. 

Moshe Maimon’s The Marranos 1893 

En los siglos XVI y XVII, hay oportunidades para descendientes de 

conversos a vivir abiertamente como los judíos, en las Américas, en el 

Imperio Otomano y en algunos países europeos. En algunos de estos 

lugares, estos repatriados al judaísmo se denominaban a “Hispano-portugués” 

judíos. Pero no fue posible práctica abierta del judaísmo en España 

o Portugal o en zonas controladas por ellos. De hecho, la Inquisición española, 

aprobada en 1480 y la Inquisición portuguesa, fundada en 1530, eran a 

135


menudo preocupa particularmente “Judaizar” entre las personas que tienen 

ascendencia de conversos. Estas inquisiciones tal vez estaban más preocupados 

por judaizar en las primeras décadas de su existencia; Aunque 

procesa a los protestantes, blasfemos y otros herejes, dirigieron su atención 

a los judíos de vez en cuando; en la Nueva España, por ejemplo, sobre todo 

en 1591 y 1640, tratada en detalle por hordas de Stan; el último 

enjuiciamiento Inquisición española prácticas secretas de judíos fue en el 

siglo XIX. Por lo tanto, excepto en las comunidades muy aisladas, las prácticas 

de los nuevos cristianos y sus descendientes que refleja la antigua 

costumbre judía o estrategias adoptadas para evitar sospechas inquisitoriales 

desaparecieron; los que difieren en absoluto la práctica católica típica 

de la región se mantienen en privado y generalmente se mantuvieron sin 

referencia específica a cualquier conexión con el judaísmo. 

En los primeros tres trimestres del siglo 20th, había pocos informes de 

retención de la identidad judía entre los descendientes de conversos y algunos 

intentos de revivir de alguna forma del judaísmo. Entre los más notables 

de estas campañas fue la de Barros Bastro en Portugal. de hecho, 

algunas comunidades remotas en Portugal mantuvo elementos distintivos de 

la creencia, la liturgia y la práctica de su herencia judía, aunque los esfuerzos 

de Barros no tuvieron mucho éxito. En América del Norte y del Sur 

había familias individuales de en gran medida española colonial o 

patrimonio mestizo, quien mantuvo tenían ascendencia judía, o habían prácticas 

considera coherente con una herencia judía, o informó tradiciones 

acerca de casarse sólo con algunas familias. Cecil Roth conocía sólo ecos 

débiles y las personas individuales que reclamó la ascendencia de Marrano. 

En su mayor parte personas de conversos patrimonio desconocen cualquier 

judías prácticas o creencias en sus familias, y si tenían prácticas inusuales 

no habría describió como judío, al menos en público, ni establecen 

comunidades formales. Venta Prieta en México fue una rara excepción. 

Raphael Patai publicado dos estudios importantes sobre los “judíos de 

India” de Venta Prieta; descontó conversos patrimonio en su primer estudio 

publicado, aunque modificó sus puntos de vista en un estudio posterior. 

De lo contrario, fue poco conocimiento general de la supervivencia de 

cualquier judíos elementos de convicción, práctica o identidad entre la 

población que podría incluir a descendientes de conversos. 

En el último trimestre del siglo 20th, especialmente en los Estados 

Unidos, las personas de la herencia hispana en general llegaron en más contacto 

con los judíos y más en la corriente estadounidense. Había una 

creciente aceptación del multiculturalismo en América, programas de televisión 

como raíces hizo hincapié en la búsqueda de patrimonio y, quizá más 

relevante para los lectores de este diario, el nivel de antisemitismo parece 

disminuyeron entre Hispanos y todos los demás, al menos en los Estados

2011] EL CONVERSOS 137 

Unidos. No es nada sorprendente que hubo un gran cambio en las actitudes 

y la apertura: la persistencia de la herencia judía entre personas de herencia 

hispana comenzó a discutir con más frecuencia con los de afuera, al 

principio sólo a puerta cerrada y apareció en las cuentas de populares y en 

la investigación. Hispanos que entraron en contacto con familias judías se 

pregunta si algunas de sus prácticas de familia tenían un origen judío. 

Examinó la literatura hasta mediados de la década de 1990 y señaló su 

crecimiento en un artículo publicado en el procedimiento de EAJS. 

Uno de los componentes de este fenómeno implica el descubrimiento o 

la determinación de ascendencia judía. Me parece que el número de conversos 

y matrimonios eventual de sus descendientes con todos los rangos de la 

sociedad española hace estadísticamente subsidiada que cualquier persona 

de patrimonio predominantemente español vivo hoy es totalmente carente 

de antepasados judíos. Este hecho, o al menos la alta probabilidad de 

ascendencia común entre los judíos y españoles o Hispanos moderno: se 

indica no sólo por la investigación, lo que sugiere una alta preponderancia 

de haplotypes común de cromosoma Y, pero también algo oscurecida por 

esta investigación. Supongamos que hay unos 20 generaciones desde los 

finales del siglo XIV y así 2 20 o un millón distintas hebras posibles; 

patrimonio genético sólo macho examina sólo uno de estos linajes. Interés 

en crypto-judaísmo también ha sido provocado por avances en la disponibilidad 

de recursos genealógicos, haciendo más fácil su ascendencia de 

seguimiento a personas específicas del patrimonio judío conocido. También 

ha habido investigación sugerir que algunas posibles comunidades de 

descendientes de conversos tienen una mayor incidencia de ciertos defectos 

genéticos asociados a menudo con las comunidades judías, como el Pénfigo 

vulgar y las “Judío” mutaciones de gen de cáncer de mama en BRCA1 y 

BRCA2. 

Otra cuestión provocando mucho debate es lo que puede llamarse el 

“canon de pruebas” de prácticas para reflejar en esas poblaciones de 

ascendencia judía, dijo. Estos incluyen informes acerca de iluminación 

velas el viernes por la noche, evitar la carne de cerdo, en algunos casos sólo 

en ocasiones especiales, reuniones de oración los sábados, objetos o 

símbolos que piensa que es judío, o incluso la transmisión de las tradiciones 

familiares que “somos judíos”. En la mayoría de los casos, es posible explicar 

estas tradiciones de diversas maneras, incluso la transmisión de identificación 

familiar judía. Sin embargo, estas prácticas, los símbolos y las 

transmisiones se producen en una población bien definida, que se ha 

demostrado que tienen al menos algunas ascendencia judía crypto. 

Un tercer componente, este autor más importante—es una sensación 

de mayor identificación con una herencia judía entre las poblaciones de 

Hispano. Hasta la primera generación nacida después de la Segunda Guerra


Mundial la mayoría de edad, hubo poco interés al reclamar este patrimonio 

de la humanidad. Por el contrario, más frecuentemente, la “historia de la 

Fundación” fue que los judíos y los musulmanes eran intrusos que estaban 

activos en España durante ocho siglos y afortunadamente, expulsados o 

convierten sin dejar rastro. También, en círculos judíos, normalmente se 

asumió que los descendientes de conversos que no habían conseguido 

escapar a lugares como Amsterdam, Salónica o Nueva York habían perdido 

cualquier rastro de la memoria de un pasado judío. La publicación y difusión 

de las cuentas de crypto-judaísmo, a partir de la década de 1970, 

aumentando sustancialmente en la década de 1980, cambian esto tanto entre 

los judíos y los Hispanos. Los judíos estaban fascinados por las historias de 

judío persistencia de asimilación, antisemitismo y los prejuicios. Personas 

de ascendencia española, tener más contacto con los judíos, una actitud más 

positiva hacia ellos y formar parte de una sociedad que valora la multiculturalidad, 

se señalan también a considerar la posibilidad de que su 

patrimonio fue más compleja de lo que podrían haber pensado. 

Algunos descendientes de conversos han elegido práctica judaísmo 

abiertamente. En algunas poblaciones, decidieron las autoridades rabínicas 

las comunidades fueron endógamos suficientemente como para permitir que 

aquellos que desean vivir como judíos para ser aceptado como tal sin preocuparse 

de conversión o ceremonias de retorno; esa decisión ha quedado 

sobre los Chuetas de Mallorca, segun noticias informados que se está 

escribiendo este ensayo. En otros casos, los descendientes de conversos han 

elegido formalmente convertir al judaísmo o identificar como judíos sin la 

conversión solicitada por las autoridades rabínicas. En algunas 

comunidades hispanohablantes en México y Estados Unidos han optado por 

identificar con congregaciones mesiánicas, explicando su mezcla de creencias 

judías y cristianas y costumbres como el reflejo de su herencia de 

conversos. 

CONCLUSIÓN 

Muy final del siglo XX (20th) y principios del XXI (21st), esto ha 

llevado a una mayor conciencia de un componente judía en América Latina 

y el hispanoamericano de identidad e incluso a un movimiento de 

“regreso”. Estudios realizados por antropólogos y sociólogos tienden a 

ocultar las declaraciones de sus súbditos, por lo que a veces es difícil 

evaluar la medida en que las actitudes y decisiones expresadas en los 

estudios reflejan un pequeño número de encuestados o las opiniones de un 

grupo más grande. Pero parece que hay pocas dudas de que muchas personas 

de origen Hispano han sido atraídas por las prácticas y creencias 

judías y en algunos casos han sido sometidos a conversiones formales, en 

otros afirmando que sus familias han sido siempre judíos—y así identificar

2011] EL CONVERSOS 139 

como judíos y han adoptado el estilo de vida basado en el judaísmo. 

Algunas comunidades han buscado orientación rabínica, adopción de prácticas 

más como las del judaísmo principal; otros han afirmado una especie de 

tradición “Cripto-judío”, que refleja principalmente las prácticas en estas 

comunidades, o han afirmado una identidad ven como judíos y cristianos 

uniéndose a congregaciones mesiánicas. En muchos casos más, hay una 

apertura para el elemento del patrimonio judío (y Islámica) entre los hispanos, 

incluso cuando no es su principal identidad religiosa o comunidad. 

Hace medio siglo la mayoría de las personas de herencia hispana 

habría argumentó que la presencia judía y musulmana en la Península Ibérica 

fue una aberración del año 800, y aunque podría han indicado algunos 

mestizos o antepasados europeos, no habría reconocido a cualquier 

antepasados como judío y probablemente hubiera anotado alto sobre índices 

de antisemitismo. Hoy, sin embargo, parece que muchas personas del 

patrimonio hispano están orgullosos de las contribuciones de los judíos de 

que España lo que era y esta contribución como parte de su propio 

patrimonio de valor y abiertamente identificar como descendientes de conversos, 

de manera impensable una generación o dos hace. 

*Seth Ward se enseña en los estudios religiosos en la Universidad de Wyoming en 

Laramie. Es un investigador asociado del Instituto para el estudio de Israel en el 

Medio Oriente en la escuela de posgrado de estudios internacionales en la Universidad 

de Denver. 

REFERENCES 

Doreen Carvajal, “Majorcan Descendants of Spanish Jews Who Converted 

Are Recognized as Jews,” New York Times, July 10, 2011 http:// 

www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/world/europe/11iht-conversos11.html. 

Stanley M. Hordes, To the Ends of the Earth. New York: Columbia University 

Press, 2005. 

Raphael Patai, “The Jewish Indians of Mexico” [originally published 1950], 

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 18 1-2 (1996), 2-12, and 

“Venta Prieta Revisited” [originally published 1965] 555518:1-2 

(1996), 13-18. 

Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication 

Society, 1975. 

Seth Ward, “Converso Descendants in the U.S. Southwest: A Report on 

Research, Resources, and the Changing Search for Identity,” Proceedings 

of the 1998 Conference of the European Association for Jewish 

Studies, ed. Angel Saenz-Badillos. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999, pp. 677- 

86.

Latin America and Iranian Terror Networks— 

Land of Opportunity 

Sergio Widder* 

The New Antisemitism has found ways to express itself in Latin 

America. This renewed hostility is expressed by political coalitions that 

bring together radical left-wing elements and religious fundamentalist 

groups, which are the main voices that promote ancient antisemitic rhetoric 

and conspiracy theories about Jewish and/or Zionist control of the 

world. 

Key Words: Jews, Antisemitism, Argentina, Latin America, Iran 

A FERTILE ARENA 

The main regional hub for antisemitic groups is the Brazil-based 

World Social Forum (WSF). Gathered under the slogan “Another world is 

possible,” the WSF was founded in 2001 by leaders from the then-opposite, 

now ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (Laborers Party, currently undergoing 

its third consecutive presidential term). The founding purpose was to provide 

a kind of response to the “neo-liberal, economic globalization,” promoting 

a “globalization of international solidarity” instead. The WSF holds 

annual meetings, but regional forums are scheduled throughout the year. 

Several legitimate grievances are addressed at those meetings (e.g., environment 

care policies, sexual exploitation, child labor), but a quick look at a 

program shows that no less than 10 to 15 percent of the activities are 

devoted to the Middle East and particularly “the Palestinian cause,” the 

delegitimization of Israel, and the justification of terrorism as “legitimate 

resistance.” 

Whatever happens in the main meeting of the WSF has an impact in 

the regional forums, and contributes to shape the agenda of radical leftwing 

groups all over the world. To offer just one example, it was there that 

the Simon Wiesenthal Center learned about the patterns of the initiative by 

pro-Palestinian groups against the Israeli security fence, half a year before 

its actual presentation at The Hague. The WSF also provides the framework 

for the coordination of the global “Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions” (BDS) 

campaign against Israel. 

The impact in Latin America was visible during the 2006 Israel- 

141


Hizbollah and the 2009 Israel-Hamas wars, when virulent antisemitic hostility, 

disguised as “anti-Zionism,” reached its peak. 

This context is providing an appealing opportunity for the radical Iranian 

regime in its search for new allies that could help to combat its 

isolation. 

“21ST-CENTURY SOCIALISM”—OR ANTISEMITISM? 

Most of the Latin American groups active at the forums find their 

political reference in the ALBA (Bolivian Alternative for the Americas) 1 

bloc, led by Venezuela’s Húgo Chávez and joined by Evo Morales 

(Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), and Fidel 

and Raul Castro (Cuba). This bloc is also the main partner for the growing 

Iranian penetration in Latin America. 

It is interesting that all of these leaders have reached power by building 

their legitimacy from outside the traditional political systems and/or in 

connection to institutional crisis in their countries: Chávez is an army colonel 

whose first attempt to get to the presidency was a failed coup d’etat; 

Morales was a leader of indigenous peasants working at coca plantations; 

Correa is the first stable Ecuadorian president in years; Ortega and the Castro 

brothers were leaders of armed revolutions, although Ortega later ran for 

and won free elections. All of them have also provided a warm reception to 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and have established diverse 

cooperation initiatives. 

In the case of Bolivia, beyond the common interests regarding energy 

resources, Iran has also financed humanitarian projects. A new hospital, 

named “Islamic Republic of Iran—The Red Crescent Society,” was inaugurated 

by presidents Morales and Ahmadinejad in November 2009. The hospital 

provides health services for over 800,000 people of El Alto, a modest 

neighborhood, 40 minutes away from the capital city, La Paz, and home to 

a wide constituency of President Morales. 2 But beyond Iran’s generosity, a 

controversy arose with the suggestion that nurses and other female staff 

wear a veil while on duty. 3 

1. The acronym ALBA was created by Húgo Chávez as a counter to the ALCA 

(Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas—FTAA, the U.S. initiative for a Free 

Trade Agreement of the Americas). In Spanish, the word “alba” means “dawn,” so 

the bloc’s name is intended to proclaim a “new era” for Latin America. 

2. “Se afianzan los vínculos con Irán,” La Nación, December 6, 2009, http:// 

www.lanacion.com.ar/1208421-se-afianzan-los-vinculos-con-iran. 

3. “Velo islámico en Bolivia,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/america_latina/ 

2009/11/091126_2328_bolivia_islam_gm.shtml.

2011] TERROR NETWORKS 143 

We should remember that Evo Morales’ decision to expel the Israeli 

ambassador under the pretext of the war in Gaza was made prior to Venezuela’s 

decision for the same reason. Morales’ anti-Israeli rhetoric is permanent, 

and he uses it as a starting point to criticize other “enemies”: prior to 

being elected president, he had labeled Chile “the Israel of Latin America,” 

referring to the neighboring country’s alleged “expansionism.” Having said 

this, it is also fair to say that, so far, the small Bolivian Jewish community 

has not suffered a direct impact from this situation. 

The case of Venezuela is different. There, it is evident that antisemitism 

has become a state policy. Attacks against Jewish targets have become 

usual and remain uninvestigated and, of course, unpunished. 

Some relevant incidents include: 

• Two police raids against the Hebraica Jewish Center of Caracas. 

The pretext was that judicial authorities were looking for hidden 

weapons and explosives. In January 2009, Tiferet Israel synagogue 

was vandalized. 

• On Christmas Eve 2005, President Chávez delivered a long speech. 

during which he said that “the world has wealth for all, but some 

minorities, among them the descendants of the murderers of Christ, 

have seized the wealth of the world.” 4 

• Frequent attacks from state-sponsored media, notably from a TV 

show, The Razor Blade, and a Web site, “Aporrea.org.” 5 During the 

2009 Israel-Hamas war, Aporrea published a “plan of action” 

against the Venezuelan Jewish community, which included the 

“confiscation of Jewish properties” and boycotts of supermarkets 

where kosher food could be bought. Aporrea’s editors later disassociated 

from the content of the article, but this step was taken only 

after they received strong criticism. 

• A close advisor to Chávez in his early days was the late Argentine 

sociologist Norberto Ceresole, an antisemitic propagandist, Holocaust 

denier, and author of Terrorismo fundamentalista judío (Jewish 

Fundamentalist Terrorism), in which he blames Jews for the 

bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, in 1994. 

Another advisor was the late Argentine Colonel Mohammed Ali 

Seineldin, a far-right nationalist who used to say to his troops that 

“green horses do not exist, nor decent Jews.” 

The scope of the attacks against the Jewish community led to an 

4. The French newspaper Liberation harshly criticized Chávez for this speech, 

in an article titled “Le credo antisémite de Hugo Chávez,” http://www.liberation.fr/ 

monde/010134744-l3-credo-de-hugo-ch-vez. 

5. The word aporrea means “beat” in English.


unprecedented criticism from the Inter-American Commission of Human 

Rights (IACHR), a body of the Organization of American States (OAS). In 

February 2010, the IACHR issued the report “Democracy and Human 

Rights in Venezuela,” which describes the current status quo in that country, 

including references to antisemitic incidents 6 : 

• Paragraph 780: “. . . the Commission is concerned by reports claiming 

that the Jewish community in Venezuela is being especially 

affected by violent incidents, including antisemitic statements and 

incidents in various media outlets, together with graffiti painted on 

the walls of various Jewish institutions and homes.” 

• Paragraph 781: “( . . . ) on December 2, 2007, police officers 

raided the headquarters of the Hebrew Social, Cultural and Sports 

Center (“La Hebraica”) in Caracas. . . . [S]ome 30 officers of the 

Intelligence and Prevention Services Directorate forced their way 

into the Center . . . [A]bsent a prosecutor from the Attorney General’s 

Office, the police officers presented an order ( . . . ) that 

allegedly gave no grounds for the operation . . .” 

• Paragraph 782: “In response to the situation ( . . . ) the Commission 

asked the State to submit information on the incident and on the 

reasons for the operation carried out at La Hebraica. ( . . . ) [T]he 

State told the Commission that “the operation in question was 

intended to conduct a detailed search of all the facility’s rooms in 

order to locate evidence of criminalistic interest related to the 

alleged commission of a crime against public order . . .” ( . . . ) The 

IACHR believes that the information furnished by the state regarding 

the operation at the Hebrew Center is inadequate to explain the 

incident that occurred at the institution’s headquarters. 

• The report also refers to the desecration of the Tiferet Israel synagogue 

in January 2009, as well as the series of incidents that happened 

in that month (Paragraph 783). It also mentions, as a 

precedent, the speech given by President Chávez on Christmas Eve 

in 2005, in which he stated that “the world has enough for everyone, 

indeed, but it happens that some minorities, the descendants of 

those who crucified Christ ( . . . ) seized the world’s riches” (Paragraph 

784). 

The Caracas–Tehran axis is also trying to influence regional politics. 

In June 2010, the ALBA bloc proposed to pass a condemnation against 

Israel at the 2010 OAS General Assembly in Lima, Peru. This initiative was 

presented at the opening of the first plenary and was voiced by Ecuador, a 

6. The complete report can be found at http://www.cidh.oas.org/pdf%20files/ 

VENEZUELA%202009%20ENG.pdf.


few days after the “Gaza Flotilla” incident. The proposal was rejected, but 

almost one third of the member states supported it. 

Even more sensitive—and, indeed, a threat to regional stability—is the 

permission granted by Chávez for the construction of an Iranian missile 

base on Venezuelan soil. According to a report originally published by the 

German daily Die Welt in November 2010, the facilities will include the 

deployment of platforms for storage of missiles with diverse ranges, plus 

four mobile platforms, which will be operated by the Iranian Revolutionary 

Guard. The agreement grants permission to Iran to open fire “in case of 

emergency.” The installations are scheduled for activation by the end of 

2011. 

NAZI SAFE HAVEN FOR TERRORISTS 

Opposite ALBA’s partnership with Iran is Argentina’s judicial case 

against a group of high-level Iranian officials for their alleged responsibility 

in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center on July 18, 1994, which left 85 

people dead and hundreds injured. A special investigation unit, led by Chief 

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, has concluded that the attack was decided by 

the highest Iranian political leadership, including former president Hashemi 

Rafsanjani and former foreign minister Alí Akbar Velayati. A key role was 

played by the former cultural attaché to Argentina, Sheikh Mohsen Rabbani, 

who played the part of a field commander. The warrants were 

endorsed by Interpol with “Red Notice” status, with the exception of Rafsanjani, 

Velayati, and Hadi Soleimanpour (former Iranian ambassador to 

Argentina), because they were considered “high authorities.” This does not 

diminish their alleged responsibility. 7 

The Argentine government backed the judicial case actively. Both the 

late former president Néstor Kirchner and current president Cristina Kirchner 

condemned Iran’s protection to the suspects at successive editions of the 

UN General Assembly, and demanded that they be submitted to a court 

trial. 

These initiatives from the Argentine authorities have caused a reaction 

from Iran: they of course dismissed the charges, started to co-opt Argentine 

7. According to the prosecutor’s indictment, the AMIA attack was decided on 

August 13, 1993, in Mashad (Iran). In addition to the names mentioned above, 

warrants were issued against Mohsen Rezai (commander of the Pasdaran–Iranian 

revolutionary guard), Ahmad Vahidi (commander of the Al Quds force), Ali Fallahijan 

(former intelligence and security minister), Ahmad Reza Asghari (third secretary 

of the Iranian Embassy to Argentina, between 1991 and 1994), and Imad 

Mougnieh (Hizbollah security chief, murdered February 2008).


activists, and eventually selected scholars to advocate in their favor. A radical 

left-wing leader, Luis D’Elía, has become an actual spokesman for Iran, 

and has publicly endorsed the theory that “the AMIA Center might have 

been bombed by ‘the Jewish far right’; remember that they were the ones 

who murdered [Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin.” D’Elía has recently 

launched his campaign for the 2011 Parliamentary elections; joining him 

was the Iranian chargé d’affaires. He has also led solidarity missions to 

Tehran. Although his constituency is not very wide, D’Elía has a very high 

profile in the media, and has been an ally of both Néstor and Cristina 

Kirchner. 

When the Argentine justice issued the indictment against Iranian officials, 

in 2006, the then Venezuelan Ambassador to Argentina instructed 

D’Elia to organize in Buenos Aires a demonstration in support of Iran. 8 The 

incident ended with Argentina requesting that Venezuela changed its 

ambassador (Chávez had no other option than accepting). 

Another example of Iran’s counter action in Argentina is an academic 

agreement between the University of La Plata (a public university, 40 miles 

away from Buenos Aires), and the University of Tehran, whose chairman, 

Farhad Rahbar, is a former deputy minister of intelligence of the Iranian 

regime. The agreement was fostered by the Asociación Argentina Islámica 

(Argentine Islamic Association). 

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE “MODERATES” 

If Venezuela is the closest ally for Iran in Latin America and Argentina 

is currently the country holding coldest relations with it, there are 

others who are playing a more ambiguous role. 

In this sense, probably the most disturbing and worrying situation was 

the warm reception by former Brazilian president Lula da Silva to Mahmoud 

Ahmadinejad, a fantastic PR opportunity for Ahmadinejad and Iran. 

Lula even praised the “legitimate elections” won by Iran’s president in 2009 

(we only need to remember the brutal oppression against dissidents in 

Tehran’s streets). The motivations were not only economic—Iran is an 

interesting market for Brazilian goods—but also political: Lula had 

explained that he wanted to “bring Iran to the negotiations table and help 

building bridges for dialogue” with the Western world. The businesses continue; 

the mediation initiative was a fiasco. 

We must add that there is a Brazilian connection to the AMIA attack: 

according to the investigation, Samuel Salman El Reda, a Colombian of 

Lebanese origin accused of being the local leader of the operative terrorist 

8. See http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2006/11/15/elpais/p-00315.htm.


cell, had an apartment—a safe house—in Foz do Iguaçu, on the Brazilian 

side of the Triple Frontier (Argentina–Brazil–Paraguay). 

The new president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has stated that her government 

will consider the respect for human rights as a guideline for her 

foreign policy. Although it is still early for a deep analysis (she took office 

on January 1, 2011), there are some alarming signals: in a series of articles 

published in April 2011 issue of Veja magazine, a weekly with the widest 

circulation in Brazil, denounced the existence of a “terrorist network” in the 

country. Such network includes elements from al Qaeda’s “Jihad Media 

Battalion,” as well as some twenty “militants” from al Qaeda, Hizbollah, 

Hamas, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, and the Egyptian Gama’a 

al-Islamiyya. 

Veja also denounced frequent visits to Brazil of Sheikh Mohsen Rabbani, 

for whom there is an Interpol “red notice” as a suspect for the AMIA 

Jewish Center bombing. Rabbani was also exposed as a host for at least 

eight Brazilians who went to Qom (Iran) for a “religious studies seminar.” 

Beyond its own borders and interests, Brazil’s relations with Iran also 

provide legitimacy for other countries to follow this path. The governments 

of Uruguay and Chile already expressed their interest in fostering commercial 

relations, without a proper evaluation of the political implications. 

CONCLUSION 

Iran’s network is likely to continue growing in Latin America, based 

on its relationship with the ALBA bloc but, more strategically, connected to 

an eventual partnership with Brazil. 

Dilma Rousseff has stated that her foreign policy will not automatically 

follow the patterns built by her predecessor, Lula Da Silva; at the 

same time, observers should also pay attention to the actual “Itamaraty” 

(the Foreign Ministry Palace) guidelines. Brazil has gradually become a 

relevant global player, and wants to strengthen this position. It would be 

legitimate to suggest that such role demands a dose of responsibility. 

In the meantime, Caracas is providing a window for Iranian radical 

elements to enter the region via Venezuela and then move freely throughout 

the continent. The experience proves that their freedom of movement was 

the antechamber for terror. 

*Sergio Widder is the director for Latin America of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. 

He has been active in confronting neo-Nazi activity in Latin America: proposing 

regional legislation to government officials in Chile and Bolivia; stopping the International 

neo-Nazi Congress from convening in Chile in 2000, testifying against a


hate video and book publisher that promoted its catalog online, resulting in their 

prosecution; and identifying an Uruguayan neo-Nazi group, “Orgullo Skinhead” 

(“Skinhead Pride”).

América Latina y las Redes del Terror Iraní— 

Una Tierra de Oportunidades 

Sergio Widder* 

El “Nuevo antisemitismo” ha encontrado su vía de expresión en América 

Latina. Esta renovada hostilidad se expresa a través de coaliciones políticas 

que reúnen a grupos de la izquierda radicalizada con elementos religiosos 

fundamentalistas, quienes son los principales voceros de una 

retórica antisemita clásica y de teorías conspirativas acerca del control 

mundial por parte de un “poder judío o sionista”. 

UN CAMPO FÉRTIL 

Uno de los ámbitos regionales más destacados para la circulación de estos 

grupos es el Foro Social Mundial (FSM), con sede en Brasil. Bajo la consigna 

“Otro mundo es posible”, el Foro fue fundado en 2001 por líderes del 

Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT—entonces en la oposición y hoy 

atravesando su tercer período consecutivo en el gobierno. en el gobierno). 

El propósito fundacional era dar una respuesta a la “globalización 

económica neoliberal”, y proponer, en cambio, una especie de “globalización 

de la solidaridad internacional”. Los encuentros del FSM tienen lugar 

una vez al año, pero a lo largo del año se suceden diversos foros regionales. 

El FSM engloba una amplia agenda de reclamos, algunos de ellos absolutamente 

legítimos (políticas que preserven el medio ambiente, luchar contra 

la explotación sexual o laboral infantil, etc.); pero dentro del programa de 

actividades, un porcentaje de entre el 10 y el 15 % está dedicado al conflicto 

en Medio Oriente, a la “causa palestina” en particular, a la deslegitimación 

del Estado de Israel, y a la justificación el terrorismo como 

“resistencia legítima”. 

Todo lo que ocurre en el encuentro central del FSM tiene impacto en 

los foros regionales, y contribuye a moldear la agenda de los grupos radicalizados 

alrededor del mundo. A modo de ejemplo, fue allí donde el Centro 

Simon Wiesenthal tuvo acceso a los parámetros de la presentación que 

harían los grupos pro-palestinos ante La Haya, en relación con la cerca de 

seguridad israelí, con seis meses de anticipación a que la presentación se 

hiciera efectiva. El FSM provee también el encuadre apropiado para la 

coordinación de la campaña mundial de “Boicot – Desinversión – Sanciones” 

(BDS) contra Israel. 

El impacto fue muy visible en América Latina durante la guerra entre 

149


Israel y Hezbollah (2006) y entre Israel y Hamas (2009), cuando la 

virulencia de la hostilidad antisemita presentada como “antisionismo” 

alcanzó su punto máximo. Este contexto ofrece una oportunidad muy atractiva 

para el régimen radicalizado iraní en su búsqueda de nuevos aliados 

que lo ayuden a combatir su aislamiento. 

VENEZUELA: ¿“SOCIALISMO DEL S XXI” O “ANTISEMITISMO DEL S XXI”? 

EL BLOQUE ALBA COMO SOCIO IDEAL PARA IRÁN 

La mayoría de los grupos latinoamericanos que participan en el FSM 

tienen como referente político el bloque ALBA, 1 liderado por Hugo Chávez 

(Venezuela), acompañado por Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), 

Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), y Fidel y Raúl Castro (Cuba). Este bloque 

es también el socio principal para la creciente penetración iraní en América 

Latina. 

Es interesante señalar que, para llegar al poder, todos estos líderes construyeron 

su legitimidad desde fuera de los sistemas politicos tradicionales 

de sus países, o en relación con procesos de crisis institucionales: Chávez es 

un coronel del ejército cuya primera intención de llegar a la presidencia fue 

a través de un fallido golpe de estado; Morales era un líder sindical de un 

grupo de campesinos cocaleros; Correa es el primer presidente ecuatorianoque 

se mantiene estable en años; Ortega y los hermanos Castro fueron 

líderes de revoluciones armadas, si bien Ortega se presentó luego como 

candidato y ganó en elecciones libres. Todos ellos han ofrecido cálidas 

bienvenidas al presidente iraní Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, con quien han establecido 

diversas iniciativas de cooperación. 

En el caso de Bolivia, más allá de los intereses compartidos en el 

campo de los recursos energéticos, Irán también ha financiado iniciativas 

sociales. En noviembre de 2009, los presidentes Morales y Ahmadinejad 

inauguraron el hospital “República Islámica de Irán—Sociedad de la Media 

Luna Roja”, que atiende las necesidades de salud de una población de 

800.000 personas en El Alto, cerca de la ciudad capital La Paz, una zona 

donde abunda la pobreza y la popularidad de Morales es abrumadora. 2 Este 

generoso aporte de Irán estuvo acompañado de una controversia, cuando las 

enfermeras y otro personal femenino recibieron la sugerencia de utilizar un 

1. Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas, surgido como oposición a la 

inciativa estadounidense del Area de Libre Comercio de las Américas—ALCA. 

2. “Se afianzan los vínculos con Irán”, La Nación, December 6, 2009, http:// 

www.lanacion.com.ar/1208421-se-afianzan-los-vinculos-con-iran

2011] REDES DEL TERROR 151 

velo mientras se encontraran en servicio. 3 

Es importante recordar que la decision de Evo Morales de expulsar al 

embajador israelí utilizando como pretexto la guerra en Gaza fue previa a la 

decisión que tomó Venezuela en ese mismo sentido. Su retórica anti-israelí 

es permanente: en vísperas de ser electo presidente, había calificado a Chile 

como “el Israel de América Latina”, en referencia a la política supuestamente 

“expansionista” del país vecino. Dicho todo esto, es justo decir, 

también, que hasta el momento la comunidad judía boliviana no ha sufrido 

un impacto directo como resultado de esta situación. 

El caso venezolano es muy distinto. Resulta evidente que allí el 

antisemitismo forma parte de la política del Estado. Los ataques contra 

objetivos judíos son usuales, y no se investigan ni se castigan. 

Esta es apenas una lista acotada de incidentes: 

• Dos allanamientos policiales contra la Hebraica de Caracas. El 

pretexto fue que las autoridades judiciales estaban buscando armas 

y explosivos que podrían haberse escondido allí. En enero de 2009, 

fue profanada la sinagoga Tiferet Israel. 

• En la víspera de la Navidad de 2005, el presidente Chávez dio un 

extenso discurso, durante el cual dijo que “el mundo tiene riquezas 

para todos, pero algunas minorías, entre ellos los descendientes de 

los asesinos de Cristo, se han apoderado de las riquezas”. 4 

• Ataques frecuentes a través de medios de comunicación estatales, 

entre ellos un programa televisivo, “La Hojilla” (en referencia a 

una hoja de afeitar), y un sitio web, “Aporrea.org”. Durante la 

guerra entre Israel y Hamas, en 2009, Aporrea publicó un “plan de 

acción” contra la comunidad judía venezolana, que promovía “la 

confiscación de propiedades de judíos” y boicots contra supermercados 

que vendieran productos kosher. Los editores de Aporrea se 

desasociaron del contenido del artículo, pero eso ocurrió recién 

después de haber recibido duras críticas. 

• En los inicios de su presidencia, Chávez tuvo como asesor a 

Norberto Ceresole, un fallecido sociólogo argentino, negador del 

Holocausto y promotor del antisemitismo, autor del libro Terrorismo 

fundamentalista judío, en el que sostuvo que el ataque terrorista 

contra la Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) fue 

perpetrado por judíos. Otro de sus asesores fue el difunto coronel 

3. “Velo islámico en Bolivia”, http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/america_latina/ 

2009/11/091126_2328_bolivia_islam_gm.shtml 

4. El diario francés “Liberation” criticó enérgicamente a Chávez por este discurso, 

en un artículo titulado “Le credo antisémite de Hugo Chávez”, http:// 

www.liberation.fr/monde/010134744-le-credo-antisemite-de-hugo-ch-vez


argentino Mohammed Ali Seineldin, un ultranacionalista a quien se 

atribuía arengar a sus tropas con la consigna “no existen caballos 

verdes ni judíos decentes”. 

El alcance de los ataques contra la comunidad judía provocó una crítica 

sin precedentes por parte de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos 

Humanos (CIDH), que forma parte de la Organización de los Estados 

Americanos (OEA). En febrero de 2010, la Comisión publicó el informe 

“Democracia y Derechos Humanos en Venezuela”, que describe el actual 

status quo en ese país, incluyendo referencias a incidentes antisemitas: 5 

• Parágrafo 780: “. . . la Comisión considera preocupante la información 

según la cual la comunidad judía estaría siendo particularmente 

afectada por incidentes de violencia en Venezuela. La 

información recibida por la CIDH hace referencia a 

pronunciamientos e incidentes antisemitas por parte de diversos 

medios de comunicación, como así también sobre la inscripción de 

graffiti en las paredes de diversas instituciones y residencias de la 

religión judía”. 

• P. 781: “( . . . ) el 2 de diciembre de 2007, funcionarios policiales 

habrían llevado a cabo un allanamiento en la sede del Centro Social 

Cultural y Deportivo Hebraica de Caracas. Conforme se indicó, 

aproximadamente 30 funcionarios de la Dirección de los Servicios 

de Inteligencia y Prevención habrían forzado la puerta de acceso de 

la mencionada sede ( . . . ) [S]in la presencia del Fiscal del Ministerio 

Público, los efectivos policiales habrían presentado una orden 

( . . . ) presuntamente carente de motivación . . .” 

• P. 782: “Ante la mencionada situación, la CIDH ( . . . ) solicitó 

información al Estado con relación a los hechos descritos y los 

motivos del procedimiento llevado a cabo en la sede de Hebraica 

( . . . ) [E]l Estado informó a la CIDH que ‘el referido allanamiento 

tenía por finalidad realizar un rastreo minucioso en todos los 

ambientes del lugar, con el objeto de ubicar evidencias de interés 

criminalístico que guardan relación con la presunta comisión de 

uno de los delitos contra el Orden Público . . .’ ( . . . ) La Comisión 

considera que la información aportada por el Estado respecto al 

procedimiento llevado a cabo en la sede Hebraica resulta 

insuficiente para aclarar las circunstancias suscitadas en la sede de 

esa institución”. 

• El informe también hace referencia a la profanación de la sinagoga 

Tiferet Israel, en enero de 2009, y a otros incidentes ocurridos 

5. El informe complete está publicado en http://www.cidh.oas.org/pdf%20 

files/VENEZUELA.2009.ESP.pdf.


durante ese mismo mes (P. 783). Asimismo, menciona como un 

precedente el discurso de Chávez en la víspera de la Navidad de 

2005, en el cual manifesto que “el mundo tiene para todos, pues, 

pero resulta que unas minorías, los descendientes de los mismos 

que crucificaron a Cristo ( . . . ) se adueñó de las riquezas del 

mundo . . .” (P. 784). 

El eje Caracas—Teherán también pretende influir en la política 

regional. En junio de 2010, el bloque del ALBA propuso que la Asamblea 

General de la OEA reunida en Lima, Perú, aprobara una resolución de condena 

contra Israel, a pocos días del incidente con la “flotilla de Gaza”. La 

propuesta fue rechazada, pero contó con el apoyo de casi un tercio de los 

estados miembros. 

Más preocupante y, de hecho, una amenaza contra la estabilidad de la 

región, es el permiso otorgado por Chávez para la construcción de una base 

misilística iraní en suelo venezolano. Según un informe publicado originalmente 

por el periódico Die Welt, en noviembre de 2010, dicha infraestructura 

permitirá el emplazamiento de misiles de diverso alcance, más cuatro 

plataformas móviles que serán operadas por miembros de la Guardia 

Revolucionaria iraní. El acuerdo permite a Irán abrir fuego “en caso de 

emergencia”. Se prevé que estas instalaciones comiencen a estar activas 

hacia fines de 2011. 

LA TRANSFORMACIÓN: DE PARAÍSO PROTECTOR DE NAZIS A LIDERAR 

UNA ACUSACIÓN CONTRA EL TERRORISMO FUNDAMENTALISTA 

En las antípodas de la sociedad del bloque ALBA con Irán encontramos 

la acusación contra un grupo de altos funcionarios iraníes por su 

aparente responsabilidad en el ataque terrorista contra la AMIA, el 18 de 

julio de 1994. que provocó la muerte de 85 personas y centenares de heridos. 

La Unidad Especial de Investigación, a cargo del fiscal Alberto Nisman, 

concluyó que la decision de ejecutar el atentado fue tomada por 

funcionarios de muy elevado rango del gobierno iraní, incluyendo el expresidente 

Hashemi Rafsanjani y el excanciller Alí Akbar Velayati. Otro personaje 

clave fue el entonces Agregado Cultural de la embajada iraní en 

Argentina, sheij, Mohsen Rabbani, acusado de haber coordinado la operación. 

Los pedidos de captura fueron refrendados por Interpol con el grado 

de “circulares rojas”, excepto para los casos de Rafsanjani, Velayati y Hadi 

Soleimanpour (exembajador iraní en Argentina), por tratarse de “altas 

autoridades”. Esto no disminuye en modo alguno su supuesta 

responsabilidad. 6 

6. Según el dictamen del fiscal, la decisión de atacar la AMIA se tomó durante


El gobierno argentino ha apoyado activamente la investigación judicial. 

Tanto el fallecido expresidente, Néstor Kirchner, como la actual presidenta, 

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, formularon enérgicas condenas 

contra Irán durante sucesivas ediciones de la Asamblea General de las 

Naciones Unidas, reclamaron que los sospechosos fueran entregados a la 

justicia. 

Estas iniciativas de las autoridades argentinas provocaron una reacción 

por parte del régimen iraní: además de rechazar las acusaciones, comenzó a 

cooptar a activistas argentinos así como a algunos académicos para que se 

pronunciaran en su apoyo. Uno de estos individuos es Luis D’Elía, un 

dirigente social que se ha transformado, de hecho, en vocero de Irán, y ha 

sostenido públicamente la teoría según la cual “la AMIA pudo haber sido 

atacada por ‘la derecha judía’; recuerden que ellos fueron los que 

asesinaron a [Primer Ministro israelí Yitzhak] Rabin”. D’Elía inició 

recientemente su campaña para las elecciones parlamentarias de 2011, en 

presencia del Encargado de Negocios iraní. Ha encabezado delegaciones 

solidarias que viajaron a Teherán. Aunque su base electoral es limitada, 

D’Elía adopta un alto perfil en la prensa, y ha sido un aliado tanto de Néstor 

como de Cristina Kirchner. 

Cuando la justicia argentina emitió el dictamen contra los funcionarios 

iraníes, en 2006, el entonces embajador venezolano en argentina instruyó a 

D’Elía para que organizara una manifestación en apoyo a Irán. 7 Esto 

provocó un incidente entre Argentina y Venezuela y el reclamo por parte 

del gobierno argentino para que Caracas cambiara su embajador (cosa que 

Chávez debió conceder). 

Otro ejemplo de las acciones de Irán en Argentina es un convenio suscripto 

entre la Universidad de La Plata (ciudad situada a 60 km de Buenos 

Aires) y la Universidad de Teheran, cuyo Presidente, Farhad Rahbar fue 

anteriormente viceministro de Inteligencia. El acuerdo fue promovido por la 

Asociación Argentina Islámica—ASAI. 

CON UNA PEQUEÑA AYUDITA DE LOS “MODERADOS” 

Si Venezuela es el aliado más próximo a Irán en América Latina, y 

una reunión en Mashad (Irán), el 13 de agosto de 1993. Además de las personas 

mencionadas más arriba, se libraron pedidos de captura contra Mohsen Rezai 

(Comandante de los Pasdaran—-Guardia Revolucionaria Iraní) Ahmad Vahidi 

(Comandante de las fuerzas Al Quds, y actualmente ministro de Defensa de Irán), 

Ali Fallahijan (exministro de Inteligencia y Seguridad), Ahmad Reza Asghari 

(Tercer secretario de la embajada de Irán en Argentina entre 1991 y 1994) e Imad 

Mougnieh (Jefe de Seguridad de Hezbollah, muerto en febrero de 2008). 

7. Ver http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2006/11/15/elpais/p-00315.htm.


Argentina es el país que mantiene las relaciones más frías, hay otros que 

juegan un papel más ambiguo. En este sentido, la situación que quizás 

resulte más preocupante es la cálida bienvenida que brindó el expresidentes 

brasileño Lula da Silva a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, una maravillosa operación 

de relaciones públicas para el presidente iraní. Lula llegó a elogiar las 

“elecciones legítimas” que consagraron la reelección de Ahmadinejad en 

2009. (recordemos la brutal represión contra los disidentes en las calles de 

Teherán). Las motivaciones fueron, por una parte, económicas: Irán es un 

mercado muy atractivo para los productos brasileros. Pero también políticas: 

Lula explicó que pretendía “acercar a Irán a la mesa de negociaciones y 

ayudar a construir puentes de diálogo” con el mundo occidental. Los 

negocios se mantienen; la iniciativa de mediación resultó un fiasco. 

Debemos agregar que existe una conexión brasilera en el atentado contra 

la AMIA: según la investigación judicial, Samuel Salman El Reda, un 

colombiano de origen libanés acusado de ser el líder local del grupo operativo, 

tenía un departamento—refugio—en Foz do Iguaçu, sobre el lado 

brasilero de la Triple Frontera (Argentina–Brasil–Paraguay). 

La nueva presidenta, Dilma Rousseff, ha dicho que su gobierno tomará 

en consideración el respeto por los derechos humanos como un lineamiento 

de su política exterior. Aunque todavía es temprano para un análisis 

profundo (asumió el 1˚ de enero de 2011), ya hay algunas señales de 

alarma. La revista Veja, el semanario de mayor circulación en Brasil, publicó 

en abril último una serie de artículos que denunciaban la existencia de 

una “red terrorista” en el país. La red incluiría elementos del “Jihad Media 

Battalion” de al Qaeda, otros veinte integrantes de al Qaeda, Hezbollah, 

Hamas, el Grupo Combatiente Islámico de Marruecos y el grupo Gama’a 

al-Islamiyya, de Egipto. Veja denunció también que un visitante frecuente 

de Brasil es el sheij Mohsen Rabbani, sobre quien pesa una “circular roja” 

de Interpol como sospechoso por el ataque contra la AMIA. Según la 

revista, Rabbani ofició de anfitrión para al menos ocho brasileros que 

viajaron a Qom (Irán) para “estudiar en un seminario religioso”. 

Más allá de sus propios intereses y fronteras, las relaciones de Brasil 

con Irán ofrecen una legitimación para que otros países de la región sigan 

sus pasos. Los gobiernos de Uruguay y de Chile ya han manifestado su 

interés en fortalecer relaciones comerciales con Teherán, sin considerar las 

implicaciones políticas de tales vínculos. 

CONCLUSIÓN 

Es muy probable que la red iraní en América Latina siga creciendo, 

apoyada en sus relaciones con el bloque ALBA pero, de modo más 

estratégico, a partir de su eventual sociedad con Brasil.


La presidenta Rousseff ha dicho que su política exterior no se guiará 

automáticamente por los mismos parámetros fijados por su predecesor, Lula 

da Silva; al mismo tiempo, los observadores más experimentados sugieren 

prestar atención a los lineamientos que fije Itamaraty (la sede de la Cancillería). 

Brasil se ha convertido gradualmente en un jugador a escala global, y 

anhela fortalecer esa posición. Sería legítimo sugerir que tal rol requiere una 

dosis de responsabilidad. 

Entretanto, Caracas ofrece una ventana de oportunidad para los elementos 

radicalizados iraníes para penetrar en la región a través de Venezuela 

y dispersarse por todo el continente. La experiencia indica que su 

libertad de circulación ha sido la antecámara del terror. 

*Director para América Latina del Centro Simon Wiesenthal.

Antisemitism in Brazil 

Alberto Milkewitz* 

Brazil, a nation with 190 million people, has grown in the last years to be 

an emerging global leader with influence and participation in key global 

issues. This article presents the current state of antisemitic affairs in that 

country. 

Key Words: Jews, Antisemitism, Brazil 

Sao Paulo is one of the three largest cities in the world, and the most 

populated of Brazil and South America. It is home to a very active Jewish 

community, comprising more than 60,000 people; the total size of the Jewish 

community in Brazil is estimated at 110,000. The country is a democracy, 

an open and free society with a stable currency, and is making a quiet 

and peaceful transition from the government of Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva 

to his successor, Mrs. Dilma Rousseff, who is from the same party, the 

Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT)—the Workers Party. 

During the last eight years of Lula’s tenure, the Brazilian government 

looked for a place in the Security Council of the UN. Lula was very vocal 

in pursuing a special place for Brazil in the international community arena. 

In that regard, he tried to show that Brazil became a serious partner in the 

discussion of international security issues—pointing out that Brazil helped 

Haiti and pursued a special role when the Portuguese-speaking African 

countries needed help. Lula’s foreign policy looked for an international role 

through placing dialogue as a top strategy to manage critical issues and 

disputes. That was the case in regard to Iran and to Venezuela. At the same 

time, to establish a balance with the Jewish community, Lula was first to 

sign for the creation of the UN International Holocaust Day. Lula is not 

considered an antisemite, but his party and their allies of the government 

coalition have adopted a permanently critical position against Israel. That is 

consistent with the traditional Brazilian anti-Israel vote in UN forums and 

committees. Itamaraty, the Brazilian Chancellery, systematically maintains 

a critical attitude to the Jewish state, even before President Lula’s tenure. 

In the past, the 1930s were a decade where the Integralists, the Brazilian 

fascists, generated in Brazil a climate of anti-Jewish hostility by creating 

the metaphor of the Jew who threatens Brazil and “equating Jews with 

157


Communists.” 1 It was the time of the Getulio Vargas government, and at 

those times, Brazilian official diplomacy told to the American authorities 

they would help the Jewish refugees, but used secret documents to forbid 

the entrance of Jews fleeing from Europe. During those times, Brazil 

reduced its immigration quotas and explicitly ordered its consuls in Europe 

to deny entry visas to anyone of “Semitic origin.” 2 The background of Brazilian 

politics related to Jews shows that there is a need to look deeper into 

the situation in order to better understand about antisemitism in our country. 

UNDERGROUND AND NOT SO UNDERGROUND 

Even though this might sound strange to some Brazilians, intolerance 

and antisemitism can also flourish or show its face in the country in times 

of democracy and freedom. Most Brazilian citizens and politicians, however, 

think that racism and antisemitism are not serious problems in the 

country. Immigrant Jews who arrived in Brazil after being persecuted in 

Europe and the Arab countries thought that the country would always be 

friendly to the Jews. In this scenario, the issue of handling antisemitism 

becomes very complex. The Jewish community knows that underground 

movements can change a country and that some new geopolitical arrangements 

like the situation in Venezuela can be the breeding ground for 

antisemitism but don’t feel this in their daily lives, and sometimes don’t 

want to admit the risks. 

Until recently, independent Jewish organizations and rabbis worked in 

a quiet and isolated way against antisemitism. But as an answer to the 

demand of the community leaders, antisemitism and all kinds of discrimination 

and bigotry began to be a priority for the Jewish Federation of the state 

of Sao Paulo, the umbrella organization of the biggest Jewish community in 

the country. 

RIGHT-WING ACTIVITY 

Let’s reveal some facts. Favored by the opening afforded by democracy, 

violence and intolerance began to flourish and grow stronger, as some 

events in the last few years show. In 2009 in Sao Paulo, during the Gay 

Parade, a bomb was dropped, wounding 21. Young neo-Nazis were the 

instigators. 

1. Hélgio Trindade, Integralismo, o fascismo brasileiro na década de 30 (Sao 

Paulo: Difel, 1979). 

2. Graciela Ben Dror, The Catholic Elites in Brazil and Their Attitude Toward 

the Jews, 1933-1939 (Shoah Resource Center, www.yadvashem.org).

2011] ANTISEMITISM IN BRAZIL 159 

Another example of what is happening is a recent series of controversies 

involving a right-wing congressman in a television show, answering a 

famous black singer, daughter of the renowned musician Gilberto Gil, who 

asked him: “If your child were to fall in love with a black person, what 

would you do?” The congressman answered: “I will not discuss promiscuity 

with anyone. I do not run that risk. My children are educated people and 

they did not live in environments as unfortunate as yours.” Since this hostile 

and racist episode, this congressman gave a series of interviews in which he 

criticized homosexuals openly. A demonstration in support of that congressman 

was released through a forum with the name of “Stormfront.org,” 

administered by the neo-Nazi movement White Pride World Wide, that 

ends its messages with the numbers “14/88,” Nazi symbolism that refers to 

Hitler and the American white supremacists. Other events show that violence 

against blacks, homosexuals, and Jews in Sao Paulo is increasing. In 

its central region, there is the highest risk with racist groups. Two hundred 

people from 25 different gangs have been identified by the staff of the special 

police force on crimes of intolerance. 

The reasons for concern are not only in Sao Paulo, as stated by the 

members of another police group. As mentioned above, a fascist Brazilian 

party, the Integralist movement, was born in the 1930s in the Brazilian state 

of Rio Grande do Sul. 

In Parana, another Brazilian state in the south of the country, two 

young men of Curitiba were sentenced to two years of prison for racist 

statements against blacks and Jews on a Web site, already taken off the air. 

The punishment, as always, was community services and a monetary penalty. 

The defense attorney said his clients expressed only an “opinion”; it 

was only “free speech, granted by the Brazilian Constitution.” 

Another concern in a huge and multifaceted country like Brazil is the 

possibility of a connection between neo-Nazis and other types of criminals, 

like the Red Commando, a famous crime organization that operates in Rio 

de Janeiro. 

THE DANGER OF MUSLIM EXTREMISM 

The antisemitic risks don’t come only from the right. According to the 

Federal Police, seven Islamic terrorist organizations operate in Brazil, 

among them Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. In the country, 

they fund operations, recruit militants, and plan attacks. This denunciation 

has recently been made by the respected magazine Veja, which has the 

biggest circulation in South America. The Muslim population is also growing, 

particularly in the region of the frontiers between Brazil, Argentina, 

and Paraguay, where the Jewish presence is quite small. Until now, there is


no report of any kind of problem between them and the Jews of Sao Paulo, 

Rio, and the other Jewish communities. 

There is also information showing that Muslims are trying to approach 

poor people and are doing mass conversions in some favelas (slums) to 

bring them to Islam. That also happens inside Brazilian prisons, where 

Muslims try to occupy the place of the evangelic church, and quickly recruit 

and convert those people for Islam. 

From the political point of view, it is important to know that Christian 

Arabs have elected members in every parliament of the states of Brazil; this 

helps the Arab Muslims to have more influence or protection if needed. In 

this context, it is difficult to advocate for Israel, and sometimes condemnation 

of the Jewish state is automatic. 

CATHOLIC ROOTS 

As in any place of the world where there was and there is a strong 

Catholic presence, the Church contributed in the past to make antisemitic 

myths part of Brazilian Catholic culture. After the encyclical document 

Nostra Aetate (Second Vatican Council), when the Catholic Church recommended 

the dialogue with the Jews and other religions, the Church and 

some members of the Jewish community began to approach each other and 

the situation changed. Today, there are groups of dialogue and fraternity 

that work together to educate their communities. The best allies to combat 

the antisemitism with Catholic roots are inside the same church. 

However, a big number of Catholic clergymen, laypersons, priests, and 

activists were educated before the Second Vatican Council. Those Catholics 

haven’t changed their way of thinking about the Jews and are not shy in 

expressing their opinions. Therefore, even though Jews and Catholics do 

work together, it will take a long time to heal the wounds between the two 

communities. Jewish leaders now avoid being naïve, as what happened in 

the past with some local rabbis, who thought that a good relationship with 

the high echelons of the Church will be enough to counter Brazilian Catholic 

antisemitism. 

In Brazil, the Catholic Church struggles against the evangelic church 

and also with religions that descended from Africa for the faiths of Brazilian 

people, so their authorities don’t want to also have a “Jewish front.” The 

evangelic church is the fastest growing religious group in a country with 26 

states (there is a parliament in each state) and a Federal District (the 

National Parliament is in Brasilia D.F.), where they have increasing power. 

There is a very good link between Jewish authorities and some evangelic 

authorities. These groups are strong supporters of Israel and potential allies. 

When the Jewish Federation organized rallies in favor of Israel and against


Ahmadinejad’s visit to Brazil, the evangelic groups were the main partners 

on this kind of initiative. 

ANTISEMITIC MYTHS OF THE LEFT 

Traditional Jewish stereotypes are part of Brazilian culture. Before her 

election, Rousseff told a group of leaders in the Jewish community that she 

thinks her family was crypto-Jewish because all of her uncles had a 

“hooked nose.” So there is a lot of educational work to do, particularly in 

the higher echelons. 

The left is very strong in the country. Most of its members think the 

Palestinians are the “victims.” Israel, the Jews, and the United States are 

perceived as the same group, and are the “perpetrators,” the Empire, the 

colonialists, and the genocides. The general Brazilian public follows the 

global population in the process of considering Israel the villain and the 

Palestinians the weak and frail people, an oppressed minority. The community 

leadership agrees that everybody has the right to criticize Israel, and 

lots of Jews do this, but when we analyze some positions it becomes clear 

that the border between anti-Zionism, being against Israel and its government 

and antisemitic point of views, is blurred. And this applies especially 

to the critics that come from the left. 

In Sao Paulo, the Jewish Federation went to Justice against a union of 

workers in the University of Sao Paulo that accused Israel of genocide 

against the Palestinian people, and the legal way was to show that they 

publicly made this accusation against the Jews, and this for Brazilian law is 

discrimination. To say this against a country is protected by the right to free 

speech and is seen as a political expression. Therefore, the discussion 

becomes very tough when the more leftist groups in the government party 

or some unions need something to unite their workers against a common 

enemy—and the Jews are always the best candidates. But the understanding 

of these kinds of mechanisms between those who work against antisemitism 

or study it is not enough to avoid the use of them. 

Dilma Rousseff said recently, in a meeting in the Jewish Federation of 

the State of Sao Paulo, that her government will continue Lula’s foreign 

policy—which means to be friendly to Iran and to Venezuela. But Rousseff 

shows an independent way of thinking and because of this, Brazil began to 

separate the Iranian nuclear aspirations from the human rights situation in 

Iran. 

CLOUDY BORDERS 

There are cloudy borders between the critics to Israel and antisemitism


on campuses, in the press, and on the Internet. Brazil has a huge network of 

public and private universities all over the country. In the university culture, 

it is politically correct to be on the left; being supportive of Israel now 

means to be with the right wing from the political point of view. On university 

campuses, it became “cool” between scholars to be against “imperialist 

Israel.” It is not easy to be a Jewish student in a Brazilian university and 

defend Israel. In most of the universities, the Jewish students are a very 

small minority. Anti-Zionism is as real in Brazil as it is all over the world. 

ANTI-ZIONISM AND THE PRESS 

The campaign against Israel in our country has found expression in the 

press. Most of the journalistic programs use news agencies with a strong 

bias against Israel. 

Foreign policy is not the main interest of the largest part of Brazilian 

public; therefore, the space in the open media for that issue is pretty 

reduced. Israel typically is mentioned only when something bad happened. 

The strategy used to face this situation is to stress the fact that Israel is a 

democratic country with essential contributions to humanity in fields like 

life sciences, technology, business, arts, and many other vital human concerns. 

The Jewish Federation works permanently to build good will for 

Israel. At every Jewish holiday, the public finds helpful interviews and 

explanations in the press about the meaning of each Jewish celebration. 

THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA 

As in every part of the world, there is in Brazil a growing use and 

influence not only of the traditional sites in the Internet but also of the 

social network in places like Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut, Facebook, and 

others. This is the way of communication for an increasing number of Brazilian 

youth and young adults, bringing a style of communication that uses 

very short messages, almost no explanations, and telegraphic discussion. 

Analysis of this kind of underground media shows that a relevant part of the 

public opinion is against Israel, and this also brings together the Jews as a 

group. In the social network sites where most of the young Jews navigate, 

the search for words like Israel, Jew, Flotilla, Gaza, and similar terms 

shows a lot of critical messages that slide in some cases immediately to 

antisemitic commentaries. The Jewish community is trying to learn how to 

deal with this and continue to fight this battle. 

The government of the state of Sao Paulo recently announced a location 

for a new underground station in a neighborhood known for its Jewish 

population. The neighbors’ association filed a complaint to the official


authorities requesting a relocation because of concerns about potential 

security issues connected with an underground station. This issue became a 

big argument between those in favor and those opposed, with a strong 

amplification through social networks. A self-styled “humorist” posted on 

Twitter a heavily antisemitic comment—“The Jews are opposed to the station 

because the last time they got close to a train was on the way to 

Auschwitz”—claiming that the Jews of the area were opponents of the poor 

population, who actually would be the beneficiaries of the new underground 

station. He twitted a phrase that provoked both a heavy traffic of additional 

antisemitic postings as well as intense reaction from the Jewish community 

and the general public. 

IRANIAN INFLUENCE 

Lula was warm with the Iranians, as part of his aspiration for a place in 

the UN’s Security Council. 

The visit of Iran’s president in 2010 generated tensions between him 

and the authorities of the Jewish community. Lula’s declaration saying that 

Iran had “free elections” was much criticized. 

With Rousseff, there are some indications of slight changes in the Brazilian 

position related to Iran. She criticized in the press the execution of 

women by Iranians. In the past, she herself suffered human rights abuses 

during the times of dictatorship in Brazil, so she is actually sensitive to this 

issue. 

Recently, Brazil’s new government for the first time did not agree to 

participate in an international mission to monitor Iranian nuclear installations. 

Rousseff said that her administration is going to segregate between 

Brazilian position on the nuclear issue with Iran and on the human rights 

issue. 

Brazilian borders are huge and very open and we have frontiers with 

Venezuela, where Iranians can enter freely. This worries the Jewish community. 

Húgo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, was a good friend of 

Lula. The concerns with the free entrance to his neighbor country for Iranian 

terrorists is serious for the Jewish communities, but it is not the point 

of view of Brazilian authorities, and most Brazilian politicians find very 

difficult to accept that terrorism can happen in our country. Jewish authorities 

in Sao Paulo are working very hard to show to the security command of 

the state that there are increasing risks of having problems during the next 

Olympic Games and the World Cup.


BRAZILIAN JEWISH IDENTITY 

Contemporary Brazilian Jews do not suffer any restriction about their 

Jewish identities, but Judaism is not necessarily their priority. Identity, in 

all its facets, is something that does not happen in the air or in a vacuum. 

Since the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel, the unity of 

the people and the Jewish identity of the biggest part of the Jews in Israel 

and other places have been based on a shared memory of national tragedy, a 

sense of a tribal bond, and a mutual interest in the building and future of 

Israel. But not enough on the study and knowledge of original Jewish 

sources like Torah, Talmud, Midrash, and the commentaries and contributions 

of the Sages; not on the study of Torah for its own sake (Torah 

Lishmah); and also on a daily Jewish life. Synagogues, Jewish daily 

schools, community centers, young-people movements, women’s institutions, 

and other organizations concentrate all the responsibility for the transmission 

of Judaism. They try to transmit Judaism and Zionism, but there is 

an increasing number of marriages where one of the members was not born 

a Jew. 

In Sao Paulo, most Jews go to the synagogue two days a year and 

don’t speak Hebrew, so their self-image as Jews depends a lot of what the 

press and the non-Jews say about Israel. Therefore, our diagnosis is that in 

the Brazilian Jewish community the Jewish illiteracy that brings inner erosion 

and assimilation is a more serious danger than antisemitism. 

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISRAEL 

Delegitimization is not new for the Jewish people, for Israel, or for the 

memory of a Jewish community. The ultimate difference nowadays seems 

to be that this campaign aims to destroy the right of Israel to exist. 

This campaign against Israel directly affects its young people, particularly 

the university students. Sao Paulo does not have vital Jewish student 

centers inside the universities like Hillel in the United States. Hillel Rio and 

a similar organization in Sao Paulo work with the same segment of the 

population but their headquarters are located in Jewish neighborhoods, not 

on campus. 

In order to meet this situation, the Jewish Federation works with information 

and education in support of Jewish schools and Jewish organizations 

as well. The Federation also takes responsibility for launching campaigns 

and information initiatives to the general public, developing two programs, 

Lifnei HaMashber (Before the Crisis Arrives), and Esser Dakot (Ten Minutes). 

Through Lifnei HaMashber, experts are invited to explain and discuss 

deeply important issues like Iran, Hezbolla, Hamas, and others. The Esser


Dakot program takes Hasbara 3 professionals for a short talk (therefore the 

program name) with university students about the campaign against Israel 

in the media. Both programs aim at helping the young people develop an 

effective response to the challenges they face in their university lives by 

providing students with facts and strategies to counter false allegations 

against Israel. 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST 

Our country may not exhibit violent antisemitism, but Jewish community 

leaders are worried when the Jewish authorities show them that what is 

actually happening is not so nice. Because of this, the work of the Jewish 

leadership is to show the problems to the government authorities, the politicians, 

and to its own community. It is very important to prepare Brazilians 

to criticize and condemn racism, and how to respond to a demagogueinspired 

dissemination of hatred against Jews. 

In this context, it is essential for Israel to enhance its communication 

channels with the diaspora and to better balance its focus to places like 

Brazil. A first step in that direction was taken with the reopening of the 

Israel consulate in Sao Paulo. 

One part of the strategy in facing this situation is to stress the fact that 

Israel is a democratic country with essential contributions in fields like life 

sciences, technology, business, arts and many others. The Jewish Federation 

works permanently to build good will for Israel. As an example, in every 

Jewish holiday the public finds interviews and explanations about the 

meaning of each Jewish celebration. And when necessary, especially when 

Israel receives strong criticism, the leadership tries to provide a consensual 

answer. 

The Jewish leadership has a universal approach against bigotry, and 

not a parochial one. In this way, we battle antisemitism together with allies 

of other groups with whom we worked before, combating racism and other 

forms of discrimination. We don’t think that we can eliminate or obliterate 

antisemitism. We try to manage it through the democratic and legal ways 

and mechanisms. 

As policy advisor Stuart Eizenstat has said about the issue of the new 

antisemitism: “It is important to keep all of this in context and not overreact.” 

There are very few antisemitic acts in Brazil, but community leaders 

must be prepared to react and specially be proactive in supporting Israel. 

This is also highly relevant for Jewish identity in times where the funda- 

3. Hasbara, from the Hebrew verb lehasbir, explain. Can be used to mean 

“diplomacy, explanations and information in favor of Israel.”


mentals are being challenged and the winds are against Israel and the Jewish 

people. 

*Alberto Milkewitz is the executive director of the Jewish Federation of the state of 

Sao Paulo, the umbrella organization of the biggest Jewish community in Brazil. 

Together with Mario Fleck, he coordinates the Working Group for Combating 

Antisemitism. He is pursuing a PhD in education at the University of Sao Paulo. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Carneiro, Maria Luiza Tucci. O Antisemitismo na Era Vargas. São Paulo: Editorial 

Brasiliense, 1988. 

Lesser, Jeffrey. Brazil and the “Jewish Question”: Immigration, Diplomacy and 

Prejudice. Tel Aviv: University Enterprises, 1998.

Una aproximación al tema de la intolerancia y del 

antisemitismo en tiempos de libertad y 

democracia en Brasil 

Alberto Milkewitz* 

Brasil, un país con 190 millones de habitantes, ha crecido en los últimos 

años transformándose en un nuevo líder mundial, con influencia y participación 

en algunos de los principales problemas globales. 

LA SITUACIÓN DE BRASIL: UNA VISIÓN GENERAL 

San Pablo, desde donde se escribe este texto, es una de las tres 

ciudades más grandes del mundo, y es la más poblada de Brasil y de 

América del Sur. Es el hogar de una muy activa comunidad judía, que 

abarca unas 60.000 personas. El tamaño total de la comunidad judía en 

Brasil se estima en 110.000. El país es una sociedad abierta y libre, con 

moneda estable y está haciendo, como ha sido habitual en los últimos veinticinco 

años de democracia, una transición tranquila y pacífica del gobierno 

de Lula a su sucesora, la Sra. Dilma Rousseff, del mismo partido (PT— 

Partido de los Trabajadores). 

Durante los últimos ocho años de su mandato, Lula, el presidente anterior, 

buscó para el Brasil un lugar en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU. 

Lula fue muy activo en la búsqueda de un espacio destacado para Brasil en 

el ámbito de la comunidad internacional. En ese sentido, trató de mostrar 

que Brasil se convirtió en un socio serio en la discusión de cuestiones de 

seguridad internacional. Brasil ha ayudado a Haití y tuvo una función especial 

cuando los países africanos de habla portuguesa precisaron ayuda. La 

política exterior de Lula buscó su inclusión internacional a través de colocar 

el diálogo como una estrategia prioritaria para administrar las cuestiones 

críticas y controversiales del panorama mundial. Ese fue el caso con 

respecto a Irán y Venezuela. Al mismo tiempo, para establecer un equilibrio 

con la comunidad judía, Lula fue el primer presidente en firmar el pedido 

de creación del Día Internacional del Holocausto de las Naciones Unidas. 

Lula no es considerado anti-semita, pero su partido y sus aliados de la coalición 

de gobierno han adoptado una posición crítica permanente contra 

Israel. Eso es coherente con el voto tradicional de Brasil en contra de Israel 

en las Naciones Unidas. Itamaraty, la Cancillería brasileña, sistemática- 

167


mente, mantiene una actitud crítica al Estado Judío, incluso desde antes del 

mandato del Presidente Lula. 

En el pasado, los años 30 fueron una década en la cual los integralistas, 

que eran el partido fascista brasileño, generaron en Brasil un clima de hostilidad 

contra los judíos mediante la creación de la imagen del judío que 

amenaza Brasil y “equiparar a los judíos con los comunistas” 1 que eran el 

paradigma del enemigo público del gobierno. Era la época del dictador 

Getulio Vargas, y en aquella etapa, la estrategia diplomática brasileña era 

decir a las autoridades estadounidenses que Brasil ayudaría a los refugiados 

judíos, al mismo tiempo que, a través de documentos secretos, prohibía la 

entrada a los judíos que huían de Europa. En aquel periodo el Brasil redujo 

sus cuotas de inmigración y explícitamente ordenó a sus cónsules en Europa 

que debían negar vistos de entrada a cualquier persona de “origen semita”. 2 

Este caso muestra que hay diferencias entre el discurso “oficial” y aspectos 

poco visibles de la opinión nacional sobre los judíos. El trasfondo de la 

política brasileña relacionada con los judíos muestra que siempre hay que 

más allá de la superficie si se quiere comprender el antisemitismo en nuestro 

país. 

SUBTERRÁNEO Y NO TAN SUBTERRÁNEO 

Aunque le suene extraño a algunos brasileños, la intolerancia y el 

antisemitismo pueden florecer y mostrar su cara en el Brasil, mismo en 

tiempos de democracia y libertad. La mayoría de los ciudadanos y políticos 

brasileños piensan que el racismo y el antisemitismo no son un problema 

significativo en el país. Inclusive los judíos inmigrantes que llegaron al Brasil 

después de haber sido perseguidos en Europa y en los países árabes, 

piensan que el país siempre será un “amigo de los judíos”. En este escenario 

el tema de cómo tratar el antisemitismo se vuelve muy complejo. La 

comunidad judía sabe que los cambios geopolíticos pueden modificar un 

país y que algunas nuevas circunstancias regionales como la situación en 

Venezuela pueden ser el caldo de cultivo para el antisemitismo, pero no 

sienten casi nunca esto en su vida cotidiana y, a veces, no quieren ni 

reconocer los riesgos. 

Hasta hace poco, unas pocas organizaciones judías independientes y 

algunos rabinos trabajaban por su propia cuenta e iniciativa, de una manera 

tranquila y aislada, contra el antisemitismo. Pero como respuesta a cambios 

1. Hélgio Trindade. Integralismo, o fascismo brasileiro na década de 30; Ed. 

DIFEL; S. Paulo:1979. 

2. Graciela Ben Dror. La elite católica en Brasil y su actitud hacia los judíos, 

1933-1939. Centro de Recursos de la Shoah; www.yadvashem.org.

2011] ANTISEMITISMO EN BRASIL 169 

de las circunstancias y a la demanda expresada por los líderes de la 

comunidad, el antisemitismo y toda forma de discriminación e intolerancia 

subieron en el nivel de prioridades de la Federación Judía del Estado de S. 

Paulo, la organización que agrupa a la mayor comunidad judía del país. 

LA PREOCUPACIÓN CON LAS ACTIVIDADES DEL ALA DERECHA EN BRASIL 

Vamos a exponer algunos datos. Favorecidas por la apertura que 

ofrece la democracia, la violencia y la intolerancia empezaron a florecer y 

crecer más como lo muestran algunos eventos de los últimos años. En 2009 

en San Pablo, durante la Parada Gay en una acción atribuida a jóvenes neonazis, 

fue explotada una bomba en un ataque que dejó 21 heridos. 

Otro ejemplo de lo que está sucediendo es la reciente serie de controversias 

provocada por la participación de un congresista de derecha en un 

programa de televisión. Respondiendo a una renombrada cantante negra, 

hija del famoso Gilberto Gil, que le preguntó: “Que haría usted si su hijo se 

enamorase de un negro?”, el congresista respondió: “No voy a discutir 

promiscuidad con nadie. Yo no corro ese riesgo. Mis hijos viven entre personas 

educadas y no en ambientes tan desafortunados como el suyo”. Desde 

este episodio agresivo y racista, este diputado dio varias entrevistas en las 

que critica abiertamente la homosexualidad. Una manifestación en apoyo al 

congresista fue lanzada a través de un foro con el sugestivo nombre de 

“Stormfront.org” administrado por el movimiento neo-nazi “White Pride 

World Wide”, que finaliza su mensaje con los números de “14/88”, un 

simbolismo nazi que se refiere a Hitler y a la supremacía blanca americana. 

Otros eventos confirman también que la intolerancia contra los negros, los 

homosexuales y los judíos en San Pablo está en aumento. La región central 

de la ciudad es la de más alto riesgo por la presencia de grupos racistas. 

Doscientas personas de 25 diferentes pandillas ya han sido identificadas por 

el equipo técnico de la Comisaría de Policía Especializada en Delitos de 

Intolerancia. 

Los motivos de preocupación no se restringen únicamente a San Pablo, 

como lo han dicho los miembros de otro grupo de la Policía dedicado a la 

lucha contra los movimientos neo-nazis en Río Grande del Sur. En la 

década de 1930 el Estado brasileño de Rio Grande do Sul tuvo un partido 

nazi, y allí también nació el movimiento integralista, el partido fascista 

brasileño, ya mencionado. 

En Paraná, otro Estado brasileño en el sur del país, recientemente dos 

jóvenes de Curitiba fueron condenados a dos años de prisión por haber 

hecho declaraciones racistas contra los negros y los judíos en un sitio web 

que ya fue retirado del aire. El castigo, como siempre ha sucedido en el 

país, fue substituido por la prestación de servicios comunitarios y una multa


monetaria. El abogado defensor dijo que sus clientes sólo expresaron una 

“opinión”, haciendo uso del derecho a la “libertad de expresión”, otorgado 

por la Constitución brasileña. 

Aún otro motivo de preocupación en un país enorme y multifacético 

como es el Brasil son los indicadores de posible conexión entre los neonazis 

y otros tipos de criminales, tales como el Comando Rojo, una famosa 

organización criminal que opera en Río de Janeiro. 

EL PELIGRO DEL EXTREMISMO MUSULMÁN 

Los riesgos antisemitas no vienen sólo desde el lado de la derecha. De 

acuerdo con la Policía Federal, siete organizaciones terroristas islámicas 

operan en Brasil, entre ellas Al Qaeda, Hezbolá, Hamas y la Jihad Islámica. 

En el país, estos grupos recaudan fondos, reclutan militantes y planean ataques. 

Esta denuncia ha sido hecha recientemente por la prestigiosa revista 

Veja, que es la de mayor circulación en América del Sur. La población 

musulmana está creciendo, particularmente en la región de la frontera entre 

Brasil, Argentina y Paraguay, donde la presencia judía es muy pequeña. 

Hasta ahora no hay informes de ningún tipo de problema entre ellos y los 

judíos de San Pablo, Río de Janeiro y de las otras comunidades judías. 

Se dispone de información que indica que los musulmanes están tratando 

de acercarse a los niveles más pobres de la población y están 

haciendo conversiones en masa en algunas favelas atrayéndolos para el 

Islam. Eso pasa también en el interior de las cárceles brasileñas, donde los 

musulmanes tratan de ocupar el lugar de la Iglesia, y reclutar y convertir 

para el Islam en una forma muy rápida. 

Desde el punto de vista político un dato relevante es que, por muchos 

años, los árabes cristianos han conseguido elegir diputados en varios Parlamentos 

de los Estados de Brasil, y esto ayuda también a los musulmanes 

árabes que, a través de ellos tienen más influencia o protección si les es 

necesario. En este contexto en que los judíos son tan minoritarios, es difícil 

abogar por y defender Israel, lo que hace que a veces la condena al Estado 

Judío sea automática. 

RAÍCES CATÓLICAS DEL ANTISEMITISMO BRASILEÑO 

Al igual que en cualquier lugar del mundo donde ha habido y hay una 

fuerte presencia católica, la Iglesia ha contribuido en el pasado a construir 

mitos antisemitas de la cultura católica brasileña. Después de la encíclica 

Nostra Aetate (Concilio Vaticano II), en la cual la Iglesia Católica 

recomendó el diálogo con los judíos y con otras religiones, la Iglesia y 

algunos miembros de la comunidad judía comenzaron a acercarse y la situa-


ción se modificó. Hoy en día hay grupos de diálogo y fraternidad que 

trabajan juntos para educar a sus comunidades. Los mejores aliados para 

luchar contra el antisemitismo con raíces católicas están dentro de la propia 

Iglesia. Sin embargo, un gran número de clérigos católicos, laicos, 

sacerdotes y activistas fueron educados antes del Concilio Vaticano II. Así, 

algunas personas católicas no han cambiado su forma de pensar acerca de 

los judíos y no se intimidan en expresar sus opiniones. Por lo tanto, a pesar 

de que judíos y católicos trabajan juntos, se necesitará un tiempo aún para 

sanar las heridas entre las dos comunidades. Hoy en día el liderazgo judío 

evita ser naïf como sucedió en el pasado cuando algunos pensaban que una 

buena relación con los niveles más altos de la Iglesia sería suficiente para 

hacer frente en Brasil al antisemitismo católico. 

En Brasil, la Iglesia Católica compite con la Iglesia Evangélica y 

también con las religiones de matriz africana, para conquistar la fe del 

pueblo brasileño. Ello hace que sus autoridades no quieran agregar también 

un “frente judío”. La Iglesia Evangélica es el grupo religioso que más crece 

en un país con 26 Estados (existe un Parlamento en cada Estado) y un Distrito 

Federal (el Parlamento Nacional se encuentra en Brasilia el Distrito 

Federal), donde poseen un poder creciente. Estos grupos son firmes partidarios 

de Israel y sus aliados potenciales. Cuando la Federación Judía 

organizó manifestaciones en favor de Israel y contra la visita de 

Ahmadinejad a Brasil, los grupos evangélicos fueron los principales aliados 

en este tipo de iniciativas. Existe una relación muy buena entre las 

autoridades judías y algunas autoridades evangélicas, que diferente de la 

Iglesia Católica, no poseen una autoridad central. 

MITOS ANTISEMITAS, TAMBIÉN DENTRO DE LA IZQUIERDA BRASILEÑA 

Los estereotipos tradicionales sobre los judíos forman parte de la cultura 

brasileña, inclusive entre la izquierda. Antes de su elección, Dilma dijo 

a un grupo de líderes de la comunidad judía que ella piensa que su familia 

era cripto-judía 3 porque todos sus tíos tenían una “nariz ganchuda”. Tal 

comentario demuestra que aún hay mucho trabajo educativo que debe ser 

hecho, comenzando por los niveles más altos del gobierno. 

La izquierda es muy fuerte en el país. La mayoría de sus miembros 

piensa que los palestinos son las “víctimas”. Israel, los judíos y los Estados 

Unidos son percibidos como un mismo y único grupo, y como los 

“agresores”, el Imperio, los colonialistas, y también los genocidas. Los 

brasileños en general acompañan a la opinión pública mundial en la forma 

3. Cripto-judíos, cristianos nuevos o marranos son formas de denominar a los 

judíos que aceptaron la conversión forzada al cristianismo.


de ver a Israel como el villano y a los palestinos como un pueblo débil y 

frágil, una minoría oprimida. El liderazgo de la comunidad judía está de 

acuerdo en que todo el mundo tiene derecho a criticar a Israel, y también 

judíos lo hacen, pero cuando se analizan algunas posiciones de grupos de 

izquierda se percibe que es poco clara la frontera entre el anti-sionismo, o 

sea, estar en contra de posiciones y acciones de Israel y de su gobierno y 

perspectivas anti-semitas. Y esto se aplica especialmente a las críticas que 

vienen de la izquierda. 

En San Pablo, la Federación Judía está procesando legalmente en la 

Justicia brasileña un sindicato de trabajadores funcionarios de la Universidad 

de San Pablo, que acusó a Israel de genocidio contra el pueblo palestino, 

y la forma legal para poder promover esta acción jurídica fue 

demostrar que el sindicato hizo públicamente en un diario una acusación 

contra los judíos y no contra un país, y esto, para la legislación brasileña, es 

considerado discriminación. Hacer críticas contra un país está protegido por 

el derecho a la libertad de expresión y es considerado una manifestación 

política. Por lo tanto, la discusión se vuelve muy difícil cuando los grupos 

más marcadamente de izquierda en el partido de gobierno o de algunos 

sindicatos necesitan de argumentos que les sirvan para unir a sus seguidores 

en contra de un enemigo común. Los judíos son siempre los mejores 

candidatos y un blanco fácil. Pero la comprensión de este tipo de mecanismos 

entre los que estudian y trabajan contra el antisemitismo, no es 

suficiente para evitar el uso de ellos. 

Dilma dijo recientemente en una reunión en la Federación Judía del 

Estado de San Pablo, que su gobierno continuará la política externa de Lula. 

Eso significa continuar la amistad con Irán y Venezuela. Sin embargo, 

Dilma muestra una forma independiente de pensamiento y debido a esto, 

recientemente, Brasil comenzó a tratar separadamente las aspiraciones 

nucleares iraníes de la situación de los derechos humanos que sufre Irán. 

LAS FRONTERAS NUBOSAS ENTRE EL ANTISEMITISMO Y EL ANTISIONISMO 

En el Campus, en la prensa y en la Internet hay fronteras nubosas entre 

las críticas a Israel y el antisemitismo. Brasil tiene una enorme red de 

universidades públicas y privadas, en todo el país. En la cultura universitaria 

lo políticamente correcto es situarse a la izquierda. Hoy en día 

apoyar a Israel significa estar con la derecha desde el punto de vista político. 

En las Universidades, en el Campus, entre los académicos es “cool” 

estar en contra del “imperialismo israelí”. No es fácil ser un estudiante judío 

y defender a Israel en una universidad brasileña. En la mayoría de las 

universidades los estudiantes judíos son una minoría muy pequeña. El antisionismo 

es una situación real en Brasil, como lo es en todo el mundo.


LA SITUACIÓN EN LA PRENSA 

La campaña en contra de Israel en nuestro país también se expresa en 

la prensa. La mayoría de los programas periodísticos utilizan agencias de 

noticias que tienen una fuerte tendencia en contra de Israel. 

La política exterior no es el interés principal de la mayor parte del 

público brasileño, por lo tanto, el espacio en los medios de comunicación 

que es abierto a esta cuestión es bastante reducido. Israel suele aparecer 

sólo cuando algo malo ha pasado. La estrategia utilizada para hacer frente a 

esta situación es hacer hincapié en el hecho de que Israel es un país 

democrático, que hace contribuciones esenciales a la humanidad en campos 

como las ciencias de la vida, la tecnología, los negocios, las artes y muchos 

otros campos. La Federación Judía trabaja permanentemente para construir 

una actitud positiva en relación a Israel. Para aumentar el conocimiento que 

la sociedad brasileña tiene sobre Judaísmo, en cada fiesta judía el público 

brasileño encuentra en la prensa entrevistas y explicaciones sobre el 

significado de cada celebración judía. 

EL COMBATE EN LA INTERNET 

Al igual que en las cuatro esquinas del mundo, existe en Brasil un uso 

cada vez mayor y una influencia creciente no sólo de los sitios tradicionales 

de la Internet, sino también en la red social en sitios tales como Twitter, 

Linkedin, Orkut, Facebook y otros. Esta es la forma de comunicación de 

una parte significativa de la juventud y de los adultos jóvenes brasileños. Y 

esto crea un estilo que utiliza mensajes muy cortos, casi sin explicaciones y 

una discusión que se puede llamar “telegráfica”. El análisis de este tipo de 

medios de comunicación subterráneo muestra que una parte importante de 

la opinión pública está en contra de Israel, y esto incluye también a algunos 

judíos. En los sitios de la red social donde la mayoría de los judíos jóvenes 

navegan, la búsqueda de palabras como Israel, judío, Flotilla, Gaza y similares, 

muestran una gran cantidad de mensajes críticos que en algunos casos 

se deslizan y se transforman en comentarios antisemitas. La comunidad 

judía está tratando aún de aprender a lidiar con esto y enfrentar esta batalla. 

En otro caso reciente que muestra la existencia de ciertas corrientes 

subterráneas de antisemitismo, el gobierno del Estado de San Pablo anunció 

la localización de una nueva estación de Metro en un barrio conocido por 

poseer numerosa población judía. La Asociación de Vecinos presentó un 

pedido ante las autoridades competentes, solicitando su reubicación ya que 

los vecinos miembros de la institución estaban preocupados con potenciales 

problemas de seguridad relacionados con una estación de Metro. Este 

problema se convirtió en una gran discusión entre los partidarios y los


opositores a la estación, y tuvo fuerte amplificación a través de las redes 

sociales. Entonces un conocido humorista publicó un comentario con la pretensión 

de ser jocoso, pero con fuertes connotaciones antisemitas. Él 

escribió: “Los judíos se oponen a la estación porque la última vez que 

subieron a un tren fue en camino a Auschwitz”. Colocado esto en el Twitter 

provocó un gran número de frases antisemitas, así como la reacción intensa 

de la comunidad judía y público en general. A partir de allí algunos alegaron 

que los judíos de la zona se oponen a la población pobre, que en 

realidad serían la beneficiaria de la nueva estación de Metro. 

LA INFLUENCIA DE IRÁN EN BRASIL Y AMÉRICA LATINA 

Lula, durante su gobierno, fue cálido con los iraníes, como parte de su 

aspiración a obtener un lugar para el Brasil en el Consejo de Seguridad de 

la ONU. 

La visita del presidente de Irán al Brasil en 2010 provocó tensiones 

entre él y las autoridades nacionales de la comunidad judía, las cuales 

fueron explícitas en su cuestionamiento y lo hicieron públicamente. Inclusive 

en una declaración Lula llegó a decir que Irán había tenido “elecciones 

libres”, y eso también fue muy criticado. 

Con Dilma hay algunos indicadores de ligeros cambios en la posición 

de Brasil relacionadas con Irán. Dilma critico en la prensa la ejecución de 

mujeres en Irán. En el pasado, ella misma sufrió abusos contra los derechos 

humanos durante los tiempos de la dictadura en Brasil. Así que ella se ha 

mostrado realmente sensible a esta cuestión. Recientemente el nuevo 

Gobierno de Dilma, por primera vez, no aceptó participar en una misión 

internacional para vigilar las instalaciones nucleares iraníes. Dilma dijo que 

a partir de ahora su Administración va a diferenciar entre la posición de 

Brasil sobre la cuestión nuclear con Irán y sobre el tema de los Derechos 

Humanos en aquella nación. 

Brasil es enorme y de fronteras extremamente permeables y el país 

tiene límites con Venezuela, país en donde Irán tiene las puertas abiertas. 

Esto preocupa a la comunidad judía. Chávez, el presidente de Venezuela es 

hasta hoy un buen amigo de Lula. Las preocupaciones con la entrada libre 

para los terroristas de Irán a este país vecino son graves para las 

comunidades judías. Pero no es ese el punto de vista de las autoridades 

brasileñas y para la mayoría de los políticos brasileños que encuentran muy 

difícil aceptar que el terrorismo pueda suceder en nuestro país. Las 

autoridades judías de San Pablo están trabajando muy duro para mostrar al 

comando de Seguridad del Estado que hay cada vez más riesgos de tener 

problemas de esta índole durante los próximos Juegos Olímpicos y la Copa 

del Mundo.


LA IDENTIDAD JUDÍA BRASILEÑA 

Los judíos brasileños contemporáneos no sufren ninguna restricción 

acerca de su identidad judía, pero el judaísmo no es necesariamente su prioridad. 

La identidad, en todas sus facetas, es algo que no sucede en el “aire” 

ou en el vacío. Desde el Holocausto y el establecimiento del Estado de 

Israel, la unidad del pueblo y la identidad judía de la mayor parte de los 

judíos en Israel y en otros lugares se han basado en una memoria compartida 

de la tragedia nacional, un sentido de unión tribal, y un interés mutuo 

en la construcción y en el futuro del Estado de Israel. Pero no se ha apoyado 

lo suficiente en el estudio y conocimiento de las “fuentes” originales judías 

tales como la Torá, el Talmud, el Midrash y los comentarios y las contribuciones 

de los Sabios. Tampoco en el estudio de la Torá por sí misma (Torá 

Lishmah). Ni en la vida diaria judía. Sinagogas, escuelas judías, centros 

comunitarios, movimientos de jóvenes, instituciones de mujeres y otras 

organizaciones cargan buena parte de la responsabilidad por la transmisión 

del judaísmo. Estas instituciones tratan de propagar el judaísmo y el sionismo, 

pero es creciente en esta comunidad el número de matrimonios en que 

uno de los miembros no ha nacido judío. 

En San Pablo, la mayoría de los judíos va apenas dos días al año a la 

sinagoga (en las grandes fiestas de Año Nuevo y del Día del Perdón) y no 

hablan hebreo. La imagen de sí mismos como judíos depende mucho de lo 

que la prensa dice de los judíos y de Israel. Por lo tanto nuestro diagnóstico 

es que en la comunidad judía de Brasil lo que se llama de analfabetismo 

judío, o sea la falta de formación judía de los propios judíos, trae la erosión 

interna y la asimilación que en ciertos sentidos es más grave aún que el 

antisemitismo. 

LA CAMPAÑA EN CONTRA DE ISRAEL EN NUESTRO PAÍS 

La deslegitimación no es una novedad para el pueblo judío ni para 

Israel y también no lo es para la comunidad judía. La diferencia más marcada 

en la actualidad parece ser que esta campaña tiene como objetivo 

destruir el derecho de Israel a existir. 

Esta campaña en contra de Israel afecta directamente a los jóvenes, en 

particular a los estudiantes universitarios. San Pablo no tiene centros para 

estudiantes judíos en el estilo de los centros Hillel dentro de las universidades 

en Estados Unidos. Hillel Río y una organización similar que 

trabaja en San Pablo, con el mismo segmento de edad, tienen sus sedes 

ubicadas en los barrios judíos, y no en el Campus. 

Para hacer frente a esta situación, la Federación Judía, trabaja buscando 

informar y educar, apoyando a las escuelas y a las organizaciones


judías. La Federación también asume la responsabilidad de lanzar campañas 

e iniciativas de información al público en general. La Federación ha desarrollado 

dos programas, uno es Lifnei HaMashber (Antes de que llegue la 

crisis) y el otro es Esser Dakot (Diez Minutos). A través del primero, algunos 

especialistas son invitados a explicar y discutir profundamente algunas 

cuestiones importantes como Irán, Hezbollah, Hamas y otros. El programa 

Esser Dakot lleva profesionales de Hasbará 4 para una breve charla (por ese 

motivo es el nombre del programa) con estudiantes universitarios, en los 

horarios de recreo entre las clases en sus propias facultades y universidades 

y se abordan aspectos relevantes de la campaña en contra de Israel en los 

medios de comunicación. Los programas Esser Dakot y Lifnei HaMashber 

tienen por objetivo ayudar a los jóvenes a desarrollar una respuesta eficaz a 

los desafíos que enfrentan en la vida de su universidad. Los programas se 

centran en proporcionar a los estudiantes los hechos y las estrategias para 

contrarrestar las acusaciones falsas en contra de Israel. 

POR ÚLTIMO PERO NO MENOS IMPORTANTE 

La comunidad sabe que nuestro país no sufre antisemitismo violento, 

pero se preocupa e incómoda cuando las autoridades judías evidencian que 

lo que realmente está sucediendo no es tan agradable. El trabajo de la 

dirigencia judía muestra los problemas a las autoridades gubernamentales y 

a los políticos bien como a algunos sectores de la propia comunidad. Es 

muy importante, preparar a los brasileños para criticar y condenar el 

racismo, y sensibilizar a la población para que no sea seducida por manipulaciones 

demagógicas en la difusión del odio anti-judío. 

En este contexto, es esencial para Israel, mejorar sus vías de comunicación 

con la diáspora y prestar más atención a lugares como Brasil. Un primer 

paso en esa dirección se dio recientemente con la reapertura del 

Consulado de Israel en San Pablo. Una parte de la estrategia para hacer 

frente a esta situación especialmente cuando Israel recibe fuertes críticas es 

dar una respuesta comunitaria consensuada. 

El liderazgo judío tiene un enfoque universal contra la discriminación 

y la intolerancia, y no una visión parroquial. De esta manera, la comunidad 

lucha sus batallas contra el antisemitismo, junto con aliados de otros grupos 

con los que se ha trabajado antes en el combate al racismo y a otras formas 

de discriminación. No creemos que podemos eliminar o borrar el antisemitismo. 

Tratamos de administrarlo a través de los medios democráticos y los 

mecanismos legales disponibles en nuestro país. 

4. Hasbará, del verbo hebreo lehasbir que significa explicar. Puede ser 

utilizado como “diplomacia, explicaciones e información a favor de Israel”.


Se busca evitar reacciones exageradas. Hay muy pocos actos 

antisemitas en Brasil, pero los líderes de la comunidad deben estar 

preparados para reaccionar y especialmente ser pro-activos en el apoyo a 

Israel. Esto también es muy significativo para la identidad judía en tiempos 

en que los fundamentos están siendo desafiados y los vientos están en contra 

de Israel y del pueblo judío. 

*Alberto Milkewitz es el Director Ejecutivo de la Federación Judía del Estado de S. 

Paulo, organización que agrupa a la mayor comunidad en Brasil y coordina, junto 

con Mario Fleck el Grupo de Trabajo para Combatir el Antisemitismo. Psicólogo, 

cuenta con una Maestría en Educación y próximamente defenderá su tesis de 

Doctorado en Educación en la Universidad de Sao Paulo. 

BIBLIOGRAFÍA 

Jeffrey Lesser. Brasil y la “cuestión judía,” La inmigración, la diplomacia, y el 

prejuicio (en hebreo). Tel Aviv: Empresas Universitarias, 1998. 

Maria Luisa Tucci Carneiro. Anti-Semitismo na era Vargas. São Paulo: Brasiliense 

Editorial, 1988.

Postcard from Venezuela 

Sammy Eppel* 

Hi, everyone. Sammy Eppel here. The weather is great! Let me tell 

you a little about how it is to be a Venezuelan Jew. First, the history. The 

presence of Latin American Jews begins with the colonial period, and as the 

region developed so did their numbers. Some Jews even participated in the 

independence movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. In my country, 

Venezuela, Mordechai Ricardo, a Jew in the Dutch island of Curacao, took 

care of the family of Simon Bolivar during a period of exile. With time, 

Latin America became the home of almost a million Jews that in general 

got a friendly welcome and were able to establish communities and contribute 

to the betterment of their respective countries. The Latin American people 

that came out of the mixing of the native population, black slaves, and 

white immigration are known for their tolerance and respect and are 

referred to as the “Cosmic Race.” Under such circumstances, antisemitism 

was minimal. One noted difference could be Argentina, which is more of a 

European-type country that imported some of the prejudices of that area. 

The Latin American Jews that have lived for generations in their respective 

countries are so well integrated that a Jew from Mexico considers himself 

totally and first of all as Mexican—and the same goes for the other countries 

of the continent. 

Having said that, it would seem incongruous that in September 2006, 

at the Tel Aviv University conference in Budapest, I declared that “for the 

first time in recent history there is government-sponsored antisemitism in a 

Western country” in reference to the new political antisemitism that has 

risen in Venezuela. The hundreds of antisemitic acts sponsored by the 

regime of Húgo Chávez have been duly presented in many international 

conferences. One such event took place on January 20, 2009, with the publication 

in official principal Web sites of a blueprint for attacking the Jews 

in Venezuela. It was written by Emilio Silva Chapellin, a professor at Venezuelan 

Bolivarian University and a prominent member of Chavez’s PSUV 

party. In it, he calls for action—and the Caracas Synagogue was desecrated 

ten days later (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1L34I7TFws). Incredibly, 

the professor was not called by any investigation team and instead was 

treated as a hero of the revolution and paraded as such in government radio 

and TV media. 

But this is even more alarming. On April 4, 2011, the director of a 

Venezuelan government-owned radio station, Cristina Gonzalez, dedicated 

almost all her time on the government’s radio station, to the reading of The 

Protocols of the Elders of Zion. She asserted that the contents of the book 

179


were approved by the Zionist Congress of 1897 in Basel, and concluded 

with the statement that all past and present ills are attributed to the “world 

Jewish conspiracy.” If you add the Muslim embracing of Chávez and the 

influence of petro dollars, we obviously have a situation of concern for the 

future of Latin American Jews. 

P.S. Come visit! The weather is great! 

*Sammy Eppel (www.eppel.net) is a Venezuela-based journalist who tracks government-sponsored 

antisemitism. Eppel was a correspondent for World Press 

Review magazine and worldpress.org, and columnist for El Universal. He is the 

founder and president of Madre Maria Luisa Casar (www.madreluisa.org), a member 

of Venezuelan Jewish community (CAIV), and director of DDHH of B’nai 

B’rith Venezuela.

Tarjeta Postal de Venezuela 

Sammy Eppel* 

La presencia de judíos en America Latina es de vieja data y comenzó 

en el periodo colonial. A medida que la región se desarrollo también los 

números de Judíos. Algunos participaron en los movimientos independentistas 

de los siglos 18 y 19. En mi país Venezuela, un judío en la isla de 

Curazao, Mordechai Ricardo le dio cobijo a la familia de Simon Bolívar 

durante un periodo de exilio. Con el paso del tiempo America Latina se 

convirtió en el hogar de casi un millón de judíos, donde en general fueron 

bien recibidos, tuvieron la oportunidad de fundar comunidades religiosas y 

contribuir al desarrollo y mejoramiento de sus respectivos países. El pueblo 

Latino Americano que surgió de la mezcla de la población nativa, los 

negros esclavos y la inmigración blanca es conocido por su tolerancia y 

respeto, por lo tanto no es de extrañar que se le mencione como la Raza 

Cósmica. Bajo esas circunstancias el antisemitismo fue mínimo. Una notable 

diferencia pudiese ser Argentina que tiene gran similitud con países 

Europeos y que importo algunos de los prejuicios del Viejo continente. Los 

Judíos Latino Americanos que por generaciones han vivido en sus respectivos 

países están tan bien integrados que por ejemplo, un mexicano de fe 

Judía se considera primero totalmente mexicano, lo mismo aplica para los 

otros países del continente. 

Habiendo dicho lo anterior, parecería incongruente que yo hubiese 

declarado en septiembre 2006 en Budapest, en la conferencia sobre 

antisemitismo de la Universidad de Tel Aviv que “por primera vez en la 

historia moderna tenemos antisemitismo de estado en el hemisferio occidental”, 

refiriéndome al Nuevo antisemitismo político que ha tomado 

forma en Venezuela. No entrare en los detalles de los cientos de actos 

antisemitas promovidos por el régimen de Hugo Chávez, ya han sido 

profusamente presentados en diferentes conferencias internacionales. 

Uno de esos eventos ocurrió el 20 de Enero de 2009 con la publicación 

en la principal pagina Web del régimen de una “hoja de ruta” para atacar a 

los judíos en Venezuela, escrita por un profesor de la Universidad Bolivariana 

y prominente miembro del PSUV, partido político de Chávez. Donde 

menciona como “blanco” especial a la sinagoga principal de caracas, la cual 

fue desecrada 10 días después (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1L34I7 

TFws) Increíblemente esa persona no fue llamada a declarar en las investigaciones, 

todo lo contrario, desfilo como un héroe de la revolución por 

todos los medios del estado. 

Uno de los últimos eventos merece especial atención: El 4 de abril de 

181


2011, la directora de una radio oficial del gobierno, Cristina González, le 

dedico su programa diario a la lectura y recomendación a los oyentes al 

estudio de los “PROTOCOLOS DE LOS SABIOS DE SION”, aseverando 

que tal escrito había sido aprobado en Basilea en 1897 durante la 

celebración del primer congreso sionista y finalizando con la típica acusación 

que presenta a una conspiración judía como los causante de todos los 

males del mundo pasados y presentes. Si le sumamos el irrestricto apoyo a 

los más radicales países musulmanes y sus grupos terroristas a la gran 

influencia vía Petro dólares que Chávez detenta sobre muchos países de 

nuestra región, es obvio que los Latino Americanos de fe Judía se enfrentan 

a un terrorífico e incierto futuro. 

*Sammy Eppel (www.eppel.net) es periodista basado Venezuela. Él era correspondiente 

para el compartimiento y worldpress.org, columnista de la revisión de 

la prensa del mundo para el universal del El. Él es fundador y presidente de Madre 

Maria Luisa Casar (www.madreluisa.org) un miembro de la comunidad judia 

venezolana (CAIV) y del director de DDHH de B’nai B’rith Venezuela. Desde 

2004 él estudia antisemitismo con apoyo dell Gobierno.

A French Intifada 

Nidra Poller* 

A process described by some as the Islamization of Europe, by others 

as the failure of Europeans to integrate Muslim immigrants, has reached a 

breaking point in France. One of the most troubling manifestations of this 

discord is the development of a particular type of violence that is more than 

the sum of its parts. A sampling of this year’s news reports reads like a 

catalogue of stomping, stabbing, shooting, torching, and sacking; attacks on 

teachers, policemen, firemen, old ladies, and modest retirees; turf wars, tribal 

fights, murder over women, over attitude, over nothing; dead youths, 

murderous youths, bodies scattered across a national battlefield. 

Is there a connection between the endless series of seemingly disparate 

criminal incidents and markers openly displayed in insurrectional riots and 

demonstrations—keffiyeh face masks, Hezbollah flags, intifada slogans, 

Islamic chants? A general French tendency to withhold information and a 

deliberate decision to avoid ethnic and religious symbols leads to white 

noise coverage of criminality. Names, photos, and background information 

about perpetrators, suspects, and victims are usually suppressed, especially 

those that might create a negative image of Muslims. 

Yet there is ample evidence that immigration has brought specifically 

Islamic antipathy to Jews, contempt for Western values, and other antisocial 

attitudes reinforced by religious zeal and aggravated by the clash between 

an authoritarian family structure and permissive French society. Many second- 

and third-generation French-born Muslims, anxious to separate themselves 

from a “French” identity they reject, are no less vulnerable to these 

influences than recent immigrants. 

A supposedly reassuring “it’s not Chicago” occasionally tacked on at 

the end of a report about a lawless neighborhood adds to the confusion. In 

fact, it is not Chicago but more like Algiers, Jenin, or Bamako. 

GAZA ON THE SEINE 

“We don’t want to import the Mideast conflict.” These soothing words 

were repeated by officials from Left to Right every time Muslim rage over 

supposed Zionist persecution of Palestinians was “avenged” by violence 

against Jews in France, notably the countless attacks against Jews tallied 

since the outbreak in September 2000 of the “al-Aqsa intifada.” Initially 

dismissed as “insults and bullying,” the worst wave of anti-Jewish aggression 

since World War II was subsequently attributed to the quirky import of 

183


a “foreign bug” that troubled harmonious relations between local Jewish 

and Muslim communities. Meanwhile, the media were importing the conflict 

with all their might, pro-Palestinian nongovernmental organizations 

were agitating, and peace marches against the Iraq war blossomed into 

punitive actions against Jews. 

Though ethnic and religious statistics are prohibited in France, it is 

estimated to have the largest populations of Muslims, anywhere from five 

to ten million, and Jews, around 550,000, in Western Europe. Over half of 

the Jewish population is Sephardic, mainly refugees from North Africa. The 

Muslim population, most of which arrived since the early 1970s, is primarily 

from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa with large contingents from 

Turkey, smaller communities from the rest of the Muslim world, and a 

growing number of converts. The ethnic or religious identities and underlying 

motives of individuals who attack Jews in France are no more mysterious 

than those of jihadists who strike elsewhere, from the smooth World 

Trade Center terrorists to the bungling Times Square bomber, and tens of 

thousands of the same stripe. A French Muslim thug does not bash the head 

of a French Jew because he cannot vent his rage against anIsraeli: His feet, 

fists, iron bar, and knife, in fact, slash the false distinction between anti- 

Zionism and antisemitism. 

In May 2004, tens of thousands of mostly Jewish marchers protesting 

terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and assaults on Jews in France 

chanted “Synagogues brûlées, République en danger (torched synagogues, 

endangered republic).” 1 Today, when the situation of French Jews has jelled 

into an uneasy truce—with a slow but steady decrease in population, sustained 

immigration to Israel, and avoidance when possible of heavily Muslim 

neighborhoods—the French republic is in danger as the anti-Jewish 

thuggery has been extended to the general population, the “dirty Frenchies” 

and “filthy whities.” France’s politique arabe (pro-Arab policy) has been 

unwittingly transposed to the domestic scene. The twisted logic and adulterated 

ethics devised to blame Israel for failing to bring peace on earth has 

come back to haunt the French. A compassionate discourse that excuses 

Palestinian atrocities against Israeli civilians as a reaction to “injustice” also 

excuses French domestic criminality as payback for colonization, discrimination, 

exclusion, unemployment, and police harassment. Confusion 

between avowed genocidal intentions and elusive legitimate aspirations—a 

Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel—breeds confusion 

at home between insurrectional thugs and frustrated but law-abiding immigrants. 

The “disproportionate reaction” accusation played like the ace of 

1. Pierre Birnbaum, “Le recul de l’État fort et la nouvelle mobilisation 

antisémite dans la France contemporaine,” Pôle Sud, November 2004, 15-29.

2011] A FRENCH INTIFADA 185 

spades against Israel turns into a joker when riot police are portrayed as 

Robocops oppressing a “Palestinized” immigrant population. Having expropriated 

the moral high ground by rough riding over the heads of Israeli 

soldiers, French authorities are disarmed in confrontations with homegrown 

shabab, or youths. 

So Palestinian terrorists are called “militants,” Gaza Flotilla jihadists 

are presented as “humanitarians,” and the young French criminals are 

“youths.” This deceivingly generic term, used to mask the identity of local 

Maghrebi and African thugs, is a paradoxical translation of the Arabic 

shabab. Indeed, it is not rare to read of a “36-year-old adult youth” involved 

in a rumble or suspected of murder. 

Have French youngsters become savages? Do they steal handbags 

from elderly women and kill a man who will not give them a cigarette? Are 

these the same youths who join peace marches, live ecologically, hate religion, 

and worship diversity? Are French youth running the drug traffic while 

studying for the baccalaureate exam? Do they break into schools to kill 

rival dealers or stab uppity teachers? Are the French youth who sit in cafes 

with their iPhones and sunbathe naked on beaches the same ones that gang 

up twenty to one on a man who looked twice at their girlfriends or complained 

when cut in front of in line at an amusement park? What about the 

youthful French boy couples strolling hand in hand on rue Ste. Croix de la 

Bretonnerie in the Marais? Do they meet rivals for knife fights at Paris’s 

north station? Hardly. 

During the 2005 uprising, when rioting Muslim youths torched cars 

and public buildings in housing projects throughout the country and clashed 

with the security forces trying to restore law and order, Parisians believed 

they were safe inside invisible walls as fires burned on the other side of the 

ring road. “It’s just the banlieue (working class suburb),” they said. A second 

round of discourse about the urgent need to improve housing, infrastructure, 

transportation, and job opportunities circumscribed the problem. 

Before the year was out, flames were rising in the center of the city and the 

banlieue problems spread like wildfire. 2 

NAKED EYE AND MEDIA EYES 

Five years later, as France is being rocked by another, if more diffuse 

and elusive, wave of violence, the discourse is similarly sterile. Newspapers 

string out a litany of violent incidents in a repetition of stock phrases and 

opaque vocabulary. Honey-voiced newscasters warble little tunes of tribal 

violence as if turf wars and fatal stabbings in retaliation for a look, an atti- 

2. TCS Daily, Public Broadcasting Service, September 20, 2005.


tude, or a woman were all in a day’s work. Bucolic place names redolent 

with memories of Impressionist boating parties are now the sites of bloody 

murder. Fatal stabbings in schools named after resistance heroes are attributed 

to the influence of video games and a hunger for consumer products 

stimulated by capitalism. A small sample paints the grim picture: 

• January 14, 2010: Adrien, an 18-year-old from Sannois (Val 

d’Oise), is savagely murdered by a gang of youths armed with 

sticks, knives, golf clubs, and a Japanese saber. He tried to find 

refuge in a car repair shop, but the manager, who was ordered out, 

stood by helplessly as the youths beat and stabbed Adrien to death. 

Subsequent reports reveal that the murder was the last act in a day 

of fights between two groups. The victim’s distraught mother 

berates the youths for making trouble and giving the neighborhood 

a bad name, yet blames their aggression on police harassment. 3 

• January 23: A “26-year-old young man” stabbed to death is found 

in the street in the Orgemont project at Epinay-sur-Seine (Seine 

Saint-Denis). A suspect turned himself in, yet the circumstances 

have not been elucidated. That same day, four people are wounded 

by BB guns, in a fight in Tremblay en France (Seine Saint-Denis), 

again without elucidation. 4 And a 16-year-old girl in Saint Gratien 

(Val d’Oise) is severely beaten by her two brothers and strict Muslim 

parents for chatting on the Internet; doctors fear she will lose an 

eye. 5 

• January 31: A gang fight involving a hundred youths, some armed 

with knives, takes place in the Boissy-Saint-Léger RERcommuter 

train station, apparently connected to a hip-hop concert. 6 

• February 6: A 17-year-old youth is stabbed to death near the Parc 

des Princes stadium in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. 7 

• February 7: Youths fight the police for two hours in Chantelouples-Vignes 

(Yvelines). The next day, two men “of African origin,” 

probably gangsters, are shot in the ninth arrondissement of Paris, 

and on February 20, a man is shot dead in broad daylight on rue des 

Pyrénées in the twentieth arrondissement. 8 

• February 21: In Conteville (Seine-Maritime), a 73-year-old man 

visiting a friend, a retired scrap-iron dealer, is killed by robbers, 

3. Le Parisien, February 12, 2010. 

4. Ibid., January 23, 2010. 

5. Ibid., January 23, 2010. 

6. Le Figaro (Paris), January 31, 2010. 

7. Ibid., February 6, 2010. 

8. Ibid., February 20, 2010.


who broke into the home. 9 

What happened next? Were the circumstances elucidated? The perpetrators 

apprehended? Convicted? We may never know. Convinced that the 

identity of culprits is withheld for ideological reasons, readers do the detective 

work with telltale clues and exasperating similarities. Youths, knives, 

the banlieue? Twenty against one? Drug wars? Turf wars? Gang fights? The 

puzzled citizen situates each incident somewhere on a line traced from the 

intimidating rowdiness observed in public to mass revolts seen on 

television: 

• February 28: An African widow beloved by her neighbors is 

stabbed to death in a bank, to the horror of helpless customers and 

personnel. The next day, a retired couple, aged 76, are brutally 

murdered in their home in Pont-Saint-Maxence (Oise), just north of 

Paris. 10 

• March 1: A sixteen-year-old boy drowns in the Yerres River at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges 

(Val de Marne) trying to escape assailants 

who chased him as he came out of a hospital after treatmentfor 

injuries sustained in an earlier episode. 11 

• March 10: Four masked youths armed with knives and a fake gun 

sneak through the handicapped entrance into an amphitheater at the 

University of Paris XIII Villetaneuse (Seine Saint-Denis) and steal 

a total of nine cell phones and C= 40 from the students and 

professor. 12 

• April 3: Fifteen youths are kicked off the tramway in the center of 

Grenoble. Three young men and a woman get off at the same stop. 

The youths harass them, ask the woman for a cigarette; she says she 

does not have any more. They knock over one of the young men, 

stomp his head, bash him senseless, stab him, perforating his lung, 

and run, leaving the victim, a 24-year-old cartographer identified as 

Martin, hovering between life and death. 13 

• April 30: A man wearing a yarmulke was attacked in the center of 

Strasbourg by two Muslims who knocked him down with a heavy 

iron bar and stabbed him twice in the back. 14 

• July 14: Nantes: A 52-year-old handicapped man is beaten to death 

by four “African type” youths scrounging for cigarettes and a few 

9. Ibid., February 21, 2010. 

10. Le Figaro, February 28, 2010. 

11. Le Parisien, March 1, 2010. 

12. Le Figaro, March 10, 2010. 

13. Ibid., April 14, 2010. 

14. Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, April 30, 2010.


euros. The police are looking for witnesses. 15 

• August 4: A 64-year-old man was kidnapped by three youths in 

front of his house, forced into a car, taken to a secluded place, 

beaten, and tortured until he told them where he hid his savings—a 

few thousand euros. The victim was hospitalized in serious condition, 

his face slashed, a piece of a finger chopped off. 16 

LOW-INTENSITY WARFARE 

Wherever punk jihadists decide to stake out a territory—a street corner, 

a park bench, a place in line, or a housing project—they punish intruders 

with merciless violence. A young couple living in the center of the 

southwestern city of Perpignan who dared to protest the ear-splitting noise 

of motorcycle rodeos under their windows in the middle of the night almost 

paid with their lives. Fifteen youths shouting, “We’re going to kill you,” 

broke into their building, raced up the stairs, and pounded on their door 

with such force that the adjoining wall started to collapse. They scattered 

and ran when the police approached. 17 Youths from l’Essonne punished a 

family because one of the boys made a remark when they pushed ahead of 

the family in line at the Asterix theme park, thirty kilometers north of Paris. 

They called in reinforcements, caught up with the family in the parking lot, 

beat up the boys, and hit their mother. 18 July 13, the eve of French Independence 

Day, is traditionally celebrated with dancing in the streets. Youths 

shooting prohibited firecracker missiles caused at least forty-seven fires. A 

63-year-old woman died when a missile, shot through an open window, set 

fire to her modest apartment. The second floor of a nineteenth arrondissement 

fire station, hit by missiles, went up in flames as people danced on the 

ground floor. 19 A minor traffic accident on a highway outside Paris ended 

in a bloody murder because the victim, a young family man named Muhammad, 

asked the woman responsible for the damage to sign an insurance 

declaration. “You trying to act French?” she objected, before calling for 

help from friends from les Mureaux, a nearby project. The youths, identified 

in one article as “black,” arrived in force, shouting, “We’re going to 

kill you in front of your mother,” and proceeded to bash the man’s head 

with unrestrained savagery, killing him on the spot, in front of his family, as 

promised. Two of the killers were identified by name and Senegalese origin 

15. RTL.fr (Paris), July 14, 2010. 

16. Le Figaro, August 4, 2010. 

17. Ibid., August 3, 2010. 

18. Libération (Paris), May 25, 2010. 

19. Libération, July 14, 2010; Paris Match, July 22, 2010.


on a Senegalese Web site. 20 Several weeks later, an American journalist 

investigating the problems of minorities in French housing projects was 

assaulted by youths in les Mureaux. Described as a 50-year-old evangelical, 

he was taken to a nearby hospital, unconscious. He had been given a head 

bashing and robbed of equipment worth more than $15,000. The circumstances 

have not yet been elucidated. 21 

ECHO CHAMBER 

In a transposition of the Middle East peace-process mentality, the failure 

of integration is blamed on France, just as the failure to create a Palestinian 

state is blamed on Israel. The Palestinian cause is forgiven for sixty 

years of aggression; delinquent immigrants are acquitted of responsibility 

for their antisocial behavior and self-destructive strategies. Hamas attacks 

Israel for years on end; Israel finally retaliates and gets its nose rubbed in 

the rubble; housing projects are dilapidated by their own delinquent 

residents, only to be displayed as proof of social injustice. International 

opinion looks the other way as Hamas imposes Shari‘a law in Gaza; the 

media close their eyes as thugs impose their law in the projects. Banlieue- 

Gaza-on-the-Seine for the domestic insurgents, Banlieue-Gaza-open-airprison 

for the compassionate choir. No matter how much is done or given, it 

is never enough; no matter how wild the behavior, it is always explained 

away. Here, there, and everywhere, ethical boundaries are erased and logic 

surrenders to magical thinking. When mothers offer their children to die as 

shahids—martyred murderers—the very horror of their vengeance is held 

as a measure of the degree of oppression they endure. In France, every form 

of brutality, including the murder of Ilan Halimi—a young French Jew kidnapped 

by a banlieue gang in January 2006 and tortured to death over a 

period of three weeks 22 —is attributed to some form of “exclusion.” 23 The 

unashamed antisemitism of gang leader Youssouf Fofana, a rabid Muslim 

Jew hater, was used to mask the motives of some twenty gang members of 

varied origins who participated in the crime. Lawyers for the defense organized 

press conferences and wrote op-eds to deny banlieue antisemitism and 

portray their clients as misguided underprivileged youths. The same reverse 

chronology, explained in the first week of the al-Aqsa intifada that Palestinians 

had gone from throwing stones to shooting guns because Israeli 

20. RMC.fr (Paris), June 30, 2010; Xibar (Senegal), July 6, 2010. 

21. Libération, July 30, 2010. 

22. The New York Sun, February 22, 2006. 

23. The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2006; Nidra Poller, “Paris: Prisoner 

of the Barbarians,” Standpoint, July/August 2009; Nidra Poller, “French Justice 

Goes Easy on the Gang of Barbarians,” New English Review, July 11, 2009.


forces overreacted to the initial—justified—“revolt,” now explains that 

banlieue youth have started shooting at the police with automatic weapons 

because law enforcement has gone quasi-military. Identification with the 

Palestinian “resistance” emboldens French-born delinquents. Punk jihadists 

who drink alcohol, wear sweat suits, hardly ever set foot in a mosque, and 

cannot read the Qur’an in classic Arabic establish their dominion as if it 

were a waqf (religious endowment). No French outlet would touch the 

“Hamas on the Seine” report by photojournalist Jean-Paul Ney, published 

by the French-language, Israel-based Metula News Agency on May 31, 

2010, describing enraged keffiyeh-masked, pro-Palestinians chanting, 

“Zionist sellout media,” “Jews to the ovens,” “F—k France,” “Sarkozy the 

little Jew,” “Obama the Jew’s n___r,” repeatedly breaking police lines, 

determined to reach the Israeli embassy and vent their rage over the Gaza 

flotilla incident. Joined by anarchist “black blocks,” the insurgents 

destroyed property, threw paving stones at the police, and wreaked havoc 

for several hours at the Champs Elysées Circle. Ney distinctly heard orders 

broadcast to the riot police: “Don’t try to stop them.” 24 The Marseille 

Bondy blog celebrated French Independence Day in its fashion by featuring 

a T-shirt emblazoned with an Algerian flag in the shape of France—the 

spitting image of a map of Israel covered with a Palestinian flag. “Secondor 

third-generation immigrant youths from the Maghreb, Comores, etc.,” 

says a young woman identified as Sonia, “are trying to find themselves.” 

The T-shirt is the answer to their quest. “We really have a double culture; 

we are both [French and Algerian].” 25 French media automatically favor the 

other version of any clash involving Israel. Journalists can write with their 

eyes closed—or simply swallow what they are fed from Agence France- 

Presse dispatches. The story of the clash in August 2010 on Israel’s border 

with Lebanon—when an Israeli officer, three Lebanese soldiers, and one 

Lebanese journalist were killed when Lebanese forces opened fire on Israel 

Defense Forces soldiers performing routine maintenance work within 

Israel—broke in France, of course, with the Lebanese narrative. The falsification 

was revealed within twenty-four hours and confirmed in full reliable 

detail, 26 but media alchemists turned the dirty facts into ambiguous gold. 27 

Why believe Israeli sources, even when corroborated by U.N. troops on the 

scene? 

24. Metula News Agency (Luxembourg), May 31, 2010. 

25. Marseille Bondy blog, July 14, 2010. 

26. Ha’aretz (Tel Aviv), August 4, 2010. 

27. Le Figaro, August 3, 2010; Le Monde (Paris), August 4, 2010.


HALL OF MIRRORS 

Given that the Muhammad al-Dura hoax—the staged death scene and 

subsequent martyrization of the 12-year-old Gazan allegedly killed in cold 

blood by Israeli soldiers on the second day of the “Aqsa intifada” 28 —was 

produced by Charles Enderlin, long-time Jerusalem correspondent of the 

state-owned France 2 television channel, the French authorities understandably 

live in dread of a real Dura on their own soil, not least since the youths 

readily fabricate their own child martyrs and go on the rampage in revenge. 

The 2005 riots were triggered by the death of two minors who sought refuge 

in an electrical substation, allegedly pursued by the police, allegedly for 

no good reason. 29 In November 2007, several policemen were wounded by 

gunfire in a battle with some 200 youths in Villiers le Bel (Val d’Oise) after 

two youths without helmets sped down the street on a prohibited minicycle, 

crashed into a police car, and were killed. 30 There is no way of knowing 

if Abu and Adama Kamara, Ibrahim Sow, Maka Kante, and Samuel 

Lambalamba, sentenced in July 2010 to prison terms ranging from three to 

fifteen years, are innocent as they claim, or fall guys for fellow youths; 31 it 

is as if the court were judging an incident that occurred in a distant foreign 

land. After a similar accident in the Woippy banlieue of Metz, gendarmes 

were pelted with stones, fourteen vehicles including a bus were torched, 

telephone booths and a school were sacked. These are but a few of many 

incidents where youths in stolen cars or motorcycles, running away from 

the police, crash and kill themselves. Yet, no matter how far-fetched the 

version of the “aggrieved” party, it always takes precedence over the official 

version in French media. Any police investigation is, by the media’s 

definition, suspect. The police, media suggest, should not engage in hot 

pursuit. One sympathizer explained in front of TV cameras that the police 

knew the names of the joy riders in the stolen car and could have let them 

go home and then arrested them the next day. After all, who cares if the 

boys cause a fatal accident in the meantime? The media offered a brief tour 

when the police raided a housing project in the Parisian banlieue of Sevran 

(Seine Saint Denis) controlled by drug dealers. Graffiti arrows indicate 

“shops”; residents tell how they pass through checkpoints to access their 

buildings, and TV cameramen were lucky to escape with their footage. 

28. Philippe Karsenty, “We Need to Expose the Muhammad al-Dura Hoax,” 

Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2008, 57-65; Nidra Poller, “Myth, Fact, and the Al- 

Dura Affair,” Commentary, September 2005. 

29. The Guardian (London), November 6, 2005. 

30. The New York Times, November 28, 2007. 

31. Le Parisien, July 3, 2010.


“Militants” responded to the raid with the now familiar torching, sacking, 

and shooting at policemen. Government promises to enforce the law provoke 

an outcry from compassionate sociologists, left-wing magistrates and 

mayors, and members of do-good associations who protest that “repression 

is not the solution.” Imposing undue restraint on the police has simply 

emboldened their adversaries. Over 5,000 were injured in the line of duty in 

2009, and in January-February 2010, some 1,100. 32 In recent incidents, 

police have been surrounded, pelted with paving stones, kicked, punched, 

hit on the head with hammers, humiliated, and treated like mugging victims, 

not agents of law enforcement. International media, relying heavily on 

Agence France-Presse and Associated Press wire services, have shown little 

interest in France’s delinquency problem. The November 2005 “intifada” 

was mistakenly equated with the Watts riots; the recent anti-niqab (full-face 

veil) law is attributed to intolerance. The grievances of minorities are taken 

at face value, and government efforts to enforce the law are denounced as 

concessions to far right extremism. In fact, and contrary to what has been 

written about French society, there is no tradition of segregation or ghettoes. 

People are constantly in motion; public transportation carries passengers 

from banlieue to city centers, and neighborhoods are mixed. The recent 

ghettoization of certain housing projects—always incomplete—is a function 

of their criminalization. When the caïds (criminal bosses) rule the 

roost, those who can, leave; those who cannot, submit. It’s a small-time 

jihad. 

THE GANGSTER AS VICTIM 

The holdup of a gambling casino in Uriage on the night of July 15, 

2010, would have been one more item on the long list of unresolved crimes 

if the police in hot pursuit had not been led deep into the gangsters’ turf in 

Villeneuve en Isère, a housing project in the banlieue of Grenoble. The two 

gangsters, wearing bulletproof vests, opened fire with automatic weapons. 

The police returned fire, killing one with a shot to the head. His accomplice 

escaped. All hell broke loose in the project. The “victim” this time was not 

a youngster on a motorcycle but rather a 27-year-old repeat offender, Karim 

Boudouda, already convicted of three separate incidents of armed robbery 

but still on the loose. Ninety cars were torched the first night, twenty the 

next night. Armored cars, commandoes, and riot police were brought in, but 

Boudouda’s friends fired on the police while his mother announced her 

intention to sue the police. The owner of a bar, said to be Karim 

Boudouda’s cousin, was arrested after an arms cache and shooting range 

32. Le Figaro, March 30, 2010; L’Express (Paris), August 13, 2010.


were discovered on the premises. Several people were detained and released 

in connection with the search for Boudouda’s accomplice, whose name and 

description were not made public. In the first week of September, the 

alleged accomplice, repeat offender Monsif Ghabbour, was finally located, 

arrested, and arraigned, then immediately released under supervision. The 

police are outraged, and the prosecutorhas appealed the release. Some 

officers directly involved in the shootout were transferred to other regions 

or sent out to pasture in what looked like a shameful retreat. Heady with 

victory, Karim’s men pursued them with personalized death threats. 33 

Eleven days later in Saint Aignan, Luigi B. crashed through a barrier, 

dragging a gendarme on the hood of his car for 500 meters, then pretended 

to stop at a second barrier, suddenly sped up, heading straight for two gendarmes. 

One of them shot at the speeding car as it whizzed by. When 

Luigi’s body was found ten kilometers further on, his gens du voyage community 

(nomads of various origins, some now sedentary) went on the rampage. 

Vandals sacked a police station, terrified a baker, chopped down a 

dozen trees, and attacked public buildings in half a dozen different localities 

in the following days. Sociologist Michel Wieviorka analyzed the two situations 

with typical French rhetoric: “The nomads don’t expect anything from 

society; the banlieue’s expectations are disappointed.” He added, “It’s territorial, 

not ethnic or religious.” 34 No one in Saint Aignan expected to be shot 

in the head as was the Israeli officer in a Lebanese incident for cutting 

down a dozen trees on the Israeli side of the border. The familiar pattern of 

retreat on the home front was matched with reversals in foreign lands. In 

August, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb threatened to punish “the treasonous 

apostates, the children and agents of Christian France . . . [and] 

Sarkozy—the enemy of Allah” for a bungled attempt to rescue a French 

hostage—beheaded one week later—in Mali. 35 Two French reporters have 

been hostages in Afghanistan since December 2009. Lebanese villagers surrounded, 

disarmed, stoned, and threatened to kill members of a French U.N. 

contingent as if they were policemen in a French housing project. Contrary 

to expectations, the government did not slip away for the August vacation, 

hoping heads would cool in Villeneuve en Isère by September. The president, 

flanked by Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux and Immigration Minister 

Eric Besson, stepped into the ring, announced a series of tough 

measures, and dared to link crime with immigration. Not all crime, not all 

immigrants. But he broke the taboo, simply by stating the obvious and followed 

with a promise of harsh measures for criminals who shoot at the 

33. Le Figaro, July 19, September 3, 2010. 

34. Le Point (Paris), July 19, 2010; France 5 TV, July 20, 2010. 

35. Reuters, August 16, 2010; Le Parisien, August 17, 2010.


police. Moreover, naturalized cop killers will lose their citizenship. Tax 

officials will be sent into the projects to crack down on people living in 

luxury while on the dole. The drug market will be dismantled. Severe delinquency, 

polygamy, and female circumcision will also be grounds for withdrawal 

of nationality (this provision was subsequently withdrawn). Illegal 

Roma camps will be dismantled, and illegal residents sent back to Romania, 

Bulgaria, etc. 36 

Suddenly, the media came forth with in-depth reports on Villeneuve en 

Isère, developed thirty years ago as a model of social harmony with public 

and private housing nestled side by side in a beautifully landscaped setting 

outside the college town of Grenoble. What went wrong? The crisis, officials 

said, caused deterioration; middle-class property owners left. More to 

the point, it was revealed that Boudouda was a “lieutenant” in one of the 

crime families. The current crop of Maghrebi kingpins are more ruthless 

and savage than earlier generations of Grenoble gangsters—Italian Mafiosi 

followed by French-Italian neo-Mafiosi. 37 Their operations are all the more 

brutal for being poorly planned and executed. They settle misunderstandings 

with sequestration, torture, or bursts of automatic gunfire. 

XENOPHOBIA, “ISLAMOPHOBIA,” OR DHIMMITUDE? 

The government’s straight talk has shaken France to the timbers. President 

Sarkozy was accused of cynically fishing for right-leaning-populist 

Front National voters, replaying the disgraceful Vichy past collaboration, 

separating the French-French from the foreign-French (akin to death-camp 

selections), and trying to draw attention away from his administration’s perfidious 

scandals. 38 In the rush to condemn the government for saying the 

unspeakable, critics have blithely stampeded over the distinction between a 

misguided 12-year-old bicycle thief and a 27-year-old repeat offender who 

shoots at policemenwith an automatic weapon. 

Not a day goes by without a barrage of statements condemning the 

president. Former Socialist prime minister Michel Rocard—remembered 

for declaring in the early 1980s that “France cannot take in all the world’s 

misery” 39 —stuck the Nazi label on President Sarkozy and accused him of 

fomenting civil war. Every opposition leader, big or small, took up the keyboard 

or microphone to vilify the president in the most emphatic terms. No 

Holocaust metaphor is left unturned. Deporting illegal Romas is equated 

36. Nicolas Sarkozy, Public address in Grenoble, July 30, 2010. 


38. See, for example, The Herald Scotland (Glasgow), July 25, 2010. 

39. Associated Press, November 15, 2002.


with roundups of Jews in the 1940s. The rhetoric has come full circle: 

“immigrants” (meaning Arab-Muslim and sub-Saharan Africans) are 

today’s Jews—when in fact the people who are now persecuting Jews 

belong to that lawless class loosely defined as “immigrants.” 

The media are giving wall-to-wall coverage to the president’s most 

severe critics while limiting the defense of strict law enforcement to officials, 

giving the impression that the government stands alone—the 2 percent 

increase in approval ratings for the president and Prime Minister 

François Fillon notwithstanding. Dominique de Villepin, the president’s 

arch-rival within the governing Union for a Popular Movement party, 

accused the president of “transgression.” 40 With his customary grandiloquence, 

Villepin declared that Sarkozy has stained the French flag with 

shame. 41 

Can the truth about the Maghrebi gangsters of Villeneuve en Isère be 

extrapolated to other banlieues, other crimes, other nights of flame and 

destruction? Are law-abiding citizens, Muslims included, supposed to grin 

and bear it? If this criminality is not strictly delinquent but is rather allied 

with a wider assault on Western values and way of life, French society must 

look it in the face. Thugs, the lumpenproletariat, and juvenile delinquents 

are easily enrolled as foot soldiers in totalitarian enterprises. These not-so- 

French, lawless youths play their role in a conflict that radiates outward 

from a flash point in the Middle East. While disillusioned advocates of law 

and order think that none of the tough measures announced will ever be 

applied, defenders of the downtrodden swear that every criminal case 

involving immigrants is deliberately highlighted to foment hostility and justify 

repression. 

Such accusations may seem plausible as long as the issues are debated 

in the abstract. But concrete realities are stubborn. Thirty-five-year-old Lies 

Hebbaj came to public attention in April 2010 when he called a press conference 

in Nantes to contest a traffic ticket issued to his wife for driving 

with obstructed vision in a niqab. 42 He has since been charged with welfare 

fraud, financial irregularities, violation of labor law, and rape and assault on 

a wife he repudiated in 2007. It is alleged that Hebbaj, who has four niqabclad 

wives and sixteen children, has control of annual receipts of more than 

C= 300,000 in welfare payments, a third of which is fraudulently granted to 

his polygamous wives, declared as single mothers. Should he be divested of 

the French nationality he acquired by marrying a Frenchwoman? 43 Two 


41. France 3 TV, August 25, 2010. 

42. The Daily Telegraph, June 3, 2010. 

43. Le Figaro, May 4, June 10, 2010.


veiled women, lost in yards of black fabric, appeared on television to complain 

that Hebbaj—their husband and companion respectively, and the 

father of their children—is a scapegoat. Sarkozy’s critics say the Hebbaj 

case was pulled out of a hat to serve the government’s nefarious projects. 

But it is Hebbaj who came to public attention with a controversial press 

conference. Why, when there is ample evidence of polygamy and welfare 

fraud, did he feel invulnerable? Why do the bandits of Villeneuve en Isère 

think they are more powerful than the police? 

They feel invulnerable because they are not apprehended or punished 

and, furthermore, they cannot be criticized or identified without raising a 

hue and cry. Hundreds of punk jihadists screaming “F__k France” can go 

amok, but no one has the right to say they belong to a specific group or 

current. No one is even allowed to speculate on what they might have in 

common with other lawbreakers—unless one portrays them as hapless victims 

of injustice. 

CONCLUSION 

Does the French government have the ways and means or will to 

impose law and order? Every law enforcement effort entails the danger of 

igniting a generalized insurrection on an overwhelming scale. It is easy to 

scold President Sarkozy as did The New York Times, 44 parroting the French 

leftists or, on the other hand, mocking the president with a long list of 

unfulfilled law-and-order promises. But it would be wiser to ask why 

authorities in this western European nation with so much to lose keep mollifying 

antagonistic elements in the vain hope of avoiding a confrontation. 

And how is this any different from the free world hiding under the 

cover of peace processes while Iran moves inexorably to the point of no 

return? The Islamic factor in both domestic strife and international conflicts 

is denied. Genocidal intentions inscribed in the charters of Hamas and the 

Palestine Liberation Organization, Muslim Brotherhood documents, 

mosque sermons, and statements by Arab and Muslim leaders, as well as 

the Qur’an and the Hadith, are ignored. Criminal acts and jihadist actions 

are treated as miscellaneous aberrations. Coherent evidence is smashed into 

a thousand pieces and thrown to the winds, and thinkers who try to put the 

puzzle together are slapped down. 

There are no images of the brutal attacks cited here, or of the hundreds 

of others committed day in and day out. France’s video surveillance network 

is underdeveloped, in part because of opposition from socialist may- 

44. “Xenophobia: Casting Out the Un-French,” International Herald Tribune, 

August 5, 2010.


ors and civil libertarians. But one can find a mirror image of the savage 

gestures, primitive weapons, and murderous rage of those youths in video 

footage from the latest Middle East reality show—the Gaza flotilla. The 

free world’s Everyman is a deliberately unprepared soldier rappelling to the 

decks of the Mavi Marmara. 

French radio reported that Nicolas Sarkozy urged Benjamin Netanyahu 

to exercise restraint after the August 2010 sneak attack from Lebanon. Even 

if this is false, it remains plausible, and would show that, for all his tough 

talk, the president has not yet grasped the connection between his weakness 

against the insurgency in France and misguided peacemaking in the Middle 

East. 

*Nidra Poller is an American novelist and journalist who has lived in Paris since 

1972. A collection of her short stories, Karimi Hotel et autres nouvelles d’Africa, 

will soon be published by l’Harmattan.

Israel’s Intent 

Yehuda Bauer* 

What happened in Palestine in 1948 was a war between two ethnic/ 

national groups about a piece of land. A typical ethnic/national fight, one 

that humanity has unfortunately witnessed innumerable times. To refer to 

the Convention 1 (or any other attempt at defining genocide) in cases like 

this creates difficulties. Was there an intent to annihilate the other group? 

On the Arab side, certainly yes, and anyone who reads Arabic or has access 

to the propaganda of the time will have to agree. Incitement to genocide is, 

according to the Convention, part of the crime of genocide, as we all know. 

But the intent was not translated into action, because the Arabs lost the war. 

On the Jewish side, there were voices that advocated what we would now 

call ethnic cleansing, not with the intent to annihilate the Palestinian Arab 

population (the term Palestinians was not then in use) but with the intent to 

settle Jews instead of them, and thus cause grave physical and mental harm. 

Benny Morris and others have shown that the official Jewish leadership was 

of two minds, and issued contradictory orders. Part of the Arab population 

in what was to become Israel were evicted; an example is Ramlah/Ramle. 

Part fled as civilian populations do in times of war—in this case, some in 

the expectation of returning after victory; some simply in panic and fear of 

the Jews who were presented, in Arab propaganda, as devils in human 

form; and some because they were forced by Arab commanders to do so, as 

in the area around Mishmar Haemek, Beersheva. Others were asked by the 

Jews to stay, and refused: Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa. Part were simply left alone, 

or were permitted to stay if they chose, and did: Galilee, part of the Jaffa 

Arab population, part of the Haifa Arab population, and the same in Lod/ 

Lydda. In part, the intent depended on the local Jewish commanders. For 

example, a Jewish commander who hailed from South Africa gave an order 

to the inhabitants of E-Rameh in the Lower Galilee to get out; a command 

car with an officer sent by the commander of the “Front” (Brigadier Moshe 

Carmel), by then ensconced in Nazareth, threatened to shoot the other 

officer if he did not rescind the order. But yet another officer managed to 

evict, brutally, the inhabitants of another large village, Hunin, in the Upper 

Galilee. Does all this amount to ethnic cleansing à la Kosovo? Was there an 

intent to annihilate a group as such by eviction/deportation/expulsion? Ben 

Gurion wanted to have as few Arabs as possible in Israel, but he never 

initiated a policy that would lead to that result; a majority of the military 

1. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 

New York, December 9, 1948. 

199


commanders (Avidan, Sadeh, Carmel, and the CoS Yadin) opposed this. 

Some didn’t, and expelled Arabs—Alon, Even. In the few cases where 

Arabs had the upper hand, nothing remained of the Jewish villages (Gush 

Etzion, Kalia). 

I think academics should be careful. There is a difference between conflict 

and genocide. Kashmir is a conflict, not a genocide. Sri Lanka could 

have become a genocide, but didn’t; it remained a bloody, horrible conflict. 

Chechnya is a frightful conflict that could, and did, almost become a genocide, 

but caused many thousands of casualties. In Palestine/Israel, there 

were two massacres: Deir Yassin, with more than 100 victims (no one has 

exact figures), committed by a Jewish group; and the medical Jewish convoy 

to Mount Scopus, with 46 doctors and nurses, committed by Arabs. 

Neither was a genocidal act. These were massacres, though compared with 

Kashmir, for instance, or Zimbabwe, or the mass murder in Hama in Syria 

in 1982 (some 10.000 civilian dead), or Chechnya, they pale into relative 

insignificance. If we are humanists, however, we have to deal with every 

case like this, whether we talk about tens, or hundreds, or thousands; they 

were live people who wanted to live. But one has to keep proportions, 

nevertheless. 

The 1948 war was a war—which is a tautology, but tautologies have 

the advantage of being true. It was, and continues to be, a bloody conflict. 

Israeli invasions of the Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 were incursions causing 

a large number of civilian casualties on both sides, but mostly on the Lebanese 

side; you can argue until you are blue in the face about who was 

responsible, and where right and wrong are. But people were killed, so that 

makes it a conflict. Conflicts can, and sometimes do, deteriorate into genocidal 

situations; genocidal situations can, and sometimes do, become conflicts. 

Conflicts can, sometimes, usually, mostly be settled. Genocides have 

to be prevented, stopped. There is a difference. The 1948 war was, in my 

view, a typical case of a conflict. It could have become a genocide, on 

either side. It didn’t. 

In a conflict situation, we very rarely have a back-and-white picture. In 

the Arab-Israeli conflict, I think both sides are absolutely right, and that 

both sides are dead wrong. The moment you take one side only, you help 

the conflict to bleed further, and increase the danger of its becoming genocidal. 

Should genocide scholars become involved in attempts to help settle 

conflicts? That, it seems to me, is up to every individual. To say, as some 

have implied in this current argument, that Israel is an illegitimate entity 

means in fact that as it is illegitimate it should be somehow abolished, 

which of course is a genocidal statement, because it means that the 6.2 

million Jews there should be either killed or expelled (or both). When you 

say that Palestinians have no right to their independence, or you want to

2011] ISRAEL’S INTENT 201 

perpetuate the effective Israeli rule on the West Bank, you may not be 

implying genocide, but you are exacerbating a conflict and making it even 

more insoluble than it already is. Solutions of conflict are usually, almost 

inevitably, messy. Different shades of gray fight it out. Nobody is satisfied 

at the moment when a compromise is reached; satisfaction comes much 

later. But messy compromises are better than people losing their lives. 

*Dr. Yehuda Bauer is a professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman 

Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. A world authority 

on the Holocaust, antisemitism, and Jewish resistance in Nazi Germany, he is 

the author of many books and articles about these topics. Dr. Bauer was the founding 

editor of the Journal for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and served on the 

editorial board of the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies. His 

awards and honors include the Israel Prize and Jerusalem’s Yakir Yerushalayim. 

He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Delegitimizing the Jewish State 

Bat Ye’or* 

In a move that caught the Israeli government and the Jewish world by 

complete surprise, on October 21, 2010, the United Nations Educational, 

Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tomb of the 

Hebrew Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem (see essay 

in this issue by Shalva Weil) “an integral part of the occupied Palestinian 

territories,” admonishing the Israeli decision to add these biblical shrines to 

the list of Jewish historical and archaeological sites as “a violation of international 

law.” 1 

What is less known, however, is that the driving force behind “the 

attempt to detach the Nation of Israel from its heritage” (to use Israeli prime 

minister Netanyahu’s words) 2 was the Organization of the Islamic Conference 

(OIC), which pressured UNESCO to issue the declaration and drafted 

its initial version. 3 United Nations secretary-general Ban Kimoon has 

described the OIC as “a strategic and important partner of the UN.” 4 

In fact, it has been the OIC that has successfully exploited its marked 

preponderance at the UN—where it constitutes the largest single voting 

bloc—to turn the world organization and its specialized agencies into effective 

tools in the attempt to achieve its goals, two of which are to bring about 

Israel’s eventual demise and to “galvanize the umma [Islamic world] into a 

unified body.” 5 

THE OIC’S ISRAEL OBSESSION 

Established in September 1969 as the “collective voice of the Muslim 

world,” the OIC has evolved into the second largest intergovernmental 

organization after the UN, bringing together fifty-six Muslim and other 

states, as well as the Palestinian Authority. 6 Though boasting a global range 

1. “Executive Board Adopts Five Decisions Concerning UNESCO’s Work in 

the Occupied Palestinian and Arab Territories,” UNESCO Media Services, Paris, 

October 21, 2010. 

2. Jerusalem Post, October 29, 2010. 

3. See, for example, International Islamic News Agency (Jeddah), March 3, 

2010; “Decisions Adopted by the Executive Board at Its 184th Session,” UNESCO, 

Paris, May 14, 2010. 

4. World Bulletin (Istanbul), September 28, 2010. 

5. “About OIC,” Organization of the Islamic Conference, Jeddah. Accessed 

November 7, 2010. 

6. Ibid. 

203


of objectives from the “promotion of tolerance and moderation, modernization, 

[and] extensive reforms in all spheres of activities,” to the cultivation 

of “good governance and promotion of human rights in the Muslim 

world,” 7 this body has constantly and disproportionately focused on Israel 

and its supposed misdeeds. It was established in response to an attempt by a 

deranged Australian to set fire to the al-Aqsamosque, which was duly 

blamed on “the military occupation by Israel of Al-Quds—the Holy City of 

Jerusalem.” 8 The “State of Palestine” (i.e., the then five-year-old Palestine 

Liberation Organization [PLO], established as a tool for promoting the 

expansionist ambitions of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser) was 

among the OIC’s original twenty-five founding members, and the pledge of 

“full support to the Palestinian people for the restitution of their rights, 

which were usurped” 9 —the standard Arab euphemism for Israel’s destruction—has 

become a central plank of the organization’s policy, reiterated in 

countless decisions and resolutions on issues that have nothing to do with 

questions concerning the Palestinians. 10 

The Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization 

(ISESCO), an OIC organ mandated “to strengthen cooperation among 

member states in the field of education, science, and culture,” 11 has occupied 

pride of place in the campaign to delegitimize Israel. Since its inception 

in 1982, it has run dozens of programs and symposia on the Jewish 

state’s supposed desecration of Islamic and Christian holy sites and the 

attendant need to wrest them from the Israelis’ control. The most important 

of these were the international conferences on the “Protection of Islamic 

and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine,” held in Rabat in 1993 and 2002 and 

in Amman in November 2004 respectively under the patronage of the 

Moroccan and Jordanian monarchs. An examination of conference activities 

reveals a systematic effort to devise an anti-Israeli media strategy that was 

to be adopted not only by Arab and Muslim states but also by international 

groups and organizations, including some of the UN’s most powerful 

agencies. 

7. Ibid. 

8. “Declaration of the First Rabat Islamic Conference,” Organization of the 

Islamic Conference (OIC), Rabat, September 1969. 

9. Ibid. 

10. “Resolutions,” Second Islamic Conference of the Ministers of Health, OIC, 

Tehran, March 1-4, 2009. 

11. “Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO),” Specialized 

Institutions and Organs, OIC, Rabat, 2009. Accessed November 7, 2010.

2011] DELEGITIMIZING THE JEWISH STATE 205 

UNIFYING THE UMMA, BASHING THE JEWS 

In his address to the 2002 Rabat conference, King Muhammad VI of 

Morocco stated: “The acts of destruction and distortion committed by the 

occupation authorities to distort the facts and truths of history cause serious 

damage to the Islamic and Christian holy sites and violate their sanctity and 

the values they embody for all the believers of the different religions.” 12 

For the Moroccan monarch, as president of the OIC’s al-Quds Committee, 

such actions as archaeological excavations and the placement of 

artifacts in museums constituted an attack against all believers. In fact, 

Christian churches that had been reduced to ruins by centuries of Islamic 

occupation were restored by successive Israeli governments because, unlike 

Shari‘a or Islamic law, the Jewish state has no laws prohibiting the restoration 

or construction of churches. The king could have also benefited from a 

measure of introspection: Morocco, like the other Maghreb states, is a place 

where virtually no vestiges of pre-Islamic Christian history have survived. 

Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, the Saudi-born, University of Oregon 

educated ISESCO director general, went a step further, asserting that “the 

crimes against humanity committed by Israel have reached an extent of 

oppression, injustice, and aggression that humanity has never witnessed, 

neither in this age nor in previous ages.” 13 He amplified this diatribe at the 

Amman conference, where he claimed that Muslim responsibilities toward 

the Islamic and Christian holy sites in the Palestinian territories sprang from 

ISESCO’s commitment to the Palestinian cause, which in his opinion constituted 

the essence of all issues and the supreme task of both the Muslim 

world and those Eastern Christian circles that were part of the Arab and 

Islamic civilization. 14 

The proceedings of the Rabat and the Amman conferences represent a 

monument to anti-Jewish hatred and incitement, featuring such assertions as 

“Jews are the enemies of Allah, the enemies of faith, and of the worship of 

Allah.” 15 They also brim with denials of Jewish attachment to the Land of 

12. Message of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, Protection of 

Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine First International Conference, Rabat, 

June 7-8, 2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), 11. 

13. Address by Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, Protection of Islamic and 

Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, First International Conference, Rabat, June 7-8, 

2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), 15. 

14. Address by Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, Protection of Islamic and 

Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, 

November 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), 18. 

15. Adnan Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, “Role of Palestinian Civil Society in the 

Protection of Holy Sites in Palestine,” Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy


Israel and claims to its Arab (and later Muslim) character since the third 

millennium BCE. The Jews are accused of having “judaized” the biblical 

prophets who were in fact Muslim and of having usurped the antiquity of 

other peoples since they themselves have no history. In the words of Adnan 

Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, president of the Jenin Information Center: 

People familiar with the Torah, which we believe to have been distorted, 

know the extent of the evils they attribute to their prophets: corruption, 

treachery, fornication or approval of it. It is with these facts that we need 

to arm ourselves when we confront the Zionist propaganda in the world 

with tangible facts, as part of our defence of the faith and the faithful on 

earth, wherever they may be. 16 

These examples of incitement to religious hatred were on display at the 

UN’s Palais des Nations in Geneva at a reception given by the OIC on 

December 19, 2008, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal 

Declaration of Human Rights. And why not? After all, the OIC is not 

only “the collective voice of the Muslim world” 17 but also the UN’s largest 

single voting bloc and a prominent collaborator with many of its specialized 

agencies. 

INFLUENCING THE UN 

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that these conferences did not content 

themselves with anti-Jewish diatribes but sought to devise a strategy to harness 

the international community to the anti-Israel campaign in general and 

the re-Islamization of Jerusalem (al-Quds) in particular. As one of the 

speakers explained, “Jerusalem is the cornerstone of the spiritual edifice 

and the Zionist Jewish entity. Were it to be dislodged, the whole edifice and 

the Zionist entity itself would crumble like a deck of cards.” 18 

Action plans show a media strategy of employing an attractive style 

and scientific language and magnifying Palestinian suffering since the 

establishment of the “racist Zionist entity” in 1948. These plans would be 

effectively replicated by the UN’s Alliance of Civilizations’ Report of the 

Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, November 23-25, 

2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), 253. 

16. Ibid., 254. 

17. “About OIC.” 

18. Abdullah Kan’an, “Media Plan for Publicising the Cause of Al Quds, Al 

Sharif in the West and Mechanisms for Its Implementation,” Protection of Islamic 

and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, 

November 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), 195.


High Level Group (HLG), which would endeavor to “make it clear to the 

Palestinian people that the price of decades of occupation, misunderstanding 

and stigmatization is being fully acknowledged,” although this “story 

had been left untold or deliberately ignored by the community of nations.” 19 

This assertion is not merely false but the inverse of the truth. The 

Palestinians have benefited like no other nation from world indulgence. 

Europe, for one, has vigorously championed their cause since 1973, devising 

a string of political schemes on their behalf and pouring immeasurable 

sums of money into the bottomless Palestinian pit. 

If anything, it was the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews 

from the Arab countries during and after the 1948 war and the expropriation 

of their worldly possessions that was entirely ignored by the Alliance of 

Civilizations, as was the history of the Jews in their ancestral homeland, 

where they had suffered ethnic and religious oppression by a long succession 

of foreign occupiers. 

While claiming to promote peace, the HLG report added yet another 

page to both the defamation of Israel and the perennial Palestinian sense of 

victimization. One wonders what prompted it to begin the historical survey 

with the establishment of the state of Israel, ignoring the millenarian Jewish 

attachment to the Land of Israel that had been acknowledged as early a1920 

by the UN’s predecessor—the League of Nations. 

Moreover, the report sought to rewrite, under the UN aegis, the story 

of the nakba (the “catastrophe,” as Palestinians and Arabs call their 1948 

failure to destroy Israel at its birth) as a counterweight to the Holocaust, and 

to impose this narrative on Israel and the international community. In the 

words of the report, it is “essential for Palestinians as well as for the Arab- 

Muslim world and Muslims in general to understand and acknowledge the 

fact that we . . . now know and take responsibility for ensuring everyone 

knows the price and weight of these sixty years of misunderstanding, stigmatization, 

as well as veiled and abused truths.” 20 Indeed, while the Alliance 

was established in 2005 with the specific goal “to explore the roots of 

polarization between societies and cultures today and to recommend a practical 

program of action to address this issue,” it has quickly become an anti- 

Israel lobbying machine on a global scale. This is evidenced not only from 

its implementation plan, which places “a priority on addressing relations 

between Western and Muslim societies” 21 at the expense of other faiths and 

19. “Report of the High Level Group,” Alliance of Civilizations, United 

Nations, New York, November 13, 2006, 18, art. 5.7. 

20. Ibid., 53. 

21. “Implementation Plan, 2007-2009,” Alliance of Civilizations, United 

Nations, New York, 2.


civilizations, but also by its close collaboration with numerous anti-Israel 

nongovernmental organizations and bodies, notably the Organization of the 

Islamic Conference. 

The OIC’s influence on the Alliance has been manifested in a wide 

range of historical and cultural issues, including the presentation of Islam as 

the source of modern Western civilization; the contrasting of Islamic tolerance 

with European culpability for the Crusades, imperialism and colonization; 

and the whitewashing of jihad’s true nature and its misrepresentation 

as a struggle for individual self-improvement. 22 

The Alliance’s views on social issues often echo OIC charges about 

the pervasive discrimination against Muslim migrants in the West and the 

Western media’s deliberate dissemination of “Islamophobia.” This state of 

affairs required, in the words, of the HLG report, that “American and European 

universities and research centers should expand research into the significant 

economic, cultural, and social contributions of immigrant 

communities to American and European life. Likewise, they should promote 

publications coming from the Muslim world on a range of subjects related 

to Islam and the Muslim world.” 23 

Such recommendations follow the injunctions of the religious scholars 

(ulema) who attended the OIC’s 2005 summit in Mecca. 24 

PLOTTING THE ANTI-ISRAEL CAMPAIGN 

Speakers at the OIC’s Amman conference stressed the media’s crucial 

role and importance in the fight against Israel. They recommended that the 

Islamic world should demonstrate its unwavering commitment to Arab and 

Palestinian rights, alongside the conviction that the re-Islamization of Jerusalem 

would restore the city’s spiritual preeminence and peaceful religious 

coexistence, enable the flourishing of faith, and make Jerusalem a worldwide 

agent of culture and civilization. 25 

In fact, this picture in no way corresponds to the actual Islamic history 

of Jerusalem, which for most of the time was a sleepy and neglected backwater. 

Rather, it is a usurpation of the Biblical vision of Jerusalem as “a 

light unto the nations,” developed by generations of Hebrew prophets more 

than a millennium before Muhammad. 

22. “Report of the High Level Group,” 11, 15. 

23. Ibid., 39; italicized in the text. 

24. “Recommendations of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons (CEP),” 

Makkah al-Mukarramah, Saudi Arabia, December 7-8, 2005. 

25. Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International 

Conference, Amman, November 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), 175.


Abdullah Kan’an, secretary-general of the Royal Committee for al- 

Quds Affairs in Jordan—whose government signed a peace treaty with 

Israel in 1994—presented a comprehensive plan for inculcating Islamic policy 

into all Western cultural and media sectors and delegitimizing the Jewish 

state, starting with turning the Muslim and Christian holy places in 

Jerusalem into a central world problem. As a first step, he suggested publicizing 

the history of Jerusalem as he saw it—from the city’s foundation by 

the “Canaanite Jebusites” to date—so as to negate “the Torah-based history.” 

He also proposed to popularize Islamic and Christian holy sites in the 

same manner, starting with al-Aqsa mosque, which, “according to the noble 

Hadith, is only forty years older than the first shrine ever created for 

humanity, al-Haram mosque in Makkah.” 26 

In enumerating the themes of ISESCO’s media war against Israel in 

the West, Kan’an evoked arguments repeated by many Western journalists, 

intellectuals, ministers, and heads of state. These included: 

• Convincing the EU that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was 

in its vital interest, thus helping Europeans (especially Germans) 

free themselves of their guilt complex vis-à-vis the Jews and the 

weight of history more generally. 

• Persuading Western leaders that as long as the Palestinians did not 

have their own state, relations between the EU and the Arab world 

would remain unstable. Once this goal had been achieved, Europe 

could look forward to an expanded partnership with the Arab world 

and full access to its markets. 

• Emphasizing that America’s pro-Israel position was in contravention 

of international law, threatened U.S. vital interests as well as 

those of Europe, and jeopardized world peace and security. This 

argument, consistently inculcated in European leaders and journalists 

by the OIC, was hammered home by the Western media and 

became an important catalyst of European hostility toward the 

United States, especially during the George W. Bush 

administration. 

• Underscoring the alleged threats to Western interests as a result of 

supporting Israel. This support had to be presented as one of the 

foremost causes of anti-Western violence, both in the Middle East 

and in the Western countries themselves, by individuals and groups 

who reacted emotionally to personal and collective tragedies. This 

argument was frequently used by Romano Prodi, then president of 

the European Commission, and French president Jacques Chirac, 

among other European politicians, to explain away the resurgence 

26. Kan’an, “Media Plan,” 201.


of European antisemitism during 2000-2005, and was also invoked 

by President Obama in March 2010, when he publicly humiliated 

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 27 

• Convincing Westerners that peace was only possible through the 

creation of an independent Palestinian state in the entire territory 

occupied in 1967 with al-Quds as its capital, the “return” of Palestinian 

refugees, and the abandonment of Israel’s “Zionist, racist 

character”—standard Arab and Muslim euphemisms for the 

destruction of the Jewish state. 

• Persuading Westerners that their shared interests with Arabs and 

Muslims far exceeded those they shared with Israel. 28 

Kan’an then summarized the long-term objectives of the media plan, 

two of which are of special note: 

• Persuading the EU to abandon its slavish trailing of Washington 

and to form its own independent vision and positions, which 

“would be more in harmony with the international will vis-à-vis the 

Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli occupation of Arab territories, 

including Jerusalem, and the right of the Arab Palestinian people to 

self-determination and to the establishment of its independent state 

with Al-Quds as its capital.” 29 

• Transforming the Palestinian question and the Arab-Israeli conflict 

from internal U.S. issues to external problems, primarily governed 

by the mutual interests of Americans, Muslims, and Arabs. This 

would break the immunity of the Israeli policies and force the 

Israeli government to bow to the will of the international community 

and adhere to all of the UN resolutions. 30 

To achieve these goals, Kan’an recommended obtaining the support of 

certain intellectuals, literary figures, and influential political movements 

that were capable of molding Western public opinion within the context of 

the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially with regard to the Jerusalem question. 

This campaign would refer to UN resolutions that formed the basis for 

the media plan. Here, too, EU support for the UN’s international law 

amounted to endorsement of the strategy and policies of the OIC, whose 

position as the UN’s largest single voting bloc gave it the unrivaled ability 

to predominate the world organization and its specialized agencies. Another 

proposed tactic was to infiltrate the media as well as influential cultural, 

intellectual, and economic circles with a view to exposing them to the Arab 

27. The Sunday Times (London), March 26, 2010. 

28. Kan’an, “Media Plan,” 202-203. 

29. Ibid, 205. 

30. Ibid.


perspective and convincing them that their countries’ policies were subservient 

to “the interests of the Zionist movement with its various formations 

and bodies and not [to] the interests of their own countries.” 31 

Other themes included: 

• Discreetly and indirectly encouraging trends critical of Zionism and 

the Israeli government’s “judaization policies” in Jerusalem within 

Western circles, so as to make them effective opponents of the 

“Zionist lobby and the coalition of Jewish and Christian Zionists” 

and defenders of their countries’ vital interests. 

• Delegitimizing laws against antisemitism, such as France’s 1990 

Gayssot Act, which made it an offense to question the occurrence 

or scope of crimes against humanity, 32 and George W. Bush’s 2004 

law requiring the Department of State to monitor global antisemitism, 

33 as laws that have no bearing on Western interests but are 

rather a part of a Zionist ploy to feed Westerners’ guilt feelings to 

keep them subservient to Zionist machinations. 

MOBILIZING WESTERN MUSLIMS 

No less important, the ISESCO campaign envisaged the mobilization 

of members of Arab and Muslim communities in the West, especially in the 

United States, who were to be enticed into becoming politically active so as 

to end their marginalization and gain major political weight. This was 

believed to be feasible given that these communities, comprising high-quality 

populations, including important scientists, intellectuals, and politicians. 

Arab and Muslim thinkers, religious scholars, and intellectuals living in 

Western societies, ought to recommend to Muslims to reject extremism, 

fanaticism, and violence, “as this tends to be detrimental and generates negative 

reactions to Arab and Islamic issues.” 34 

Another step would involve blocking attempts in Europe and the 

United States to ban Islamist charitable societies, which according to 

Kan’an were purely humanitarian organizations but in fact were funneling 

funds for jihadist and terrorist groups. 35 Within this framework, he 

31. Ibid., 204. 

32. “Tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ouxénophobe,” République 

Française, Paris, July 13, 1990. 

33. Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, PL 108-332, U.S. Congress, 

October 16, 2004; BBC News, October 20, 2004. 


35. See, for example, Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, “CAIR: Islamists Fooling 

the Establishment,” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006, 3-20.


recommended: 

• Encouraging the investment of Arab and Muslim capital in all 

forms of the media (written, audio, and visual), especially in the 

United States, thus paving the way for breaking the alleged Jewish 

monopoly in the field. Arab radio stations and satellite television 

channels such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabia should broadcast 

“weekly programs in English [about al-Quds], targeting Western 

public opinion, benefiting from media personalities knowledgeable 

about the Western mentality and capable of influencing it to the 

benefit of the issue of al-Quds with the help of UN resolutions.” 

Programs about al-Quds in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, 

and other languages should be created, and a multilingual satellite 

channel called al-Quds would be created, “staffed with a 

media, information, intellectual, and historical team knowledgeable 

about the question of al-Quds and its various dimensions.” 36 

• Encouraging Muslim and Arab investments in modern information 

and communication technologies, notably the Internet, and filming 

television and cinema documentaries with a view to shaping Western 

public opinion, which is heavily reliant on this type of educational 

and media sources. A special emphasis should be placed on 

the possibilities of “utilizing modern communication technologies, 

especially the opening of Web sites dedicated to al-Quds, and 

encouraging Muslims to embark on an Internet-supported war for 

al-Quds to counterbalance the activities of the Zionist movement 

and its octopuslike formations, the most dangerous of which is 

Christian Zionism and its mastermind, the neo-conservatives.” 37 

On a broader level, Kan’an advised Arab and Muslim communities “to 

integrate as much as possible within the societies where they live, in order 

to gain credibility,” especially in universities and institutions of higher 

learning. “Friends of al-Quds” associations in U.S. and European universities, 

organizations, and working places were to be established to support 

those NGOs working for the cause of al-Quds. To this would be added the 

worldwide distribution of propaganda materials “issued by Americans, 

Europeans, and Jews against Israel, its policies, and Zionism,” including 

specifically produced films that “reveal the barbarity of Israel, the dangers 

inherent in the policy of demolishing houses, murder, and massacre of the 

Arab Palestinian people, and distributing these films as widely as possible 

in the Islamic world.” 38 


37. Ibid. 

38. Ibid., 207-208.


Finally, specialists and experts in Western affairs should be drawn into 

“the discussion of the broad lines of the media plan in order to enrich it and 

guarantee all conditions of its success.” Such experts would specialize in 

Western media, politics, public opinion, psychology, religions, law, and 

culture, as well as in history of al-Quds. In two notes that appear in the 

French text but are omitted from the English proceedings, the lecturer 

ridicules the “Zionist stories of alleged Nazi slaughters.” 39 

THE OIC’S WORLD COLLABORATORS 

These were by no means novel, let alone maverick, ideas. The intention 

to extend the OIC’s influence to Western countries through immigrant 

populations and their growing weight in the host societies had been insinuated 

on previous occasions, notably by OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin 

Ihsanoglu at the European parliament in 2005 40 and by the founders of the 

Euro- Arab Dialogue, which evolved from a French initiative in the late 

1960s. 41 

According to unpublished sources from the Euro-Arab Dialogue 

movement, 42 in November 1973, Christopher Mayhew, a member of the 

British parliament, and Raymond Offroy, a member of the French national 

assembly, envisaged the creation of an association for improving Europe’s 

relations with the Arab world. 43 Its launching coincided with the European 

Commission (EC)’s Brussels declaration that urged Israel to return to the 

pre-1967 lines and, for the first time, recognized the PLO. 44 Mayhew and 

Offroy, now supported by the EC, were the first to create a Euro-Arab network, 

the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation 

(PAEAC), at a conference in Paris March 23-25, 1975. Its secretary-general, 

Robert Swann, a former foreign office diplomat, had been a secretarygeneral 

of Amnesty International. The funds for PAEAC came from a 

Swiss foundation, ANAF, set up in 1969 and managed by an administrative 

committee consisting of European political personalities. PAEAC benefited 

from the financial aid and support of the EC and its networks, in liaison 

39. Ibid., 208. 

40. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general, Organization of the Islamic Conference, 

address to Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, October 4, 2005. 

41. Roy H. Ginsberg, The European Union in International Politics: Baptism by 

Fire (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 112-113. 

42. Association Parlementaire pour la Coopération Euro-Arabe, 1974-1994 

association archives, unpublished document in author’s possession, 6-12. 

43. Ibid. 

44. Joint statement, European Economic Community, Copenhagen, November 

6, 1973.


with the Council of Europe. The minutes of the PAEAC meetings were 

published over the years in the Documents d’Actualité Internationale by the 

French foreign office. These reveal the effective extension of OIC strategy 

to Europe, combining a policy of immigration with the cultural and political 

Islamization of Europe. 45 

Extensive U.N.-sponsored networks, bringing together the EU, the 

OIC, and ISESCO, would effectively implement this strategy in all Western 

countries. Europe, for example, has lavished millions of Euros on Palestinian 

NGOs and organs of “civil society,” which advocate the economic, 

political, educational, and cultural boycottingof Israel and which have systematically 

demonized and delegitimized the Jewish state inschools, the 

media, Palestinian publications, and on the international scene. 46 

Since 2005, a “Palestinian Week against Israeli Apartheid” has 

become a regular feature on campuses and in major cities throughout 

Europe, Canada, and the United States, calling for divestments, sanctions, 

and boycotts against Israel. According to NGO Monitor, most speakers at 

these demonstrations belong to organizations financed by European governments, 

the European Commission, and the New Israel Fund, created following 

Obama’s election. 47 

To these NGOs must be added “The Elders”—a newly established 

“independent group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson 

Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support 

peace building, help address major causes of human suffering, and promote 

the shared interests of humanity.” 48 Generating much international influence 

and considerable funds, the group comprises twelve leaders and dignitaries, 

quite a few of whom—notably former U.S. president Jimmy Carter 

and former Irish president Mary Robinson of Durban conference infamy— 

are harsh critics of Israel. It is chaired by former South African archbishop 

Desmond Tutu—the spiritual instigator of the world campaign of cultural 

and economic apartheid against Israel. 

Small wonder that the group, in line with the former policies of its 

members while in power, has consistently misrepresented the Israelis as the 

unjust and warlike party and the Palestinians as hapless victims of their 

45. Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson 

University Press, 2005), 93-95. 

46. Gerald M. Steinberg, “Europe’s Hidden Hand. EU Funding for Political 

NGOs in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Analyzing Processes and Impact,” NGO Monitor 

Monograph Series, April 2008. 

47. “Israeli Apartheid Week 2010: NGO Involvement,” NGO Monitor, updated 

March 3, 2010. 

48. “About the Elders,” The Elders Web site. Accessed October 13, 2010.


predatory neighbor. For The Elders, the Palestinian denial of Israel’s right 

to exist embodies natural justice (hence, for example, their advocacy of 

“engaging” Hamas), while Israel’s attempts to protect its citizens from sustained 

terror attacks—from the erection of the security fence, to Operation 

Cast Lead, to the naval blockade of Hamas—are illegal and disproportionate 

uses of force. Tutu congratulated Turkey for having sent its flotilla of 

supposed humanitarians in May 2010 while the Elders condemned Israel’s 

attempt to stop this effort on behalf of Hamas, a terror organization, whose 

constitution openly calls for Israel’s destruction. 49 They also urged the UN 

Security Council “to debate the situation with a view to mandating action to 

end the closure of the Gaza Strip.” 50 

In what had by now become an instinctive reaction, the European parliament 

joined the Elders and condemned Israel by a crushing majority, 

insinuating its massive support for Hamas. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high 

representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of 

the European Commission, argued that lifting the blockade would bring 

peace, 51 conveniently overlooking the fact that the blockade was a defensive 

response to Hamas’ genocidal policies rather than their catalyst. 

EXPLOITING THE PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS 

Nor has the OIC, together with its willing international collaborators, 

shied away from exploiting West Bank and Gaza Christians—discriminated 

against and oppressed by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which 

have ruled over them for the past fifteen years—for its anti-Israel propaganda 

campaign. 

Consider the document titled Kairos Palestine, drawn up by Palestinian 

theologians and published in Bethlehem on December 11, 2009, by the 

Geneva World Council of Churches. 52 In the name of love, peace, and justice, 

the paper portrays Israel as the epitome of evil and oppression, urging 

all Western churches to initiate a policy of economic strangulation and defamation 

of the Jewish state. This was followed by a letter from the Greek 

Catholic patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, Gregorios III, to 

49. “Hamas Covenant 1988,” Yale Law School Avalon Project. Accessed 

November 4, 2010. 

50. “The Elders Condemn Israeli Attack on Gaza Relief Ships,” The Elders, 

May 31, 2010. 

51. Catherine Ashton, speech to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, June 16, 

2010. 

52. Kairos Palestine, Bethlehem, December 11, 2009; Al-Jazeerah: Cross-Cultural 

Understanding (Dalton, GA), December 15, 2009.


Pope Benedict XVI 53 in preparation for the October 2010 Synod, planned to 

bring together the Catholic churches of the Middle East to discuss the 

greater problems facing the local Christians and to devise ways and means 

for stopping their ongoing flight from the region. 

Invoking his duty to inform the pope on the dangers in the region, the 

patriarch had no qualms about blaming Israeli actions for the surge of militant 

Islamism throughout the region and its adverse implications for the 

local Christian communities. He wrote: 

There is a diffuse but sure rise of Islamic extremism, provoked by the 

threats of the Israeli government against Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, 

[and Iran], which is spreading throughout all the countries in the region. 

Even in Syria, where such extremism has been up to now very limited, its 

advance has become more and more evident, despite efforts from the 

government against it. 

Gregorios lamented the widespread terror attacks by these Islamists on 

local Christians, especially in Iraq and Egypt. Yet, rather than ask the pope 

to help restrain the perpetrators of this violence, he begged that the Holy 

See’s diplomacy redouble its efforts to persuade the Tel Aviv government, 

despite the views of its most intransigent wing—probably via the United 

States and those European countries that, having sponsored the birth of the 

State of Israel and supported it ever since, should be able to exert effective 

pressure on it—of the grave danger of this development, which in the 

medium and perhaps short term runs against the interests and future of the 

State of Israel itself, a country that needs peace in the region just as much as 

Arab countries do to be able eventually to live normally all together. 54 

CONCLUSION 

Judging by Israel’s growing international isolation, the OIC’s sustained 

effort to delegitimize the Jewish state has borne substantial fruit. Not 

only is Israel’s right to exist constantly debated and challenged in Western 

public opinion forums, but sixty-three years after establishing the Jewish 

state in an internationally recognized act of self-determination, the United 

Nations has become a foremost purveyor of anti-Israel and antisemitic 

incitement. 

Time and again, year after year, its Commission on Human Rights 

53. Gregorios III, Patriarch to Pope Benedict XVI, Melkite Greek Catholic 

Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East of Alexandria and of Jerusalem, March 1, 

2010. 

54. Ibid.


discusses Israel’s supposed abuses while turning a blind eye to scores of 

actual atrocities around the globe. This world organization has 192 member 

nations, but its Security Council has devoted about a third of its activity and 

criticism to only one of those states—Israel. Nowhere has this obsession 

been more starkly demonstrated than in the World Conference against 

Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held 

September 2001 in the South African town of Durban, where, for eight full 

days, delegates from numerous countries and thousands of nongovernmental 

organizations indulged in a xenophobic orgy of anti-Israel and 

antisemitic incitement that made a mockery of the conference’s original 

purpose. 55 

As UNESCO follows suit by denying the Jews some of their most 

cherished historical and religious symbols, the OIC scores yet another palpable 

hit in its ceaseless hate campaign. 

*Bat Ye’or is the author of Eurabia (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005). 

This article contains extracts from her forthcoming book, Europe, Globalization 

and the Coming Universal Caliphate (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011). 

55. Gerald M. Steinberg, “NGOs Make War on Israel,” Middle East Quarterly, 

Summer 2004, 13-25.

Doing the Yale Flip-Flop 

Amitai Etzioni* 

Yale University announced this month that it would close an institute 

dedicated to the study of antisemitism, the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary 

Study of Antisemitism. In the wake of controversy over that decision, 

Yale has now announced that it will open a new center dedicated to 

the same subject. Between the closing and opening lies a telling tale about 

research in a politically charged world. 

Yale initially stated that it decided to close the original center after a 

routine five-year review because it “failed to meet high standards for 

research and instruction,” and “no core of faculty research or student interest 

has developed around the center.” Questions were immediately raised 

about whether academic performance was the only thing on Yale’s mind. 

The institute’s critics charged last year that it was defaming Muslims. 

Nobody claims that the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of 

Antisemitism desecrated a holy place, marred a mosque or otherwise acted 

inappropriately. The critics merely pointed to papers delivered at a center 

conference on topics such as “The Central Role of Palestinian Antisemitism 

in Creating the Palestinian Identity,” “Lawfare, Human Rights Organizations 

and the Demonization of Israel,” and “Self Hatred and Contemporary 

Antisemitism.” The conference included scholars from more than a dozen 

countries. 

Maen Rashid Areikat, the Palestine Liberation Organization representative 

to the United States and one of center’s most vocal critics, sent a 

letter in August 2010 to Yale’s president, urging him to dissociate the university 

from the institute. Areikat’s letter, however, does not quote from the 

papers themselves but merely expresses disapproval of the speakers and of 

their chosen topics. There are many scores of papers in the academic world 

at large delivered each year, many of them critical of Muslims or of Jews, 

that are truly inflammatory, yet — in the West — one does not close down 

the places where they have been delivered. 

Defamation is the same charge that was leveled against a Danish newspaper 

that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Denmark protected 

the paper, its editors and cartoonists, and other papers across the 

world continued to publish them. It is the same charge leveled against 

Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, only instead of censoring 

him, Britain provided him shelter and enabled him to continue publishing. 

Yale should not have closed the institute if only not to seem even to 

yield to such pressures. Imagine what we would have said if Britain 

219


expelled Rushdie because he did not have a permit to work or some other 

such reason we could not disprove. 

Defenders of the closure argue that whenever they criticize Israel, they 

are charged with antisemitism. As I see it, assuming they are criticizing the 

policies of Israel rather than seeking to delegitimize it by claiming that the 

Jewish people are not entitled to a homeland, they are free to say all they 

want. And they, and all other critics of the Yale center’s papers, are free to 

counter speech of which they disapprove with more speech—but not with 

closing down one of the few institutes dedicated to the study of 

antisemitism. 

In my 50 years on campuses—including at similarly highly regarded 

universities such as Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley—I have seen plenty 

of institutes that produced little and are still functioning. Universities that 

consider the mission of an institute to be an important one, but its output 

weak, can and do replace the director and beef up the faculty. In some 

cases, they even put the institute in what is called a “receivership,” which 

gives the university a free hand to reconstitute the institute. This is essentially 

what Yale finally did—by announcing that it will open a new center 

for the study of antisemitism this fall. 

It matters little to me if Yale acted properly because it responded to a 

chorus of criticism or showed particular sensitivity to the issue because it 

maintained quotas that discriminated against Jewish students into the 1960s, 

or because it took into account that antisemitism is flourishing in many 

parts of the world, including in several Muslim nations. It did the right 

thing. Now it is up to the new team to show that they will go wherever their 

research points them, disregarding what critics who have pro-Palestinian or 

pro-Jewish agendas demand. 

*Amitai Etzioni is a sociologist and professor of international relations at George 

Washington University. He was a senior adviser to the Carter administration, 

founder of the Communitarian movement, and the author of several books, including 

Security First (Yale, 2008). Published as “Yale’s Flip-Flop on Anti-Semitism,” 

CNN International June 28, 2011; reprinted here with Etzioni’s permission.

Arab Spring Sprung 

Fiamma Nirenstein* 

There is something that prevents us from understanding where the 

waves of the greatest revolutions since anti-communism will lead. It is a 

damn stupid bias that has different colors, incoherent and bombastic tones, 

and feeds on Nazi lies, refined pacifist ideologies, or simply cliches. There 

is a strategy—to bash Israel and focus on the Palestinians. 

Not the freedom of people, or their well-being, or their progress 

toward modernity. No—Israel must be “wiped off the map.” From Saddam 

to Qaddafi, from Assad to Ahmadinejad, this invention has been the best 

weapon. And now, here we go again. Using Israel as an excuse is again the 

weapon of consensus that can disrupt any process of modernization. The 

Muslim Brotherhood, in fact, has presented again its official candidacy in 

Egypt when Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi suggested to a million people in Tahrir 

Square the conquest of Jerusalem. Shouts of joy, to which no one in the 

West raised an eyebrow. Amr Mussa, the Arab League’s historic Pharaoh 

and the main candidate for the country presidency, has immediately understood 

the lesson, which wasn’t difficult for him given his record of anti- 

Israel hatred. He opened his campaign by saying that his relationship with 

Israel is not that of Mubarak, and that the Jewish lobby is conspiring to 

prevent him from entering his desired role. 

From Yemen comes another typical conspiracy theory: President Ali 

Abdullah Saleh has accused Israel and the United States of fueling the 

revolt against his regime. The crowds regurgitate the antisemitic venom— 

during the protests, leaders were violently accused of collusion with Israel. 

Mubarak was portrayed with stars of David and American flags on his forehead. 

In Bengasi and Tripoli, crowds shouted “Jew” at Qaddafi(!)—the Libyan 

dictator who asked “all Arab warriors” to destroy Israel will be 

displeased. 

The theory goes like this: Anti-Israelism, with lively antisemitic hues 

(see www.memri.org, which translates documents from all the Arab world), 

was the main flag behind which Arab suffering has been hiding. Remember 

the Nasser trade-off—I will starve you, I will use you, I will support crowds 

of courtiers who will rob you of your money and police who will block 

your ideas—and in return I promise to restore the power of the Arab and 

Muslim world destroyed by Western conspiracy. 

The first stage is not one of freedom and justice, but to expel—from 

Arab and Muslim Ummah, our community, our land—the Jews, sons of 

dogs and pigs, and restore justice for our Palestinian brothers. Many propa- 

221


gandist inventions were made to support this thesis: remote-controlled 

Zionist rats and vultures, children killed intentionally, organs of killed 

Palestinians explanted by Israeli soldiers and a genuine suicide cult (shahid) 

was born. Each and every anti-Western terrorist has been raised and glorified, 

in Libya, in Iraq, and in Lebanon or in Syria. The criminalization has 

convinced the Middle East that Israel is merely the result of an imperialist 

conspiracy, and that a nation nine miles wide is the biggest problem. 

And we Europeans don’t know any other song about freedom than that 

of the Palestinians. Ah, really, the Arab world was oppressed? It was poor? 

It was also in great part politically extremist? And now? Help! What to do 

with all this freedom that looks inside our house, shouting? 

I would say, since I don’t know what to stutter, that it is urgent that 

Israel return to its 1967 borders, whatever it takes . . . Mrs. Catherine Ashton, 

the foreign minister of the European Union, didn’t realize that the people 

she visited during her recent Middle East tour suffered under the heel of 

their tyrants, and so she pronounced the word “freedom” only when speaking 

of the Palestinians. Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg 

on an official state visit to Jerusalem repeated like a trained parrot that for 

him the most crucial problem of the Middle East is that of the Israeli-Palestinian 

conflict, and that only Israel is to blame for its failure to resolve it. 

Barack Obama, in a meeting at the Conference of Presidents of Major 

American Jewish Organizations, seems to continue to think that a few 

houses built in Jerusalem are the most crucial issue, while the Middle East 

burns. 

Meantime, the EU, instead of working on the wave of refugees who 

are approaching its coasts, or the possibility of military intervention in 

Libya, or on the problems of energy supply or on the mullah who are sharpening 

their weapons in preparation for a new conquest of power—instead of 

dealing with any of these issues, instead plans for a meeting of the Quartet—the 

UN, the EU, the United States, and Russia—that should choke 

Israel and bypass the United States (the everlasting dream of Europe) is 

now in a state of confusion. But does it make sense, a normal person would 

ask, to rekindle old obsessions while the world burns with a new fire? 

Shouldn’t we be suspicious of the fact that, in a world indifferent to the 

suffering of hundreds of millions of people, the only democracy in the Middle 

East is depicted with the image of oppression? The leader of the Nation 

of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, has declared on the Libyan war: “The Jews and 

the Zionist lobby, which dominate the U.S. government and banks, are 

pushing the U.S. towards a new war . . . my work is to discover the plots of 

Satan so they do not deceive you and people all over the world again.” 

We would respond to the usual nonsense of Farrakhan with a yawn of 

boredom, but we cannot: his words find listeners, and they become politi-

2011] ARAB SPRING SPRUNG 223 

cally acceptable not only by people in the Muslim world, but also by liberals 

in the West. So it was during the time of the war in Iraq, so it is with 

Afghanistan. If we permit this Middle East crisis to be tainted by anti-Israel 

rhetoric, the first to be affected will be us: hundreds of millions of people 

have been oppressed for decades, and today they can be guided to extremism 

and war. 

*Fiamma Nirenstein is a journalist and author and member of the Italian Chamber 

of Deputies, where she serves as vice president of the Committee on Foreign 

Affairs and chair of the Committee for the Inquiry into Antisemitism. A Board 

member of Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, she blogs regularly on her Web 

site: http://fiammanirenstein.com. This essay was originally published March 6, 

2011, in Il Giornale daily. Reprinted by permission.

The Murder of Hugo Bettauer 

Martin Kitchen* 

Hugo Bettauer, a journalist and highly successful author of countless 

popular novels, was assassinated on March 26, 1925, by Otto Rothstock, an 

Austrian nationalist and a dental technician closely associated with the Austrian 

Nazi party. The murder was inspired by the Nazi press, which had 

mounted a relentless campaign against this “scabiesious Talmudic soul,” 

this “perverted sewer rat.” calling for him to be “eliminated” or “lynched.” 1 

The assassin was ably defended by a prominent Nazi attorney, Dr. Walter 

Riehl, who waived his fee and succeeded in getting his client acquitted on a 

plea of temporary insanity. Riehl had been the leader of the German 

National Socialist Worker’s Party (DNSAP), founded soon after the end of 

the war, but as an opponent of the idea of Austria uniting with Germany and 

an advocate of a broadly based people’s party, he had broken with Adolf 

Hitler in 1923, and founded a new party—the German Social Association 

(Deutschsozialen Verein). 2 Riehl’s defense of Rothstock brought him back 

into favor among Nazis and other radical antisemites, but Hitler never forgave 

him for his opposition to the idea of an Anschluss. He rejoined the 

Austrian Nazi Party in 1930, but remained critical of the excesses of the 

leadership. After he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and released, he 

sank into relative obscurity. Rothstock, a fervent antisemite, having followed 

Riehl into the wilderness, enjoyed his brief moment of notoriety, 

spent eighteen months in a psychiatric institution, and then vanished into 

anonymity. 

Bettauer, a provocative, disputatious, and publicity-seeking character 

with a somewhat murky past, had survived bankruptcy in New York before 

being expelled from Prussia, where, as a scandal-mongering journalist, he 

had driven the director of the Hoftheater to suicide, before returning to 

Vienna in 1910. 3 His novels, most of which were originally published as 

serials, were hugely successful, while his journalistic activities gave him an 

1. “Über Leichen,” Der Spiegel, February 15, 1982. 

2. For details, see F. L. Carsten, The Rise of Fascism, London 1982, and Fascist 

Movements in Austria, London 1977; Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: 

A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism, Chapel Hill 1998; Rudolf 

Brandstötter, Dr. Walter Riehl und die Geschichte der nationalsozialen Bewegung, 

Vienna 1969. 

3. Murray G. Hall, Der Fall Bettauer, Salzburg 1978; Beth Noveck, “Hugo 

Bettauer and the Political Culture of the First Republic,” in Günter Bischoff, Anton 

Pelinka, and Rolf Steiniger, Austria in the Nineteen Fifties (Contemporary Austrian 

Studies, vol. 3), New Brunswick 1995; Magdalena Lueger, Die Funktion der Stadt: 

225


increasingly hazardous prominence that resulted in his receiving a number 

of murder threats. Bettauer’s best-known novels were The City Without 

Jews (Stadt ohne Juden), 1922, and The Street of Sorrow (Die freudlose 

Gasse), 1924. Both were made into successful motion pictures: the former, 

a journeyman’s effort by H. K. Breslauer, now only of interest in that it 

marks the film debut of the popular character actor Hans Moser; the latter 

was made into an impressive effort by G. W. Pabst in which Greta Garbo 

made her first appearance in a major production, playing alongside the 

superstar Asta Nielsen. Shortly after finishing the film, in September 1925, 

Garbo went to Hollywood. Five other movies were based on Bettauer’s 

novels. He was also well known as the editor of the deliberately provocative 

Bettauers Wochenschrift, described as a “weekly for lifestyle and eroticism,” 

as well a short-lived weekly Er und Sie (Him and Her), which was 

obliged to fold after five issues. 4 In 1924, Bettauer was charged with pimping 

on the grounds that the lonely-hearts column in Er und Sie provided 

cover for prostitutes to advertise their wares. He was acquitted amid howls 

of protest from the respectable Viennese. The case triggered a heated debate 

in City Hall in which insults and even blows were exchanged. 

Bettauer was an outspoken and frequently immoderate advocate of 

sexual liberation as well as being a leading advocate of rescinding article 

144 of the criminal code, which banned abortion. He was a tireless advocate 

of social reform, addressing such issues as the housing crisis, the steadily 

increasing number of the homeless, the problems faced by single mothers, 

discrimination against homosexuals, the harsh treatment of drug addicts and 

prostitutes, and the vulgarity of the nouveaux riches. In so doing, he further 

enflamed the struggle between the arch-reactionary chancellor Ignaz Seipel, 

a Catholic priest and leader of the Christian Social Party, and the Social 

Democrat Karl Seitz, the mayor of “Red Vienna,” 5 But it was The City 

Without Jews that caused the greatest outrage and provided Rothstock with 

a powerful motive for his crime. The book, designed as a light-hearted satire, 

was horribly prescient. It tells the tale of an Austria with the Christian 

Social Party in power led by a fanatical antisemite, Dr. Schwerdtfeger, a 

character bearing the closest imaginable resemblance to Ignaz Seipel. The 

government passed an immensely popular law that called for the expulsion 

Wien in der Österreichischen Literatur. Theorie, Tradition und Analyse in ausgewählte 

Beispiele (master’s thesis, Vienna 2010). 

4. Melanie Hacker (ed.) “Er und Sie.” Wochenschrift für Lebenskultur und 

Erotik: Hugo Bettauers Zeitschrift und die Sexualmoral der 1920er Jahre, Saarbrücken 

2009. 

5. Seipel resigned as chancellor in 1924 after an assassination attempt, but 

remained party chairman. He resumed the chancellorship in 1926. In the meantime, 

a Christian Socialist, Rudolf Ramek, served as acting chancellor.

2011] THE MURDER OF HUGO BETTAUER 227 

of all Jews by year’s end. But enthusiasm for this measure soon waned. 

Cultural life became insufferably dull. Playgoers soon tired of a meager diet 

of the alpine idylls of Ludwig Ganghofer and the sentimental village sagas 

of Ludwig Anzengruber. Deprived of their Jewish patrons, elegant cafés 

were obliged to convert into snack bars selling sausages. Jewelers, couturiers, 

and furriers, no longer patronized by wealthy Jews, were forced to 

move to Prague and Budapest. Unemployment rose steeply. Inflation was 

rampant. The once vibrant and exhilarating Vienna rapidly sank to the level 

of a dull provincial town. Leo Strakosch, one of the Jews who had been 

expelled, disguises himself as a French artist and returns to Vienna to visit 

his wealthy girlfriend. He immediately starts a poster campaign to repeal 

the expulsion order. The government is toppled and the Jews return amid 

general jubilation. The film differs substantially from the book, causing a 

severe altercation between Bettauer and Breslauer because the political 

message was blunted. Vienna becomes Utopia, the entire story a nightmare 

dreamt by an antisemitic member of parliament, whose waking words are: 

“Thank heavens that this stupid dream is over! We are all human beings and 

do not want hate. We simply want to live together in peace and quiet.” Jews 

are seen as a necessary evil, the “world’s yeast.” The film is further distanced 

from reality by expressionistic sets in the manner of Robert Wiene’s 

classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Yet even in this anodyne form, the film 

caused an outrage. Much of the satire backfired. Did the novel as well as 

the film not show that Austria’s culture and economy were dominated by 

the Jews, just as the antisemites claimed? Nazis rioted and threw stink 

bombs into cinemas. It was banned in Linz. There were calls for “self-help” 

against the Jewish pornographer Bettauer, which Otto Rothstock promptly 

answered, thereby becoming a popular hero. 

Amid the uproar over the Bettauer assassination, a hastily prepared 

book appeared that provides remarkable testimony to the strength of 

antisemitic sentiment in the Vienna of the 1920s. Herwig Hartner-Hnizdo’s 

Erotik und Rasse: eine Untersuchung über gesellschaftliche, sittliche und 

geschlechtliche Fragen (Eroticism and Race: A study of the social, moral 

and sexual question) provides an exhaustive and disturbing justification for 

Bettauer’s assassination, by detailing the charges laid against him and 

Vienna’s Jewish community. 6 The author starts from the premise that contemporary 

theater and film, both of which were dominated by Jews, emphasized 

the sexual at the expense of the intellectual. While both mediums of 

entertainment claimed to be realistic they failed, for the obvious reason that 

all were written by Jews, to take account the destructive influence of Jewry. 

6. Herwig Hartner-Hnizdo, Erotik und Rasse: eine Untersuchung des gesellschaftliche, 

sittliche und geschlechtliche Frage, Munich 1925.


Contemporary dance comes from primitive “coloured people.” With an 

unmistakable reference to Josephine Baker, who had just opened at the Théâtre 

des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Hartner-Hnizdo claimed that France was 

particularly taken by this degenerate Negro culture. Germany was already 

following along this path to decline. 

A further threat to German culture came from bobbed hair, with its 

variants the Dutch Boy, the Eton Crop, and the Shingle, all said to have 

originated in homosexual circles in New York and enthusiastically taken up 

by Jewish women in Europe. Short hair and the slightly androgynous style 

of dress pioneered by Coco Chanel was, Hartner-Hnizdo argued, part of an 

absurd and unnatural attempt to make women more like men, which was 

bound to lead to a perverse amorphousness. It was also an expression of an 

individualism that was encouraged by Jews in order to destroy non-Jewish 

ethnicity, while Jews knew full well that their strength lay in their sticking 

together. Hartner-Hnizdo found himself in something of a bind in that he 

realized that antisemitism, for which he was a strident advocate, served to 

strengthen Jewish determination to defend their identity, thereby steeling 

their “racially conscious” religion. 

Jews were gradually but relentlessly taking over the arts and sciences, 

which are in turn the “source of all life.” 7 Using Martin Luther’s misquotation 

of Genesis 26:3 to the effect that the Lord exhorted the Jews to be “a 

stranger in this country,” Hartner-Hnizdo claimed biblical support for his 

conviction that Jews are not only an alien body within Christian society, but 

also one that is positively harmful. 8 In former times, Christians were well 

aware of the danger posed by the Jews; canon 78 of the Lateran Council of 

1215, for example, called for Jews to wear distinctive clothing and exhorted 

Christian princes to take strict measures against blasphemies against Jesus 

Christ. This measure was necessary, we are confidently told, because Jews 

made a habit of dressing as Christians to seduce Christian girls and also 

because Jewish moneylenders reduced interest rates when permission was 

granted to sleep with their clients’ wives. 9 Pope Gregory IX was particularly 

concerned that Jews were seducing Christian wet nurses and maids, 

while Honorius IV was appalled at the debauchery that occurred when 

Christians and Jews lived in close proximity. Hartner-Hnizdo managed to 

convince himself that Jews were an innate danger to Christian society and 

that it was simply not possible for them to change their malicious ways. 

7. Erotik und Rasse, 25. 

8. Luther wrote: “Sei ein Fremdling in diesem Land,” which is translated by 

The New Jerusalem Bible as: “Remain for the present in that country.” The King 

James Bible’s version is: “Sojourn in this land.” 

9. Erotik und Rasse, 30ff.


“Racial studies” (Rassenkunde) clearly showed that character is inborn and 

not affected by surroundings, as was boldly claimed at the time of Jewish 

emancipation. The notion that nurture was more important than nature was 

simply used as an alibi for Jewish malevolence. 10 Race is the key determinant 

and cannot be overcome, Hartner-Hnizdo contends. Most history is 

unscientific in that it does not take account of racial factors, thereby disguising 

the true motive forces determining the historical process. 

The threat posed by Jews should be as much a concern to contemporaries 

as it was to thirteenth-century popes. It is still essentially the menace: 

an unbridled and perverse sexuality intent on destroying the Christian sense 

of community and civil virtue. This is clearly evident in contemporary Jewish 

literature, the essential characteristics of which, Hartner-Hnizdo claims, 

are a cynically negative sense of satire, sensationalism, and unrestrained 

sexuality. He depicts Bettauer as an exemplary instance of this noxious type 

of literary figure. The sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld was another of his 

bêtes noirs, although he completely misunderstood Hirschfeld’s theory. 

Hirschfeld was a eugenicist and member of the Society for Racial Hygiene 

(Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene) who believed that homosexuals should not 

be permitted to have children, on the grounds that their condition was attributable 

to a genetic defect. On the other hand, he was a passionate opponent 

of article 175 of the German criminal code, which banned male homosexual 

acts. and he called for a sympathetic understanding of gays and lesbians. 

Hartner-Hnizdo attacked Hirschfeld for claiming that since homosexuality 

was “natural” and inborn it should therefore be permitted. For Hartner- 

Hnizdo, homosexuality was blatantly unnatural and had to be stopped, 

because if allowed to go rampant it would lead to the end of the human 

race. Homosexuality, he was convinced, was particularly prevalent in the 

Jewish community and was symptomatic of the Jewish emphasis on an individualism 

that posed a mortal threat to the Christian community and the 

Aryan race. He claimed that there were three times more cases of psychosis 

among Jews than non-Jews, hence the rise of the sex-obsessed Jewish 

pseudo-science of psychoanalysis. 11 Throughout the Jewish community 

there was a neurotic drive toward “planation”—the gradual reduction of 

intellectual and physical distinctions between the sexes—coupled with a 

missionary zeal to encourage homosexuality among non-Jews so their birth 

rate would be lowered while they, particularly the Ostjuden, bred prolifically. 

Here were further powerful arguments for a strict apartheid between 

Jews and non-Jews. 

The counter-measures proposed by Hartner-Hnizdo came from the 


11. Erotik und Rasse, 46.


familiar repertoire of the extreme right; some were also advocated by leftwing 

eugenicists. Abortions should be performed wherever there was a suggestion 

of a genetically determined physical or mental deficiency. The asocial 

and criminally inclined should not be permitted to have children. The 

imperatives of “racial hygiene” should be rigorously enforced. Sex education 

should be taken out of the hands of Jews and be entrusted to those who 

were clearly aware of “racial necessity.” 

Before launching a broadside against Hugo Bettauer, Hartner-Hnizdo 

selects a number of Austria Jewish literati for special opprobrium. Studiously 

avoiding such important figures as Stefan Zweig and Alfred Döblin, 

he fastens instead on obscure writers. First on the list was Emmerich 

Békessy, publisher of Austria’s first tabloid newspaper Die Stunde (The 

Hour). Békessy, a notorious morphine addict, somehow managed to get 

Austrian citizenship in 1923, in spite of facing charges of blackmail, libel, 

and fraud in his native Hungary. Die Stunde was an appalling scandal sheet, 

a pristine example of what was known as “revolver journalism” (“gutter 

journalism”), but it was resolutely democratic and initially enjoyed the support 

of the Social Democratic Party. It had some impressive contributors, 

including the 18-year-old Billy Wilder. In 1924 Békessy founded a theatrical 

journal, Die Bühne (The Stage). 

From the very outset, Békessy was a controversial figure. His vicious 

attacks on prominent citizens, his unscrupulous gossip mongering and 

shameless attention seeking prompted the Austrian writer Karl Kraus to 

launch a ferocious counterattack in his journal Die Fackel (The Torch). 

Kraus’ slogan, “Chuck the scoundrel out of Vienna,” was echoed throughout 

the city. Békessy’s unprincipled methods, which included outright 

blackmail, was too much even for the paper’s editor, Ernst Spitz, who 

revealed all to his colleagues, including young Billy Wilder, who in turn 

informed the management. An editor was arrested for blackmail, but the 

charges were dropped. Békessy was taking the waters in France when his 

backers went bankrupt as a result of some hazardous speculation in foreign 

currencies. He remained in France before returning to Hungary, where he 

was active as a journalist. In 1938 he moved to Switzerland and in 1940 to 

the United States, returning to Hungary after the war. After numerous 

botched attempts he finally committed suicide in 1951, alongside his wife, 

by a morphine overdose. 

Békessy was for Hartner-Hnizdo little more than a typical example of 

“Jewish journalism,” with its emphasis on sex and its attacks on the “scientifically 

based and historically proven” importance of race, all dressed up as 

an attack on prejudice and a call for freedom. The intended result would be 

an unbridling of the sex drive and the domination of the masses—in other


words, Bolshevism. 12 There was nothing exceptional therefore about Hartner-Hnizdo’s 

attack on Békessy, apart from its strident antisemitism and his 

denunciation of Békessy’s avid “anti-swastika-ism,” his abortion advocacy, 

and his propagation of free love. Hartner-Hnizdo also went on the attack 

against several prominent anti-racists. Dr. Ignaz Zollschan, a physician and 

anthropologist, set out to destroy the racist views of British-German philosopher 

Houston Stewart Chanberlain, an effort that Hartner-Hnizdo poohpoohed 

on the grounds that Jews themselves have a genuine and in a certain 

sense admirable awareness of racial identity. 13 The gynecologist and 

demographer Felix Aaron Theilhaber was another target for Hartner- 

Hnizdo’s vitriol. Theilhaber bemoaned the fact that German Jewry was 

gradually disappearing due to emigration to the urban centers, intermarriage, 

and a drop in the birth rate to less than one child per family. 14 As a 

passionate Zionist, Theilhaber believed that the only solution was a Jewish 

state. As a physician, he was a birth control advocate and called for 

decriminalization of abortion and homosexuality. He was closely associated 

with Magnus Hirschfeld and later with Wilhelm Reich. Another intimate 

colleague was Arthur Ruppin, a sociologist and Zionist, who was one of the 

founders of Tel Aviv and professor of “Jewish sociology” at Hebrew University. 

In addition, Ruppin, a eugenicist who believed that settlers should 

meet rigorous “bodily, professional and moral criteria,” was known as the 

“father of the Jewish settler movement.” He insisted that the biological singularity 

of the Jews necessitated strict ethnic separation from the Palestinians. 

In an outburst of social-Darwinist fervor, he argued that: “It is not 

simply that the Jews (during the Diaspora) preserved the exceptional inherited 

traits of their race, they were actually strengthened by a lengthy process 

of selection. The exceptionally difficult conditions under which the Jews 

were forced to live during the last five hundred years resulted in a struggle 


13. Erotik und Rasse, 66. Zollschan’s attack on Houston Stewart Chamberlain is 

found in Das Rassenproblem unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der theoretischen 

Grundlagen der jüdischen Rassenfrage, Vienna 1910, reprinted 1925. Zollschan 

devoted his life to the struggle against racialism, summarizing his thoughts on the 

topic in Racialism against Civilization, London 1942. See Paul J. Weindling, “Central 

Europe Confronts German Racial Hygiene: Friedrich Hertz, Hugo Iltis and 

Ignaz Zollschan as Critics of German Racial Hygiene,” in Blood and Homeland: 

Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940, ed. 

Marius Turda and Paul Julian Weindling, Budapest 2006. 

14. Felix Aaron Theilhaber, Der Untergang der deutschen Juden: eine volkswirtschaftliche 

Studie, Munich 1911. Theilhaber was arrested by the Gestapo in 

1933 and lost his license to practice medicine. He managed to escape to Palestine in 

1935, where he helped organize the private medical insurance company Kupat 

Cholim Maccabi. He died in 1956.


for existence in which only the cleverest and economically shrewd survived. 

For this reason today’s Jews can, in a certain sense, be seen as a 

particularly valuable human species. Other races may have other merits, but 

as far as intellectual ability is concerned they can hardly outdo the Jews.” 15 

Ruppin caused further embarrassment to liberal Zionists by claiming that 

the Ashkenazim were superior “with regard to energy, intelligence and scientific 

curiosity” to Jews from Yemen, Morocco, and the Caucasus. 16 He 

asked whether such inferior material should be permitted to immigrate to 

Palestine because “the intellectual and cultural level of these Jews is so low 

that mass immigration of these elements would lower the average cultural 

standards of the Jews in Palestine.” 17 Ruppin’s insistence that Jewishness 

was due to ethnicity rather than religious affiliation or the result of shared 

experience excited the interest of Hans F. K. Günther, a prominent Nazi 

racial ideologue and expert in “racial hygiene,” who argued that Jews 

should be forced to emigrate “to Palestine, or some other part of the world 

suited to their hereditary traits.” 18 

Hartner-Hnizdo saw all these efforts to strengthen a sense of Jewish 

identity as particularly alarming in that they were, particularly in the case of 

Arthur Ruppin, mirror images of the intellectual heritage of Houston Stewart 

Chamberlain. Perhaps for this reason he hastily moved on to attack a 

series of Austrian Jewish writers before focusing his full attention on Hugo 

Bettauer. 

First on the list was Arthur Schnitzler, whom he characterized, along 

with Jakob Wassermann, as leading examples of the pernicious species of 

assimilated Jew. 19 He was particularly incensed by Schnitzler’s frequent 

attacks on the antisemites, which he found to be “narrow-minded, spiteful, 

and pettily one-sided: now the Jew is awake and strikes back.” As a prime 

example of this attitude, he pointed to Schnitzler’s sensitive treatment of 

antisemitism in his play Professor Bernhardi. Hartner-Hnizdo dismissed the 

rest of Schnitzler’s work as superficially witty and sex-obsessed, in which 

the concept of public decency was mocked as prejudice, narrow-mindedness, 

and intolerance. In spite of this diatribe, he was in danger of coming 

under Schnitzler’s irresistible spell and grudgingly admitted that the object 

15. Arthur Ruppin, Die Juden der Gegenwart, Berlin 1904, reprinted 1920, 

p.191ff. Ruppin received the Haeckel Prize in 1903 for his social-Darwinist study 

Darwinismus und Sozialwissenschaft. 

16. Ruppin, Die Juden, 191. 

17. Ruppin, Die Juden, 260. 

18. Günther, the author of Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922), was a 

leading light in the pseudo science of “Racial Hygiene,” thereby earning the nicknames 

“Rassen-Günther” and “Rassenpabst.” 

19. Erotik und Rasse, 68-83.


of his outrage was an assimilated Jew who had lost much of what made the 

Ostjuden so repulsive. 

It is hardly surprising that Hartner-Hnizdo had considerably less to say 

about Jakob Wassermann. Wassermann was a paradigmatic example of the 

“collar and tie” assimilated Jew (Krawattenjude) whose novel Die Juden 

von Zirndorf was a blistering attack on the suffocating monotony, bigotry, 

and backwardness of an orthodox Jewish community. Wassermann said of 

these Jews that they were “worms, snakes and rubbish,” adding that “our 

entire cultural sickness is called Jewry.” He went even further by insisting 

that Christianity was even worse than Judaism, because it was solidly based 

on all that was worst in the latter. Therefore, he said, a passionate 

antisemite should be even more fanatical in his hatred of Christianity. Hartner-Hnizdo 

rather lamely claimed that Wassermann was not against “German-ness 

as such,” merely against “anti-Jewish sentiment.” He argued that 

Wassermann was not really a German, but that was not his fault—it was 

racially determined. 

Next on the list came Gustav Meyrink, author of the novel Der Golem. 

The illegitimate son of Karl von Varnhagen, minister of state in Württemberg, 

and a Viennese actress, Maria Meier, he was a restless soul, who 

lingered on the wilder shores of the occult. Gershom Scholem, who had 

visited him to discuss details of Der Golem, later said that Mayrink was “at 

that time a famous writer, who combined an exceptional ability for antibourgeois 

satire with an equally remarkable facility for mystical puffery 

that was expressed in hair-raising, often very impressive, but hardly serious 

short stories, the quality of which today has only been surpassed by Jorge 

Luis Borges.” 20 For his part, Borges admired the book as a memorable horror 

story. Hartner-Hnizdo attributed Meyrink’s obsession with the occult to 

his affinity with the kabala, inherited from his Jewish mother. Meyrink’s 

anti-bourgeois satire, most clearly evident in his collection of short stories, 

published in 1913 under the title Des deutschen Spiessers Wunderhorn (The 

Philistine’s Cornucopia), shows good and bad Jews, but all non-Jews are 

represented as evil, apart from a few criminals who are represented as being 

decent, sensitive, generous, and unselfish. Hartner-Hnizdo dismisses this 

work as “repugnantly coarse” and nothing but “derisive mockery.” 

Arnolt Bronnen, author of a successful play, Vatermord (Patricide), 

was for Hartner-Hnizdo an exemplary case of a “half-Jew” adopting the 

protective mimicry of assimilation. At the time that Erotik und Rasse was 

written, Bronnen was on the left, cooperating with Brecht and friendly with 

Friedrich Murnau. Later he moved sharply to the right, joined the Nazis, 

20. Roland Reuss, “Was man in Gespensterkreisen gerade so trägt,” Frankfurter 

Allegemeine Zeitung, September 21, 1910.


and became closely associated with Otto Strasser and Goebbels. For a while 

he lived in a ménage à trois with Goebbels and his mistress, a young actress 

who also happened to be an NKVD agent. 21 Hartner-Hnizdo denounced 

Bronnen as a representative of “the victory of the vanguard of the sexual 

revolution over the German world of order, intellect and morality”—in 

other words, of Bolshevism. This led him to the observation that “we 

should not overlook the fact that there is a remarkable resemblance between 

the Jewish and the Mongol-Tartar temperament as far as the libidinal is 

concerned. Thus we see in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia the leadership 

divided between the Jew Trotsky and the Mongol Lenin, who incidentally 

has Jewish blood in his veins from his mother’s side.” 22 

Hartner-Hnizdo’s final victim before turning to Hugo Bettauer was 

Max Glass, author of Die entfesselte Menschheit (Humanity Unchained), a 

novel about the revolution in Germany in November 1918. All the characters 

in the book are described as violently aggressive, pathologically criminal, 

and determined to free themselves from all moral, cultural, and social 

restraints. It was a ferocious condemnation of middle-class attitudes toward 

the “other”—the “November criminals” who had stabbed the fatherland in 

the back, proletarians, and Jews. Glass’ novel was promptly turned into a 

successful film, beginning for him a meteoric career as a screenwriter and 

producer. 23 It was for Hartner-Hnizdo a prime example of the “hair-splitting 

philosophy,” “Talmudic writing,” and “purely economic and libidinal attitude” 

typical of his race. Such trumpeting of “lack of prejudice” was a 

destructive attitude that posed a serious danger to German civilization. 

Hartner-Hnizdo’s condemnation of Die entfesselte Menschheit was warmly 

endorsed by the prominent racist ideologue Franz Schattenfroh in a book 

that suggested that mass murder was the optimum solution to the Jewish 

21. For details of Bronnen’s remarkably checkered career, see Friedbert Aspetsberger, 

Arnolt Bronnen, Vienna 1995; Harald Kaas, “Der faschistische Piccolo” 

A.B’, in Intellektuelle im Bann des Nationalsozialismus, Karl Corino (ed.), 

Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1980, pp. 136-149. 

22. Erotik und Rasse, p. 106. 

23. For Die entfesselte Menschheit, see Andy Hahnemann, “ ‘Der Tod jagt 

durch die Strassen . . .’ Zur Psychopathologisierung der Revolution” in Max Glass, 

Die enfesselter Menschheit (1919), in “Friede, Freiheit, Brot.” Romane zur deutschen 

November Revolution, ed. Ulrich Kittstein and Regine Zeller, Amsterdam 

2009. Glass founded the production companies Terra-Film-Gesellschaft, Max 

Glass-Film GmbH, and Kristall-Film GmbH. As a Jew who converted to Catholicism, 

he was forced to leave Germany in 1933. After a short but successful career 

as a film producer in Paris, he managed to travel to Brazil and then to the United 

States. He returned to France after the war, where he died in 1965. He was the 

stepfather of the psychologist Hans Eysenck. See http://www.lips.org/ 

bio_GlassM.asp.


question. 24 

The second half of Erotik und Rasse is devoted to a ferocious attack on 

Hugo Bettauer, who is presented as being the most pernicious of all these 

German-Jewish writers. When the police tried to stop the sale of Er und Sie 

to minors, Karl Sietz, the mayor of Vienna whom Hartner-Hnizdo claimed 

was the illegitimate son of “the Jew Pollak,” stepped in to save his Jewish 

comrade. 25 This outraged the chancellor, Ignaz Seipel, who called for “the 

rehabilitation of souls” (Seelensanierung) and the outlawing of publications 

such as Er und Sie and Bettauers Wochenschrift, a view that was shared by 

the Zionist paper Wiener Morgenzeitung, which described Bettauer as “a 

professional pimp disguised as a journalist,” whose paper offered “the satisfaction 

of every imaginable sexual indulgence by people of all ages, even 

sixteen-year-olds, on provision of the client’s age and due payment.” 26 

Hartner-Hnizdo agreed with this judgment, but questioned the paper’s 

motives. Bettauer had become an embarrassment for the Jewish community 

and was an anti-Zionist. He asked why the Wiener Morgenzeitung did not 

also attack Freud, suggesting as an answer—with blissful disregard of the 

fact that Freud was a prominent anti-Zionist—that it was probably because 

he was a Zionist. 27 Bettauer was charged on twenty-three counts of attacks 

on public decency under paragraph 516 of the criminal code, but a jury 

court found him not guilty. 

Bettauer’s propagation of free love was a constant thorn in the side of 

the respectable right and prompted antisemites like Hartner-Hnizdo into 

frenzied outbursts of indignation. His claim that prostitutes voluntarily plied 

their trade, making the preposterous accusation that this assertion was cover 

for the fact that the sex trade was firmly in Jewish hands, caused particular 

outrage. Bettauer campaigned for the rights of women, including prostitutes, 

and mounted a campaign against the law that denied them the right to 

vote. 28 He strongly endorsed Magnus Hirschfeld’s efforts to legalize homosexuality. 

29 In addition, he supported the idea that before a couple could get 

24. Franz Schattenfroh, Wille und Rasse, Berlin 1938. 

25. Harald Gröller, Karl Seitz, Vienna 2002; Wolfgang Maderthaner, Karl Seitz, 

Vienna 2000; Rudolf Spitzer, Karl Seitz: Waisenknabe, Staatspräsident, Bürgermeister, 

Vienna 1994. Seitz’s father died young, leaving his wife and eight children 

destitute. For this reason, and not because he was illegitimate, Seitz was raised in 

an orphanage. Seitz was the architect of “Red Vienna,” a model of social democratic 

town planning. 

26. Erotik und Rasse, 135. The Wiener Morgenzeitung was the only Germanlanguage 

Jewish daily in Europe. 

27. Freud abandoned his opposition to Zionism when the Nazis came to power. 

28. Prostitutes were also disenfranchised in Italy and Spain. 

29. Lesbianism was criminalized in Austria, but not in Germany.


married they had to show that they had lived together for at least six 

months; other provisos was that the relationship could be broken off at any 

time during this trial period; the man would be made responsible for the 

upkeep of any child conceived during this time if the mother was unemployed 

and remained single, and he would also be obliged to compensate 

the woman for any losses incurred should they not marry; and if the experiment 

failed, a year had to pass before another attempt was made. Only three 

such trials should be permitted. 

Hartner-Hnizdo was appalled by these rather impracticable notions, 

which he felt would reduce European civilization to a “Negroid level.” He 

insisted that a German woman’s greatest wish was to “bring forth new, 

healthy German life that was full of hope,” whereas Bettauer saw marriage 

purely and simply in terms of mutual sexual compatibility. For Hartner- 

Hnizdo, Bettauer showed his true face in his novel The Blue Mark (Das 

Blaue Mal). 30 The story, which is set in the American Deep South, tells the 

tale of a blonde, blue-eyed botany professor who falls in love with a beautiful 

mulatto woman. Were such miscegenation to be encouraged, the net 

result, Hartner-Hnizdo argued, would be the “niggerisation of America.” 

For this reason, he strongly endorsed the Klu Klux Klan, which lumped 

Jews together with Negroes. They did so, he asserted, “for perfectly good 

reasons, because they (Jews) have a lot of dark, non-Aryan and especially 

Nigger blood in their veins. This can clearly be seen in their bulging lips 

(Nigger lips) and their curled hair, as well as in their dark complexion, 

which naturally can also come from other racial mixtures[,] and their prominent 

schnozzles, which is a pretty common characteristic among Jews.” He 

agreed wholeheartedly with the Klan in his determination to make a clear 

distinction between Jews, coloreds, and “us Germans.” This would inevitably 

lead to the forcing away of Jews from German soil.” Hartner-Hnizdo 

had to admit that Bettauer’s portrait of the Ostjuden as ‘flat-footed, grafters, 

wheelers and dealers, their hands covered with platinum and diamonds,” 

with their “prurient lust for women” was perfectly accurate, but regretted 

that he did not apply this description to the rest of his race. 31 On the contrary; 

Bettauer believed that the vast majority of Jews were sensitive, intelligent 

human beings, who were open-minded, thoughtful, and mentally 

alert. Above all, they had a better understanding of women—particularly 

those independent, warm, and sensual women whom he admired—than the 

30. Das Blaue Mal. Der Roman eines Ausgestossenen, Vienna 1922; Erotik und 

Rasse, 165-172. 

31. The word used for “wheelers and dealers” is Kettenhändler—unnecessary 

dealers between producers and consumers. The practice is illegal in present-day 

Germany.


average German petit bourgeois. By contrast, the crooks in his novels are 

almost all exemplary Aryans. 

This was all too much for Hartner-Hnizdo. As a passionate antisemite, 

convinced that Jews posed a deadly threat to Aryan civilization, he was 

outraged that “the swastika people,” by whom Bettauer means all those who 

have anti-Jewish sentiments, are without exception portrayed in his novels 

as “utterly inferior, measly and mean-spirited creatures.” Bettauer’s agenda 

was obvious to him: “He clearly shows us where the whole movement is 

intended to end: in the total dissolution of existing conditions, with the Jew 

as the only consciously active and effective element, while the German having 

been deprived of all intellectual and moral footholds will sink into the 

mud.” 32 At the root of the problem, in Hartner-Hnizdo’s troubled mind, was 

the belief that intellectual and instinctual drives differed radically according 

to race. Unbridled sexuality is, according to this theory, at the basis of the 

Jewish worldview. All that stays in the way of pure animal lust—marriage, 

the family, the sense of spiritual and intellectual belonging, even the state— 

is rejected out of hand. The Jew initially sees in a woman an object of 

sexual desire. He is incapable of appreciating beauty without being overcome 

by lust. The Aryan, by contrast, looks first for spiritual and intellectual 

qualities in the other sex. Marriage is at the very heart of the racial idea, 

for it is through marriage that the race is strengthened, purified, and preserved. 

It is for this precise reason that Jews attack the institution, while 

making sure that marriage within their own community is kept free from 

extraneous racial material. Quotations from Ezra and Nehemiah did not act 

as a very successful smokescreen with which to hide the fact that the 

already high degree of exogamy in the Jewish community was on the rise, 

much to the alarm of the antisemites. 33 Hartner-Hnizdo worked himself up 

into a frenzy over this issue: “The racial idea alone can save our young men 

from gaining knowledge of life and intellectual sustenance from a foreign 

or poisoned source; but women also can only be protected from sinking into 

an inferior race and becoming the objects of desire of sensually perverse 

humans or sexual adventurers by a strong spiritual affinity with their racial 

species. This racial consciousness, which is represented in the Old Testament 

in an often repulsive form, was made into one of God’s most sacred 

commandments by the prophets Ezra and Nehemiah, so that the Jews, even 

in the Diaspora, were saved from dissolution among the neighbouring peoples 

. . . Who teaches our children to have a German sense of race and 

identity, that will guide their lives and save them from being destroyed by a 

foreign culture and way of life? Neither at home nor in the schools do they 


33. The relevant passages are in Ezra 10 and Ezekiel 10:31 and 13: 23-31.


learn anything of the importance of race, or of the spiritual and intellectual 

forces that are determined by this factor. The cultural uniqueness and level 

of a people is irrevocably linked to its racial composition. It is never made 

clear to them that they are Germans and that as Germans they must feel that 

they are a vital part of the race and that they must order their lives in a 

manner appropriate to the intellectual, moral and cultural imperatives of 

their racial origins.” 34 

Hartner-Hnizdo made the state responsible for Bettauer’s murder. He 

had been allowed to publish his pornography, to undermine public order 

and decency, and to attack those who were determined to preserve all that 

was best in German culture. In such a situation, violence was justified as the 

last resort. At this point, one might well ask why the murder of a hack 

writer of dubious integrity by a psychologically disturbed fanatic and justified 

in a 252-page rant by a racist crank should be worthy of attention. First 

of all, Erotik und Rasse was lent to Heinrich Himmler in 1927 by Walter 

Buch, the man responsible for purges in the Nazi party and a prominent 

racial ideologue. 35 The prudish Himmler, who was still at the age of 27 

inexperienced in matters sexual, was enormously impressed by this tirade 

against the unrestrained sexuality of the times encouraged by highly spiced 

Jewish literary products. In his judgment, the book was “a collection of 

appalling products of literature, terrible to read. It is, however, a necessary 

collection of evidence and therefore valuable.” 36 The book certainly served 

further to confirm Himmler’s already obsessive antisemitism and 

homophobia. 

But this alone is hardly enough. Far more important is the light it 

shines on the appalling degree of antisemitism in interwar Austria. Chancellor 

Ignaz Seipel’s Christian Social Party was founded by the prominent 

antisemite Karl Lueger and its program bore a close resemblance to that of 

the National Socialists, but Seipel was alarmed at the socialist elements 

within National Socialism and appalled at the movement’s rejection of 

Christianity. Seipel was what was known at the time as a “theological 

antisemite,” one who rejected the racial antisemitism of the Nazis. His 

world view was based on the Catholic social teaching of Leo XIII’s encyclical 

Rerum Novarum of 1891 on the rights and duties of capital and labor 

that was reaffirmed and extended in 1931 by Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno 

on the reconstruction of the social order. It was a reactionary, authoritarian 


35. The “Röhm Putsch” of 1934 was among the Säuberungsaktionen (purges) in 

which Buch played a prominent role. 

36. Geoffrey J. Giles, Why Worry About Homosexuals? Homophobia and Sexual 

Politics in Nazi Germany, Washington, D.C. 2001, 6.


Catholicism, similar to that of Franco and Salazar and, mutatis mutandis, 

Vargas in his first period as president of Brazil. 

Bettauer’s murder, like that of Walter Rathenau, marks a sea change in 

European antisemitism. Toward the end of the nineteenth century traditional 

European antipathy towards Jews, largely for religious motives, 

became a codeword for a wide range of attitudes including authoritarianism, 

imperialism, ultra-nationalism, racism, militarism, manliness, misogyny, 

the desire for fellowship in an exclusive community, hatred of all forms of 

democracy, particularly liberalism and social democracy. 37 It was an attitude 

summed up by the historian Heinrich Treitschke in his remark, “The 

Jews are our misfortune,” or by Otto Glagau, who wrote “The social question 

is the Jewish question,” in other words, “The Jew” was symbolic of all 

that is out of joint in the modern world—a boo word for boo things. 38 It did 

not necessarily imply hatred or even dislike of individual Jews—as Karl 

Lueger’s “I decide who is a Jew,” or its later equivalent, “Some of my best 

friends are Jews”—clearly indicates. Nor was antisemitism ever transformed 

into a systematic ideology, in spite of a series of determined 

attempts. It was, instead, a convenient means of explanation for often complex 

issues, a blanket rejection of many facets of modernity, a knee-jerk 

reaction to an inchoate discontent, anxiety, or unease. It is thus hardly surprising 

that Julius Streicher adopted Treitschke’s “Die Juden sind unser 

Unglück” as the motto for his appalling weekly Der Stürmer (The 

Attacker). By the same token, an alarming number of professed antiantisemites, 

particularly among the Social Democrats, let slip many an anti- 

Jewish slur and had neither a particular affection for Jews nor concern for 

their fate. Some Jews even managed to convince themselves that there was 

a grain of truth in the antisemites’ charges against them. 

With the rise of violence against Jews, of which Bettauer’s murder is a 

37. Shulamit Volkov, Germans, Jews, and Antisemites: Trials in Emancipation, 

Cambridge 2006, 113; Volkov, “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on 

the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany,” Leo Baeck 

Institute Yearbook 23, 1978, 25-46. 

38. Daniela Weiland, Otto Glagau und “Der Kulturkämpfer”. Zur Entstehung 

des modernen Antisemitismus im frühen Kaiserreich, Berlin 2004. Otto Glagau is 

best known for his series of articles in Die Gartenlaube in 1874-5 on Die Borsen 

and Gründergeschwindel in Berlin, in which he blames the Jews for irregularities 

in the stock market. Glagau wrote: “The children of Israel multiply in Berlin just as 

they once did in Egypt and they are all prosperous and rich people; really poor Jews 

are not to be found among them. The climate in Berlin, although lacking ozone, 

suits Abraham’s descendents very well. If one wished to assuage their 1800 years 

of suffering and send them back to the land of milk and honey, they would say 

‘thank you very much.’ ”


striking example, coupled with calls for the expulsion of Jews, German 

antisemitism had escalated to a new and dangerous level. This prompted the 

anti-antisemitists to take a more principled stand, while those Jews who did 

not manage to convince themselves that this new and virulent antisemitism 

was directed solely against the Ostjuden, that it was purely political, or that 

the work of cranks and psychopaths had begun to fear what the future had 

in store. But at that time no one could possibly have imagined the full scale 

of the horrors that lay ahead. 

Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1925, but it attracted little attention. 

He was seen as a somewhat ridiculous figure ranting and raving about 

Jews, socialists, and democrats, dismissed as a “vegetarian Genghis Khan” 

or a “Charlie Chaplin without the talent.” 39 Viscount D’Abernon, British 

ambassador to the Weimar Republic, in his three volumes of memoirs mentioned 

Hitler in a footnote as a man who “rose to notoriety” by “exploiting 

the Semitic and Bolshevik bogies,” who was sentenced to five years’ 

prison? but “was finally released after six months and bound over for the 

rest of his sentence, thereafter fading into oblivion.” 40 

The threat of right-wing extremism in Austria had diminished considerably 

when the Geneva Protocols helped to stabilize the economy. But the 

potential was very real, as many shrewd commentators remarked. There 

was a steady escalation of violence between Nazis and Social Democrats. 

One such clash was over the Nazis’ allegation that the social democratic 

paramilitary organization, the Schutzbund, was used to protect the delegates 

to the Zionist congress in Vienna in 1925. This prompted the Social Democrats 

to make a swift rejoinder that they did not support “bourgeois-nationalist 

elements.” Antisemitism was constantly on the political agenda and, 

once enflamed by the demagogic genius of Adolf Hitler, resulted in an even 

greater degree of brutality against Jews than in Germany in the immediate 

aftermath of the Anschluss. As early as 1926, when Seipel once again 

became chancellor, it became increasingly clear that Austria was heading 

toward a civil war, as is reflected in the Social Democrats’ Linz Program of 

that year. At the same time the vaguely reformist, staunchly nationalist, and 

internally democratic native National Socialism was replaced by the “Hitler 

Movement,” which placed the Austrian Nazis under the direct control of the 

German party, thereby subordinating its needs and aims totally to those of 

the Germans. For the Nazis, Austria was now simply an administrative dis- 

39. Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany 1743-1933, 

New York 2002, 380. 

40. Lord D’Abernon, An Ambassador of Peace. Lord D’Abernon’s Diary, Vol. 

II: The Years of Crisis June 1922-December 1923, London 1929, 51-52. I am grateful 

to Gaynor Johnson for this reference.


trict (Gau) of a greater Germany. In such a context, Bettauer’s murder was 

a significant portent. 

The murder was soon forgotten, however, as Austria was rent apart 

amid escalating violence. The murderer and his defense council vanished 

from the stage. Hitler never forgave Riehl for his Austrian nationalism and 

his refusal to bend to his will. Himmler failed to repay the debt he owed to 

Herwig Hartner-Hnizdo—who, after the Anschluss, found a niche in the 

propaganda ministry’s Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question in 

Frankfurt after publishing a scurrilous book on Jewish swindlers; while at 

the Institute, worked on a new edition of a standard textbook on the Jewish 

question. 41 Bettauer’s novels were placed on the Nazi index, but they 

enjoyed a modest revival after the war, when scholars began to turn their 

interest to trivial literature. In December 2009, the crossroads at the Lange 

Gasse and the Josefsgasse in Vienna’s Josefstadt was renamed the Hugo- 

Bettauer-Platz. 

*Martin Kitchen is professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, Canada. His 

most recent books are A History of Modern Germany, 1800-2000, Rommel’s Desert 

War: Waging World War II in North Africa, 1941-1943, and The Third Reich: 

Charisma and Community. 

41. Herwig Hartner-Hnizdo, Das jüdische Gaunertum, Munich 1939; Theodor 

Fritsch, Handbuch der Judenfrage, Leipzig 1943.

Antisemitism in Wagnerian Opera 1 

Daniel N. Leeson* 

Richard Wagner’s Jew hatred is well known. What is less well known 

is that his antisemitic utterances are sometimes a hidden part of his operas. 

This experience of viewing antisemitic theater may have direct consequences 

in terms of perpetuating his vicious and ugly stereotypical beliefs. 

Wagner’s intentions and his success in achieving this end are discussed. 

An apocryphal story about Wagner’s stage works is attributed to 

Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), who is alleged to have described Wagner’s 

music as having “great moments, but bad quarter hours.” 2 Those of us who 

have worked Wagner’s operas in orchestra pits, however, do not agree with 

that bit of nineteenth-century wit, for what one plays is sometimes remarkable. 

For special moments, such as the death of Siegfried in Gotterdammerung 

or Walther’s “Prize Song” in Meistersinger (The Mastersingers of 

Nuremberg), it is hard, even for the most blasé and bored old-timer who has 

played everything, to control the emotions, so awe-inspiring is the impact of 

the music. 

Unfortunately, playing, singing, and even listening to Wagner’s music 

presents internal conflicts for those who reject the man’s antisemitic utterances, 

as espoused, for example, in his essay “Jewishness in Music.” 3 

In this essay, assertions about the absence of antisemitism in his music 

dramas are said to be unsound at the instant of their utterance. Below the 

surface in some of Wagner’s most creative utterances—particularly though 

not exclusively in Meistersinger and The Ring—there are many examples 

of coded antisemitic stereotypes, hateful images of Jews, and disguised references 

to what Wagner believed were abhorrent Jewish personal and physical 

characteristics. 

1. This essay is a revision and enlargement of an article on Wagner that 

appeared in the Zionist publication Midstream, Vol. XXXIV, No. 7, November/ 

December 1998, 9-12, with relevant letters to the editor printed in the issue of 

February/March 1999. 

2. While this quotation is attributed to Rossini, I have been unable to find a 

source for the attribution. 

3. Das Judenthum in der Musik, by Richard Wagner, published under the pseudonym 

K. Friegedank in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Leipzig, September 1850. 

The essay attacks Jews in general and the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and 

Felix Mendelssohn in particular. The work, which was reissued in a greatly 

expanded version under Wagner’s name in 1869, is a landmark in the history of 

German antisemitism. 

243


BEING WAGNER 

Wagner’s loathing of Jews is a much-examined topic in the vast biographical 

literature about the composer. A consensus of the opinions of 

many of those examining the subject focus on a seminal phobia in Wagner’s 

life: an anxiety responsible for his efforts to distance himself from 

Jews, namely, his belief that he was of Jewish origin. 

Wagner was not certain of his father’s identity, and one possibility was 

that the actor, poet, and painter Ludwig Geyer, a man who Wagner suspected 

of being of Jewish descent, sired him. No proof is available to 

resolve the biological question, nor does it matter—the overriding consideration 

being not whose son he was, but who and what Wagner thought his 

father might have been. So consumed was he with the question of his own 

heritage that he may have held suspicions of a possible Jewish ancestry for 

his mother, too. 

Thus, it is suggested that Wagner became one of the most vocal 

antisemites in Europe as a means of focusing attention away from his own 

ethnicity. Sadly, there are many cases of such extreme examples of selfhatred. 

The idea of a fatherless hero appears at least five times in Wagner’s 

music dramas. Siegfried, Siegmund, Tristan, Parsifal, and Walther were all 

either unaware of who their fathers were or else had the father disappear or 

die when they were young. It is difficult to see this leitmotif reoccur so 

many times in Wagner’s operas and not believe that he was obsessed with a 

father’s absence. 

The idea for Wagner’s possible Jewish descent was exploited by 

detractors of his music, often in caricatures that appeared in the press, 

where he is shown with an excessively large nose designed to resemble the 

stereotypical “distinctive physiognomy” that Jews were accused of possessing. 

Such caricatures also burlesqued other unVolkish physicality in Wagner. 

He was short, large of head, and had an excitable nature. 

Theodore Adorno (1903-1959), a German-born Protestant intellectual, 

sociologist, philosopher, musicologist, and composer (of Jewish descent), 

wrote in In Search of Wagner (1981) that Wagner’s early depiction of the 

gnome Mime, an important character in The Ring, was so psychologically 

self-descriptive that Wagner withdrew and replaced it as soon as he realized 

what he had done—i.e., he had described some of his own physical characteristics: 

“[Mime] is small and bent, somewhat deformed and hobbling. His 

head is abnormally large, his face a dark ashen color and wrinkled, his eyes 

small and piercing, with red rims, his grey beard long and scrubby, his head 

bald . . .” Wagner’s description of Mime, which later also depicts him as

2011] ANTISEMITISM IN WAGNERIAN OPERA 245 

having an excitable nature, is a traditional antisemitic stereotype. How 

shocked Wagner must have been to see himself in Adorno’s description of 

the prototypical subhuman. 

MEISTERSINGER 

The opera, which takes place in medieval Nuremberg, tells of that 

city’s guild of singer/poets. 4 Entry into the guild was based on the applicant’s 

singing and his ability to craft the poetry on which his song would be 

based. Rules of text and song were strict, with little toleration for any deviation 

from orthodoxy. 

Wagner’s opera was an autobiographical roman à clef in which the 

genius-hero, Walther—Wagner’s depiction of himself—breaks the rules of 

song construction but creates masterpieces. The villain, Sixtus Beckmesser, 

represents Wagner’s archenemy, the forces that insist on adherence to doctrine. 

Beckmesser, who is not a Jew and who could not have been a member 

of the guild if he were, is an accumulation of nineteenth-century antisemitic 

clichés, the personification of every unsavory aspect about Jews espoused 

by Wagner. 

Specifically, Wagner believed that Jews shuffle and stagger, their eyes 

squint, they are belligerent, designing, and unscrupulous—all characteristics 

that Beckmesser displays in the course of the opera. Furthermore, and 

most important to the character of Beckmesser, is his absolute deficiency of 

musical talent, his inability to craft poetry, and his lack of metric or rhythmic 

sensitivity, any one of which should have made him unfit to be a member 

of the guild. 

4. Between the 14th and 16th centuries, Mastersingers generally belonged to 

the artisan and trading classes of German towns. The earliest Mastersinger school 

was in Mainz. Others were established in Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Wurzburg, Zurich, 

Prague, and Nuremberg, the latter under the leadership of Hans Sachs, who is a 

central figure in Wagner’s opera. The Nuremberg Mastersinger school became the 

most famous school in the 16th century, by which time such schools had spread all 

over Germany to include Magdeburg, Breslau, Görlitz, and Danzig. Each guild had 

various classes of members, ranging from beginner to Meister, who were poets 

skilled in writing new melodies as well as new verses to already composed melodies. 

The singing was done without accompaniment and with rules of the art set 

down in the lawbook of the guild. Meetings took place either in the town hall or, 

more frequently, in the town church. Three times a year, at Easter, Pentecost, and 

Christmas, special festivals and singing competitions were instituted. At such 

events, judges, called “Markers,” were appointed to criticize the competitors and 

note their offenses against the rules. In Meistersinger, this is the role of Sixtus 

Beckmesser.


Wagner’s view on the Jew’s ability to contribute to the world of culture 

is described in his essay “Jewishness in Music”: 5 He writes, “In this 

language and this art the Jew can produce only imitative sounds and counterfeit 

goods—he cannot write truly eloquent poetry or create works of true 

art.” 

Elsewhere in this essay, Wagner writes, “If the Jew [is] incapable of 

articulating his feelings and intuitions through artistic speech, how much 

more incapable he must be of articulating them through song.” Yet, like the 

Jew who, in Wagner’s eyes, used devious and unscrupulous practices to 

gain entry into German society, Beckmesser has somehow become a member 

of the guild of singers, though how he passed the entrance examination 

at some previous time is incomprehensible. 

Unlike every other guild member, Beckmesser has no craft but earns 

his living as the town notary. Despite his inadequacies, he has become a 

Marker, measuring the worth of potential members for the guild and judging 

the merit of aspiring candidates. He criticizes the slightest deviation 

from doctrine, and is the very thing that Wagner hates, namely a critic. On 

this matter, it is noted that an early name for the character of Sixtus 

Beckmesser was “Veit Hanslich,” almost a duplicate of Wagner’s nemesis, 

Eduard Hanslick, the so-called “Bismarck of critics.” The name change to 

Sixtus Beckmesser occurred very early in the creative cycle, but the fact 

that Wagner even considered this humiliation for a man he regarded as an 

archenemy is notable. Beside the fact that Wagner’s detested Hanslick 

because of his negative criticisms about Wagner’s music, equally noteworthy 

is the fact that Hanslick’s mother was Jewish. 

It is in Beckmesser’s singing style that the most revealing picture 

makes itself known, for what he sings and how he sings it is a parody of the 

rhythms and vocal inflections of synagogue chant. Further, it is music that 

is very high—far too high, in fact, for the bass voice specified by Wagner. 

It is an example of the effeminate high voice that parodied the imagined 

result of castration, which, in the mind of the ill informed, was confused 

with circumcision. 

Beckmesser’s performance as a poet singer is so outrageously incompetent 

that the reactions to him from the citizens of Nuremberg range from 

cynical disrespect to outright ridicule. His ardent but pathetic serenading of 

the wrong woman leads to a riot. And he is a thief as well, stealing a poem 

that he uses as the text for his own song. But even in this he fails because, 

in Wagner’s eyes, Beckmesser cannot be a musical person even when given 

5. The English title is often given as “Judaism in Music.” But Wagner’s intent 

was to describe alleged negative Jewish characteristics, not theological details, 

which is the implication given by “Judaism in Music.”


satisfactory raw material and coached in its proper use by a master. Here, 

the parallel to the unpoetic, inarticulate, and unmusical Jew is 

unambiguous. 

Finally, there is the matter of Beckmesser’s participation in a song 

contest that directly challenges Walther, the opera’s hero. Beckmesser’s 

purpose in this foolish act, which results in further humiliation for him, is 

shaped by the contest’s prize being the beautiful daughter of a wealthy fellow 

guild member; the image of Beckmesser is that of a talentless and 

incompetent older man having sexual pretensions for a young, pure German 

maiden as well as a lust for wealth. This description summarizes Wagner’s 

opinion of Jews. 

The characteristics exhibited in Beckmesser generally pass unnoticed 

by contemporary audiences, mostly because our generation has little experience 

with and hardly any memory of coded nineteenth-century antisemitism. 

The heritage of the Shoah has gone far to desensitize us to all but the 

most naked, uncamouflaged, and flagrant antisemitic actions. Our sensitivity 

to how the German world saw Jews at the time of the premiere of Meistersinger 

has become clouded, unfamiliar, and distorted by time, making it 

difficult for the contemporary world to recognize the subtle characteristics 

of coded antisemitism. For example, we no longer remember the Grimm 

fairy tale, “The Jew in the Thornbush,” 6 which appeared in 1815 though 

derived from a story dating from 1618. Theodore Adorno claimed that 

Wagner identified the character of Beckmesser with the “Jew in the Thorn- 

Bush,” though his assertion is disputed. 7 It is interesting to note that those 

who quarrel with Adorno’s contention have neither experience in the details 

of pre 20th-century antisemitism or exposure to antisemitic theater. 

Early performances of Meistersinger suggest that its reception was not 

uniformly positive. There were hostile demonstrations, but it is not clear if 

these were because of Wagner’s essay “Jewishness in Music,” the opera as 

a whole, the composer, or the character of Sixtus Beckmesser. But it was 

the Jews who were blamed for the disturbances when the audiences were 

said to be full of “distinctive physiognomies”—once again, the nose— 

“ready “to take their revenge on [Wagner].” Wagner’s wife, Cosima, wrote 

that “the [Jews] are spreading a story . . . that ‘Beckmesser’s Song’ is an old 

6. See Pat Pinsent, “After Fagin: Jewishness and Children’s Literature,” in 

Stanley E. Porter and Brook W. R. Pearson, Christian Jewish Relations Through 

the Centuries (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 311-328. 

7. See Ritchie Robertson, ed., The German Jewish Dialogue: An Anthology of 

Literary Texts, 1749-1793 (Oxford University Press, first published as Oxford 

World’s Classics, 1999), 63-67; “The Jew in the Thorn-Bush” (1815).


Jewish song that R[ichard] was trying to ridicule. In consequence [there 

was] some hissing in the second act.” 

Wagner’s antisemitic subtlety in Meistersinger is matched by his cunning 

in depicting Jewish characteristics in The Ring. In that monumental 

music drama he would employ all of the artifacts used to characterize 

Beckmesser and add a few more, including references to the blood libel and 

the dangers of race mixing. 

THE RING 

It is possible to tell the story of The Ring, but the collection of characters, 

plots, and subplots make it difficult to understand. There are gods, 

goddesses, giants, gnomes who live beneath the earth, mermaid-like creatures 

living in the Rhine, mortals, and other roles difficult to categorize. 

The Ring is a pagan tale of sorcery and incest that presents an incomprehensible 

mythology as a rational philosophy for the world, but it is 

strong enough stuff to allow the modern listener to become drunk in its 

embrace. Rarely has the art-loving world been presented with such a deceit 

as this attempt at a complete work of art, for it is a tangle of falsehoods and 

pathetic arrogance run amok, where trivial opinions are made into ponderous 

utterances, and bankrupt personal pursuits are elevated to matters of 

universal significance. Like every other written utterance of Wagner, The 

Ring is largely egocentric. But here it is of such proportions that it forms a 

stage work in which Wagner’s fantasies were transformed into the future of 

the German people. 

Excluding those few characters who are neutral, the personalities of 

the drama fall into two groups having opposite characteristics. One such 

group is the “Volk,” roughly translated as “the race” or “the nation,” but not 

“the common people.” The other is the “outsider,” who differs from the 

Volk in many specifics. 

Wagner assigns various characteristics to the good Volk, and then displays 

the opposite attributes as present in the evil outsiders. One such characteristic 

is that the Volk walk in a poised and confident manner, while the 

outsider staggers and stumbles. This stage device is derived from the medieval 

superstition that Jews had goat feet. In the Middle Ages, the billy goat 

was presented as a symbol of satanic lechery and the devil’s most usual 

disguise. The Jews, believed to be Satan’s minions, were also accused of 

having the same attribute. That the Jew’s feet were shod in public was interpreted 

as using the cloak of civilization to disguise his corruption. This 

acceptance of Jewish deviltry gave rise to the concept that the Jewish foot 

could not function at a normal gait; the Jew stumbled and staggered. In The 

Ring, the gnomes walk in this fashion while the Volk are surefooted, a


characteristic also seen in the stumbling of Beckmesser as contrasted with 

the graceful dancing of the townspeople in Meistersinger. 

In Sander Gilman’s The Jew’s Body (1991), further significance is 

given to the Jew’s feet. They became a source of disease, and the pace at 

which Jews walked was perceived as a sign of their affliction. The seventeenth-century 

Orientalist John Schudt commented that the crooked feet of 

the Jews made them physically inferior and, ultimately, the general belief 

about Jews’ feet influenced liberal efforts to include them in the modern 

state. This is particularly true with military service, where it was believed 

that Jews would be worthless as soldiers. In Austria, for example, weak feet 

were said to be the main reason Jews inducted into the military were subsequently 

detached. 

Another example of a characteristic with hidden antisemitic meaning is 

that of vocal patterns. Wagner’s formulation of a large-scale male and 

female voice, for example, the “heroic tenor,” is used for the Volk, whereas 

the outsiders sing in distinguishing non-Volkish ways. The gnomes in The 

Ring have high and piercing voices, the same coded message for the confusion 

between castration and circumcision found in Meistersinger, as well as 

a related claim connecting circumcision with effeminacy in the Jewish 

male. Thus, the Volk sing with heroic qualities while the outsider screams 

in a high-pitched, effeminate voice. 

Going beyond the visual and acoustic, Wagner employs the allegory of 

smell to evoke images of character. Sulphurous fumes and the noxious 

stenches that emanate from the outsider often accompany them. The central 

theme of this coded idea is especially despicable because it is derived from 

the belief of the “Jewish stench,” or “foetor Judaicus.” 8 

The assertion that the Jew has a distinctive and unpleasant odor is a 

particularly grave accusation, first because of the origin alleged to be the 

stench’s cause, and second because of the several ways Jews were said to 

act in order to eliminate it. Common belief during the Middle Ages associated 

good spirits with emitting a pleasant fragrance while evil spirits, particularly 

Satan and his minions, gave forth an obnoxious stench. For example, 

when the coffin of St. Stephen, the protomartyr, was opened, his body was 

said to have filled the air with a sweet fragrance that insinuated the odor of 

sanctity. 9 In the case of the Jews, the stink was said to be a punishment for 

8. For a survey of this degrading medieval superstition, see Jay Geller, 

“(G)nos(e)ology: The Cultural Construction of the Other,” chap. 10 in People of 

the Body, ed. Howard Eilberg Schwartz (Albany, NY: State University of New 

York, 1992), 243-282. 

9. See Stephen the Deacon, Protomartyr, in http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/ 

1226.shtml.


their alleged crimes, which included accusations of host desecration and 

deicide. 

The Jews were believed to have two ways to eliminate the smell, one 

of which involved murder and cannibalism; it was said that Jews killed 

Christian children to obtain their blood for ritual purposes, one of which 

was said to occur during the Passover Seder. It was alleged that Jews consumed 

cups of this blood as a way to alleviate the Jewish stench. The other 

choice was acceptance of baptism. A direct quote from the time states that 

“the water of baptism carried off the Jews’ odor” and that this left them 

with a fragrance “sweeter than that of ambrosia floating upon the heads 

touched by the sanctified oil.” 

This accusation went beyond those expressed in the extreme anti-Jewish 

rhetoric of Martin Luther, causing him to say, “So long as we use violence 

and slander, saying that [the Jews] use the blood of Christians to get 

rid of their stench . . ., what can we expect of them?” 10 

Another discriminatory feature used by Wagner is that of vision. 11 

Poor eyesight is a class attribute that was never applied to anyone but Jews. 

The medieval view was that Jews were blind to Christianity, that the synagogue 

was veiled. Statues of a blindfolded woman, an allegory representing 

“the synagogue defeated,” still decorate churches in Europe; one stands 

today in an alcove on the exterior of Strasbourg’s cathedral, and postcards 

of it may be purchased at nearby shops. This notion eventually was concretized 

as weak eyes, which, among other things, caused squinting and blinking, 

characteristics that are found in the outsider. Wagner carried the idea of 

good vision of the Volk to a higher dimension in suggesting that they recognize 

each other by glance alone, and can “see” the outsider as being 

different. 

Finally, in The Ring, Wagner gives coded messages about the dangers 

of race mixing. The character Hagen, who has a gnome father but a Volkish 

mother, bears no good maternal characteristics. Instead, he retains the 

depraved character of his father, namely that of a liar, usurper, and villainous 

murderer. But his racially pure counterpart, Siegfried, the product of an 

incestuous twin brother-sister relationship, is an idealized hero who is hand- 

10. The statement appears in Martin Luther’s pamphlet, Dass Jesus ein 

Geborner Jude Sei, and is contained in the online Jewish Encyclopedia article on 

Martin Luther under the pamphlet’s title. 

11. See Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination 

(Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), chap. 1, “The Eyes of the 

Volk.” Here, Weiner discusses the importance of vision as it appears in Wagner’s 

antisemitic writings.


some, honest, virtuous, and brave, and whose most significant flaw is that 

he is too trusting of strangers. 

It is often argued that every representation of a negative physical characteristic 

should not automatically be interpreted as an antisemitic statement. 

This is a perceptive and valuable criticism, but not as applied to these 

five specifics, none of which are in the least extreme. As Paul Lawrence 

Rose said in Wagner: Race and Revolution, “If Wagner, with the supreme 

artist’s infallible intuition, never intruded his racialist theories into his 

works of art, this does not mean that the art is free of racist content. It 

simply means that Wagner was too subtle an artist to reduce his operas to 

the level of political tracts.” 

While it would be possible to level a criticism of overreaction were 

there to be only one or two instances where Wagner’s utterances could be 

confused with coded antisemitic statements, the presence of five specifics— 

feet, smell, voice, sight, and race mixing, as found in three of the four 

operas of The Ring—defies the laws of probability. I suggest that The Ring, 

with the exception of Valkyrie, is an anthology of Jew hatred from first note 

to last. 

NON-WAGNER OPERAS 

Other than Wagner, negative stereotypes of Jews in opera are rare. 

Richard Strauss’s portrayal of five Jews in Salome shows quarreling, complaining, 

and whining men. Furthermore, four of the Jews are high tenors, 

which gives an especially shrill quality to their singing. As Sander Gilman 

has pointed out, 12 in the latter part of the nineteenth century, high voices 

were associated with castration, which, in the mind of the ill informed, was 

synonymous with circumcision. 13 

Sergei Prokofiev’s opera, Betrothal in a Monastery (La Duenna), 

based on an eighteenth-century play, La Duenna, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan 

(1751-1816), contains the individual, Isaac Mendoza, a Jew portrayed 

in a negative fashion. But this would be very much out of character for 

Prokofiev, who was not an antisemite. His Overture on Yiddish Themes was 

written in New York for his conservatory colleagues in the touring Jewish 

12. Sander Gilman is Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences 

at Emory University, where he is the director of the Program in Psychoanalysis as 

well as the University’s Health Sciences Humanities Initiative. In 2007 he was 

appointed professor, Institute in the Humanities, Birkbeck College (London) and a 

visiting fellow of the new Institute of Advanced Studies, Warwick University, UK. 

13. Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, Chapman, and 

Hall, 1991).


musical ensemble Zimro, and was based on Jewish-style melodic material 

given to him by Simeon Bellison, clarinetist with the ensemble and later 

principal clarinet with the New York Philharmonic. Betrothal in a Monastery’s 

antisemitic details come from Sheridan’s play in which Mendoza, a 

central character, gives up his Jewish faith in order to marry a rich Christian 

girl. Jack D. Durant, in his 1975 study of Sheridan, depicts Mendoza as “a 

repulsive, fortune-seeking Jew,” on the basis of the play’s characterization 

of Mendoza. 14 

The Tales of Hoffmann, an opera by the composer Jacques Offenbach 

(who was Jewish), makes an unfortunate reference to the bankruptcy of “the 

Jew Elias,” who never appears in the opera. The implication is that Elias’s 

bankruptcy may have been deliberate to avoid the repayment of a debt. This 

operatic characterization is due either to the surrealist, E. T. A. Hoffmann, 

three of whose stories were used as the basis of Offenbach’s opera, or the 

librettists Jules and Pierre Barbier. Later in the drama, the shadowless 

“Schlemiel” makes his entrance. This character, whose name, Schlemiel, is 

a Yiddish word (derived from the Hebrew congnate Shlumi’el) that 

describes a hopelessly incompetent person, a bungler. The name, a synonym 

for any unlucky person, is mentioned in an 1813 novella, Peter 

Schlemiehl’s Remarkable Tale, by the German Romantic writer Adelbert 

von Chamisso (1781-1838). 15 In a letter to his brother, Chamisso explained 

that the word was “a Hebrew name meaning ‘the one who loved God’ . . . 

[and is a] term Jews use for clumsy or unhappy people.” Whatever the 

source of Chamisso’s understanding, there appears to be no malevolence in 

his or the opera’s use of the Schlemiel character. 

Rossini’s opera, Moses in Egypt, is said by Stendahl to have a chorus 

with “nasal intonation.” But this is an opera with which Stendahl has had no 

experience. No conclusions are possible without personal, first-hand understanding; 

even listening to a recorded performance is insufficient. One must 

see the event in its natural setting to experience the context in which such 

alleged stereotypical images may be presented. Stendahl’s comment is 

unclear, and by “nasal intonation” he may be referring to a classic 

antisemitic assertion about Jewish noses. 

Other operas that have one or more Jewish characters (or subthemes)—often 

portrayed sympathetically—include Gounod’s The Queen 

of Sheba, Halevi’s La Juive, 16 Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz, Saint-Saens’ Sam- 

14. Jack D. Durant, “Sheridan and Language,” in Sheridan Studies, eds. James 

Morwood and David Crane (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 96-113. 

15. Adelbert von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihl’s wundersame Geschichte, 1814, 

ed. Friedrich Heinrich Karl La Motte-Fouqué (Nürnberg: J. L. Schrag). 

16. The English title of the opera is frequently given as The Jewess, which is an


son and Delilah, Sullivan’s Ivanhoe, and Verdi’s Nabucco. 

In effect, it is generally assumed—in fact, it is asserted as possible 

evidence of Wagner’s non-hostile view of Jews—that, unlike the few cases 

mentioned above, nowhere are Jews present or even remarked upon in 

Wagner’s operas. The evidence presented above, however, contradicts this 

assertion. 

SOME OF HIS BEST FRIENDS . . . 

Wagner’s antisemitism is sometimes said to be exaggerated. Manfred 

Eger, then director of the Richard Wagner museum in Bayreuth and organizer 

of a 1985 exhibition on Wagner and the Jews, admits that some of 

Wagner’s utterances “could have been attributed to the National Socialist’s 

violently antisemitic publication, Der Stuermer, 17 but adds that “several of 

[Wagner’s] colleagues and friends were Jews.” 

The exhibition brochure stressed Wagner’s supposed appreciation of 

Jewish composers such as Mendelssohn and Halevy. The reference to Mendelssohn 

as a Jewish composer is the worst possible example for Eger to 

have employed in this context since doing so, even with the best of intentions 

and without malevolence, is an example of racial antisemitism. Mendelssohn, 

as it is frequently forgotten, became a Lutheran Protestant at the 

age of four, when his father, Abraham, had the entire family, including the 

children, converted to Christianity. And in Wagner’s eyes—as well as the 

eyes of many antisemites, including Hitler’s—there was no such thing as a 

former Jew. For Eger to refer to Mendelssohn as a Jew is little different 

from the National Socialist argument that Jewishness was such a sufficient 

evil that even divesting oneself of it by conversion to Christianity was inadequate 

for entry into German society; i.e., Jewishness was perceived as a 

ugly stereotype that needs to be eliminated from English usage. A more suitable 

translation would be The Jewish Woman. While many languages enforce a gender 

distinction, English does not. In medieval literature, the term “Jewess” was used 

synonymously with “witch,” or “sorceress.” Further, such a use marginalizes Jewish 

women, since no one uses gender-based terms to describe female members of 

other religions. It would be ludicrous to hear the term “Protestantess,” or 

“Catholicess,” though the term “Mormoness” does appear from time to time. In the 

case of animals, the terms “lioness,” “tigress,” and “pantheress” suggest an aura of 

feline savagery for a Jewess. In Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, the term, when referring 

to Rebecca, is generally pejorative. 

17. Der Stuermer was a weekly Nazi newspaper and a central element of the 

Nazi propaganda machine. The founder and publisher was Julius Streicher. At the 

Nuremberg trials after the war, Streicher was convicted of crimes against humanity 

and executed.


genetic disfigurement, a chromosomal defect, that was retained for several 

generations. 

After conversion, Mendelssohn was no more Jewish than Madeleine 

Albright; the late Cardinal Lustiger of France; the 20th century’s most 

important operatic baritone, the late Leonard Warren; and one of the 20th 

century’s most important historical musicologists, Otto Erich Deutsch, 18 all 

of whom happen to have been born Jews. Using the word “Jew” in reference 

to Mendelssohn shows how futile conversion to Christianity is in 

achieving social equality. 

The particulars of Wagner’s alleged friendship with Jews were offered 

by Eger as evidence, along with the fact that Wagner had an affair with a 

Jewish writer, Judith Gautier, that he was not an antisemite (a questionable 

piece of reasoning, which asserts that sex between Jew and non-Jew is evidence 

that the non-Jew is a philosemite). Wagner’s rages are suggested only 

to be resentment of the successes of the Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, 

whose operas were then triumphs that today defy explanation. 

Eger suggested that antisemitism in Bayreuth was eliminated, and 

cited as evidence the fact that the 1983 season had three Jewish conductors, 

one of whom, Daniel Barenboim, has made public statements about his perception 

of both Wagner’s antisemitism and its presence in the music dramas. 

Barenboim stated at one point that “Wagner did not write antisemitic 

music,” and at another, that “. . . knowing [Wagner’s] views on antisemitism 

and on Judaism you can interpret certain figures as such . . . But the 

pieces [i.e., the music dramas] themselves are not that.” 

It is disappointing to hear such a shallow interpretation of Wagner’s 

music dramas from a man so musically well schooled. That he has conducted 

performances of The Ring and saw no further than the superficial 

layer is appalling. In effect, Barenboim appears to be entirely ignorant of 

the antisemitic details of the Wagner that he conducts, and a hypocritical 

Jewish apologist for Wagner’s Jew-hating attitude. 

As for Mr. Eger, I am as heartened by his outstretched hand and genuinely 

positive effort as I am disappointed by his “some of my best friends 

18. See Gitta Deutsch’s biography of Otto Deutsch, The Red Thread (Riverside, 

CA: Ariadne Press, 1996), for a discussion of her father’s conversion to Christianity. 

Both Deutsch and his daughter are buried in Vienna’s Central Cemetery, he in 

an Ehrengrab (grave of honor). This distinction is granted by certain German, 

Swiss, and Austrian cities to one of their citizens for extraordinary services or 

achievements in their lifetime. If there are no descendants or institutions to care for 

the grave site, the communities or cities will take responsibility for the grave and 

for financing its care. Many honorary graves serve to document cultural history, for 

example, when a cemetery containing artistically notable graves is closed and the 

graves are relocated at public expense.


are Jews” naïveté. It is true that Wagner had a number of long-term Jewish 

supporters, including conductor Hermann Levi, and pianists Karl Tausig 

and Joseph Rubenstein. But dealings with these men can only be characterized 

as something similar to keeping pets in one’s home. 

Levi was publicly and privately abused and humiliated by Wagner at 

every opportunity, which included an insistence that Levi’s conversion to 

Christianity was a prerequisite to his conducting of Parsifal. In the face of 

this, Levi behaved like a lapdog, appreciative of any attention. 

A letter from Levi to his rabbi father demonstrates what a spineless 

individual the son must have been, not only to tolerate the abuse, but to 

express such noble sentiments about Wagner. He calls him “the best and 

noblest of men,” offers the view that Wagner’s antisemitic opinions 

“[sprang] from the noblest motives,” and ends his pathetic letter with the 

statement that “The most wonderful thing I have experienced in my life is 

the privilege of being close to such a man, and I thank God for it every 

day.” 

Wagner had several reasons to deal with pianist Tausig. First, he was a 

key fund-raiser for Bayreuth; second, he acted as a foil to the outrage 

voiced by Wagner’s Jewish supporters after “Jewishness in Music” was 

reprinted. Tausig was naïve enough to be content with Wagner’s 1869 letter 

to him suggesting that if Jews would simply understand his essay in the 

proper spirit, all would be well. 

Rubenstein may have been deranged. When he first arrived to meet 

Wagner, he was accompanied by his personal physician, who advised Wagner 

of his instability; Rubenstein requested that Wagner offer him salvation 

from his Jewishness. He came, however, from a wealthy family, played the 

piano exceptionally well, promised financial support for the transcription of 

Wagner’s scores, became his mascot and house Jew, and was exploited, 

manipulated, and insulted behind his back by both Wagner and Cosima. 

It is painful to report the bootlicking reactions of some Jews to Wagner. 

Levi, Tausig, and Rubenstein were not the only Jewish apologists for 

his antisemitic views, but they are, typically, the ones brought up to show 

that Wagner’s loathing of Jews as a class was exaggerated. Wagner, however, 

was prepared to enter into a symbiotic relationship with anyone, 

providing that person could be of use, and that he [Wagner] would be 

toadied to. 

An international conference on Wagner and the Jews was held in the 

Bavarian city of Bayreuth in August 1998. Sponsored by the universities of 

Tel Aviv, Heidelberg, and Bayreuth, the event was funded by the Bayreuth 

Festival, the German government, and Israel’s Howard Gilman Israel Culture 

Foundation. The matter of the open-mindedness of the symposium


became a sore spot even before it began, because of the apparently deliberate 

failure to invite Hartmut Zelinski, author of the 1976 book, Richard 

Wagner: Ein Deutsches Thema, that did so much to open the discussion of 

Baryeuth’s Nazi past. It is suggested that the rejection of Zelinski was due 

to his claims that Wagner’s antisemitism was expressed as part and parcel 

of his operas. Zelinski’s opinion contradicted and embarrassed those who 

want to separate Wagner’s music dramas from his expressions of Jew 

hatred. 

Other Wagner critics not invited to attend the symposium were the 

composer’s great-grandson, Gottfried Wagner, and Mark Weiner, author of 

Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination. The only known anti- 

Wagnerian writer to be invited to speak, an act now regretted by the 

organizers of the event, was Paul Lawrence Rose, author of Wagner: Race 

and Revolution. His presentation was repeatedly interrupted by one of the 

conference organizers, who told Rose that he would not be permitted to 

address questions about certain topics on the grounds that other speakers 

had thoroughly discussed these points. His paper was denounced in hysterical 

terms because it argued that Wagner’s antisemitism was actually 

inscribed musically within the operas. Clearly, such attitudes changed the 

nature of what was supposed to be a scholarly conference to that of a political 

convention. 

Criticisms were also leveled at the symposium’s structure of control. 

One Israeli participant became so disturbed by the lack of any open discussion 

of the problems of Wagner/Hitler/Holocaust and the violation of academic 

freedom that was imposed on the conference by the Bayreuth 

organizers that he walked out publicly and in protest on the second evening 

of the event. 

The conference, it seems, had a prearranged agenda—i.e., to secure the 

lifting of the Israeli ban on Wagner and then to use this as a certificate of 

good health in Germany. In this way, Bayreuth would be redeemed, sanitized, 

and restored to its prime position in German culture. At the symposium’s 

conclusion, a public invitation materialized inviting Wolfgang 

Wagner, the composer’s grandson, to a 1999 Tel Aviv conference on Wagner, 

along with the suggestion that his visit might be celebrated with a public 

performance of Wagner’s music in Israel. 

AN OLD DEBATE IS RENEWED 

Today, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) does not play Wagner’s 

music, though it is incorrect to suggest that they never did. Arturo 

Toscanini included the preludes to Acts I and III of Lohengrin, Jascha Horenstein 

the overture to Tannhauser, and Bronislav Szulc the overture to the


Flying Dutchman, all before 1938. 19 

The ban on performance of Wagner’s music by the Palestine Orchestra 

(later the Palestine Philharmonic and, still later, the IPO) began on Nov. 12, 

1938. The closing work of the program was to have been the prelude to 

Meistersinger. Following the intermission of that concert, the chairman of 

the orchestral association announced that “because of the antisemitic 

excesses and disturbances in Germany,” the Wagner work had been 

removed from the program by public demand, and Weber’s overture to his 

opera Oberon had been substituted. 

The most significant factor in this action was due, not to Wagner, but 

to Kristallnacht, which had taken place only three days earlier, November 

9, 1938. It would appear that the use of the name “Nuremberg” and its 

connection with both Nazi party conventions and anti-Jewish laws was the 

aggravating factor—i.e., the restrictive ordinances were made by the Nazis 

in that city in explicit deference to Wagner’s opera. As such, this was not a 

wholesale condemnation of Wagner by the management or the personnel of 

the Palestine Orchestra, and for the fourth concert of the season, the orchestra 

played the “Bacchanal” from Wagner’s Tannhauser, though not in Palestine 

but on tour in Egypt. From November 12, 1939, until today, however, 

with one well-publicized exception, the IPO has performed no music of 

Wagner. 

That exception occurred in 1981, when the conductor, Zubin Mehta, 

tried to heal the wounds with an unscheduled Wagner encore. Some orchestral 

musicians refused to participate; many older members of the audience 

left before the work—an excerpt from Tristan and Isolde—was played; and 

there was considerable commotion during the encore from those who 

remained. Unwilling to repeat the reaction, and aware of a poll in which 

50% (later 30%) of those sampled were against the playing of Wagner’s 

music, performances of his works by the IPO were put aside. 20 

On June 7, 1998, the English version of the Israeli newpaper Ha’aretz 

reported emotional outbursts at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center, where 

19. The information about the Palestine Orchestra was taken from the book The 

History of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Researched and Remembered by Uri 

Töplitz, 1913-2006 (Tel Aviv: Sifiat Poalim Publishing House, translated from 

Hebrew. Töplitz, who immigrated to Israel from Germany in 1936, was one of the 

orchestra’s original founders; until 1970, he held the chair of principal flutist with 

the orchestra. He was the son of one of the 20th century’s most important mathematicians, 

Otto Töplitz (1881-1940). 

20. In 2001, Daniel Barenboim conducted an unadvertised excerpt from Tristan 

and Isolde as an encore at the Israel Festival with the Berlin Staatskapelle. For a 

BBC newscast of the event and the audience reactions, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ 

hi/entertainment/1428634.stm.


a symposium entitled “Wagner: An Artist or a Symbol” was being held. 

Sponsored by the New Israel Opera (NIO) and attended by the composer’s 

great-grandson, Dr. Gottfried Wagner, the discussion pitted Zalman Shoval, 

chairman of the NIO’s board, against Asher Fisch, NIO music director, who 

wished to perform Wagner’s operas in Israel. When Fisch, on piano, tried to 

accompany a baritone in a monologue from The Flying Dutchman, dozens 

of people left the hall in protest, shouting, “This is unthinkable!,” “Rape!,” 

and “In the name of culture, you are patronizing everyone!” 

For many music lovers, the emotions associated with the performance 

of Wagner’s music have a built-in safety valve, invoked with variations of 

the following statement of justification: “Certainly Wagner was an 

antisemite. However, Schubert’s alleged pedophilia does not change my 

perspective of his music’s beauty, nor does Mozart’s scatology, Beethoven’s 

poor hygiene, Delius’s sexual promiscuity, or Grainger’s whipping 

fetish. Besides, other composers also held loathsome antisemitic views. So, 

despite Wagner’s offensive declarations, his opinions are irrelevant to an 

admiration of his music, and one must not permit his abhorrent personal 

creed to be an impediment to an appreciation of his musical genius.” 

Yet, in 2010, the intended action of the Israeli Chamber Orchestra has 

resurrected a debate over whether it is appropriate for an Israeli orchestra to 

play the music of Richard Wagner, and in Germany no less. It seems that 

Katherina Wagner, the German composer’s great-granddaughter, sought to 

visit Israel to formally invite the Cameri Israeli Chamber Orchestra to inaugurate 

the 2010 Bayreuth Festival in Germany—an annual event promoting 

Wagner’s music. But when her intentions were leaked to the media, a maelstrom 

of anger arose and she canceled her visit. Later, the Cameri 

announced its intentions to perform at a venue other than the Bayreuth 

Festpielhaus—as if that changes the picture—and it would neither rehearse 

nor play Wagner’s music in Israel. For an Israeli orchestra to actually go to 

Germany to perform Wagner’s works in Bayreuth, where the Nazis glorified 

him, is both a disgrace and a public humiliation. 

For those opposed to the playing of Wagner’s music in Israel, the situation 

became more uncertain when the Israeli government approved the creation 

of an Israeli Wagner Society, which has been accepted into the 

International Association of Wagner Societies. 

The new association will be headed by an Israeli lawyer, Yonatan 

Livni, who said, “It’s time to allow those who desire to hear Wagner’s 

music in Israel to be able to do so . . . Karl Orff, and even Richard Strauss, 

who was president of the Reich’s State Music Bureau, are played in Israel. 

So why is it prohibited to play Wagner, who died years before the Nazis 

came to power? This boycott no longer makes sense.”


One can only wonder about Livni’s calculations, which enabled him to 

say, “It’s time to allow . . .” For some, that time will never be. 

BAREINBOIM REDUX 

Having touched on Daniel Barenboim’s blind eye to the antisemitism 

that is part and parcel of both Meistersinger and The Ring—but that he 

denies exists—there are aspects of his Israel bashing that warrant mentioning, 

not the least of which is his silence on the matter of anti-Israel 

violence. 

Barenboim is a first-class musical talent, well schooled, and with technique 

and temperament to burn. Those skills are combined with a worldclass 

sense of political irresponsibility and gross naiveté. In a recent concert 

of Music Without Borders held in Hamastan 21 at the Mathaf Cultural 

House, he led an ensemble of musicians from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, 

the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, and 

the Orchestre de Paris, saying, “We are playing this concert as a sign of our 

solidarity and friendship with the civil society of Gaza,” which he followed 

with his wishes for success of the recently signed agreement executed in 

Egypt by Hamas and Fatah. While the orchestral players waited late into the 

evening before just across the Egyptian border in nearby El Arish, Hamas 

officials almost sent the undertaking off the rails because they thought that 

the event would somehow be interpreted as a celebration of Osama bin 

Laden’s assassination, which the Hamas government had just publicly 

condemned. 

Global public opinion sees Barenboim as the epitome of tolerance, 

though his actions show a distinctly different face. For example, he refused 

to take part in Israel’s 60th-anniversary celebrations. And, in 2005, during a 

book-signing ceremony (a book coauthored with the late anti-Israel activist 

Edward Said), he refused to be interviewed by an Israeli army radio reporter 

because the reporter was wearing an IDF uniform. 

In 2002, Barenboim performed in Ramallah at the very time that terrorist 

groups were launching suicide attacks inside Israel. In 2008, he 

became the recipient of a Palestinian passport, an act approved by the former 

Hamas-led Palestinian government, and then he pledged allegiance to 

an antisemitic entity whose objective is the elimination of Israel. 

21. Hamastan is a derogative, newly coined term that merges “Hamas” and 

“-stan.” The term, which emerged during the days of Israel’s withdrawal from the 

Gaza Strip in 2005, is suggestive of Hamas’ Islamic ideology as well as its political 

ties with Iran. Since 2007, the term has been used to refer to its victory over Fatah 

in Gaza in the ongoing inter-Palestinian conflict.


Barenboim always claims to be promoting the “cause of peace,” 

though his behavior is the antithesis of that claim. For example, he made no 

protest when Hamas banned all musical instruments not mentioned in the 

Koran, and he also failed to object when a Palestinian youth orchestra was 

disbanded in Jenin because it had performed for Holocaust survivors in 

Israel. 

His silence in the face of attacks on Israelis speaks volumes. In August 

2003, while conducting a Concert for Peace in Spain with an Arab orchestra, 

a bus of the Jewish faithful returning from the Western Wall was blown 

up. Many infants were among the dead and injured. Instead of using the 

Spanish concert to denounce the massacre of Jews, he chose to remain 

silent. And, tragically, I can find no comments by him concerning the death 

of the Fogel family by Arabs from the village of Avrata, and which 

included a three-month-old infant with her throat cut. 

Note 

Performing Wagner’s music in an orchestra gives one no special 

insight into matters beyond a simple understanding of how the music goes. 

Orchestral players are specialists in the difficult task of performing specific 

orchestral parts, and while some go beyond that because of personal curiosity 

and intellectual interest, it is not part of the job. Even some conductors 

do not inquire beyond that printed in the orchestral score. A colleague of 

mine, who held a principal chair with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for 

30 years, knew very little of the characters or the plots of the operas that he 

performed so many times, though he carried off his role as a critical orchestral 

player brilliantly. In my own case, I have performed the Nutcracker 

ballet more than 600 times but have no idea what happens on stage except 

that mice are somehow involved, a fact deduced when a heavy mechanical 

mouse used for one production wandered off the stage, tumbled into the 

orchestra pit, glanced off my head and shoulder, and disabled me for several 

weeks. 

All this is by way of saying that though I have played a great deal of 

Wagner’s orchestral music over the years, the preparation of this article 

required considerable study. It was here that I benefited from the specialized 

research of some remarkably sophisticated historians and social scientists, 

many of whom have spent a great part of their adult lives plowing 

deep furrows in this gnarled, unpleasant, and distasteful territory. 

In addition to the brilliant Wagner: Race and Revolution of Paul Lawrence 

Rose, quoted from above (and with whom I had an exceptionally 

useful correspondence, some of which influenced my views about the Bayreuth 

conference of August 1998), I mention two other seminal research


efforts in this domain. They are Marc A. Weiner’s profound but disturbing 

book, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, and Barry Millington’s 

seminal article, “Is There Anti-Semitism in Die Meistersinger,” 22 

now summarized in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera. 

I honor and remember the late Uri Töplitz, retired principal flute of the 

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and a member of the group at the time of the 

first concert under Toscanini, for supplying me with details of the IPO’s 

history regarding the playing of Wagner’s music. 

My career as an orchestral player has been over for some years. But if 

I were still performing—being sensitized now to what I did not know 

then—I am not sure that I would be able to play any more of Wagner’s 

music, contractual obligations, its extraordinary beauty, fascinating architecture, 

and strong emotional effect notwithstanding. It has even become 

too painful to listen to it, and I am musically poorer because of this decision. 

But having lived through the period of the Shoah and seeing, from my 

safe haven in the America of my birth, where Wagner’s brand of thinking 

leads—and, more important, finding so much of that thinking coded into his 

music dramas—I do not wish to give such bigotry any further space in my 

life. Despite the music’s extraordinary richness, it is not worth the pain. 

I speak for no one but myself, and offer no opinions on what others 

should do. 

*Daniel Leeson retired from 30 years at IBM, then taught mathematics at De Anza 

Community College for an additional 15 years. A leading Mozart scholar with six 

books and some 100 published articles on the subject, Leeson has played professionally 

with major symphony orchestras. His interest in the history of antisemitism 

is long standing. 

22. Cambridge Opera Journal, 1991.

The Mosque at Rachel’s Tomb 

Shalva Weil* 

And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is 

Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar 

of Rachel’s grave unto this day. 

—Genesis 35:19-20 

The Biblical matriarch’s tomb, purportedly containing the bones of 

Rachel, has for many years now been a bone of contention. Last month, 

Palestinian youth hurled Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers guarding the 

tomb situated on the outskirts of Jerusalem on the road to Bethlehem. In 

February 2010, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had drawn up 

a list of Israeli holy sites to be included in the UN Educational Scientific 

and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) National Heritage list. The tomb, 

which is one of the holiest sites to Jews over the generations, was naturally 

included in the list, but instead, in October 2010, it was declared a mosque 

by UNESCO. Out of 58 member states, only the United States voted against 

the decision; 12 European and African countries abstained. 

The Tomb of Rachel marks the very spot where the Biblical matriarch 

Rachel died in childbirth on the road to Bethlehem. Muhammad al-Idrisi, 

the 12th-century Muslim geographer, wrote: “On the road between 

Bethlehem and Jerusalem is the Tomb of Rachel, the mother of Joseph and 

Benjamin.” The tomb has been the site of pilgrimage and prayer for Jews in 

the Diaspora for more than three thousand years. Throughout the centuries, 

Jews from all over the world visited the tomb, and sent funds to help 

renovate and maintain it. It was such a revered site that even Jews in farflung 

countries, as far away as India, longed to pray there and felt 

connected to the place. 

The tomb is of special significance to women, who used to pray there 

263


for a suitable marriage partner or the ability to give birth. Rachel’s birthday, 

which falls on the 11th day of the lunar month of Heshvan, has become a 

day of pilgrimage for thousands of Jewish women, who come from all over 

the country to pray for fertility for their loved ones or themselves. By an 

irony of history, this Hebrew date has also become a source of conflict. 

Rachel’s birthday coincides with the day on which Prime Minister Yitzhak 

Rabin was assassinated. In recent years, in an attempt to avoid 

commemorating the assassination of a left-wing political leader, many 

religious right-wing Jews have offered Rachel’s birthday as a “religious” 

alternative. It has thus come to pass that large sectors of Israeli society do 

not know when Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated but are reminded of 

Rachel’s death annually. 

As with many Jewish religious sites in Israel and elsewhere, and 

particularly with respect to tombs of patriarchs, prophets and great Rabbis, 

the site also had religious significance for members of other faiths. This was 

particularly well documented in the 15th century with descriptions of Jews, 

Muslims, and Christians frequenting the place. In 1615, Muhammad, Pasha 

of Jerusalem, gave the Jews exclusive rights to the tomb. In 1830, the 

Ottomans recognized the legal rights of the Jews to the site. When Sir 

Moses Montefiore purchased the site in 1841, he restored the tomb and 

added a small prayer hall for the Muslims. Christians wanted to take this 

over and build a church there. However, until 2000, the site remained 

predominantly Jewish. 

One of the lesser known historical facts is the connection between the 

Jews of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, and Rachel’s tomb. Inscribed 

on the wall was the following plaque: “This well was made possible 

through a donation from our esteemed brothers, the Bene Israel, who dwell 

in the city of Bombay, may the Lord bless that place. In honour of the 

whole congregation of Israel who come to worship at the gravestone for the 

tomb of our matriarch Rachel, may her memory rest in peace, amen! In the 

year 5625.” This lunar year is the equivalent of 1864. 

In 1859 the emissary Rabbi Eben Sapir from Jerusalem had stayed six 

months in Bombay in order to find out more about the “lost” tribes of Israel 

“who are called Bene Israel.” Sapir wrote: “And they knew that there are 

other Jews and the land of Israel, and Jerusalem, and the destruction of the 

Temple, and that when the Messiah comes they will be redeemed and 

gathered together in Jerusalem . . . . and they also give charity and 

donations to the poor of Israel and to messengers who come from Palestine 

for this purpose.” 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, while Jewish art in Palestine 

always portrayed Rachel’s tomb as one of the most important holy sites, the 

site began to be contested by Muslims, with the Wakf demanding control of

2011] THE MOSQUE AT RACHEL’S TOMB 265 

the place on the grounds that the tomb was part of a neighboring Muslim 

cemetery. After the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, the tomb was 

allocated to Jordan and Jews could no longer visit. During the Six Day War 

in 1967, after Israel occupied some Jordanian territory, the tomb once again 

became part of Israel. During the 1970s, when I used to visit the tomb of 

Rachel, the keeper of the small tomb was a Bene Israel Indian Jew from 

Bombay, who felt an historical affinity with the site because of his 

forefathers. 

In 1995, after the Oslo agreement, Bethlehem, with the exception of 

Rachel’s tomb, became part of the Palestinian Authority. The following 

year, the Israel Defence Forces, fearing a terrorist attack at the site, built a 

huge fortification round the previously modest tomb. In retaliation, the 

Palestinian Authority declared the place to be on Palestinian land and built 

on an Islamic mosque. During the second Intifada in 2000, there were 

intermittent attacks on the tomb with altercations between the IDF and 

Palestinian gunmen. Since then, there has been growing support for the idea 

launched by Al-Hayat al-Jadida, a Palestinian daily, that the site was a 

thousand year-old mosque by the name of the “Bilal ibn Rabah mosque” 

until, finally, UNESCO endorsed the idea. In a petition to UNESCO 

initiated on the internet, petitioners pointed out that Rachel’s Tomb was 

called Al-mawsu’ah al-filastiniyah in the Palestinian encyclopedia 

published after 1996, and also in Palestine, The Holy Land, a publication 

with an introduction by Yasser Arafat. They wrote: “In attempting to sever 

the Jewish cultural, religious, and natural heritage bond with the Tomb of 

the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb, UNESCO denies the history it is 

mandated to preserve, engages in a political maneuver designed to weaken a 

member UN nations, and undermines its own principles. . . . We demand 

that UNESCO, whose purpose it is to protect heritage, also protect Jewish 

heritage, rather than deny it.” 

It has thus come to pass that Rachel’s Tomb, which today is situated in 

Israel just in front of the “checkpoint” to Bethlehem, has become a symbol 

not just of fertility, but of disputed historical memory. 

*Shalva Weil is a senior researcher at the Research Institute for Innovation in 

Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She is a specialist in 

Indian Jewry and is the founding chair of the Israel-India Friendship Association. 

Reprinted by permission from ISN Insights. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current- 

Affairs/ISN-Insights/Detail?lng=en&ots627=fce62fe0-528d-4884-9cdf-283c282cf0 

b2&id=128699&contextid734=128699&contextid735=128314&tabid=128314

Journal of Contemporary 

Leftist Antisemitism? 

Mark Gardner* 

Routledge, the respected academic publishing house, has published a 

book review that is a depressing tour de force of contemporary high-brow 

leftist antisemitism. There has long been a sense of “anything goes” in such 

circles, and this review goes a long way to proving that—an impression that 

is only deepened by its carrying a “peer review integrity” logo. 

Worse still, the review provides further evidence of the convergence 

between the increasingly antisemitic anti-Zionism of parts of the left intelligentsia 

and the increasingly anti-Zionist antisemitism of American neo- 

Nazi ideologues. 

The damage is done. The only thing remaining is to see if Routledge 

and the editorial board responsible for the review belatedly distance themselves 

from it. 

The review is of James Petras’ book, War Crimes in Gaza and the 

Zionist Fifth Column in America. It shames the May 2011 edition of Routledge’s 

peer-reviewed Journal of Contemporary Asia, and is written by a 

former United Nations official, Frederic F. Clairmont. Both Petras and 

Clairmont, in addition to celebrity intellectual Noam Chomsky, are on the 

Journal’s editorial board. 

The Petras book, and its Journal review, present a conspiracy theory 

that has very little to do with traditional Asian themes, but fits resoundingly 

with the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century socialist linkage of 

Jews with capitalism, now updated and repackaged for twenty-first-century 

anti-capitalist discourse. Socialist antisemitism had nothing to do with biological 

racism, but exhibited striking resemblances to the subsequent 

national socialist propaganda that twinned “international Jewry” with 

American capitalism and British imperialism. Soviet antisemitism continued 

this lineage with its combined attacks on Zionism, finance capital, corporations, 

millionaires, and so on. Today, the trend continues, with far-left 

and far-right bastardization of the word “Zionist” providing the cornerstone, 

and the word “Jew” lurking in its shadow. 

Clairmont’s offending review in the Journal clearly derives from an 

earlier review by Clairmont, dated September 5, 2010, that can be read in 

full on James Petras’ Web site. The earlier review is the unexpurgated version: 

the Director’s Conspiracy Cut, as it were. 

The Routledge version avoids some of the trashier antisemitic aspects 

of the original. We can’t know if this editing was done by the editors of the 

267


Journal or the author, but whatever the case, it is a good representation of 

how the antisemitic aspects of contemporary anti-Zionist hysteria are airbrushed—as 

if the old antisemitic conspiracy theories would have been 

entirely accurate had they only coined their own linguistic obfuscation of 

the word “Jew.” 

Clairmont’s only point of contention with the Zionist Fifth Column 

book is that he believes Petras should not have used the terms “Zionist Fifth 

Column in America” and “Zionist Power Configuration,” but should rather 

have called it the “Zio-fascist complex,” “so as to throw into sharper relief 

the horrors of its being.” Clairmont’s contemplation resembles a 2009 posting 

by ex-Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke on Stormfront, the 

leading American neo-Nazi Web site, in which Duke asked his readers: 

Maybe one of you might have an idea to describe the matrix of power in 

America. 

Perhaps, the political, financial, media-Zionist matrix 

Or 

Just the Zionist media, political and financial matrix 

Or just the Zionist matrix, 

Or just the Zionist complex 

Any suggestions? 

Let’s work on this; we can create a whole new powerful term that sums 

up the core of Jewish extremist power in America and the world. 

It is most unlikely that this review will propel Journal readers to 

urgently warn their peers and students that the dangers of Zionism and 

Zionists are even worse than they had previously believed. Nevertheless, it 

is the insidious nature of such arguments, repeated time and again with 

varying degrees of extremism, that is the biggest danger. Over time, such 

incitement is increasingly able to masquerade as academic theory, especially 

when it is not simply unchallenged, but approved by an academic 

editorial board. 

Nevertheless, the similarity in belief and language between Stormfront 

and the Journal is more likely a reflection of David Duke having been 

seduced by James Petras et al.—by what they get away with saying—rather 

than the other way around. At any rate, both ideologies have reached the 

same point, inexorably borne by what is, at root, an antisemitic conspiracy 

narrative. 

The Routledge version seems at least (implicitly) cognizant of the dangers 

of sounding outwardly antisemitic. For example, it states, “. . . [Israeli] 

‘settlements’ are being funded by the ‘donations’ of Zionist finance,” 

whereas Clairmont’s original says, “. . . [Israeli] ‘settlements’ are being 

funded by the big money bags of Zionist finance capital . . .” Perhaps an

2011] CONTEMPORARY LEFTIST ANTISEMITISM? 269 

editor at the Journal realized that “the big money bags of Zionist finance 

capital” sounded more National Socialist brute than it did Revolutionary 

Socialist highbrow. Or perhaps Clairmont knew it himself. 

Then, in the next paragraph, there is another deletion of a phrase that is 

redolent of Nazi anti-capitalist antisemitism. The Routledge version says, 

“Excluding the huge German reparations, since 1950 Israel has received 

yearly some US $5 billion, and that in a land of about six million.” The 

original adds in a parenthetical after this statement: “(that is the private 

sector payouts from international Jewry plus the US government),” and follows 

by saying, “Any move to halt this . . . would be knifed by the Zionist 

cabals.” 

This is not, however, to say that the Routledge version does not have 

its own blatant shortcomings. Consider this: 

Israel is a brazen fascist monster. The mobilisation of its power in the 

USA is by elected and appointed Zionist officialdom. A key to its power 

is that it is a mass grassroots organisation buttressed by the financial support 

of scores of millionaires, dozens of billionaires and a mass media 

that is its handmaiden. 

The review continues: 

In many ways it has paralyzed the US Congress and the Executive. It 

influences Treasury, State, the Pentagon and all leading Congressional 

committees that relate to Israeli expansionism . . . The career profiles of 

its professionals that are the quintessence of the “Fifth Column” are to be 

found in every nook and cranny of Wall street, the globe-girdling corporate 

law firms, the insurance industry, the big three stock market-rating 

agencies, the big three accounting firms and the media. As the author 

makes clear, pro-Israel career patterns and projections of power have 

established a hegemony of US public life. 

How does this conspiracy really differ from David Duke’s depiction of 

“the Zionist media, political and financial matrix”? Yes, Duke uses the 

word “Jewish” (to be more precise, “Jewish extremist power”), but the 

Petras book echoes even that, citing “Judeo-Zionist hegemony.” (A fantasy 

term, warmly quoted in Clairmont’s original article, “he [Petras] emphasizes 

that ‘in effect pro-Israel career patterns and projections of power have 

established a kind of Judeo-Zionist hegemony of US public life.’ ”) 

The above paragraphs may remind those familiar with antisemitism of 

the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with its global 

conspiracy theory and attendant imagery, such as a Star of David-bearing 

octopus encircling the globe in its tentacles, or a Star of David-bearing spi-


der holding the world in its web, or a grotesque Jewish capitalist squeezing 

blood out of the world. As if to reinforce the impression, the next paragraph 

in the Routledge version states that “the ramifications of the Zionist behemoth 

is by no means confined to the US political oligarchy. Indeed its tentacles 

are globalized, notably in all the major EU countries.” (Here, the 

Routledge version omits Clairmont’s details of how “the grip” of “the operational 

fifth column . . . is vastly magnified by the stranglehold on the major 

media outlets notably on the Middle East.”) 

Perhaps Clairmont’s peer reviewers were seduced by the relative 

absence of the word “Jew” from their actual version of the article. After all, 

Jews (by name) appear only in the article’s conclusion: 

. . . the preparations for the obliteration of Iran has gathered speed . . . 

The vote in Congress was galvanised amongst others by the American 

Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and acclaimed by all the major 

American Jewish organizations. 

The upsurge of Zionism, as Petras notes is a virulent form of identity 

linked to a foreign power. Its overwhelmingly successful hegemonic 

inroads have been abetted by the abject capitulation of the US ruling 

class. The US political complex and successive administrations with no 

exception have become part of the interlaced web of Zionist power that 

extends into every nook and cranny of all sectors of American capitalism. 

There is no distancing here of Jews from this “interlaced web of Zionist 

power” that holds the “US ruling class” in “abject capitulation.” It is “all 

the major American Jewish organizations” that are either in the conspiracy 

or cheering from the sidelines. 

This sudden introduction of “all the major American Jewish organisations” 

into the closing section of Clairmont’s polemic really lets the 

antisemitic cat out of the bag. The only surprise is that whoever airbrushed 

Jews from the original article failed to spot this mention of them. Or, perhaps 

more likely, the antisemitic cat had been squirming so furiously in the 

anti-Zionist bag that it finally, inevitably, escaped. 

*Mark Gardner is director of communications, CST (Community Security Trust), 

http://www.thecst.org.uk/, and regularly publishes articles on antisemitism. Gardner 

was awarded a police commendation for his work during the 1999 neo-Nazi 

nail bombing campaign, and in 2006 he represented the Jewish community and 

CST during the Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism. He assists with several 

police advisory committees.

Miral and International Efforts 

to Delegitimize Israel 

Joanne Intrator and Scott Rose* 

Does Miral author Rula Jebreal harbor any antisemitic thoughts and 

feelings? 

In preparation for this article, we sent an interview request to Jebreal 

through the contacts given on her Web site. We said we wished to speak 

with her to gain clarity about her current political thoughts vis-à-vis Israel. 

We did not receive the courtesy of a reply. We note from the outset that 

Jebreal long suffered a very painful, arduous personal history. Among her 

many tragic living nightmares, her mother’s stepfather raped her mother, 

who committed suicide when Jebreal was five years old. We state also that 

aspects of her advocacy for the role that education might play toward establishing 

peace in the Middle East could conceivably be viewed as admirable. 

However, particularly given that her lover Julian Schnabel’s controversial 

film Miral was shown at the United Nations in New York, Jebreal now 

should consider that she is accountable for speaking responsibly in public 

about Israel. We have searched in vain for statements from her acknowledging 

that, for example, due to the centuries and centuries of anti-Jewish persecutions 

in the Muslim-majority countries of Africa and the Middle East, 

Jews—and Sephardic Jews most of all—have a right to be free of anti- 

Jewish persecution in at least some sliver of the geographical area that was 

the homeland of the ancient Hebrews. 

To the extent that Jebreal formulates coherent geopolitical proposals, 

she would appear to favor a single-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian 

conflict. Notably, she is recklessly unbalanced in her recommendations for 

271


how to reach that goal, were that goal even deemed enduringly safe for the 

Jews of the Middle East. She has a tendency, outside of her fiction, to fault 

Jewish Israelis obliquely but sharply for everything, and Palestinian Muslims 

mildly for almost nothing. Interviewed on The Charlie Rose Show on 

March 23, 2011, for instance, she appeared glamorously beautiful as well as 

persuasive in her appeals for women in the Middle East to escape religious 

extremism through education. Without saying the country-name “Israel,” 

though, she talked about “walls” that have been built to prevent young Palestinian 

women from reaching Jerusalem to become educated. Repeatedly, 

she implicates Israel’s security barriers against suicide bombers, and other 

forms of attack, as the most formidable barrier to young Palestinian women 

becoming well educated. Even as she states that young Palestinian women 

must not be allowed to get trapped in their lives by Islamic extremists in 

Gaza and the West Bank, she implies that Israel should eliminate its 

defenses against the Islamic extremists in those places, in order that young 

Palestinian women should be allowed a better education. Why Jebreal does 

not instead demand of Palestinian authorities in Gaza and the West Bank 

that they immediately allow their young women access to contemporary 

liberal education within those territories is anybody’s guess. Her belief, 

misguided, appears to be that if Israel removed its security barriers, all 

young Palestinian women would immediately receive enlightened educations 

in Jerusalem, and Israel would have nothing to fear from Hamas in 

Gaza or from various malevolent elements in the West Bank. 

Jebreal’s “pin the blame on Israeli Jews” viewpoint was confirmed 

when Charlie Rose asked her about recent Arab revolts against despotic 

leaders in countries including Tunisia and Egypt. Jebreal asked, “After the 

uprising, are we telling people to stay behind walls?” It was clear in the 

context that she was referring to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as 

being “behind walls.” Equally clear was her lack of consideration for what 

would happen to Israelis were the referenced “walls” eliminated. Ironically, 

as we were at work on this article, in Egypt—with its popular uprising that 

Jebreal had cited as a model for an enlightened, peaceful new Middle East 

reality—hardliner Salifi Muslim mobs were setting violently upon 

Christians. 

As with life generally, it is a given in the Middle East that varying 

degrees of ambiguity attend the elements within it. Jebreal is not a conscienceless 

monster. Yet if her prescriptions for Israeli policies were implemented 

today, a result in very short order would be the subjugation of 

today’s Israeli Jews—and, not insignificantly, today’s Israeli Arabs—to the 

much harsher dictates of theocratic rule we now see imposed on the Palestinian 

populations in Gaza and the West Bank. The case of Walid Husayin 

comes to mind. In Qalqilya in the West Bank, Husayin posted online atheis-

2011] MIRAL AND DELEGITIMIZING ISRAEL 273 

tic messages lampooning Islamic religious beliefs. When the general population 

started giving Husayin death threats, and clamoring for him to be 

punished, the Palestinian authorities imprisoned him. Writing in The Wall 

Street Journal, Bret Stephens said, “if Palestinians cannot abide a single 

free-thinker in their midst, they cannot be free in any meaningful sense of 

the word.” Worth noting, additionally, is that Husayin had originally written 

on his Noor al-Aqel (Enlightenment of Reason) blog that, in his view, Muslims 

“believe anyone who leaves Islam is an agent or a spy for a Western 

State, namely the Jewish State. They actually don’t get that people are free 

to think and believe in whatever suits them.” 

We find unacceptable that Jebreal, in addressing an international public, 

mischaracterizes Israel’s security barriers as “walls” against the enlightened 

education of young Palestinian women. As if, were Hamas in Gaza 

and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to guarantee and fully to 

protect freedom of speech and freedom of religion for their populations, 

Israel would in the least object. As if Israel’s security barriers were in place 

mainly for the purpose of stopping young Palestinian women from receiving 

enlightened educations. When Jebreal mischaracterizes Israel’s security 

barriers as “walls” against Palestinian women becoming educated, she is 

demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. 

Whatever the qualities of the novel Miral and of Schnabel’s movie 

based on it, Jebreal is not alone in the present-day world to deliver genteelly 

wrapped public statements delegitimizing Israel. Imam Abdullah Antepli, 

for example, published an essay on the Huffington Post about his tour of 

Auschwitz. The ostensible theme of Antepli’s essay is his heightened sensitivity 

to Jewish-rights-related concerns in the wake of his increased understanding 

of the history of the Holocaust. Lamentably, though, Imam Antepli 

paints the Holocaust as an exclusively European event. He actually states 

that Bosnian Muslims did much to save Bosnian Jewry. (We e-mailed 

Imam Antepli, asking him whether he acknowledges the documented Middle 

Eastern Muslim complicity in the Holocaust. We did not receive the 

courtesy of a reply.) There might indeed have been some individual Bosnian 

Muslims who made efforts to save Bosnian Jews from the Holocaust. 

However, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had a 

face-to-face meeting with Hitler during which they agreed to extend the 

“Final Solution” to Jews in all the Muslim-Arab majority countries, organized 

Muslim SS troops in Bosnia, and those troops collaborated in the 

destruction of Bosnian Jewry. 

The Grand Mufti was later hailed by his nephew Yassir Arafat as a 

Palestinian national hero; Hind Husseini, the Mufti al-Husseini’s sister, was 

glorified uncritically in Miral. (Where is the record of Hind Husseini condemning 

her brother’s involvement in the Holocaust?) In her interview with


Charlie Rose, Rula Jebreal said she does not believe one needs to know 

much of politics or history in order to have properly apportioned empathy 

for the people now living in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. We beg to 

differ. 

*Joanne Intrator, MD, is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai 

School of Medicine in New York, where she also has a private practice. Scott Rose 

writes frequently on culture and the arts.

But Will It Sell in Islamabad? 

Tarek Fatah, The Jew Is Not My Enemy. 

(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2010), 243 pp., $24.95 

Khaleel Mohammed* 

It is not often that someone gets to review a book in which he is positively 

mentioned. I note this at the very beginning in the interests of full 

disclosure. I must also point out that, after the publication of this book, the 

author and I have blocked each other on our Facebook pages. I chose to do 

so because I feel that Tarek Fatah has morphed from someone with reformist 

ideas to a person sounding more like a self-hating Muslim, deeming all 

who disagree with him as Islamists. My evidence is the material on his 

Facebook page and the large following of Islamophobes that form his fan 

base, sparing no opportunity to disparage and denigrate Islam. I had also 

refused, until sent this copy for review, to read the book because I consider 

its title to be pandering to a Jewish readership. 

And yet, if I stick to the book and its contents only, I must admit that 

from its very first page it rivets the attention. The author is not an academic—perhaps 

mercifully so—because he spares us the stultifying pedantry 

that is often expected in such a work. Instead, he gives us an eloquent, 

well-researched document. The reception that his work has met is precisely 

why I, despite having researched the topic of Jewish-Muslim religions at 

great length, have chosen not to write a book for the popular press. For the 

275


Islamophobes, Tarek is not critical enough of Islam, and for the Islamists, 

he has crossed the boundaries of propriety (82). 

Tarek’s book is filled with references to contemporary events, items 

that the average reader can remember from television or newspaper news, 

and can easily research for accuracy. Even though I still feel that Jewish 

readers are more likely to make use of this book than are Tarek’s coreligionists, 

I find the principled statement that the author makes in his preface 

to be most commendable: 

For me, a discussion about Muslim-Jewish relations or the Arab-Israeli 

dispute becomes a non-starter the moment the right of Israel to exist as a 

Jewish state is challenged. Having said that, I firmly believe Israel, in 

continuing its occupation of the West Bank, is in serious violation of 

international law (xvii). 

Whether one agrees with Tarek or not is beside the point; what is 

established is that the writer is a principled man and states his position 

fearlessly. This is Tarek at his sometimes discomfiting best: saying what he 

feels, honestly and courageously—a characteristic he has displayed even 

from his days as a foreign worker in Saudi Arabia. 

If the book is wonderfully written; that some of it is hyperbole, often 

verging on outright prevarication, is problematic. Tarek claims that Professor 

Tarek Ramadan is one of those academics who has praised the alleged 

massacre of the Jews of the Banu Qurayzah “in glowing terms” (xxiii). 

Later in his book, he does refer to statements made by the professor on the 

incident—and none of these represent any “adulation,” as claimed (144). 

Tarek also asserts that for centuries, the norm has been for Muslims to 

ask God to “crush the Jews” (16). The fact is that while the hadith literature 

is replete with denigrating references to Jews, there has never been a time 

when it would have been likely that Muslims would make that prayer 

except for the time of Muhammad’s wars with the Jewish tribes, the rebellion 

of Abu Isa al Isfahani, and the rise of modern Israel. For most of the 

history of the Muslim polity, Jews were not a threat and the prayer would 

not have been applicable. If in Tarek’s lifetime this has been the norm, then 

he ought to realize that the modern confrontation between Jews and Arabs 

started during WWI and that it is conceivable that Muslims started to make 

their invocations then. Contrary to his norm, Tarek has provided no citations 

from classical texts showing any sources for invocations dating back 

centuries, as he claims. 

One of Tarek’s most astute observations is reflected in his term 

“pseudo anti-Americanism” (19). It is a statement that is likely to be 

attested to by any Muslim who has visited one of the Muslim-majority

2011] BUT WILL IT SELL IN ISLAMABAD? 277 

states. On my several visits, I have encountered in public the most hateful 

anti-American rhetoric. And yet, in private, the most vociferous perpetrators 

become transformed into abject beggars, pleading with me to find some 

way to get visas for them and/or their family to the supposedly ungodly 

United States. 

Even with the very occasional hyperbole, Tarek ensures that his presentation 

is balanced and provides nuggets of information that one does not 

even find in the regular history texts. He shows, for example, that King Zog 

of Albania, during the time when the pogroms of Hitler were being conducted 

without much interference from abroad, was the first Muslim monarch 

to rescue the Jews in his country (41). 

Since the book is not an academic text, the author is certainly at liberty 

to write from his own political biases. As such, he considers the Arabs’ 

siding with the British against the Ottomans in World War I as a betrayal 

(68). He does not seem to realize that the Arabs were never happy having 

the authority of Islam in the hands of non-Arabs, and to them, therefore, the 

Ottomans were just another foreign oppressor. The British had offered independence 

to the Arabs in exchange for their assistance against the Ottomans. 

The Arabs were acting out of good faith—so much so that until they 

found out that the British would renege on their promise, they even supported 

the establishment of a Jewish state. 

Tarek also considers the Saudi presence in the Hijaz as an “occupation.” 

Perhaps he overlooks the fact that Muhammad united the Arab tribes 

under the banner of religion, and that the headquarters of Islam was seen to 

belong to the Arab people as a whole. The power of the Najdis, therefore, is 

not considered as an occupation by most Muslims—and Tarek’s contention 

might come across, unintentionally, as trying to place the Arab-Israeli dispute 

on a par with what he deems a Saudi occupation (xvii). 

The Arab-Israeli dispute is presented with remarkable candor—one 

that is probably not going to win the author support by ardent supporters of 

either side. His chiding the Arabs for their own problems (76) is straightforward 

and precise; his dealing with the modern as well as the classical material 

is truly remarkable. In his chapter on the investigation of the alleged 

massacre of the Banu Qurayzah, Tarek does something no Muslim writer 

has done with as much intrepidity and ingenuity: he probes, dissects, and 

finally debunks the whole massacre story as a myth. Shortly before reviewing 

this book, I read Sir Martin Gilbert’s In Ishmael’s House. Sir Martin 

also deals with the Banu Qurayzah story. Strangely, though, the accounts of 

the two authors are vastly different—Sir Martin comes across as 

unschooled in history, while Tarek emerges as the consummate academic. 

What we glean from Tarek’s investigation is something that has been 

known to biblical scholars for a long while, even if it has been lost on


Muslims: stories of war and depictions of the routed enemy in classical 

presentations are often done with highly exaggerated numbers. They were 

presented to show God’s chastisement of a people—and did not cater to 

questions of a later time, such as the investigation of data, considerations of 

human rights, and other issues. 

In dealing with the scriptural basis for the existence of Israel, as well 

as the pervasive antisemitism in modern Islam, Tarek makes use of much of 

my material. He painstakingly investigated all my claims, and in the end 

reached the same conclusion that I did. He is to be commended for his 

industrious approach to his task, as I remember him cross-examining me on 

my references. Others have sought to use Tarek to advance their own 

agenda. Farzana Khan, for example, tries to find a hole in Tarek’s reference 

to 5:21 of the Qur’an, where he asserts that God had decreed Israel as 

belonging to the Jews in perpetuity. 1 Ms. Khan claims that Q5:26 refutes 

such permanency, and that that “Fatah Muhammad” argument is fallacious. 

She obviously has no training in hermeneutics; if she had done her research, 

she would have found that classical exegetes did not see 5:26 as a refutation. 

She also claims that 6:165 of the Qur’an denies specific Jewish claims 

to the land (enlandisement), and that God’s bounties are open to all. In fact, 

no exegete, classical or modern, makes this claim. Her interpretation of 

religious continuity to show that Muslims are somehow, by scriptural writ, 

entitled to the Holy Land is simply supersession in disguise. The Qur’an 

never denies Jews their land. And when, during the caliphate of Umar, that 

territory was captured, he declared it a waqf (endowment) precisely because 

he knew it was not to be treated like other territories since the Qur’an had 

specifically mentioned its owners. 

Even if Muslim scholars had laid claim to Israel based on Ms. Khan’s 

unique interpretation, the fact is that Jewish claims to their land are not 

contingent upon Muslim approval. Indeed, for Jews, and for Muslims who 

are directed to look to the Bible for history (Q 21:7, 16:43), Sarah had 

exacted a promise from God that the inheritance would be through her 

son—Isaac. Muslim claims to Israel are based on the hadith . . . a genre of 

literature that Tarek has shown is notorious for its self-serving, supremacist 

agenda. Without realizing it, Ms. Khan has, while ostensibly fighting 

Islamism, sought to supply it with a new argument against Israel. 

As I noted earlier, I had refused to read this book because I felt its title 

pandered to a Jewish readership. Interestingly, Tarek accuses Irshad Mani 

of catering to Jews with the publication of her book, The Trouble with 

Islam. He claims that she accused him of being anti-Jewish because she 

1. See http://www.artsandopinion.com/2010_v9_n6/hassan-2.htm. Accessed 

January 30, 2011.

2011] BUT WILL IT SELL IN ISLAMABAD? 279 

could not understand his pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian positions (79). 

Tarek’s depiction of Ms. Manji may lead some to the misconception that 

she is anti-Palestinian. This is the farthest thing from the truth. I remember 

some colleagues from Israel complaining to me that Ms. Manji had refused 

to pose for photographs with an Israeli tank crew. When I asked her about 

the incident, she pointed out that she did not wish to give the impression she 

was siding with any occupation by force. Both Tarek Fatah and Irshad 

Manji are reformist- minded Muslims who have the same positions on 

many issues; it behooves Tarek to be more judicious in his representation of 

allies in his cause. 

In rating Tarek’s book, I am reminded of my Arabic-language professor 

at McGill. I dreaded receiving my corrected research papers from him; 

they would invariably be covered in notes. Yet, I never received less than 

an “A”—because the professor was a perfectionist; his comments were 

meant to be constructive. My voluminous critique of Tarek’s book is in that 

category. But for the fact that Tarek has lauded me in it, I would have given 

it an A+. Since I do not wish to be accused of favoritism, however, I must 

award it only an A. Yet, however, in my department, we do not give A+s, 

so in the end, his book still gets the top grade. This book should be in every 

mosque, every church, every synagogue, every library—every institution 

that promotes knowledge as empowerment. 

*Khaleel Mohammed is an associate professor of religion in the Department of 

Religious Studies at San Diego State University. He has a bachelor’s in religion 

and psychology from Universidad Interamerica (Mexico), an MA from Concordia 

University (Canada), and a PhD in Islamic law from McGill (Canada). He has read 

law at Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University and held a Kraft Hiatt fellowship 

from Brandeis.

Time Well Spent 

Albert S. Lindemann and Richard S. Levy, eds., 

Antisemitism: A History 

(Oxford University Press, 2010), 288 pp., $31.95 

Leon Rosenberg* 

According to the editors of this collection, Albert S. Lindemann, professor 

of history emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, and 

Richard S. Levy, professor of history, University of Illinois, Chicago, the 

“central goal of this volume is to offer a reasonable overview of a daunting 

topic.” To accomplish this task, they recruited “a wide selection of recognized 

scholars, asking them to include the most important new developments 

in their fields, as succinctly as possible.” I volunteered to write a 

review on this book in an effort to learn the topic; the authors and editors of 

Antisemitism: A History successfully taught me the facts and imparted their 

opinions. 

In the body of the work, 232 pages of this 288-page book, Lindemann 

and Levy, with a distinguished supporting cast, educated me in true professorial 

style. They used the classical formula, “Tell them what you’re going 

to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them,” and did just that, 

discussing the last 2,000 years of prejudice against Jews and antisemitism. 

The introduction, the “Tell them what you’re going to tell them” and 

including the subtitle “Antisemitism: What Is It? How Can We Best Understand 

It?” begins the discussion; the epilogue, entitled “The Conclusion: 

281


Not the Final Word,” weaves over the factual history, using all of the information 

in the book to help us to understand the editors’ hypothesis: that we 

are only in the second century of the new face of antisemitism, not just 

hatred of the Jews, but an era of death and destruction to the Jews. In his 

summary, Levy notes that since the end of the 18th century, certain people 

have moved from “Jew-hatred, Jew-baiting, and Judeo-phobia and their permutations 

and other prejudices to anti-Jewish actions.” Prior to the last century, 

“persecution, especially in violent forms, had been episodic rather than 

continuous, and long periods of European history yielded no evidence of 

anti-Jewish violence.” The editors note that the “fantasy of enormous Jewish 

power became the position of enough individuals to float a movement.” 

Prior to this, Augustine had taught that “Jews should go on living but that 

their debased condition was fitting testimony to the superiority of Christian 

faith.” In the last 200 years, however, Jews thriving and triumphant rather 

than suffering and subservient violated a culturally embedded expectation. 

Jews are now to be feared, not just hated. 

The body of the pieces begins with two chapters entitled “The Jewish 

Question,” by Albert S. Lindemann; and “The Ancient Mediterranean and 

the Pre-Christian Era,” by Benjamin Isaac, Lessing Professor of Ancient 

History, Tel Aviv University, and ends with two chapters entitled 

“Antisemitism in Eastern Europe (excluding Russia and the Soviet Empire) 

Since 1848,” by Istvan Deak, Seth Low Professor of History emeritus, 

Columbia University; and “Israel and Antisemitism,” by Meir Litvak, associate 

professor of Middle Eastern history, Tel Aviv University, and Esther 

Webman, senior research fellow, Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and 

African Studies, and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism 

and Racism. 

The 15 middle chapters open with the following quote in Chapter 3, 

“Jews and Christians from the Time of Christ to Constantine’s Reign,” by 

Philip A. Cunningham, professor of theology and director of the Institute 

for Jewish-Catholic Relations, St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia: “It is a 

widely held belief that Judaism and Christianity became separate and fundamentally 

opposed religious communities shortly after the lifetime of 

Jesus,” teaching the history of the world from an antisemitic perspective. 

Lindemann and Levy wonder what, perhaps, the Jews had done to 

deserve their special status as the eternal scapegoat, but had no convincing, 

valid explanation for it; indeed, given the present level of anti-Jewish, anti- 

Zionistic, and antisemitic feelings among the billion Muslim voices, they 

despair in the conclusion to the book—although they recognize that it is not 

the final word—that “It is difficult to believe that antisemitism will anytime 

soon be overcome.” 

This book could either be used in the classroom, or serve, as it did for

2011] TIME WELL SPENT 283 

me, as a self-directed course. I learned a great deal, even from the glossary, 

which should have been placed immediately after the preface and should 

have been more extensive, as I had to resort to the Internet to uncover the 

meaning of such previously esoteric words as neopaganism—an umbrella 

term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly 

those influenced by pre-Christian pagan beliefs of Europe; and by 

eschatology, the branch of theology concerned with End Times. Most of 

these words, however, were readily explained in the text. Such concepts 

include the Doctrine of Jewish Witness, noted above, the influential argument 

advanced by Augustine of Hippo at the end of the 4th century that 

said Jews and Judaism should be allowed to survive in the Christian world 

in order to “bear witness, in their depraved state, to the superior truth of 

Christianity.” Likewise, the ancient phrase, “the enemy of my enemy is my 

friend,” explained the Catholic-Jewish and alternatively Protestant-Jewish 

alliances that proved, intermittently, to alleviate the burden of antisemitism 

for the Jews. 

The early chapters of the book for the most part are set in a format that 

separates each chapter’s conclusion, or editorial comments, from the primary 

resource material of the chapter. Had the editors insisted on this format 

in every chapter, this great book might have been even better. It is done 

well in Chapter 9, “Antisemitism in Modern France: Dreyfus, Vichy and 

Beyond,” by Richard J. Golsan, Distinguished Professor of French, Texas 

A&M, who ends his chapter with a section titled “Conclusion: The Duty to 

Remember,” in which he editorializes upon his area of expertise. Similarly, 

other chapters separate content from opinion in a clear way that uses the 

content to reinforce the opinions of these learned writers. 

On the other hand, Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, in his Chapter 11, entitled 

“Antisemitism in Russia and the Soviet Union,” while doing an excellent 

job of teaching us, for instance, that “Pogroms were not an everyday occurrence 

in Russia[;] rather, they appeared in three great waves, 1881 to 1884, 

1905 to 1906, and 1917 to 1921,” that “more than 95% of all pogroms took 

place in the four years, 1881, 1882, 1905 and 1906,” and that “Contrary to 

widespread opinion, the pogroms were not government organized or the 

work of any mysterious hidden hand,” goes on to hypothesize that the 

pogroms were targeted, suggesting that the “acculturated, integrated, and 

economically successful Jews may have been more intolerable to the 

broader masses than the Orthodox poor and less assertive Jews.” He cites as 

evidence for this that prior to these pogroms (noted above), others occurred 

in Odessa in 1821, 1859, and 1871, where “Jews were the most modernized 

and integrated.” Lowe claims additional support for this hypothesis that the 

pogroms were targeted “[w]hen the few pogroms of 1884 and the infamous 

pogrom of Kishinev are were taken into consideration,” but does not tell us


about the economic and social situation of Kishinev or about the economic 

and social situation where the 1884 pogrom took place. It is confusing when 

Lowe mixes fact with opinion in this way. Later, on page 182, he discusses 

the “only important special institution for Jews inside the (communist) 

Soviet system, the Yevsektsiya (the wholly subordinate Jewish section of 

the communist party of the Soviet Union), was abolished in 1903.” Lowe 

editorializes within the factual/scientific body of the chapter when he says 

that the Yevsektsiya was “created to combat the overwhelming influence of 

non-communist groups within the Jewish population, it was obviously 

never intended as a means of pursuing Jewish national aims,” without giving 

any scientific evidence for his non-scientific “obviously.” 

Despite this minor shortcoming, anyone interested in learning and 

delving deeper into the history of the Jews and of antisemitism—i.e., not 

just that there were marranos, but that these marranos eventually became 

known as New Christians, singled out after conversion, even though they 

were forced to convert as “Ethnic Jews no longer constrained by anti-Jewish 

restrictions and whose increasing influencing and prosperity provoked 

resentment and jealousy” to separate them from Old Christians, who began 

to fear “actual physical contamination from near proximity to the New 

Christians’ “polluted blood’ ”—will learn a great deal from this book. 

So, I agree with the statement on the back cover of this paperback 

collection, which reads: “The essays contained in this volume provide an 

ideal introduction to the history and nature of antisemitism, stressing readability, 

balance, and thematic coherence, while trying to gain some distance 

from the polemics and apologetics that so often cloud the subject.” Reading 

this book was time well spent. 

*Leon I. Rosenberg, MD, is the president and medical director of the Center For 

Emotional Fitness (CFEF) in Cherry Hill, N.J., where he practices psychiatry, geriatric 

psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry.

Jihad and Judaism . . . The New Incivility 

David Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: 

Anti-Semitism and Nazism to Islamic Jihad 

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 312 pp., $27.99 

Steven K. Baum* 

Of his thirty books, this may be David Patterson’s best book to date. 

For those who are new to Dr. Patterson’s work, he is the Hillel Feinberg 

Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and generally 

writes in the humanities on subjects ranging from philosophy to education. 

He now turns his attention to the jihad. 

The first three chapters of A Genealogy of Evil are spent laying the 

foundation for his case for Islamism as an ideology of hate. The case is 

compelling and well organized, focusing correctly by Chapter 3 on the key 

Islamist ideologues—al Banna, Qutb, and Maududi. The Muslim Brotherhood 

becomes the pivot point for the next chapter, which is incredibly 

timely as we watch the Arab Spring unfold in Egypt with questions of how 

and where the Brotherhood will affect the burgeoning democracy. Their 

influence for the jihad may be a fait accompli. According to a 2011 Pew 

Research Center poll, only 36% of Egyptians would maintain a treaty with 

Israel, while 82% of Egyptians view the United States unfavorably. 

The remaining chapters document the activities of Hamas, Islamic 

Jihad, and the Sudanese National Islamic Front. It is interesting that Dr. 

Patterson separates out the religious (Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Islamic Revolu- 

285


tion) from secular offshoots of Islamist activities—e.g., Baath Party, 

PLO—though he acknowledges that the boundaries fuse at times: the secular 

are religious and the religious are at times political. 

The conclusion may be somewhat troubling for the less religious person. 

Because of his Orthodox Jewish background, Dr. Patterson easily cites 

Old Testament passages, making his case that Israel’s existence is humanity’s 

existence. Indeed, the last line of the book is ki mi-Zion tetze Torah 

undevar Ha Shem mi Yerushalyum (Isaiah 2:3). It is not translated into 

English in the text, but means “for from Zion (Israel), the Torah Law comes 

forth and Hashem (God) shall speak from Jerusalem.” Citing the Bible to 

make an academic point is just fine for the religious reader. For the nonreligious 

reader, however, citing the Bible borders on the squeamish. 

Biblical citations notwithstanding, this is a good academic work on the 

jihad and the politics of hate. David Patterson’s newest book is timely and 

solidly based and well worth the read. An early review by Oxford’s 

Jonathan Leader Maynard found otherwise. It was unduly scathing and his 

criticism was not based on the criteria that usually makes for bad reviews— 

sloppy footnoting, erroneous conclusions, lack of originality, timeliness. 

Instead, it bordered on antisemitism using denigration as academic pretense 

to attack in what may be termed the new incivility. 

While conceding that there are linkages between Nazism and jihadism, 

Maynard dismisses or may not know of the 1,500-year history of Muslim 

antisemitism prior to the formation of the State of Israel. He focuses exclusively 

on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, blaming Israel for the jihad and 

subsequent antisemitism. He writes, “Patterson seems blind to the obvious 

fault in his inference”: 

Jihadists’ belief that “Jews are evil irrespective of what they/Israel does” 

does not demonstrate that Israeli actions do not play a causal role in 

explaining Jihadists’ anti-Semitism, or in providing a narrative within 

which anti-Semitic rhetoric is persuasive for potential audiences.” 

Taking this position not only dismisses prior scholarly work by Jeffrey 

Herf, Laurent Murawiec, Matthew Kuntzel, Walid Phares, Richard 

Breitman, and Richard Rubenstein, as well as Andrew Bostom on the Nazijihadi 

linkage, it points up the new incivility. No one has said that these 

authors used false methodology or garnered a “poor interpretative method,” 

as Maynard did with Patterson. But with the new incivility, you can. 

Regarding Islam and Nazism, Maynard concedes that “It’s not that 

there is nothing to this argument,” but he seems to be worried that “Patterson’s 

deflection of criticism from Israel” is due to “prior political or religious 

projects [that] are driving the production of preconceptions.” When

2011] THE NEW INCIVILITY 287 

Patterson writes: “There is much for the world to atone for, starting with the 

countless UN resolutions against the Jewish state . . . [for] while Mecca 

signifies the truth of Islam, Jerusalem signifies the holiness of humanity— 

that is what makes it God’s dwelling place . . . Jerusalem is not only the 

capital of Israel, it is the centre of the world . . . hence humanity’s need for 

Israel.” Maynard counters with “readers hardly need assistance in evaluating 

these passages and the motivations behind them.” In the new uncivility, 

you can dismiss Jews as being too subjective. 

Too Jewish to be objective about Israel was the theme of Margaret 

Thatcher’s former press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham. Ingham said that, as 

editor of The Private Eye, he would never read a letter to the editor about 

Israel written by someone with a “Jewish sounding name,” because he 

knew it would be biased. It should then follow that all Christian and Muslim 

letters are unbiased purveyors of the political truth. 

In the new incivility, it is better to be critical of Israel and minimize 

antisemitism while justifying jihad. Like it not, the new incivility is here 

and is working hard to convince you that it is politically unfettered in 

speaking the truth to Jewish power. Reasonable people may ask what in the 

world this has to do in saying a book is academically sound—as is David 

Patterson’s latest work—and they would be right. 

*Steven K. Baum is the co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.

Analysis of the Pogrom 

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt, 

Natan M. Meir, and Israel Bartal (eds.), 

Anti-Jewish Violence: 

Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History 

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 240 pp., $34.95 

Paul R. Bartrop* 

The word pogrom comes from Russian roots: grom, thunder, and 

pogrimit, to smash or destroy. It is a term usually associated with mob 

attacks against Jewish communities, especially in Tsarist Russia before 

1917, though embracing numerous additional anti-Jewish persecutions in 

other countries up to relatively recent times. The term became common 

when describing anti-Jewish riots in the Russian Empire that had been 

organized by (or at least arranged with some form of assistance from) local 

authorities. During much of the twentieth century, the term implied any 

attack on Jews regardless of the degree of official input, and irrespective of 

whether or not the attack was spontaneous or planned. The destruction 

wrought by pogroms varied from situation to situation, and could involve 

murder, rape, pillage, physical assault, and wanton or random destruction. 

The relationship of pogroms to genocide is a close one, in that pogroms 

could lead to genocidal massacres, or, when not going as far as this, could 

nonetheless promote the physical and psychological preconditions in the 

289


minds of the perpetrators to be disposed to taking the extra step toward 

genocide if ever the conditions should call for it. 

While this latter situation did not occur in Russia, the destruction that 

rained down on Jewish communities at the end of the nineteenth and the 

start of the twentieth centuries was no less horrifying for the Jewish communities 

and individuals who suffered. The formula attributed to the conservative 

Russian statesman Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827-1907)—that 

the solution to Russian’s Jewish problem would be for one third to die, one 

third to assimilate, and one third to emigrate—found expression in the 

pogroms: certainly there were deaths, certainly there were those who sought 

sanctuary through merging into the general population (difficult though that 

was), and certainly there was intimidation, leading many Jews to flee 

overseas. 

This book examines the phenomenon of the pogrom and its effects, 

seen through a new lens and asking by the asking of new questions. The 

story of the pogroms is essentially connected to the Jews of Russia, though 

the pogrom as a device for terrorizing Jews and attaining antisemitic policy 

goals spread throughout eastern Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth 

century. This book, which comprises a number of articles originally 

presented as papers at an academic conference on the subject held in Stockholm, 

Sweden, in May 2005, examines the pogrom not only in the late 

Russian Empire, the Revolutionary period, and the early Soviet Union, but 

also localizes the phenomenon through considered studies of Ukraine, 

Poland, Lithuania, Siberia, and Belorussia. 

While the various essays all bring their own distinctive perspectives on 

pogroms to the table, the Introduction by the editors provides a very useful 

unifying structure to the volume overall. A brief consideration of the nature 

of anti-Jewish violence as a general theme in European history gives way to 

a definitional discussion concerning the notion of the pogrom itself: what it 

was, how it varied from place to place, and what its intentions were. A 

conclusion worthy of note is that while the pogroms stimulated a considerable 

outcry from foreign observers, and a resultant sympathy for the persecuted 

Jews, this did not lead to any form of concrete action to alleviate their 

distress. 

An additional point made in the Introduction—for some readers no 

doubt an obvious one, for others perhaps not so obvious—is that the 

pogroms have been largely overshadowed historically by the far greater 

antisemitic explosion that took place a generation later under the Nazis, the 

Holocaust. It should not be held, though, that these were necessarily two 

distinct experiences. The precedents offered in Russia were noted by many 

in Germany and elsewhere, and the political, social, and psychological uses 

that could be made of anti-Jewish violence were studied carefully by Euro-

2011] ANALYSIS OF THE POGROM 291 

pean racists, rabble-rousers, and anti-democratic politicians throughout the 

first third of the twentieth century—a period during which antisemitism 

once more became fashionable and new uses (and justifications) were found 

for exploiting the Jewish presence. 

How did the Jews themselves respond to these developments? An 

important section of the book, “Responses to Pogroms,” contains two 

essays that consider Jewish reactions, noting that the Jews did not sit by 

passively awaiting their victimization. Rather, we see some of the ways in 

which Jews organized their various communities to meet the challenge of 

anti-Jewish violence—not through counter violence (which could never 

hope to be successful), but, rather, through self-defense, meaningful dialogue 

with the authorities leading to political intercession, and a systematic 

campaign with the broader (non-Jewish) community to raise awareness of 

the need to oppose antisemitism through the dissemination of books and 

pamphlets, as well as through public education efforts. In Kiev, we learn, 

Jews reminded their Christian neighbors of the long-standing interrelationships 

that had existed between the two communities, working from the perspective 

of a shared history rather than one in which two disparate groups 

had nothing to do with each other. 

Overall, this outstanding collection of eleven essays (plus the Introduction) 

sheds fresh light on the phenomenon of the pogrom in late-nineteenth 

and early-twentieth-century Russia. It offers much that is new and groundbreaking, 

enabling a contemporary readership to delve into the roots of this 

expression of anti-Jewish atrocity. From this, even newer questions may be 

asked, and something of the character of the pogroms may be discerned. 

Finally, it is to be hoped that the initiative taken by those who called the 

original conference from which this book derives (and the editors who followed 

it through to publication) will stimulate additional scholarship in this 

area. For too long, pogroms have been neglected, overshadowed by the 

much greater expression of evil that followed twenty to thirty years later. 

*Paul R. Bartrop is the head of the History Department at Bialik College, Melbourne, 

Australia, where he teaches Jewish Studies, Comparative Genocide Studies, 

and the History of Revolutions. His most recent book, co-authored with Steven 

Leonard Jacobs, is Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (Routledge, 

2011).

What Walt and Mearsheimer Got Wrong 

Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance that 

Undermines America’s Interest in the Middle East 

(New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 362 pp., $27.99 

Samuel M. Edelman* 

Walt and Mearsheimer got it wrong. Their work on the so-called Israel 

“lobby” published as an article in 2006 and full book in 2007 accused the 

lobby of overwhelming influence on American foreign policy. Their accusation 

was unwarranted and unsubstantiated, their research finding flawed. 

Yet, their work has become one of the theoretical underpinnings for anti- 

Israel boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. It has also been used by 

antisemites. Israel remains a staunch ally of the United States, and economic, 

educational, military, and cultural relations between the two countries 

have been and continue to be beneficial to both. 

The relationship between the United States and the Arab world has not 

been so beneficial. Billions have been spent by the United States on military 

solutions to conflicts with the Arab world; 9-11 caused the deaths of 

thousands of America citizens; today we spend more than ever on gasolineand 

oil-based products; and our homeland security costs have gone up dramatically. 

Yet, there remains a lobbying effort paid for by the Arab nations, 

which spend in the billions of dollars to influence American public opinion 

and to shape policies in Congress, and have affected a generation of Middle 

East scholars through Arab-funded Middle East Studies programs. Libya, 

293


Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and even non-Arab Iran have a daily impact on 

American policies through paid lobbyists and volunteer organizations 

underwritten by foreign funds. Walt and Mearsheimer are the recipients of 

some of this largess themselves. 

Mitchell Bard’s book, The Arab Lobby, explores in detail the history 

and the impact of the Arab lobby—a mix of old-style Christian missionary 

anti-Jewish groups, oil lobbyists and companies, Arabists retired from the 

State Department, members of Arab-American groups, Islamic religious 

groups, and the Arab diplomatic corps and a variety of both extreme leftist 

and rightist groups whose major interest is less in the Arab world and more 

in pursuing anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiments. 

Bard’s work is a crucial and important primer into this relatively 

unknown world. It is certainly a work that uncovers the negative impact of 

Arab lobbying efforts on the U.S. economy in the arena of energy policy. 

Even more important for scholars and lay people concerned about 

antisemitism, Bard’s work reveals the deep-seated anti-Jewish and anti- 

Israel nature of many of the groups and organizations lobbying the U.S. 

president and the Congress on behalf of the Arab world. 

Every American has the constitutional right to petition his or her government 

no matter whether they are Jewish or Arab; Walt and Mearsheimer 

seem to forget that seminal concept in their writing. Bard does not. He does 

not attack Arab Americans for petitioning their government but he does 

rightly go after Arab governments and big oil for using their massive wealth 

to affect public policy without any regard to the negative consequences for 

the United States. Clearly, Mitchell Bard got it right. Walt and Mearsheimer 

got it wrong. 

*Samuel M. Edelman is the executive director, Scholars for Peace in the Middle 

East; professor emeritus, CSU, Chico; and former dean at American Jewish 

University.

Confluent Ideologies—Nazism and Islamism 

Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Nazi Palestine 

(New York: Enigma Books, 2010). Paper. 

Reviewed by David Sokol* 

Enigma Books should be complimented for bringing Klaus-Michael 

Mallmann and Martin Cüppers’ book to the English-reading world. Originally 

published in German in 2006 as Halbmond und Hakenkreuz: Das 

Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palestinia (The Crescent and the Swastika: 

The Third Reich, The Arabs and Palestine), its title, unfortunately, has been 

changed by the publisher to Nazi Palestine. I say unfortunately because the 

original title is more indicative of the goals and focus of the book. Nazi 

Palestine sounds to me like a defamation, a name calling, and leads to supporting 

a politically motivated criticism of the book that is simply not true 

for two reasons 1 : The criticism I refer to suggests that the book is part of an 

Israeli propaganda movement. The truth is that the original title reflects the 

clear-headed analysis contained in the book of the relationship between the 

Muslim world (the Crescent) and the National Socialists (the Swastika). It 

describes how the common value of Jew-hating and anti-Zionism made Palestine 

a ripe prize and rallying point both strategically and politically for 

Islamists, Arab nationalists, and Nazis. In a personal communication, the 

1. Gilbert Achcar, “Blame the Grand Mufti: Israel’s Propaganda War,” Le 

Monde Diplomatique (English ed.), May 2010. 

295


editor for Enigma Books told me that “The title was picked by Enigma 

Books, not the translator; it means to indicate what would have happened if 

Palestine and the rest of North Africa had been conquered by the 

Germans.” 2 The book does paint the disastrous probable outcome of a 

“Nazi Palestine,” but it is much more than that. It is a book about what did 

happen, not a fantasy. It makes clear that the outcome of a success of the 

Arab/Nazi coalition in WW II would have been genocide of the Jews, led 

by Germans and enforced by Arabs. 

Nazi Palestine is one of the first of a shower of post-2001 books on the 

relationship between the Muslim world and the Nazis. Other books at the 

top of the list, filling that story out—by Matthias Küntzel, Ephraim Karsh, 

and Jeffrey Herf, and some chapters in Robert Wistrich 3 —are invaluable to 

understanding what actually happened in that part of the world during and 

after WW II. 

Since history is not a snapshot of an event but more like a film—a 

continuous and sequential set of ongoing happenings—it is crucial to find 

out what has led up to contemporary events. Nazi Palestine does that by 

revealing some of the underpinnings to the intractable problems between 

Israel and Palestine. When it seems clear that reasonable men and women 

could come to a solution to a problem of boundaries and assets, Mallmann 

and Cüppers show us the irrational roots of history. The authors discuss 

how useful the irrationality of Jew-hating was as a tool for uniting Muslims 

and Nazis. In addition, Nazi Palestine displays the toxic mix of Nazi and 

Muslim antisemitism, showing how the Germans exploited its pragmatic 

and historical tendency in the Middle East. The debate about how intrinsic 

antisemitism is in Muslim orthodoxy is not dealt with here, however. The 

relevant discussion between writers like Bassam Tibi, Bernard Lewis versus 

Andrew Bostom, 4 and others might be expanded by this work. 

Did the Nazis bring genocidal antisemitism to an Arab culture that 

previously had a very negative view of Jews, or is there a genocidal message 

in the core of Islam that the radical Islamists are bringing to the fore? 

Although Nazi Palestine does not approach this philosophical question 

2. Robert Miller, personal letter to author, March 15, 2011. 

3. Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew Hatred (New York: Telos Press, 2007); 

Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University 

Press, 2009); Ephraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven: Yale University 

Press, 2010); Robert Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession (New York: Random House, 

2010). 

4. Bassam Tibi, From Sayyid Qutb to Hama: The Middle East Conflict and the 

Islamization of Antisemitism (New Haven: YIISA, 2010); Bernard Lewis, “The 

New Antisemitism,” The American Scholar, Vol. 75, no. 1 (Winter 2006); Andrew 

Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008).

2011] CONFLUENT IDEOLOGIES—NAZISM AND ISLAMISM 297 

directly, it gives us a lot of facts useful in drawing conclusions and in providing 

an understanding of how, in much of the Palestinian population, this 

antisemitism was transformed into genocidal hate and political ammunition. 

The book educates us about what went on between Germans, Arabs, 

and Jews between 1933 and 1945 in the Middle East. Numerous anti-Jewish 

assaults began after the end of WW I. Early in Nazi Palestine, Mallmann 

and Cüppers introduce us to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini. 

The Mufti and his actions have been well known. During WW II and 

earlier, the Mufti was a celebrity—a dark star, no doubt, but often seen in 

newsreels and in The New York Times. His murderous conspiracies lost 

public attention until recently, but post 9/11 research is bringing him back 

under scrutiny; he is one of the few Arab sources directly quoted. The Iraqi 

leader and Nazi supporter Gailani (elsewhere spelt as Kailani) is also mentioned, 

but most of the narrative is told by the authors through translations 

of German sources. This does not make the information in any way inaccurate, 

but the reader should be aware that what the Germans said about the 

Arabs may be somewhat different from what the Arabs were saying to each 

other. The Mufti is freely quoted promoting the antisemitic forgery The 

Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

Before WW II, the Mufti was ranting for genocide. In 1936 he said, 

“When the English remove their hands from this land, we will throw and 

chase all the Jews in a stampede into the sea.” 5 The authors mention that 

the Mufti incited the Arab revolt against the English and Jews of Palestine 

in 1936-1939. In the revolt, more Arabs perished under the terror of the 

Mufti’s gunmen than did Jews or Englishmen; the Mufti had taken this 

opportunity to start killing off any Arabs in Palestine who showed signs of 

compromising with the Jews or the English. 

In 1933, the Mufti reached out to the German consul general with a 

warm gesture toward the new German regime and his idol Adolph Hitler. 

The relationship of these men mirrors a nefarious love affair. The authors 

merely touch on this metaphor of romantic love, and it deserves more 

development. In 1938, articles appeared in various Arab newspapers in 

which Hitler was placed on a level with the Prophet Mohammad.” 6 

Clerics began preaching that God had sent the twelfth imam to the 

world in the form of Adolph Hitler. The myth of Hitler’s divinity became 

an orchestrated public relations move planned in Germany and aimed at 

Islam; a common chant at demonstrations was “In Heaven Allah/On Earth 

Hitler.” A love affair was growing—one not nurtured on kindness but fed 

5. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Nazi Palestine (New York: 

Enigma Books, 2010), 18. 

6. Mallmann and Cüppers, Nazi Palestine, 30.


by hate, specifically Jew hating. Representatives of Nazi Germany began 

visiting the Middle East. The German head of Hitler Youth visited Iraq. 

Arab youth organizations popped up, designed after Hitler Youth and promoting 

the similarities between Nazis and the pan-Arab renaissance. 

“Anyone who drove through Arab territory with a swastika pennant 

had nothing to fear and was met with rapturous cheers,” the authors state. 7 

Comments like these support other reports of the popularity of the Nazis in 

the Middle East. They also bring up the question that although there is 

anecdotal evidence of collusion of the population, can the level of support 

be quantified? Since most of the evidence is from the German report, we 

once again miss the firsthand contemporary Arab translations that might 

provide some quantifiable evidence. The reason we cannot completely trust 

only the German reports is twofold. First, using the previous example of 

“rapturous cheers” for the swastika, it is possible that after the Mufti terrorized 

his Arab opposition into silence, there was an obligation to conform. 

Imagine in Tripoli during the 2011 uprising refusing to cheer Gadafi while 

in the midst of Gadafi supporters. 

Next, there is a term in Arabic called taqiyya. The principle of taqiyya 

allows Muslims to lie with honor if they believe it protects the goals of their 

faith. Lying to the Germans in some situations may have been strategic. We 

know today that some of Arab leaders’ comments in English can be contradicted 

by the same leader’s comments in Arabic. 

Nowhere in Nazi Palestine does it state that all Palestinians were 

antisemitic Nazis. There are a few stabs at measuring the amount of sympathy 

for Nazis. There were 2,500 German settlers living in Palestine—members 

of the Templar Society (Templars), a Christian group. Where 5% of 

non-Jewish Germans outside of Germany belonged to the Nazi Party, 17% 

of the German Palestinian Templars were Nazis. The authors later quote a 

“British situation analysis concluding that 95% of the population of Iraq 

was also quite positively disposed toward Germany.” 8 In 1942, Germany 

sent Persian spies to assess the situation in Iran. They reported that 90% 

were in support of Germany. Robert Satloff 9 estimates that possibly up to 

90% of Arabs might have been indifferent to the fate of the Jews. That still 

left 10%, or millions of people, to support the Nazi persecution of the Jews. 

The love affair between Hitler and the Arab world did not start out 

smoothly. Many Arabs had stars in their eyes. They projected their hopes of 

a liberator onto Hitler and were blind to the racist discrimination that would 

most likely be in store for them. In the beginning, the Germans were not in 

7. Mallmann and Cüppers, Nazi Palestine, 30. 


9. Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous (Perseus Group, PublicAffairs, 2006).


any way in favor of the Arabs. They did not want to offend the British, 

whom they wanted to keep neutral. What started out as a rejection by Germany 

would turn into a mutually exploitive relationship. By 1937, Adolph 

Eichmann’s visit to the Middle East indicated a serious interest in exploring 

the relationship; by 1939, there was evidence that the Germans had secretly 

funded the Mufti’s Arab Revolt. The cool reception the initial Arab courting 

got from the Nazis was changing into something hotter and more 

mutual. The British Mandate system estimated that 60% of Palestinians 

who owned radios listened to Radio Bari. Radio Bari, an Italian station, was 

broadcast all over the world. The Mufti (Palestine) and Gailani (Iraq) and 

others broadcast over 5,000 broadcasts of vicious antisemitic and anti-British/American 

propaganda on Radio Bari. 

After presenting information of the deepening confluence of Palestinian 

and Nazi interests and resources, Mallmann and Cüppers, in an unusual 

criticism, charge an American historian with being “erroneous” and “inconsistent” 

when he claims that “The Arab cause in Palestine . . . was not 

among the interests of National Socialist Germany.” 10 

If the German Mediterranean strategy had been successful, there is no 

reason to believe that the future of the Jews there would have been any 

different from their fate in the conquered nations in Europe. In 1941, the 

Mufti escaped the British, who were chasing him around the Middle East. 

and took up residence in Berlin. His meeting with Adolph Hitler is the consummation 

of the Mufti and Arab love affair with Hitler. They agreed to 

share the German solution to the “Jewish question.” This period brought 

explicit plans for the destruction of the Jews worldwide. One quote states: 

“The Jews could be enclosed and isolated in their Zionist state and 

destroyed there root and branch.” 11 This antisemitic genocidal statement is 

echoed in modern times by Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, when 

he says, “If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of 

going after them world wide.” 12 

An unbelievable criticism of Nazi Palestine is that the Mufti was actually 

a marginal power at the time and never had the power attributed to him. 

These critics ignore the facts. Yasser Arafat became a disciple of the Mufti 

when he was 17 years old. At the Mufti’s funeral in 1974, Arafat called him 

“our Hero.” The U.S. government was threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood 

at the end of WW II. The Brotherhood basically said that if the Mufti 

were prosecuted for war crimes, the United States would be the target of 



12. Deborah Passner, “Hassan Nasrallah: In His Own Words,” Committee for 

Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), July 26, 2006.


terrorism. The king of Egypt provided living quarters to the Mufti, and the 

whole establishment of the Arab world welcomed him back from Europe 

after the war as a hero. The Arab Higher Committee was renewed and Husseini 

was appointed leader. 

In the 1960s, the Mufti lost his glow in the Arab world. Though politics 

put him on the losing side at times, he has always been a powerful figure 

in Palestine and beyond. In 2011, when Israel destroyed a wing of the 

decrepit Shepherd Hotel, protests arose that this was a “Palestinian and 

Islamic symbol” that should be honored and preserved. The building was 

originally built by and as a home to Husseini. The lead Palestinian spokesperson 

protesting the partial destruction of the building was a Palestinian 

official directly related to the Mufti. Thirty-six years after his death, many 

still hold the Mufti in high regard. In light of all this, the authors are right to 

ascribe significant power to Amin al-Husseini. 

ROMMEL AND THE ROAD TO CAIRO 

At this point in the book I wanted a military table map to keep track of 

ground, sea, and air movements. At least a printed situation map included in 

the book would have been helpful. The propaganda in the region was that 

the Axis powers in the form of the Afrika Korps were coming to liberate 

Egypt. Mussolini was ready to ride into Cairo on a white horse. He already 

had victory medallions minted. The Axis plan was to destroy Russia as an 

ally to the United States, bring Nazis into the Middle East from the 

Caucuses and from the west, and, through Tunisia and Libya, conquer 

Egypt and the rest. 

Probably the most shocking and freshest research in Nazi Palestine is 

the information on the Einsatzkommando and Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The 

Einsatzkommando was authorized by the SS and the German police to “take 

executive measures against civilian populations on its own authority.” 13 

This was a euphemism for a license to commit mass murder on civilians, 

especially Jews. The Einsatzgruppen had a history as a small group of commandos 

who recruited the help of local sympathizers to slaughter large 

numbers of non-military men, women, and children. They did this in the 

Soviet Union, Poland, Lithuania, and Serbia. The authors give us a very 

personal profile of the members of the Einsatzkommando. They were 

young, idealistic, and committed Nazis, most in their twenties. Walter Rauff 

was the leader of this killing unit deployed in Egypt with plans to actively 

sweep into Palestine, exterminating the Jewish population on the way. One 

of Rauff’s claims to fame was the invention and use of automotive trans- 



ports that had the exhaust hooked up to the cargo section of the van, delivering 

lethal doses of carbon monoxide to the passengers/cargo. The 

readiness of this unit, along with the assurances of Arab leaders of assistance 

in the mass murder of the Jewish populations, gave little doubt of the 

antisemitic genocide about to take place. The precedent had been set. The 

Einsatzkommando had a tried-and-true protocol, tested in Europe, that they 

were about use in the implementation of the Holocaust in the Middle East. 

While the Mufti and Arabs enjoyed a honeymoon of hate with the 

Third Reich, there were Arab troops in Greece waiting for deployment. 

Eichmann was bragging about the success of “the solution to the European 

Jewish Question.” Eichmann and the Mufti were equally charmed with each 

other; the Jews were their mutual mortal enemy. 

In the Arab world, people were greeting each other on the street with 

“Heil Rommel.” Nasser was an advocate of The Protocols of the Elders of 

Zion. Sadat said of the Nazis and his own political circle in Egypt that “We 

acted in complete harmony.” 14 Once Rommel crossed the Suez, Arabs, with 

German guidance, would have instituted the Nazi solution to the Jewish 

Problem in Palestine. 

In 1936, David Ben Gurion predicted “the greatest catastrophe the 

world has ever experienced,” stating that Hitler and Arab supporters would 

invade the Middle East and destroy all Jews. In 1942, it looked like this was 

right on schedule: 15,000 Jews left Egypt for Jerusalem; Rommel was 

advancing with the Einsatzkommando, and plenty of willing Arab henchmen, 

behind him. The Haganah and the Irgun debated strategy. Jews from 

Palestine were ready to join the British military. The Palmach was formed 

to perform commando missions. A Jewish fighting force was maturing. 

There were plans for a mass evacuation should Rommel succeed in reaching 

Palestine. But evacuate to where? The reality was that the Jewish community 

in Palestine would have been annihilated. 

Alas for Hitler, his decision to put most of his resources in the Eastern 

Front foiled his plans for conquering the Middle East. The battles at El 

Alamein and the Nazi invasion from the Caucuses began to fail. The intelligence 

advantage switched to the British side. Supplies became scarce for 

the Axis powers. The Nazi plan was to converge on the Arab region from 

the east and west. Rommel’s losses at Alamein ended the hopes to crush the 

Jews and the British in the Arab world. Walter Rauff and his Einsatzgruppen 

were sent back to Europe. 

Before Rauff returned to Europe, he inflicted a reign of terror in Tunisia. 

He enforced a labor program on Jews for months and robbed them of 



their personal possessions. After Rauff was evacuated from Tunisia, the war 

soon ended. 

The Middle East was not the only place Muslims were working for 

Hitler. The Mufti was crucial to raising Muslim Nazi troops in Croatia and 

elsewhere. These troops, who were SS war criminals, wore uniforms honoring 

both Nazi and Islamic symbols. Certainly, all European Muslims were 

not Waffen SS soldiers. But this book is not about those who were not 

Nazis, it is about those who were. In Among the Righteous, Satloff 15 told 

about the righteous Muslims of WW II who saved Jews. Unfortunately, 

there were tens of thousands more who carried guns, burned homes with 

civilians inside, and generally perpetrated mayhem under the Crescent and 

the Swastika. Bolshevism, Jews, Catholic Serbs, and gypsies were the 

enemy. The troops were inspired by Imams trained in Islam and Nazi propaganda 

who traveled with them as they inflicted havoc. The cover of Nazi 

Palestine shows a photograph of two young and innocent-looking Muslim 

Waffen SS soldiers studying an antisemitic text. In Western Europe, there 

were training camps provided by the Germans for Arab informers who were 

trained in sabotage, insurrection, and radio operations. They were guided 

intellectually and politically to believe that Nazi and Islamic interests were 

parallel. Nowhere, though, do Mallmann and Cüppers claim that these Muslim 

troops were crucial to the Holocaust; in fact, they write when discussing 

the Muslim troops, “The practical value of the SS formations proved to be 

modest.” 16 Those troops did, however, commit numerous war crimes and 

“had taken wide ranging measures against the Jews.” 17 

Husseini exaggerated to the Reich what he could deliver to them in 

terms of real military might. He was a failure not only to his troops and the 

Nazis, but to his people as well. Or was he? In the short term, he failed, but 

his view was wider and longer than WW II. One could say that his anti- 

Western plan is continuing and that WW II was just the beginning. 

Mallmann and Cüppers end the book with a follow-up on some of the 

villains. The Mufti lived a long and celebrated life. Walter Rauff retired to 

South America and spoke freely of his death machine; he was protected by 

Chile’s lack of deportation laws. Others were killed by the end of the war, 

and very few were tracked down and punished after the war. 

Of course, all Arabs were not Nazis. The Mufti and his thugs did 

allow, intentionally or not, some moderate, communist, and other Palestinians 

to live. Mallmann and Cüppers did not write a survey of all of Arab 

hearts and minds. They wrote instead a shocking and dangerously revealing 

15. Satloff, Among the Righteous. 




story of a significant threat to the world reflected in the relevance of Nazi 

ideology and Nazi values to many Arabs. We hear in modern voices rising 

from Palestine and the Middle East repetitions of those genocidal threats 

that seem to have been coined in the 1930s and 40s. There should be room 

to defend against a blanket condemnation of a whole people as “Nazis.” At 

the same time, there should be the awareness of a legacy of Nazi sympathizers 

that exists in the Middle East. 

It would be interesting to see this subject followed up by a study using 

Arabic sources researched from the same time period. René Wildangel does 

attempt to counter Mallmann and Cüppers, but his book, Between the Axis 

and the Mandate Power, 18 published in German, is unavailable in English. 

This reviewer cannot read German, but from commentary, Wildangel 

believes Mallmann and Cüpper’s position is overstated. 

Another book, by Esther Webman and Meir Litvak, 19 is primarily 

about post-Holocaust Arab opinion. This work, which helps the Western 

reader understand Arab thinking on the Nazis, uses many Arabic sources as 

it takes a look at the complexity of Arab opinion after the war of the treatment 

of Jews by Nazis. 

What makes this book extraordinarily relevant today is not that Arabs 

collaborated with Nazis; French, Polish, and other peoples did as well. 

What is different is that today we hear the same hateful and genocidal rants 

tolerated, not from Europe, but from the Middle East. It is imperative to 

determine the roots of this criminal speech and intent so that it can be 

overcome. 

The public has the tendency to keep their eyes shut tight and not see 

the uncomfortable even if it is obvious. It is the role of the researcher to pry 

those eyes open through well-researched material, allowing scholars and the 

public to see the facts. The authors of Nazi Palestine have done just that 

with good scholarship and potent writing. 

*David Sokol, MA, is a writer, psychologist, and visual artist living in Vermont. 

He wrote and produced the video Mufti and writes about antisemitism. 

18. René Wildangel, Between the Axis and the Mandate Power (Berlin: Klaus 

Schwarz Verlag, 2007). 

19. Esther Webman and Meir Litvak, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Reponses 

to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

The First Argentinian Jewish Women 

Sandra McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, Claiming a 

Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880-1955 

(Duke University Press, 2010), 368 pp., $84.95 

Donna Guy* 

The publication of Sandra McGee Deutsch’s Crossing Borders, Claiming 

a Nation marks a major contribution to the history of Jews in Argentina 

as well as to women’s history. Her nuanced and engaging stories of women 

from the right, the left, and the center of the Argentine Jewish community 

and their efforts to distinguish themselves beyond the realm of hearth and 

home represents the first major monograph on Jewish women in the Southern 

Hemisphere. It covers women who grew up in the Jewish agricultural 

communities as well as those who lived in urban areas from 1880 to 1955. 

From women who told of their daily existence in families to those who 

portrayed Jewish themes in the theater and in music, to socialists and Zionists, 

women appear in the records of the Jewish community, even though 

they often had little power outside the home within the religious community. 

Equally important, Deutsch has paid careful attention to German, eastern 

European, and Moroccan Jewish women. 

Often, prosopography can be weighed down by the biographical 

unsubstantiated by personal recollections, but Deutsch has relied on a combination 

of statistics, memoirs, and personal interviews to bring life to the 

many women discussed. Furthermore, their lives become more than anecdo- 

305


tal through the skillful use of the concepts denoted in the book title: the 

efforts of women to transit communal, geographic, political, and familial 

boundaries. Together they form part of a transnational diasporic community 

bounded by gender, religious, and ideological expectations that women 

challenged as well as celebrated in many ways. 

Each chapter deals with a different group of women, beginning with 

those in the Jewish agricultural colonies who were often ignored or 

expected to remain at home by the Jewish Colonization Association officials. 

Although the common recollections of these communities are often 

nostalgic, the Ashkenazi and Sephardic women who went to the interior 

sometimes had to support the family by moving to Buenos Aires to work, 

and widows became the only women entitled to plots of land without their 

husbands to help out. Furthermore, Jewish girls received less education than 

their male counterparts, partly due to poverty, but also to the emphasis on 

male education. One solution became boarding schools in more urban areas, 

with the girls living with relatives, and women became active in founding 

and supporting libraries. Communist-supported libraries also introduced 

Jewish women to new ideas. They also supported activities extolling the 

Argentine state on its public holidays as part of the process of both assimilation 

and patriotism long before women gained voting rights in 1947. 

In Buenos Aires, as well as in other urban diasporic cities, poor Jewish 

women helped support the family through menial tasks such as laundering 

clothing. Educated women became involved in cultural centers and philanthropic 

activities. Although Jewish women lived in neighborhoods more 

segregated than others in immigrant communities, that did not mean they 

had no opportunities to reach out and engage in activities that transcended 

their own streets and families. They also received more education, often 

through religious organizations, than in the countryside, and teaching 

offered an acceptable occupation for educated women both inside and 

outside the Jewish community. Once again the presence of strong ideological 

movements such as anarchism, socialism, and, after 1918, communism, 

meant that women proved their usefulness ideologically by engaging in 

strikes, maintaining solidarity with those imprisoned on political charges, 

and both publishing and teaching these ideologies. 

The narratives and analysis become the strongest as the research 

approaches the mid twentieth century due to the possibility of interviewing 

women who participated in these processes. Furthermore, the coverage of 

both antifascist and Zionist Jewish women shows that women could cross 

international borders as well as work closely with groups of other Argentine 

women, particularly with the Junta de la Victoria in the case of the antifascist 

women. 

Rather than tell just the stories of the most famous Jewish women

2011] THE FIRST ARGENTINIAN JEWISH WOMEN 307 

Deutsch truly tries to integrate the unknown, the infamous (in the case of 

Jewish prostitutes), and the more well-known political activists. Thus while 

we learn more about the socialist Chertkoff sisters, we also learn of Elisa, a 

seamstress from Romania. We now know much more about the entertainers 

Cipe Lincofsky and Golda Fleme. What remains untold, however, is the 

interaction of these women with formal Jewish associations controlled by 

men. Indeed, the emphasis in this book, other than looking at the Zionists, is 

on women who generally worked outside the framework of “appropriate” 

roles for Jewish women in Argentina. Equally important, it is very difficult 

to tell whether the patriarchal nature of the formal Jewish community or 

husbands actually impeded women “crossing borders.” For example, there 

are no studies on divorces among the religious and their impact on Jewish 

women, nor of community ostracism of women who transgressed boundaries 

other than commercial sex. 

Since it would be impossible to quantify the number of women who 

became notable within the Jewish community over time, it is even more 

difficult to gauge whether they are principally with the left or the Zionists. 

In more recent times, estimates of Jews in Argentina who do not practice 

their faith well outnumber those who do, and given the fact that before the 

1960s no Jewish seminaries operated in Argentina, one might surmise that 

non-practicing Jews also outnumbered those who belonged to the formal 

Jewish community. Thus the issue of patriarchy and religious control is a 

particularly important question for the Jewish women of Argentina, as the 

Jewish community itself solidified its fragmentation between the left and 

the religious during the Peronist era and thus muddied these waters. Despite 

these thorny questions, there can be no doubt that few have gone as far as 

McGee Deutsch to reveal the history of Jewish women in Argentina. In 

fact, it ranks as the first major publication on women in an immigrant community 

anywhere in Latin America. And that is quite an achievement. 

*Donna Guy teaches in the Department of History at Ohio State University. This 

review was originally published on H-Judaic (June 2011) and is reprinted with 

permission of the author.

. . . From the Conference Floor 

Madeleine Albright and Joschka Fischer 

speaking with AJC’s David Harris 

Neal E. Rosenberg 

AJC 2011 

On April 27-29 of this year, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) 

presented its Global Forum on global Jewish advocacy at the Grand Hyatt 

in Washington, D.C. The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism editors 

Steven K. Baum and Neal E. Rosenberg attended, as did several other 

groups, such as SPME. 

Speakers and debates included renowned diplomats and political 

figures such as Madeline Albright (former U.S. secretary of state), Joschka 

Fisher (foreign minister and vice chancellor of Germany), Elliot Abrams 

(U.S. deputy security advisor), and William M. Daley (White House chief 

of staff). Their analysis of the current political climate concerning global 

antisemitism was insightful and succinct. 

The debate between Yossi Klein Halevi of The New Republic and 

Peter Beinart, senior political writer for the Daily Beast, was exciting. Beinart 

made an impassioned plea against settlement building in West Bank 

(Sumeria and Judea), focusing on the offended sensibilities of the Palestinians. 

Halevi then asked Beinart why he did not have the same passion and 

sensitivity for Jews living under the yoke of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism 

in Israel. Along those lines. Halevi asked Beinart why he did not criticize 

the bomb and missile attacks with the same intensity in his remarks 

about Palestinian sensitivities concerning settlement building. Halevi 

309


addressed the double standard of judging the actions of Jews by one standard 

and the Palestinians by another. The debate was lively. 

There were several breakout sessions with lectures. Of particular interest 

was the forum on “Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: Confronting a 

Persistent Menace,” by Andrew Baker, the AJC director of international 

Jewish affairs. Rabbi Baker’s analysis of the Dutch approach to antisemitism 

illustrated the complicated nature of the phenomenon in Holland. The 

audience’s engagement and personal experiences added greatly to the texture 

of the breakout sessions. 

AJC excels as an advocacy group that fosters the equitable interests of 

Jews, Israel, and the world at large. With its specific focus on worldwide 

antisemitism, AJC’s nuanced and sophisticated offensive is a bulwark 

against the multifaceted expression of antisemitism in the contemporary 

world, and lays important methodical groundwork to strengthen the ties 

between Jews and non-Jews throughout the world. This was illustrated to 

me in a discussion with Antonyia Parvanova, a member of the European 

Parliament from Bulgaria. Dr. Parvanova is a member of a faction of the 

European Parliament identified as the “Friends of Israel.” These members 

attempt to foster a good relationship between the European Union and 

Israel. The AJC assists the Friends of Israel with information, personal persuasion, 

trips to Israel, and trips to conferences such as this AJC Global 

Forum. 

AJC is an older group and has begun to seek out Jewish youth. As 

such, it encourages Jewish youth from all corners of the globe to involve 

themselves with issues concerning Jews, Israel, and antisemitism. At the 

end of the Global Forum on Friday, the weekend continued with a youth 

conference called Access 20/20 Weekend. The AJC believes that the future 

of global Jewish issues is dependent upon the enthusiasm and participation 

of today’s youth. It is the young Jews who will be inheriting the legacy of 

antisemitism—whether they are prepared is AJC’s concern.

AIPAC Conference May 22-24, Washington, D.C. 

Neal E. Rosenberg 

AIPAC 2011 

The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference 

was held May 22-24 this year at the Convention Center in Washington, 

coinciding with the visit of Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of the 

State of Israel, with Barack Obama, president of the United States of 

America. The atmosphere was charged with excitement and anticipation. 

On the first day of the conference, President Obama came to the 

podium. His speech clarified comments he had made concerning whether 

the 1967 borders of Israel would be the basis of the settlement between the 

Israelis and Arabs for a comprehensive peace. The president’s speech was 

courageous in that many of the delegates at the AIPAC conference had 

strong reservations about the level of commitment that he has to the State of 

Israel. President Obama reiterated his strong support for the territorial integrity 

of Israel and military support for the Jewish state. But there was an 

unspoken issue of concern to the audience at the conference: What is the 

real inner conviction of the president for the survival of the Jewish state? 

President Obama’s intent was to convince those assembled at the AIPAC 

conference that his inner conviction strongly supports the Jewish state. During 

the speech, he produced all the buzzwords concerning support of the 

State of Israel and the mutual democratic traditions of both countries. But, 

for many, the buzzwords were not enough. The question remains concerning 

the strength of his inner commitment to the Jewish state. President 

Obama’s speech did not overcome the reservations of many in the audience. 

These members, even after the speech, questioned that commitment and 

wondered whether he identifies more with the plight of the Palestinians than 

the survival of the Jewish people in Israel. 

The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed the con- 

311


ference on Monday evening. He stressed the historical and emotional ties 

between the Israeli people and the American people, describing in his most 

succinct point what a democracy is in relation to the Arab revolutions now 

taking place. Natanyahu’s fear is that the revolutions may herald the arrival 

of fundamentalist and authoritarian regimes that will not accept the peace 

process with Israel. He pointed out that a democracy is not just the vote of 

its people; rather, it is a true democratic government that has many necessary 

values associated with it, such as freedom of the press, freedom of 

religion, and freedom of associations. Without these values, a democratic 

vote does not reflect true liberal democracy. Natanyahu strongly stated that, 

without these associated freedoms, Israel will not have true democratic partners 

to make peace with its Arab neighbors and the Palestinian people. And, 

without these associated democratic traditions, any peace accord will 

always be in jeopardy. 

Not only did the conference consist of a Who’s Who of policy makers 

concerning Israel, but also the AIPAC assembly and two-thirds of Congress 

for the dinner honoring Benjamin Netanyahu. Along with the prime minister, 

at the dinner were both Harry Reed (D-NV), majority leader of the U.S. 

Senate, and the Honorable John Boehner (R-OH), speaker of the U.S. 

House of Representatives, who voiced their strong support for the State of 

Israel. The conference achieved its purpose of bringing together the supporters 

of the State of Israel in the United States, and making clear the 

division between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin 

Netanyahu concerning the elements needed for peace between Israel and its 

neighbors. The audience’s engagement and personal experiences added 

greatly to the texture of the breakout sessions.

Antisemitica 

313


In the 1992 embassy bombing in Buenos Aires, 29 people were killed and 

242 were injured. In the bombing at the AMIA Jewish community center 

in 1994, 85 people were killed and 300 injured. 

A banner made of the colors of the Israeli flag and Nazi swastika reads, 

in Spanish, “What a shame Israel” at a march to the Israeli Embassy in 

Buenos Aires, January 6, 2009. (AP Photo)

2011] ANTISEMITICA 315 

Cartoons by Carlos 

Carlos Latuff, Brazilian cartoonist, b. November 30, 1968 

Urging Turkish PM to “cut ties with Israel NOW” A Palestinian as a Holocaust victim 

Israelis are born to kill. Like Nazis, they are just following 

orders.

The Shunned Toadstool 

In the past, fungi were often regarded with suspicion and fear. Mysterious and 

magical qualities were associated with their unusual shape, and it was also well known 

that many of the species could be toxic and even fatal. The fact that they thrive in dark 

and wet places added to the misgivings people held about them. These weird botanical 

wonders were given strange names that were supported by folklore and superstition. 

Even when scientific and rational explanations emerged in time, certain stories 

prevailed and still appear in their old garb. Myriads of mushrooms spring up all over the 

world; they sprout, bloom, burst forth, and wither very quickly; some of them have 

become well known for their poisonous deadly attributes, yet others—the edible ones— 

are considered delicacies, fit to be the gold of the gods. Most mushrooms have always 

been treated with great respect for these reasons, but no fungus has been considered as 

vile and unholy as the edible Auricularia auricular, or, as it is known by its alternate 

name, Auricula judae—Latin for Jew’s ear. 

The Auricula judae grows mainly but not exclusively on dead and dying elders, 

and its nickname goes back to the Middle Ages. People believed that Judas Iscariot had 

betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, then grew desolate and morbid because of his 

deed, discarded the money, and hanged himself on an elder tree. The fungus appeared 

on the tree as a symbolic manifestation of Judas’ evil deed, a representation that his 

doomed spirit cannot find rest. The toadstool is edible, velvety soft, and jelly-like, and 

truly looks like a wrinkled disfigured ear. Its vicious reputation does not prevent some 

people from picking it and consuming it in a stew, despite that it does not seem to add 

any desirable flavor. Some who like practical jokes might enjoy the surprise and disgust 

on the faces of their guests when they serve the soup that seems to have ears floating in 

it. 

Hatred and hostility toward Jews was widespread, deep, and illogical. People 

forgot that Jesus himself had been a Jew, and that Judas, whose exact motives are 

unknown, had betrayed a friend, and not a member of a different religion or race. Judas’ 

act is but one of the excuses for the spread of discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance. 

Folklore sometimes, as in this case, reinforces the strong negative feelings of those who 

chose to follow the dark paths. The unlucky Auricula judae is regarded as a curse, not 

just because of its shape, but also due to its repulsive odor that was believed to have 

some connection with witchcraft. It grows very quickly, and some tales connect its 

unusual rapid birth and demise with the full moon and the thundering skies. Thunder is 

usually followed by rain, and thus creates the ideal breeding field for mushrooms, while 

the full moon exerts a certain additional gravitational pull to which fungi seem to 

respond by maturing even faster. 

The elder tree shares some of this toadstool’s despicable reputation, since its 

flowers and leaves are commonly considered to be foul smelling. The curse fell on the 

tree, reflecting that some say it was its wood that served as Jesus’ cross. The legend has 

more far-reaching, dismal insinuations. It was believed that God punished the Jews for 

Judas’ betrayal by inflicting on them the same putrid smell and some abominable 

disease. Yet another sinister tale sprang forth, as a result of the previous one, claiming 

that for the Jews the best medicine to combat those illnesses was the blood of Christian 

children. Thus it became a common conviction that Jews murdered youngsters, 

particularly around Passover. The proof—the brownish-reddish flakes that appear on 

the surface of the baked matzo eaten during the holiday—is a sure sign that blood is 

used in its making. 

—From Nadine Grosser Nagarajan’s Pomegranate Seeds 

(University of New Mexico Press, 2005). 

317

The UK’s University and College Union (UCU) decided this weekend to 

immunize itself against anybody who might claim that antisemitism can 

come in a form that looks like criticism of Israel. It did this by rejecting and 

denouncing the EUMC working definition of antisemitism. There was only 

one Jewish person at UCU willing or to speak against this stance, and it 

was met with stony silence. 

I, a Jewish member of this union, am telling you that I feel an antisemitic 

mood in this union and even in this room. I would feel your refusal to 

engage with the EUMC definition of antisemitism, if you pass this motion, 

as a racist act. Many Jews have resigned from this union, citing their experience 

of antisemitism. Only yesterday a delegate here said: “They are an 

expansionist people.” It is difficult to think that the people in question are 

anything other than the Jews. You may disagree with me. You may disagree 

with all the other Jewish members who have said similar things. You may 

think we are mistaken. But you have a duty to listen seriously. Instead of 

being listened to, I am routinely told that anyone who raises the issue of 

antisemitism is doing so in bad faith. Congress, imagine how it feels when 

you say that you are experiencing racism, and your union responds: “Stop 

lying, stop trying to play the antisemitism card.” You, a group of mainly 

white, non-Jewish trade unionists, do not have the right to tell me, a Jew, 

what feels like antisemitism and what does not. Macpherson tells us that 

when somebody says they have been a victim of racism, then institutions 

should begin by believing them. This motion mandates the union to do the 

opposite. Until this union takes complaints of antisemitism seriously, the 

UCU will continue to be labeled as an institutionally antisemitic organization. 

It’s true that anti-Zionist Jews may perceive things differently. But the 

overwhelming majority of Jews feel that there is something wrong in this 

union. They understand that it is legitimate to criticize Israel in a way that 

is, quoting from the definition, “similar to that leveled to any other country,” 

but they make a distinction between criticism and the kind of demonization 

that is considered acceptable in this union. 

—Ronnie Fraser, UCU Congress, Harrogate, UK, May 29, 2011 

Religions are based on scripture, which is mostly poetry. So it only makes sense 

that religious conflict must be resolved through poetry, and not through politics, 

negotiation, or war. I propose that all religious conflicts be redefined poetically, so 

that they can be resolved without bloodshed, winners, or losers. So let’s sharpen 

our pencils, not our swords; send missives, not missiles; and apply our minds not to 

pomposity, animosity, ferocity, atrocity, or monstrosity but to metaphor, simile, 

rhyme, meter, and prosody. 

—Hugh Mann 

319

JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

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