Reason, Liberty, & Culture



Muslim Antisemitism

Muslim and Arab Antisemitism is a Trojan Horse designed to undermine the West's belief in its own values. Islam is winning this war at the moment because Europe is cooperating.

Robert Wistrich

The Wiesenthal Center has recently published data on antisemitism over the European Internet; reports are once more being received about violence against Jews in Europe and in Russia; the Knesset's Aliyah and Absorption Committee is also discussing antisemitism in Europe.

All of this is cause for justifiable concern, but at the same time both Israel and the Jewish Diaspora are repressing certain facts of great importance: It is radical Muslims and not necessarily white Europeans who are leading the present wave of antisemitism.

Public opinion is not aware of the fact that the Islamic world imported antisemitism from Europe , "converted it to Islam" (mainly as the result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and exported it back to Europe and the West in general by means of the Muslim diaspora and by means of an expected supporter - anti-West and anti-globalization elements.

Until the collapse of the Oslo process, Israel had never grappled with Arab antisemitism in order not to ruin chances for peace. It was a combination of wishful thinking, lack of desire to properly face up to unpleasant facts and misplaced political considerations.

In a study that I made, I found a plethora of examples of the connection made between the Koran and "Mein Kampf" in the Arab media, whose influence over millions of Muslim households is well known. Judaism is often presented as evil, immoral and with a lust for intrigue and Israel and the Zionists as Nazis, racists, criminals and land grabbers engaged in "ethnic cleansing".

Unfortunately, despite peace agreements with Israel, there is also evidence that Egypt also feeds "Nazi" antisemitism; ostensibly "moderate" Jordan and pro-Western Saudi Arabia also create anti-Jewish propaganda. In Pakistan - a non-Arab country that has no territorial dispute with Israel - there is antisemitic literature is flourishing.

Such literature has been disseminated by the Palestinian Authority during and since the Oslo agreement period. Text books contain antisemitic themes, and publications often minimize the importance of the Holocaust or even deny it.

Arab governments are doing nothing against these fabrications, and in essence legitimize them in order to protect themselves from the wrath of their own embittered citizens, deprived of democracy, freedom of speech and basic human rights.

Against this background it is clear how millions of Muslims are prepared to believe every falsehood, including the blowing up of the World Trade Center by the Mossad.

This "Semitic" antisemitism is especially threatening when it is on a mission from Allah, and the 1979 revolution in Iran against the "Great Devil" (America and the "Crusader" West) and the "Jewish-Zionist Devil" bears witness to this.

This is total war, because it is mainly a religious war. Antisemitism of this kind has diverted the Jihad from its original objective and turned into a death cult.

The annihilation of Israel is the precursor to a successful Jihad, as was Hitler's war against the Jews, which is also viewed as the opening salvo in gaining world domination.

The Nazis, like Stalin in the final years of his rule, accused "World Jewry" of having the same ambitions they themselves fostered. They are reminiscent of the Nazis because of their hatred of liberalism, of freedom of thought of non-conformism, of women's liberation, and other "decadent" expressions of modernism and civilization.

Arab and Muslim antisemitism is the Trojan Horse designed to undermine the West's belief in its own values. Islam is at present winning this war because Europe is cooperating - because of its lust for oil, because of electoral considerations with the increased Muslim populations in their countries, because of past colonialist "sins" and because of the naive belief that the "weak" is always right. But the West must not sacrifice Israel on any altar of appeasement.

Europe is liable to find itself once more entrapped in a complex of partners in destructive crime, and Israel has not yet begun to relate to this serious problem through a coherent strategic policy, frequently playing into the enemy's hands. Both of them - Europe and Israel - must change their ways.


Prof. Robert Wistrich, a historian with the Shalem Center, formerly the Director of the European Institute of Modern History in London, and a researcher in the sphere of antisemitism, anti-Israel activities and Fascist organizations.

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