Ahasver, Mammon and Moloch: Anti-Jewish images 1602 to 9/11

Antisemitism and Germany:

anti-Jewish images from 1602 to 9/11

About Ahasver (the »eternal Jew«), anti-capitalist antisemitism (»Mammon«) and blood libel (»Moloch)

Dr. Clemens Heni, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), YALE University

Clemens Heni Ahasver Mammon Moloch

Prologue

As early as 20 years ago, Henryk M. Broder, one of the most prominent German journalists and authors, characterized the ways German society deals with anti-Semitism as follows[1]:

“There were and are three ways in which one may deal with the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic: in a scientific way, in a historicizing way and in a defensive way. In the first case, one has to collect data, as if the issue at hand were drunk driving or working-class children at secondary schools. But one must make sure not to draw conclusions from the data. In the second case, it is recommended to select topics such as ‘Anti-Semitism in the late Tsarist period’ or ‘Christians and Jews in the time of the first crusade,’ which are surely important subjects, but whose greatest virtue is, of course, that everybody involved has been dead for a long time and one need not reckon with angry responses. Finally, in the third case, it is advisable to declare anti-Semitism a marginal phenomenon accompanying the otherwise fruitful German-Jewish symbiosis, to describe the Third Reich as a kind of natural catastrophe or accident, and to rehabilitate figures of contemporary history with a reputation of being anti-Semitic and to prove that they have been misunderstood. If indeed all three conditions are fulfilled, then the work will be considered high-level and will enjoy public funding.”[2]

Introduction

I consider this paper as part of a theoretical approach to the study of anti-Semitism. The  paper examines the anti-Jewish images of Ahasver, Mammon and Moloch and contributes to research on anti-Semitism, or to criticism of anti-Semitism, a criticism of both ideology and at the level of political economy. This is in contrast to many a dictum of desiring specifically “not to point out literary anti-Semitism” when dealing with Ahasver[3]. Analysis of anti-Semitism must include an examination of the society or context made it possible to think up and write down precisely a legend about Jews. For this reason, this working paper attempts to examine analogously three of the most important anti-Jewish images which are intertwined with one another: Ahasver, Moloch and Mammon. In doing so, it goes without saying that the historical point of departure is not to be regarded in isolation, but in its relationship to the contemporary manifestation of such images. In addition, it is imperative to inquire about specifically German patterns of this anti-Jewish triad.

Preliminaries: The German specificity and antisemitism

Before explaining in detail the three images of Ahasver, Mammon, and Moloch, let us at least to focus briefly on some German specifics. Three US scholars may help me in pointing this out. First the historian, philosopher, poet and Pulitzer-Prize winner Peter Viereck (1916-2006). In 1941 he finished his famous doctoral dissertation (PhD) at Harvard University, shortly after the start of World War Two. He served later as psychological advisor to the US Army. Viereck’s PhD, entitled Metapolitics. From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler[4], attempted to define why Germany is a special case which has to be distinguished from other European and Western countries. Even though Viereck finished his work in 1941, before he knew about the Holocaust, his contribution is important in understanding German antisemitism. He distinguishes five developments which make Germany a specific case. 1) The “German” revolt against Rome and the “universal legalism of the Roman Empire and the universal absolutes of Christianity”. Besides Viereck’s pride in Christianity, he nevertheless points to an important point: Germans, or Hermann the Cheruscan (Arminius) fought the Romans at the battle of Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9. This is indeed an important event in German nationalism even in the contemporary context, and even worse, it was an important topic in the rise of National Socialism. A more detailed analysis could also look at Jewish roots of universal rights and law, going beyond Viereck’s pro-Christian perspective. Paganism was an important element of the early anti-universalist and cultural-relativist German attempt to reject Roman universalism. Roman universalism is, on the other hand, an important aspect of the American Revolution and constitution, e.g. the famous “Novus Ordo Saeclorum”, to which I referred in my PhD in 2006.[5] The anti-Roman German ideology can be seen in Heinrich v. Kleist’s “Hermannsschlacht” (The Battle of Hermann) of 1808. Among other elements, the black flag of the Germans in that battle is important, as it indicates the ‘total will’ to destroy, not just to defeat.[6] The late 19^th century movement “Los von Rom” [away from Rome] around Austrian agitator Georg von Schönerer claimed: “Ohne Juda, ohne Rom bauen wir Germaniens Dom” [Without the Jews, without Rome, we build Germany’s cathedral].[7]

2) The second revolt Viereck assesses is the medieval Saxons who reject Christianity. Instead, they fought “for their god Wotan against Charlemagne (…).”[8] 3) The third German Revolt is related insofar as Luther and the Reformation in the 16^th century rejected as well (Catholic) universalism and Rome in order to establish a ‘German’ way of Protestant Christianity. Furthermore: we can see a specific German situation in terms of creating three different ways of anti-Jewish thinking. First the Pagan Revolt against monotheism, which is an important aspect of right wing extremism, especially the “New Right”, the topic of my PhD. The neo-pagan resentment against monotheism and the cultural relativist plea for “a god for every people”. rejects Christianity. It is seen by pagan anti-monotheist ideology as another form of Judaism (on another level). Viereck was already pointing to these tendencies, even though he might have been too optimistic about Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. The two other religious elements in Germany are of course Luther and Protestantism, and Catholicism. No other major European country has three big and influential religious elements of antisemitism. Italy, France, Spain, and Poland, are all Catholic. Britain has a tradition of Protestant, but Germany has both. In addition National Socialism was supportive of (neo)paganism. This complex religious situation in Germany since the 16^th century must be taken seriously in its specifics. 4) The fourth German “Revolt against the Roman Empire’s western heritage” was directed against France. From the late 18^th century until the late 19^th century, from “Sturm und Drang” [“Storm and Stress”] until the neo-romantics, a specific German way of denouncing western values and principles developed. Finally,

“Nazism, the fifth revolt, the most radical break ever made with western civilization, would annihilate our liberties, our very bodies and our most basic ethics.”[9]

Vierecks outlook of 1941 saying „Germany’s ceaseless cultural pendulum will swing back to its western pole“ failed. Even at the time this was printed in 1941 the Germans were killing the Jews in the Holocaust.

Therefore, I turn now to my second reference, dealing with the German specific: this is Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s PhD also at Harvard University, published in 1996. It is entitled Hitler’s willing executioners[10].  Goldhagen argues that a specific type of German antisemitism evolved as the result of a unique political culture. He focuses on the antisemitic motivations of German perpetrators and killers during the Holocaust. He refers to the “Polizeibataillone” [Police Battalions], “Jewish” work in the concentration camp, and the “Death marches”. Elsewhere I have written about the specific argumentation of Goldhagen and the Goldhagen debate, also in relation to the attempt of philosophers Horkheimer and Adorno and their “Dialectic of Enlightenment” of 1947.  This debate aimed at shedding some light on both bourgeois society in its unspecificity and on Germany and its specific development, first until 1933 and then until 1945.[11]

One quote of Goldhagen’s work here is important for understanding. The specific German understanding of “the Jew” is in its core different from other anti-Jewish constructs like that in France in late 19^th century (Dreyfus-affair), or in Russia at the 1880s, at the start of the pogroms:

“The underlying German cultural model of ‘the Jew’ (der Jude) was composed of three notions: that the Jew was different from the German, that he was a binary opposite of the German, and that he was not just benignly different but malevolent and corrosive. Whether conceived of as religion, nation, political group, or race, the Jew was always a Fremdkörper, an alien body within Germany.”[12]

The ensuing Goldhagen debate was a significant step forward in increasing the awareness of antisemitism as the core of National Socialism and the Shoah.

The third contribution I would like to refer to is historian Paul Lawrence Rose’s. He wrote several books on German history, of which the most important for my paper is German Question/Jewish Question. Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant to Wagner, first published in 1990.[13] I shall focus on some of Rose’s important questions, which help in the understanding of the phenomenon of German history and antisemitism. He shows that, especially from the 19^th century until Hitler and National Socialism, a type of “revolutionary” antisemitism developed in Germany’s political culture.

“The historical problem, however, is why it was that German antisemitism, rather than that of any other society, produced the movement and the means for physically implementing the ‘destructionist’ mentality. We cannot say just it was an accident that German and not, say, Polish or French antisemitism brought about the Holocaust and shrug off further discussion. For a fire to burn, there must be tinder and fuel. Only if an entire culture were permeated – not always malevolently – with anti-Semitic sensibility could it allow itself to initiate and participate in such a process as the Holocaust. I tried in this book to delineate a peculiarly German corruption of the whole spectrum of intellectual and political culture – even of ‘pro-Jewish’ opinion – by a habit of thinking and feeling that was profoundly anti-Jewish. (…) To regard German antisemitism as just one of many antisemitisms and disconnect it in any substantial way from the explanation of the Holocaust is to fall into a most serious historical error.”[14]

Rose highlights an often neglected point, and I want to contribute with my working paper, to some extent, to the discussion about the specific German version of modern antisemitism, without neglecting general and almost universal elements of antisemitism in the contemporary context.

Making a connection between the German case and other aspects of antisemitism, Viereck helps us understand what is taking place. In his new introduction to Metapolitics in 2003, more than 60 years after the first edition, he adds some paragraphs dealing with Muslim antisemitism. As I will later discuss current trends in new antisemitism, his perspective is interesting. He clearly sees the danger of political Islam, even though he reduces the problem somehow as ‘just’ an import from Germany. For example he writes, that “Sati al-Husri, father of pan-Arabism in the 1920s, was a devoted Fichte scholar. So was Sami al-Jundi, a founder of the Baath (…)”.[15] Genocidal antisemitism cannot be appeased, and Viereck, like Goldhagen (whom he obviously does not like[16]) decades later, was well aware of the specificity of German Jew-hatred, which went beyond all known boundaries in the history of racism and exploitation (like imperialism and colonialism).  As Viereck  explains:

“After all, anti-Semitism was not profitable. This misses the point of Nazi Metapolitics: that it used up its transports for its death camps even when other use of transport would have been of greater economic and military use, just as working the persecuted minorities would have been more profitable than murdering them. (…) I wrote my book because I found most Americans blind to Hitlerism as a new religion, an evil Wagnerian dream. Not an economic utilitarianism that could be appeased, bought off.”[17]

There is a need to try to understand that National Socialists and Germans killed the Jews because they wanted to kill the Jews. There was no other aim or purpose in the Holocaust.

Without comparing Nazi Germany completely with Islamicist totalitarianism, we must focus on the special threat which derives from political Islam (and theological implications of Islam itself) and also relates to National Socialism and European antisemitism. This should and must also be the topic of further studies.[18]

Today there is a need to understand radical Muslim prayers, comments and resolutions, as Dr. Mordechai Kedar explained at a YIISA public lecture.[19] Benny Morris in his assessment that it is important to understand the specific threat deriving from political Islam, one that it contrary to typical political conflicts in Europe.[20] We have to learn to understand the language of (political) Islam, which differs harshly from Western civilization. If the West did learn something from the Holocaust, National Socialism and its antisemitism, then we have to focus on this new, different, but also genocidal threat, aimed especially at Jews and the state of Israel.

These more general aspects of German history and other aspects of antisemitism will now be analyzed in more detail. I will begin with Ahasver.

1) Ahasver

In a Danzig chapbook of 1602, the Jew Ahasver was depicted as a Jerusalem shoemaker, and the villain who, according to the Christian anti-Jewish idea, did not permit poor Jesus, carrying the cross on his back, to rest on his way to Golgotha. For this reason, the Jewish shoemaker was cursed and sent away to wander the world forever. Although this legend had existed since the 13th century[21], even if under another name, I would like to ask even at this point whether one can make out a German specificity in the appellation “ewiger Jude,” “eternal Jew,” which had soon become notorious. Whereas in most European countries, the legend of the wandering Jew – the Wandering Jew, le juif errant, Juan Espera en Dios, Ebreo errante – is traditional and well-known, it was re-coded early — in 1694 — in German-speaking lands as the saga of the “eternal Jew.”[22] The attribute “eternal” cries out for redemption: for Christianity, it embodies the refusal on the part of Jewish People to accept the coming of Jesus as the son of God. This type of “redemption” consists in the demise of Judaism. The word “eternal” entails the anti-Jewish accusation of “Jewish stubbornness,” which was handed down especially in German-speaking countries. In France, Spain and England, it was “only” about the wandering Jew, in any case not about the “eternal” Jew. Since the late 19^th century, however, blood and “race” have also been termed “eternal,” both of them central topoi of volkish thinking and modern antisemitism. Even the chapbook of 1602 which created the legend of Ahasver has its specifically German background,

“given that just a short time before, the Jews’ ‘stubbornness’ had become apparent anew because of their refusal to join the Reformation and had stirred up Luther’s anger.”[23]

In addition, concern with Jews can be interpreted as a concrete expression of a literary projection of actual conditions in the Hamburg of the day, when many Portuguese were “exposed as or revealed themselves to be”[24] Jews. And it is specific to Germany that in the 16^th century, the Reformation reactivated old Christian dreams especially in a German framework, as Adolf Leschnitzer analyzes – and not, or to a lesser extent, in the contexts of Calvinism or other Protestant streams, e.g. in Switzerland, Holland or England[25]:

“The Jew Ahasverus embodied an age-old Christian dream which Protestant theology, above all Luther himself, had passionately conjured up and brought to life again: the image of the damned and rueful Jew, who had once sinned against the Redeemer and who now meekly confessed his guilt.”[26]

These images have a significant impact over the centuries, indeed, we can recognize them as the longue durée of anti-Judaism developing towards antisemitism.[27] The following episode from the principality of Waldeck from the early 19th century vividly illustrates on another level a German specificity of a hallucination of the “wandering/eternal Jew” to be examined in more detail in further studies:

“Making the figure of Ahasver ‘real’ in the economic realm went along with making ‘eternal’ a category of time in the sense of the obviously continuing obligation to be mobile. In 1815, the magistrate of the City of Korbach in Waldeck refused to grant the wealthy Jewish import-export trader Salomon Simon who lived there citizen’s rights, the reason being, among others,  that he had been roaming the world for years. For example, he had recently been to Düsseldorf. That is why one could call him a ‘vagrant.’[28]

Even though the “wandering Jew” is  also called “the walking shoemaker” in Bavaria or “the running Jew” in Switzerland, Werner Zirus already emphasizes in 1930 that the “term ‘eternal Jew’ for the mysterious wayfarer” makes the “philosophical interpretation” more stimulating than “the more real names”[29]. Another scholar speaks aptly of the linguistic connection “eternal Jew – real vagrant” using the example of Waldeck.[30]

With the image of the “eternal Jew,” the individual imputation of guilt which made the individual Jew into Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus, could be recoded to create collective guilt and collective punishment of all Jews. For instance, in the mid-19th century, Karl Gutzkow, still often considered a harmless liberal writer of the literary movement Young Germany (Junges Deutschland), said, “The Jews were not damned to wander the earth” because they had “committed a crime” against Christianity, but one “against humankind!”[31] Rose summarizes these developments as follows:

»A living, Wandering Jew was a far more pregnant emblem of enduring Jewish wickedness than a dead Judas Iscariot. (…) (In this book I translate Ewiger Jude, following English usage, as ›Wandering Jew‹, but the German emphasis on his unredeemed eternity of life has always to be kept in mind).«[32]

Between 1806 and 1808, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano recorded old German songs and titled their collection “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). Ahasver can be clearly recognized in all of the collection’s anti-Jewish diction.[33]

In 1811, decades before Chamberlain’s antisemitic theories of race, von Arnim already formulated in his text ‘Versöhnung in der Sommerfrische’ that the Jews were bound to their Jewish “nature” “like a snail to the burden of its shell”, because: “He will always remain a Jew.”[34] Entirely consistent with this, Arnim and Brentano have Ahasver appear as the “eternal Jew” in “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” And finally, it was von Arnim’s speech before the “Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft” (“Christian-German dining society”) in the spring of 1811 – “On the Features of Jewry” – which has been characterized as “the nastiest antisemitic text of German Romanticism,” as historian Susanna Moßmann records. A glance at this inflammatory work makes the German line of continuity to Julius Streicher’s tirades of hate clear.[35] In “Versöhnung in der Sommerfrische,” Arnim works through the old Christian commandment to baptize in an apparently typically German way: he has a mariner take in a shipwrecked Jew and baptize him, only to throw him back into the open sea, as Germanist and publicist Gerhard Scheit reports:

“This is obviously the quintessence of the salvation of Jewry, as Arnim understands it – it is balanced in the center between old and modern hatred of Jews and leaves hardly a doubt about the internal connection between the two.”^[36]

In baptizing, the Christian mariner has done his duty to liberate the world from unchristened Jews so that his Lord may return. The fact that this Cristian seafarer then committed murder is completely irrelevant, for, from his Christian perspective, “the” Jew counts only as a factor for his own redemption as a Christian; as a human being, a Jew has no rights. And the Jew did not become a different person by being baptized, either, that is the racist tone of this story. The ‘eternal Jew’ must perish, according to the antisemitic ideology. The principality of Waldeck may serve as an example. An article devoted to the ‘eternal Jew’ had been written there in 1787. It tells the historic story about Jesus’s cross and the shoemaker in a specifically Protestant version. More interesting, however, is the ways in which the material has been handed down from generation to generation: “The legend was not dismissed as a ‘fable,’ but reinterpreted in an economic context because of the experiences that the Christians of Waldeck had putatively had with ‘the Jews.’”[37] Thus, the two following versions of the antisemitic legend are typical:

“’The eternal Jew cheated once, therefore, he must carry his burden forever. He once rested in [the village of] Wrexen and was seen there.’”

And:

“’The eternal Jew that you’ve all surely heard of, he passes through at night, wailing and wailing all the time. That is because, — he used to cheat a lot of poor people and broke the Sabbath, he couldn’t get enough. And now, he has to fly through the air eternally because of that, all night long.’”

Volker Berbüsse interprets these two texts as follows:

“The first version was written down in 1860 by local Waldeck historian Ludwig Curtze, the second was recorded on tape in 1956 and published by Gustav Grüner. Both occurrences have something astounding in common: There is no recourse to the happenings around Jesus’s death on the cross, and the Jew of the Waldeck legend does not become an eternal Jew because of his transgressions, he is one even before doing evil.”^[38]

Rose, in turn, makes it clear that this transformation – Berbüsse speaks of reinterpretation – of the image of Ahasver was carried out as early as the 1830s. Accordingly, Ahasver’s refusal to grant Jesus a respite was transposed into a character trait of egoism:

»The Jews had formerly resisted Christ; now they resisted love and humanity. But at the root of this formal shift was the anthropological fear of ›the other‹ that refuses to be absorbed into the organic whole.«^[39]

In doing so, Rose conceptualizes “the other” especially as the “specifically Jewish,” as his title shows: German Question/Jewish Question.

Richard Wagner, the epitome of the Jew-hating star composer of the Germans to this day[40], revived Ahasver in “Jewishness in Music” (1850) in just as Christian-German a manner as did von Arnim, and what is more, redeeming humanity:

»But, remember, that there is only one real form of deliverance from the curse which besets you – that of Ahasuerus – the ‘Untergang’!«[41]

In his 1844 work “On the Jewish Question,”[42] Karl Marx saw emancipation to true humanity appear in the demise of Judaism[43]. Marx criticized Bruno Bauer, who had written an anti-Jewish essay on the “Jewish Question” shortly before that. Marx wanted to plead for political rights for Jews, but this did not go without contradictions, as he saw (like many radicals of his time) Jews as responsible for capitalism. He wrote:

“Let us look at the actual, secular Jew of our time…the Jew of everyday life. What is the Jew’s foundation in our world? Material necessity, private advantage. What  is the object of the Jew’s worship in this world? Usury/Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money. Very well then; emancipation from usury/huckstering and money, that is, from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time.”[44]

As did for example many socialists and Marxists thereafter, including during state socialism in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, Marx rejected the idea of accepting Jews as Jews:

“The social emancipation of Jewry is the emancipation of society from Jewry/Judaism.”[45]

Even though the anti-Jewish impact of this text has been well discussed at least since 1949[46], some scholars still do not even mention that Marx wrote an antisemitic article.[47] Historian Robert Wistrich, however, pointed out the problematic aspect of Marx’s essay:

“Marx undermined his own defence of Jewish civil rights in bourgeois society. At the heart of the ‘Jewish question’ Marx perceived the contradiction between political and human emancipation, between man’s existence as abstract citizen and egoistic bourgeois in civil society, and his species-essence as a social being. The road to full emancipation must lead back to man himself, not as an isolated individual but as an integrated human being who has overcome the separations he experiences in everyday life. The solution to the ‘Jewish question’, which presaged Marx’s imminent transition to Marxism, demanded the resolution of the contradiction between civil society and the political State. Since Marx identified Judaism as the worldly religion of money-worship which underlay the atomism of society, it was evident that human emancipation was impossible until it had been concretely aufgehoben, i.e. abolished. Thus on the one hand, Marx supported Jewish emancipation as a demand fully consistent with the principles of bourgeois society while at the same time calling for its liquidation in the name of a higher social order. This dialectical paradigm which he bequeathed to the socialist movement encouraged an ambivalent stance towards the Jewish question open to anti-Semitic interpretation.”[48]

French Philosopher Robert Misrahi comes to the same conclusion.  In the early 1970s, he wrote on Marx and the ‘Jewish question’, including an analysis of Christian German philosophy and also of French anti-Semites of that time like anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon.[49]

Marx retracted his equating of “Jewish principle” and “egoism,” “haggling” and money^[50] years later – among other places, in “Capital,” Volume 1 (1867) – in his epistemological retraction of such Jew-hating reification. After all, Marx recognized, in his analysis of the value form and the fetish character of commodities, that the tables were turned on their heads and started to dance, that man is no longer the subject of history, but rather commodities and value. In later years, Marx did not go along with a projection or reduction of this dance to a group of people or a particular sphere of the process, the process of circulation, although labor and production do not lose their dignity[51]; his analysis no longer permitted this.

And this is where both the other distorted images from the anti-Jewish arsenal unleash their effects: Moloch and Mammon.

2) Moloch and Mammon

Moloch is considered to be the god of human sacrifice, Mammon the god of money. Both are connoted as Jewish and traditionally had strongly pejorative characters. Moloch served not only as a sign of Jewish human sacrifice, as in 1840 in the Damascus Blood Libel and in a European philosophy of those years which inspired one to see “Judaism as Molochism”[52]. Later it served also as an expression of modern life, in particular of urban life.[53] Machines, too, were often called ‘Moloch’ in a derogatory way, Moloch was cast pejoratively as a symbol of an anonymous, devouring power.[54] Today there are internet sites which agitate explicitly against the autobahn as a “Moloch,”[55] publicists stir up readers against the “Moloch USA”[56] in their books.

Analytically speaking, the following idea is important: Christians project their own obsession with blood precisely onto the religion of the Jews (necessary as the basis out of which Christianity could develop), which had itself evolved in opposition to the cult of blood. This instance of projection is a typical element of antisemitism. Horkheimer/Adorno write in their Dialectic of Enlightenment:

»The Jews as a whole are charged with practicing forbidden magic and bloody rituals. Disguised as an accusation, the subliminal craving of the indigenous population to revert to mimetic sacrificial practices is joyously readmitted to their consciousness. Once the horror of the primeval age, sent packing by civilization, has been rehabilitated as a rational interest through projection onto the Jews, there is no holding back. It can be acted out in reality, and the evil which is acted out surpasses even the evil content of the projection. The popular nationalist fantasies of Jewish crimes, of infanticide and sadistic excess, of racial poisoning and international conspiracy, precisely define the anti-Semitic dream, and fall short of its realization.« ^[57]

This subject theory of critical theory, which is constituted in an orthodox psychoanalytical manner following Sigmund Freud, and which I would like to test here regarding the image of Moloch, demonstrates how problematic every form of research on antisemitism is that believes it has to concern itself with Jews’ behavior. Grotesquely misunderstanding antisemitism as racism and playing it down, so to speak, as prejudices or stereotypes against any random ‘Other’[58] underestimates the psychodynamics of the antisemitic subject. Analyses that purport to draw conclusions from the interactive behavior between Jews and non-Jews are not only mistaken, but occasionally even champion antisemitic figures of thought themselves, for example sociologist Bernd Estel of the University of Tübingen, Germany:

“But also regarding the Jews who had resided locally for a long time and were usually well-integrated, even their more frequent supranational business ties and their internal social cohesion had to arouse the suspicion of the nationalists; and this suspicion was nourished additionally by the fact that the Jews belonged disproportionately to the ‘Golden International,’ perceived as un-German, on the one hand, and the ‘Red International’ on the other.”[59]

In spite of the insights of critical social science, this assumption, based on the correspondence theory of truth, suggests that a certain type of behavior or the mere existence of Jews could lead to antisemitism. The anti-Semite, however, does not need to experience Jews himself.[60] Astonishing (or not) this article of Estel was published in an important volume of two co-workers of the Berlin Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA), Werner Bergmann and Rainer Erb, who do not even comment on this anti-Jewish article of Estel in the foreword or another part of this volume. I think it is interesting that two scholars, both affiliated with an institute for research on antisemitism, could edit and publish such an article.

My analysis of Moloch, as it occurs in Adorno/Horkheimers ‘elements of antisemitism’ attempts to shed light on the specificity of antisemitism like my analysis of Ahasver and Mammon.

Now, about Mammon, who already resonated in Estel’s talk of the “Golden International.” The New Testament says: “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon”[61]. An idea of Rose’s is of interest here; he speaks of a process of secularization of the blood libel beginning in the 19th century. The Medieval blood libel accused Jews of requiring human blood to carry out their rituals. Socialist versions of this blood libel by Karl Marx and Moses Hess argued that the Jews had secularized the religious practice and were now serving the god of money – Mammon had replaced Moloch.[62] A problematic point in Marx’s criticism of religion lies precisely in this idea that emancipation is possible only as a rejection of god and Mammon, who is merely a secularized form of Jewish power.

It is exactly here that lies the key to understanding the connection between handed-down anti-Judaism and modern antisemitism. By no means does the latter feed only into the theories of race and their application, as researchers still frequently argue; in addition, they set the date of the onset of racial thinking much too late – usually only at the end of the 19th century. In this way, Jews are attacked from both sides: by the conservatives, by Christians who view the Jews as those who defiled Jesus’s blood or who bring sacrifices to Moloch, and at the same time by the radical avant-garde, which promised the liberation of humankind from Mammonism, the rule of money, in an anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois way. Christianity offers the foil for this secularization of antisemitism in the image of Mammon. Here a German Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) could be delineated – still without a unified state, which came into existence only in 1871 – making it seem insignificant whether an antisemitic attack came from the right, the left or the center. Later, it was by no means only the volkish and the NSDAP of the Weimar Republic who opposed intellectuals, department stores or urban life, but already the early anti-Semites around court chaplain Adolf Stoecker and his Christian-Social Party[63] as well as broad streams of German society. This disapproval manifested itself in debates about a “department store tax” that came up again and again and, as early as the 1890s, in an ongoing “department store debate” that said far more about German sensitivities than about the everyday behavior of consumers who sometimes shopped there.[64] Above all, we must reflect upon the combination of Moloch, Mammon and department store/warehouse, as several anti-Jewish threads of discourse (only a few of which were mentioned here) reinforced one another. Werner Sombart’s antisemitic utterance about German “Helden” (heroes) and English “Händler” (traders) at the beginning of World War I in 1915 puts these feelings of resentment in a nutshell.[65] Sombart had determined in 1911 that traders were in principle “Jewish” when he equated “Jewish rationalism” with “capitalist spirit.”[66]

In other words, the longue durée of antisemitism reveals itself relating to the image of Mammon as well. As early as 1910, a series of stoneware jugs were produced in the Westerwald region that sent their German-volkish or German-national message unmistakably. Christel Köhle-Hezinger and Adelhart Zippelius described them:

“At the top, the tree runs into a scroll: ‘Great happiness and joy at the news: Germany is rid of the Jews.’ Beyond the border, the Jews hurry towards a Golden Calf surrounded by an aureola on a raised platform before a camp of tents in the background, the “dance around the Golden Calf” begins. It, too, was often quoted both orally and in writing by anti-Semitic agitators as the embodiment of ‘the Jewish spirit of Mammon’.”[67]

In the late 19th century, Theodor Fontane had committed his antisemitism to paper in writing that “der”(“the”) “Meyerheim” – in the semiotics of language and names, this unequivocally meant Jews – “were present” “all over.” The popular German author continues: “They dance and murder around the Golden Calf.” Norbert Mecklenburg, who wrests this poem, “Entschuldigung”[68] from oblivion, counters the hegemonial, defensive reception of Fontane:

“The Golden Calf as god of the Jews was a central anti-Semitic ideologeme which could make traditional Christian anti-Judaism with its anti-Mammonist components interface seamlessly with modern anti-capitalist and racist anti-Semitism because of its biblical origins.”[69]

Hermann Goedsche (better known as Sir John Retcliffe), whom Fontane not only knew well as a colleague in the editorial department of the Kreuzzeitung and whose works he received[70], set a milestone for the ‘Antisemitic International’ as early as 1868 in his novel Biarritz. In a decisive scene of this novel, which is set by the grave of a rabbi in the Prague cemetery, Jews from all twelve tribes gather every hundred years to consult on their power and domination over the world:

“After each participant has spoken, everyone swears an oath to the Golden Calf which rises from the rabbi’s grave in a ghostlike blue glow.[71]

When this fantasy was handed down internationally, the Jews’ consultations as set down by Goedsche are finally transformed into the speech of one rabbi:

“’The Rabbi’s Speech’ was soon distributed in Russia and other countries, as if it were an authentic document; it was a precursor of the later Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were more detailed and sophisticated.”[72]

A 1928 brochure by the Catholic Dr. Friedrich Mack with the apt title “The False God Mammon Kills the Law and Love” begins as follows: The “system of Mammon” is the “greatest emperor and tyrant,” and its “coat of arms”[73] displays the following typical images: “the Golden Calf, the rich glutton, Judas, the thief with the money bag.”[74]

3) Jewish resistance to the image of the “Wandering Jew”

It must be mentioned that (at least) the legend of Ahasver was also met by a literary and artistic Jewish countermovement. Jews attempted in many ways to shatter the anti-Jewish core of the Ahasver myth by, for instance, viewing the “eternal Jew” in a positive light, as if referring to Moses’ regarding promise, liberation and transcendence. A 1901 picture of Ahasver by Alfred Nossig, carrying “transcendence through the occident” – Nietzsche notwithstanding – as Alfred Bodenheimer says, serves as an example.[75] We must also think of the anti-Jewish undertones in Thomas Mann’s works and his lack of understanding of Jakob Wassermann’s quest for a possibility of being both “a Jew and a German.”[76] Similar to Nossig, Stefan Heym also tried to give Ahasver positive Jewish features, even promise and revolution.[77] In Franz Kafka’s work, however, the more dominating, sad image of Ahasver emerges, at times in Kafka’s tragic writing against himself, when he sees himself as the eternally wandering Jew. His image of the surveyor, which can mean both “surveyor” and “messiah” in Hebrew, is one approach to understanding this.[78] Here, the reference to Günther Anders, who grappled intensely with Kafka, is evident. In 1978, in a seldom noted text on his “Judaism,” Anders speaks of his “Ahasveric destiny”[79] which has been persisting for 70 generations for Jews. Here, as an older man, Anders returns to thoughts which moved him deeply as early as 1935: In the poem “Ahasver besingt die Weltgeschichte” (“Ahasver chants about world history”), he, who had had to flee from Nazi Germany two years previously, writes:

„Only I shall not perish, only I escape the cycle of life, every month going back to the beginning, only I am spared, because I am not worthy.“ (…) Am I to remain forever chosen? Am I to be forever refused what every other is granted? Never to completely perish, never to rest beneath the footsteps and raking, never to live with death, unbound from time and moon?”[80]

4) Mammon today, after the 9/11 mass murder

On September 11, 2001, Islamist suicide killers murdered almost 3,000 people in New York when two hijacked airplanes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Broad segments of German society reacted to this event with comments such as “Sowas kommt von sowas” (roughly: “what goes around comes around,” whereby the speaker expresses sympathy for something unnamed, yet understood, while distancing him/herself from it), a saying which the PDS (Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus, the Leftist party which evolved from the ruling East German SED, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, now called “Die Linke,” “the left”) even used as a slogan.

The reference to the 19^th century is not all that far away; the antisemitic images of Mammon, Moloch and Ahasver are still alive. It became apparent after 9/11 that anti-Ahasver texts of the German left had contributed to ideology formation since the 1970s:

“Of course: I simply cannot call a nation ‘my own’ as long as country estates, factories and urban land ownership are not ‘nationalized’ as well, that is, that they belong to those whose work created them. Is it for this reason that terms such as ‘homeland,’ ‘fatherland’ are beneath our dignity, once and for all? Our leftist laborer of the superstructure knows: There is nothing more homeless, more rootless, more like Ahasver, than capital. It hurries around the globe, seeking tax shelters, low-wage countries and a cemetery-like climate for investments, where it can fatten up on the work of others,”

wrote Hermann Peter Piwitt[81], longtime writer for the most important left-wing magazine in the Federal Republic, Konkret, in a 1978 volume in Wagenbach Verlag’s Tintenfisch series, which was popular among writers and members of the Left and the alternative scene, expressing what German leftists think about Jews without even mentioning them. Former Federal President Johannes Rau, too, a devout Protestant and politician of the Social Democratic Party, spoke of “capitalist Mammon.”[82] But far more: in fighting Israel, anti-Zionists are struggling against the “ideelle Gesamtjude”[83] [Israel as collective Jew]:

“From the previous, isolated Jewish outsider in the midst of a non-Jewish population evolved a Jewish outsider state in the midst of a non-Jewish community of states.”^[84]

In doing so, National Socialism is compared or equated more and more with the US or Israel. In addition, such ‘committed individuals’ seek to liberate and cleanse the world from ‘unrestrained capital,’ from ‘turbo-capitalist financial jugglers.’ “The stock exchange was the first place to be opened again in the disaster area. A symbol? Mammon over mind?” is what not only Horst Mahler[85], a Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier and good friend of Iran, but also leftist radicals[86] of the ‚Infoladen‘ (a small, radical left cultural center) Tübingen say. What historian Rose analyzes conceptually for the 19^th century with his triad of Ahasver, Moloch and Mammon, is still virulent even after Auschwitz, after the “Zivilisationsbruch” (“rupture of civilization,” Dan Diner) and is activated more and more as a sketch of a movement passed off as a revolution, a liberation of all of humanity.

Today, many opponents of globalization, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, Al Qaeda or Hizbullah continue this struggle, each with their own means and methods. The Islamists ‘run ahead to death’ with their suicide bombing. They import Heidegger[87] to the Middle East.  (This does not mean that all Muslim antisemitism and Jew-hatred is just an import from Europe, by the way, but that Europe influenced its evolution.)

As Robert Wistrich reports, the Arabic Writers’ Association published a new version of the blood libel in their Damascus-based weekly in 2000, repeating the Damascus Blood Libel which had electrified European politics in 1840; today, the fantasy is about Jewish matzah balls that the Americans make from the blood of Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs, but also of Christians.[88] While the “Islamo-fascists”[89] therefore struggle against the Jewish Moloch in addition to Mammon, a famous, neo-heathen, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish writer[90] in Germany, Martin Walser, (publicly!) breaks a taboo, wishing death on a Jew and fighting against the enemy invading from the outside: the “eternal Jew”[91], who, ironically and cynically, presents himself as debonair and salacious – characterized as such by von Arnim in 1811, too – and, as Ahasver, is ‘invulnerable’ in the anti-Jewish fantasy. Walser’s 2002 novel “Tod eines Kritikers” (“Death of a Critic”) is permeated with time-honored anti-Jewish images.[92] Other Germans struggle with broad segments of the global ‘Left’ in its unbroken mania of making the abstract concrete against the ‘god of money,’ against Mammon. Walser versus Ahasver, the Left versus Mammon, the Islamists versus Moloch.

Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, this ‘anti-mammonist’ anti-capitalism, which culminates in the Jewish world conspiracy, has supported antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism in refraining from analyzing power relations, and in cultivating resentment against the Jews, which had now evolved into resentment against the Jewish state. The persistence of this anti-Jewish image extends beyond the Holocaust. An incorrect analysis of capitalism, riddled with the old images of Mammon, thus returns time and again. Piwitt’s words quoted above – that there is “nothing more homeless, more rootless, more like Ahasver, than capital” – expresses this paradigmatically. On January 25, 2003, 20,000 people, first and foremost European Leftists, demonstrated against the World Economic Forum in Davos and some dressed up as Jews dancing around a golden calf[93]: a kind of feel-good antisemitism, because the

“anti-Semitism linked to the struggle against globalization presents a point of contact for the Right and the Left which has not existed so openly since the heyday of national bolshevism.”[94]

These foes of Jews consider themselves Leftist, free, emancipated and progressive, and not Nazis. Political scientist Daniel J. Goldhagen analyzed this image:

»An emblematic image of globalized antisemitism is of Donald Rumsfeld wearing a yellow star inscribed with ›sheriff‹, followed by a cudgel wielding Ariel Sharon who is flanked by a golden calf. (…) That this scene, expressing the putative globalized nature and predations of the Jews, was created for an anti-globalization demonstration in Davos is no mere coincidence.«[95]

Josef Joffe, too, political scientist and co-publisher of the German weekly Die Zeit, also dissected the antisemitic and anti-American dimension of the Davos scandal:

»The message? America is in thrall to the Jews/Israelis, and both are the acolytes of Mammon and the avant-garde of pernicious global capitalism. Let’s call this ›conceptual‹ or ›neo-antisemitism‹. This variant lacks the eliminationism of the classical type, but it is rife with its most ancient motifs: greed, manipulation, worship of false gods, sheer evil. What is new? It is the projection of old fantasies on two new targets: Israel and America. Indeed, the United States is an antisemitic fantasy come true, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in living color. Don’t Jews, their first loyalty to Israel, control the Congress, the Pentagon, the banks, the universities, and the media? This time, the conspirator is not ›World Jewry‹, but Israel. Having captured the ›hyperpower‹, Jews qua Israelis finally do rule the world. It is Israel as the Über-Jew, and America as its slave.«^[96]

Here, the German specificity of this otherwise global phenomenon lies in the coupling and mutual intensification of the resentment against Jews, as secondary antisemitic[97] patterns of rejection of memory and projection of guilt appear in concert with primary antisemitic motifs.[98]

Though this paper cannot reflect on Left antisemitism as a whole, a few important aspects have to be mentioned. Marxist sociologist Klaus Holz wrote with some friends in 2002 an article[99] in which he accuses Left support for Israel as sometimes being “blinded by Auschwitz”. Holz and friends wrote that Israeli policies are “state terrorism” and “Palestinian violence” is just “a response” to such Israeli actions. In a small book about antisemitism, Holz repeated his controversial argumentation, now saying that Muslim antisemitism (if it exists) is nothing but a response to the experiences of Muslim immigrants in Europe.[100] Holz is a well-known scholar on antisemitism, therefore his own contribution to new antisemitism by bashing criticism of Muslim antisemitism as “blinded by Auschwitz” is remarkable.[101] Besides academic examples there are of course also left-wing organisations which promote antisemitic tropes. The latest examples are rallies against Israel during the War on Gaza, where parties like the Deutsche Kommunistische Partie (DKP) [German Communist Party], the Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (MLPD) [Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany], a lot of so-called “Friedensbündnisse” [peace groups], or members of Parliament of the Party of the Left [Die Linke] participated. Daily newspapers like junge Welt promote antisemitism by saying “I am against the state of Israel”, and “Zionism” is a “project of the colonial powers”, as Mamdouh Habashi of the African&Arab Research Center told the junge Welt in an interview on January 10, 2009.[102] These are just a few remarks on left-wing antisemitism in Germany. There have always been leftists against antisemitism, but today they are only a tiny minority. While extremist right-wingers are always antisemitic, in some rather conservative parts of German society, including chancellor Merkel, there is a certain tendency to support Israel. On the other hand, the capitalist establishment in Germany (and Austria) concludes big business deals with Iran; the Government is well aware of them, if not actually involved in such activity and cooperation.

Back to my remarks on the German left: The slogans chanted at demonstrations, such as “Beat the Zionists dead, make the Middle East red!”[103] (by the ‘68 generation) and “USA-SA-SS”[104] (by the “Autonome” of the 1980s), as well as “USA – genocide headquarters,” the latter slogan being used just a few days after the mass murder in New York, for example in Bremen at a radical leftist demonstration with more than 1,000 participants[105], are connected by a thread of projection of guilt which finally materializes in a whole tangle of hatred, resentment and projections in the winter of 2003 and finds its fitting image in the dance around the Golden Calf in Davos, Switzerland. This is the same topos as that of the Catholic anti-Mammonism[106] of 1928, the antisemitic stoneware jugs of 1910 from the Westerwald or Cologne, as well as that of Fontane’s poetry of the late 19^th century. The fact that a dance around a Jewish golden calf can unite Europeans in the 21^st century, after the rupture of civilization: that is inconceivable – and when history repeats itself this time, it is not a farce. The danger of this new-old antisemitism lies in particular in the Arabic and Islamic worlds:

“The Protean caricature of the Jew has been resuscitated by today’s followers of Jihad. Israel and Jewry have become the surrogate in the Holy War against America and the corrupt modern world (the jahiliyya). Uncle Sam has, in a sense, melded with Shylock to turn into the awe-inspiring ghost of globalization which threatens to overrun the world of Islam.”[107]

Habermas’s “European chauvinism”[108] vis-à-vis the US relies on the ‘peace movement,’ consequently the pan-European movement of February 15, 2003[109] – and these people dancing in Davos are such peace dancers in the name of the anti-Jewish and anti-American[110] resentment[111] against ‘the Jewish principle,’ not to speak of the existential danger for Israel and the Jews worldwide because of Jihadism and its friends. As terribly as the words of an Achim von Arnim were turned into reality more than 130 years after their publication in the actual annihilation of Jews, of the ‘eternal Jew’ by willing Germans, all the more depressing is the existence is of the same anti-Jewish images 60 years after Auschwitz. The talk of “We happen to be living in difficult times, Modernity has so many anti-integrating elements, etc. etc.,” which never goes beyond attempts to understand the perpetrators, or even prays for them – the “terrorists” – on a daily basis, as Cardinal Meisner blurted out[112] on the occasion of the Catholic World Youth Day, affirms the new antisemitism, as Mark Strauss established in late 2003[113]:

“The new anti-Semitism is unique because it seamlessly stitches together the various forms of old anti-Semitism: The far right’s conception of the Jew (a fifth column, loyal only to itself, undermining economic sovereignty and national culture), the far left’s conception of the Jew (capitalists and usurers, controlling the international economic system), and the ›blood libel‹ Jew (murderers and modern-day colonial oppressors«.

Conclusion

The analysis of Ahasver, Mammon and Moloch has attempted to make clear that these old patterns of antisemitism, which require examination in the future as well, are not all that new, particularly in their specifically German expressions. Even German revolutionary antisemitism in combination with conservative hatred of Jews displayed all three elements which Strauss identifies precisely: hatred of Mammon, Jews and the sphere of money and circulation; disgust about the imagined Jewish blood sacrifice to Moloch; and the image of Ahasver, the ‘eternal Jew’ which is subordinated only to his own interests, his unchangeable character and his domination of the world. These three images together constitute the immense danger of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Nonetheless, it is correct to speak of a new antisemitism after 9/11 and the Intifada starting in autumn 2000, since an international political situation has come about which has isolated Israel to a greater extent than ever since 1948. Appeasement towards Islamic jihad is ubiquitous, not only in the Federal Republic of Germany. Antisemitism research, cultural studies, political sociology, literary studies, history, political science and other sciences involved should be obliged to confront this ideological triad of willing executioners. But the typical response of playing down antisemitism as a ‘protest’ against a particular ‘policy,’ the question of who might benefit from critical antisemitism research which analyzes antisemitism sui generis and does not break it down as if it were a ‘social problem’ or regard it in the context of the history of racism, must be identified as what they are: back-handed affirmation. Historian Omer Bartov put it in a nutshell:

“Hitler taught mankind an important lesson: If you see a Nazi, a fascist or an anti-Semite, then you must say what you see. If you want to justify or apologize for something, then describe exactly what you are playing down. If a British newspaper publishes an anti-Semitic cartoon, one must call it anti-Semitic. If the attacks on the twin towers in New York were founded upon anti-Semitic motifs, one should say so. If a Malaysian prime minister expresses anti-Semitic opinions, one must not attempt to apologize for that which is inexcusable. If a self-proclaimed liberation organization demands the annihilation of the Jewish state, one must not pretend that it is demanding anything else. Where clarity ends, complicity begins.”[114]

Contrary to attempts to forget history and to trivialize the German role in it, and to downplay and to ignore the current, genocidal threat deriving from political Islam, Islamicism, or a murderous totalitarian regime like that of Iran[115] and organizations like Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaida, the Taliban, and others, not to forget the political culture of many Arab and Muslim countries and their communities and friends in the western world, I have tried in this small piece to decode some specifics of antisemitism, namely the influential images of Ahasver, Mammon, and Moloch.

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Rensmann, Lars (2004): Demokratie und Judenbild, Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften

Reulecke, Jürgen/Zimmermann, Clemens (ed.) (1999): Die Stadt als Moloch? Das Land als Kraftquell? Wahrnehmungen und Wirkungen der Großstädte um 1900, Basel/Boston: Birkhäuser

Rose, Paul Lawrence (1990)/1992: German Question/Jewish Question. Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant to Wagner, Princeton: Princeton University Press

Rosenthal, John (2008):  German Researcher. ‚Islamophobia‘ – the ‚New‘ Antisemitism, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-stupidity-of-equating-anti-semitism-with-islamaphobia/

Scheit, Gerhard (1999): Verborgener Staat, lebendiges Geld. Zur Dramaturgie des Antisemitismus, Freiburg: ça ira

Scheit, Gerhard (2004): Suicide Attack. Zur Kritik der politischen Gewalt, Freiburg: ça ira

Schirrmacher, Frank (2002): Tod eines Kritikers, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29.5.2002

Seymour, David M. (2007): Law, Antisemitism and the Holocaust, Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish

Silberner, Edmund (1949): Was Marx an Anti-Semite?, in: Historica Judaica, 11 (April 1949)

Soffar, Mohamed (2004): The Political Theory of Sayyid Qutb. A Genealogy of Discourse, Berlin: Köster

Sombart, Werner (1911): Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot

Sombart, Werner (1915): Händler und Helden. Patriotische Besinnungen, München/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot

Stern, Frank (1995): »Der Ewige Jude« – Stereotype auf der europäischen Wanderung, in: Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Wien (ed.) (1995): Die Macht der Bilder. Antisemitische Vorurteile und Mythen, Wien: Picus, pp. 117-121

Strauss, Mark (2003): Antiglobalism’s Jewish Problem, in: http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/111303FP_A-S.shtml

Tibi, Bassam (2008): Political Islam, World Politics and Europe. Democratic Peace and Euro-Islam versus Global Jihad, London/New York: Routledge

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Footnotes

^[1] “Footnotes. Little has been written to date about the role of footnotes in science and the literature. It is certain, however, that they are a reserve in which subjectivity can run riot unpunished. (…) They are often a system of secret references and inform us in this way about preferences and dislikes which are allegedly irrelevant. Authors also reveal to us in their footnotes how their texts are supposed to relate to current events” (Redaktion 17oC (1996): Fußnoten, in: 17^{oC. Zeitschrift für den Rest, issue 13, November/De}cember/January 1996/97, p. 95). If there are sometimes two time data given in my references, the first indicates the first publication or the year a piece was written, while the second just shows the published year I am quoting from.

[2] Henryk M. Broder (1986): Der Ewige Antisemit. Über Sinn und Funktion eines beständigen Gefühls, Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, p. 209.

[3] Mona Körte (2000): Die Uneinholbarkeit des Verfolgten. Der Ewige Jude in der literarischen Phantastik, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, p. 16. Körte is affiliated with the Berlin center for research on antisemitism. The section »Der Ewige Jude« seems similarly depoliticizing; in: Stefan Rohrbacher/Michael Schmidt (1991): Judenbilder. Kulturgeschichte antijüdischer Mythen und antisemitischer Vorurteile, Reinbek bei Hamburg: rororo, pp. 246-252. Committed to immanence of the work, Hans Otto Horch plays down antisemitism, explicitly separating literary analysis from a political analysis critical of ideology: Hans Otto Horch (1985): Judenbilder in der realistischen Erzählliteratur. Jüdische Figuren bei Gustav Freytag, Fritz Reuter, Berthold Auerbach und Wilhelm Raabe, in: Herbert A. Strauss/Christhard Hoffmann (ed.) (1985): Juden und Judentum in der Literatur, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, pp. 140-171, here p. 171.

[4] Peter Viereck 1941/(2004): Metapolitics. From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler. Expanded edition. With a new introduction by the author, New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers.

[5] Clemens Heni (2007): Salonfähigkeit der Neuen Rechten. ‚Nationale Identität‘, Antisemitismus und Antiamerikanismus in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Henning Eichberg als Exempel, Marburg: Tectum Verlag (doctoral dissertation, University of Innsbruck, Department of Political Science, 2006). For “Novus Ordo Saeclorum”, its impact on the American Revolution and Constitution see my argumentation, which is based on Hannah Arendt’s “On Revolution”, Heni 2007, pp. 332-334.

[6] This is the argumentation of political scientist Andreas Dörner, cf. Heni 2007: 325-327.

[7] For some remarks and literature dealing with the topic of anti-Roman German thinking, including the Thomas Mann of the First World War, see Heni 2007: 328. See also Forrest McDonald (1985): Novus Ordo Seclorum. The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

[8] Viereck 2004: 12.

[9] Viereck 2004: 14.

[10] Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (1996): Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust , New York: Knopf. In Germany the title was translated incorrectly, saying “Hitlers willige Vollstrecker”, while “Vollstrecker” means executor and not executioner.

[11] This is a chapter entitled „Wie deutsch ist abendländische Vergesellschaftung? Die Analyse der ‚ordinary Germans‘ von Daniel J. Goldhagen und die ‚Elemente des Antisemitismus‘ von Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno im Vergleich“ in my new book Clemens Heni (2009): Antisemitismus und Deutschland. Vorstudien zur Ideologiekritik einer innigen Beziehung [Antisemitism and Germany. Preliminary Studies of a ‘heartfelt’ relationship], Morrisville, NC, USA: Lulu Publisher,  pp. 47-103, available as hard copy and online at www.lulu.com.

[12] Goldhagen 1996: 55.

[13] Paul Lawrence Rose (1990)/1992: German Question/Jewish Question. Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant to Wagner, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[14] Rose 1992: 384-385.

[15] Viereck 2004: xxiii.

[16] Cf. Viereck 2004: xxiv.

[17] Viereck 2004: xxxiv.

[18] „I argue that the bottom line for a pluri-cultural – not a multi-cultural – platform is the unequivocal and binding acceptance of the core European values of secular democracy, individual rights of men and women, secular tolerance and civil society. In my understanding this is the basis for Euro-Islam, and contrasting options of ghetto-Islam or fundamentalist Islam are anti-European“ (Bassam Tibi (2008): Political Islam, World Politics and Europe. Democratic Peace and Euro-Islam versus Global Jihad, London/New York: Routledge, p. 215).

[19] Lecture of Dr. Mordechai Kedar at YIISA on February 4, 2009.

[20] Lecture and discussion with Prof. Benny Morris at YIISA’s Second Annual William Prusoff honorary Lecture, Yale University, February 3, 2009.

[21] On the history of the Wandering Jew, cf. the standard work: George K. Anderson (1965)/1970: The Legend of the Wandering Jew, Providence: Brown University Press.

[22] Adolf Leschnitzer (1962): Der Gestaltwandel Ahasvers, in: Hans Tramer (ed.) (1962): In zwei Welten. Siegfried Moses zum Fünfundsiebzigsten Geburtstag, Tel Aviv: Bitaon, pp. 470-505, here p. 473: “The term “ewige Jude” appears for the first time in 1694 and is used more and more often in the following decades.”

[23] Ibid.: 480.

[24] Ibid.: 481.

[25] John Weiss (1996)/1998: Der lange Weg zum Holocaust. Die Geschichte der Judenfeindschaft in Deutschland und Österreich, Berlin: Ullstein, p. 46-52. Weiss published his book in the US in 1996 with the very fitting and telling title “Ideology of Death. Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany.” The altered title of the German edition provides food for thought. Even though (or, tragically, because) Goldhagen’s study – Goldhagen 1996 – had been published the same spring (in the US; in Germany in August), Weiss’s study, which at its core supports Goldhagen, and rounds out his thesis with important fragments from ideology-criticism and the history of ideas, unfortunately hardly found an audience.

[26] Leschnitzer 1962: 482.

[27] On the continuity of antisemitism, cf. Leon Poliakov (1955)/1977-1988: Geschichte des Antisemitismus. 8 Bände, Worms: Heintz Verlag; Robert S. Wistrich (1991): Antisemitism. The Longest Hatred, London: Methuen. An interesting materialist criticism of the anti-Jewish images “from the medieval passion play to the National Socialist film” is provided by Gerhard Scheit (1999): Verborgener Staat, lebendiges Geld. Zur Dramaturgie des Antisemitismus, Freiburg: ça ira.

[28] Volker Berbüsse (1987): »Darum  muß er ewig seinen Packen tragen«. Die waldeckische Version der Sage vom ‚ewigen Juden‘, in: Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, vol. 83., pp. 219-228, here p. 227.

[29] Werner Zirus (1930): Ahasverus. Der Ewige Jude, Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, p. 2.

[30] Berbüsse 1987: 227.

[31] Karl Gutzkow (1838): Julius Mosens Ahasver und Noch einmal Ahasver, quoted in Körte 2000, p. 42.

[32] Rose 1992: 24f.

[33] For example, the  shoemaker is imagined not only as the enemy of Christ, but also as rich, Mammon meets Ahasver., see http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/Lieder/christdh.html (12.15.2008).

[34] Achim von Arnim (1812), Die Versöhnung in der Sommerfrische, quoted in: Susanna Moßmann (1994): Das Fremde ausscheiden. Antisemitismus und Nationalbewußtsein bei Ludwig Achim von Arnim und in der »Christlich-deutschen Tischgesellschaft«, in: Hans Peter Herrmann/Hans-Martin Blitz/Susanna Moßmann (1994): Machtphantasie Deutschland. Nationalismus, Männlichkeit und Fremdenhaß im Vaterlandsdiskurs deutscher Schriftsteller des 18. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, pp. 123-159, here p. 139.

[35] It is precisely the “debonair and salacious tone of the speech with its references to Aristophanes and Eulenspiegel” (Moßmann 1994:152) which shows how aggressive Arnim’s thinking is. He ponders whether it might be worthwhile to pulverize Jews in order to ascertain how their bodies react, cf. Achim von Arnim (1811): Über die Kennzeichen des Judentums, in: Achim von Arnim (1992): Werke in sechs Bänden, Frankfurt/Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, volume 6, pp. 362-387.

[36] Scheit 1999: 259.

[37] Berbüsse 1987: 226.

[38] Ibid.: 224f.

[39] Rose 1990: 28.

[40] Every year without fail, the Bayreuth Festival has continued to be an event where the political and societal establishment gathers.

[41] Richard Wagner (1850)/1950: Judaism in Music [Das Judentum in der Musik]. Being The Original  Essay together with the later Supplement. Translated From the German and furnished with explanatory notes and introduction by Edwin Evans, Senior, F.R.C.O., London: William Reeves, pp.49-50; cf. als Scheit 1999: 26 and the 1869 edition, now under Wagner’s real name in Wagner 1950 and http://mydocs.strands.de/MyDocs/05845/05845.pdf (12.15.2008), after the first edition had been published under a pseudonym, and as an anti-Semitic test case, as Gerhard Scheit analyzes aptly, Scheit 1999: 273f. Constantin Frantz, too, stated in his work “Ahasverus oder die Judenfrage” in 1844 that “Jews always remain Jews” and “Jews have always been wandering”, for: “They themselves are Ahasverus who is not granted peace, not even the peace of the grave, because they cannot die” (cf. Rose 1992: 38). Eugen Dühring used similar words in 1881: “The Jews remain collectively a single Wandering Jew” (quoted in ibid.: 39).

[42] Karl Marx (1844)/1956: Zur Judenfrage, in: Marx-Engels-Werke (MEW) vol. 1, Berlin (Ost): Dietz Verlag, pp. 347-377.

[43] See Julius Carlebach (1978): Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism, London, Henley and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. The book is dedicated: “To my parents Chief Rabbi Dr. Joseph Zvi Carlebach and Charlotte Carlebach, née Preuss. They lived as Jews…Loved Judaism…And died because they were Jews…in a concentration camp outside Riga, 26 March 1942 – 8 Nissan 5702”.

[44] Quoted by Marvin Perry/Frederick M. Schweitzer (2008): Antisemitic Myths. A Historical and Contemporary Anthology, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, p. 79.

[45] Perry/Schweitzer 2008: 82.

[46] See Edmund Silberner (1949): Was Marx an Anti-Semite?, in: Historica Judaica, 11 (April 1949).

[47] Most recently David M. Seymour wrote on Marx and the „Jewish Question“ without  discussing the long and interesting debate about the antisemitism in Marx’ own work at that time (1844), see David M. Seymour (2007): Law, Antisemitism and the Holocaust, Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, pp. 1-12. Seymour consequently and intentionally plays down the antisemitism in the work of early Marx .

[48] Robert Wistrich (1982): Socialism and the Jews. The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary, Rutherford/Maadison/Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pp. 25-26.

[49] „Ainsi donc, nous avons pu établier que l’article de Marx sur La Question Juive est un texte antisémite (…)“ (Robert Misrahi (1972): Marx et la question juive, Paris: Gallimard, p. 241).

[50] Marx 1844.

[51] Cf. Jürgen Langenbach (1982): Selbstzerstörung als Vollendung des bürgerlichen Subjekts. Zur Identität von abstrakter Arbeit (Technik) und Faschismus, Munich: Raben Verlag. According to Langenbach, Marx actually does follow in the wake of the ontology of labor in all his writings. Langenbach, on the other hand, underestimates the ideological power of antisemitism, nonetheless (and implicitly?) examines a German specificity of the work mania (right up to the National Socialist state), which correlates analytically with a critique of the anti-Jewish image of Mammonism.

[52] Rose 1990: 251-262.

[53] Jürgen Reulecke/Clemens Zimmermann (ed.) (1999): Die Stadt als Moloch? Das Land als Kraftquell? Wahrnehmungen und Wirkungen der Großstädte um 1900, Basel/Boston: Birkhäuser.

[54] Stuart Chase (o.J)/ca. 1930: Moloch Maschine. Die Kultur- u. Wirtschaftskrise d. Welt, Stuttgart: Dieck.

[55] http://www.moloch-autobahn.de (12.15.2008).

[56] Karlheinz Deschner (2002): Der Moloch. Eine kritische Geschichte der USA, 10th revised edition, Munich: Heyne.

[57] Max Horkheimer/Theodor W. Adorno (1947)/2002: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments, edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Translated by Edmund Jephcott, Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 153. See also the discussion related to the lecture of Brigitte Sion at YIISA on December 4, 2008, on “blood”, “Christian projection” and Horkheimer/Adorno; her paper is here http://www.yale.edu/yiisa/Sionoutline12408.pdf (02.26.2009).

[58] It would be important and interesting for researach to have a look on the concept of „the other“ and the specific Jewish dimension in it in the philosophies of Emanuel Levinas or Michael Walzer, for example.

[59] Bernd Estel (1990): Nationale Identität und Antisemitismus in Deutschland, in: Werner Bergmann/Rainer Erb (ed.) (1990): Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur nach 1945, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 57-78, here p. 66.

[60] Horkheimer/Adorno 1947: 166 says: „It has been shown, in fact, that anti-Semitism’s prospects are no less good in ‚Jew-free‘ areas than in Hollywood itself.“

[61] Die Bibel, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (Lutherbibel), 1975, Matthäus 6, 24.

[62] Cf. on this the chapter »›Against Humanity‹: Moloch, Mammon, and the Secularization of the Blood Libel« in: Rose 1990: 44-50.

[63] Detlef Briesen (2001): Warenhaus, Massenkonsum und Sozialmoral. Zur Geschichte der Konsumkritik im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt/Main/New York: Campus, p. 157.

[64] On the early rejection of the department store, cf. the chapter »Eine ›hassenswerte Betriebsform‹: Die Warenhausdebatte um die Jahrhundertwende« in: Briesen 2001: 12-23.

[65] Werner Sombart (1915): Händler und Helden. Patriotische Besinnungen, München/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

[66] Werner Sombart (1911): Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, p. 242.

[67] Christel Köhle-Hezinger/Adelhart Zippelius (1988): »Da ist der Michel aufgewacht und hat sie auf den Schub gebracht«. Zu zwei Zeugnissen antisemitischer ›Volkskunst‹, in: Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 84. Jg., pp. 58-84, here p. 68. As a boy, around 1914, Adorno attempted to confront these Jew-hating Germans at least symbolically, and, during World War I, defended words of foreign origin against the German language purists as well as possible, and fancied, with a friend at that time, “when we used our distinctive words of foreign origin to be hurling arrows at the indispensable patriots from our secret kingdom which could neither be reached from the Westerwald nor in another way, Germanized, as the others loved to say” (Theodor W. Adorno (1959)/1998: Wörter aus der Fremde, in: Adorno (1998): Gesammelte Schriften, volume 11, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 216-232, here pp. 217f.). Ahasver and foreign words have a close relationship: »Foreign words are the Jews in language«, Theodor W. Adorno (1951)/1971: Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, p. 141).

[68] Norbert Mecklenburg (2000): »Ums Goldne Kalb sie tanzen und morden«. Philo- und antisemitische Gedichte des alten Fontane, in: Wirkendes Wort. Deutsche Sprache und Literatur in Forschung und Lehre, vol. 50, pp. 358-381, here p. 370.

[69] Ibid.: 371.

[70] Cf. ibid.: 373-376.

[71] Hadassa Ben-Itto (1998)/2001: »Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion« – Anatomie einer Fälschung, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, pp. 54f.

[72] Ibid.: 55.

[73] Even in seemingly harmless descriptions such as “Rappen im Wappen” (“Rappen” means both “black horse” and “coin”; “black horse/coin on his coat of arms”), as provided by Fontane, the anti-Jewish content can be deciphered – the Jews as horse traders who are made fun of here, without explicitly being called Jews, cf. Mecklenburg 2000: 366. Open (cf. the following note) and rhetorically skillful (Fontane) antisemitism exist side by side and are quasi complementary to National Socialist antisemitism on the Nazis’ path to power.

[74] Friedrich Mack (1928): Der Götze Mammon tötet das Recht und die Liebe, Luxemburg (Liga vom guten Buch R 7) pp. 2f.

[75] Alfred Bodenheimer (2002): Wandernde Schatten. Ahasver, Moses und die Authentizität der jüdischen Moderne, Göttingen: Wallstein, p. 26, see a figure p. 27.

[76] Cf. ibid.: 84.

[77] Historian Frank Stern on Heym’s 1981 novel “Ahasver”: “Here, Ahasverus is not a symbol of Christian suffering, a victim yearning for redemption, but the human embodiment of the spirit of resistance, of a theology of change, of a rebellious Zeitgeist across the centuries. (…) He is seeking to effect tikkun ha’olam, as it is called in Hebrew, the fundamental change, the revolutionizing, the reforming, the betterment of human society” (Frank Stern (1995): »Der Ewige Jude« – Stereotype auf der europäischen Wanderung, in: Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Wien (ed.) (1995): Die Macht der Bilder. Antisemitische Vorurteile und Mythen, Wien: Picus, pp. 117-121, here p. 121).

[78] Cf. Lovis M. Wambach (1993): Ahasver und Kafka. Zur Bedeutung der Judenfeindschaft in dessen Leben und Werk, Heidelberg: Winter.

[79] Günther Anders (1974)/1984: Das Günther Anders Lesebuch, edited by Bernhard Lassahn, Zurich: Diogenes, pp. 234-251, here p. 249.

[80] Günther Anders (1935)/1985: Tagebücher und Gedichte, Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, pp. 379f. Ahasver must not die, just as, for generations, the anti-Semitic German fraternity students considered Jews in Germany not capable of giving satisfaction in a duel.

[81] Hermann Peter Piwitt (1978): Einen Kranz niederlegen am Hermannsdenkmal, in: Hans Christoph Buch (ed.) (1978): Tintenfisch 15. Thema: Deutschland. Das Kind mit den zwei Köpfen, Berlin: Wagenbach, pp. 17-24, here p. 18, also cf. Broder 1986: 92f. Piwitt’s antisemitism is linked with a language-purist form of anti-Americanism: “This depressed national sentiment of the Germans also stems from the fact that their revolutionary traditions were cut off from them. That is how this Yankee language emerged which dominates us with words like ‘fighting’ and ‘dope,’ ‘power’ and ‘message’ even where we resist’” (Hermann Peter Piwitt in Konkret 1981, quoted in Henning Eichberg (1987): Abkoppelung. Nachdenken über die neue deutsche Frage, Koblenz: Bublies Verlag, p. 177). Eichberg is the forward thinker of the New Right, a version of right-wing extremism in Europe (especially France, where Alain de Benoist is his counterpart) and the Federal Republic of Germany since the late 1960s. His ‘rhetorical mimicry’ is paradigmatic for concealed National Socialist journalism in post-Holocaust Germany, cf. fundamentally Heni 2007.

[82] In a eulogy of Herder, Rau writes, “Weimar – in other words, it is not only a fond national myth which the rulers from the right or the left used skillfully for their own ends, again and again, without any scruples, no, Weimar – that is simply a unique occurrence in our history: a republic of men of letters and scholars in which it was not – power based on weapons, – and certainly not filthy ‘capitalist Mammon,’ but rather – intellect, fantasy and a well-nigh exploding creative energy unfolded” (Johannes Rau (1996): Rede zum 250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, in: Regine Otto (ed.) (1996): Nationen und Kulturen. Zum 250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, pp. 1-12, here p. 2).

[83] Joffe speaks of “Israel as the Über-Jew”: Josef Joffe (2005): Nations We Love to Hate: Israel, America and the New Antisemitism, Jerusalem, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (ed.) (2005): Posen Papers in Contemporary Antisemitism, No. 1, p. 1. Hans Mayer speaks of the “Jewish outsider state” and decades ago identified the core of anti-Zionism: “Whoever attacks ‘Zionism,’ but by no means wants to say anything against the ‘Jews,’ is kidding himself or others. The state of Israel is a Jewish state. Anyone who wants to destroy it, avowedly or by means of a policy that can have no effect other than such an annihilation, is practicing the hatred of Jews of yore and from time immemorial” (Hans Mayer (1975)/1981: Außenseiter, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, p. 451, p. 457). On the other hand, Mayer equates several groups of “outsiders” with Jews, which is definitely not convincing, as antisemitism is an entire  worldview and not “just” a prejudice or a simple form of racism, part of several racisms. Sociologist Moishe Postone argued in this direction long ago, in the early 1980s (“Antisemitism and National Socialism”). In an article he wrote as part of his theoretical criticism of Hannah Arendt: “I have argued elsewhere that modern anti-Semitism should be understood as a powerful, fetishised form of anti-capitalism that attributes the tremendous transformations of social, cultural, and political life in the industrialized world to a destructive world conspiracy – that of the ‘Elders of Zion.’ Anti-Semitism, then, is a revolt against history as constituted by capital misrecognised as a Jewish conspiracy. That conspiracy (and, hence, that history)  must be destroyed if the world is to be saved. This suggests that, contrary to Arendt’s assertion, it is precisely the nature of the crime of extermination, and not only the choice of victim, that can be derived from the history of modern anti-Semitism” (Moishe Postone (2006): Reflections on Jewish History as General History. Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, in: Raphael Gross/Yfaat Weiss (Hg.) Jüdische Geschichte als Allgemeine Geschichte. Festschrift für Dan Diner zum 60. Geburtstag, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 189-211, here p. 205). That Postone is wrong in accusing Goldhagen of establishing a kind of “quasi-ontologically” German antisemitism (see ibid., p. 210, footnote 64), is another discussion, for Goldhagen see Heni 2009.

[84] Mayer 1975: 451.

[85] Mahler was invited to the Iranian Holocaust denial conference, held on December 11 and 12, 2006 in Iran. Mahler could not attend because German officials confiscated his passport. Even before 9/11, in March of 2001, Mahler underpinned his antisemitism with anti-Mammon phrases in a paper he wanted to give at a conference (which was then prohibited) of Holocaust deniers in Lebanon: »The peoples will triumph over the East coast and free themselves from the worldly god of the Jews, Mammon, in the historic moment when they recognize that every people having a powerful history is a tangible form of God (German Idealism: Herder, Hegel)« (http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/mahler/parttwo.html (12.15.2008).

[86] “It almost seems as if one would have to broaden Horkheimer’s dictum that anyone who does not wish to speak about capitalism should remain silent about fascism: anyone who does not wish to speak about anti-capitalism should remain silent about fascism as well,” (Thomas Uwer/Thomas von der Osten-Sacken/Andrea Woeldike (2003a): Vorwort, in: Uwer/von der Osten-Sacken (ed.) (2003): Amerika. Der ‚War on Terror‘ und der Aufstand der Alten Welt, Freiburg: ça ira, pp. 7-17, here p. 16).

[87] In the doctoral dissertation of a Cairo scholar which was accepted at the Freie Universität Berlin, Heidegger is received affirmatively, and even imported for political Islam – especially also referring to the circling around “death”; for example, there is talk of “muslim Dasein”: Mohamed Soffar (2004): The Political Theory of Sayyid Qutb. A Genealogy of Discourse, Berlin: Köster, Part I.: »The Context of Sayyid Qutb’s Discourse (The Muslim Dasein)«, pp. 47-179, and the subsection »Heidegger’s notion of death«, pp. 125-128. The Islamists’ suicide terrorism has a philosophical core here. »Through surpassing the limits of his Being to attain a certain purpose, the Shahid has passed from one level of existence to the other through the gateway of death. Death is for him less painful than the prick of a needle« (p. 128). Without recourse to this doctoral dissertation (Prof. Friedemann Büttner and Prof. Gudrun Krämer were on the committee), cf. the references in “Islamisten lesen Heidegger.” Israeli Philosopher Avishai Margalit on hatred of the West, in: Jüdische Allgemeine, No. 32, August 11, 2005, p. 13 as well as the study by Gerhard Scheit (2004): Suicide Attack. Zur Kritik der politischen Gewalt, Freiburg: ça ira.

[88] Robert S. Wistrich (2002): Muslim anti-Semitism. A clear and present danger, New York: The American Jewish Committee, p. 31.

[89] Robert S. Wistrich (2004): Der alte Antisemitismus in neuem Gewand, in: Doron Rabinovici/Ulrich Speck/Natan Sznaider (ed.) (2004): Neuer Antisemitismus? Eine globale Debatte, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 250-270, here p. 265.

[90] Cf. Thomas Assheuer (2003): Die Klone Gottes. In der aufgeklärten Republik verwandelt sich Religion in Esoterik. Das jüdisch-christliche Erbe ärgert viele immer mehr. Warum nur?, in: Die Zeit, 8/2003.

[91] The words of Frank Schirrmacher, who was otherwise very sympathetic to Walser and defended the writer’s memory-repressing secondary-anti-Semitic speech in St. Paul’s Church of October 1998, in his public rejection of advance publication of Walser’s novel „Tod eines Kritikers,“ Frank Schirrmacher (2002): Tod eines Kritikers, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29.5.2002. “Do you understand that we will not print a novel that plays with this murder is committed fictionally? Do you understand that we will not offer a forum for the thesis, returning here in veiled form, that the eternal Jew is invulnerable?” (ibid.).

[92] For a comprehensive treatment of antisemitism in Walser’s oeuvre, cf. the doctoral dissertation by Matthias N. Lorenz (2005): »Auschwitz drängt uns auf einen Fleck« Judendarstellung und Auschwitzdiskurs bei Martin Walser, Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler; on necessary criticism of Lorenz because of his ties to anti-Zionist Klaus Holz, see Heni 2007: 280, note 1166.

[93] http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/14065/1.html (12.15.2008).

[94] Andrei S. Markovits (2004): Amerika, dich haßt sich’s besser. Antiamerikanismus und Antisemitismus in Europa, Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, p. 194. Markovits analyzes this scene in Davos, cf. ibid.: 193f.

[95] Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (2003): The Globalization of Antisemitism http://www.forward.com/articles/8736/ (12.15.2008).

[96] Joffe 2005: 1.

[97] To the concept of secondary antisemitism see Clemens Heni (2008): Secondary Anti-Semitism. From Hard-core to soft-core denial of the Shoah, in: Jewish Political Studies Review, 20:3-4 (Fall 2008), pp. 73-92, online at http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=625&PID=0&IID=2675 (02.14.2009).

[98] Cf., for example, the current figures produced by empirical social research on secondary antisemitism in the Federal Republic of Germany: Aribert Heyer/Julia Iser/Peter Schmidt (2005): Israelkritik oder Antisemitismus? Meinungsbildung zwischen Öffentlichkeit, Medien und Tabus, in: Wilhelm Heitmeyer (ed.) (2005): Deutsche Zustände. Folge 3, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, pp. 144-165, especially pp. 151, 154, 160. More than 68% of those surveyed agreed with the statement “I am annoyed that the Germans are still confronted with the crimes against the Jews today,” of these: 23.8% agreed “more or less” and 44.5% agreed “wholeheartedly,” ibid.: 151. Heitmeyer, the editor of this series, is one of the fathers of equalizing antisemitism with “Islamohpobia” and also other “prejudices”, like “discrimination” of jobless people and others. This ignores completely the specificity of antisemitism, in history, related to the Holocaust, and today.

[99] Klaus Holz/Elfriede Müller/Enzo Traverso (2002): Schuld und Erinnerung. Die Shoah, der Nahostkonflikt und die Linke, in: jungle world, 13. November 2002, see http://www.nadir.org/nadir/periodika/jungle_world/_2002/47/29a.htm (12.15.2008).

[100] Cf. Klaus Holz (2006): Die Gegenwart des Antisemitismus. Islamistische, demokratische und antizionistische Judenfeindschaft, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, p. 9. He also accuses critics of political Islam of having the tendency to be part of „Islamophobia“, ibid.

[101] For criticism of Holz see Yves Pallade (2008): Only non-Antisemites, statement at the OSCE hearing at the German Bundestag, January 25, 2008, partly published in http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/yves_pallade_o
nly_non_antisemites/ (02.14.2009); Matthias Küntzel (2006): Anmerkungen zum Fall Holz, in: http://www.matthiask
uentzel.de/contents/anmerkungen-zum-fall-holz (02.14.2009), and especially: Lars Rensmann (2004): Demokratie und Judenbild, Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 105-113; see also Heni 2008, footnote 59. For left-wing antisemitic politics, e.g. in 1973 in Germany, where an anti-imperialistic group wrote for a typical „Palestine week“: „Down with Imperialism, down with Zionism“ etc., see Heni 2007: 53-54, and ibid. Footnote 125.

[102] http://www.jungewelt.de/2009/01-10/001.php (02.14.2009).

[103] As early as 1976, Jean Améry, spoke of a “new anti-Semitism” – anti-Zionism, cf. Jean Améry (1976): Der neue Antisemitismus, in: Tribüne, vol. 15., issue 59, pp. 7010-7014, here p. 7012. One of the first big volumes on the new antisemitism was already published in 1974 (!), see: Arnold Forster & Benjamin R. Epstein (1974): The new Antisemitism, New York etc.: McGraw-Hill Book Company. This book, dealing with Christian, Arabic, Left, Right and Center antisemitism and other aspects, was dedicated “For those who have died because they were Jews-“. Until today a lot of scholars, politicians, and activists , especially outside the US and Israel, are not aware of the fact that “new anti-Semitism” is not really new and exclusively a phenomenon of the 21^st century. Nor is Arab and Muslim antisemitism that new.

[104] Dan Diner (1993a): »USA-SA-SS«: Bundesrepublikanische Verschiebungen, in: Diner, Dan (1993): Verkehrte Welten. Antiamerikanismus in Deutschland. Ein historischer Essay, Frankfurt/Main: Eichborn, pp. 117-167.

[105] Having heard about this demonstration I prepared some hundreds of flyers with slogans like “behind the call for ‘peace’ the killers are hidden”, or “you ignore the threat of Islamic Jihad” and others. Throwing these flyers on to the demonstration at the event itself, I was all alone.

[106] Neo-Nazis, too, stir up emotions today explicitly against ‘Mammon’ and speak of an “anti-Mammonist definition of capitalism,” according to the »Kampfbund Deutscher Sozialisten«, cf. http://www.kds-im-netz.de/wetter/antikapi/grundsatz_4.htm (12.15.2008).

[107] Wistrich 2004: 269f.

[108] Markovits 2004: 218.

[109] Ralph Peters, too, puts the German-French axis of this current-day anti-Americanism into context in a quite businesslike manner in commenting, “Sorry, but Gaul does not give Rome orders” (Ralph Peters (2003): Hitler war wenigstens ehrlich. Ihr widert uns an: Die Amerikaner sind mit den Deutschen fertig, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 15, 2003). In contrast, entirely in line with Habermas’s/Derrida’s European chauvinism: Ulrich Beck/Edgar Grande (2004): Das kosmopolitische Europa. Gesellschaft und Politik in der Zweiten Moderne, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. There, even the important term “cosmopolitanism” is used in an anti-American way: namely, that there is “worldwide an alternative to the American Way, a European way which places the rule of law, political equality, social justice, cosmopolitan integration and solidarity in the center” (ibid.: 393). According to this point of view, the US are unjust, unequal, without law and solidarity.

[110] Another form of radical anti-Americanism and also a form of what I call „soft-core“ Holocaust denial, is the comparison of the US after 9/11 with Nazi Germany. This is an essential part of fashionable philosopher Giorgio Agamben. He wrote the same year as Davos happened, 2003, the following lines: „The USA Patriot Act issued by the U.S. Senate on October 26, 2001, already allowed the attorney general to ‘take into custody’ any alien suspected of activities that endangered ‘the national security of the United States,’ but within seven days the alien had to be either released or charged with the violation of immigration laws or some other criminal offense. What is new about President Bush’s order is that it radically erases any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being. Not only the Taliban captured in Afghanistan not enjoy the status of POW’s as defined by the Geneva Convention, they do not even have the status of persons charged with a crime according to American laws. (…) The only thing to which it could possibly be compared is the legal situation of the Jews in the Nazi Lager [camps], who, along with their citizenship, had lost every legal identity, but at least retained their identity as Jews” (Giorgio Agamben (2003/2005): State of Exception, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-4). There are a lot of things to criticize here, including Agamben’s view on law, democracy (which he, coming from the “radical left”, detests like his godfather from the radical right, Carl Schmitt), which is too much for a short essay. But most important is the following: Such a comparison is anti-Semitic, because it banalizes the Holocaust. Jews were killed by Germans, intentionally. Whether one is in favor or not with former President Bush’s policies in regard to war criminals like the Taliban (and they are criminals), America has no plan to eradicate all Taliban. Such an accusation is extremely absurd. The fact, that Agamben nevertheless is taken seriously in the Western world, especially in “intellectual circles” who prefer “the latest thing” of philosophy, is a sign of decay in serious scholarly and intellectual research in the 21^st century. A journalist in 2003 described Agamben splendidly: “Because Agamben must be taken seriously. That at least is the claim he has successfully defended until now. He benefits from the perfume of the radical. The Agambenian critique of democracy could not be more trenchant: today’s constitutional states are in essence nothing more than huge concentration camps. This is what he attempts to demonstrate in “Homo Sacer”, originally published in 1995, with an eclectic overview of the legal history of the West. The modern state is nothing other than a totalitarian organisation for the efficient administration of bare biological life“ (Daniel Binswanger (2005): Preacher of the profane. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is a beacon for an entire generation of young intellectuals across Europe – and a flighty eclectic, in: http://www.signandsight.com/features/399.html (01.18.2008), first published in German in Die Weltwoche, October 13, 2005). The “universalization” of National Socialism, the Holocaust, and concentration camps, is part of my criticism of new antisemitism. The father of this concept of “universalization” of German guilt and denial of the specific of the destruction of European Jews is Martin Heidegger, see Heni 2008.

[111] “What was said and written in Germany in the weeks after 9/11 is worth being recorded as a kind of clinical history of the incurably healthy. It was passion plays of the commenting class. The hysteria of those days has calmed down, the yearning for total peace remains. It will articulate itself again. Coming soon in the German theater” (Henryk M. Broder (2002): Kein Krieg, nirgends: Die Deutschen und der Terror. With a text by Reinhard Mohr, Berlin: Berlin Verlag, p. 13). Wolfgang Benz, historian and director of the Berlin center for research on antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technical University of Berlin, is quoted in this volume of Broder, as Benjamin Weinthal documents in a critical article: “Benz has been criticized in the past for seeming to justify the motives of the 9/11 terrorists with what some perceived as anti-Americanism. Der Spiegel journalist Henryk M. Broder cited a quote from Benz in his 2002 book No War, Anywhere, addressing the outbreak of anti-Americanism in Germany following the September 11, 2001 attacks. At the time, Benz commented that the Twin Towers in Manhattan “are symbols of pride and wealth and arrogance. Building such buildings is extreme arrogance, and so vulnerability is built in. And the attacks on these buildings, with these attacks one could erase feelings of helplessness and one’s own humiliations and turn them into the opponent’s helplessness and humiliation. And that provokes the drastic and dramatic reactions and the martial reactions, and that’s what makes it so dangerous and devastating to attack and destroy these particular symbols.” http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1228728130041&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull (02.14.2009) , Benjamin Weinthal, Berlin Center ignores Iranian threat, Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2008.

[112] In an interview with Spiegel Online on August 9, 2005, the Cardinal said, “You may think I’m crazy, but I pray for the terrorists every evening. God’s blessing can make holy men out of terrorists: One must overcome the evil by the good. I have not yet upset myself for half a minute with the question that things could get going here, too. God will make sure that things go well” (http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,368465,00.html (12.15.2008). It is part of the Shahids’ ideology that god, Allah, makes terrorists into holy men or martyrs.

[113] Mark Strauss (2003): Antiglobalism’s Jewish Problem, in: http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/111303FP_A-S.shtml (12.15.2008).

^[114] Omer Bartov (2004): Der alte und der neue Antisemitismus, in: Rabinovici/Speck/Sznaider (ed.) (2004), pp. 19-43, here p. 43.

[115] The Israel daily newspaper Jerusalem Post has a column on its Homepage called „The Iranian Threat“, see also Alizera Jafarzadeh (2008): The Iran Threat. President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis, New York City: PalgraveMcMillan. Syria is a similar case. Venezuela (represented by „leftist“ Hugo Chavez) supports Iranian Holocaust denial and the Iranian ambitions to produce nuclear facilities, including a nuclear bomb; in addition, Chavez recently allowed anti-Semites to destroy synagogues in Venezuela and to promote violent Jew-hatred.

Zionism, Israel and the Conservation of Nature

By Dr. Clemens Heni, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), Yale University – translated by Leslie Lebl, CT, for Artists4Israel, New York City, Manhattan

The relationship between Judaism and nature conservation is the focus of a book, “Conservation and Democracy,” published in 2006.[i] In addition to numerous short contributions on this subject, it includes an appendix containing the first reprint of a historical document about “Judaism and nature conservation” from 1932. To accuse Jews of being not friends of nature, rather a threat to ecology (what ever that means) is a typical example of antisemitism, not only, but particularly in Germany. This short review can just shed some light on this phenomenon by focusing on Judaism and nature conservation. This article is part of a new discussion about “how cool is Zionism” or “Neo-Zionism”?

The Israeli landscape architect Tal Alon-Mozes examines, from a Zionist perspective, the environmental roots that preceded the founding of the state of Israel.  She investigates three important tropes:  First, the “myth of Palestine as a desert,” second, the “myth of making the desert bloom” and third, the “myth of the return to nature.”  Biblical and modern concepts competed and still compete with each other.  In particular, the view of agriculture as offering a means to connect with nature was a modern idea.  As a further example, she introduces the proposal of Yehoshua Margolin (1877-1947) to situate kindergartens inside gardens.  Margolin wrote books and study plans on ‘nature studies’ for kindergartens as well as grammar schools and founded the first Hebrew-Pedagogical Institute in 1932.

Henning Eikenberg adds to this and reports about the history of nature conservation in the State of Israel.  It is striking that, in Israel, the programs of the Ministry of Environmental Protection are funded up to 75% not by the state budget but by entrance fees and donations, many of them from the Jewish diaspora.  That pattern is consistent with the origins of the nature conservation movement, which developed from the bottom up rather than being initiated by the state.  For example, the NGO Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), a key player, was founded 35 years before the establishment of an independent Ministry of Environmental Protection in 1988.  One of the founders of SPNI was the Zionist Heinrich Mendelssohn (1910-2002).  In the Weimar Republic, he was inter alia a member of the Zionist student group Kadimah.  In 1933 he emigrated to Palestine.  A zoologist, he helped found the Tel Aviv University.  Mendelssohn “is considered today as one of the founding fathers of environmental protection in Israel.”

Alois P. Hüttermann completes this volume with a short description of nature conservation in ancient Israel.  After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, the Jews were driven into less fertile agricultural areas.  Normally, such plots would appear suitable for herds of smaller animals such as sheep or goats.  The rabbis knew, however, that these animals’ grazing habits would denude the pastures and cause desertification, so it was decided to forbid Jews to keep smaller animals.  As a result, desertification did not occur.  Hüttermann proposes using this approach to prevent desertification today (for example, in Mauretania, Iran, or China).

Siegfried Lichtenstaedter:  “Nature Conservation and Judaism” (1932)

Appended to the volume is Nature Conservation and Judaism by Dr. Siegfried Lichtenstaedter.  A 48-page text published in 1932, it is a very significant document about the German nature conservation movement.  It is based on a speech given by the author “on March 4, 1931, in the framework of a Jewish community study course in Munich.”  The exclusion of Jews from the nature conservation movement after 1933, the Holocaust, and the impact of anti-Jewish environmentalists after 1945 caused this document simply to be ignored until now.  Gert Gröning, Professor of “gardening and open space development” at the University of Art in Berlin (UdK) and one of the founders of critical research into the history of environmental protection and the open space movement in National Socialism and in the Federal Republic of Germany, rescued this text from the oblivion caused by ignorance or the desire to downplay the role of Jews in environmentalism.  Born in 1865, Siegfried Lichtenstaedter was a state official and a publicist from 1898 to 1932.  From 1897, when his initial work, Culture and Humanity, appeared through the Weimar era, he published works on anti-Semitism, such as Antisemitica in 1926.  As anti-Semitism in imperial Germany was no less widespread than in the Weimar Republic, he often used a Turkish pseudonym, “Dr. Mehemed Emin Efendi.”

Lichtenstaedter begins Nature Conservation and Judaism by noting that conservation was in fact a new movement, with the Yellowstone National Park in North America, created in 1872, the first big park designed to protect nature.  This new-found love of nature stands in opposition to the ancient Roman aversion to the Alps – “foeditas Alpium.”  Attention to unusual stone outcroppings, the extinction of entire animal species (such as the Stellerschen sea-cow (“Borkentier”) first discovered in 1741 that had already disappeared by 1768), or environmental threats to plants drove Lichtenstaedter to seek the institutional origins of nature conservation.  Along with the establishment of various organizations he cites, for example, Bavarian rulings against “disfiguring advertisements” or medieval conservation laws.  Nevertheless, he concludes that: “The theoretical foundation is unsatisfactory.”  Some of his findings are undoubtedly problematic, for example, his reference to Swiss nature researcher Paul Sarasin, who called for the protection of “threatened races of men”.  Similarly, his call for ‘linguistic conservation’ begs the question as to why languages, that is to say human culture, should be included in nature conservation.  Lichtenstaedter’s passages dealing with Jewish laws, on the other hand, are very interesting.  The first that he mentions and analyzes is the most important:  the institution of the Sabbath Year.  While the Christian concept of the Sabbath simply views the Seventh Day as a time to rest and think ‘about God’, he shows how universal, pragmatic and sensible the Jewish law of the Seventh Year was:

“When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord.  Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord:  thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.  That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed:  for it is a year of rest unto the land.”[ii]

Lichtenstaedter comments that it is doubtful “whether a similar law exists or existed in any other religion.”  He mentions that in the 1890s, collections were taken up outside Palestine so that Jewish settlers could celebrate the Sabbath year in the Holy Land.  It is a proud Judaism that expresses itself so by demarcating the limits of economic exploitation:

“How much higher is our Torah than the conscience of the so-called cultural world!”

He analyzes another law from the book of Moses according to which young birds and eggs that fall together with a nest can be kept, but the mother bird should be let go.  This is because the grown mother bird can lay new eggs right away, while the young birds that have fallen as well as the eggs are lost no matter what:

“This is nothing else but a zoological protection of nature – to my knowledge the first such law in the history of religion and culture, as far as it is known to us.”

Then he discusses the law “Bal taschchith”, “you should not ruin anything”, directed specifically at military sieges or victories.  The next law, the “prohibition on mixing” is obviously abstruse; it describes among other things the prohibition on wearing “clothing from different cloths (wool and linen)”.  Even Lichtenstaedter considers it irrational, as the orthodox position, according to which the 1555 Codex “Schulchan Arush” is still determining.  He dismisses two traditional Jewish approaches, the “fossilized point of view” and the “garbled point of view” as insignificant and unhelpful for tracing the genesis of nature conservation.  Much more useful is the approach of trying to “return to the Torah”.  At any rate, Lichtenstaedter sees the conditions for demonstrating the close relationship between Judaism and nature conservation completely realistically – 1932 – in a sad light:

“By this we do not, by any means, want to underestimate the difficulties and concerns, that pose natural obstacles to a leading role for Judaism.  As things stand now, if we were to push ourselves to the fore, the response would be more or less:  what?  Judaism preaches nature conservation?  Then there can be only one solution:  Destroy whatever can be destroyed, lay waste what can be laid waste, exterminate what can be exterminated!  We must therefore exercise a certain restraint; address narrower, more refined circles rather than the broad public, particularly at a time when it is vulnerable to incitement and being made stupid.  Above all, the most important thing is for us to act in the spirit of our religion.”

Lichtenstaedter closes his talk by clearly opposing the völkisch ‘nature and homeland protectors’ who were already all too audible during the Weimar years:

“With absolute certainty one can state:  the widespread ‘modern,’ ‘patriotic’ or völkisch concept that ‘only one’s own people or one’s own race (anthropological, imaginary or feigned) has merit and whose existence is therefore absolutely justified’ stands in irreconciliable opposition to Jewish moral teachings.”

The non-Jewish, German protectors of nature took another way after 1933, like most Germans.  Nature conservation was not the only area in which the longstanding hatred of Jews, ‘non-Germans’ and Judaism ‘ripened’.

“On June 25,1942, Lichtenstaedter was deported from Munich to Theresienstadt with the Transport II/9.  Of the 50 people in this transport, 46 were killed and 4 liberated.  Lichtenstaedter was murdered on December 6, 1942, in Theresienstadt.”

---

[i] Gert Gröning/Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (ed.) (2006): Nature Conservation and Democrcy!?, Munich: Martin Meidenbauer [in German]. The German original of this article was published here, including the quotes of the references in this article http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2008/01/tu-bischwat.htm .

[ii] Leviticus 25: 2-5, King James version.

Ein ganz normaler Deutscher

Papst Benedikt XVI verharmlost den Holocaust

Dr. Clemens Heni, Post-Doctoral Researcher, YALE University, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA)

Hat der erste und letzte deutsche Papst, der in der Hitlerjugend war, nun in Israel „brav und bravourös“ seine Pflicht erfüllt, wie der Tagesspiegel und das Internet-Portal Achse-des-Guten insinuieren?  Was ist gemeint wenn gesagt wird, der „Tod“ sei keineswegs nur ein „Meister aus Deutschland“, vielmehr könne er „sich auch überall sonst auf unserer mörderischen Welt heimisch fühlen“? Wie steht das in Beziehung zum an Walser erinnernden Reden von einer „Bekenntniskultur“?

Was hat der Papst denn wirklich gesagt? Papst  Benedikt XVI sagte in seiner kurzen Ansprache in der Holocaust-Gedenkstätte Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, welche er in gebrochenem und teils gemurmeltem Englisch sowie in recht monotoner Rede von sich gab, Folgendes:

1) Er stehe „in silence“ vor diesem Monument, welches in Gedenken 2) an die „Millionen“ ermordeter Juden erinnere. Die explizite Nichtnennung der Zahl „sechs Millionen“ ermordete Juden ist ein bekannter Topos in rechtsextremen Kreisen, da Antisemiten unter allen Umständen die Zahl „sechs Millionen“ vermeiden möchten. Für eine Person mit einem weltweit so ungeheuerlichen Einfluß wie der Papst ihn hat, wäre es von eminenter Bedeutung gewesen (an diesem Ort!) von sechs Millionen ermordeten Juden zu sprechen.

Diese Toten jedoch verlören 3) nie ihren Namen („never lose their names“). Wie im Vorfeld bekannt geworden war, würde der Papst die Ausstellung in der Gedenkstätte nicht besuchen müssen – das wäre zuviel für einen deutschen ex-HJler, rein psychologisch gesehen. DerMann ist 82 Jahre alt. Und zudem hätte er die Tafel zu einem seiner Vorgänger, Papst Pius XII gesehen, der ein Antisemit war und dessen Rolle im Holocaust immer noch nicht ganz abschließend analysiert werden kann, da noch Quellen nicht freigegeben worden sind vom Vatikan. Allein das ‘Schweigen’ von Pius XII hat den Holocaust unterstützt.

Und schließlich hätte Benedikt XVI lernen können – dafür ist es ja nie zu spät – dass es purer Zynismus ist, wenn er davon redet, die toten Juden würden niemals ihren Namen verlieren. In Wirklichkeit sind die Namen von ca. der Hälfte der ermordeten Juden, also ungefähr drei Millionen Menschen, (noch) nicht bekannt und es ist sehr unwahrscheinlich dass alle Namen je heraus gefunden werden können. Diese unfassbar traurige Tatsache wischt der Pontifex einfach weg und redet 4) davon, dass „their names forever fixed in the memory of Almighty God“.

Dass er dann gerade an der Gedenkstätte für die ermordeten Juden davon redet, dass er als Katholik „Jesus“ verpflichtet sei mit dessen „love for all people“ ist als Augenzwinkern für alle christlichen Antisemiten zu sehen, welche die offensichtliche und absichtliche Weigerung von Juden Jesus als „Heiland“ anzunehmen, seit Jahrtausenden zum Anlass nehmen Judenhass zu schüren. Sofort springt der erste und oberste aller Vertreter dann zum Heute und warnt davor, dass auch heute „persecution“ drohe, sei es aufgrund von „race, color, condition of life or religion“. Diese Trivialisierung des Holocaust als geradezu läppische „Verfolgung“ (persecution heißt Verfolgung) ist natürlich nicht auf des Vatikans Mist gewachsen, vielmehr längst Mainstream der Rede von Sorge um Verfolgung und Genozid all überall. Der Tagesspiegel drückt es mit der oben zitieren Formulierung so aus: „Dabei weiß inzwischen jeder, dass der Tod nicht nur ein Meister aus Deutschland ist, sondern sich auch überall sonst auf unserer mörderischen Welt heimisch fühlen kann.“ Jedem seinen Holocaust, oder was ist damit gemeint? Es hat jedenfalls nichts mit der Realität zu tun, was Malte Lehming da formuliert. Die Shoah war aus vielen Gründen ein präzedenzloses Verbrechen. Der französische Philosoph Bernard-Henri Lévy hat das sehr komprimiert aber treffend so formuliert:

“And you could take the time, with those who wonder, sometimes in good faith, about the uniqueness of the Holocaust, you could take the time to explain that this uniqueness has nothing to do with body count but with a whole range of characteristics that, strange as it may seem, coincide nowhere else in all the crimes human memory recalls. The industrialization of death is one such: the gas chamber. The irrationality, the absolute madness of the project, is the second: the Turks had the feeling, well founded or not, and mostly, of course, unfounded, that they were killing, in the Armenians, a fifth column that was weakening them in their war against the Russians – there was no point in killing the Jews; none of the Nazis took the trouble to claim that there was any point to it at all; and such was the irrationality, I almost said gratuitousness, of the process that when, by chance, the need to exterminate coincided with another imperative that actually did have a point, when, in the last months of the war, when all the railways had been bombed by the Allies, the Nazis could choose between letting through a train full of fresh troops for the eastern front or a trainload of Jews bound to be transformed into Polish smoke in Auschwitz, it was the second train that had priority, since nothing was more absurd or more urgent, crazier or more vital, than killing the greatest number of Jews. And the third characteristic that, finally, makes the Holocaust unique: the project of killing the Jews down to the last one, to wipe out any trace of them on this earth where they had made the mistake of being born, to proceed to an extermination that left no survivors. A Cambodian could, theoretically at least, flee Cambodia; a Tutsi could flee Rwanda, and outside Rwanda, at least ideally, would be out of range of the machetes; the Armenians who managed to escape the forces of the Young Turk government were only rarely chased all the way to Paris, Budapest, Rome, or Warsaw (…)” (Bernard-Henri Lévy (2008): Left in Dark Times. A stand against the new barbarism. Translated by Benjamin Moser, New York: Random House, p. 159).

Das sollte als Anregung über die Präzedenzlosigkeit der deutschen Verbrechen nachzudenken Anlass genug sein. Der Tod war ein Meister aus Deutschland und nur aus Deutschland.

Sicher ist die Motivation von Lehming und manch anderen irgendwo durchschimmernd: viele, welche den Holocaust betrauern sind für heutige Gefahren, und namentlich der Gefahr eines zweiten Holocaust immun. Viele sehen nicht, dass der Iran mehrfach angekündigt hat, Israel zu zerstören. Viele sehen das sogar und finden das super. Dagegen möchte sich evtl. ein Lehming wehren. Gut. Nur fehlen ihm dazu die Mittel. Er sollte lernen, dass es erstens einer sehr spezifischen Erinnerung an den Holocaust bedarf. Viele Deutsche wollen ja überhaupt gar nichts mehr hören von den Verbrechen ihrer Großväter, Onkel, und Väter, und das Gerede von der „Pflicht zu gedenken“ oder dem „Gedenkritual“ ist absurd in einem Land, das der Spezifik des Antisemitismus und des Holocaust zu keinem Zeitpunkt gewahr wurde!

Es gilt zweitens zu lernen, dass der Kampf gegen den Islamfaschismus nur zu gewinnen ist, wenn der deutsche Nationalsozialismus weiterhin erforscht und erinnert wird.

Die Rede des deutschen Papstes Benedikt XVI am 11. Mai 2009 in Yad Vashem ist gerade – völlig konträr zu achgut/Tagesspiegel – kein Zeichen des Gedenkens. Es ist das Ritual des Vergessens. Der Pontifex hat nicht erwähnt, wer die Mörder waren – Deutsche. Er hat nicht erwähnt und bedauert, dass er selbst ein kleiner Nazi war als Hitlerjugend-Mitglied. Es war sehr erquicklich, als vor einigen Wochen die Historikerin Dr. Catherine Chatterley von der University of Winnipeg hier in YALE vorgetragen hat und ganz selbstverständlich meinte, es sei ja wohl ein Witz, dass ein “ex-Hitler Youth-member” und stolzer Deutscher dieser Generation “Pope” werden könne. WAS solle mensch von so einem erwarten?

Der selbsternannte Stellvertreter hat vor allem auch nicht erwähnt, dass der jahrtausendealte Judenhass und Antisemitismus des Christentums und damit auch und namentlich der Katholischen Kirche den Holocaust mit vorbereiten geholfen hat. Er hat nicht erwähnt, dass Papst Pius XII in die „Judenpolitik“ der Deutschen eingeweiht und involviert war. Er hat nicht erwähnt, wieso er die tridentische Messe, welche für das „Heil der Juden“ zu Ostern betet, wieder eingeführt hat. Und er hat natürlich nicht erwähnt und bedauert, die offenen Holocaustleugner der Piusbruderschaft rehabilitiert zu haben.

Warum all diese Lücken sowie das, was der Papst dann doch gesagt hat, für den Tagesspiegel und diejenigen, welche diese sicher gern gemeinte Meinung hören, eine „bravouröse“ Leistung war, bleibt ein Geheimnis oder Mysterium. Oder eben Zeichen einer politischen Kultur, welche im 60. Jahr der Bundesrepublik nichts – aber auch gar nichts! – von der deutschen Spezifik des Nationalsozialismus und der unvergleichlichen Verbrechen des Holocaust hören will.

Vom Iran und dem arabischen Antisemitismus zu reden ist sehr wichtig. Doch wer das wirklich ernst meint, kann vom nationalsozialistischen Antisemitismus nicht schweigen.

Was so schwierig ist, sowohl von den präzedenzlosen Verbrechen der Deutschen zu reden und vom genozidalen Antisemitismus der heutigen Islamischen Welt – das ist rational schwer nachzuvollziehen.

Ein pro-deutscher Reduktionismus, der von den Verbrechen der Deutschen nicht wirklich noch was hören möchte und von der Spezifik der Shoah schon gleich gar nichts, ist äußerst problematisch.

Da nun der Holocaust, die Verbrechen der Deutschen und die Involviertheit der katholischen Kirche gleichermaßen erinnert werden müssen, ohne die heutigen Gefahren auch nur im Ansatz zu übersehen, haben Holocaustüberlebende, der Leiter des Direktoriums der Gedenkstätte Yad Vashem Avner Shalev, der „chairman“ of Yad Vashem, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau und Stephan Kramer vom Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland die Rede des Papstes scharf kritisiert.

Doch in der Weigerung von den Deutschen als Tätern zu reden und Juden als spezifische Opfer von Antisemitismus zu benennen, ist Benedikt XVI durchaus angesagt. Ganz normale Deutsche wollen das auch nicht hören und sie wollten es noch nie hören. Auch jene, welche niemals in der HJ waren.

Es ist nicht überraschend, dass dieser Papst die katholische Kirche und die geliebten Deutschen exkulpiert. Skandalös ist es trotzdem. Und keineswegs „brav“.

Islamic Antisemitism

Islamic Antisemitism and the Failure of Western Academia

Experiences from YALE, America and the Western world

A few ideas about a tremendously important topic in the 21^st century

Lecture, held at YALE University, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), “A YIISA Symposium:  Understanding Facets of Contemporary Antisemitism”, April 3, 2009, Davies Auditorium

Dr. Clemens Heni, Yale University, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA)

Dedicated to Leslie Lebl, Connecticut[1]

1) Introduction

In a time when people prefer to write or read twitter, facebook, or just use their cell phone 24/7, writing and reading long or longer articles, let alone books, is not fashionable. This is a problem in so far as some topics – if not most – need deep intellectual research for the important aspects to surface.[2] The following text tries to shed at least some light on the biggest threat of our times to Jews, Israel and the entire Western world: Islamic Antisemitism, an essential component of the project of Islamic Jihad.

The failure of Western Academia in addressing the threat, deriving from Islamic Jihad in general and Islamic anti-Semitism in particular, is worrying. As faculty respective Post-Doc at YALE I experienced both silence and ignorance on an unprecedented level the last nine months. After having lived before in post-Holocaust Germany, I was very happy to live in America, the free world, and conduct research on anti-Semitism at the only university-based institution dealing especially with anti-Semitism on an American campus. But this was overshadowed by an event at that very campus on my first official day early in September 2008. The Yale political union, an undergraduate organization, invited John Mearsheimer, infamous co-author of the anti-Zionist bestseller “The Israel Lobby” and voted to agree with him “to end the special relations of the US with Israel”. Of course, those undergraduates have no power now, but they will likely occupy influential positions in the US and abroad in the future personal. The academic establishment is already on the road to cultural relativism, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, no doubt. And this is the reason why Islamic antisemitism has not become a topic of Middle East Studies, in political science, not even among those very few institutions who deal with anti-Semitism like the Berlin center for research on Antisemitism (ZfA).

I witnessed scholars at Yale/YIISA who reject publicly the term “emergency” if someone mentions the existential threat of the Iranian regime for Israel or the danger of Islamic Jihad in general. “Emergency can lead to anti-democratic action” they claim. Ah, really? Isn’t the everyday environment of a Muslim country like Iran threatening enough? Or at least the fact that women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive cars, because an accident could create the ‘danger’ that such a female driver gets in contact with a male mechanic etc.?  Or the ongoing performance, on a daily basis, of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Arab and Muslim world, isn’t this an emergency for every single Muslim girl which should lead the free world to act and protect those female children? And of course: The launching of rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory, the denial of the Holocaust during the Munich security conference in early February 2009 by Ali Larijani backing his president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, isn’t this an emergency for the free world, the West, and Israel and the Jews?[3] Isn’t it an emergency if this same president Ahmadinejad gets a visa and can speak at the United Nations in New York City, as he did on September 23, 2008? I was among some 10,000 protesters the day before in New York City, part of an angry but powerful crowd of friends of Israel, including Irvin Cotler, Professor of Law in Canada, Dalia Itzik, former speaker of the Knesset, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. This is such a pathetic event, as Charles Small, director at the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) used to say, to hear Wiesel urging the world to act against a “second Holocaust”. Meanwhile, where are all those famous and well-paid professors, doctors, who speak out against anti-Semitism?

Ahmadinejad’s speech the following day was one of the nastiest anti-Semitic speeches ever held at the UN. “Zionists” are his enemies when he defames them as “Zionist murderers,” when he sees Russia’s aggression in Georgia as actually stemming from NATO and the “Zionists” behind it, and of course, the “Zionists” are accused of their imagined role as “dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US.”  Finally, he agitates against a “Zionist network” and a “Zionist regime.” To Ahmadinejad as for the Germans during National Socialism – here, the comparison obviously holds – Jews are Zionists and vice versa. Every Jew a Zionist = enemy, everywhere.

That makes Iran’s attacks against Israel so typical: Israel stands for Jewry in total; however, Iran’s anti-Semitism is fueled not only by repression of memory and Holocaust denial, derealization and projection of guilt; time-honored primary patterns of hatred of Jews such as the “Jewish world conspiracy,” “the Jewish capitalist” and the small, but influential group of “the Jews” in general can be discerned as well. For this reason, this speech must be taken seriously and recognized as an icon for the delusional ideology which aims to kill Jews, promoted by present-day Iran, which is also echoed by other regimes and movements. Anti-Zionism is the core of Ahmadinejad’s ideology, and – ever since Auschwitz, which he does not acknowledge – this anti-Zionism has only been code for “the Jew”!

Not only against this background do all the refined differentiations between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism burst asunder. The anti-Semitism of the 21st century is first and foremost anti-Zionist, with the clearest of consciences and with the European  mainstream in its wake. Mullah-fascism has been allowed to show its ugly face again in New York City, and the world looks on, applauds, laughs, smiles, grins or plays it down.

Is such a speech of Iranian president not a case of emergency, especially if we take into consideration that the very same regime denies the Holocaust and prepares another one, as they repeatedly said they fight for a “world without Zionism” and want to “wipe Israel of the map”? Not an emergency?

Well, I know well the theoretical background of such people: fashionable Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. He is one of the most quoted philosophers of our time (and I saw his books on the bookshelves of these Ivy League scholars), walking in the footsteps of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, probably the most quoted philosopher of the 20^st century. Agamben wrote in 2003 the following lines:

„The USA Patriot Act issued by the U.S. Senate on October 26, 2001, already allowed the attorney general to ‘take into custody’ any alien suspected of activities that endangered ‘the national security of the United States,’ but within seven days the alien had to be either released or charged with the violation of immigration laws or some other criminal offense. What is new about President Bush’s order is that it radically erases any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being. Not only do the Taliban captured in Afghanistan not enjoy the status of POW’s as defined by the Geneva Convention, they do not even have the status of persons charged with a crime according to American laws. (…) The only thing to which it could possibly be compared is the legal situation of the Jews in the Nazi Lager [camps], who, along with their citizenship, had lost every legal identity, but at least retained their identity as Jews”[4].

There are a lot of things to criticize here, including Agamben’s view on law, democracy (which he, coming from the “radical left”, detests like his godfather from the radical right, Carl Schmitt), but for that, this essay is too short. Most important is the following: Such a comparison is anti-Semitic, because it banalizes the Holocaust. Jews were killed by Germans, intentionally. To compare the policies of an American government with those unprecedented crimes against humanity is just unbelievable. That kind of anti-Semitism sells and becomes mainstream in academia. If Agamben ever had spoken with Holocaust survivors or with empathy  listened to witnesses of Holocaust survivors (he could use the first video archive of Holocaust testimonies at YALE library, for example, including videos from the late 1970s) he could not make such comparisons. But the European anti-Bush climate after 9/11 allowed anti-Western hatred to surface in an unprecedented way.

The fact, that Agamben nevertheless is taken seriously in the Western world, especially in “intellectual circles” who prefer “the latest thing” in philosophy, is a sign of decay in serious scholarly and intellectual research in the 21^st century.[5] The “universalization” of National Socialism, the Holocaust, and concentration camps, is part of my criticism of new antisemitism.[6]

Recently, on April 2, 2009, Yossi Klein Halevi from Jerusalem based Shalem Center gave a very impressive and important lecture at YIISA declaring that there is our fight against “Islamic Jihad” and nothing else. This has to be the focus and not old-school right-wing extremism, etc.

I myself gave a lecture at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University in December 2002, ending with the following:

“In Germany a predilection for dead Jews is maintained. There is no way to support living Jews in fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism today.”

Since then Islamic antisemitism has increased and research is stuck in old-school approaches, mostly stopping the analysis of anti-Semitism in 1945, or, worse, sympathizing with Islamic anti-Semitism (framed as “criticism of Israel” or “Human Rights policies”) of today, in which twisted way ever.

I want to address at least some important elements of Islamic anti-Semitism. Let’s begin with the city of Berlin, capital of the Federal Republic of Germany.

1) Some weeks ago in Berlin, there were rallies against the military response of the IDF in Gaza to several years’ of launching rockets toward Israel territory, into the city of Sderot and elsewhere. A video of one of these rallies shows the antisemitism of the 9,000-strong crowd, mostly Muslims living in Berlin.[7] This is a new development even in Berlin. In other cities, like Duisburg, some 10,000 also mostly Muslim demonstrators urged the police to take away two Israeli flags which were set in the angle of a bedroom window and on a balcony of two German students.[8] The woman and the man living in that apartment wanted to show their solidarity with Israel. The police illegally entered their apartment to calm the anti-Semitic crowd in front of the building.

2) The same day, on January 10, 2009, a big rally took place in San Francisco, California. Posters read “Gaza = Auschwitz”. This is what I called in an article I published last November in Jewish Political Studies Review “soft-core denial of the Holocaust”.[9] It trivializes the Holocaust on the one hand and demonizes Israel and the Jews on the other. I would note that according to the working definition of the EUMC in Europe, this is anti-Semitic.[10]

What are scholars on anti-Semitism saying to these events in Germany? Professor Werner Bergmann, one of two Professors of the only university-based institution which deals with anti-Semitism in Germany, the above mentioned Center for research on anti-Semitism at the Technical University in Berlin (ZfA), said in an interview with the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung on February 9, 2009, that it is something different if Muslims are “articulating their anger and fear for relatives living in Gaza”, compared with (other) Germans from the extreme left or right, who probably just have an anti-Semitic intention to join such rallies.[11] Well: why does a Palestinian, probably born in Berlin, say “Olmert is a son of a dog” or “Zionist are fascist”. What is the difference for a Jew if a left-wing German or a radical Muslim German says “Kill the Jews”? Is the latter an expression of fear for relatives in Gaza?

It is blatantly anti-Semitic, as it also threatens Jews in Berlin.  Bergmann’s approach shows how even sympathetic mainstream academics have been addressing Muslim anti-Semitism: they are in denial.

3) President Obama gave most recently a video address to Iran on the Newroz new year. Without accusing Iran of denying the Holocaust or making conferences à la “A World without Zionism” he pleaded for good relations among “civilizations”. In what sense is Iran under the Mullahs since 1979 still civilized – this is a question Obama does not raise. The response, though, of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was very prompt and interesting[12]:

“My advice to the American officials – to the president and to the others – is to think carefully about these things. Give it to someone to translate it for you – but don’t give it to the Zionists to translate…“[13]

We can decode the anti-Semitism of that speech if we look at the word “Zionists” – Khamenei imagines that those people working in radio-stations, at TV channels and the press, those who will translate his Farsi speech into English, German, Spanish or French, are all “Zionists”. He imagines a world conspiracy, e.g. that media and all translators are run by the Jews (read “Zionists”).

American writer and Iranian born Amil Imani urged President Obama to be less naïve about the attempt of the US Administration to discuss with the Iranian regime. Imani urges the American president not to betray the Iranian people another time:

“President Obama said, ‘The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations.’ But, Mr. President, the Iranian nation does not wish to be associated with this occupying regime, whatsoever. In fact, they want the Islamic Republic to be thrown into the dustbin of history as quickly as possible. Mr. President, today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the greatest threats to the stability of the civilized world and humanity at large. It continues to impose its horrendous ideology on the Iranian population.“^[14]

Another scholar, Philip Carl Salzman, Professor of Anthropology at McGill University, is critical about Obama’s attempt to „engage” with regimes like Iran:

“The President’s emphasis on the commonalities of Americans and Iranians reflects the major cultural frame of “progressive” American culture, a frame which emphasizes and celebrates “diversity” and “inclusion.” In this frame, Iranians and Americans should be able to get along just the way Iranian-Americans get along with Spanish-, Jewish-, African-, Italian-, and other hyphenated-Americans. We are all human, the President seems to say, and we all want the same things, which, if we work together, we can all gain. This is another assumption of the “progressive” American frame: all can be winners; there need be no losers; life is not a zero-sum game. And, if we are all winners, we can all be equal, a third element of the frame.[15]

2) The biggest Threat of the 21^st century so far: Islamic Jihad

On September 11, 2001, the Islamist movement started its war against the United States, the West, and the Jews by killing 3,000 people by flying hijacked aircraft into the twin towers of World Trade Center, and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Literally they declared war even before in 1998 and the Arab world has been at war with Israel since 1948, but 9/11 is the murderous symbol of the ongoing war of Islamic Jihad against the West. The concept of Islamic Jihad goes beyond anti-Semitism. Though for Israel and the Jews, Islamic antisemitism has already become an existential threat. On October 26, 2005, at the Conference “A World without Zionism”, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared:

“Our dear Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine.”[16]

The nuclear ambitions of Iran clearly show the realistic threat which derives from Islamic antisemitism. Worse, the statement was backed up by a Holocaust denial conference in December 2006 in Teheran.  The collaboration with Neonazis and European or Western Holocaust deniers underlines the radical and dangerous profile of today’s Iran.

By the way, for those who are interested in the history of Western anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: as early as 1969, a Dutch court clearly stated that to be “anti-Israel” is “anti-Semitic”.[17]

Bin Laden, the head behind the massacre of 9/11, states that Jews stand behind all evil, a point on which Sunni and Shi’i Islam coincide. This is another aspect of the danger of Islamic antisemitism which goes far beyond the Arab world or the Israeli-Arab conflict. Gabriel Schoenfeld states in his book “The return of antisemitism:

“But in bin Laden’s conception, the United States is not the prime mover in this relationship; rather, its leaders have ‘fallen victim to Jewish Zionist blackmail’.”[18]

Historian Robert Wistrich from the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University, wrote in 2003 about the continuity of Arabic and Islamic anti-Semitism from National Socialism to our times:

“It was surely no accident that Haj Amin al-Husseini, the foremost Palestinian Arab leader {whose Nazi biography is still whitewashed by the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C., see the criticism of the recently renewed Homepage of the Memorial by “Holocaust Museum Watch”[19]}, who spent much of the war years in Berlin, found such strong ideological similarities between Islam and National Socialism, especially in their authoritarianism, anti-communism and hatred of the Jews. His speeches often began with anti-Jewish quotations from the Qur’an. In March 1944, speaking on Radio Berlin, he called on the Arabs to rise up: ‘Kill the Jews, wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.’”[20]

3) Islamic anti-Semitism and the Qur’an

Let me now go back in history to look for other roots of Islamic anti-Semitism. The Quran contains several clearly anti-Jewish suras, like Jews have to be humiliated “because they had disbelieved the signs of God and slain the prophets unrightfully” (Sura 2:61/58)[21] “O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other. Whoso of you makes them his friends is one of them. God guides not the people of the evildoers” (Sura 5:51).[22] “And well you know there were those among you that transgressed the Sabbath, and We said to them, Be you apes, miserably slinking!” (Sura 2:65).[23] I cannot go into details of the emergence of Islam, but one central aspect has to be mentioned. Some scholars have criticized the attempt to define the relationship of Muslims and Jews as somehow a “golden time”.  Professor Ronald L. Nettler published for the Vidal Sassoon Center already in 1986 an important piece about Islam and anti-Semitism by criticizing that attempt including a criticism of the renowned Bernard Lewis. He says:

“Muhhammad’s Emigration (hijrah) to Medina marked the beginning of Islamic history. Islam’s calendar started with the Hijarah, because it was through Muhammad’s enhanced role as a political leader in Medina that Islam first fulfilled its destiny as a polity. It was as though Islam had not yet fully existed in Mecca, where the nascent ideal ummah, political community, could never have been realized. (…) Muslims’ views emerging from Medina consequently reflected the worst possible attitudes toward the Jews. Islam’s earlier ambivalence, desiring its own confirmation from the people of the Jewish Book while at the same time remaining condescending toward this same People and Book, had here almost vanished. Now there was absolute confidence in Islam’s superiority and finality, with the notion of the Jews and polytheists being ‘the worst enemies of the Believers.’ The element of contradiction and confrontation became paramount. The earlier possibility of accommodation had disappeared. Here in the heat of bad relations, the foundation of continuing theological antipathy toward the Jews was irrevocably laid.”[24]

Psychologist Neil Kressel writes in 2007: In the early years of Islam the

“caliph Umar expelled the Jews from Khaibar and all Arabia, relying on a provision of the surrender that said that the terms could be revoked, if the Muslims so desired. When Hezbollah named their missile Khaibar-1, therefore, it portrayed its battle against Jews and Israel as a continuation of one started in Muhammad’s day. (…) The Palestinian Sunni militant organization Hamas, similarly, has employed the Khaibar name in its slogan: ‘Khaibar, Khaibar, O Jews, [Muhammad’s] Army will return.’”[25]

This foundation of Islam has to be kept in mind, if we read about today’s hatred of Islamist Jihadists, or prayers in mosques with Islamicist Imams.[26]

Another story of the theological source of the Islam is of interest: In 1833 German-Jewish Rabbi Abraham Geiger, one of the most important Reform oriented Jews of his time, published his PhD about “Judaism and Islam”.[27] The core of his analysis is the assumption that Mohammed borrowed a lot of ideas for Islam from the Jews and Judaism. At the end of his study he refers to several anti-Jewish quotes in the Qur’an, claiming that it was necessary for Mohammed to set some opposite rules or ideas in regard to Judaism, to veil his borrowing from Jewish sources.

There is of course a big scholarly debate about the history of the Jews in Islam, to which I cannot refer here. The concept of being Dhimmi has been analyzed for example by Bat Ye’or in 1980.[28] Although the history of Christianity was worse for the Jews than Islam, Islam was nonetheless a threat for the Jews. Jews were (like Christians) not allowed to ride horses or camels and were subject to all the other restrictions of dhimmi status[29].

The fact is that pogroms occurred in Muslim societies against the Jews like in Marocco’s Fez in 1465, in Granada in 1066, and in other places.[30] Muslim leaders introduced special insignia for Jews to wear as early as 717, hundreds of years before Christianity – which was nonetheless worse than Islam in regard to Jew-hatred, pogroms and anti-Semitism – invented a kind of yellow star in 1215 during the second Lateran council.

A crucial moment for the Islamic antisemitism of today was a conference in 1968 held at the Egyptian Al-Azhar mosque and university (the “Yale of the Islamic world”).  It was the “fourth conference of the Academy of Islamic Research”[31]. Islamic leaders and scholars from twenty-four countries produced a ”quasi-official position of Islam to the Jews”, defining the Jews as “the worst enemies of Islam” or “the best friends of Satan”. Avi Beker concludes:

“This Al-Azhar document made the Jews not just the humiliated dhimmis of the past, but rather a challenge to the primacy of Islam.”[32]

Professor Emmanuel Sivan presented a lecture in Jerusalem in 1985, claiming that 1977/78 was a “watershed”[33] for the radicalization of Islam and the Arabs. He meant the Egypt-Israeli peace process and the Iranian Revolution, which took place in early 1979. These “watershed” years and the fight against “’Westoxication’ (as Khomeini called it)”[34] together are crucial for our understanding of Islamic anti-Semitism. Taken into account that Sivan or Nettler dealt with these topics in the mid 1980s we see very clearly the failure up until today of Western academics outside Israel to understand the underlying dynamic, both in the Mideast conflict and more generally in the clash between radical Islam and the Western world. One of the few early Western scholars who analyzed Islam’s impact on politics is Daniel Pipes. He wrote in the early 1980s “In the Path of God”, and one of his points is to focus on the Western blindness to understand the importance of religion in the Islamic world.[35]

4) Import and Islamization of Christian anti-Semitism: Blood Libel (1840 until today)

The old Christian accusation that Jews killed a gentile boy in order to make matzah out of his blood was probably first used in the Muslim world on a large scale in 1840 during the Damascus affair. A Catholic priest, Father Thomas, and his servant, had disappeared and the Jews were accused of Blood Libel. Several other accusations of that kind followed in the Muslim world thereafter. Today the Blood Libel is still an important part of Muslim anti-Semitism, see for example the Egyptian TV series “Rider without a horse”.[36]

5) Import of modern anti-Semitism: World conspiracy, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

This TV Series is also based on the infamous “Protocols”. One of the most dangerous imports from European anti-Semitism is definitely the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian secret service forgery first published in 1905. Hermann Goedsche (better known as Sir John Retcliffe) set a milestone for the ‘Anti-Semitic International’ as early as 1868 in his novel Biarritz. In a decisive scene of this novel, which is set by the grave of a rabbi in the Prague cemetery, Jews from all twelve tribes gather every hundred years to consult on their power and domination over the world:

“After each participant has spoken, everyone swears an oath to the Golden Calf which rises from the rabbi’s grave in a ghostlike blue glow.[37]

When this fantasy was transmitted internationally, the Jews’ consultations as set down by Goedsche are finally transformed into the speech of one rabbi, as Hadassa Ben-Itto reports:

“’The Rabbi’s Speech’ was soon distributed in Russia and other countries, as if it were an authentic document; it was a precursor of the later Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were more detailed and sophisticated.”[38]

One of the most influential Muslim ‘scholars’ in the 20^th century was Sayyid Qutb. He is best known for his piece “Our Struggle with the Jews”, written in 1950. The core is the accusation of a Jewish conspiracy against Islam, based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Saudi editors of the first widely used edition of Qutb’s text in 1970 added some quotes from the Protocols to the text.[39] The importance of the Protocols for the Charter of Hamas, for example, cannot be overestimated. This Charter from 1988 says, for example, that “the enemy” (the Jews or Zionists) are behind the “French Revolution”, the “Communist Revolution”, “World War II”, the “Rotary Clubs” and the “Freemasons”.[40]

However, scholars like Christopher Partridge and Ron Geaves, both full professors, and critical of the Protocols, deny this Islamic anti-Semitic framework:

“The accusations of ‘antisemitism’ directed toward the Muslim world are a significant strategy within the struggle for world opinion.”[41]

The kind of scholarship Partridge and Geaves are conducting is a strategy to deny the threat posed by Islamic anti-Semitism.

6) Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas: Death Industry, suicide killing

In 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood. Up to today this is an extremist organization, based in Egypt, spreading Islamicist ideology and anti-Semitism. He invented an “industry of death” in an article in 1938, which has been analyzed by scholar Matthias Küntzel.[42] Compare this with German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his “Vorlaufen zum Tode” (forerunning for death”) without saying that al-Banna was just importing that antihuman Islamist and suicidal and genocidal ideology. The specific Islamist and anti-hedonist word of “you love life, we love death” derives from such anti-human ideology. Suicide killing is part of the strategy especially of organizations like Hamas or Islamic Jihad. To become a “shahid”, a martyr in Islamicist thinking, has become an aim for generations of children in the Muslim and Arab world.

Efraim Karsh in his important study of “Islamic Imperialism” refers to some early Islamic sources of that “we-love-death”-ideology in Islam:

“’We have seen a people who love death more than life, and to whom this world holds not the slightest attraction,” a group of Byzantine officials in Egypt said of the invading Arabs. The great Muslim historian and sociologist Abdel Rahman Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) expressed the same idea in a somewhat more elaborate form: ‘When people possess the [right] insight into their affairs, nothing can withstand them, because their outlook is one and they share a unity of purpose for which they are willing to die.’”[43]

It would very interesting for further studies to analyze this Islamic ideology of “willing to die,” for the sake of their own religion.

7) Failure of Western Academia in addressing the problem

The fact that there have been very few conferences of scholars of Middle East studies on the topic of anti-Semitism and the special case of Islamic and Muslim antisemitism indicates the failure of these studies again and again, proving the accusation by Martin Kramer. Neil Kressel proved the same failure of psychologists and sociologists to address the topic of anti-Semitism adequately.[44] The failure of postcolonial theory, anthropology and especially those following Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism has in recent years become more and more an issue in research, though the mainstream in literature, sociology, anthropology, political science and several other involved fields remains uncritical and still is a main obstacle to fight anti-Semitism.[45]

Finally what about the parallelization of anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia”? To equate anti-Semitism as a whole with racism or prejudice has become fashionable. At the United Nations and in the Muslim world, Islamophobia is an important weapon to reject criticism of Islamic Jihad, including Islamic and Muslim anti-Semitism. Even in serious research centers like the Berlin center for research on anti-Semitism, headed by Prof. Wolfgang Benz, which organized a conference on that false equivalence equation in December 2008, Islamophobia has become an important part of their work. I criticized this conference in the Jerusalem Post -  “Antisemitism is not the same as Islamophobia”[46] – and since then, there has been a debate in both German and English speaking blogs in the Internet, as well as in newspapers like Haaretz, Jerusalem Post or the Wall Street Journal. Benz and his colleagues declared that we “know” the stigmatization of Muslims today from “the history of anti-Semitism”. This is not true, rather it trivializes the history of anti-Semitism in an unprecedented way for an institute supposed to be expert regarding antisemitism. Contrary to the failure of the Berlin Institute ZfA historian Walter Laqueur analyzes why “Islamophobia” is a completely wrong term:

“If there was growing animosity toward Muslims in Europe in recent years, it was not in response to their religion per se but due to the fact that most terrorist attacks were carried out by Muslims; ‘terrorphobia’ would have been a more accurate term, and if those involved in terrorism had been Eskimos, dread and fear would have been directed against them, even though the overwhelming majority of Eskimos had not been involved in the violence. If the condemnation of a few is transferred to a whole group this is of course unfair but probably inevitable, especially if a significant part of the whole group does not clearly distance itself from the ‘activists’ among them or discourage violence but, on the contrary, expresses support or at least understanding for the terrorists. According to public opinion polls in 2005, a majority of Muslims in countries such as Jordan and Nigeria and 38 percent in Pakistan made it known that they had at least some confidence in Al Quaeda, and so did significant minorities in European Muslim communities. Violent anti-Western rhetoric and emphasis on the necessity of jihad (holy war) certainly did not help matters.”[47]

The invention of the term “Islamophobia” is also part of the  struggle for victimhood, and the Palestinians, the “Third World”, or the Muslims (and even other groups like the left) want to be victims like the Jews, an argument advanced by Professor Dina Porat from the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, given at the above mentioned Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in February 2008 at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. Porat criticized such attempts to trivialize the Shoah. In her view such “struggle of victimhood” is based on to anti-Semitism. Trivialization of the Holocaust is a new form of anti-Semitism. Some scholars also compare all crimes or ‘genocides’ with the Holocaust. French Philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy analyzes very precisely why the Holocaust was unique.[48] Today I just leave this as a remark, though the importance of understanding the uniqueness of the Holocaust is crucial for the study of antisemitism.

A lot of people, scholars, politicians, and activists, still believe most problems on earth, including Islamic anti-Semitism, which is mostly not framed as such, are the direct result of lack of education, poverty or being an outsider. The case of anti-Semitism clearly shows that this is not the fact. Political psychologist Neil Kressel says:

“We must recognize that anti-Semitism is no mere by-product of poverty, lack of education, or lack of access to power. As we have seen, Islamic universities and power centers are the source of much Jew-hatred.”[49]

Kressel points to the individual as well as to the societal situation in order to better understand what happens if a person becomes an anti-Semite.[50] To look on the personal level is also essential part of classical psychoanalytical theory, as point out by Sigmund Freud, and his followers Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and others.

There are also differences between antisemitism in Muslim countries and Muslim anti-Semitism in Western countries, especially Europe. We all know that some of the 9/11 terrorists like Mohammed Atta were well educated at the university in the city of Hamburg.

One disturbing anti-Semitic event happened at York University in Toronto, Canada, in February 2009. After a student meeting several Jewish students were attacked and taken hostage in their Hillel, until the police (after an hour) escorted them out of the building. The well organized and established crowd consisted of both left-wing and Muslim anti-Zionists; perhaps other groups were also involved. For the Jewish students this was a deep shock – being confronted with a crowd screaming “Intifada” or chanting, “Die, bitch, go back to Israel,” and “Die, Jew, get the hell off campus.”[51] The faculty kept silent. No outrage, no “emergency”.

Some weeks later, during a lecture Charles Small gave at Brown University, several dozen Muslim students made noise and created a disruption every time Charles mentioned the Holocaust. Such Holocaust denial or trivialization at an American campus is difficult for the liberal mind to tolerate. Most frightening is the following: after such actions, whether in Toronto, Providence or elsewhere, you cannot expect faculty to stand up and fight for Jewish students or at least to speak out against Israel-hatred and anti-Semitism. No way.

To the contrary, outstanding academics like feminist Judith Butler, known for her anti-Israel attitude, linguist Noam Chomsky, – and you find several of his books in every university bookstore in the US and abroad – infamous for his anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism and his soft-core denial of the Holocaust by saying the US needs some “denazification” and his support for hard-core Holocaust deniers like Robert Faurisson[52], are demonizing Israel. Hundreds of people attend events on Campus with anti-Zionist anti-Semites like Norman Finkelstein – compare this with the numbers of people who are interested in fighting anti-Semitism on campus, even in the United States![53]

Also Frenchmen Pierre Bourdieu or Jacques Derrida, or those dozens of academics, mostly British, who called for a boycott of Israel in the midst of the Gaza war, including people like Eric Hobsbawn, Ted Honderich, Etienne Balibar, Ilan Pappé, Slavoj Zizek. [54] They indicate what I call a decay in political awareness. The do not care about the genocidal ideology of Hamas, they do not care about the anti-Semitic hate speeches of Hamas, and of course they do not care about children and kindergartens in the south of Israel, like in Sderot, where people have been terrorized by rockets from the Gaza strip for several years now. The withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza strip encouraged, obviously, Hamas and its friends to be even more aggressive against Israel and the Jews. The decay of such intellectuals and scholars like Hobsbawn, Balibar or Zizek is described very well in one the most important books of our time: Bernard-Henri Lévy’s “Left in Dark Times. A stand against the new barbarism”.[55] Lévy is engaged, he does not keep silent, and he attacks people by naming them, if necessary, to indicate the unbelievable failure of Western academia in general and the Left in particular. Lévy is probably the loudest Left European anti-fascist voice of today’s world. He reminds us that antifascism was about National Socialism. And today we have to deal with “Fascislamism”, the Islamic version of fascism, a term he has created. He recalls his intellectual and political development since the 1960s.

“…what I do know for sure is that we still had some reflexes, and when that hatred became visible to the naked eye in the organizations that embraced al-Husseini, when his legacy was embraced by people for whom he remained, until his death and beyond, the true master thinker, when, in other words, commands from Fatah killed eleven Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics, a shiver of horror went through everyone who had anything to do with the Left.”[56]

And today? Suicide bombers in Iraq or in Israel, or in Islamabad, or in Tunisia, or in London, or in Madrid, or, of course, 9/11, or Mumbai, India’s 11/26 as they call it, WHO speaks out against these acts of Islamic Jihad? Obama and the US Administration now even denies the “War on Terror”. They prefer to talk about “Overseas contingency operations”. And a suicide bombing is now called a “man-caused disaster”. It sounds like I am exaggerating or kidding you. No, this is the reality.

It is the same political culture in the US: ignoring Islamic Antisemitism and blaming Israel instead: Again, Bernard-Henri Lévy:

“And I am thinking of a tiny event, almost ignored by the press but immensely powerful symbolically: a declaration by Cindy Sheehan, America’s antiwar mother, the mother of all the mothers whose children had been killed in Iraq and who had to be shown respect because the anti-Bush climate demanded it; I am thinking of the terrible thing she said, which accused the Jewish state of the worst crime a state can be accused of: ‘My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel’; she had had enough of these ‘lies,’, these ‘treasons,’ ‘which we mothers know well are for the sole profit of Israel’ – Jewish state, sacrificial idol: the innocent flesh of American children burnt before the altar of Israel; once again, it’s all there…”[57]

Professor Ruth R. Wisse wrote an important article, most recently, in Commentary: “Forgetting Zion”. Her article expresses her deep concern about the future of support for the Jewish State of Israel, especially in North America, where most Jews outside Israel are living.

“A Jewish child growing up as I did in Montreal during the 1940’s absorbed Zionism as naturally as Canadian ground did the snow in springtime.”[58]

She is sad that this is no longer the fact. Zionism has become an obstacle to becoming part of the establishment in the Western world, thanks to left-wing and Muslim anti-Semitism, spread over the decades. A cultural relativism which denounces universalism also undermines the struggle against bigotry and Islamic antisemitism.

Absorbing Zionism and supporting Israel for a lot of different other reasons, should be part of academic research, intellectual debate, political culture and politics likewise. Radical Muslims like neither intellectual debate, nor sex and Rock n’ Roll, nor core Western values like  freedom, democracy and universal secular law. The late Peter Viereck, founding father of conservatism in the US, wrote in a foreword for a new edition (first edition 1941!) of his famous “Metapolitics” in 2004, that the threat of Islamic Jihad is comparable with that of Nazi Germany.[59]

Referring to the title of Lévy’s book (“Left in dark times”) I state: A time when the Left – and not just the Left — but of course all of us — may become  lost in the dark winter of Islamic anti-Semitism and Islamic Jihad may not be far off.

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[1] Leslie Lebl did not just help me getting invited to my first Thanksgiving, she was not just the first to invite me to her American Super Bowl Party (including one of the most impressive runs and touch-downs in the history of American Football and Super Bowl, a 100-yard interception), she was not just showing me lovely places in New England’s countryside and helped me improving my English, no: she was a lighthouse of enlightenment in the darkness of Obamania, in so difficult times for the United States, the West, Israel, and the world. She always sheds light on dangerous developments in the US, Europe, and the Muslim world. Finally without her help it would have been even more difficult to resist ‘strange’ (to use a nice word) elements of the Ivy League. Thanks, Leslie!

[2] John Podhoretz (2009): A Magazine and Its Mission, in: commentary, February 2009, pp. 3-4, here p. 3.

[3] Benjamin Weinthal (2009): ‘For us, it’s an honor to support Hamas’, in: Jerusalem Post, 02/07/2009.

[4] Giorgio Agamben (2005): State of Exception, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-4.

[5] A journalist in 2003 described Agamben splendidly: “Because Agamben must be taken seriously. That at least is the claim he has successfully defended until now. He benefits from the perfume of the radical. The Agambenian critique of democracy could not be more trenchant: today’s constitutional states are in essence nothing more than huge concentration camps. This is what he attempts to demonstrate in “Homo Sacer”, originally published in 1995, with an eclectic overview of the legal history of the West. The modern state is nothing other than a totalitarian organisation for the efficient administration of bare biological life“ (Daniel Binswanger (2005): Preacher of the profane. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is a beacon for an entire generation of young intellectuals across Europe – and a flighty eclectic, in: http://www.signandsight.com/features/399.html (01.18.2008), first published in German in Die Weltwoche, October 13, 2005).

[6] Clemens Heni (2008): Secondary Anti-Semitism. From Hard-core to soft-core denial of the Shoah, in: Jewish Political Studies Review, 20:3-4 (Fall 2008), pp. 73-92.

[7] See the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2zWIo8GcIw (03.26.2009). At minute 0:26 they scream „Zionisten sind Faschisten – töten Kinder und Zivilisten“ (Zionists are fascists – they kill children and civilians).

[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNZrSSlDlz0&feature=related (03.26.2009). At the beginning of this video you also see pictures of the Berlin rally on January 17, 2009, screaming at minute 0.25 „Tod, Tod Israel“ (Death, death to Israel), 0:32 „Massenmörder Israel“ (mass murderer Israel), 0:41 “Tötet Juden” (Kill the Jews), 0:45 “Jude, Jude, feiges Schwein” (Jew, Jew, coward of a pig).

[9] Cf. Heni 2008.

[10] “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis“, EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, see: http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/material/pub/AS/AS-WorkingDefinition-draft.pdf (03.26.2009). The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) was the predecessor of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) which was established in March 2007.

[11] The German reads like this: “Bergmann: Man muss sich vor allem davor hüten, den Antisemitismusvorwurf zu nutzen, um ein Unbehagen über die Zuwanderung zu legitimieren, indem man Muslime pauschal zu Antisemiten und Frauenfeinden macht. [Question]: Sie verharmlosen den Hass der Demonstranten. [Answer of Prof. Bergmann]: Keineswegs. Aber wenn Palästinenser, die um ihre Angehörigen und Freunde im Gazastreifen fürchten und vielleicht Familienmitglieder im Konflikt mit Israel verloren haben, ihre Wut und Angst artikulieren, dann ist das erst einmal eine Reaktion auf einen aktuellen Konflikt. Man muss das anders bewerten, als wenn deutsche Rechte oder Linke aus ideologischen Gründen so etwas tun. Akzeptabel ist es in keinem Fall, hat aber einen jeweils anderen Hintergrund“ (Judenfeindliche Haltungen nehmen kaum zu, wohl aber Straftaten. Judenfeindliche Haltungen nehmen kaum zu, wohl aber Straftaten. Wie misst man Antisemitismus? – Ein Gespräch mit Prof. Werner Bergmann, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 9, 2009). This interview was published (and probably made) several weeks after the documented rallies, which took place e.g. on January 10 or 17, 2009.

[12] See a video of that speech at the Homepage of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2059.htm (03.26.2009).

[13] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP229709#_edn1 (03.26.2009). See also: “”Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged,” Khamenei said. Khamenei, wearing a black turban and dark robes, said America was hated around the world for its arrogance, as the crowd chanted “Death to America.” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/20/international/i053637D69.DTL&tsp=1 (03.26.2009).

[14] Amil Imani (2009): Obama and Khamenei, in: American Thinker, March 27, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/obama_and_khamenei.html (03.28.2009).

[15] Philip Carl Salzman (2009): President Obama speaks to Iran, in: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009/03/president-obama-speaks-to-iran/ (04.01.2009).

[16] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The World without Zionism Conference (October 26, 2005), in: Walter Laqueur/Barry Rubin (ed.) (2008): The Israel-Arab Reader. A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. Seventh Revised and Updated Edition, New York etc.: Penguin Books, pp. 601-602, here p. 601.

[17] “On November 8, 1969 a Durch court ruled that ‘anti-Israel’ meant the samt thing as ‘anti-Semitic.’ President U.W.H. Stheeman of the court found that ‘the situation of the Jews and their common fate in the world’ were intimately linked with the existence and survival of Israel. The ruling came in an action against the newspaper De Volkskrant, the plaintiff alleging that the paper was anti-Semitic, the paper responding that it was only ‘anti-Israel.’ Judge Stheeman rejected the defendant’s plea” (Arnold Forster/Benjamin R. Epstein (1974): The New Antisemitism, New York etc.: McGra-Hill Book Company, p. 158). This is, by the way, one of the first monographs dealing with “new anti-Semitism”, in 1974.

[18] Gabriel Schoenfeld (2004): The Return of Anti-Semitism, San Francisco: Encounter books, p. 53.

[19] Is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum whitewashing the biography of the Holocaust-era mufti of Jerusalem – a notorious Nazi collaborator? So says Holocaust Museum Watch, an American group that seeks to expose Arab anti-Semitism, and which has a years-old dispute with the Holocaust Museum in Washington on the matter. At issue now is the biographical entry for the mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, on the museum’s Web site. “The museum’s biography undercuts documented facts about the mufti, and, in an effort to be politically correct, seeks to exonerate him from actually murdering Jews and falsifies the historic record,” Carol Greenwald, chairwoman of Holocaust Museum Watch, said on Tuesday” (Etgar Lefkovits (2009): US museum blasted for pro-Nazi mufti bio, in: Jerusalem Post, March 17, 2009).

[20] Robert Wistrich (2003): Totalitarian Antisemitism: A Global Menace, in: Antisemitism International. An Annual Research Journal of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Special Issue, editor Robert Wistrich, Jerusalem: Hebrew University, pp. 13-22, here pp. 20-21; see also Matthias Küntzel (2007): Jihad and Jew-Hatred. Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, New York: Telos.

[21] See Robert Wistrich (2002): Muslim Anti-Semitism. A clear and present danger, New York: The American Jewish Committee, p. 8.

[22] Quoted in Andrew G. Bostom (ed.) (2008): The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, Foreword by Ibn Warraq, Amherst: Prometheus Books, p. 218.

[23] Ibid.: 219.

[24] Ronald L. Nettler (1987): Past Trials and Present Tribulations. A Muslim Fundamentalists’s View of the Jews, Published for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Oxford etc.: Pergamon Press (Studies in Antisemitism, Series Editor: Yehuda Bauer), p. 4.

[25] Neil J. Kressel (2007a): Bad Faith. The Danger of Religious Extremism, Amherst: Prometheus Books, p. 166.

[26] John Kelsay recently gives some more important insight in Islamic sources, based on German sociologist Max Weber and his analysis of religion as „order“, see: John Kelsay (2008): Antisemitism in Classical Islamic Sources, in: Michael Berenbaum (ed.) (2008): Not Your Father’s Antisemitism. Hatred of the Jews in the Twenty-first Century, St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, pp. 101-117.

[27] Abraham Geiger (1833)/1896: Judaism and Islám. A Price Essay. Translated From the German by a Member of the Ladies’ League in Aid of the Delhi Mission, Madras: M.D.C.S.P.C.K. Press. The original thesis at the University of Bonn was entiteled: “Inquirator in fonts Alcorani seu legis Mohammedicae eas, qui ex Judaismo derivandi sunt”, ibid., p. v. Cf. Avi Beker (2008): The Chosen. The History of an Idea, the Anatomy of an Obsession, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 53-56; “However, before entering the enterprise of Reform Judaism, Geiger published a book on Islam under a title that strikes a dissonant chord in today’s liberal circles and would be termed as insensitive and definitely not ‘politically correct’. (…) Geiger’s concept of borrowing is alien and even dangerous in today’s clash with Islamists” (ibid., p. 54). “Geiger claims, and this sounds logical, that several religious practices of Islam were made deliberately in direct opposition of the Jews in order to widen the gulf between the religions and to please the Arabs with some compromises. That is why, unlike Judaism, supper precedes prayer and why cohabitation with the wife on the night of the fats is permitted, as well as other changes removing Jewish dietary laws (besides the prohibition of swine). In today’s intellectual environment, a scholarly work such as this written by Abraham Geiger can hardly survive, though ironically Geiger was a liberal Jew and a reformer of the Jewish religion. (…) Geiger’s thoughts on Islam from 1833 are more relevant and critical than many volumes of contemporary Middle East studies for our understanding of the most sensitive agenda the world faces today in the ‘clash of civilizations’”(ibid.: 55f.).

[28] Bat Ye’or (1980)/1985: The Dhimmi. Jews and Christians under Islam. With a Preface by Jacques Ellul. Translated from the French by David Maisel (author’s text), Paul Fenton (document section) and David Littman, Rutherford/Madison/Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London/Toronto: Associated University Press.

[29] This is part of the ‘peaceful’ dhimmi-status. As a remark to those ‘scholars’ who want to compare “Islamophobia” of today with anti-Semitism, think about the following: which society does Muslim not allow to drive a car or a bicycle, today?

[30] Walter Laqueur (2006): The Changing Face of Antisemitism. From Ancient Times to the Present Day, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 193.

[31] Bernard Lewis (1986): Semites and Anti-Semites. An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice, New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company, p. 197.

[32] Beker 2008, p. 59.

[33] Emmanuel Sivan (1985): Islamic Fundamentalism and Antisemitism, Jerusalem: Study Circle on World Jewry in the Home of the President of Israel; Shazar Library, The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, pp. 18-24.

[34] Sivan 1985, p. 10.

[35] Daniel Pipes (1983)/2002: In the Path of God. Islam and Political Power. With a new preface by the author, New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers. Pipes interestingly points to the fact that “Allah” is not a real word, instead: “In one special case, however, a well-known Arabic word is translated regularly into English: Allah. Calling the Lord of Islam Allah seems to imply that Muslims direct their prayers to a divinity who differs from that of the Jews and Christians, whereas, in fact, Muslims worship the same Lord” (p. 21).

[36] The US State Departments reported about this: „In the Middle East, our embassies have protested to host governments against practices that have allowed their institutions to promote anti-Semitism, such as the heavily watched television series Rider Without a Horse and Diaspora that respectively promoted the canard of the blood libel, and “The Protocols of Elders of Zion.” Report on Global Anti-Semitism. January 5, 2005, July 1, 2003 – December 15, 2004, submitted by the Department of State to the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on International Relations in accordance with Section 4 of PL 108-332, December 30, 2004, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/40258.htm (03.26.2009).

[37] Hadassa Ben-Itto (1998)/2001: »Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion« – Anatomie einer Fälschung, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, pp. 54f.

[38] Ibid.: 55.

[39] Sayyid Qutb (1950)/1987: Our Struggle with the Jews, reprinted/documented in Nettler 1987, op. cit., pp. 72-89. An interesting aspect is the use of the word “heroes”, see the remarks of Nettler: “In many contemporary Muslim writings, particularly those of the fundamentalists, the term ‘heroes’ (abṭāl) is used ironically to refer to the secularized and Westernized leaders and intelligentsia who, in fundamentalist opinion, are often agents of the Jewish-Zionist cabal against Islam”(ibid., p. 88, footnote 8). As President Obama described George J. Mitchell, an expert in European conflicts like in Northern Ireland, as “expert” in the Middle East, this indicates clearly that he has no knowledge about the importance of language and behavior in Islam, let alone Mitchell’s ability to deal critically with anti-Semitism as a specific threat deriving for example out of political Islam today. For the importance of language and gests etc. see a work of Bernard Lewis (1988): The Political Language of Islam, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Lewis begins his book – with the importance of the Islamic ‘Revolution’ in Iran in 1979, just a few years before he wrote that book. Now we have 30 years Islamic Republic Iran and the Western world still does not speak their language and fail to understand the impact of Islamic anti-Semitism in particular and Islamic language of a regime like that of Iran in general.

[40] See the analysis provided by Raphael Israeli (2000): Arab and Islamic Anti-Semitism, Shaarei Tikva: The Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR), ACPR Policy Paper NO. 104, p. 17.

[41] Christopher Partridge/Ron Geaves (2007): Antisemitism, conspiracy culture, Christianity, and Islam: the history and contemporary religious significance of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, in: James R. Lewis/Olav Hammer (ed.) (2007): The Invention of Sacred Tradition, Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, pp. 75-95, here p. 92. The downplaying of the anti-Semitism of the Protocols as part of Islamic anti-Semitism is obvious here: “Any analysis of the reemergence of the Protocols in the Muslim world along with other historic manifestations need to take into account the propaganda struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs.” In this logic both sides are evildoers and societies which make propaganda. The fact that Israel has no “Protocols of the Elders of Gaza” is not worthy to be mentioned here.

[42] Küntzel 2007, p. 14.

[43] Efraim Karsh (2007): Islamic Imperialism. A History, New Haven/London: Yale University Pres, p. 25.

[44] Martin Kramer (2001): Ivory Towers on Sand. The failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Washington: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The study is now also online: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubPDFs/IvoryTowers.pdf (03.27.2009).

[45] See Philip Carl Salzman/Donna Robinson Divine (2008): Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israel Conflict, London/New York: Routledge.

[46] Clemens Heni (2008a): Antisemitism is not the same as Islamophobia, in: Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2008, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1236676912135 (05/06/2009).

[47] Walter Laqueur (2007): The Last Days of Europe. Epitaph for an Old Continent, New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, pp. 80-81.

[48] “And you could take the time, with those who wonder, sometimes in good faith, about the uniqueness of the Holocaust, you could take the time to explain that this uniqueness has nothing to do with body count but with a whole range of characteristics that, strange as it may seem, coincide nowhere else in all the crimes human memory recalls. The industrialization of death is one such: the gas chamber. The irrationality, the absolute madness of the project, is the second: the Turks had the feeling, well founded or not, and mostly, of course, unfounded, that they were killing, in the Armenians, a fifth column that was weakening them in their war against the Russians – there was no point in killing the Jews; none of the Nazis took the trouble to claim that there was any point to it at all; and such was the irrationality, I almost said gratuitousness, of the process that when, by chance, the need to exterminate coincided with another imperative that actually did have a point, when, in the last months of the war, when all the railways had been bombed by the Allies, the Nazis could choose between letting through a train full of fresh troops for the eastern front or a trainload of Jews bound to be transformed into Polish smoke in Auschwitz, it was the second train that had priority, since nothing was more absurd or more urgent, crazier or more vital, than killing the greatest number of Jews. And the third characteristic that, finally, makes the Holocaust unique: the project of killing the Jews down to the last one, to wipe out any trace of them on this earth where they had made the mistake of being born, to proceed to an extermination that left no survivors. A Cambodian could, theoretically at least, flee Cambodia; a Tutsi could flee Rwanda, and outside Rwanda, at least ideally, would be out of range of the machetes; the Armenians who managed to escape the forces of the Young Turk government were only rarely chased all the way to Paris, Budapest, Rome, or Warsaw (…)” (Bernard-Henri Lévy (2008): Left in Dark Times. A stand against the new barbarism. Translated by Benjamin Moser, New York: Random House, p. 159).

[49] Neil Kressel (2007): Mass hatred in the Muslim and Arab World: The Neglected Problem of Anti-Semitism, in: International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 4, Issue 3, pp 197-215, here p. 207.

[50] „Moreover, hateful behavior is generally best understood as an interaction between personal dispositions and situational pressures“ (Kressel 2007, p. 211). “It would also be useful to explore the psychological functions of anti-Semitism in the Muslim and Arab world, perhaps constructing a social psychological typology of anti-Semites. For some, presumably, religious and ideological commitment is vitally important to the organization of their personality. For others, Jew-hatred is more social, grounded in a desire to get along in their community” (ibid.). We have to look on the “psychodynamic underpinnings of Muslim anti-Semitism” (ibid.).

[51] Tori Cheifetz (2009): Jewish students ‘held hostage’ in Toronto Hillel, in: Jerusalem Post, February 15, 2009.

[52] Denis MacShane (2008): Globalising Hatred. The New Antisemitism, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp. 16-19. “The US media, far from being controlled by the elders of an Israel lobby, cannot stop publishing books denouncing Israel and the machinations of its friends. Noam Chomsky was voted the most important intellectual in the world by readers of Prospect, Britain’s main intellectual monthly, in 2005. Was that an account of his writings on linguistics? Or because of his lifelong animosity to Israel and his defence of Europe’s most notorious antisemite, Roger Faurisson, who wrote ‘the alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews form one and the same historical lie’?”(ibid., p. 18).

[53] This is a remark especially for those Europeans who have little insight in the situation on Campuses in the USA in particular and the political culture of anti-Semitism in America in general. There are many differences between the US and Europe on these issues. But there are also several similarities and it is a myth that anti-Semitism is not an issue in America. It is an issue and it has been an issue since 1654, the landing of the first Jews in America. I will work and publish on this topic.

[54] Open letter, Growing outrage at the killings in Gaza, in: The Guardian, January 16, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/16/gaza-israel-petitions (03.27.2009).

[55] Lévy 2008.

[56] Lévy 2008, pp. 170-171.

[57] Ibid., p. 164.

[58] Ruth R. Wisse (2008): Forgetting Zion, in: Commentary, October 2008, pp. 30-35.

[59] Peter Viereck 1941/(2004): Metapolitics. From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler. Expanded edition. With a new introduction by the author, New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers.

Da regt sich eh keiner drüber auf – Spiegel-online hetzt gegen Israel

Da regt sich eh keiner drüber auf

Spiegel-online hetzt gegen Israel

Dr. Clemens Heni, Yale University, USA, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA)

Heute wird der neue israelische Außenminister Avigdor Lieberman in Berlin erwartet und die ganz normalen Deutschen tun das, was sie am besten können: antisemitisch hetzen. Eines der größten Nachrichtenportale im deutschsprachigen Internet, www.spiegel.de bringt schon vorab eine fiktive Brandrede von Deutschlands Außenminister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), verfasst von Erich Follath. Follath diffamiert den israelischen Politiker Lieberman und nennt ihn wahlweise einen „Rassisten“, einen, der „Apartheid“ in Israel schüre und „kriegshetzerische Ausbrüche“ zu verantworten habe. Der Spiegel selbst stellt Lieberman im Vorspann als „Ultranationalisten“ vor, um der deutschen Seele und dem sekundären Antisemitismus Labsal zu sein. Ja, ein Jude ist in Deutschland „an sich“ „hier nicht willkommen“, wie der Spiegel in der Überschrift treffend schreibt. Natürlich schreibt er nicht „Jude“, sondern „Lieber Kollege Lieberman“, der aber offenbar Jude aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion ist, und nun israelischer Minister. So beachtlich so eine Hetze im Spiegel ist – so typisch ist sie doch für deutschen Journalismus insgesamt. Verwundern könnte höchstens das abermalige Schweigen. Wo ist eine spontan verfasste Presseerklärung des Zentrums für Antisemitismusforschung, dass eine Diffamierung Israels als „Apartheidstaat“ antisemitisch und nicht hinnehmbar ist? Doch warum sollte ein Prof. Wolfgang Benz sich aufregen, hat er doch selbst mit seiner Gleichsetzung von „Islamophobie“ und Antisemitismus letzterem Vorschub geleistet indem die präzedenzlosen Verbrechen der Shoah trivialisiert und der heutige genozidale Antisemitismus zumal aus Teheran weggewischt werden? Warum sollte sich sein Kollege Prof. Werner Bergmann einmischen, hat er doch selbst erst kürzlich gesagt, in der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung, Anfang Februar, dass es ganz was anderes sei, wenn Palästinenser, Araber oder Muslime antisemitisch krakelen oder aber linksextreme oder rechtsextreme Deutsche. Juden hingegen verstanden schon damals nicht so ganz wo der Unterschied liegt, wenn ein Muslim schreit „Tod den Juden“ bzw. (je nach Geschmack) „Alle Leute wissen schon, Olmert ist ein Hundesohn“ oder wenn das ein anderer nicht-muslimischer Deutscher tut. Und warum schließlich sollte Dr. Juliane Wetzel gegen diesen agitatorischen Spiegel-Aufreißer etwas schreiben, hat sie doch selbst bei der „Islamophobie“-Tagung, welche die Abwertung bzw. das Lächerlichmachen von Kritikern wie Henryk M. Broder oder Dr. Gudrun Eussner sowie Dr. Matthias Küntzel zuließ, mitgemacht. Und auch die anderen Mitarbeiter am ZfA wie Königseder, Widmann, Erb etc. werden sicher so einem Spiegel-Artikel nicht widersprechen. Das ist nicht die Aufgabe von Antisemitismusforschern, werden sie sagen. Was ist deren Aufgabe dann?

Was machen zudem all die anderen Holocaust- oder gar Antisemitismusforscher den ganzen lieben langen Tag (in Leipzig, Freiburg, Frankfurt am Main an der Uni oder am Fritz-Bauer-Institut etc. etc.) über so außer Forschungsanträge für mehr Gelder zu schreiben bzw. schreiben zu lassen? Wo ist deren Einsatz GEGEN Antisemitismus, wenn er nicht aus den Gewehrläufen der SS kommt, vielmehr aus der Feder des Spiegel-online im Jahr 2009, welche damit die Gewehrläufe der muslimischen Antisemiten im Nahen Osten in Schutz nimmt? Wenn sich diese Forscherinnen und Forscher angeblich so fürchterlich über den Antisemitismus bis 1945 aufregen (und für die meisten deutschen Forscher war ja Antisemitismus gar nicht zentral für den Holocaust, vielmehr war das ganze eine blöde, gleichsam „kumulative Radikalisierung“ nicht intendierter autopoetischer Systemprozesse wie Hans Mommsen bzw. Niklas Luhmann sagen würden), wieso schweigen sie dann alle zum heutigen Antisemitismus? Weil fast nirgendwo NSDAP oder SD oder Wehrmacht draufsteht? Oder weil die Muslime einen Großteil der Gefahr für Juden und Israel ausmachen und die Ideologie des Multikulturalismus es verbietet Muslime als Muslime zu kritisieren (und nicht als Jugendliche, Looser, Benachteiligte etc. etc.)?

Und wo sind all die Forscher zur „Gruppenbezogenen Menschenfeindlichkeit“ aus Bielefeld, Gießen und wo sie sich aufhalten? Ist es keine „gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit“ Israeli als tendenzielle Förderer der rassistischen Apartheid zu denunzieren, und die „Weltsicht“ von Lieberman als „faschistisch“ oder „rassistisch“ zu diffamieren, bar jeder Kenntnis der Stellungnahmen Liebermans zu einer Zwei-Staaten-Lösung etc., und ihn ganz gezielt als Jude und Israel auf diese Weise zu attackieren?

Und wo ist der Aufschrei wenn Follath schreibt (und die Worte Steinmeier in den Mund legt) „Fanatiker habe ich immer gemieden“? Meint er den Besuch des Saudischen Königs Abdallah II z. B. im Herbst 2007, als dieser King mit seiner Kopfwindel von der Kanzlerin in Ehren begrüßt wurde (und auch Obama hat sich kürzlich vor ihm verbeugt) und die Innenstadt Berlins voll war mit diesen arabischen Fanatikern, die nicht nur im Innern ihres Landes anti-demokratisch und islamistisch wüten, vielmehr mit der Finanzierung von antisemitischen Schulbüchern und Institutionen etc. weltweit (vor allem in der Arabischen Welt) ihrem Fanatismus freien Lauf lassen. Und was ist mit dem Besuch von Ali Larijani auf der Münchener Sicherheitskonferenz im Februar 2009, als er mal wieder den Holocaust leugnete, immerhin ein Straftatbestand in Deutschland, der bei einem Katholiken auch sofort zu einem Skandal führt, bei einem Muslim jedoch gar nix zur Folge hat? Ist das kein Fanatiker im Lande Steinmeiers? Was mit den ökonomischen Banden Deutschlands mit Iran, nicht nur aber auch und gerade unter den Fittichen des Nah- und Mittelost-Vereins e.V. unter „Ehrenvorsitz“ des alten Steinmeier-Spezls Gerhard Schröder? Keine Kooperation mit Fanatikern, wenn der deutsch-iranische Handel – mit Hilfe des Auswärtigen Amtes – blüht?

Für den Spiegel-online wird „Israel zum Problem für den Friedensprozess“ und natürlich nicht der Iran, der nicht nur Hamas und Hezbollah finanziert, vielmehr selbst an der atomaren Bombe baut und vor wenigen Tagen ganz offen gedroht hat, zum wiederholten Mal, ja deutlicher sogar, Israel zu vernichten?

Das juckt weder den Spiegel-online, noch die genannten super gepolsterten deutschen Forscher, welche ohnehin meist lieber mit toten Juden sich abgeben, eine Spezialität in Deutschland. Ein zweiter, diesmal atomarer und vom Iran geplanter und durchgeführter Holocaust würde diesen Forschern jedenfalls reichlich Material geben, um neue spannende Forschungsprojekte zu konzeptualisieren. “Iran hats doch gemacht – Spontane Radikalisierung nicht antizipierbarer Gewaltprozesse im Vorderen Orient” könnte ein solches Projekt heißen.

So warten also deutsche Antisemitismusforscher und Historiker des Holocaust gemächlich ab, was sich so tut im Nahen Osten/Middle East. Die Dämonisierung Israels, die offene Hetze auf einer der größten online-Seiten in Deutschland schockiert niemanden sonderlich. Vielmehr ist solche antisemitische Hetze gegen Lieberman der willkommene Anlass Israel zu delegitimieren, Antizionismus zu frönen, islamischen Antisemitismus einen Persilschein zu geben, den genozidalen Antisemitismus des Iran wie gewohnt zu verleugnen und den Israelisch-Palästinensischen Konflikt zum einzigen und gar zentralen Problem der Region zu erklären.

Und selbst die teils weniger araberfreundlichen Zitate Liebermans aufgreifend: wer fragt sich jemals, warum in Saudi-Arabien, Ägypten, Libyen oder Qatar (fast) keine Juden leben? Und wer skandalisiert jemals dass immer davon ausgegangen wird ein zweiter (nach Jordanien) palästinensischer Staat in der Westbank/dem Gazastreifen hätte ohnehin keine Juden? Israel hat schon heute ca. 20% Araber, die wenig frauenfreundliche Gesellschaftsauffassung des Islam wird das rein demographisch noch nach oben treiben. Es gibt mehr als 1,2 Milliarden Muslime auf der Welt in weit über 50 Staaten, allein im Nahen Osten gibt es nur muslimisch dominierte Staaten, außer Israel und (eher weniger als mehr) den Libanon.

Die Obsession gegen Israel ist in Deutschland im Mainstream-Medium Spiegel-online längst angekommen. Das sollte Menschen, die auch nur den letzten Rest von Anstand verspüren, und seien es Historiker, Soziologinnen, Pädagogen, Politologinnen, Kulturwissenschaftler, Literaturwissenschaftler, Religionswissenschaftlerinnen etc. (ja selbst Antisemitismusforscher könnten mitmachen), sowie Journalisten, Publizisten, Politiker und Aktivisten aller Art, anhalten, zu intervenieren. Zu protestieren. Spiegel-online die rote Karte zeigen und der Welt sagen, dass das kein Zufall ist, vielmehr die politische Kultur im post-Holocaust-Deutschland im Jahr 60 der BRD trefflich widerspiegelt. Deutschland ist wieder gut gemacht. Die Faschisten sitzen jetzt in Israel. Die Juden sind die neuen bösen Buben. Alle dürfen das jetzt so sagen. Sagt Spiegel-online.

Stolz breitet sich in Deutschland aus. Antizionistisch-antisemitisch motivierter pseudo-Antifaschismus, der doch nur den Islam-Faschismus der Hamas, Hezbollahs oder und zuvörderst Teherans schützen, tolerieren und befördern helfen möchte.

Why Prof. Wolfgang Benz is headed in the wrong direction

What is the focus? Why the JEWS or WHY the Jews?

The Berlin Center for Research on AntiSemitism (ZfA)
equates
Islamophobia with anti-Semitism

-

Why Prof. Wolfgang Benz is headed in the wrong direction

Dr. Clemens Heni, Post-Doctorate Researcher, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary
Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), Yale University

Probably the most disturbing, aggressive, and offensive anti-Semitic rallies in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany occurred in January 2009. As the Israeli military answered several years of launching rockets into Israeli territory from the Hamas-Gaza strip, Muslims and their friends screamed “Death to the Jews”, no “Holocaust in Gaza”, “Boycott Israel” and so on in German streets. At one of these rallies in the city of Duisburg, the German police illegally entered an apartment of two students in order to confiscate two Israeli flags hung from the balcony and bedroom as a protest against the rise of anti-Semitism. Some 10,000 aggressive demonstrators, mostly Muslim (Germans), urged the police on. This was again a watershed moment in the political culture of Germany. To allow people to scream (whether in Arabic, Turkish, or German) “Death to the Jews”, or “Olmert is the son of a dog” (as happened at a rally in Berlin), and not to allow an Israeli flag peacefully placed in the angle of a bedroom window is a sign of that change. Muslim extremism is obviously on the rise; Jews and their friends are the target. We are talking about Germany, Europe and the world in January 2009.

Is this a sign of what has become fashionable as “Islamophobia”?

A few weeks before those rallies, an event in Germany shed light on the current trend to play down anti-Semitism, while ignoring the sharp rise in genocidal threats to Jews and the state of Israel, in particular the existential threat from Iran and its nuclear program. The Center for Research on Anti-Semitism (ZfA) of the Technical University in Berlin, one of the four existing centers dealing specifically with anti-Semitism,[1] held a conference on December 8, 2008 on the “concept of the enemy Muslim – concept of the enemy Jew”.

The ZfA is a very influential institution with two full professors (Prof. Wolfgang Benz, historian and director, and sociologist Prof. Werner Bergmann), more than 50 doctoral candidates, three assistants, one academic co-worker, and over 15 employees working on various projects, not including seven fellows in an academic project dealing with anti-Semitism in Europe from 1879 until 1914.

Benz is known for some important works on Nazi Germany and right-wing extremism in the FRG alike. In my PhD for example I quoted Benz in a long paragraph of an article of him in a book he edited in 1980, dealing with right-wing extremism and the downplaying of the Holocaust. Benz correctly opposed equating the crimes against native Americans and the Holocaust, as had become fashionable after the screening of the TV series ‘Holocaust’ in January 1979.[2] Benz  also co-edited another important book, an encyclopaedia of National Socialism, first published in 1997.[3] Also this handbook I am referring to in my PhD.[4]

Benz’ criticism of National Socialism and right-wing extremism after 1945, though, might also be the reason he appears blind to the danger from the left and the Muslim world, or Muslims in Western countries after 9/11. In my view scholars must try to combine criticism of right-wing extremism with criticism of left-wing extremism and the Muslim world, as well as of Christian anti-Semitism and the history of anti-Semitism as a whole, from ancient (Greek-Roman) pagan times[5] to our contemporary world.

Just focusing on the right is not helpful. I wrote my PhD about right-wing extremism, I obviously see the big danger of that ideology. But no one should downplay other  forms of anti-Semitism (and anti-Americanism, and nationalism). The actions against Israel and the Jews of today, including rallies in the United States,[6] are not organized by Neo-Nazis, but by the left and the Muslim world. In effect, the mainstream of Europe is tolerating or appeasing Islamic Jihad.

In the announcement for the ZfA conference the organizers write that the “paradigm” of accusations against the Muslims are known from the “history of anti-Semitism”. This was the first hint that the conference would equate anti-Semitism with Islamophobia.

Most of the lectures had been published before in the Institute yearbook.[7] For Angelika Königseder, member of the ZfA, the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005/2006 is described as pure “hatred”[8] on the part of those Danish cartoonists. Peter Widmann, also an essential member of the ZfA, accused Henryk M. Broder of being a “discourse strategist of the right”.[9] While Königseder and Widmann at least tried to follow scholarly standards, another contributor to the conference, Yasemin Shooman, focused mainly on one single German Homepage, which was already known before for its racist tendencies against Islam (mostly deriving from the Christian background of that Homepage, “Politically Incorrect”). For her this is proof of how racist and anti-Muslim the www is.[10]

A commentator on Königseder’s lecture was Dr. Sabine Schiffer. She is known for writing for an anti-Zionist homepage – anis-online.de.[11] Schiffer consequently downplays the threat from Islamic Jihad. Worse, in an article published in November 2008, she accused German-Jewish publicist Henryk Broder of “demonizing” Muslims as Jews were demonized in Nazi Germany![12] In her PhD Schiffer already equalized the history of anti-Semitism with racism and especially “Islamfeindlichkeit” (hostility against Islam).[13] She equates anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia,” trivializing the unprecedented crimes of the Shoah is anti-Semitic. And a person promoting anti-Semitic statements is obviously an anti-Semite, by the way.

Inviting anti-Semites like Schiffer is remarkable for an institution like ZfA of international renown. Prof. Benz is presumably committed to making every effort to demonstrate the high quality of the work done by his institute. Yet Schiffer wrote that it is “unbelievable” that Broder spoke about the threat of a “nuclear Holocaust” committed against Israel by Iran. Why does the ZfA invite a person who denies that genocidal threat? Is the ZfA an institution against anti-Semitism in ALL its forms or has it become an institution which can only see one side of a complex phenomenon?  Schiffer’s presence, though, is a secondary issue. What about the director of the ZfA himself?

Benz wrote an introduction to his yearbook and also spoke at the beginning of the conference. He started his article with the following lines: “Since September 11, 2001, anti-Islam resentment is fashionable on a world wide scale. The killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004 activated emotional reactions, which grew to what we now call Islamophobia.”[14] The focus lies on “Islamophobia” (whatever this means[15]) and not on the victims of Islamic Jihad. This is not just the view of Benz; rather, it has become a mainstream concept in the Western post 9/11 world.

A closer look at some recent ZfA publications  is highly suggestive. As early as 2002, in a volume edited by Benz in honor of the 20^th birthday of the ZfA, he compared the situation of “foreigners (asylum seekers as well as residents)” in Germany of the 1990s with the situation of Jews in the times of crisis at the end of the 19^th century.[16] Playing down the anti-Semitic ideology of Nazi Germany in an attack on Daniel Goldhagen as Benz and Bergmann do[17] is related to a framework which does not analyze anti-Semitism first, rather all kinds of “prejudices”, like the situation of native Americans in Bolivia or socially deprived people, other examplesused in that volume[18]. This is interesting, as Benz himself criticized equating the situation of native Americans and the Holocaust in 1980.[19] Did he forget his own correct analysis of 1980?  The ZfA now sees anti-Semitism merely as a “paradigm” for stigmatization, prejudice and discrimination.[20]

Further doubts arise if one analyzes the components of anti-Semitism in relation to “Islamophobia”. An inherent feature of the conference is to equalize or create the moral equivalence of the notion of racism (portrayed as “Islamophobia”) with anti-Semitism. This is a watershed moment in the history of research on anti-Semitism, particularly in post-war or post Holocaust Germany.

Anti-Semitism is something different then forms of pure racism. Jew-hatred is based on significantly different images and ways of thinking: Jews are not below “us” (as the blacks are typically depicted), rather they are planning a conspiracy to rule the world.  Anti-Semitism, in Germany, was the motif for the Holocaust. Those unprecedented crimes combined religious Jew-hatred, race-theories about “the Jew”, and modern anti-Semitism in all its forms, including a comprehensive worldview. It is this anti-Semitic ideology which distinguishes anti-Semitism from racism.

As early as 1543, German protestant Martin Luther blamed the Jews for almost every evil on earth. In 1602 the first story about “Ahasver” appeared, a fiction about the “wandering Jew” who refused to let Jesus rest with his cross, and was therefore sent to roam endlessly. This Ahasver-myth is an essential part of hatred of Jews. Blaming Jews for being responsible for capitalism, the “worship for money, or mammon” is another one. “Mammon” became a symbol for “Jewish” power centuries ago, and since the middle of the 19^th century the image of Mammon is an essential part of anti-Jewish resentments. Another example is the blood libel which evokes the fear of non-Jews of being killed. The 1840 Damascus blood libel was an important step in singling out Jews for being un-civilized, as they were accused of killing innocent children to use their blood for making matzah.[21]

Later, during the early 20^th century, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared. This Russian forgery had a significant impact on German and European anti-Semitism. Currently, this myth is having a resurgence and a huge and negative effect in the Muslim world.

In the German empire there were so-called “Antisemitenparteien”, parties dedicated to spreading Jew-hatred. Furthermore in 1916 there was a “Judenzählung” (counting of the Jewish Soldiers) in the German army during WorldWar I. On December 13, 1934, a new law was passed in Nazi Germany: from that day on Jews were no longer allowed to get a superPhD, the formal prerequisite for becoming a Professor at University in Germany[22]. Other examples of exclusionary policies against Jews in Germany are too numerous to mention here.[23] Today every individual, including of course all Moslems, who has the ability to study on a University level, can complete a PhD or super PhD. As the ZfA says in its conference announcement, the “paradigm” of accusations against the Muslims is known from the “history of anti-Semitism”. To compare the situation of today’s Muslims in Germany with the situation of the Jews is a denial of the concrete policies of Nazi Germany. It also obscures and trivializes the true situation of Jews during the German Empire (1871-1918), including the first World War, and the Weimar Republic.

As these examples demonstrate, anti-Semitism (in Germany) is based on a worldview, an ideology, which considers Jews to be an evil which has to be eradicated from the earth. Racism, including resentments against Muslims, is not based on such a worldview, rather on the assumption that those people are less worthy than “whites” (whatever that includes or means). Racism has a rational dimension: exploitation was one central purpose it served. Anti-Semitism is totally different. Anti-Semitism is genocidal and has an extremely irrational dimension. To equalize anti-Semitism with racism or even to use the term “Islamophobia”, an invention of the Islamic Republic Iran since 1979, is dangerous.

Furthermore: there are Islamist ideas (or political Islam as such) that advocate the take-over of Europe and the West.[24] Contrary to that there have never been attempts or designs of Jews to say or do that. It is rational to acknowledge these ideas and perhaps to be frightened by them.  The only problem that arises is the projection of such views onto every Muslim, as occurs in some openly anti-Islamic circles, rather than in attributing them only to Islamists.

Anti-Semitism is a specific topic. Important research on anti-Semitism concludes that racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism are not equivalent. No single group of people, except for the Jews, has ever been singled out and blamed simultaneously for mutually exclusive developments like capitalism, communism or liberalism and humanism. For example, the conclusions of the Iranian conference, “A World without Zionism,” and the accusations that “the Zionists” were responsible for the recent crisis in Georgia display the pathologic anti-Jewish thinking of Ahmadinejad and anti-Semites in general.

Some simple comparisons demonstrate this fundamental difference between anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia”:

• No single Muslim country is singled out as such, or rendered illegitimate because of the religion of its citizens;
• There are no “Protocols of the Elders of Berlin-Kreuzberg” (a neighborhood with many Muslims);
• There is no accusation of Muslims being responsible for capitalism or the economic crisis;
• There is no Blood Libel against the Muslims, blaming them of using the blood of innocent children for religious purposes.

Contrary to that, the history of anti-Semitism shows very clearly:

• Jews and Israel (the “Zionists”) are singled out as a people and as a country (see the UN speech of Iran on September 23, 2008, e.g.)
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion  are being reprinted today in the entire Muslim world, including Turkey, Iran and the Arab world
• Jews are being blamed for today’s economic crisis of today
• Jews are still accused of the Blood Libel, e.g. in Egypt TV during Ramadan in 2007

Anti-Semitism is a specific ideology which needs serious scholarly research. The equalization of anti-Semitism and “anti-Muslimism” or “Islamophobia” is wrong, and a sign of the growing “struggle of victimhood” (Dina Porat)[25]. It is the worst ‘answer’ to the threat of Islamic Jihad, which is a threat first to the Jews and Israel, but also – see the Mumbai massacre – for the entire Western world and its allies.

A center for the study of anti-Semitism should be aware of these facts and not equalize anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia” or other forms of “prejudice”. You can overcome a prejudice, anti-Semitism, though, is irrational and genocidal. Talking about “Gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit,” (Group focused enmity) as several scholars in Germany do, trivializes anti-Semitism.[26] That kind of postmodern relativist philosophy or political culture is just another way refusing to conduct research on anti-Semitism, seen as a phenomenon sui generis. Sui generis does not suggest that anti-Semitism evolved outside history and society, but it indicates the unique nature of anti-Semitism which separates it from racial prejudice, or ‘just’  negative byproducts of capitalism, socialism, Christianity, racism, slavery, exploitation, etc.

The way the ZfA reacted to criticism of its controversial conference showed, at the very least, that it had no adequate substantive response to make to the criticism leveled at it.  The first reaction of Benz, in early December, when confronted with advance criticism of his conference, was to tell a newspaper that both an Israeli ambassador and the chairwoman of the Jewish community in Berlin stood behind his idea to have a conference on Islamophobia. It turned out a few days later that this was not the case.[27] The ZfA then singled out a Jewish journalist, first ignoring him and refusing to give him interviews, and then saying he acted only from personal motivation – of course money[28] – and therefore produced a “torrent of hatred”[29] for an Israeli journal, only made things worse

The Western world fails day by day by ignoring the genocidal threat deriving of Islamic Jihad. Fashionable philosophy like that of Italian Giorgio Agamben compares American reactions to Jihad after 9/11 and the situation of some Taliban or other criminals in Guantanamo with the situation of Jews in German concentration camps during the Holocaust.[30] Such anti-Semitic trivialization of the Shoah goes along with the denial of the threat of Muslim anti-Semitism.

German-Jewish author and journalist Henryk M. Broder makes a very strong argument in his confrontation with the ZfA: in his view such centers and a lot of researchers on anti-Semitism can analyze WHY Jews are object of hatred, but they cannot say why JEWS are that object.[31]

That is a crucial point.

The ongoing controversy about the ZfA can help to enlighten the faults of current research on anti-Semitism. Several scholars, politicians, diplomats, writers, media are playing down anti-Semitism and depicting the Muslims of today as victims of Islamophobia, a strategy well orchestrated in the UN as well. Former State Secretary Klaus Faber has pointed this out clearly:

“’Islamophobia is reaching the level of the anti-Semitism of the 1930s,’ said Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in an interview in a Turkish newspaper.”

He goes on in his criticism of the ZfA:

“Anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia” cannot be equated. (…) In Germany, this means police have to protect Jewish kindergardens, schools, institutions and synagogues around the clock. In contrast, anti-Islamic terrorism is virtually non-existent in Europe.

Instead, one finds a close cooperation between aggressive anti-Semitic Islamists and equally anti-Semitic neo-Nazis.”[32]

Jerusalem Post Berlin based correspondent Benjamin Weinthal quotes Charles Small, founder and director of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, who criticized the ZfA for remaining “silent”:

The lesson of the Holocaust was that silence in the face of injustice was immoral – especially when it comes to genocidal anti-Semitism. The silence among those who understand contemporary anti-Semitism – from Durban II to the Iranian regime’s threat and German economic relations with the regime – to remain silent is most troubling.”[33]

Taking all these facts into account, especially the equation of “Islamophobia” and anti-Semitism, Noah Flug, chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors and president of the International Auschwitz Committee, says: Germany “must examine and analyze whether it is important to support the center“.[34]

The ZfA is just an example of the failure of today’s academic experts to address contemporary anti-Semitism in an appropriate way. Whether they deal with ancient anti-Semitism[35], Nazi anti-semitism (even before 1933)[36], or Muslim anti-Semitism of today, they all tend to play down anti-Semitism significantly.

The positive outcome of the ZfA conference, however, is the chance for several scholars all over the world to change their framework of research on anti-Semitism (if necessary), in order to get a more accurate view on the “longest hatred” (Robert Wistrich)[37], anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism cannot be compared with “simple” prejudice, racism or even “Islamophobia”, which actually does not exist, either in Germany, or the world. Antisemitism is the most dangerous ideology and worldview. Jews have been singled out for several thousand years now, in an irrational tendency that leads to genocide. To prevent a “second Holocaust”, to use the word of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel at his speech at YALE Law School not long ago[38], research on anti-Semitism has to be strengthened. To remain silent during the Gaza war or to play down the anti-Semitic rallies in Germany[39], or even to equate anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia” is inappropriate.

I am not sure, but is there still hope that (not only but especially German) scholars change their framework and conceptualization of anti-Semitism?

---

[1] The Berlin center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin was established in 1982. In the same year the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism (SICSA) at Hebrew University in Jerusalem was established. 1991 the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Racism and Anti-Semitism was established at Tel Aviv University. Finally, in 2006, the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) was created at Yale University.

[2] Clemens Heni (2007): Salonfähigkeit der Neuen Rechten. ›Nationale Identität‹, Anti-Semitismus und Antiamerikanismus in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1970 – 2005: Henning Eichberg als Exempel, Marburg: Tectum Verlag, pp. 265-266; cf. ibid. footnote 1100, the article of Benz is entiteled: „‘Die Blockadebrecher‘. Rechtsextreme Schüler- und Jugendzeitschriften.“

[3] Wolfgang Benz/Hermann Graml/Hermann Weiß (ed.) (1997): Lexikon des Nationalsozialismus, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.

[4] E.g. Heni 2007, p. 37, footnote 53.

[5] For an analysis of ancient anti-Semitism see Peter Schäfer (1997): Judeophobia. Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Cambridge (Massachusetts)/London (England): Harvard University Press. Schäfer is head of the Department of Jewish Studies at Princeton University. He was the first and only scholar who received the two most prestigious awards in the humanities („Geisteswissenschaften“) in Germany and the United States of America, the German Leibniz Price (in 1994) and the US Mellon Award (in 2007). For my article most important is his criticism of an essay on ancient anti-Semitism, co-written by Werner Bergmann, one of the two professors at the ZfA. Schäfer says for example: „In a recent article called ‚Kalkül oder ‚Massenwahn‘? Eine soziologische Interpretation der antijüdischen Unruhen in Alexandria 38 n.Chr.‘, Werner Bergmann and Christhard Hoffmann have taken precisely this view against almost all the relevant scholarly literature. Over and again they insist that we are confronted in Alexandra with ‚real conflicts of interest‘, ‚conrete political competition‘ (…). Anti-Semitism figures in this scenario as the effect of the ‚real conflicts of interest‘ and not as their cause“ (Schäfer 1997, p. 157). For more criticism of Bergmann/Hoffmann, including their highly problematic distinction of “politics” and “culture/religion” in ancient times see ibid., pp. 157-159.

[6] See a big rally against Israel and the Jews in San Francisco on January 10, 2009, posters at that rally read „Gaza = Auschwitz“.

[7] Wolfgang Benz (ed.) (2008): Jahrbuch für Anti-Semitismusforschung 17, Berlin: Metropol Verlag.

[8] Angelika Königseder (2008): Feindbild Islam, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp.17-44, here p. 32, in German she describes those cartoons as „Hetzwerk“.

[9] Peter Widmann (2008): Der Feind kommt aus dem Morgenland. Rechtspopulistissche „Islamkritiker“ um den Publizisten Hans-Peter Raddatz suchen die Opfergemeinschaft mit den Juden, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp. 45-68, here pp. 67-68.

[10] Yasemin Shooman (2008): Islamfeindschaft im World Wide Web, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp. 69-96.

[11] http://www.anis-online.de/1/rooms/_index.htm (04/30/2009). The founder of this homepage, German-Palestinian Anis Hamadeh, spoke in the city of Erlangen in July 2008 (http://www.anis-online.de/1/pressearchiv/Erlangen18072008.pdf  04/30/2009), Schiffer was moderator. He trivialized and even denied the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust. The German reads: “An dieser Stelle greift ein mächtiges Dogma, das besagt, dass nichts in der Geschichte des Universums so schlimm gewesen sei wie der Genozid an den Juden und nichts damit irgendwie vergleichbar sei.“ In his view the Holocaust is a “dogma”, saying “that no other crime can be compared with the Holocaust”. The rejection of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust is fashionable in the Western academic world, for a Palestinian like Hamadeh it is nothing special of course, he takes this kind of anti-Semitism for granted. Again: why does an outstanding scholar like Prof. Benz invite a person Sabine Schiffer, someone who allows the denial of the Holocaust as an unprecedented crime? The fact that Schiffer is part of Anis’ Homepage, is even more scandalous.

[12] http://www.medienverantwortung.de/imv/pdf/zukunft_28_sschiffer.pdf (04/30/2009).

[13] See Sabine Schiffer (2005): Die Darstellung des Islams in der Presse. Sprache, Bilder, Suggestionen. Einen Auswahl von Techniken und Beispielen, Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, pp. 218-220. She plays down the mass murder of 9/11, see ibid., 220, and 14. For her the victim of 9/11 is Islam and not the 3000 killed human beings in the world trade center in New York City, and the other killed persons in the hijacked aircrafts and attacks on that day. In Germany well known Professor and linguist and leftist Siegfried Jäger wrote a foreword to this volume, see ibid., p. 9., using the term “Islamophobia”.

[14] Wolfgang Benz (2008a): Vorwort, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp. 9-14, here p. 9.

[15] At the conference the ZfA was asked about the origin of the term „Islamophobia“. The ZfA responded that the term „antisemitism“ in their view is also „controversial“. What a response!

[16] Wolfgang Benz (2002): Anti-Semitismusforschung als Vorurteilsforschung, in: Wolfgang Benz/Angelika Königseder (ed.) (2002): Judenfeindschaft als Paradigma. Studien zur Vorurteilsforschung, Berlin: Metropol Verlag, pp. 15-21, here pp.18-19.

[17] Wolfgang Benz/Werner Bergmann (1997): Einleitung. Antisemitismus – Vorgeschichte des Völkermordes?, in: Wolfgang Benz/Werner Bergmann (ed.) (1997a): Vorurteil und Völkermord. Entwicklungslinien des Antisemitismus, Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, pp.10-31, here p. 11. Benz and Bergmann go so far to claim without proof, that even the success of the NSDAP in the late Weimar Republic was no result of the anti-Semitism of that Nazi party, see ibid., p. 13. Martin Ulmer from the University of Tuebingen most recently finished his PhD in Cultural Studies, proofing that antisemitic agitation was very important for the NSDAP at that time. Ulmer can clearly show in his case study that the NSDAP clearly showed their anti-Semitic worldview by proclaiming at every single party event between 1930 and 1933 on their posters „Jews are not not welcome“, see Martin Ulmer (2008): Anti-Semitismus im öffentlichen Diskurs und im Alltag in Stuttgart 1871-1933. Eine Lokal- und Regionalstudie, Dissertation, Fakultät für Sozial- und Verhaltenswissenschaften der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, p. 451. See also the following chapter on „antisemitic codes“ during the campaing for the election of the major of Stuttgart in spring 1931.

[18] See Benz/Königseder (ed.) 2002, pp. 273-279, resp. 250-264.

[19] See footnote 2.

[20] Wolfgang Benz (1996): Feindbild und Vorurteil. Beiträge über Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 19. He explicitely says, that „anti-Semitism“ is the same as „Fremdenfeindlichkeit“ („xenophobia“), and that instead of „the Jews“ other „minorities“ or „people“ („Volksgruppen“) could be set.

[21] Ahasver, Moloch und Mammon. Der »ewige Jude« und die deutsche Spezifik in antisemitischen Bildern seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, in: Andrea Hoffmann u.a. (Hg.) (2006): Die kulturelle Seite des Anti-Semitismus zwischen Aufklärung und Shoah, Tübingen: TVV, pp. 51–79.

[22] Cf. Heni 2007, p. 295.

[23] In the years 1933 and 1934 alone, 61 laws especially against Jews passed in Nazi Germany, see Bruno Blau (1952)/1965: Das Ausnahmerecht für die Juden in Deutschland 1933-1945, third edition, Düsseldorf: Verlag Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland (first edition 1952 in New York City).

[24] For proofs of this take-over of Europe fantasies by Islamist Jihadists see the movie „Obsession“ (released in 2006), with Prof. Robert Wistrich as scholarly advisor. This film was send per mail to a hundred million people in the US alone, see a private discussion with Prof. Wistrich in New Haven, USA, 21 February 2009.

[25] Clemens Heni (2008): “Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism”, Israelisches

Außenministerium, Jerusalem, 24.-25.2. 2008, in: Pardes. Zeitschrift der Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien e.V., pp. 183-187, here p. 186: „Porat betonte, dass der französische Intellektuelle Alain Finkielkraut schon vor über 20 Jahren auf die Verbindung von Antisemitismus, der Linken und Antirassismus eingegangen sei. Heute würde das u.a. im (israelischen) Post-Zionismus ein Echo erfahren. Sehr interessant und für die kommenden Jahre und Jahrzehnte wegweisend dürfte Porats These sein, es gebe bezüglich des Holocaust einen regelrechten „Opferwettstreit“. Sie macht drei Elemente dabei aus: 1.) Wer ist verantwortlich für den Holocaust? 2.) Wer ist das Opfer? 3.) Sind wirklich Juden die Opfer?“

[26] I criticized that kind of scholarship, including one of the leading scholars in promoting GMF (Group focused Enmity) Prof. Wilhelm Heitmeyer from the University of Bielefeld, for example in my piece about the ZfA in December 1, 2008, see: http://clemensheni.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/antisemitismus-ist-eine-gefahr-%E2%80%9Eislamophobie%E2%80%9C-ein-phantasma/ (04/30/2009).

[27] http://www.lizaswelt.net/2008/12/zentrum-fr-ahnungslose.html (03/28/2009).

[28] See the monthly newsletter of the ZfA, the January 2009 volume http://zfa.kgw.tu-berlin.de/newsletter/news-09-01.pdf (03/28/2009) . Responsible for the newsletter is Prof. Benz, the editor was Dr. Juliane Wetzel.

[29] See Clemens Heni (2009): What is considered extremist in today’s Germany?, in Jerusalem Post, February 10, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304731222&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull (03/28/2009).

[30] A form of anti-Americanism and also a form of what I call „soft-core“ Holocaust denial, is the comparison of the US after 9/11 with Nazi Germany. This is an essential part of fashionable philosopher Giorgio Agamben. He wrote the same year as Davos happened, 2003, the following lines: „The USA Patriot Act issued by the U.S. Senate on October 26, 2001, already allowed the attorney general to ‘take into custody’ any alien suspected of activities that endangered ‘the national security of the United States,’ but within seven days the alien had to be either released or charged with the violation of immigration laws or some other criminal offense. What is new about President Bush’s order is that it radically erases any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being. Not only the Taliban captured in Afghanistan not enjoy the status of POW’s as defined by the Geneva Convention, they do not even have the status of persons charged with a crime according to American laws. (…) The only thing to which it could possibly be compared is the legal situation of the Jews in the Nazi Lager [camps], who, along with their citizenship, had lost every legal identity, but at least retained their identity as Jews” (Giorgio Agamben (2003/2005): State of Exception, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-4). There are a lot of things to criticize here, including Agamben’s view on law, democracy (which he, coming from the “radical left”, detests like his godfather from the radical right, Carl Schmitt), which is too much for a short essay. But most important is the following: Such a comparison is anti-Semitic, because it banalizes the Holocaust. Jews were killed by Germans, intentionally. Whether one is in favor or not with former President Bush’s policies in regard to war criminals like the Taliban (and they are criminals), America has no plan to eradicate all Taliban. Such an accusation is extremely absurd. The fact, that Agamben nevertheless is taken seriously in the Western world, especially in “intellectual circles” who prefer “the latest thing” of philosophy, is a sign of decay in serious scholarly and intellectual research in the 21^st century. A journalist in 2003 described Agamben splendidly: “Because Agamben must be taken seriously. That at least is the claim he has successfully defended until now. He benefits from the perfume of the radical. The Agambenian critique of democracy could not be more trenchant: today’s constitutional states are in essence nothing more than huge concentration camps. This is what he attempts to demonstrate in “Homo Sacer”, originally published in 1995, with an eclectic overview of the legal history of the West. The modern state is nothing other than a totalitarian organisation for the efficient administration of bare biological life“ (Daniel Binswanger (2005): Preacher of the profane. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is a beacon for an entire generation of young intellectuals across Europe – and a flighty eclectic, in: http://www.signandsight.com/features/399.html (01.18.2008), first published in German in Die Weltwoche, October 13, 2005). The “universalization” of National Socialism, the Holocaust, and concentration camps, is part of my criticism of new antisemitism. The father of this concept of “universalization” of German guilt and denial of the specific of the destruction of European Jews is Martin Heidegger, see Clemens Heni (2008): Secondary Anti-Semitism. From Hard-core to soft-core denial of the Shoah, in: Jewish Political Studies Review, 20:3-4 (Fall 2008), pp. 73-92“, http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=625&PID=0&IID=2675 (04/30/2009).

[31] http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/aliens_und_antisemiten/ (03/29/2009).

[32] Klaus Faber (2009): Islamophobia is not the same as anti-Semitism, in: Jerusalem Post, March 10, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236676912135&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter (04/15/2009).

[33] Benjamin Weinthal (2009): Anti-Semitism research center in Germany criticized for failing to urge boycott of Durban II, in: Jerusalem Post, Mar. 11, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236764158749&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter (03/27/2009).

[34] Weinthal 2009.

[35] Cf. footnote 5.

[36] Cf. footnote 17.

[37] Robert Wistrich mentioned at his speech at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in New York City, Manhattan, on February 26, 2009, that he would today be a millionaire if he had asked for a certificate for his term „longest hatred“, title of a film and his book Robert S. Wistrich (1991): Anti-Semitism. The Longest Hatred, London: Methuen. It is not by accident that Wistrich, one of the leading historians of anti-Semitism worldwide, was never invited to talk at the ZfA. The ZfA has obviously no interest in someone who is aware of the threat deriving of Islamic Jihad and who talks loudly and publicly about Muslim anti-Semitism. They prefer the concept of “Islamophobia” and invite ‘scholars’ like Schiffer, who makes propaganda against MEMRI (see footnote 12), an organization who translates Arabic, Farsi and other Islamist documents.

[38] Dr. Charles Small mentioned this „pathetic“ moment, when Wiesel talked at the Yale Law School a few years ago, at a lecture he gave at the conference of the Canadian Academic Friends of Israel (CAFI) in Toronto, March 9, 2009. I myself attended a big rally of some 10.000 people in Manhattan/New York City on September 22, 2008, one day before Iranian President Ahamdinejad gave one of the most anti-Zionist anti-Semitic speeches in the history of the United Nations. Wiesel spoke at this rally and urged the world to act against Iran!

[39] See Interview with Prof. Bergmann in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 9, 2009. He claims that Muslim just were in fear of their relatives in Gaza etc. He does not at all explain what the slogan „Death to the Jews“ or „Olmert is a son of a dog“ has to do with worry about family in Gaza. In consequence he says, it is something totally different if German leftist or right-wingers are against Israel, compared to anti-Israel hatred of Muslims! The German original reads: „Question: „Sie verharmlosen den Hass der Demonstranten. Bergmann: „Keineswegs. Aber wenn Palästinenser, die um ihre Angehörigen und Freunde im Gazastreifen fürchten und vielleicht Familienmitglieder im Konflikt mit Israel verloren haben, ihre Wut und Angst artikulieren, dann ist das erst einmal eine Reaktion auf einen aktuellen Konflikt. Man muss das anders bewerten, als wenn deutsche Rechte oder Linke aus ideologischen Gründen so etwas tun.“

Antisemitism – from ancient times to the post-9/11 world

Dr. Clemens Heni, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Yale University,
Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA)

Lecture, Hadassah, Heritage Village, Southbury, April 14, 2009

hand-out for participants

Antisemitism – from ancient times to the post-9/11 world

Why anti-Semitism is not just a ‘prejudice’ or ‘simple’ racism, and
why especially scholars in genocide studies fail to understand
the unprecedented crimes of the Shoah

1) From “Judeophobia” to anti-Judaism to Antisemitism

- Pagan, Roman, Greek, Persian and Egypt polytheism against monotheism of the Jews

- Jewish rejection of Jesus Christ as Messiah / Christian anti-Judaism: among other aspects: hearing the “word of god” for Christians instead of reading the universal law in Judaism

- Islam introduces “a sign” to wear for Jews and Christians 717

- Fourth Lateran Council 1215 has several anti-Jewish rules, e.g. the wearing of the yellow role

- Crusades

- Islam forces Jews of Grenada to wear the “yellow shred” ca. 1320

- Expulsion of the Jews from England 1290, Spain 1492

- Protestant anti-Judaism: Martin Luther 1543 “The Jews and their lies”, therefore Jews do not work, they prefer leisure time, suggesting to set a blaze on synagogues etc.

- French Revolution 1789: liberté, fraternité, egalité. Good ideas, but for Jews not without contradictions, because Jews as a nation have no rights, just as individual believers

The rise of “modern” anti-Semitism

1) race theories, Gobineau, Chamberlain

2) term anti-Semitism; most popular first user: Wilhelm Marr 1879

3) Conspiracy theories; Dreyfus-affair in France 1894-1906; most important: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first edition in Russia in 1905, today reprinted in a lot of Muslim countries, second best selling book, after the Koran

2) Holocaust

1) Specific anti-Semitic political culture of Germany: “The creation of the German nation against the Jews” since the 19^th century”

Difference of German anti-Semitism which led to the Holocaust and Russian or Eastern European pogrom anti-Semitism: the latter did not tend to eradicate all Jews! Germans, on the other side, did look for every single Jew they could find in Greece, Lithuania, Russia, France or Yugoslavia

2) Holocaust is an unprecedented crime in world history. Never before and never again has a people been killed because of just being that people – Six million Jews have been killed for no purpose, but of their simple existence as Jews – see Daniel J. Goldhagens PhD: Hitler’s willing executioners, 1996

3) Hatred against the “chosen people” – Spaniards, Portugese, and finally Germans wanted to become the chosen…

4) “Why we watched” (Prof. Theodore Hamerow, 2008): Antisemitism in the US during the 1930s and 1940s; an example from New York City: Prof. William Prusoff

3) Specific topics of anti-Semitism/three important anti-Jewish images:

Ahasver, Mammon, and Moloch

1) Ahasver, the “eternal Jew”, a topic since 1602 until today. Story: the Jew Ahasver did refuse Jesus to make a break with his cross in the back, therefore Jesus decided “the Jews” have to wander without ending…

2) Mammon, the “Jewish God of money”, saying that Jews are devoted to money and nothing else. Anti-capitalist anti-Semitism of today very often derives of that image of Mammon – example: rally of 30.000 people in Switzerland 2003, Jews and Rumsfeld portrayed as worshipping the “Golden calf”

3) Moloch and the “Blood libel” – Jews are accused of killing every year for Pessah a Christian (or Muslim) child, using its blood for making Matzah – this is shown e.g. in videos of Muslim anti-Semitism today

Explanations:

A) Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud used the term “Projection”, saying that people project their own view, needs or obsessions to others – often to “the other”, “the Jew”. For example: Jews are accused of the Blood Libel, even though Christians (and Muslims) know, that Jews do not even like bloody meat. So they project their own obsession of blood onto the Jews

B) Separating capitalism in something good (production of goods like cars or chewing gum) and something bad (Wall Street, financial sphere etc.) is dangerous and anti-Semitic. Jews are accused of being responsible for the financial crisis, even though it is obviously a crisis of the whole system, all around the world! 9/11 is proof that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are twins

4) New anti-Semitism after the Holocaust

Mixture of four elements: right-wing, left-wing, mainstream and Islamic anti-Semitism

- Since 1948 Arab and Muslim rejection of the Jewish state

- Anti-Zionist agitation in Eastern Europe, USSR, Poland, Tschechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic and other countries

- Increase of new anti-Semitism since six day war 1967 and especially since the second Intifada of the Palestinians in September 2000 and even worse after 9/11, 2001, as anti-Zionism is fueled with hatred against Jews from mostly these four sources. In Europe countries like Spain or Germany believe Israel is the “biggest danger to world peace”

- The core problem today: The Iranian threat and
Muslim/Islamic antisemitism.

Iran wants to produce a nuclear bomb, and simultaneously says that Israel has to be wiped of the map. Even worse: a lot of academics join the Muslim, but also left-wing or right wing anti-Semitism by backing conferences of Iran entitled “A World without Zionism”… This is the new anti-Semitism, a threat to Israel and the Jews in an unprecedented way since 1945!!!

- The problematic politics of the United Nations (UN), like the Durban conference in 2001 and the Durban two conference (in Geneva, Switzerland) in April 2009

- Anti-Semitic rallies all around the world, Muslims but also left wingers and right wingers and even Jewish groups, including rallies in San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, New Haven, in the last weeks in regard of Israel’s war of defense against genocidal Hamas in Gaza

5) Trivialization of the Holocaust

This is called “secondary anti-Semitism”, like the new anti-Semitism also a form of Jew hatred after 1945. The equation of “Islamophobia” with anti-Semitism is part of the strategy to relativize the crimes of the Holocaust.

Remember: The Shoah is not a “genocide among others”.

To claim, Germans have also been “victims” of the Nazis, is also anti-Semitic because it denies the fact that Germans have been willing executioners.

- Saying the Hitler Youth was a good thing, because it was a sign of passionate people, like Reverend Rick Warren did on April 17, 2005, is also part of anti-Semitism after Auschwitz, because it denies the impact of those “passionate” Germans in brown shirts. Other examples:

- PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals): they compare the Holocaust with life stock farming, this is an anti-Semitic trivialization of Treblinka and all other concentration camps

- German philosopher Martin Heidegger (one of the most influential thinkers of the 20. Century) said in 1949 (“Bremen lectures”) that “agriculture is nowadays a motorized nutritional industry, by nature the same as the production of corpses in gas chambers (…)”

- Other, more recent examples of trivialization of the Holocaust: terms like “Holocaust of expulsion”, or “Bombing Holocaust”, both saying that poor Germans have been victims of World War II LIKE the Jews

- Comparing the Shoah with other “genocides”, as for example Prof. Ben Kiernan does, he is founding director of the Yale Genocide Studies Program, is very problematic. To say there is a “China’s Holocaust” and to say behind every genocide was an economic (mostly agricultural) purpose, denies the specificity of the Shoah. It denies the senselessness of the destruction of the European Jews – people who do not read German should be careful in comparing Blut und Boden (“Blood and Soil”) with almost every “imperialist” action since the ancient times. It denies the unprecedented racial and eliminationist anti-Semitism of Germany and rejects to remember the Holocaust as a specific crime – this sort of anti-Semitism, a soft-core denial of the Holocaust, is most fashionable and a lot of ‘scholars’ are supporting this kind of research (“Islamophobia=Antisemitism”, Blacks=Jews, Indians=Jews, Canadian natives=Jews, Australian Aboriginies=Jews etc. etc.)

- See also the criticism of that “struggle of victimhood” of Prof. Dina Porat, Tel Aviv University

- Very important for criticism of the ‘comparative model’: Bernard-Henri Lévy “Left in Dark times”

Remember, again: even scholars who remember the Holocaust are often producing anti-Semitic views, like anti-Zionist hatred of Israel – example: Steven Beller “Antisemitism. A Very Short introduction”, Oxford 2007, writing at the end: “the answer to antisemitism is ultimately not a Jewish state”…..

I wanted to show in this short overview that anti-Semitism is a very complex phenomenon. It is by far the longest hatred (term of Israeli historian Prof. Robert Wistrich) – anti-Semitism is more than “simple” prejudice, it is a whole worldview, an ideology with genocidal consequences (Shoah) and intentions (Ahmadinejad/Iran, Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism and their Western friends).

DOCUMENTATION OF AN ANTISEMITIC CARTOON – made by Pat Oliphant, “the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world, Published on the Homepage of the Terrorist Organization Hezbollah (http://www.hizbollah.tv/caricature.php) – FIRST published, though, in the NEW YORK TIMES, Washington Post and other daily newspapers, March 2009!!!!

Time to focus: the enemy is Iran, not critical Journalism!

A friendly response to Prof. Bauer

Yehuda Bauer wrote on 4 March 2009 in the JPost on the Berlin center of research on anti-Semitism (ZfA), and accused Berlin based JPost correspondent Benjamin Weinthal of blaming this center to equate “Islamophobia” with anti-Semitism. Well, Bauer is of course a very good and important historian and I read his books, especially on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, always with great interest. It was a big honour to get his applause at the Maiersdorf Faculty Club at SICSA as I spoke for the first time at Hebrew University – on Germany and anti-Semitism – in December 2002.

First of all it is astonishing that Bauer accuses Weinthal. Why? In the JPost four articles appeared on that Berlin conference, held on 8 December 2008. Two of these articles (Op-Eds) were written by myself, including the initial one, even before the conference, on 3 December 2008. Why is he not mentioning my articles as well? I am also criticizing the Benz center in the JPost.

The ZfA is a very influential institution with currently more than 50 doctoral candidates, two full professors, Prof. Wolfgang Benz, historian and director, and sociologist Prof. Werner Bergmann, three assistants, one academic co-worker, more than 15 employees working in projects, not including seven fellows in an academic project dealing with anti-Semitism in Europe from 1879 until 1914. The ZfA is also usually known as resource for interviews if an anti-Semitic incident happened in Germany. But in the case of Weinthal they rejected several times to give him an interview. Bauer says the conference does not equate anti-Semitism with Islamophobia. That is not true. In the announcement for this conference, consisting of an introduction, four lectures and four commentators, and a final panel discussion, the ZfA writes, that the “paradigm” of accusations against the Muslims are known from the “history of antisemitism”. Most of the lectures had been published before in the yearbook of the institute.[i] For Angelika Königseder, member of the ZfA, the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005/2006, is describes as pure “hatred”[ii] of those Danish cartoonists. Peter Widmann, also essential part of the ZfA, is accusing Henryk M. Broder of being a “discourse strategist of the right”.[iii] While Königseder and Widmann at least try to follow scholarly standards (but fail), another contributor to the conference, Yasemin Shooman, did not even try to argue in a more or less balanced way. She focuses mainly on one single German Homepage, which was already known before for its racist tendencies against Islam (mostly deriving of the Christian background of that Homepage, “Politically Incorrect”). For she this is a proof how racist and anti-Muslim the www is. This has nothing to do with scholarly research.[iv]

But what about Prof. Benz himself? He wrote an introduction to his yearbook and did also speak at the beginning of the conference. Without any contextualization he begins his introduction by saying: “Since September 11, 2001, anti-Islam resentment is fashionable on a world wide scale. The killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004 activated emotional reactions, which grew to what we now call Islamophobia.”[v]

In this view van Gogh is not the subject of empathy. Rather poor Muslims, though the murderer of van Gogh was member of an Islamist terror group. Even more frightening is Benz’ view on 9/11 if we remember what he said some days after this unprecedented mass killing in the United States since the Second World War. In his view skyscrapers are a symbol of “of pride and wealth and arrogance”.[vi]

It was not by accident that Benz reacted that way, and it was also not by accident that Benz held the Islamophobia conference. As soon as 2002, in a big volume edited by him in honour of the 20^th birthday of the ZfA, he compared the situation of “foreigners (asylum seeking people as well as residents)” in Germany of the 1990s with the situation of Jews in the times of crisis at the end of the 19^th century.[vii] Honestly Benz and his center declair that they are not interested in special research on anti-Semitism (consequently he plays down the anti-Semitic ideology of Nazi Germany in an attack on Daniel Goldhagen[viii]), they prefer to compare all kinds of “prejudices”, like the situation of native Americans in Bolivia, or social deprived people[ix] etc. They miss to analyze the specific of anti-Semitic ideology which is the core of the anti-Jewish worldview.

Native Americans of Bolivia might have problems with nationalism, ethnocentrism or what ever – and this is sad enough – in Bolivia, but no one in Norway or Japan or Canada makes anti-native American Bolivian propaganda. Contrary, anti-Semitic propaganda is spread worldwide, especially today via satellite, internet, tv, immigration etc.

Benz and his followers see anti-Semitism as nothing as a “paradigm” for stigmatization, prejudice and discrimination.[x]

This shows the continuity of the Islamophobia conference. It was by intention and not by accident that Benz and the ZfA now equate Islamophobia with anti-Semitism.

The way the ZfA people reacted shows something else: by singling out Weinthal by saying he has nothing but a personal motif – of course “money”[xi] – and therefore produces “torrent of hatred”[xii] for an Israeli journal is such a disgusting way of ‘argumentation’, that it is still hard to believe that it happened that way. Worse, this anti-Semitic reaction – and it is a downright anti-Semitic reaction – follows the first reaction of Benz himself, in early December. Confronted with first criticism of his conference, some days before the event, he told a newspaper, that both an Israeli embassador, Ilan Mor, and the chairwoman of the Jewish community Berlin, Lala Süsskind, stood behind his idea to have a conference on Islamophobia. It turned out a few days later that this was a lie.[xiii] Why says an internationally known elderly historian that “the Jews” stand behind him? Without argumentation he thought that Jews as witness are always the best, in terms of dealing with anti-Semitism.

Probably Yehuda Bauer is not aware of these facts. He probably has not been informed of the flyer which announced the conference by clearly making a parallel of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. He was also probably not informed that the center did lie already before the conference, that some Jews stood behind them. And he was probably not informed that the ZfA singled out Weinthal (because besides Weinthal several other critics appeared, like in the Wall Street Journal Matthias Küntzel, or in Germany well-known Henryk M. Broder) and accused him with lies.

To be clear: the enemy of today is not the ZfA, but Iran, Islamic Jihad, global anti-Semitism and anti-Western resentment, especially anti-Americanism and anti-Israel hatred. Weinthal wrote extensively about Germany and its ties to Iran. He and several colleagues in Germany like Stop-the-bomb want to stop Iran producing a nuclear bomb.

The ZfA is welcome to join this campaign against Iran! This proposal was also essential part of an open letter of ScholarsForPeaceintheMiddleEast/German chapter (SPME), some weeks ago.

But to keep quiet during Gaza or even to play down the anti-Semitic rallies during the Gaza operation as Werner Bergmann did in an interview for the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, is not helpful.

Of course it is not just the ZfA which failed. The Western world fails day by day by ignoring the genocidal threat deriving of Islamic Jihad. Fashionable philosophy like that of Italian Giorgio Agamben, compares American reactions to Jihad after 9/11 and the situation of some Taliban or other criminals in Guantanamo with the situation of Jews in German concentration camps during the Holocaust. Such anti-Semitic trivialization of the Shoah goes along with the denial of the threat of Muslim anti-Semitism.

If the ZfA says Weinthal is writing a “torrent of hatred” this is not true. They can find torrent of hatred produced in Teheran, for example. And they have to learn to focus. Iran has to be the focus. Not an American Jewish journalist writing about Germany and its ties to Iran.

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[i] This article was first published on 7 March, 2009 on http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/clemens_heni_a_friendly_response/ . Wolfgang Benz (ed.) (2008): Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 17, Berlin: Metropol Verlag.

[ii] Angelika Königseder (2008): Feindbild Islam, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp.17-44, here p. 32, in German she describes those cartoons as „Hetzwerk“.

[iii] Peter Widmann (2008): Der Feind kommt aus dem Morgenland. Rechtspopulistissche „Islamkritiker“ um den Publizisten Hans-Peter Raddatzz suchen die Opfergemeinschaft mit den Juden, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp. 45-68, here 67f.

[iv] Yasemin Shooman (2008): Islamfeindschaft im World Wide Web, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp. 69-96.

[v] Wolfgang Benz (2008a): Vorwort, in: Benz (ed.) 2008, pp. 9-14, here p. 9.

[vi] “Benz has been criticized in the past for seeming to justify the motives of the 9/11 terrorists with what some perceived as anti-Americanism. Der Spiegel journalist Henryk M. Broder cited a quote from Benz in his 2002 book No War, Anywhere, addressing the outbreak of anti-Americanism in Germany following the September 11, 2001 attacks. At the time, Benz commented that the Twin Towers in Manhattan “are symbols of pride and wealth and arrogance. Building such buildings is extreme arrogance, and so vulnerability is built in. And the attacks on these buildings, with these attacks one could erase feelings of helplessness and one’s own humiliations and turn them into the opponent’s helplessness and humiliation. And that provokes the drastic and dramatic reactions and the martial reactions, and that’s what makes it so dangerous and devastating to attack and destroy these particular symbols.” http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1228728130041&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull , Benjamin Weinthal, Berlin Center ignores Iranian threat, Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2008.

[vii] Wolfgang Benz (2002): Antisemitismusforschung als Vorurteilsforschung, in: Wolfgang Benz/Angelika Königseder (ed.) (2002): Judenfeindschaft als Paradigma. Studien zur Vorurteilsforschung, Berlin: Metropol Verlag, pp. 15-21, here pp. 18-19.

[viii] Wolfgang Benz/Werner Bergmann (1997): Einleitung. Antisemitismus – Vorgeschichte des Völkermordes?, in: Wolfgang Benz/Werner Bergmann (ed.) (1997a): Vorurteil und Völkermord. Entwicklungslinien des Antisemitismus, Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, pp.10-31, here p. 11. Benz and Bergmann go so far to claim without proof, that even the success of the NSDAP in the late Weimar Republic was no result of the antisemitism of that Nazi party, see ibid., p. 13. Martin Ulmer from the University of Tuebingen most recently finished his PhD in Cultural Studies, proofing that antisemitic agitation was very important for the NSDAP at that time. Ulmer can proof in his case study that the NSDAP clearly showed their anti-Semitic worldview by proclaiming at most of their party events between 1930 and 1933 on their posters „Jews are not not welcome“, see Martin Ulmer (2008): Antisemitismus im öffentlichen Diskurs und im Alltag in Stuttgart 1871-1933. Eine Lokal- und Regionalstudie, Dissertation, Fakultät für Sozial- und Verhaltenswissenschaften der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, p. 451. See also the following chapter on „antisemitic codes“ during the campaing for the election of the major of Stuttgart in spring 1931.

[ix] See Benz/Königseder (ed.) 2002, pp. 273-279, resp. 250-264.

[x] Wolfgang Benz (1996): Feindbild und Vorurteil. Beiträge über Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 19. He explicitely says, that „antisemitism“ is the same as „Fremdenfeindlichkeit“ („xenophobia“), and that instead of „the Jews“ other „minorities“ or „people“ („Volksgruppen“ – by the way a rather right-wing extremist term for homogenous people!) could be set.

[xi] See the monthly newsletter of the ZfA, the January 2009 volume http://zfa.kgw.tu-berlin.de/newsletter/news-09-01.pdf . Responsible for the newsletter is Prof. Benz, the editor was Dr. Juliane Wetzel, long-time co-worker at the institute.

[xii] See again my Op-Ed in the Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304731222&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.

[xiii] http://www.lizaswelt.net/2008/12/zentrum-fr-ahnungslose.html.

Trizonesien, Kölner Karneval und Antisemitismus 1949-2009

„Trizonesien“ revisited, oder 60 Jahre sekundärer Antisemitismus in Köln

Von Dr. Clemens Heni, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), Yale University

60 Jahre Bundesrepublik Deutschland, das ist für viele ein runder Geburtstag und Anlass zurück zu schauen. So auch in Köln zum Karneval. Extra wird dieses Jahr ein Wagen des Kölner Karneval von 1949 nachgebaut – „Wir sind die Eingeborenen von Trizonesien“. Dieser berühmte bzw. bekannte und von den damaligen Deutschen gern gesungene Marsch-Foxtrott „Wir sind die Eingeborenen von Trizonesien“ hat es in sich. Nachdem es von 1940 bis 1948 keinen Karneval in Köln gegeben hatte, gab es 1949 eine „erweiterte Kappenfahrt“, was noch keinen Rosenmontagszug darstellte: „Meer sin widder do un dun war meer künne“.

Während der Wagen leichtfüßige Insulaner zeigt, welche irgendwie lustig dahinleben, Würstchen kochen, fischen und musizieren, tanzten Karnevalisten 1949, verkleidet als „Eingeborene“, mit dunkler Farbe auf dem Körper, auf den Straßen Kölns umher. Der WDR hat dazu Filmmaterial. Der Song jedoch wird auch heute noch offenbar gern goutiert. Was ist der Inhalt?

Vers 1 „Mein lieber Freund, mein lieber Freund, die alten Zeiten sind vorbei, ob man da lacht, ob man da weint, die Welt geht weiter, eins, zwei, drei. Ein kleines Häuflein Diplomaten macht heut die große Politik, sie schaffen Zonen, ändern Staaten (…) Vers 3 Doch fremder Mann, damit du’s weißt, ein Trizonesier hat Humor, er hat Kultur, er hat auch Geist, darin macht keiner ihm was vor. Selbst Goethe stammt aus Trizonesien, Beethovens Wiege ist bekannt. Nein, sowas gibt’s nicht in Chinesien, darum sind wir auch stolz auf unser Land. Refrain: Wir sind die Eingeborenen von Trizonesien, Hei-di-tschimmela- tschimmela-tschimela-tschimmela-bumm! Wir haben Mägdelein mit feurig wildem Wesien, Hei-di-tschimmela-tschimmela-tschimmela- tschimmela-bumm! Wir sind zwar keine Menschenfresser, doch wir küssen um so besser. Wir sind die Eingeborenen von Trizonesien, Hei-di-tschimmela- tschimmela-tschimmela-tschimmela-bumm!“

Dieser Song wurde 1948/49 mitunter als Nationalhymne gespielt, etwa bei Sportveranstaltungen, und war der Hit des Karneval 1949 in Köln. Der Songtexter Klaus Berbuer, welcher schon vor 1945 im NS-Staat ‚Unterhaltung‘ gemacht hat, ist eine bekannte Person, ihm wurde vor einigen Jahren in Köln ein Denkmal aus Bronze gewidmet. Der Musikwissenschaftler Fred Ritzel hat vor einigen Jahren in der Zeitschrift Popular Music den Trizonesien Song seziert und stellt die Frage, ob es zu gewagt sei, in der „obskuren Fremdheit“ „Chinesiens“ eine Referenz auf die Juden sehen zu wollen. In der Tat: Der Antisemitismus scheint im Reden von „Chinesien“, das im Gegensatz zu „Trizonesien“ keine „Kultur“ und keinen „Geist“ kenne, unschwer wider. In dem Trizonesien-Song, der natürlich auf die westlichen Besatzungszonen damals anspielt, wird auch lamentiert, dass „Diplomaten“ einfach Staaten änderten und „Zonen“ schufen. Die Deutschen nicht als konkrete Täter, von denen noch Hunderttausende munter lebten, 1949, vielmehr als Opfer und Gegängelte solcher Diplomaten zu sehen, ist zentral. Ein solches Lied bzw. den dazugehörigen Wagen nun heute, munter-fröhlich, quietsch fidel lachend zu feiern, als Auftakt zur BRD, ist so schamlos wie bezeichnend. Das stolze Deutschland feiert sich heute, 2009. Der Auftakt im Jahr 1949 war ein Karnevalsumzug mit genau jenem schuldvergessenden, ja Schuld derealisierenden und projizierenden Song. Die Deutschen haben sich 1949 als „Kolonisierte“ arme Würstchen dargestellt, aber eben auch als Küsser und nicht als Menschenfresser.

Dabei war die vorübergehende Besatzung Deutschlands ja noch sehr zuvorkommend. Der Soziologe Helmuth Plessner hatte eine ganz andere, interessante Idee: verteilt die deutschen Landen an die Nachbarländer Dänemark, Frankreich, Holland etc. etc.

1949: Vier Jahre nach der Befreiung von Auschwitz, vier Jahre nach den Todesmärschen durch ungezählte Dörfer, Weiler und Städte im ‚Deutschen Reich‘, vier Jahre nach der Heimkehr der Polizeibataillonsmitglieder, die millionenfach Juden ‚aufspürten‘, zusammen trieben und erschossen, vier Jahre nach all diesem Unaussprechlichen mit seinen ganz konkreten deutschen Tätern und Täterinnen, natürlich auch solche aus der Domstadt, dichtet sich dieses Land ein solches Lied. Erinnerung an die präzedenzlosen Verbrechen der Shoah wird abgewehrt. Die Forschung nennt diesen Prozess ‚sekundärer Antisemitismus‘. Stolzdeutsch Beethoven, Goethe und das Küssen hervorzuheben und explizit zu behaupten, die Deutschen des Jahres 1949 seien keine „Menschenfresser“, ist so infam und perfide, dass es jedem überlebenden Juden eiskalt ins Gesicht schlägt, im Februar 1949. Eine stattliche Zahl der Zuschauer des Umzuges von 1949 in Köln wird sehr wohl am Holocaust beteiligt gewesen sein, oder am unfassbar brutalen Krieg „im Osten“ gegen die Sowjetunion, wo allein im damaligen Leningrad aufgrund der Blockade der Wehrmacht fast eine Million Menschen elendig verhungert ist. Das Wort ‚zynisch‘ ist gar nicht ausreichend, um diesen ach so lustigen Ausdruck „Wir sind zwar keine Menschenfresser“ zu bezeichnen. Und als ob das noch nicht reichte, kommt noch der koloniale Blick der Europäer hinzu, der ohnehin davon ausgeht, dass irgendwelche Insulaner in der Südsee Menschenfresser seien, während die deutschen Inselbewohner in Trizonesien gerade keine seien.

2009 wiederum wird all das nicht gebrochen, reflektiert und kritisiert, sondern geklatscht. Ein grandioser Auftakt zu 60 Jahre Bundesrepublik. Lernen aus der Geschichte sieht anders aus.

Rick Warrens Bewunderung für die Hitlerjugend

Obama, his Inauguration prayer, and Rick Warrens fight for a kind of Hitler Youth for Jesus…

In wenigen Stunden wird Barack Obama zum 44. Präsidenten der USA vereidigt. Amerika ist eine Demokratie und Washington D.C. ist heute ein Tollhaus, Obama wird gefeiert wie eine Art König oder Heilsbringer. Insofern mag es passen, dass die Inaugurationspredigt von Rick Warren gehalten werden wird. Warren hat am 17. April 2005 vor 30.000 fanatisierten Christen in Kalifornien sich völlig positiv auf Adolf Hitler und die Hitler Jugend bezogen. Das seien noch Zeiten gewesen, als Zehntausende von Menschen mit ihren Körpern zu Slogans sich formten, um ihre unbedingte Ergebenheit für den Führer zu demonstrieren. Warren ist auf der Suche nach einer Art Hitlerjugend für Jesus. Während es von einigen wenigen Konservativen und Demokraten wie Bruce Wilson von der Huffington Post sehr wohl skandalisiert wird, dass Warren sich auf Hitler bezieht und seine evangelikale Mission in den Fußstapfen des imperialistischen und genozidalen Nationalsozialismus sehen möchte, ist es im Mainstream der USA völlig egal, dass Warrens Ideologie diese Art der antisemitischen Erinnerungsabwehr an die Shoah praktiziert. Es hätte schon “ausgereicht”, Warren niemals einzuladen zu diesem weltweit höchste Aufmerksamkeit erlangenden Moment an diesem Dienstag, da er ein homophober Evenglikaler ist, der sein Wort weltweit zu verbreiten weiß. Es hätte “ausgereicht”, wenn man weiß wie fürchterlich seine Kooperation mit Uganda ist, wo nicht nur Homophobie Alltag ist, sondern auch Abstinenz statt dem Gebrauch von Kondomen neue AIDS-Erkrankungen in großem Maße zur Folge hatte. Zudem werden in Uganda antisemitische Comics von der Regierung an Schulen verteilt. All das hätte schon “ausgereicht”, um einen Warren niemals ein staatliches Podium bei einer Inaugurationsfeier eines angeblich ach so demokratischen Präsidenten zu geben. Wer sich die Videos anschaut, in welchen Warren sich so begeistert zeigt von der Hitlerjugend, merkt wie ernst es diesem fanatischen Evangelikalen ist. Er ist geradezu neidisch, nicht schon 1939 oder 1944 (diese beiden Daten nennt er bei seinen pro-HJ-Auftritten) dabei gewesen zu sein, wie es scheint. Warren war schon unter den 100 wichtigsten Personen der Welt gelistet, als Obama noch ein no-name war. Insofern stellt sich die Frage, wer hier wen hofiert.

Sicher, es gibt eine ganze Reihe Antisemiten (”Jews are Terroist” (!), oder “Zionists love Obama “), darunter auch jüdische (”Jewish Voice for Peace”), und schwule, lesbische, transgender oder bisexuelle (so bezeichnen sie sich selbst mit der Abkürzung LesbianGayBisexualTransgender), “Queer against Genocide”, die alle auch hinter Parolen wie “Gaza = Auschwitz” hinter her liefen und somit auf einer anti-israelischen Demonstration in San Francisco am 10. Januar 2009 die antisemitischsten Parolen nach 1945 unterstützten.

Doch Obamas Schweigen zum Krieg gegen die Hamas lässt nichts gutes ahnen, von seinen Beziehungen zu Edward Said-Nachfolgern wie dem Antizonisten Rashid Khalidi nicht zu schweigen.

Der folgende knappe Text hat zumindest einige Anmerkungen zu den katholischen Wurzeln von Massenpredigten im Freien sowie weiteren Facetten der Ideologie Rick Warrens.

“Whatever it takes” – Obama’s inauguration Reverend Rick Warren

or

the Saddleback Church and its reference to the Hitler Youth

By Dr. Clemens Heni, YALE

If someone would say publicly “I want you to become followers of my religion as the Hitler Youth had become followers of Adolf Hitler” that person would rather have a chance to get invited by chancellor Merkel for a major event. As we have anti-Semitism in Germany as well, this might be possible (as 25% of Germans, according to a poll, say they see “good sides in National Socialism), but it would become rather a scandal, because at least some critical journalists, activists, politicians, or scholars would not tolerate such an event. What about the US? Barack Obama will celebrate his inauguration as “start, not end, of change in America”. It was Obama’s will to choose Reverend Rick Warren, an outstanding evangelical American personality, even elected as one of the leading 100 personalities in the world, to hold the inauguration prayer on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. Warren is the founder and head of the evangelical megachurch Saddleback Church in southern California. He most often is criticized because he is against abortion, not really a fan of Judaism, has problematic contacts to the government in Uganda, which spreads anti-Jewish comics in public schools throughout the country, and is also against same sex marriage.

Even worse than the homophobia of Warren seems to be the following. Huffington Post’s Bruce Wilson reports that on April 17, 2005, Rick Warren held a worship with 30.000 followers in the Anaheim Angels Sports Stadium in southern California, comparing the necessity of admiration of Jesus Christ with that of the Hitler Youth in 1939, where they said to Hitler in a Munich Stadium: “We are yours”. Now Warren wants the people to follow his church (and/or him?). Therefore he prepared thousands of posters with the slogan “whatever it takes”, and 30.000 people in that stadium had to hold this same poster. Blind obedience is the impact and consequence of a prayer where Hitler is seen as kind of forerunner of the Saddleback Church. You can watch these videos on Internet.

To refer positively to Hitler is a kind of anti-Semitism because it does not say that everything what happened in Germany from 1933 to 1945 was part of an anti-Jewish society, even before the Holocaust. For Jews and Holocaust survivors, but also for others, it is impossible to refer positively of any aspect of National Socialism 1933 until 1945. The veiling of history, ignoring the fact that in the Hitler Youth no Jews were allowed is in research on anti-Semitism called “secondary anti-Semitism”, a term Peter Schönbach, co-worker of Theodor W. Adorno created.

Furthermore: As a scholar Warren’s way of praying reminds me to the German catholic youth movement of the early 1920s. At that time groups like “Quickborn”, later also “Bund Neudeutschland” did invent open air mass ceremonies to pray for Jesus Christ as their “leader”. The catholic invention of mass prayer in the 1920s in Germany is part of their anti-individualistic, and also – referring to their journals like “Leuchtturm” or “Werkblätter” and other writing, which I studied extensively – anti-humanistic, and anti-Jewish ideology. They did invent blind obedience for their kind of (catholic) Christianity, praying with thousands of followers in public. A lot of the same Catholics of “Bund Neudeutschland” became Nazi party members or active agitators for National Socialism at least since 1933 and the early period of Nazi Germany.

Eigth decades later, in another world, we now witness a similar kind of worship as it seems, as Warren is referring to Hitler and passionate Nazi Germans. He also refers to Lenin, and Mao, but most important is his reference to Hitler, because Germany committed the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust. Even though he says Hitler is “the incarnation of evil”, this is nothing but lip service. In fact it is the free choice of Warren to positively refer to Hitler and the masses of National Socialism. The blindness of the Hitler Youth and the willing executioners adult Germans became, are most important to understand Nazi anti-Semitism. To deny personality and subjectivity, and to plea for an “organic nation body”, in German “Volksgemeinschaft”, are part of the mass policies of Hitler and Nazi Germans.

Warren calls for “Radicals” in his 2005 prayer, because “moderate people get moderately nothing done….”. There is no doubt about the evangelical impact of every paragraph in Warren’s prayers. This is well known from the history of evangelical prayers like Billy Graham. Worse, Warren strengthens the “argument”, that only masses and radicals like Hitler and the Germans, did change the world. Essential part of Hitler is the Shoah. So it is a kind of anti-Semitism, if Warren refers to Hitler in a positive way, because 1) Hitler was radical, and only “radicals change the world”, 2) the Hitler Youth created words of total obedience with their own bodies, and this is a paradigm for Warren, and 3) the Californian prayer uses masses for his kind of Christianity, like saying “whatever it takes”, and 30.000 followers had to show the same time the same poster. This is how blind obedience does work.

It is a scandal that Obama did invite Warren for the inauguration prayer, as Warren wants his Christian followers to be like a Hitler Youth for Jesus. This seems not to be a taboo in America. And it is a shame that it is not a shame, actually. So I am still curious about the political culture of this country.