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The Old-New Anti-Semitism

(The National Interest) Robert S. Wistrich - There is currently a culture of hatred that permeates books, magazines, newspapers, sermons, video-cassettes, the Internet, television, and radio in the Arab Middle East, which has not been seen since the heyday of Nazi Germany. Indeed, the dehumanizing images of Jews and Israel that are penetrating the body politic of Islam are sufficiently radical in tone and content to constitute a new "warrant for genocide," combining the blood libel of medieval Christian Europe with Nazi conspiracy theories about the Jewish drive for "world domination" and slanderous Islamic quotations about Jews as the "sons of apes" and donkeys. The al-Qaeda assault on the World Trade Center in New York was not only a declaration of war against the greatest metropolis of international capitalism. It was also seen by its perpetrators as a blow against the nerve-center of "world Jewry." The Islamo-fascists, like the Nazis before them, are genuinely convinced that a corrupt America is in Jewish hands. In the first half of the 20th century, many good-hearted rational people refused to believe that such highly irrational beliefs could be taken seriously by many people. They were wrong. This is an error well worth avoiding in the first half of the 21st century.
2003-09-05 00:00:00
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