SANCTION FOR GENOCIDE: ANTISEMITISM AND THE EVOLUTION OF EVIL

Abstract: The evolution of antisemitism is analyzed from its start as a religious based

belief to systematic racial prejudice and to a nationalist ideology, emphasizing the

facilitating effect of these changes on the emergence of an eliminationist mentality.

Parallels are drawn between the development of German ideological antisemitism and

modern Islamic antisemitism, and the implications of these similarities for the

emergence and acceptance of a new genocidal mindset.

Key Words: psychology of evil, antisemitism, symbolic universe, doubling, eliminationist

mentality, Islam, genocide

In a previous article on the issue of the psychology of

evil, the Holocaust was used as the most representative example

of contemporary evil; other examples include the Armenian

Holocaust, the Gulag, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfour, modern slavery,

ethnic cleansing, right and left wing totalitarianism and

terrorism. Nonetheless, the Holocaust remains a historical

singularity in its scale, atrocity, and in the degree to which

large number of people that supported it, and participated in it,

felt empowered to discard the ethical and moral rules governing

social interactions. The purpose of the present paper is to try

and follow the factors that made possible this evolution of evil,

and to identify contemporary trends that are similar.

Starting from an evolutionary psychology point of view I

proposed a general model for the average person’s participation

in evil, based on the interaction of several mechanisms that are

adaptive when taken in isolation, but when considered together,

their interaction allows a person to commit deeds that can only

be characterized as evil, while at the same time permitting

him/her to retain a sense of moral probity and conformity with

the prevailing cultural values.

These mechanisms include humankind’s general acceptance of

symbolic reality, which frees thought from the bonds of the

concrete reality and allows the conceptualization of a

transcendental reality; the social construction of symbolic

universes that connect the individual to culture (Berger and

Luckman 1966); the denial of our mortality and the quest for

symbolic immortality which shield us from anxiety and create a

sense of continuity (Becker 1976), as well the interaction of

several psychological mechanisms whose function is to shelter the

individual from guilt or shame and help coping with extreme

situations: obedience to authority (Milgram 1969) numbing,

doubling (Lifton 1986), and self deception.

“The readiness to accept symbolic reality facilitates the

emergence of symbolic universes and replaces survival with the

search for symbolic immortality. In order to share symbolic

immortality, humans accept others’ definition of reality and, by

implication, tend to become subservient to authority (and) to

accept and share the stereotypes that facilitate the use of

violence. Psychic numbing and doubling insulate them against the

consequences (of their actions) and … self-deception (allows

them) to create life stories consistent with the sense of

meaning and history of the symbolic universe they subscribe to.

Free choice is present at every step of the way and individual

responsibility is never eschewed.”(Dan 2007)

One of the keys to understanding the dynamic of a person’s

participation in acts of violence against Jews is the

relationship between antisemitism and the symbolic universe of

the Western and the Islamic worlds. As proposed by Berger and

Luckman (1966), the symbolic universe is generated as a social

construct by the interactions that take place within it and

constitutes the cognitive, cultural, philosophical and

theological frame of reference for the totality of human

experience. “The symbolic universe is conceived as the matrix of

all (objective or subjective) meanings; the entire historic

society and the entire biography of the individual are seen as

taking place within this universe” (Berger and Luckman 1966, p.

96).

The symbolic universe is supported by maintenance

mechanisms, which “ensure its continuity and internal consistency

and act as a safeguard against dissonance” (Bergen and Luckman,

1966). Among the most important such mechanisms are culture,

moral values, religion, mythology, theology, philosophy and

science.

These allow the emergence of a notion of the sacred (Becker

1976), transcending individual existence and mitigating of one’s

sense of mortality by permitting the accumulation of “immortality

symbols” such as fame, power and wealth, which confer the

individual symbolic immortality: not biological but cultural

continuity. The promise of symbolic immortality is an intrinsic

part of our symbolic universe which gives existence its meaning,

being in fact a universe maintenance mechanism.

One of the distinctive Jewish characteristics is the ability

to adjust to many different societies while at the same time

retaining a Jewish identity. The Jews’ contribution to the host

culture, and their perceived level of influence, is generally

disproportionate with their number. Furthermore, this

characteristic did not abate when the Jews converted or became

assimilated; on the contrary one could argue that it became

amplified. Because of their forever adapting yet unchanging

nature and their accumulation of immortality symbols, such as

power and wealth, the Jews are seen as having obtained a measure

of symbolic immortality. Considered from an antisemitic

perspective this is a zero sum game: the Jews obtain their

symbolic immortality at the detriment of other ethnic groups.

Antisemitism is an integral part of Christian identity,

which is an important universe maintenance mechanism of our

(Western European) symbolic universe, so important, in fact that

it can exist paradoxically even in the absence of Jews. For

example, antisemitism persisted in England for 400 years after

the expulsion of the Jews. The very existence of the Jews is a

permanent source of dissonance to Christian religion and beliefs.

Their role is ambivalent and their acceptance in the new faith is

a source of conflict. Thus Christianity, seen as a universe

maintenance mechanism is essentially flawed because it

incorporates a contradiction at its core: the Jews are God’s

chosen people and Jesus is Jewish, but the Jews are guilty of

deicide. In turn, this creates cognitive dissonance.

Antisemitism, like all stereotypes, is unchanged by cognitive

dissonance because every countervailing example is dismissed as

an exception to the rule: Jesus and the Apostles are “good Jews”,

but they are an exception; all the others are bad. Incorporating

antisemitism into Christianity is the strategy through which the

core cognitive dissonance is silenced and internal consistency

restored. “Antisemitism …is more than a set of beliefs and

corresponding attitudes: it is a complex cognitive-emotional

structure linking the individual to cultural and societal values

and playing a role in identity formation and maintenance,

management of aggressive behavior, interpersonal relations and

general worldview… At the individual level, anti-Semitism is self

reinforcing and self justifying, and like a stereotype,

impervious to cognitive dissonance. Like a defense mechanism, it

distorts reality in a systematic way. At cultural level, it is an

integral part of religion. At the small group and societal level,

it is triggered, maintained, and reinforced by two ritualized

behaviors: the passion play, and the blood libel (Dan 2008)

Religious antisemitism also contains its own inhibitory

mechanisms represented in Christianity by the injunctions of

Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard, based on Psalm 59 (“Slay them

not least my people forget”) , and in Islam by the acceptance of

Jews as “people of the Book”. From a social-cultural perspective,

this allowed the issuance of edicts that partially protected the

Jews, such as the papal bull “Sicut Judaeis” (Constitution for Jews)

issued by Calixtus II in 1120 and re-issued numerous times, or

the 1553 “firman” of Suleiman the Magnificent which transferred

the jurisdiction over blood libel cases from local judges to the

jurists of the Sultan. At the personal level antisemitism is an

internalized, normative structure, allowing for continued hatred

and aggression against the Jews, but its social expression is

subject to regulation, being limited by the decrees of the Church

or by the “firman” of the Sultan. As a result, despite the fact

that the logical conclusion of antisemitism requires the

destruction or conversion of all the Jews, religious

antisemitism, in both Christianity and Islam, lead to wide spread

persecution, massacres, mass expulsions, forced conversions,

pogroms and blood libel, but not to extermination or the adoption

of an “eliminationist mindset” (Goldhagen,1996)

However, ideological antisemitism does not contain such

safeguards, and as it will be argued, neither does modern Islamic

antisemitism. They both draw on religious antisemitism, but have

replaced the Jews as a religious entity with the Jews as the

representatives of a race and a political enemy. Religious

antisemitism portrayed the Jews as a threat to symbolic

immortality; racist antisemitism portrays them as a threat to the

biological existence of a nation, while ideological antisemitism

portrays them as bent on world domination.

The antisemitism of Nazi Germany which resulted in the

Holocaust constitutes a new phase in the evolution of evil: the

emergence of a genocidal mentality and its acceptance by an

entire society and culture resulting in modifications of the

ethical value system which made extermination morally acceptable

and facilitated peoples’ participation in it. The thesis of the

present paper is that there are significant similarities between

German antisemitism and modern Islamic antisemitism: taken to

their ultimate conclusions both are a new phase in the evolution

of evil, lacking any safeguards against the emergence of an

eliminationist mindset, and as such constitute a moral sanction

for genocide.

Antisemitism, racism and

ideology

Ironically, the definition of Jews as a distinct race has

its roots in the success of religious antisemitism in Spain and

Portugal. The mass conversions of Jews to Catholicism created the

category of “New Christians” with the subcategories of

“Conversos” (derogatorily “Marranos”) From the point of view of

the Catholic Church, those converted and their descendants were

Christians, and had to be treated as such. The true enemies of

the Church should be considered those who continue to

discriminate against them, asserted no less an authority than

“the defender of Faith”, Cardinal Juan de Torequemada, the uncle

of the future Grand Inquisitor. Historians differ in their

interpretation as to whether the majority of the Conversos were

good Catholics or “crypto Jews”, continuing to practice their

faith in secret. The fact is that even converted and assimilated,

the Jews remained an identifiable group. As the Conversos

continued to prosper and some reached positions of prominence,

popular resentment against them increased, fueled by demagogues

within the Church. Answering to populist pressure the city of

Toledo issued in 1449 the “Sentencia Estatuto”, prohibiting the Jews

and their descendants, convert or not, from holding any public

office “as this causes harm to “old Christians of pure lineage (

a los Christianos viejos lindos)” (Roth, 1995, p.91). As Roth notes this

is the first mention of the “purity of blood.” However, Netanyahu

(1995) traces the origins of racial, as opposed to religious,

discrimination against the Jews much earlier: the Fourth Toledan

Council of 633 prohibits the granting of public office “ to Jews

or those who are of the Jews”, and the “Liber Iudiciorum” of the

Visigoths, (later translated as the codex of Spanish law “Fuero

Juzgo”, adopted by Ferdinand III in 1241), prohibits “Jews,

whether baptized or unbaptized to testify against Christians”

( 1995, p.400). Netanyahu further notes that “the phrase ”those

who are of the Jews” has unquestionable racial connotations…

Indeed, the whole purpose of these laws, as we see it, was to

make clear that in the matter they referred to there was no

distinction between Jew and convert.” (1995, p. 401). This framed

the discussion of Jewish identity and issues concerning the

status of the Jews in society in racial terms, positing

“(two)inseparable relationships (one) between racial and moral

qualities of man and another that imputed to Jews as a race a

predisposition to evil” (Roth, 1995,p. 451)

Substituting faith with race as the source of Jewish

identity changed antisemitism, conferring to the perceived

negative characteristics of the Jews the immutability of a

biological fact. Furthermore, it allows for a false

quantification of one’s Jewishness based on ancestry, as

illustrated by the 16th, 17th and 20th Century purity of blood

statutes.

As Western societies grew increasingly secular, antisemitism

based on race started to displace religious antisemitism, first

in Germany and then in France. (Modern antisemitism is a German

import” wrote Leroy-Beaulieu in 1893, p.25). The emerging new

sciences of ethnology and comparative philology, and the work of

Darwin provided a framework for rephrasing the issue of

antisemitism in the terms of the comparison and competition

between the Semitic and Aryan civilizations. The so called

findings were disseminated in simplified form in the antisemitic

press of the day. For example, Friedrich von Hellwald, the author

of “The History of Culture in Its Natural Evolution“ adopted

cultural Darwinism and saw the evolution of culture as the fight

between superior and inferior civilizations. He was also the

editor of the influential journal “Ausland” and wrote (1872,

p.901) , paraphrasing Ernest Renan " The Jews are not merely a

different religious community, but—and this is to us the most

important factor—ethnically an altogether different race. The

European feels instinctively that the Jew is a stranger who

immigrated from Asia. The so-called prejudice is a natural

sentiment. Civilization will overcome the antipathy against the

Israelite who merely professes another religion, but never that

against the racially different Jew. The Jew is cosmopolitan, and

possesses a certain astuteness which makes him the master of the

honest Aryan. In Eastern Europe the Jew is the cancer slowly

eating into the flesh of the other nations. Exploitation of the

people is his only aim. Selfishness and lack of personal courage

are his chief characteristics; self-sacrifice and patriotism are

altogether foreign to him."

In his 1886 antisemitic tract “La France Juive” Edouard

Drumont describes the Jew as a polar opposite of the Aryan: The

Jew is “of the earth”, cowardly, has substituted violence with

cunning, has the cult of money, is mercantile and miserly, gets

rich at others’ expense, has the temperament of an

oppressor ,lacks any creative faculty and exploits the inventions

of the Aryan . On the other hand, the Aryan is “a son of heaven”,

noble and generous, enthusiastic and heroic, an inventor and

discoverer, honest and confident to the point of being naïve.

( 1886,pp.9-11) Quoting, like van Hellwald, Renan’s ideas, he

writes :”The Semitic race can be recognized almost exclusively

by negative characteristics. It lacks a mythology, an epic,

science, philosophy… a civil life, all in all an absence of

complexity, of nuance, of feelings.” (1886, p.11). Drumont goes

on to describe the physical characteristics of the Jew, foremost

among them the hooked nose, salient ears, and the “soft and

melting hand of the hypocrite or traitor.” (1886, p. 34) Having

thus set the stage, Drumont faces the daunting task of explaining

how the superior Aryan is dominated by the lowly Jew. This

conundrum is solved by a cognitive sleight of hand, using

circular reasoning to make what has to be proven its own proof:

the inferiority of the Jews is proven by the fact that they need

a worldwide conspiracy to maintain their continued dominance.

Since the existence of such a conspiracy is beyond doubt, the

inferiority of the Jews is also beyond doubt. The access to power

is made possible by the underhanded and treacherous methods of

the Jews, who “for centuries have monopolized the profession of

medicine which facilitated their spying by allowing them access

everywhere.” (1886, p.32) As for the relationship between the

Jews and other peoples “The Jew will never be the equal of a man

of Christian race (sic). He creeps at your knees or crushes you

under his heel, he is beneath or above, never by your

side.”(1886, p.22)

I quoted Drumont to some length, despite the fact that his

entire book is a gigantic non sequitur, because most of his ideas

have been adopted wholesale and can be found in Nazi antisemitic

propaganda. Systematizing these ideas, Bering (1992) enumerates

some core antisemitic beliefs: ““Jews are not only partially but

totally bad by nature… their bad traits are incorrigible.” They

remain “essentially alien” to their host societies and “bring

disaster (on them) or on the whole world” Because their bad

nature is a generalized trait, Jews must be seen not as

individuals but as a group. These beliefs facilitate the

depersonalization of the Jews, making them the focus of hostile

projections and justify pre-emptive violence against them,

rationalized as self defense.

One should note that racial antisemitism incorporates the

religious antisemitism, and ideological antisemitism incorporates

racial antisemitism. Thus the Jews are seen at the same time as a

threat to symbolic immortality, as a threat to the existence of

the nation as a biological entity, and a threat to the existence

of society and culture. As German society became an increasingly

closed society, the “pathology and fragility of reason” (Morar

2006) also increased. The degree of distortion of reality

required to adopt antisemitic beliefs expanded with the type of

antisemitism in question: religious antisemitism requires the

belief that the Jews are damned for having killed Jesus, racial

antisemitism requires one to believe that negative and

inheritable traits can be generalized to an entire people, and

that the Jews are a threat to the “purity of blood”, while

ideological antisemitism requires a paranoid distortion of

history and the projection of one’s own genocidal tendencies

onto the Jews by portraying them as seeking world dominance and

being a physical threat to the existence of a nation. For

example, Hitler wrote:” Today…it is the inexorable Jew who

struggles for domination over the nations. No nation can remove

this hand from its throat except by the sword. Only the assembled

and concentrated might of a national passion rearing up in its

strength can defy the internal enslavement of peoples” (1971,

p.651) and Himmler declared that “we had a moral right vis-a-vis

our people to annihilate this people which wanted to annihilate

us.” The qualities of this brand of German antisemitism are

described by Goldhagen : the “hallucinatory image of the Jews;

the specter of evil that they appeared to Germans to be casting

over Germany; Germans’ virulent hatred of them; the “abstract”

character of beliefs that informed the treatment which its

bearers accorded real Jews; the unquestioned nature of these

beliefs; and the eliminationist logic which led Germans to

approve the persecution, ghettoization and extermination of the

Jews.”( 1996,p.89)

These beliefs formed the basis for the Nuremberg laws which

translated ideology into policy and systematically excluded Jews

from society: prohibition of intermarriage and non conjugal sex

with Jews (Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor 9-15-

1935), barring Jews from holding public office, destruction of

synagogues (11-11-1938), dissolving all Jewish businesses ( 11-

23-1938) cutting Jewish homes’ heat and electricity (2-2-1938),

forbidding Jewish children to attend German schools ( 11-13-1938)

forbidding Jews to own radios (9-29-1939) telephones (7-20-1940),

bicycles (5-15-1941), forbidding Jews from using public

transportation (9-18-1941) or public phones (12-26-1941),

mandatory wearing of the yellow star (9-1-1941), prohibition of

friendly relations with Jews (11-24-1941). These laws were

emulated by other states that subscribed to Nazi ideology. For

example in Romania Mihail Sebastian’s “Journal” notes the

confiscation of Jewish property (3-26-1941), forbidding Jews to

own radios (4-20-1941) forced labor for Jews (8-2-1941) mandatory

wearing of the yellow star (9-15-41) confiscation of skis (12-1-

1941), bicycles (8-12-1942) food rationing for Jews (9-10-1942)

and the removing of the works of Jewish authors from bookstores

(11-5-1942) li.

Nazi posters for the propaganda films “The Jew Süss” and

“Eternal Jew”

Source: The German Propaganda Archive,calvin.edu

Once the Jews were excluded from society, dehumanized and

falsely represented as a multiple threat, all the inhibitions

against using the most extreme measures against them were

neutralized. “The Jewish problem” required a solution. Addressing

this point, Goebbels said in 1944 that “In the case of the Jews

there are not merely a few criminals, but all Jews rose from

criminal roots, and in their very nature are criminal. The Jews

are no people like other people but a pseudo-people welded

together by hereditary criminality…The annihilation of Jews is no

loss to humanity but just as useful as capital punishment or

protective custody against other criminals.”

Lifton coined the term “controlling image” for the highly

symbolic, emotionally loaded metaphors that distill the essence

of a culture and help to both motivate and rationalize behavior.

He interviewed several Nazi doctors who carried out the selection

process at Auschwitz, as well as medical experiments on the

prisoners. Lifton described the relevant controlling image that

facilitated the emergence of an eliminationist mindset as

“killing in the name of healing” – a rationalization helped by

equating the very existence of the Jews with the symptom of a

disease that threatens the well being of the national organism.

The doctors were shielded from the psychological consequences of

their actions, such as guilt and shame, by believing themselves

the agents of a higher authority to which they readily submitted

(Milgram 1969), and by psychological doubling,”the division of

the self in two functioning wholes so that a part self acts as an

entire self” (Lifton 1986, p.418)., He named these two selves

“the Auschwitz self” and “the prior self”. “There is dialectic

between the two selves in terms of autonomy and connection. The

individual Nazi doctor needed his Auschwitz self to function

psychologically in an environment so antithetical to his previous

ethical standards. At the same time, he needed his prior self in

order to continue to see himself as humane physician, husband,

father. The Auschwitz self had to be both autonomous and

connected to the prior self that gave rise to it.”(1986, p.419)

The use of doubling allowed the doctors to give meaning to the

Auschwitz experience and to function within it free of guilt.

This process does not eliminate conscience, but transfers its

requirements: within the Auschwitz self, for instance the

criteria for good would include discipline, loyalty, duty, and

the controlling image of “killing in the name of healing”

facilitated conceptualizing the extermination of human beings in

those terms. For example, due to the near starvation diet,

Auschwitz prisoners who worked could be expected to survive

approximately 12 weeks. The ID number tattooed on the prisoners’

arm allowed the guards to keep track of the prisoners’ time in

Auschwitz, and those who had survived for more than the expected

period of time were executed, because it meant that either they

avoided work or stole food. Within the Auschwitz self this action

could be rationalized as an issue of fairness, enforcing the

rules and getting rid of parasites.

Much of the criticism of Goldhagen stems from the fact that

he supposedly subscribed to the notion of German collective

guilt. For instance Wehler (1998) questions the existence of a

specific German brand of eliminationist anstisemitism and asks

”how deeply was antisemitism rooted in the thinking of millions

of Germans, and to what extent did it make possible and foster

the process that started with social discrimination and led, via

psychological harassment, active persecution and pogroms to a

comprehensive Final Solution?” (1998, p.96)

The answer is self evident: obviously sufficiently deep in

enough Germans to carry out the Holocaust, and sufficiently deep

in the rest of the Germans to tacitly approve of it or be silent

about it. That is why I believe that focusing on intentionality

(willing versus unwilling Germans) misses the mark. The issue is

the existence of a well known, very public, culturally shared

ideological and legal framework that permeated the entire society

and made it possible to justify and support the extermination of

the Jews, a framework that connected the individual to

transcendental values. In other words, for Nazi German society,

ideological antisemitism was a symbolic universe maintenance

mechanism which facilitated the emergence of an eliminationist

mentality. In an obscene congruence, psychological mechanisms

evolved to help the individual cope with extreme situations

protected those who carried out the genocide from the

psychological consequences of their actions, and self deception

allowed those who passively acquiesced in it to convince

themselves that there was nothing they could have done, and that

in any case they did nothing wrong. Goldhagen’s charge hit a raw

nerve because it exposed the fallacy of trying to formulate an

explanation of the Holocaust based on the participation of

limited groups, rather than considering it a society wide

phenomenon.

Islam and antisemitism

There is considerable dispute among scholars as to whether

antisemitism in Islam is a recent phenomenon, imported from

Europe and amplified by the creation of the state of Israel and

the ensuing conflicts, or, far from being a modern phenomenon, it

is part of Islam from its inception. This is not my area of

expertise, and a discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of

this paper. However it appears clear that one can find evidence

of antisemitism in the Qur’an itself, in Qur’anic commentaries,

as well as in historical data. What the scholars seem to debate

is the relative degree of antisemitism and the relative wellbeing of

the Jews under Christian and, respectively Muslim rule; the harsh

reality of their life under either cannot be refuted. For example

Maimonides wrote in his 1172 “Epistle to the Jews of Yemen” after

fleeing from Cordoba to avoid the Almohads’ persecution: “The

nation of Ishmael…persecute us severely and devise ways to harm

us and to debase us…None has matched it in debasing and

humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have. We

have not done, as our sages of blessed memory instructed us,

bearing the lies and absurdities of Ishmael. We listen, but

remain silent…In spite of all this, we are not spared from the

ferocity of their wickedness. On the contrary, the more we suffer

and chose to conciliate them, the more they chose to act

belligerently toward us.”(Translated by B. Cohen)

Maimonides’ words stand in stark contrast with the idyllic

images of Jewish life in the Golden Age of Moorish Spain or later

under Ottoman rule that one finds in the works of other authors.

As Bostom and Ibn Warraq (2008) indicate, evidence of negative

attitudes toward Jews can be found in the Qur’an, in the Hadith

(the collection of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and of

things that were said in his presence), and in the Sirat (early

Muslim biographies of Prophet Muhammad.) The Jews are described

with two terms “Banu Isra-il” meaning “Children of Israel” and

“yahud” with its variations meaning “Jew”. As a general rule

remarks referring to “Banu Isra-il” are positive and those referring

to “yahud” are negative.

The Qur’an decribes the Jews as cursed (2:61) “And

humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were

visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved

in Allah’s revelation and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was

for their disobedience and transgression.” (For the sake of

consistency, all the quotes are by M.W. Pickthall translation

“The Glorious Qur’an” listed in the book referenced below. For

more comprehensive quotes, please see chapter 2 of “The Legacy of

Islamic Antisemitism, Prometheus Books, 2008, Andrew Bostom Ed.

which provides the complete text of each relevant verse in three

different translations of the Qur’an) “Those of the Children of

Israel who went astray were cursed by the tongue of David and of

Jesus, son of Mary. That was because they rebelled and used to

transgress.”(3:112). The Jews are a people that has passed away

(2:134) repeatedly punished by Allah by sending the Babylonians

and the Romans against them (17:4, 17:5) and dispersed by Allah

(7:168). They have broken their covenant “Then because of their

breaking of their covenant and their disbelieving the revelations

of Allah, and their slaying the prophets wrongfully, and their

saying: our hearts are hardened-Nay, but Allah set a seal upon

them for their disbelief, so that they believe not save a few.”

(4:155). The Jews misinterpret and distort “Some of those who are

Jews change words from their context and say: “We hear and

disobey; hear thou as one who heareth not” and “Listen to us!

distorting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they

had said: “We hear and we obey: hear thou and look at us” it had

been better for them, and more upright. But Allah hath cursed

them for their disbelief, so they believe not, save a few.”

(4:46). The Jews are liars (2:78) who willfully distort the word

of Allah (2:75) and whose hearts have been hardened and have

become like the rocks or worse (2:74) and are the servant of the

Devil(4:60). Unless they accept Islam they will be turned into

apes and swine (2:65, 7:166; 5:60), and will burn in the fires of

hell. “Lo! Those who disbelieve, among the People of the

Scripture and the idolaters, will abide in fire of hell. They are

the worst of created beings.” (98:6, also 4:55, 5:29 and 58:14-

19).

As a general rule, the “Hadith” contains more negative

references to the Jews than the Qur-an. Here are a few examples,

excerpted from M.M. Khair‘s translation of the “Sahih Bukhari”

quoted in Bostom’s 2008 book:

Vol.3, bk.47, no.786: “Narrated Anas bin Malik: A Jewess

brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from

it. She was brought to the Prophet and he was asked,”Shall we

kill her?” He said “No”. I could see the effect of the poison on

the palate of the mouth of Allah’s Apostle.” (2008, p.229)

Vol.4,bk.52,no.176: Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar: Allah’s

Apostle said, “You (Muslims) will fight the Jew till some of them

will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray) them saying “O

‘Abdullah (slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so

kill him.” (2008, pp. 229-230)

Vol.2,bk 23, no 414: Narrated ‘Urwa: Aisha said,”The Prophet

in his fatal illness said, ‘Allah cursed the Jews and the

Christians because they took the graves of their Prophets as

places for praying” Aisha added, ”Had it not been for that the

grave of the Prophet would have been more prominent but I am

afraid it might be takes (as a) place for praying.”(2008, p.229)

Vajda (1937, 2008) classifies the material in the Hadiths

that refer to Jews in three categories: those which regard Jewish

customs, those which describe the behavior of the Jews towards

Muslims and the Prophet, and those which describe the attitude of

Moslems towards Jews. He writes “the more Muhammad advanced his

career in Medina, the more his resentment of the Jews grew…since

the Jews, not content with disappointing his expectations of

seeing them rally unreservedly to his cause, riddled him with

sarcasm (and) cast doubts on the authenticity of his prophetic

mission” (1937, 2008, p. 240) The Jews are followers of the Dajjal

(the Muslim Antichrist), who is Jewish. Furthermore, the Jews and

Christians will be exchanged for the Muslim sinners who are

burning in hell, and “the sin of certain Muslims will weigh on

them like mountains, but on the day of the resurrection, these

sins will be lifted and laid upon the Jews” (1937, 2008, p.246)

As Vajda and others have remarked, the Hadiths also contain

passages that describe the Jews in a positive light, but the

preponderance of references to Jews is negative. Maimonides

alluded to a possible reason for the anti Jewish sentiment:

“Since they could not find any proof whatsoever in all of the

Torah, nor any verse or allusion they might latch onto, their

only recourse was to say that we have changed and altered the

text of the Torah and deleted that man’s name (Muhammad) from

it.” (Epistle to the Jews of Yemen)

I believe that the above passages prove that Islamic

attitudes toward Jews parallel those found in Christianity: while

being recognized as “People of the Book”, they are also seen as

being cursed by Allah, rejecting and distorting his message and

possibly causing the death of his Prophet. Just like in the case

of Christianity, the ambivalence regarding the existence and

acceptance of Jews is a source of conflict and generates

cognitive dissonance, albeit less of it.. Islam, perhaps the most

important maintenance mechanism of the symbolic universe based on

it, incorporates a contradiction at its core and uses

antisemitism to silence cognitive dissonance and restore internal

consistency

.Because the Qur-an says that the Jews are cursed with

“humiliation and wretchedness”, they have to pay ”jizya” or poll

tax, and like al non-Muslims have the inferior status of “dhimmi”.

Goitein (1970) wrote that “Christians and Jews were not citizens

of the state, not even second hand citizens. They were outsiders

under the protection of the Muslim state, a status characterized

by the term dhimma, for which protection they had to pay a poll

tax specific to them. They were also exposed to a great number of

discriminatory and humiliating laws.”

Maoz (1975) describes the life conditions under Ottoman

rule: “They were inferior subjects in the Muslim-Ottoman state

which was based on the principle of Muslim superiority.. Their

testimony was not accepted in the courts of justice, and in the

case of the murder of a Jew or Christian by a Muslim, the latter

was not usually condemned to death. In addition… they were

forbidden to carry arms…to ride horses in towns or to wear Muslim

dress. They were… often subjected to oppression, extortion and

violence both by local authorities and by the Muslim population.

The Jews in Ottoman Palestine and Syria lived under such

ambivalent and precarious conditions for a number of centuries”

(quoted in Bostom, 2008 ,p.87).

Below you can see a painting by A. Dehodenq: The Execution

of a Moroccan Jewess, Sol Hachuel, for apostasy in 1834. Her

death was narrated by Eugenio Maria Romero in 1837, indicating

that even in the middle of the eighteens century Jews in Moslem

lands were put to death for apostasy.

Bat Ye’or (1985) characterized the dhimma status as having

“the general character of a system of oppression, sanctioned by

contempt and justified by the principle of inequity between

Muslims and dhimmis.. Singled out as objects of hatred and

contempt by visible signs of discrimination, they were

progressively decimated during periods of massacres, forced

conversions and banishments.” ( quoted in Bostom, p.171)

The historical record of Jewish life under Islamic rule is

also replete with violent incidents, although it can be argued,

fewer and less violent than those that took place under Christian

rule.: Caliph Haroun al Rashid orders all Jews to wear a yellow

belt, and Christians a blue one ( 807); Caliph Al-Hakim bi Amr

Allah orders Jews to wear a heavy wooden golden calf, and the

Christians a heavy wooden cross around their necks, and both to

wear distinctive black hats (1008-1013); there are forced

conversions (1016 Kairouan, Tunisia, 1107 Morocco, 1148-1212

during the Almohad rule in Andalusia, 1165 and 1198 Yemen, 1323

Marrakesh, 1678 Yemen) mass expulsions (1066 Granada, 1107

Morocco, “Surgun” (forced exile) of whole Jewish communities

under Ottoman rule, 1934 Afghanistan), massacres (1032 Fez, 1066

Granada, 1090 Granada,1790-1792 Morocco, 1805 Algeria, 1840

Damascus, 1840 Rhodes, April 1920 Jerusalem pogrom, May 1 -4 1921

Jaffa riots, August 23 1929 Hebron massacre, 1941, Bagdad Farhoud

pogrom) and blood libel cases ( 1545 Amasya, 1840 Damascus, 1840

Rhodes).

By and large, Islamic antisemitism appears to have been much

less connected with the concept of the Jews as a different race.

The ideas of racist antisemitism seem to have been a Western

European import, which had arrived with colonialism, and had

found a fertile soil with the advent of Zionism. On the other

hand, the separation between religion and policy, between church

and state which characterizes modern Western European states does

not exist and does not make sense in Islam. Furthermore, I think

that the separation of church and state is the legal expression

of a moral principle that permeates Western democratic societies

and value systems: pro-social acts in the name of religion are

seen as acceptable, but antisocial acts are not. We admire Mother

Theresa but loathe the 9/11 hijackers. This perspective is

missing in Islam, since the mentality of jihad can be used to make

violent actions in the name of religion morally acceptable. That

is why in Islamic culture the transition from religious

antisemitism to ideological antisemitism was a natural one. This

new, more radical trend was represented by Sheikhs Izz al-Din al-

Quassam and Hajj Amin el-Husseini. “Both these leaders relied

upon the ideology of jihad, with its virulent anti-infidel (i.e.

anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and anti-Western) incitement, to

garner popular support.” ( Bostom, 2008, p. 92) Al-Quassam

encouraged the use of violence against Jews and founded “The

Black Hand” secret society whose goal was to target Jews for

terror and murder. Al- Husseini became the mufti of Jerusalem and

was an ardent Nazi sympathizer. He urged the killing of all Jews,

not only Zionists, and incited the 1941 Farhoud pogrom in

Baghdad. After an unsuccessful coup attempt, he sought refuge in

Germany and recruited Bosnian Muslims for the SS. “The mufti’s

objectives for these recruits –and Muslims in general- were made

explicit during his wartime radio broadcasts from Berlin, heard

throughout the Arab world: an international campaign of genocide

against the Jews For example, during his March 1 1944 , broadcast

he stated ”Kill the Jews wherever you find them This pleases God,

history and religion.” (Schechtman, 1993, quoted in Bostom, 2008,

p. 95) According to Wanner (1986) the mufti garnered the support

of Himmler and Eichmann and engaged in an active letter writing

campaign, urging the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania

to cancel exit visas granted to Jews, resulting in the revocation

of 80.000 visas by Romania and 400.000 visas by Hungary.

Consequently most of the Hungarian Jews were exterminated. Hitler

considered the mufti the representative of the Arab liberation

movement which he saw as a”natural ally.” Hirszowicz (1966),

states that the mufti also “emphasized that the Germans and Arabs

had common enemies: bolshevism, Britain and the Jews. Hitler

assured the mufti that Germany’s uncompromising war against the

Jews included active opposition to the Jewish national home in

Palestine and that her objective was the destruction of the

Jewish element residing in the Arab countries.” (1966,p.218)

Karl Jung commented on the convergence between fascism and

Islam” We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new

Islam. He is already on his way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion

in Germany is Islamic. They are all drunk with (their) wild god.

That can be the historic future.” (1939, vol. 18, p.281) Speer

(1970) wrote in his memoirs that Hitler talked wistfully about

the more vigorous Islam which he considered more suitable for the

Germans than the “flabby and meek” Christianity.

The racial hatred and imagery of Nazi ideological

antisemitism have been adopted wholesale by modern Islamic

antisemitism, as can be seen in antisemitic imagery present in

the TV shows, in literature, in the cartoons published in the

Arabic press, in the frequent invocation of the Protocols of the

Elders of Zion as a historical document, in the use of blood

libel, and the diatribes directed against Jews in general, as

opposed to Israelis or Zionists.

Similarity of themes in Nazi and Arabic cartoons: The Jew

and Ariel Sharon as ogres. Source: The German Propaganda

Archive,calvin.edu,and bornavol.blogspot.com

Blood Libel theme in Nazi and Arabic cartoons. Source: The

German Propaganda Archive,calvin.edu, and jewpi.com

At the same time, a genocidal mentality seems to be emerging

and to gain acceptance. For example, Hassan Nasrallah, secretary

general of the Hezbollah is quoted in FrontPagemagazine.com on

December 1, 2006 as saying “If we searched the entire world for a

person more cowardly, despicable and week in psyche, we would not

find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli..If

they (the Jews) all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble

of going after them worldwide.” (2006, quoted in

Bostom,2008,p.145)

Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Yacoub, stated on Al-Rahma

TV on January 17, 2009, (al translations are from MEMRI):"We must

believe that our fighting with the Jews is eternal, and it will

not end until the final battle...You must believe that we will

fight, defeat, and annihilate them, until not a single Jew

remains on the face of the Earth.”.

On a the same station, on January 17, 2009, Egyptian cleric

Sheik Said Al-'Afani stated:”[The Jews] are the accursed people,

who incurred the wrath of Allah. They are the offspring of snakes

and vipers, the slayers of our Prophet Muhammad, whose death was

a consequence of his being poisoned by a Jewish woman... We

should know that the Jews are the slayers of the prophets…the

Jews are behind all the ruin and destruction in the world…The

Jews were behind World War I and World War II. When the American

commander said that Japan had agreed to the terms of surrender,

Rothschild the American – or rather, Roosevelt the American – was

told by the Jewish loan sharks to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. The Jews were behind the English Revolution. The Jews

were behind the French Revolution. The Jews were behind the U.S.

Civil War in 1869-1866 [sic]. The Jews were behind the French

coup of 1815. The Jews were behind the war between France and

Prussia. The Jews were behind the rise of Communism. Karl Marx

was a Jew. The Jews instigated war by means of sex. The Jewish

Mathilde inspired Johnson to carry out the 1967 war.”

Palestinian preacher Ibrahim Mahdi declared in a sermon:

"Oh beloved of Allah... One of the Jews' evil deeds is what has

come to be called 'the Holocaust,' that is, the slaughter of the

Jews by Nazism. However, revisionists [historians] have proven

that this crime, carried out against some of the Jews, was

planned by the Jews' leaders, and was part of their policy.”

Bostom (2008) quotes Husayn Fadlallah, senior clerical

authority for Hezbollah who “repeatedly refers to anti-Jewish

archetypes in the Qur-an, hadith and sira: the corrupt,

treacherous and aggressive nature of the Jews, their reputation

as killers of prophets, who spread corruption on earth; and the

notion that the Jews engaged in a conspiratorial effort against

the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Fadlallah argues that ultimately”

either we destroy Israel or Israel destroys us”’(2008, pp.144-145

Finally, Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais , the leading imam of the

Grand mosque of Mecca, stated in a April 19 2002 sermon:” Read

history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are

the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring,

infidels, distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers,

prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race

whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs.”

I believe that these examples, which were necessarily

limited because of consideration of space (for a much more

comprehensive approach, the reader is directed again to Bostom’s

book), constitute sufficient proof that the eliminationist

mindset is an integral part of modern Islamic antisemitism.

Furthermore, far from being an isolated modern phenomenon, this

mindset appears to be the logical outgrowth of religious and

historical prejudice, and the present day propagandists takes

pains to make references to history and to the Qur-an and the

Hadith. The anti-Jewish prejudice demonstrated by these quotes

has precisely the hallucinatory, delusional quality Goldhagen

identified in the antisemitism of Nazi Germany, and the advances

of the Taliban in Pakistan and the strides that Iran makes toward

acquiring nuclear capability bring the means to carry out

genocide within the reach of extremists. Noting that two of

Iran’s presidents have spoken openly about destroying Israel,

Goldhagen warns that “it would be folly for the world to treat

the Iranian leaders’ words as anything but an articulation of

their intent.”(2005)

Just as the executioners who carried out the Holocaust

needed the tacit approval of the majority of the Germans to carry

it out, the present day genocidal regimes need at least passive

acquiescence from the rest of the world. The Pew Global Attitudes

Project Report from September 2008, indicates that the

“unfavorable view of Jews (and Muslims) is increasing in Europe.

From 2004 to 2008, the percentage of the population holding an

unfavorable opinion of the Jews went from 21% to 46% in Spain,

from 27% to 36% in Poland, form 25% to 34 % in Russia, from 20%

to 25 % in Germany, from 11% to 20 % in France, while it remained

steady in Britain ( 9%to 9%) and in the US (8% to 7%). In the US

77% have a favorable view of the Jews; in Europe that percentage

ranges from a high of 73% in Britain to a low of 37% in Spain.

For comparison in the Muslim countries, in Indonesia 10% have a

favorable opinion of the Jews, in Turkey 7%, in Pakistan 4%, in

Egypt and Jordan 3% and in Lebanon 2%..

The reaction of the Western world to acts of religious

intolerance, such as the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie by

the Ayatollah Khomeini for “The Satanic Verses” and the

subsequent attacks against the publishers and translators of his

book, the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan, the murder of

Theo van Gogh, the threats against Ayan Hirsi Ali were muted to

say the least.. The protests against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-

Posten which on September 30, 2005 published cartoons deemed

offensive to the prophet Muhammad, are a case in point.

Disproportionate and staged reactions of intolerance and incited

violence made 100 victims worldwide and were followed by hand

wringing, intimidation and self censorship. Major US, Canadian

and British publications refused to publish the cartoons, citing

the desire not to offend, and the potential for violence. More

recently, in August 2009, Yale University Press decided to delete

the reproductions of the cartoons from the book “The Cartoons

that Shook the World,” by professor Jytte Klausen. At the same

time, antisemitism is more and more acceptable, masquerading

under the guise of anti-Israeli criticism. As Nathan Sharansky

put it “Israel has become the world’s Jew.” Here are a few

representative examples, illustrating how wide spread the

acceptance of equating Israel with the Nazis has become, and the

extent to which such imagery incorporates antisemitic

stereotypes:

Antisemitic cartoons Above: China and Brasil.

Below: Russia and the US.

Source:tomgrossmedia.com

On May 23, 2001, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published a

cartoon of Clio, the muse of history affixing Hitler’s moustache

on Ariel Sharon. The daily La Vanguardia published a cartoon

showing a building labeled “Museum of the Jewish Holocaust” near

a building under construction labeled “Future Museum of the

Palestinian Holocaust” . In Greece, in April 2002, the daily

Eleftherotypia depicted an Israeli soldier as a Nazi officer and

a Palestinian civilian as a Jewish concentration camp prisoner,

under the title “Holocaust 2” In April 2002, the Italian daily La

Stampa published a cartoon of an Israeli tank, identified by the

star of David, pointing its cannon at the baby Jesus who says:

"Surely they don't want to kill me again, do they?" In Corriere

Della Sera, another cartoon depicted Ariel Sharon holding a rifle

and sitting on Jesus’ tomb, who is unable to rise.

As Tom Gross (2005) states, it is striking how openly the

Western press, so careful not to give any offense to the Arabs

when covering the events of Darfour for example, is displaying a

blatant anti-Israeli bias which can only be explained by

antisemitism. ”The libels and distortions about Israel in some

British media are by now fairly well known: the Guardian's

equation of Israel and al Qaeda; the Evening Standard's equation

of Israel and the Taliban; the report by the BBC's Middle East

correspondent … on how "the Israelis stole Christmas.” Gross

notes that French courts have ruled that the writers and

publishers of the newspaper “Le Monde” are guilty of “racist

defamation” against Jews and Israel for the opinion piece

“Israel-Palestine : The Cancer.” Violence against the Jews is

constantly downplayed or excused, while at the same time, as

Gross (2001) writes “The systematic building up of a false

picture of Israel as aggressor, and deliberate killer of babies

and children, is helping to slowly chip away at Israel’s

legitimacy”

These examples are meant to illustrate that the genocidal

mentality that exists in certain Islamic nations today is

accompanied by a widespread acceptance of antisemitism and a de-

legitimizing of Israel. Far more that the statistics suggest, at

the time when a nuclear weapon may soon be in the hands of

suicidal/homicidal fanatics, the image of the Jew as the focus of

evil in the world is gaining acceptance, and the idea that an

“Israeli Problem” exists that requires a “Solution” is making

headway. At the same time, legitimate self defense on Israel’s

part is invariably described as aggression or disproportionate.

This dynamic is eerily reminiscent of the one that existed in

Nazi Germany. The structure that permitted the emergence of evil

at a national scale is reproduced at a global scale. There are

groups committed to the destruction of the Jews, ready to carry

out genocide, that complain constantly of Israeli aggression

against them. The countless one-sided UN resolutions are the

global counterpart of the Nazi anti-Jewish legislation, aiming to

make Israel a pariah nation. The conventional thinking was that

the Holocaust is a historic singularity, a horror of such

dimensions that, as Elie Wiesel suggested, we may lack adequate

words to discuss it, but today there are groups- and nations-

which approve of it and consider it a model for action, and which

also believe that the world tacitly supports them. We ignore them

at our own risk.

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Peter Dan, PhD in Personality and Social Psychology from the City University of New York, isa practicing School Psychologist in New York City, and an Adjunct Professor at Long IslandUniversity graduate program in School Psychology.