Muslim antisemitism

A change in the provisions regarding acquisition of citizenship in Spain will, if adopted by the Senate, grant special privileges to Jews of Sephardi origin.     

Pedagogical guidelines for literary antisemitism

Literary antisemitism presents problems for both teachers and students. Censorship is wrong and impractical; ignoring antisemitism in texts might lead to the reinforcement of antisemitic attitudes. Teachers should therefore encourage student engagement with the problem and discuss literary antisemitism openly.     

The antisemitism of Henry Wickham Steed

ABSTRACT

Henry Wickham Steed (1871–1956), then editor-in-chief of the London Times, adopted an ambiguous position with regard to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion when the tract first appeared in English in 1920. He neither endorsed nor rejected it but instead mused in the editorial pages of The Times about whether it might be authentic. The following year, when The Times correspondent in Istanbul brought out proof that The Protocols was a forgery, Steed accepted his correspondent's findings and publicly retracted his earlier ambivalent position. This incident reflects on Steed's (deserved) reputation as an antisemite but it also suggests something of the complexity of his position. Steed's denunciations of Jewish influence, discovered, by his own account, through his experience as a foreign correspondent in Vienna before the First World War, are recurrent in his writings. At the same time, Steed lent strong support to Zionist aspirations at the time of the Balfour Declaration and thereafter, and, in the 1930s, he was among the very first English critics of Hitler's antisemitism. In this article, I propose to offer some hypotheses regarding Steed's antisemitism. Strange as it may sound in the wake of the Second World War, it was Steed's visceral Germanophobia that lay at the heart of his antisemitism. Until the advent of the Third Reich, Steed identified Jews with Germans and with German interests. As an ardent exponent of the ‘principle of nationality’, however, Steed consistently extended his advocacy of statehood for various Eastern European nationalities to the Jewish national cause. A final factor that helps to explain Steed's suspiciousness and gullibility is that, by disposition and as a lifelong journalist, he was drawn to conspiracy theories. He created a number of sensations in his career and, to return to the example of The Protocols, he was loath to discount so spectacular a conspiracy story.     

Fighting antisemitism with numbers in early twentieth-century Britain

ABSTRACT

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish Health Organization of Great Britain (JHOGB) and its president, Redcliffe Nathan Salaman, championed the collection and analysis of demographic data about the Anglo-Jewish community as a way to counter rising antisemitism. In this article, Endelman discusses the belief in the ability of statistical research to undermine lies and distortions about the Jews of Britain that rested on untested Enlightenment assumptions about human nature and the sources of human behaviours and sentiments. While the JHOGB’s faith in statistical research as a bulwark of counter-propaganda never faltered, and while it obtained funding for a handful of projects, it failed to convince the leaders of Anglo-Jewry of the necessity to create and support a permanent statistical bureau. With the onset of the Second World War, the organization ceased its work, as more pressing communal priorities, especially caring for refugees from Nazism, rose to the fore.     

The use of antisemitism in the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War saw an outburst of antisemitism in the Nationalist-controlled areas of the peninsula and in the Moroccan protectorate, an antisemitism influenced by the work of ultra-right-wing intellectuals associated with the Acción Española review. All the factions of the Nationalist camp interpreted the civil war as a crusade against the 'Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevist' conspiracy. In mainland Spain, where there were only a few Jewish families, antisemitism was largely confined to the written word. In this way, it was used mostly as a rhetorical tool to attack the Nationalists' real and imaginary enemies: the Republican forces, the French and the Soviets. Although there was no systemic persecution of the Jews, some aggressive acts took place in Seville and Barcelona. The situation of the larger Jewish community in Spanish Morocco was quite different. The Moroccan Jews were adversely affected by the Nationalists' efforts to enlist the support of the Muslim population against the Republicans and by the German presence in the protectorate. They were also victimized by the Falangists who confiscated their property and imposed heavy fines on them. The military authorities of Morocco tried to restrain these excesses as they realized that blatant antisemitism could hurt the rebels' image abroad. They also believed that Jewish wealth and connections could serve the Nationalist cause.     

Combatting antisemitism in the school playground: an Australian case study

The aim of Gross and Rutland's paper is to analyse the problem of antisemitic bullying in contemporary Australian state schools by investigating the case of Jewish children in those schools. The study is interdisciplinary, drawing on historical data and educational methodology, and employs a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews conducted in Sydney and Melbourne with all the major actors: students (55), teachers (10), principals (4), parents (13) and Jewish communal leaders (10). Gross and Rutland argue that classical anti-Jewish stereotypes are perpetuated in the school playground, transmitted by children from one generation to the next. This finding provides an additional perspective to the general literature, which argues that racial prejudice and stereotypes are acquired primarily through home socialization, religious institutions and the media, and neglects the role of the school playground.     

The limits of analogy: comparing Islamophobia and antisemitism

ABSTRACT

The predicament faced by Muslims today, either in the United Kingdom specifically or in the West more generally, is often compared with the predicament faced by Jews at some point in the past. Muslims, it is suggested, are the new Jews. Klug's article homes in on one element in this view, the claim that Islamophobia is the new antisemitism, and considers the analogy between them. An introductory section sketches the political context, after which Klug focuses on logical or conceptual issues. The two middle sections contain the core of the analysis: consideration of the two terms ‘antisemitism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ in relation to the concepts they denote, followed by an examination of the concepts as such. Certain conclusions are drawn about both their general logic and their specific logics. The final section returns to the political context and, via critique of a thesis put forward by Matti Bunzl, discusses the uses of the analogy. Klug argues that the question we need to ask is not ‘Are Islamophobia and antisemitism analogous?’ but ‘What is the analogy worth?’ The value of the analogy lies in the light it sheds on the social and political realities that confront us in the here and now. Does it illuminate more than it obscures? These things are a matter of judgement. Klug leans towards asserting an analogy between antisemitism in the past and Islamophobia in the present, within limits.     

The impact of the conflict in Gaza on antisemitism in Belgium

ABSTRACT

Taking Belgium as a case study, this article aims to assess the impact of a foreign conflict (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip) on intergroup relations in Europe. It asks whether intensification of the conflict in Gaza increases the number of antisemitic incidents in Belgium, and makes use of a database of complaints to the Centrum voor gelijkheid van kansen en voor racismebestrijding (Center of Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism), a federal anti-racism agency, and of an analysis of political claims-making in the written press. It is often stated that the conflict between Palestine and Israel leads to increased levels of antisemitism in Europe but rarely is this based on statistical analysis. The authors of this article undertook such an analysis and concluded that complaints about antisemitism in Belgium indeed showed a statistically significant increase during the Israeli military operation Cast Lead (December 2008–January 2009). Time series and intervention analysis on data spanning a period of one-and-a-half years, however, showed that this effect was not lasting and wore off after a couple of weeks. Apart from the temporary effect of the Gaza war on domestic intergroup relations, there seemed to be no systematic and continuous link between events in the Middle East and acts of antisemitism in Belgium.     

John Amery: the antisemitism of the 'perfect English gentleman'

Copsey explores the antisemitism of John Amery, the fascist renegade who along with William Joyce was hanged for treason after the Second World War. Like Joyce, Amery was a radio propagandist who made a series of war-time broadcasts from Berlin. Beyond this, he also tried to enlist British POWs to fight against the Soviets on the Eastern Front. Amery was the son of a senior British cabinet minister and yet, compared with Joyce, he has received little serious attention. What has been written about Amery tends to denude him of any ideological sophistication and presents him as a rather farcical figure, an irresponsible and foolhardy adventurer who was motivated by a simple fear of Communism. Copsey departs significantly from these standard representations and, using Amery's radio broadcasts and much-neglected propagandistic writings, shows the extent to which antisemitism became Amery's core obsession. Attentive to the ways in which an upper-class background influenced Amery's thinking, Copsey delineates the contours of his virulent antisemitism. What this article reveals is that, beneath the surface charm of the 'perfect English gentleman', Amery's hatred of Jews was deeply rooted in conspiracy theory and racial ideology. Despite all this, one cannot escape the curious fact that Amery's father was half-Jewish. On this point, Copsey examines whether Amery's passionate antisemitism was also psychologically driven.     

The collective Jew: Israel and the new antisemitism

For Theodor Herzl, Zionism, in the sense of a political movement to establish a sovereign Jewish state, offered the only workable solution to the problem of antisemitism. Some commentators today speak of a 'new anti-Semitism'. They claim, first, that there is a new wave or outbreak of hostility towards Jews that began with the start of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000 and is continuing at the present time. Second, and more fundamentally, the 'new anti-Semitism' is said to involve a new form or type of hostility towards Jews: hostility towards Israel. This is the claim under discussion in Klug's paper. The claim implies an equivalence between (a) the individual Jew in the old or classical version of antisemitism and (b) the state of Israel in the new or modern variety. Klug argues that this concept is confused and that the use to which it is put gives a distorted picture of the facts. He begins by recalling classical antisemitism, the kind that led to the persecution of European Jewry to which Herzl's Zionism was a reaction. On this basis, he briefly reformulates the question of whether and when hostility towards Israel is antisemitic. He then discusses the so-called new form of antisemitism, especially the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. He concludes by revisiting Herzl's vision in light of the situation today.     

Patterns within prejudice: antisemitism in the United States in the 1940s

ABSTRACT

Ziege compares two field studies on ethnocentrism, racism and antisemitism among American workers during the Second World War: ‘Antisemitism among American Labor’ (1945) by the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research (ISR) in exile and Wartime Shipyard (1947) by Katherine Archibald at the University of California at Berkeley. The former was a large-scale team project headed by Friedrich Pollock, Theodor W. Adorno and Paul Massing, who had at their disposal a large number of fieldworkers as well as the support of the trade unions. Archibald worked in complete isolation. Yet, in spite of this and major differences in design and theory, the European Marxists and the American liberal came to similar conclusions: hostility towards Jews at that time had to be analysed in connection with hostility towards other groups (including women, Blacks, labourers from the American South and other ethnic and social minorities) and within the context of the war and the Holocaust. While aware of the innovations achieved in research by means of public opinion polls, both studies were pioneering in their ambition to improve on quantitative research by means of non-quantitative procedures and qualitative-participatory observation. Ziege links these studies to a third study, The Authoritarian Personality (1950), conducted by the ISR, particularly Adorno, which poses the question of how relevant the ISR's critical theory was for the innovations achieved in studies of prejudice, when Archibald's study, which eschewed social theory, arrived at similar conclusions regarding antisemitism.     

Fighting with phantoms: a contribution to the debate on antisemitism in Europe

ABSTRACT

The point of departure of this paper is the polarization of ways of thinking about antisemitism in Europe, between those who see its recent resurgence and those that affirm its empirical marginalization and normative delegitimation. The historical question raised by this polarization of discourses is this: what has happened to the antisemitism that once haunted Europe? Both the current camps—‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’, as they are sometimes known, or, perhaps more accurately, new antisemitism theorists and their critics—have the strength to challenge celebratory views of European civilization. One camp sees the return to Europe of an old antisemitism in a new and mediated guise. The other sees the return to Europe of a rhetoric of antisemitism that is not only anachronistic but also delusory and deceptive. Overshadowing this debate is the memory of the Holocaust and the continuing presence of the Israel–Palestine conflict. The aim of this paper is to get inside these discourses and deconstruct the dualism that generates homogenizing and stigmatizing typifications on either side. The spirit of Hannah Arendt hovers over this work and the question of the meaning of her legacy runs through the text.