Schlagwort: Islamism

In these troubled days there is no inclination for a flowery introduction. No time for the flowers when 60,000 neo-Nazis march through the streets of Warsaw, flaunting Nazi salutes and promoting a “white” Poland while the minister of the interior applauds, when American neo-Nazis scream “Jews will not replace us” and a US President finds “fine people” among them, in a time when the first neo-Nazi party ever was elected to the postwar German Parliament, the Bundestag. All this in 2017.

Medias in res: Let’s be crystal clear – the pro-Israel camp in the US, Europe and Israel has a huge problem with right-wing extremism, racism, antisemitism and bigotry. Plain and simple.

During my time as a post-doctoral associate at Yale University in 2008-2009, I joined the chairperson of my center, the eminent scholar and dauntless campaigner for an academic response to resurgent antisemitism, Dr. Charles Small, founder of the Institute for the Global Study of Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), and another colleague for an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. There was an interesting debate going on with about “Radical Islam and the Nuclear Bomb.” Later, we had a vibrant discussion with Bret Stephens in a smaller circle. Now, Stephens works as a journalist for the New York Times and in a groundbreaking piece on November 16, 2017, he boldly critiqued the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA):

“The Zionist Organization of America feted Stephen K. Bannon at a gala dinner in New York on Sunday night. What a disgrace.

What a mistake, too. It’s a disgrace because no organization that purports to represent the interests of the Jewish people should ever embrace anyone who embraces anti-Semites. Jews have enemies enough.”

Stephens compares the Zionist Organization of America to the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, and he does so quite rightly:

“But just as there are anti-Zionist Jews, there are also anti-Semitic Zionists.”

While the Zionist Organization of America hosts and praises the far-right’s hero of the decade, Steve Bannon, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), headquartered in Los Angeles, even prayed publicly in a PR extravaganza for a new president who is sexist, racist and a follower of antisemitic conspiracy myths.

The Middle East Forum’s (MEF) president Daniel Pipes left the Republican Party (GOP) after 44 years, due to the nomination of Trump. His statement, explaining why he left the GOP is truly important and much to the point:

“The Republican Party nominated Donald Trump as its candidate for president of the United States – and I responded by ending my 44-year GOP membership. Here’s why I bailed, quit, and jumped ship: First, Trump’s boorish, selfish, puerile, and repulsive character, combined with his prideful ignorance, his off-the-cuff policy making, and his neo-fascistic tendencies make him the most divisive and scary of any serious presidential candidate in American history.”

Pipes stands for an anti-Islamist position, distinguishing between Islam as a religion and Islamism as an ideology. Islamism and jihad are main threats to the Western world, to America, and the Jewish state of Israel. Supporting moderate Muslims is also important to the MEF and Pipes.

While Jewish anti-Zionists are very troubling these days, including their support for BDS, pro-Zionist Jewish bodies are of course not attacked by think tanks such as the MEF. However, that same Middle East Forum now goes ahead and supports an extreme right-wing German online page called “Journalistenwatch,” which is a trumpet for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), who’s then chairwoman Frauke Petry was very happy after the election of Trump. It was a big win for the extreme Right.

On November 9, 2017, the anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, Journalistenwatch published an article by Max Erdinger (the article is signed by “ME”, which stands for Max Erdinger). It attacks Jews in Germany, namely former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (2006–2010) and former Vice-President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Charlotte Knobloch, for her stance against neo-Nazis in general and the extreme right-wing party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) in particular.

The article blames the Central Council of Jews in Germany for their policies of remembrance for the Shoah. Charlotte Knobloch (85 years old), a Holocaust survivor, also works with the World Jewish Congress (WJC) on issues related to Holocaust remembrance. Journalistenwatch writes that Knobloch “agitates” against those who fight immigration and non-Germans.

They blame Knobloch for doing so while in Paris jihadist murder was going on. The accusation that she was silent on Muslim antisemitism, while Knobloch is among the best known critics of Muslim antisemitism, is part of the fake news plague of our time of Trumpism and right-wing extremist conspiracy myths.

Readers will soon learn just how active Knobloch and the Central Council of Jews in Germany are in fighting Islamist antisemitism.

Journalistenwatch says in Erdinger’s piece on November 9, 2017 that there must be “calculation” behind the behavior of Jews such as Knobloch and the Central Council of Jews in Germany in order to succeed in urging Germans to commemorate the Holocaust. What calculation? A Jewish conspiracy? That is an antisemitic resentment, aimed at Jews who urge non-Jews to remember the crimes of their forefathers and foremothers.

Journalistenwatch goes on to bemoan that it is

“not enough to visit concentration camp memorial sites. Then, we also need to talk about communism and socialism, about Stalin, Mao, PolPot, South Africa and the North Korean leader”.

That kind of Holocaust distortion is well-known in the field of research of antisemitism. When asked about Auschwitz, one answers with Stalin, and that is a clear case of antisemitism –

Why? Because the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, while the Germans had built it and killed and gassed some 1.5 million people there, among them 1.2 million Jews. Stalin’s own crimes have nothing to do with Holocaust remembrance. Yet, this typical reaction by ordinary Germans and their allies is part of today’s Holocaust distortion or “double genocide” ideology. The infamous Prague Declaration and the critique by eminent scholar and defender of history, Professor Dovid Katz from Lithuania, is a case in point.

At the end of the November 9 article by Journalistenwatch we find:

“Therefore, Central Council of Jews in Germany: finally, become honest or shut up your impertinent mouth.”

Jews who urge Germans to visit concentration camps, have an “impertinent mouth”? If that is not antisemitism, what is?

Does the Middle East Forum (MEF) and Daniel Pipes truly want to support a group like Journalistenwatch that is defaming the leading Jewish, Zionist and anti-Islamist body in Germany, the Central Council of Jews in Germany? The Central Council of Jews in Germany is the best-known Jewish voice in Germany when it comes to defending the Jewish state of Israel, to remembering the Holocaust, to protecting German Jews, and combating Muslim antisemitism, and right-wing, left-wing as well as mainstream antisemitism in all its forms.

Journalistenwatch obviously fights against the Jewish community in Germany, which is represented by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Of course, they might find two or three extremist Jews, who share their resentment against the Central Council. We also have left-wing anti-Zionist Jews in Germany who like to defame the Zionist Central Council of Jews. There are diverse views, and highly fringe views, among all groups, but that is not the point.

For non-Jews in Germany, the Central Council of Jews in Germany is the core concept of “the enemy.” In 2002, extreme right-wing politician Jürgen Möllemann from the Libertarian Party (FDP) accused Ariel Sharon for killing children with tanks, and he attacked Michel Friedman for defending Israel and the Jews. At the time, Friedman was Vice President of the Central Council (May 2002), Möllemann had said on TV (Channel 2, ZDF), on May 16, 2002, that “Jews,” such as “Ariel Sharon or Michel Friedman,” “are responsible for growing antisemitism.” Today, Friedman, who is a public intellectual and journalist, is also anti-Nazi and anti-AfD, to be sure. Hatred of Friedman, and nowadays Charlotte Knobloch or today’s head of the Central Council, Josef Schuster, indicates hatred of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and this has not stopped, but only increased in the years to 2017. Journalistenwatch is a case in point.

Linguist and scholar of antisemitism, Professor Monika Schwarz-Friesel of the Technical University Berlin, in 2013 published a book, co-written with Jehuda Reinharz (former President of Brandeis University, from 1994–2010), dealing with 14,000 antisemitic letters to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and to the Israeli Embassy in Germany between 2002 and 2012. They underline that the Central Council of Jews is a core target for antisemites in Germany, including and most importantly, from the mainstream. Journalistenwatch clearly promotes that kind of hatred towards the Central Council.

The Central Council very often gives interviews or statements against different forms of antisemitism. On July 23, 2017, for example, Josef Schuster, gave an interview to the leading newspaper BILD, urging Muslim organizations to be more active against Muslim antisemitism. In an interview with RP online, May 15, 2017, Schuster argued against Muslim antisemitism as well as neo-Nazi antisemitism and he rejects the fantasy, that the AfD is pro-Jewish. On August 5, 2014, then head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, says the Jewish world in Germany feels “shock waves” after aggressive antisemitic rallies during the Gaza war, mainly from Islamists and Muslim antisemites.

After the jihadist attacks in Paris against the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in January 2015, in an interview with the Berlin based daily Tagesspiegel, January 24, 2015, Schuster argued vehemently against Muslim and Islamist antisemitism. On January 14, 2015, Charlotte Knobloch was quoted as saying she “fears Islamist terrorism”. After the jihadist massacre in Paris on November 13, 2015, where 130 civilians were killed by jihadists, including 89 people at a rock concert in the Bataclan club in downtown Paris, Knobloch, as head of the Israelite Community of Munich [Israelitische Kultusgemeinde München und Oberbayern], issued a statement the following day calling the outrage a “terror of a new dimension.” On November 18, 2017, Knobloch published an article in the mainstream Focus journal, urging Muslims and immigrants to stop preaching anti-Western ideology, including antisemitism and hatred of democracy and a Western way of life.

So much for the blatant untruths of Journalistenwatch that the Central Council of Jews in Germany and Charlotte Knobloch are unable or reluctant to deal with Muslim antisemitism or jihad. It’s just fake news, period.

Islamism, Muslim antisemitism and jihad are at the core of the work of the Central Council. But Journalistenwatch intentionally agitates against Jews such as Knobloch, because she does not share their extreme right-wing agenda.

Journalistenwatch can’t stand Charlotte Knobloch and the Central Council of Jews in Germany, because they stand for a pro-Israel agenda, for genuine Holocaust remembrance, and for a clear stance against neo-Nazism, right-wing extremism and the far-right AfD party.

This extremist agenda of the Far Right in Germany can be seen ever so clearly this month. In November alone, Journalistenwatch agitated against an anti-Nazi congress in Munich, to be held at the Munich chapter of the huge German Trade Union [Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB], which has more than six million members. At that left-wing Antifa congress, the AfD and the right-wing extremist Pegida-movement (Patriots against Islamiziation of the Occident) joined forces and some 50-60 activists protested outside the 600 Antifa people who were a part of the congress.

One of the Pegida-counter protesters, who also joined the AfD event against the Antifa, was a certain Karl-Heinz Statzberger, as the Bavarian chapter of the German first TV channel, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), reports. Statzberger is a convicted neo-Nazi. He wanted to blow up the Jewish Community Center of Munich and was convicted for that crime; his sentence was four years and four months in jail, alongside with his fellow neo-Nazis, including Martin Wiese (seven years) and others.

Today, according to the German daily tageszeitung (taz), Statzberg er supports the neo-Nazis of the “National Socialist Underground” [Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, NSU], who since May 2013 face trial in Munich. The NSU killed at least 10 people between 2000 and 2006, among them nine immigrants and one police officer.

So much for the hapless pretense by Journalistenwatch that the AfD is not connected to neo-Nazis. Journalistenwatch reported about the events against the Antifa congress in Munich without mentioning the participation of a convicted neo-Nazi among the Pegida and AfD “protesters”. Instead, Journalistenwatch posted a video online by a speaker at the Anti-Antifa event, an AfD MP in the Bundestag, Wolfgang Wiehle, who spoke there on Nov. 4, 2017.

German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel said prior to the election, that “real Nazis” will be standing at the speakers desk in Parliament, if the AfD is elected, and Minister of Justice Heiko Maas emphasized, that the party program of the AfD is “in part against the German constitution.”

AfD politician Beatrix von Storch claims that “Islam as such is a political ideology and not compatible with the German constitution.” That contradicts the distinction between Islam as a religion and Islamism as an ideology, made by Pipes and the MEF. The Huffington Post reported on May 27, 2013, about an event with Daniel Pipes about Islamism and Islam and the crucial distinction between Islam and Islamism. If all of Islam is Islamism, we would have lost. Israel would be lost, liberal Muslims couldn’t exist. But they do exist, as the event in Mississauga, a town near Toronto in Canada, where Pipes spoke, indicates. He was invited by a Muslim Committee against Antisemitism. The AfD rejects the core difference between Islam and Islamism.

In their party program of June 2016, the AfD rejects “minarets” in general, which violates freedom of religion and stands against the principles of the Middle East Forum, because, we assume, the MEF supports moderate Muslims, who might be among those who go into mosques with minarets.

In their program for the federal elections to the German Parliament, the Bundestag, on September 24, 2017, from April 2017, the AfD again rejected “minarets” as such. That, again, violates the German constitution and is set against the freedom of religion. Then, the AfD party program rejected also shechita (traditional Jewish slaughtering according to the laws of kosherness) in all its forms (see point 13.4 of their program). In particular they aim at “religious communities” and want to forbid shechita for them as well (nowadays, Germany allows shechtia for religious communities). Is the Middle East Forum against the freedom of religion?

Leading AfD politician Alexander Gauland said on September 2, 2017 at a meeting at the German nationalist symbol, the mountain Kyffhäuser in Thuringia, we should be “proud of two German armies in two World Wars” — including, in other words, the role of the German Wehrmacht in the Holocaust and the destruction of Poland, Belarus, the western Soviet Union and vast parts of Europe. Being proud of the German Army in the Second World War also includes pride for having killed American soldiers.

We are dealing here (most probably) with American donors to the Middle East Forum (MEF) that supported the page Journalistenwatch, which promotes and embraces the AfD, and Gauland is No.1 of the AfD in the German Bundestag, alongside with Alice Weidel. Giving money to an online news page that promotes and supports a political party, which is proud of German soldiers who participated in the Holocaust and also killed American and Allied soldiers who saved Europe from Hitler? Really? Journalistenwatch defends Gaulands pride in the German army of the Second World War!

Former head of the party Frauke Petry has reintroduced the Nazi word “völkisch” (“of the People” in a nationalist-racist conceptual framework) into the mainstream. It was a prime antisemitic term in Nazi Germany.

Other AfD politicians used Nazi slogans such as “Deutschland Erwache,” a slogan of the Storm Troopers (SA, Sturmabteilung), the SS (Schutzstaffel) and the Nazi Party (NSDAP). It is nowadays used on Twitter by Cologne AfD member Hendrik Rottmann, according to a report by the daily Die Welt. That slogan is illegal in Germany, as it resembles Nazi ideology (§86, 4 of the German Criminal Code, see report of the Saxonian chapter of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, report 2015, page 9). Journalistenwatch defends Rottmann.

Many AfD politicians share violent fantasies about hurting, hunting, torturing or killing left-wingers, the Antifa, Muslims, Jews, pro-abortion women etc. Journalistenwatch is promoting the AfD. Prior to his AfD membership Holger Arppe, an MP of the AfD in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, according to leading news site in Germany, Spiegel Online, wrote in a chat on March 17, 2012: “Perhaps we should kidnap [name’s] mother, brutally rape her on a daily basis by a chimp and then send [an acquaintance] a finger, day by day.”

Journalistenwatch trivializes the sick and violent fantasies of AfD-Arppe and equate this politician to Erdogan’s hostage in jail, German journalist Deniz Yücel, and his editor-in-chief of the daily Die Welt, Ulf Poschardt. For Journalistenwatch neo-Nazi-style Arppe, anti-Islamist Yücel, who is also critical of German nationalism, and his ally Poschardt are equally horrible. This kind of comparison is nothing but an insidious trivialization of violent fantasies of the Alternative for Germany’s personal (Arppe) and their loudspeakers (Journalistenwatch).

AfD MP in the Bundestag, Markus Frohnmaier, is working at a “German Centre for Eurasian Studies.” He is collaborating with right-wing extremist Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor of the journal “Zuerst.” Ochsenreiter wrote an anti-Israel book about “The Power of the Zionist lobby in Germany”, that was translated into Farsi with help of the Iranian Ministry of Culture, according to an article by exile Iranian, anti-Islamist and pro-Israel activist Kazem Moussavi. Frohnmaier is a spokesperson for AfD MP Alice Weidel, number one of the party in Parliament, together with Alexander Gauland. Journalistenwatch promotes Frohnmaier.

Journalist Esther Scheiner from Switzerland, who made aliyah to Israel several years ago, urges the Middle East Forum (MEF) to immediately stop supporting antisemitic and extreme right-wing groups such as “Journalistenwatch”, as she writes on a German language Israeli news site.

In 2015, for the first time, a German minister, Heiko Maas, Minister of Justice, spoke at the Israeli government sponsored Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism. Maas is a leading voice against neo-Nazism, right-wing extremism as well as the “Alternative for Germany (AfD).”

Support for Israel must be right in the mainstream, not a partisan project of neo-Nazis, who want a Jew-free Germany (and America).

American NGOs and think tanks, such as the Middle East Forum (MEF), might have reasonable concern about the failure of scholarship and activism when it comes to Israel and jihad, as the pro-Edward Said post-colonial mainstream would seem to indicate. Therefore, support for serious anti-Islamist scholarship and activism, as well as support for Zionist scholarship and activism is essential – but not support for those, who join Germany’s far-right antisemitic establishment in defaming German Jews like Charlotte Knobloch or the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

If NGOs or think tanks support such extreme right-wing groups, they do not just harm Israel and Jews in Germany, they even work against their own commitment to protect American values and interests. Since when has it been an American interest to support German neo-Nazi style agitators who endorse a party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is “proud of German soldiers in two World Wars,” including the Wehrmacht in the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the killing of American soldiers? Since when do donors or members of boards of governors support such German neo-Nazi type groups?

They would do better to listen to Bret Stephens in the New York Times:

“If Israel is going to retain mainstream political support, it cannot allow itself to become the pet cause of right-wing bigots and conspiracy theorists. That requires putting serious distance between Bannon and every pro-Israel organization, to say nothing of the Israeli government itself, by refusing to provide a platform for him and his ilk. Personal and national reputations alike always depend on the company one keeps. Not every would-be supporter deserves consideration as a friend.”

The very same far-right people in the pro-Israel camp also should listen to historian Martin Kramer from the Shalem College in Israel: in an article in Mosaic Magazine, November 6, 2017, he emphasizes the pro-Zionist role of Stalin, Gromyko and other Soviet politicians and diplomats in the years 1947–1949. Without Gromyko, Israel might not have had a diplomatic chance, as US President Truman was not at all as Zionist as many American Jews still like to believe. Stalin was much more pro-Israel at that time, and Stalin was the one who defeated the Germans and who liberated Auschwitz. Without Czech weaponry and Soviet help, Israel would probably not have survived the War of Independence.

Why remember that? Because bipartisanship is at the core of Zionism. Jews and Zionists depended on capitalists and communists to make Israel happen. In Germany, many of the often-defamed Antifa are anti-Nazi and pro-Israel, while the self-declared pro-Israel far right is antisemitic.

Zionists and Jews do not depend on neo-Nazis to defend them, to be sure.

At the end of the day, neo-Nazis want to kill the Jews. However, too many well-meaning pro-Israel Jews, many quiet naive, still don’t get it.

Today, many people in the pro-Israel camp defame Zionist left-wingers and defame every kind of reasonable criticism of Israeli policies or poor pro-Israel advocacy in Germany or other countries. Many simply deny that there are troubling tendencies in Israeli political culture. We do not ignore Arab, Palestinian and Islamist antisemitism, of course. The Arab rejection of the UN partition plan from November 1947 was a historical mistake. It is not the one and only problem, though. The occupation after 1967 is a problem, too, no doubt about this. Just ask David Ben-Gurion.

Some rightwing Zionists in countries such as Germany and America defame Israeli liberals while lionizing pro-fascists such as Bannon. Some would like to forget that President Trump did not mention Jews in his special message for Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2017, an omission that is not “accidental” in the current state of discourse.

Bret Stephens continues in the New York Times:

“The second reason is that political support for Israel is too important to tarnish through association with the likes of Bannon or European kindred spirits such as Holland’s Geert Wilders or Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Israel is not a latter-day Crusader kingdom holding out against a 21st-century Mahometan horde. It is a small democracy trying to uphold a set of liberal values against autocrats and religious fanatics sworn to its destruction. Zionists love Israel because of the way in which it brings together the values of individual freedom and Jewish civilization, not because of some blood and soil nationalism.“

Therefore, we strongly urge the Middle East Forum (MEF) to stop supporting extreme right-wing groups such as “Journalistenwatch” in Germany, and all other groups that harm the Jewish state of Israel, defame left-of-center Zionism, or Jewish bodies such as the Central Council of Jews in Germany. They must stop supporting groups that agitate against all immigrants and Muslims and reject any distinction between Islam and Islamism, reject Holocaust remembrance and praise the German (or Lithuanian or Hungarian, or Ukrainian etc.) armies and units who were involved in perpetrating the Holocaust.

It is all common sense. We need to step back and soberly assess the unique and disturbing combinations and juxtapositions of 2017.

An earlier, much shorter version of this article was published in The Times of Israel (TOI) blogs on November 18, 2017. The German online news blog “Journalistenwatch” complained and told TOI that their author McMahon was not quoted correctly from an October 2017 article. In fact, I did not at all refer to that article. I referred rather to an article from November 9, 2017, as indicated in the text. In any event, TOI deleted my article and sent it back (without asking me if I had quoted that October 2017 article, which I had not). Falsification of fact to undermine honest discourse is alas a hallmark of “Journalistenwatch” and hopefully major international Jewish journals and portals will stand their ground firmly.

The author, Clemens Heni, Ph.D., wrote a M.A. thesis in 1999 (at Bremen University) about the relationship of Germany, antisemitism and the Holocaust, comparing Daniel J. Goldhagen’s (Harvard) study “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” (1996) to Critical Theory’s masterpiece “Dialectic of Enlightenment” by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (1944/47); in January 2001 (during the second Intifada), he was a co-author of a brochure about left-wing anti-Zionism in Germany, based on the antisemitic hijacking by left-wing Germans of the Revolutionäre Zellen (RZ) and Palestinians of an airplane in June/July 1976 to Entebbe (Uganda), where Benjamin Netanyahu’s elder brother Yoni was killed; in 2006 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Innsbruck (Austria, “summa cum laude”) with a study (509 pages) about political culture and the New Right in German political mainstream from 1970–2005; in 2008/09 he was a Post-Doc Associate at Yale University (Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, YIISA), doing a study about German antisemitism, including the Nazi time and post-Holocaust antisemitism (332 pages); in 2011 he published a study about Islamic Studies and Antisemitism in Germany after 9/11 (410 pages, in German, supported by the Middle East Forum, MEF); in 2013 he published his study “Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism” (648 pages; review in the Middle East Quarterly by the MEF in 2017); in 2014 he did a book (177 pages, in German) about “Critical Theory and Israel. Max Horkheimer and Judith Butler, Judaism, binationalism and Zionism” (lecture at ISGAP in April 2014); 2017 he published a collection of essays (in German, 262 pages) about German nationalism, racism and antisemitism, entitled “An Alternative towards Germany” (also as an E-Book); Heni is director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), founded in 2011; since 2016 BICSA organizes the Robert S. Wistrich (1945–2015) Memorial lectures (on May 19); 2011 BICSA published Wistrich’s brochure “Muslim Antisemitism” (American Jewish Committee, 2002) in a German translation, 2015 BICSA published a second edition of Wistrich’s groundbreaking “Hitler’s Apocalypse” from 1985, including his analysis of the Islamist threat; 2017, BICSA translated (Clemens Heni and Michael Kreutz, 456 pages) the book “The Israeli Nation-State,” co-edited by Fania Oz-Salzberger and Yedidia Z. Stern, into German; Since May 2016, Heni is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (JCA) by Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA.

Does Germany need just another Islamist, anti-Israel and antisemitic infusion by John L. Esposito?

von admin

am Januar 7, 2016

in Allgemein

By Clemens Heni

First published on CampusWatch

75 year old John L. Esposito, Georgetown University’s Director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., will be the keynote speaker of a big conference in Germany, Jan 14–16, 2016, about „anti-Muslim racism and hostility towards Islam in Germany and Europe.“

The conference will take place at the University of Osnabrück in the North-West of Germany, over forty speakers are invited to speak. The event is organized by the “Center for Islamic Theology,” and supported by the German Federal Government and its Ministry of Education and Research, Lower Saxony’s Ministry for Research and Culture, and the Post Graduate Program Islamic Theology.

This Center for Islamic Theology is headed by Bülent Ucar, who is the main organizer of the event alongside with his co-worker, Nina Mühe, an anthropologist and Islamic studies scholar known for her attack on Berlin’s Anti-Hijab Law in classroom. Mühe is a former fellow at a German branch of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Obviously, attacks like the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher supermarket massacre in Paris in January 2015 are a “reason” for many academics in the humanities and social sciences to focus on an alleged “anti-Muslim racism‟ and not on Jihad, Islamism, Muslim anti-Semitism and Muslim terrorists. This is mainstream in Europe and the Western world ever since 9/11. We are facing in part a racist and nationalist climate in Germany, indeed. But this has nothing to do with the rejection of most academics in the field of Islamic Studies to deal, let alone fight Islamism in all its forms. The true antifascism of the 21^st century deals with both the neo-Nazi and Islamist threats.

In his book “Who Speaks for Islam?” (2007, together with Dalia Mogahed), Esposito used the equivalence of anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia.” In his distorted view, Jews aren’t but a “religion” and just one of two “religions with Semitic origins.” In fact, hatred of Jews is a worldwide ideology, while “Islamophobia” is rather an invention by some specific circles, namely Iran and Islamist organizations and their followers.

In “Who Speaks for Islam,” the authors defame Islamic Studies scholar Daniel Pipes of being “anti-Muslim,” intentionally distorting his well-known and long-time distinction between Islam as religion and Islamism as an ideology, or between moderate and radical Muslims. More recently, Esposito also started to defame Egypts’s anti-Muslim-Brotherhood stance and started his „Brigde Initiative,“ dedicated to the analysis of „Islamophobia“ and the defamation of all critics of jihad and Islamism.

Esposito is fascinated by the “Iranian Revolution” from 1979, as can be seen in his edited volume “The Iranian Revolution. Its Global Impact” (1990) and his chapter “The Iranian Revolution. A Ten-Year Perspective,” where he also emphasized the outreach of Iranian style Islamism to Muslims outside Iran. In 2010, he co-edited the volume “Islam and Peacebuilding. Gülen Movements Initiates,” where he promotes the Islamist approach of Fethullah Gülen and frames him as a kind of Islamic version of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Both share a “similar belief in mutual understanding, dialogue and optimism,” murmurs Esposito.

This “optimism” (a nice word for the spread of Islamism, no?) can also be seen in the work of leading Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, another protagonist of Esposito. In his book “The Future of Islam” (2010), the Saudi (Prince Alwaleed) funded scholar says, al-Qaradawi “claims that everything is acceptable (halal) unless proven forbidden (haram).” This makes him a moderate according to Esposito and his German colleagues Gudrun Krämer and Bettina Gräf. Gräf co-edited a book, “The Global Mufti,” with pieces by another Georgetown academic, Barbara Freyer-Stowasser (1935–2012), about “gender equality” in a fatwa about female suiciding bombing against Israel by al-Qaradawi.

In “The Future of Islam,” Esposito also invokes an equivalence between Islamic and Western “fundamentalism,” taking Ronald Reagan and the Iranian Revolution as examples, he also compares George W. Bush to Osama Bin Laden. This cultural relativist approach is well known. But jihad and the rule of religion (Islamism) is not the same as whatever democratic government in the US, Britain or Germany and France etc. does. Mustafa Ceric, former Grand Mufti of Sarajevo, is another Islamist portrayed as kosher, by Esposito. Ceric once went to the Auschwitz Memorial site, not to remember the Shoah but rather to invoke the Muslims-are-the-new-Jews-analogy. Ceric has also been criticized for his ties to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, among other Islamist aspects of his approach.

Finally, Esposito refers to German security expert and former head (1996–2000) of the “Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution,” Peter Frisch. In his 2010 book (finished in 2009), Esposito writes about Frisch as if he was head of that important institution in 2009, which is a minor problem compared to the lie, the Georgetown scholar spreads about Frisch. Esposito writes: “In Germany, Peter Frisch, head of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution), has repeatedly asserted, ‘Muslims want to rule the world.’” He does not quote form a single article by Frisch. In 2001, after 9/11, Frisch argued against the defamation of all Muslims. In 1997, Frisch argued against the rise of Islamism and the reluctance in Germany to even deal with that problem. To my knowledge, he never said that all Muslims want to rule the world. This reproach is rather a lie, invented by Esposito – who runs short to substantiate his claim. But Esposito is obviously not interested in research and quotes.

August 5, 2014, during the latest Gaza War, John L. Esposito tweeted the following: “Elie Wiesel plays the Holocaust trump card in Gaza” and links to an antisemitic homepage – “Mondoweiss.” Wiesel had said, that Jews stopped using children as sacrifices some 3500 years ago, Hamas should stop it now, too. Truly a correct statement, taken the fact that Hamas is verifiably known for abusing children and others as human shields. For Esposito this was just another reason to defame Israel and make fun of the Shoah and a Holocaust survivor.

Esposito compares Israel to Nazis, uses even more antisemitic language, promotes Islamists as possible allies and defames German officials, who headed federal offices in the fight against Jihad and Islamism.

Are these enough reasons for the Jewish Museum Berlin’s Yasemin Shooman, the mainstream weekly “Die Zeit” and its author Yassin Musharbash, the left-green-wing daily “taz” and its Daniel Bax, scholars like Andreas Zick from Bielefeld University, who even sits on Board of the US based “Journal for the Study of Antisemitism” (JSA), or historian Wolfgang Benz, former head of the “Center for Research on Antisemitism” at Technical University Berlin, dozens of other scholars, activists and authors, the Government of Lower Saxony and the German Federal Government to support and join such an event?

Dr. Clemens Heni is a political scientist, the author of five books, including “Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism” (Berlin 2013, 648 pages), “Schadenfreude. Islamic Studies and Antisemitism in Germany after 9/11” (2011, in German, 410 pages) and the director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), www.bicsa.org

A response to Bernard-Henri Lévy

von admin

am November 22, 2015

in Allgemein

By Leslie S. Lebl, Connecticut, USA

On November 16, 2015, French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy published a commentary in which he urges the West to acknowledge that it is at war and must call things by their right names. He subsequently argues that we must battle Islamic jihad while understanding the difference between those Muslims who worship death and those who support a peaceful, tolerant form of Islam.

It is difficult to quarrel with this concept, especially when one remembers that by far the largest number of people who have died fighting various jihadist groups have been Muslims. But, as in so many other cases, “the devil is in the detail.” Lévy’s argument suffers by failing to acknowledge or understand some of the “details.”

Distinguishing ‘moderate’ from ‘radical’ Muslims sounds easy, until you try it. For example, Lévy includes former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović among the moderates. Yet Izetbegović’s famous Islamic Declaration (1970) presents a vision of Islamic triumph completely consistent with the Islamist goal of imposing traditional Islamic law, or sharia, in Western countries. It argues that Muslims living in a non-Muslim majority country should play by the rules of that country—until they are strong enough to overthrow the system and install an Islamic government. The Declaration has been dismissed as a youthful folly, yet Izetbegović distributed it to Bosniac troops during the 1990s war, suggesting that it still reflected his thinking – as did other actions promoting Islamism and jihad taken while he was in office.[i]

A number of people, including Adolf Hitler, perceived similarities between Islam and Nazism, but it does not help to charge that Nazism is a form of Islamism, as does Lévy while citing French poet, dramatist and diplomat Paul Claudel, a well known Catholic at the time. This trivializes Nazism as just another form of Islamism. From a historical perspective, this is an extremely difficult argument to make, in view of all the other sources of Nazism much closer to home. Nor does it help promote understanding in today’s world, where the word “fascism” is tossed about with abandon. Applying it to the terrorist groups attacking the West does little to focus our thinking. Nor does Levy’s explanation address the much more pressing and painful fact that Islamism has, since World War II, poisoned the Muslim world with its genocidal hatred of Jews, the Jewish state of Israel and the Western way of life. Today, Arabic translations of Mein Kampf and Protocols of the Elders of Zion are available in just about any bookstore, and stories like those told by Robert Satloff of Arabs saving Jews during World War II appear hopelessly remote.[ii] Yes, Arabs in the Middle East can argue that they had nothing to do with the Holocaust, but they cannot simultaneously proclaim their admiration for Nazism while claiming moral superiority.

Lévy is also wrong when he states that the “real source of this flood of horror” is the Islamic State. Islamic State may have carried out the latest attacks, and be our most significant threat right now, but it is only following in the well-established tradition of other groups like Al Qaeda and the Algerian GIS. Nor is it the bloodiest or most murderous group today: that honor belongs rather to Boko Haram.

The problem is not the group but the ideology, which all these terrorist organizations share with the so-called “nonviolent” Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, whom Lévy seems to ignore. All of them want to establish a global Caliphate under sharia, but the “nonviolent” groups believe it is easier and more efficacious to do so without violence. Former U.S. President George W. Bush was indeed wrong to declare a “War on Terror” when what threatens the West is not a tactic but an ideology. Banning hate preachers is fine but will achieve little as long as groups like the Brotherhood, posing as friends of Western democracy, laws and values, in fact act as a Fifth Column (as did Nazi groups, as Lévy notes). Recent events in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere have revealed the Brotherhood’s true face, but Lévy seems to ignore these revelations. Unfortunately, however, the Brotherhood’s presence throughout Western Muslim communities, and its ability to poison traditional Islam, make the problem of isolating our true enemies much more difficult than Lévy imagines.

[i] For more details, see Leslie S. Lebl, Islamism and Security in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Strategic Studies Institute, May 2014, pp. 20–26.

[ii] Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands (New York: Public Affairs, 2006).

Leslie S. Lebl, a former US diplomat, is an independent scholar writing on Islamism in Europe. She is currently working on a book about the EU, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation

Huge event at Mount Scopus honors leading researcher on antisemitism

von admin

am Juni 3, 2014

in Allgemein

By Dr. Clemens Heni, Director, The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

25–28 May, 2014, Israel’s biggest and one of the biggest conferences world-wide ever on the topic of antisemitism was held at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, on the occasion of the retirement of historian Robert Solomon Wistrich. The International Conference was entitled “Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, Delegitimizing Israel.”

(View from the Maiersdorf Faculty Club over Jerusalem*)

The location was beautifully chosen. From the terrace of the Maiersdorf Faculty Club, where the event was held, one has a stunning view over Jerusalem. On the other side of Mount Scopus, just a five minute walk away at the gorgeous Amphitheatre, one looks out over the Judean Mountains and desert up to the Dead Sea and Jordan.

(Hebrew University, Campus, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem*)

Robert Wistrich is the author of 17 books and the editor of 12. His work has been translated in many languages. He published over 350 articles between 1973 and 2011 – you find a complete list of his writings from 1973 through 2011 in the German edition of his Muslim Antisemitism, published in 2011 by Berlin based publishing house Edition Critic.

(Prof. Robert S. Wistrich’s German edition of his bestseller brochure from 2002 with the American Jewish Committee on Muslim Antisemitism, published in December 2011 with Berlin based publishing house Edition Critic)

I know of no other scholar who has such a record and continued reflection on antisemitism, the “longest hatred” and “lethal obsession,” as Robert frames it very precisely. His first article was published in 1973 about “Karl Marx, German Socialists and the Jewish Question.”

(Amphitheatre, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus)

Wistrich is known for “stepping back” and looking at the big picture, as he emphasized during his long talk at the conference. He focused on Jewish anti-Zionism, starting with famous Austrian literary critic Karl Kraus. The outstanding nature of Robert’s scholarship became again obvious during his presentation: like almost no one else he is able to jump from 19^th century Jewish anti-Zionism and Reform Judaism to Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky’s 21^st century Jewish anti-Zionism. He is not drawing direct lines and is very well aware of the differences between Hannah Arendt and Judith Butler, for example. The latter needs the German-Jewish thinker to bolster her own anti-Zionism. Arendt’s criticism of the nation-state, though, is indeed dangerous when it comes to the Jewish state. Still, this might differ from the very outspoken hatred of Zionism known from many Jewish-Austrian thinkers through the 1930s and that of the Butlers, Chomskys or even Finkelsteins of our time.

(Prof. Robert S. Wistrich during his presentation at the SICSA conference, Tuesday, 27 May, 2014)

Robert Wistrich dedicated several of his books to his mother Sabina. She made aliyah age 100 in 2010. When asked at Ben-Gurion Airport if she was so fascinated about Zionism to make aliyah at that age, she said: “No, I just want to see the book of my son. That is the reason I came to Israel.” She was thinking of her son’s comprehensive history of antisemitism, A Lethal Obsession. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, a 1184-page volume, published that year.

Robert Wistrich’s research can be put in five categories:

1) The Left and Antisemitism

2) Jewish History

3) Hitler, National Socialism and the Holocaust/Shoah

4) Theories and the analysis of antisemitism and anti-Zionism

5) Muslim antisemitism

Contrary to many, Robert sees Friedrich Nietzsche in the most positive sense of the word as the most anti-German philosopher ever. Nietzsche was not a forerunner of fascism and Nazism. Instead, he embraced the Old Testament and the Jewish “naiveté of the strong heart.” One of the best talks at the huge conference was given by Margaret Brearley (not only because of her wonderful British accent). She dealt with German anti-Jewish esoteric and occult or paganist thinking from Friedrich Schiller through German romanticism and Schopenhauer.

Robert Wistrich was born in April 1945 in Kazakhstan. His father, Jacob Wistreich, a former member of Hashomer Hatzair, was displaced by Stalin (I do intentionally not use the word „deported“ as this means in German to be deported to a Holocaust site). This displacement by Stalin saved his life. Robert Wistrich lost half of his family in the Shoah.

Robert grew up in England, learning Polish, French, then English, German and Hebrew. He also knows or can read and listen to several other languages, including Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Dutch, and Arabic. His focus on Jewish history in Habsburg Austria is of tremendous importance. For example, he analyzed in his 1985 study Hitler’s Apocalypse the antisemitism of Hitler, including the time before 1914. Hitler lived in Vienna from 1907 until 1913. I mentioned this during my presentation at the conference, as we are increasingly facing scholars and authors who distort Hitler’s antisemitism. Take Brendan Simms from Cambridge, England, as an example. He argued in 2014 in an article for International Affairs that the First World War made Hitler an anti-English soldier. Only later did he become antisemitic, according to Simms. The same holds for American journalist Jonah Goldberg (National Review Online) who claims that Hitler was a leftist and “socialist” as he writes in his truly troubling and barely scholarly book Liberal Fascism. I emphasized that the notion that Hitler was left is utterly wrong. For example, “German Socialism,” as we call it, was based on private property and capitalism. The core of this “German Socialism” was hatred of Jews and the creation of the “people’s community” or Volksgemeinschaft in German. Hitler was an antisemite and the most far right politician ever. He was not an anticapitalist and not a “man of the left.”

At least in passing I could mention that there were Marxist (and later post-Marxist) pro-Israel scholars. Take Leo Löwenthal, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno and Critical Theory as an example. Most pro-Israel scholars and authors in America, the UK, South Africa, Australia and Israel think a priori that Critical Theory is anti-Zionist. That is not the case. But one has to be able to read German to discover the truth behind the origins of Critical Theory, founded in 1937 by Max Horkheimer. He had to struggle with Zionism, but supported Israel. He was aware of the Nasserist and Egyptian threat in the 1950s, for example. I have just published a comprehensive study on the topic of Critical Theory and Israel.

Gershom Scholem, one of the most famous Israeli and Hebrew University professors ever, became a political Zionist by the mid 1930s, turning his back on the “Brit Shalom” period of 1925–1933, based on binationalism and rather cultural Zionism. In my talk, I focused on scholars like Christian Wiese from Frankfurt University who embraces the binational ideology of Hans Kohn. In 2006, Wiese went so far as to quote from one of the most absurd anti-Zionist books so far, Jacqueline Rose’s Question of Zion from 2005. In that book, Rose wrote that Hitler was perhaps inspired to write Mein Kampf and Theodor Herzl to write Der Judenstaat at the very same concert of Wagner music. The problem is that Herzl finished his manuscript in May 1895. Hitler was born in 1889 and was never in France until 1940 when he conquered the country with the German Wehrmacht. Wiese quoted from the very chapter (pages 58–107) in Rose’s book where this antisemitic fantasy of the Hitler/Herzl association by the same taste in music appeared. Finally, I analyzed the scholarly shortcomings of Yale historian Timothy Snyder in his study Bloodlands, which distorts Auschwitz and the Shoah. I also emphasized his close relationship with anti-Zionist Tony Judt. Likewise I criticized Yale’s Seyla Benhabib and her defamation of Israel in 2010. Then, I mentioned troubling tropes in contemporary scholarship in postcolonial studies that distort the history of the Shoah.

At the conference at SICSA there were almost 40 speakers and presentations from four continents (America, Europe, Africa, Asia). Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles analyzed the shocking new wave of anti-circumcision and anti-kosher-slaughtering discourse all over Europe, including Germany. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin dealt with the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement in California at the huge University of California (state sponsored) educational system. New York’s Ben Cohen with his deep “Alabama” English accent (that remark was funny, as his accent obviously is British) focused on some core features of today’s antisemitism. He distinguishes between historical German “bierkeller” antisemitism and today’s “bistro” antisemitism. Rude agitation and the defamation of Jews as Jews were replaced in many western societies by the more sophisticated version of 21^st century anti-Zionist antisemitism. Stephen Norwood showed the overlapping of left-wing and right-wing antisemitism in the United States. He also emphasized that there was significant support in the American Catholic mainstream and the Church during the 1930s and World War II for far-right Jew-hatred like that of Catholic priest Charles Coughlin.

A very few presentations, though, gave several people pause. One speaker said that there is “no Palestinian people” – who, then, should acknowledge the Jewish state, one must ask. Another speaker went so far as to say that the “West Bank is temporarily occupied by the Palestinians.” This was portrayed as supposedly pro-Israel. In fact, it is damaging the Israeli society from within the pro-Israel camp. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year said that a future Palestinian state in the territories should think about including Jewish citizens. In fact, since 1948, Israel has some 20% Arab and Muslim citizens as well. Why is everybody a priori thinking of a Palestinian state with no Jews? Today, some 20% Jews are living in parts of the disputed territories. Daniel Pipes wrote about Netanyahu’s “master stroke.” Although I was not able to attend all presentations I did not hear people discussing that idea. This master stroke by Netanyahu includes the acceptance of Jews living in Judea and Samaria and in an Arab state. That would be a signal to the entire Arab and Muslim worlds that Jews are accepted as citizens and are not the “sons of pigs and apes” as the antisemitic discourse in parts of the Arab world always suggests.

Another speaker at the conference said that Norwegian killer Breivik is a criminal, “but” he killed “socialist anti-Zionists and possible future anti-Zionists.” This was shocking not just to me and I left the room soon after.

Another speaker stressed that EUrope is already “Islamized” which was a rather racist comment and had nothing to do with a specific criticism of Islamism, Jihad and Muslim antisemitism. One speaker said that Islam as such is the reason for antisemitism and every single (believing) Muslim will become an antisemite sooner or later. Jihadists and Islamists are antisemites today, other Muslims will become antisemitic later. This is of course not the case. Take groups like British Muslims for Israel as an example, among many other pro-Israel Muslims. They are a tiny and oppressed minority in the Muslim community, but they exist. Or look at people like Irshad Manji, known for her modern translation of the Quran. She is pro-Western, pro-Israel and anti-Islamist. The ontologization of Muslims as “the enemy” sooner or later has of course to be rejected.

In addition, I would state: In May 2014, American anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller and her allies started an ad campaign in New York City. They show the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, talking to Hitler in November 1941. It is tremendously important to focus on that alliance, indeed. But what does the ad say? On the right side of that big picture one can read “Islamic Jew-hatred: It’s in the Quran”:

This reminds me, sarcastically, of leading Sunni Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He said in January 2009 on TV that Allah installed Hitler to “punish the Jews.” This Holocaust affirmation is unbelievable. Geller, who is of course pro-Israel and against antisemitism and Jihad, now insinuates that not just the Mufti but also Hitler was inspired by the Quran. The Quran and Islamic Jew-hatred was first and then came Hitler. This is also distorting the history of Islamism as a modern phenomenon in the Muslim world. To claim that today’s Islamist antisemitism is in the Quran – and promoting this ideology with a picture of Hitler – denies or obfuscates the very history of Islamism.

In addition, it also obfuscates the history of Austrian and German modern antisemitism that lead to the Shoah. Islamism is a very modern ideology, as historian and Islamic studies scholar, president of the Middle East Forum (MEF) in Philadelphia, Daniel Pipes, tirelessly emphasizes. Take Hassan al-Banna’s founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt as a kind of starting point for 20^th century modern Islamism as a mass movement. Old Islamic Jew-hatred rather resembled Christian Jew-hatred, and is distinct from German eliminationist antisemitism during Nazi Germany and the Shoah. Pipes is also always emphasizing the historical and political difference between Islam and Islamism, take 1798 as a starting point for the demise of the Muslim world and the emergence of Islamist ideology.

Holocaust remembrance is used as a tool to fight the Jewish state. This was a core message of one the most fascinating greeting remarks at the gala dinner at the first evening of the conference by Canadian scholar in law and politician, Irvin Cotler. He is known worldwide for his fight against antisemitism and he is using law to fight Jew-hatred like the incitement to genocide by Iran. Cotler focused on the supposedly well-meaning and for sure more sophisticated anti-Zionist activists of today. They say that the Holocaust was a horrible crime, like South-African apartheid. At this point I ignore the Holocaust distorting aspects of that very comparison or equation, by the way. For liberals in particular Israel has become in some respects the new “Apartheid State” or even “Nazi State.” And here is what Irvin Cotler emphasized: IF Israel is an apartheid state or even a Nazi state people have to fight it. The terms apartheid state and Nazi state are not just meant to defame the entire project of a Jewish state. It calls liberals, leftists and all other people of “good will” to arms, according to Cotler. Anti-Zionist antisemitism is seen by those activists as a form of “anti-fascism.” There is a moral “necessity” to be anti-fascist and therefore today “anti-Israel,” as those people insinuate. Cotler’s vibrant and impressive remarks were a model for the entire conference. People truly feel good to fight Israel as this is seen in their delusional worldview as an act of “anti-fascism.” Cotler grasped and criticized that ideology splendidly.

British legal scholar Lesley Klaff showed the mainstreaming of “Holocaust inversion” in the UK, using the example of the Liberal Democratic Party’s MP David Ward. Since 2010, the Liberal Democratic Party is a coalition partner of the British government under the Conservative Party’s leadership of Prime Minister David Cameron.

Political scientist Matthias Küntzel from Hamburg analyzed the failure of the international community to deal with the antisemitism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime. Meir Litvak from Tel Aviv University also dealt with Iranian anti-Zionist antisemitism. However, Litvak also said that Iran is much more a rational country and not driven by Islamist messianism, as some might think. Esther Webman focused on aspects of the Arab antisemitic discourse, including Holocaust denial. Milton Shain from Cape Town, South Africa, focused on left-wing and Muslim anti-Zionist activism in the former apartheid state.

Historian Laurence Weinbaum from the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Jerusalem spoke about Polish antisemitism in recent decades and the failure of Poland to deal with its involvement in the Shoah and with its own Jew-hatred before and after 1945. At the end of the day, though, the glass of water is rather “half full” and not “half empty,” Weinbaum said, given the fact that Poland is the first country of the former East Bloc that tries to deal emphatically with antisemitism and its own history, thanks in particular to the scholarship of Jan Tomasz Gross. Sarah Fainberg and Samuel Barnai dealt with Russian antisemitism and anti-Zionism, like far-right groups that embrace Nazi antisemitism and the “8. SS Division Florian Geyer” which has supporters among hardcore antisemitic (and anti-Western) groups in today’s Russia, as Barnai showed in his vibrant talk. Fainberg underlined that it is very difficult to take sides in the current crisis in Ukraine. For sure Russia has to be criticized for its policies, but Ukraine is not just a victim: the conflict is much more troubling. Particularly when it comes to antisemitism, this becomes obvious. In addition one could say: take Stepan Bandera statues and pro-OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) propaganda during the uprising this year at the Maidan and in many parts of Ukraine as examples. Russian antisemitism and anti-Western ideology is also very troubling and not every Russian criticism of “fascist” tendencies and antisemitism in Ukraine is necessarily honest in nature, given similar tendencies in Russia which are not condemned by the Kremlin.

French philosopher Shmuel Trigano gave yet another proof of his deep insights in contemporary antisemitic tropes in philosophy, including post-modernism. Trigano frames contemporary antisemitism as disguised as “philosemitism,” which is in fact true. Remember Cotler’s focus on Holocaust remembrance and its abuse by anti-Zionists. Historian Dina Porat underlined the importance of the EUMC working definition of antisemitism. She knows that this was never a legal document. However, it is important, according to Porat, to have a document that states, for example, that comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany are not criticism of Israel but antisemitism.

One of the highlights of the conference was for sure the talk by Indiana Professor emeritus in Jewish Studies, Alvin Rosenfeld. He dealt with the reactions – today we would say “shitstorm” – on his world-famous brochure “Progressive” Jewish Thought and the new antisemitism from 2006, published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). In his monograph Rosenfeld analyzed Jewish anti-Zionist thought, including Jacqueline Rose, Michael Neumann and Tony Judt. The New York Times set the pace for the denunciation of Rosenfeld’s masterpiece. Several authors criticized terms and events that Rosenfeld did not even mention in his piece, like the “Iraq War” or terms like “liberals” or “the liberals.”

Finally, there was a small concert for the conference participants at the Botanical Garden at Hebrew University. The four Israeli Irish folk musicians, among them a kind of young Jerusalem version of Paul Simon, gave the participants a wonderful rest. The place was other-worldly, typical Jerusalem stones surrounded by trees and flowers. At some point, a bird joined the concert. Before, the visit of the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis I, in the Middle East, could not overshadow the fantastic experience at Mount Scopus.

The entire conference was just possible thanks to the support by the Knapp Foundation, New York, and Charles Knapp, who also gave a powerful greeting address at the very beginning of the event and thanked all participants at the very end of the gathering with an exceptional statement: we, the speakers, shall keep on doing our research the way we do it and the way he witnessed it. This would be like a “thank you” to him…

In addition, Felix and Daniel Posen were supporters of SICSA and the event. I was a happy Felix Posen Fellow of SICSA in 2003 and 2004, after having been a speaker at Robert’s first international conference as new head of SICSA in December 2002.

Many conference participants said that they are looking forward to the future work of the honoree. His focus on the “longest hatred” paved the way for many scholars in recent decades. People who know the current situation among research centers on antisemitism world-wide are aware of the fact that this is an exception from the rule. It was a privilege for all speakers and participants to share their views on antisemitism, anti-Judaism and the delegitimization of Israel with the historian of antisemitism of our time.

However, we have to be realistic. Future generations of scholars even in Israel are not necessarily very much involved in the study of antisemitism. Nor are they known for a vibrant Zionist approach… Time will tell what research in antisemitism will look like in the years to come. Perhaps this conference was the peak of an entire generation or even several generations of scholars in antisemitism, headed by Robert Solomon Wistrich.

(Backcover of the German edition of Robert S. Wistrich’s Muslim Antisemitism, Dec. 2011)

* Many thanks to Lesley for sharing these pics with me and for her encouragement; as ever, I would like to equally thank Leslie for her editing; finally and in addition, the support and encouragement in recent days by friends and colleagues from around the world was wonderful, thanks so much to Simon, Steffi, Elena, Peter, Thomas, Milton, Jonathan and Neil.

Schlagwort: Islamism

Jews should stop supporting the Alt-Right and the enemies of the Jewish people

Does Germany need just another Islamist, anti-Israel and antisemitic infusion by John L. Esposito?

A response to Bernard-Henri Lévy

Huge event at Mount Scopus honors leading researcher on antisemitism