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Comparing Islamic Anti-Semitism to Nazi Germany at its Worst

[Ha'aretz] Robert S. Wistrich - In 1938, only a fortnight after "Crystal Night," the SS journal Das Schwarze Korps chillingly prophesied the final end of German Jewry through "fire and sword" and its imminent complete annihilation. Today, the specter of such apocalyptic anti-Semitism has returned to haunt Europe and other continents. In the Middle East, it has taken on a particularly dangerous, toxic and potentially genocidal aura of hatred, closely linked to the "mission" of holy war or jihad against the West and the Jews. Islamist anti-Semitism is thoroughly soaked in many of the most inflammatory themes that initially made possible the atrocities of Crystal Night and its horrific aftermath during the Holocaust. The scale and extremism of the literature and commentary available in Arab or Muslim newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Islamist websites, on the Middle Eastern radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and educational materials, is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany at its worst. Yet the Western world largely turns a blind eye to the likely genocidal consequences of such a culture of hatred, much as it did 70 years ago. The writer is director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (2010).
2009-11-06 06:00:00
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