34 No. 70 JUSTICE he murderous terrorist attack by the Hamas organization in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, was one of the most difficult events that Israel has experienced since its founding. About 1,200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas on that day, most of them civilians – the elderly, men, women, children, and even babies in their cradles. This was a mass murder of Jews, due to their being Jews, on a scale and scope which the Jewish people has not known since the Holocaust. Following Hamas’s murderous attack, Israel launched the “Iron Swords” war with the aim of “destroying Hamas’s military capabilities and its ability to control the Gaza Strip.”1 The Hamas attack sparked a wave of sympathy around the world towards Israel and led to widespread support among most Western governments for the war it launched against Hamas. Western governments saw the conflict that erupted at the Gaza border as not only an IsraeliPalestinian struggle, but a struggle against radicalism and Islamic terrorism that threatens the values of the West and may eventually reach the streets of cities in Europe and the United States, as happened a few years earlier with ISIS.2 The war in Gaza, however, also led to an unprecedented wave of antisemitism throughout the Western, Arab, and Muslim worlds that no longer operated under the guise of anti-Israelism. This phenomenon is not new, but it has grown stronger over the last few years and seems to have broken records with the outbreak of this war in Gaza. The waves of hatred for Israel and the Jews in the Arab and Muslim world manifested itself in the statements of many leaders of Arab and Muslim countries, such as the presidents of Iran and Turkey. They also emerged among the heated discourse in the Arab media, on social media platforms, and in the slogans voiced in demonstrations taking place throughout the Middle East and the Western world.3 The antisemitic and anti-Israeli underpinnings of these statements are so fundamental to their meaning and historic use that they cannot be repurposed for any alternative meaning. The enmity and hatred of these slogans does not differentiate between Jews and Israel and is anchored in a religious antisemitism that has always characterized the attitude of Muslims and Arabs toward Israel and the Jews. Alongside this, the new antisemitism identifies Israel as the imperialist and colonialist state of the Jews, rendering Jews themselves, regardless of their location or nationality, as imperialists and colonialists by association. This classification comes with the ills and crimes of the European colonialists and white supremacists of the modern age. In this article we examine the historic roots of these waves of hatred throughout the Arab and Muslim world, their characteristics, and the ways in which they are expressed. Finally, we present the inherent dangers in these revelations of antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiments. Antisemitism in the Arab and Islamic World: Historical Roots Antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim world is historically anchored in Islam. Islam does show tolerance toward Jews and Christians as “the people of the book” (Ahl al-Kitab) who believe in the Bible and the New Testament. Additionally, Islam considers them proteges (Ahl al-Dhima) who are accorded protection for their lives, The Resurgence of Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Sentiment in the Arab and Islamic World T Eyal Zisser 1. See Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Swords of Iron: War in the South – Hamas’ Attack on Israel” (Oct. 7, 2023), available at https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/ swords-of-iron-war-in-the-south-7-oct-2023 2. See Josef Federman and Amy Teibel, “The US has strongly backed Israel’s war against Hamas. The allies don’t seem to know what comes next,” AP PRESS (Nov. 2, 2023), available at https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas11-1-2023-blinken-netanyahu-d57766fd8e55500ff6f16b78 b3560d51 3. See George Washington University, Program on Extremism, “Antisemitism in the Middle East: Unpacking the Root Causes and Implications for Regional Stability” (Nov. 21, 2023), available at https://extremism.gwu.edu/ antisemitism-middle-east
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgzNzA=