Buddhists Against Antisemitism

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Category: Read. It’s our only hope.

The deep roots of antisemitism in the Islamic world

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On July 9, 2024

In antisemitism, Read. It's our only hope., the mufti, zionism

At the moment this post is mostly just a list of links. I hope to come back later and provide a brief overview of each of the linked-to items. They all pertain to the subject indicated by the title of this post: “The deep roots of antisemitism in the Islamic world.” The main point is to show that the blind hatred for Israel that pervades modern day Islam did not spring forth, fully formed, when the state of Israel came into existence as a result of the Israeli War of Independence from 1947 to 1949.

In fact, the war of 47-49 was the result of antisemitism, not its cause. The war began when the United Nations proposed to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. A two-state solution. The Arab state proposed in 1947 would have had twice as much land as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank combined. Why did this proposal lead to war? Because the Arabs of Palestine, joined by the entire Arab world, completely rejected the idea of having a Jewish state in Palestine.

The Arab rejection of the 1947 partition plan was really not terribly surprising, considering the fact that they had also rejected the partition plan proposed by the British in 1937, which would have given the Arabs even more land (and the Jews even less).

Why were the Arabs so adamantly opposed to a Jewish state in their midst? Arabs and Jews had lived side-by-side for centuries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. But Jews had always held a subordinate position. Now the Jews were seeking the very same thing that the Arabs sought – self determination. But to the (overwhelmingly Muslim) Arabs the idea of Jews having the same rights as Arabs was intolerable. This is the essence of antisemitism, and this essence had been there all along.

In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews In Muslim Lands  by Martin Gilbert
https://www.martingilbert.com/book/in-ishmaels-house-a-history-of-jews-in-muslim-lands/

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by Darío Fernández-Morera
https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/the-myth-of-the-andalusian-paradise/

Convivencia and the “Ornament of the World” by Kenneth Baxter Wolf
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=pomona_fac_pub

Convivencia in Medieval Spain: A Brief History of an Idea by Kenneth Baxter Wolf
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/23/

Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II by Matthias Küntzel
http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/nazis-islamic-antisemitism-and-the-middle-east/

Genocidal Antisemitism: A Core Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood by Markos Zografos
https://isgap.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/GenocidalAntisemitism-Markos-Zografos.pdf

Antisemitism in the Middle East: Unpacking the Root Causes and Implications for Regional Stability

  • Evin Ismail, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University
  • Matthias Küntzel, Political Scientist and Historian
  • Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, Founder & CEO of CyberWell
  • Vered Andre’ev, Head of Research at CyberWell

https://extremism.gwu.edu/antisemitism-middle-east

A Little Light Reading

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On May 30, 2024

In antisemitism, Read. It's our only hope.

This post is another list of things to read, specifically books. Reading is good. Ignorance is bad. I love books.

For each book I provide a relevant link (to a review, an article about the author, etc). I am not providing direct links to the books themselves, which you can easily locate yourself with the author and title.

The books alternate between Zionist authors (odd numbered) and anti-Zionist authors (even numbered). If you are a Zionist, you really should know what the anti-Zionists are saying, and vice-versa.

        1. Adi Schwartz, Einat Wilf  The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace
          book review by Alex Ryvchin at fathomjournal.org
        2. Ilan Pappé The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
          My Israeli Friends: This is Why I Support Palestinians article by Ilan Pappé at palestinechronicle.com
        3. Susie Linfield The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky
          The Return of the Progressive Atrocity quillette.com article by Susie Linfield
        4. Maxime Rodinson Israel: A Colonial Settler State?
          Maxime Rodinson Was a Revolutionary Historian of the Muslim World A bio from a leftist anti-Zionist perspective
        5. Benny Morris 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War
          Israeli Historian Benny Morris Addresses the War Against Hamas algemeiner.com Feb 15, 2024
        6. David Cronin Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel
          David Cronin’s Blog hosted at electronicintifada.net
        7. Daniel Gordis Israel: A Concise History
          A review of Gordis’ book by Philip K. Jason at jewishbookcouncil.org

          8. Rashid Khalidi

        8. Ghassan Kanafani Selected Political Writings
          The 1936–39 Revolt in Palestine – Ghassan Kanafani
        9. Anita Shapira Israel: A History
          Indispensable Man Anita Shapira on David Ben-Gurion (at jewishreviewofbooks.com)
        10. Rashid Khalidi  The Hundred Years War on Palestine
          Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies his professional website at (can you guess??) Columbia University
        11. Cary Nelson Dreams Deferred: A Concise Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Movement to Boycott Israel
          ‘We can have a debate about whether Hamas did the right thing’: Judith Butler’s Moral Relativism by Cary Nelson at fathomjournal.org
        12. Ben White Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide
          Why Israel is an apartheid state  by Ben White at palestinecampaign.org
        13. Matthias Küntzel Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East
          1967: Nasser’s Antisemitic War Against Israel fathomjournal.org interview with Matthias Küntzel

        14. Anita Shapira

          Edward Said Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question
          Edward Said Showed Intellectuals How to Bring Politics to Their Work jacobin.com article by Conor McCarthy

        15. Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson (ed.) A History of the Jewish People
          Shmuel Ettinger at “My Jewish Learning”  four excerpts from Shmuel Ettinger’s contribution to A History of the Jewish People
        16. Albert Hourani A History of the Arab Peoples
          The Case Against a Jewish State: Albert Hourani’s statement to the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry of 1946

A Guide for the Perplexed (Distinguishing antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism, Part Two)

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On May 28, 2024

In antisemitism, Read. It's our only hope., the mufti

Hajj Amin al-Husseini (left), Heinrich Himmler (right)

“For the most part, postwar Germany has repudiated and dissociated itself from its Nazi past and has made a serious commitment to the writing of honest history. In contrast, the Arab world has failed to take this important step.”

This post is a collection of resources which provide background on this question: How can we distinguish antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism? The quote above is from the main article, by Joel Fishman, in the Fall, 2014, issue of the Jewish Political Studies Review, linked to below (# 11).

Please note that half of the items listed below (the odd numbers) are from pro-Zionist sources that generally agree with the definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). That definition is also supported by the Anti-Defamation League, the World Jewish Congress, etc., and it is found in the first item on the list below. The very next item after that is an Al Jazeera article attacking the defintion. Which brings me to the other half of the list (the even numbers), which are all from sources that are anti-Zionist, and who vehemently reject the IHRA definition (according to which they are all proponents of antisemitism, not to put too fine a point on it). The only exception is the last item (# 13), which is an 80 minute long debate between articulate proponents of both sides of the issue.

  1. Working Definition of Antisemitism International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
  2. An Al Jazeera “Explainer” on the IHRA definition of antisemitism
  3. The 1948 Arab war against Israel: An aftershock of World War II? by Matthias Kuntzel, fathomjournal.org, June, 2023
  4. Criticism of Israel’s war and occupation is not anti-Semitism Maximilian Hess, Al Jazeera, March 13, 2024
  5. 3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization by Natan Sharansky, Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3-4 (Fall 2004)
  6. Targeting Free Speech & Redefining Antisemitism: How Pro-Israel Actors Are Using US Laws to Attack Palestinian Activism & Solidarity Lara Friedman, University of the Pacific Law Review, July, 2023
  7. About the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism Anti-Defamation League
  8. Distorted Definition: Redefining Antisemitism to Silence Advocacy for Palestinian Rights palestinelegal.org
  9. The BDS Pound of Flesh Einat Wilf, tabletmag.com, May 10, 2022
  10. Israel, Palestine, BDS, and the right to boycott in the US Al Jazeera (youtube video),
  11. The Historical Problem of Haj Amin al-Husseini, “Grand Mufti” of Jerusalem Jewish Political Studies Review Volume 26, Numbers 3–4 (Fall, 2014)
  12. Blame it on the mufti Khaled Diab, Al Jazeera (opinion), Oct 22, 2105
  13. Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism intelligencesquared.com, a conversation with Melanie Phillips, Einat Wilf, Mehdi Hasan, and Ilan Pappé, chaired by Carrie Gracie

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