Wistrich: “Antisemitism is a widening syndrome”

New English Review:

Professor Robert S. Wistrich is a recognized expert on antisemitism.
He holds the Neuberger chair for Modern European History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and heads the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He was recently given a Lifetime Achievement award by The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (The JSA).
He is the author and editor of 29 books, several of which have won international awards.  Our interview with Dr. Wistrich can be found in our collection, The West Speaks.
Dr. Wistrich was interviewed by Hansjorg Muller, editor of the Baseler Zeitung, a German newspaper in Basel, Switzerland.  This was originally published in German in the September 12, 2012 edition of the Baseler Zeitung. Dr. Wistrich translated the article into English. We have permission from the Baseler Zeitung to republish.
Hansjorg  Muller:    In your encyclopedic work, A Lethal Obsession. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, 2010), you present Islamist antisemitism as an existential danger to modern civilization. Could you explain?
Dr. Robert Wistrich:    In my view, Islamic antisemitism is by far the most dynamic and threatening form of antisemitism existing at present in the contemporary world. It combines the scourge of Islamist terrorism, the spread of jihad, hatred of the West, Holocaust denial, and the genocidal “anti-Zionism” which is state-sanctioned in Iran. The dramatic triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the alarming growth of militant Salafist movements across the Arab Middle East have greatly increased the level of threat worldwide.
Muller:    Is there a historic connection between European fascism and Islamism?
Wistrich:    The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, had a radical totalitarian vision of societal transformation, a leadership cult, and visceral hatred of Jews not so different from that of fascism and National Socialism. Moreover, the charismatic founder of the Palestinian Arab national movement, Haj Amin el-Husseini, was a fanatical genocidal anti-Semite who actively collaborated with Adolf Hitler during World War II. This “annihilationist” tradition of Jew-hatred has continued in the Palestinian Hamas movement (an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) to this very day. Its Sacred Covenant is one of the most nakedly anti-Jewish texts of the entire post-Holocaust era.

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About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

4 Replies to “Wistrich: “Antisemitism is a widening syndrome””

  1. Jew hatred always originates from great evil. The majority of anti-Semites are Jew haters because of ignorance and misinformation, but behind this misinformation are the ringleaders and they are evil people.
    History has shown that anti-Semitism arises from irrational, obsessive and demonic sources and there are always ruthless despots or paranoid psychopaths behind it.
    Haj Amin al-Husseini, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, the Prophet Mohammed, Mahmout Ahmedinejad, Joseph Mengeles – these are examples of the sort of characters that I am talking about.
    It is said that the Jews are the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ and when anti-Semitism is on the rise you can be certain that something terrible that affects all of us is going to follow soon afterwards.

  2. Bob the growth of antisemitism is one of the things that tell me a major war is coming, and probably soon (but I have been expecting it for the last 7 years) another sign of a major war is the way the Western nations are refusing to stand up for what is right, and how they are reducing their military so the other nations won’t think we are out to conquer the world. All of the above normally happen shortly before a major war, along with the leading nation selling out a weaker nation that is counting on them. Think Czechoslovakia just before WWII.

  3. For much of its history the Western World has always prided itself on its monopoly on integrity all the while pursuing their own interests in an unusually dishonest and Machiavellian manner.

    In hindsight, WW2 can be seen as a moral test for the Western World that they failed badly at and can be summed up as follows:

    Do they put aside their Jew-hatred and follow their self-proclaimed integrity by allowing the Jews of Europe to escape and defeating the Nazis at minimal cost to life on Western terms?

    Or

    Do they follow their Jew-hatred and Self-Interest by preventing the Jews of Europe from escaping while letting the Nazis grow / fester to the point where by choosing Self-Interest, the Western World effectively chooses War on Nazi terms and the resultant deaths of tens of millions of people (including 6 million Jews) by the end of WW2 and the enslavement of millions more in the aftermath (e.g. Eastern Bloc / Soviet Union)?

    In the coming World War the Western/Westernized World once again faces the same choice between Integrity and Interest against the Green/Red/Brown Axis (comprising of Islam, the Left and the Neo-Fascists), whether to totally fight this deadly axis to preserve one’s long-term Integrity or accommodate/collaborate with the axis to pursue one’s short-term Interests at the cost of potentially billions of lives.

  4. Nate the cost in blood would have been the same no matter what the European nations did, Hitler wanted to conquer the world, this wouldn’t have changed. In fact standing up to him earlier would have delayed the war but probably made it worse since he would have waited until he had more subs, tanks and planes.