Bernard Lewis
Commentary Magazine, May 1986
“Since 1945, certain Arab countries have been the only places in the world where hard-core, Nazi-style anti-Semitism is publicly and officially endorsed and propagated.”
Since 1945, certain Arab countries have been the only places in the world where hard-core, Nazi-style anti-Semitism is publicly and officially endorsed and propagated.
In the Western world, since the defeat of the Nazi Reich, anti-Semitism, though by no means dead, is clandestine or hypocritical, and cannot be openly avowed by anyone with serious political ambitions or cultural pretensions. In the Soviet bloc, though extensive use is made of anti-Semitic themes and symbols in both domestic and foreign propaganda, anti-Semitism as such is denounced and condemned, and the war against the Jews is waged under other flags, such as secularist anti-Judaism and socialist anti-Zionism. While the influence of such anti-Semitic classics as Canon Rohling’s Talmud Jew and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion can sometimes be seen very clearly in polemical literature ostensibly directed against Jewish clericalism and Zionism, these works are not cited by name, and copies are apparently not available. In the Western world, where there is no comparable control of publications, these books are still being reprinted, but they are nowadays confined to the lunatic fringe, and their direct influence is minimal.
In the Arab world, by contrast, these two books are the most frequently cited authorities on Jewish matters—not only on Israel and Zionism, but on Jews and Judaism in general; not only in the context of the present time or since the beginning of Zionist settlement, but throughout the three thousand years of recorded Jewish history. Nor are these publications confined, as in the West, to the lunatic fringe. They are published by major, sometimes government, publishing houses; they are endorsed and sometimes introduced by prominent political, religious, and intellectual figures; they are quoted on national television and radio programs and in some of the most respected newspapers and magazines; they form the basis of discussions of Jews and Judaism in many school, college, and teacher-seminary textbooks.
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