Soha ElSaman
Egypt Today, Jan. 31, 2019
“In their view, from the time that the Jews rejected Prophet Mohammed’s demands that they convert to Islam, the Jews became an “enemy” of Islam. In so doing, Nazism’s Arabic-language propaganda placed the events of the mid-20th century into the far longer context of a supposed, but actually false, Jewish antagonism to Islam as a religion.”
Jeffrey Herf, professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland, College Park, recently authored Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, published by Yale University Press. In 2006 he published The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Al-Masry Al-Youm spoke with Herf to discuss his latest publication.
Al-Masry Al-Youm: The West in general uses the term anti-Semitism, although both Arabs and Jews are Semitic. Are there other terms that are more apt?
Jeffrey Herf: The answer to this and other questions are in my book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. An entire chapter explores the extensive efforts made by the Nazi regime to avoid the use of the term “anti-Semitism.” It was, its officials stressed, a regime animated by antagonism toward the Jews but not towards Arabs and Muslims in general. The term anti-Semitism has long entered academic discourse to refer to hatred of Jews.
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