Distorting the first and preventing a second Holocaust?

Publiziert am 2. Mai 2013 von admin

Troubling invitations spark controversies about the Global Forum in Jerusalem, to be held end of May 2013

by Dr. Clemens Heni

The Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism is a very important international conference. The first one was held in 2007, followed by two more events in 2008 and 2009. May 28-30, 2013, the fourth Global Forum will take place in Jerusalem. Fighting antisemitism, hatred of Israel, Islamism, anti-Zionism, and the distortion of the Shoah are tremendously timely and important topics.

Israel is a tiny country and the only one facing genocidal threats. Anti-Zionism is a religion in Europe and particularly in the Arab world, and parts of the Muslim world. Iran denies the Holocaust and agitates in a Nazi-style against Israel. Islamism is a huge threat on a worldwide level, but particularly in the Middle East, just look at Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey with the more veiled but influential, equally legal form of Islamism and Jihad (remember the Mavi Marmara) or Saudi-Arabia with its decades long spread of Islamist ideology via funding of extremist groups, mosques, cultural centers and the like. Qatar is home of one of the world’s leading Sunni Islamists, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who urges the Muslim world to fight Israel, who supports suicide bombing by unveiled females and who thanked Hitler for having punished the Jews. No one is criticizing or isolating Qatar for being host of that influential antisemite and his world-wide media network, including al-Jazeera.

Therefore, the Global Forum will be a very important gathering of those dedicated to fight Islamism, Muslim antisemitism, anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel in all its forms.

However, is it a good idea to invite someone to an event dedicated to fight antisemitism and a possible ‘second Holocaust’ who is known for distorting, veiling or even affirming the Holocaust? Are politicians or representatives of countries known for their efforts to whitewash their own pro-Nazi legacy allies in the fight against Holocaust denial and distortion of history? Is it a reflection and sign of a change in public relations to invite the very same country to the very same event four years later, again?

Some tiny and not powerful countries have learnt to pay lip-service to Israel while promoting the above mentioned Holocaust distortion in their own countries. This is the case in Hungary and Lithuania.

In December 2009 I was part of a struggle against Lithuanian antisemitism at the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, organized by the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. In a working group, Professor of Yiddish Dovid Katz and I, supported by British MP John Mann, criticized Lithuanian antisemitism and Holocaust distortion!

Now, in May 2013, the very same Lithuanian government will be invited to the fourth Global Forum. Are the representatives at the MfA just lazy and have no other countries in mind when it comes to Israel and antisemitism? Was our criticism in December 2009 completely useless?

Now, facing the next Global Forum end of May 2013 in Jerusalem, Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, said senior government officials from Lithuania, Greece, Hungary and Ireland should not be allowed to attend — and speak at — the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism. “The opportunity to address the conference by visiting dignitaries should be a prize given to people who are leading the fight against anti-Semitism, and not to individuals representing countries in which the problem is among the worst in Europe, if not the worst,”.

In December 2009 Zuroff already criticized the invitation of the then Lithuanian Foreign Minister:

“I am referring primarily to the invitation to Lithuanian Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas to participate as a special guest of the forum, but also to the presence there of two right-wing Hungarian politicians, Zsolt Semjen and Zoltan Balog, both of whom have made very negative comments about Hungarian Jews.“

Isn’t it predictable and also shocking, that these two countries, Lithuania and Hungary, are again supposed to deliver ridiculous speeches at the very same Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism? They will of course not deal with the failures of their own countries since 2009. They will not apologize for a reburial of a Nazi puppet minister in 2012 in Lithuania (with military honors). Nor will they change their radical nationalist policies, including antisemitism in both countries like the equation of red and brown (“Prague Declaration”) or the toleration if not support of antisemitic and far-right parties like Jobbik in Hungary. The same holds for Greece. Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn was supported by Prime Minister Samaras and a member of that antisemitic party was elected by the Greek Parliament to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). A Hungarian extreme right politician from Jobbik was elected to that very EU body, too. In March 2013 antisemitic and anti-Roma, racist journalist Ferenc Szaniszlo was awarded a state sponsored and most important Hungarian award for journalists, the Táncsics prize, given under the auspices of Minister of “human resources.”

Why should Israel honor such countries and governments at an event exclusively dedicated to the fight of antisemitism?

Nevertheless, computer expert and NGO activist Andre Oboler from Australia rejects Zuroff’s criticism and recently attacked the leading Nazi-hunter, historian and activist from the Simon Wiesenthal Center on his JPost blog for his criticism of this year’s Global Forum.

In addition, Oboler is the author of a brochure about antisemitism on Facebook. Of course it is important to deal with antisemitism, neo-Nazis, Holocaust denial and related issues on the leading social network. However, Oboler bases his text on British scholar, very influential book author and activist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins insists that there is no-free-will, everything is determined, biologically and/or culturally. For example, Dawkins created the term “Meme,” which in layman’s speak is a means for ideas to be transmitted via ‘cultural’ genes from one generation to the next.

If one takes this idea one step further the notion of free will can no longer exist in such a Dawkensian world. One can only wonder what Dawkins would say about the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and their active and self chosen involvement in the killing of Jews during the Shoah. Dawkins has sparked controversies about his aggressive new atheism, too and his friendship with animal rights activist Peter Singer, who endorses euthanasia, and says that a handicapped baby could be seen as a “non-person” and be killed, is highly troubling. Dawkins has talked about the (in his view: huge and dangerous) Jewish influence in American foreign policy, for example, and has agitated against Judaism.

The Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, organized by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and probably the biggest gathering of scholars, activists, politicians, philanthropists, citizens, bloggers, journalists and others in the pro-Israel and anti-antisemitism tent, should be a place to analyze and fight all forms of antisemitism.

Inviting countries who are known for their contribution to the distortion of history, for the antisemitic rewriting of the history of the Second World War, Nazi Germany and the Shoah, was a bad idea in 2009 and is a bad idea in 2013.

Of course Israeli diplomats are happy if a European or Western colleague is rather friendly and not outspokenly hostile to the Jewish state. However, we have to think twice. We cannot criticize one form of antisemitism (like anti-Zionism or Muslim antisemitism) while endorsing another form of antisemitism like Holocaust distortion, the equation of red and brown, the trivialization of the Holocaust and the promotion of the swastika as “cultural heritage” as is the case in Lithuania. No one who trivializes the Shoah can be considered a true friend of Israel and the Jews, regardless of his or her lip-service to the Jewish state.

Does the steering committee of the Global Forum, including Oboler, and the Israeli government really think that countries who distort the Shoah are among the best allies to prevent a ‘second Holocaust?’

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit anti-Semitism, Antisemitism, conference, Dovid Katz, Efraim Zuroff, Facebook, Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, Golden Dawn, Greece, Holocaust, Holocaust distortion, Hungary, Jobbik, Lithuania, Oboler, Richard Dawkins, second Holocaust | Kommentare deaktiviert

„Tuvia, es ist alles noch viel schlimmer!“

Publiziert am 8. Februar 2013 von admin

”Tuvia, es ist alles noch viel schlimmer!”

Bericht über eine Veranstaltung zu Tuvia Tenenboms
Allein unter Deutschen

Die Lesung aus Tuvia Tenenboms Bestseller Allein unter Deutschen sowie die anschließende Diskussion in der Ostberliner Volksbühne am 7. Februar 2013 geht mit Sicherheit als eine der bemerkenswertesten Veranstaltungen der letzten Jahre gegen Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik in die Geschichte ein.

Tuvia Tenenbom: Allein unter Deutschen. Eine Entdeckungsreise

Der Schauspieler Bernhard Schütz sowie seine Kollegin Kathrin Angerer

Kathrin Angerer

Bernhard Schütz

lasen zu Beginn ein Kapitel aus Tenenboms Buch. Darin geht es um einen Besuch in Duisburg-Marxloh, der größten Moschee Deutschlands sowie einiger deutsch-deutscher Protagonisten, die „Liebe“ suchen wie Gitti Schwantes, mit der Tuvia Tenenbom sprach, und doch nur zum Judenhass schweigen oder naiv den Duft von Rosen der Analyse und Kritik des islamistischen Antisemitismus und anderer Facetten des Islamismus vorziehen.

Wie Tenenbom später in der Diskussion nachdrücklich betonte, geht es um die Aussagen der Deutschen (oder auch der Deutsch-Türken, z.B.) in seinem Buch, nicht um ihn als Journalisten, der nur aufzeichnet und hervor kitzelt, was Deutsche („deutsch-deutsche“, „deutsch-türkische“ etc. etc.) wirklich denken, wenn es um Juden, Israel, Islamismus, Amerika, Geld oder die deutsche Geschichte geht. In Marxloh kommt Tenenbom mit einigen Muslimen ins Gespräch und klärt mehrere Muslima darüber auf, dass im Koran gerade nicht steht, dass Frauen einen Hijab oder Schleier tragen sollten. Die groteske Überheblichkeit islamistischer Interpretationen des Koran, wonach der Islam die Vollendung des Monotheismus sei und Judentum wie Christentum gleichsam im Islam ‚aufgehoben‘ seien (vgl. dazu die Hegelsche dialektische Aufhebung), wird von Tenenbom, der unter anderem auch einmal Islamwissenschaft studierte, fließend Hebräisch und Arabisch spricht und den Koran gründlich gelesen hat, selbstredend kritisiert. Doch am Ende ist es weniger der so offenkundige islamistische Judenhass, der ihn irritiert. (Die Schleichwerbung für sein Apple I-Pad (das häufiger erwähnt wird), auf dem er u.a. eine Koranausgabe in digitaler Version hat, sei geschenkt.)

Trotz aller Absurditäten, Boshaftigkeiten, Verfälschungen und ideologischen Obsessionen umarmt ihn die muslimische Gastgeberin, die ihn so unfreundlich empfangen hat, nach Stunden der Diskussion am Ende doch. Die „deutsch-deutschen“ Protagonisten in Tenenboms Buch jedoch, ob in Marxloh oder anderswo, werden realitätsgetreu als verbissen, herzlos und noch weit mehr von einer antijüdischen Obsession getrieben vorgestellt und zitiert. Ob das weltpolitisch der Realität entspricht, kann natürlich bezweifelt werden, da kaum jemand den Antisemitismus des Iran, der Muslimbrüder oder auch der derzeitigen Türkei mit dem deutschen Antisemitismus auf eine Stufen stellen kann, da für Israel die Gefahr aus Iran oder der arabischen Welt doch ganz real ist, während deutsche Ressentiments zwar unerträglich sind aber doch nicht eine militärische Gefahr darstellen wie der Iran mit seinem Atomprogramm sowie seine verbündeten Terrorgruppen Hizballah und Hamas. Andererseits: was wäre der Iran ohne seine Freunde, Helfer oder Abwiegler der iranischen Gefahr aus der deutschen Wirtschaft, ohne Claudia Roth, Günter Grass und Jakob Augstein? Wie gefährlich wäre islamistischer Antisemitismus noch, sähe er sich tagtäglicher kompromissloser Kritik der Eliten wie auch der Massen, der Medien, der Politik, der NGOs, der Blogger, der Wissenschaft, der Intellektuellen, der Kirchen, der Regierungen und Politiker der westlichen Welt, insbesondere Europas und Nordamerikas gegenüber? Und wie gefährlich wäre islamistischer Antisemitismus ohne ‚Entwicklungshilfegelder‘ aus Washington, Berlin, Paris, London und ohne die Unterstützung z.B. deutscher Stiftungen im Nahen Osten?

Entscheidend ist Tenenboms Analyse der neu-deutschen Ideologie. In der Diskussion erwähnt er z.B. einen Gesprächspartner, der ihm natürlich zuerst versicherte, wie sehr er und die Deutschen die Juden und Israel lieben und sie am besten vor sich selbst beschützen wollen, und daher pro-palästinensisch aktiv sind, also antijüdisch und antiisraelisch. Diese allzu deutsche ‚Logik‘ hat Tenenbom in wunderbarer Weise bloßgestellt. Tenenbom kritisierte auch die Heuchelei der Deutschen, es ginge ihnen tatsächlich um die Palästinenser – doch warum schweigen die Deutschen dann zum elenden Leben der Palästinenser in Jordanien und anderen arabischen Ländern, wo es ihnen um Welten schlechter geht als im Gazastreifen? Das kann man nur mit dem Antisemitismus erklären, mit der Obsession Israel und die Juden zu attackieren und das auch noch mit angeblicher Fürsorge für die Palästinenser zu begründen.

Volkhard Knigge und ein T-Shirt der Uganda-Bar

Tenenbom erwähnte den Leiter der KZ-Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, Volkhard Knigge, der in aller dummdeutschen Dreistigkeit dem Juden und Israeli Tenenbom mit einem T-Shirt der „Uganda-Bar“ aus Jerusalem gegenübertrat als dieser in Buchenwald mit Knigge sprach. Dieser Barname bezieht sich auf die antizionistische Fantasie, Juden hätten doch lieber im ugandischen Afrika denn in Zion eine Heimstätte aufbauen sollen.

Uganda-Bar, Jerusalem

Unter Beifall jenes Teils des Publikums (darunter Antideutsche, Hipster-Antifas, Punks und Intellektuelle unterschiedlicher Couleur), der Tenenboms Analyse und Kritik des deutschen Antisemitismus teilt, betonte der Autor, Knigge möge seinetwegen diese Position der Uganda-Bar teilen, doch bitteschön ganz sicher nicht als Leiter einer KZ-Gedenkstätte.

Doch einer der analytischen Höhepunkte des Abends kam für viele sicher überraschend. Es war ein Statement des bekannten Politologen, Zeithistorikers, Journalisten, TV-Talkmasters und häufigen Talkshowgastes und Herausgebers der Jewish Voice from Germany, Rafael Seligmann.

Rafael Seligmann

Wie Tenenbom in Tel Aviv geboren, aber ein deutscher und kein amerikanischer Jude, unterstrich er die Bedeutung des Buches seines Freundes Tuvia, doch ermahnte er Tenenbom nachdrücklich: „Es ist alles viel schlimmer!“ Es gäbe viel mehr und tiefer sitzenden Antisemitismus als Tenenbom das schreibe. In völlig ungewohnter Schärfe und Offenheit war es Rafael Seligmann ein Bedürfnis, einem amerikanischen Juden, der nur eine sehr kurze Zeit in Deutschland verbrachte, von der schockierenden Alltäglichkeit und Aggressivität des Antisemitismus zu erzählen. Seligmann zeigte sich fassungslos angesichts von Angela Merkels Einladung an den Antisemiten und Islamisten Mohamed Morsi, dem ägyptischen Präsidenten, am 30. Januar 2013, dem 80. Jahrestag der Machtübergabe an Hitler. Morsi bezeichnete vor wenigen Jahren Juden als Abkömmlinge von „Affen und Schweinen“ und wurde mit militärischen Ehren von der Bundesrepublik empfangen.

Merkel und Morsi am 30. Januar 2013 in Berlin

Als Seligmann letztes Jahr in der Hochphase der Agitation gegen das Judentum und gegen die Brit Milah (Beschneidung) zu einer Sendung des Senders WDR 5 eingeladen wurde, schlug ihm ein solcher Hass, eine solche Ablehnung und ein solch antijüdisches Ressentiment entgegen, dass es ihm fast die Sprache verschlug. Der Schock sitzt tief. Was Seligmann nicht wissen konnte: Tenenbom kennt diese Situation durchaus, im August 2012 habe ich ihn mit einigen Freunden zur wohl ersten Pro-Beschneidungsdemonstration in Deutschland, auf dem Bebel-Platz in Berlin, eingeladen. Die fünf oder sechs anwesenden Muslime, ca. 150 Juden und einige dutzend Sympathisanten wirkten wie eine völlig verlorene Gruppe, wie eine kleine Insel umgeben von antijüdischen, selbst ernannten pro-israelischen ‚Linken‘, Rechtsextremisten aller Art, und vor allem dem deutschen Mainstream, repräsentiert von den gut 60% Deutschen, die laut Seligmann quasi über Nacht zu Experten über den jüdischen „Schwanz“ wurden!

Der Kampf für die „völkische Vorhaut“, wie es Henryk M. Broder (der auf der Veranstaltung mehrfach als böser Augstein-Kritiker diffamiert wurde, vorneweg vom evangelischen und wie immer recht unerträglichen Schmock Christoph Dieckmann)

Christoph Dieckmann (in jungen Jahren)

2012 in Worte fasste, zeigt die Salonfähigkeit des Judenhasses, des Antisemitismus im heutigen Deutschland, der gerade auch von den wiederum selbsternannten ‚Islamkritikern‘ wie Politically Incorrect, Geert Wilders und seinem weltweiten Fanclub etc., promotet wird.

Dieckmann beharrte darauf, das Buch von Tenenbom gelesen zu haben, alle Seiten, und findet vieles darin gut, lustig, interessant, aber kam dennoch zu der so infamen wie realitätsfernen Behauptung, Tenenbom würde doch, unterm Strich, den Antisemitismus und das Thema „Juden“ gezielt suchen. Da wurde Tenenbom richtig wütend und erläuterte dem ignoranten deutschen Christen, dass er sogar antisemitische Beispiele seiner Deutschlandreise wie in der Roten Flora in Hamburg, einem beliebten Ort der linksradikalen Szene, in dem Buch wegließ, da es ihm als zu randständig und unbedeutend vorkam, zu Beginn seiner ganz anders und nicht auf den Judenhass der Deutschen fokussierten Reise.

Als Tenenbom sich von Benjamin Netanyahu abgrenzte und die (noch amtierende) israelische Regierung als „rassistisch“ bezeichnete, mit der Betonung dass die derzeitige palästinensische Regierung „noch rassistischer“ sei, erwiderte Seligmann mit einer gewissen Schärfe in der Tonlage, dass er es recht unerträglich findet, wie selbst wohlwollende Leute immer einen „Kotau“ machten in Deutschland und anderswo und Netanyahu diffamierten.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Ergänzend sei hinzugefügt, dass ein Land, dessen Linksradikale (Revolutionäre Zellen, RZ) in eben jenem Uganda, in Entebbe, zusammen mit palästinensischen Terroristen am 4. Juli 1976 den Bruder von Netanyahu, Jonathan (Yoni) Netanyahu, ermordeten, besser überlegen sollte, was es für Benjamin Netanyahu, seine israelische und so unmissverständlich gegen den antizionistischen Antisemitismus gerichtete Realpolitik bis heute bedeutet, in jungen Jahren seinen älteren Bruder in eben jenem Kampf gegen den praktizierten Antisemitismus verloren zu haben.

Jonathan Netanyahu

Was bleibt? Die Lesung aus Allein unter Deutschen sowie die anschließende Diskussion zeigten die ungeheuerliche Bedeutung eines einzelnen Autors, der bis dato gar nicht als Kritiker des Antisemitismus oder gar Deutschlands in Erscheinung getreten war. Der Eleganz der Sprache und Analyse von Jean Améry oder Eike Geisel steht mit Tuvia Tenenbom jetzt jemand zur Seite, der gerade in und mit der Einfachheit der Sprache die Alltäglichkeit des Antisemitismus in Deutschland in ihrer ganzen Grausamkeit zum Ausdruck verhilft. Fast in ihrer ganzen Grausamkeit muss man sagen, um die luzide Kritik von Seligmann beim Wort zu nehmen. Es ist in der Tat noch viel schlimmer mit dem Antisemitismus in Deutschland, als Tenenbom es darstellt bzw. in der Kürze der Zeit seines Aufenthalts in diesem Land erfahren konnte. Holocaustverharmlosung, Schuldprojektion, Schuldabwehr, sekundärer Antisemitismus, die Verharmlosung oder Affirmation des islamistischen Antisemitismus wie auch Facetten des postkolonialen oder auch kosmopolitischen Antizionismus zeigen in der Tat eine noch weit größere Bandbreite des Antisemitismus, als Tenenbom das in seiner Deutschlandreise erfassen konnte.

Juliane Wetzel

Allzu bezeichnend ist die Reaktion des deutschen Mainstreams. Tenenbom hat Juliane Wetzel vom Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (ZfA) an der Technischen Universität Berlin (am Ernst-Reuter-Platz) per e-mail angefragt, ob sie im Februar 2013 Zeit hätte für eine Diskussionsveranstaltung mit ihm. Leider nein, war die Antwort, der Terminkalender von Wetzel sei bereits voll. Kein Problem für Tenenbom. Er schrieb ihr zurück, dass sie ihm doch einfach irgendeinen Termin im Jahr 2013 nennen solle, und er würde dann für eine Diskussion mit ihr über Antisemitismus in Deutschland extra aus New York einfliegen. Keine Reaktion und kein Terminangebot von Wetzel, die nur pars pro toto für das Versagen der akademischen, deutschen Antisemitismusforschung steht, wie wir alle seit langem wissen.

Tuvia Tenenbom

Der Autor, Dr. phil. Clemens Heni, hat im Gegensatz zur Bundesministerin für Bildung und Forschung, Annette Schavan, seine Dissertation in einem Alter geschrieben, als er schon wusste, wie richtig zitiert wird. Er ist Direktor des Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), www.bicsa.org, und publizierte zuletzt im Januar 2013 die Studie Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism. (Die erste Rezension publizierte Prof. em. Edward Alexander)

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit Allein unter Deutschen, Angela Merkel, Antisemitismus, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernhard Schütz, Beschneidung, Buchenwald, Christoph Dieckmann, Claudia Roth, Duisburg-Marxloh, Eike Geisel, Entebbe, Geert Wilders, Gitti Schwantes, Günter Grass, Henryk M. Broder, Hijab, Hitler, Jakob Augstein, Jean Améry, Jerusalem, Jewish Voice from Germany, Jonathan Netanyahu, Juliane Wetzel, Kathrin Angerer, Koran, Kotau, KZ-Gedenkstätte, Made in Marxloh, Marxloh, Mohamed Morsi, Politically Incorrect, Rafael Seligmann, Revolutionäre Zellen, Rosen, Rote Flora, RZ, Schleier, Tuvia Tenenbom, Uganda, Uganda-Bar, Volkhard Knigge, Volksbühne, WDR 5, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung | Kommentare deaktiviert

Is Quentin Tarantino an Antisemite?

Publiziert am 17. Januar 2013 von admin

By Dr. Clemens Heni, author of Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

Antisemitism is a very flexible ideology. We know of Islamist antisemitism, the Iranian threat, Arab antisemitism, left-wing, right-wing and mainstream anti-Zionist European antisemitism. We also know of anti-Judaism and hatred of the circumcision and of ritual slaughter, for example.

A couple of days ago, American film director Spike Lee accused his colleague, film director, screen writer and actor Quentin Tarantino of distorting American history and slavery in his new film “Django Unchained.” For Lee the film is rather racist, or portrays slavery in a mild light. Lee will not watch the film, he says. Tarantino thinks of himself as the leading American film producer of our time.

Promoting his film in Berlin, Tarantino responded indirectly to Spike Lee and said: “America is responsible for two Holocausts: for the destruction of native Americans and for the slavery of African Americans.”

Leading German daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, known for promoting the anti-Zionist antisemitism of Nobel Prize Laureate Günter Grass earlier this year, happily quoted Tarantino accusing America of “two Holocausts.” Tarantino’s Austrian actor Christoph Waltz just was awarded a Golden Globe for his role in Django Unchained and Waltz is not known as a critic of Holocaust distortion Tarantinostyle.

Accusing America of genocide is among the best known anti-American tropes worldwide. In Germany (FRG), there was a remarkable increase in promoting this trope right after the screening of TV series Holocaust in January 1979. Blaming the West and America for just another genocide or Holocaust was most welcome by many Germans. Psychoanalytic theory calls this a projection of guilt.

As we know, the Holocaust was an unprecedented crime. Many historians of the Holocaust emphasize the unprecedented character of it, including historian and Jewish studies scholar Steven T. Katz from Boston University.

The Holocaust is unique. Never before were there the intent and the policies to kill an entire people. Germans wanted to kill the Jews – and they destroyed European Jewry by killing six million Jews. For the first time in history gas chambers were part of an industry of destruction. The German railway system was used for deportations of Jews from far away countries like Greece. Since the late 19^th century in particular (in fact, even before), Germans developed a specific form of German antisemitism aimed at the destruction of Jews. Jews were seen as the “eternal Jew,” Ahasver, as working on a world conspiracy, as being behind capitalism (“Mammon,” the supposedly Jewish god of money!) and communism, liberalism, modernity, urban cities, free forms of sexuality and the like. The Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first distributed around 1905, became crucial for Hitler’s antisemitic ideology, too. Since the Middle Ages blood Libels have been a typical Christian tool and, since 1840 and the Damascus Affair, an increasingly Christian Arab, as well as Muslim and Islamist tool to spread Jew-hatred. Today Jews are accused of killing innocent Christian or Muslim children for religious purposes.

All these genocidal features are missing when we look at colonialism, slavery, and racism. Jews are seen as superior, not as inferior like native Americans, Blacks, or slaves. Jews were seen as a dangerous force behind all kinds of evil. Africans were subject to horrible crimes in modern times, but those crimes were far from genocide. The Arab-Islamic slave trade and the European-American slave trade used Africans as a cheap labor. Exploitation was the reason behind slavery and racism, and the allegedly superior Arabs or Whites were behind it.

On the other side, exploitation was neither the reason nor the result of the Holocaust. The (German) will to destroy Jewry was behind the Shoah. Destruction ruled, not exploitation or racist rule over a group of people. German did not just want to rule over Jews, they wanted to kill them and they did kill them. Not so in slavery, colonialism, or racism. The history of native Americans was also horrible, but far from genocide. There was never the intention of European settlers to kill the entire native population. Rather diseases caused much of the destruction of native peoples. Historian, theorist and critic of capitalism, Karl Marx, called this “primitive accumulation.” Primitive accumulation is based on violence, direct violence and murder. The Holocaust, though, is completely distinct from that. There was no cui bono in the Shoah.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung mentions historian David Stannard as a “serious” source to back Tarantino’s claim about America having committed Holocausts. However, Stannard, is not a serious historian. I deal with him my new book, Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitian anti-Zionism. Stannard promotes the anti-American and antisemitic Holocaust-distorting trope of the Holocaust of native Americans in the US. Stannard is also a friend of author and agitator Ward Churchill, infamous for framing the entire history of the US as an ongoing genocide or “Holocaust” (since 1492) and for calling of the 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” (The two notorious studies from these two ‘historians’ are David E. Stannard (1992): American holocaust: Columbus and the conquest of the New World, New York: Oxford University Press and Ward Churchill (1997): A Little Matter of Genocide. Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, San Francisco: City Lights Books.)

American journalist and columnist for the German weekly Die Zeit, Tuvia Tenenbom, reported in his book I Sleep in Hitler’s Room (which became a German bestseller, Allein unter Deutschen) about a brother-in-mind of Tarantino, the gardener of a lovely and very trendy restaurant vis-à-vis the house of the Wannsee-Conference in Berlin. When Tenenbom asked about the strange people who love to marry and to have lunches at the House Sanssouci Restaurant, the gardener responded: “And you killed the Indians!”

Tarantino promotes the very same antisemitic ideology. He distorts the Holocaust by framing American history as even worse than German history. Two holocausts for the US, and just one for Germany in this antisemitic, though very fashionable view.

Hurting Jewish Holocaust survivors and their relatives and all other people who remember the worst crime of mankind ever, the Shoah, is the result if not the intent of Quentin Tarantino. He praises the Germans for their kind of Holocaust remembrance while accusing America of being unable and unwilling to confront their own history.

There was and there is racism in the US, yes, even after the end of slavery and segregation. This has to be confronted on a daily basis. But there were not two holocausts in American history. Neither native Americans nor African Americans were killed intentionally on a genocidal level. Rather, exploitation, the spread of diseases, and European-American chauvinism and racism were prevalent.

The obsession to downplay, obfuscate, distort and even universalize the Holocaust has to stop. Quentin Tarantino is just another candidate, one of the first one in 2013, for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Top Ten Antisemitic/anti-Israel Slurs. Holocaust distortion and Holocaust universalization are very widespread and serious forms of antisemitism. Those who forget or distort the past won’t support the Jewish state of Israel in the future. Quentin Tarantino is not a ground-breaker in this regard; he merely echoes the German and European (as well as American) anti-Americanism and antisemitism of the cultural elite.

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit anti-Semitism, Antisemitism, David Stannard, Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino, racism, slavery, Spike Lee, US history | Kommentare deaktiviert

Right-wing and left-wing Trojan Horses/Trojanische Pferde von links und rechts

Publiziert am 10. Januar 2013 von admin

Right-wing and left-wing Trojan Horses

Troubling tendencies in the pro-Israel and anti-Islamism tent and among scholars in the field of research on antisemitism

By Dr. Clemens Heni, Director, The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

German abstract, including additional information/deutsche Kurzfassung plus einiger ergänzender Informationen – Trojanische Pferde von links und rechts:

Einer, aber keineswegs der einzige Aufhänger, diesen Text zu schreiben, war für mich die Tatsache, dass der neu-rechte Aktivist Felix Strüning von der Stresemann-Stiftung Mitte Dezember 2012 im Hotel Adlon auf der Buchvorstellung zu Tuvia Tenenboms Bestseller Allein unter Deutschen war, ohne dass jemand dort wusste, wer Strüning ist. Strüning kann mit Kritik an Deutschland oder am Antisemitismus auch gar nichts anfangen, vielmehr war er aus ganz anderen Gründen auf dieser Veranstaltung.

Daher meine Analyse Strünings und des Norwegers Fjordman, sowie des extrem rechten Verlegers und Kumpels von Strüning, Götz Kubitschek, der im Oktober 2012 ein großes bundesweites Treffen der (extrem) rechten Szene in Berlin organisierte (“Zwischentag”) und im Februar 2013 ein anti-Broder Buch herausgeben wird und sich zudem hinter den Antisemiten Jakob Augstein stellt. Niemand hat bislang thematisiert, dass Kubitschek gerade die Hetze gegen Henryk M. Broder mag und fördert und sich als extremer Rechter hinter den Linken Augstein stellt. Eine Querfront für Deutschland und gegen Israel und die Juden.

Kubitscheks Antaios Verlag publiziert aber auch Rassisten, Nationalisten und Rechtsextreme wie den norwegischen Blogger Fjordman. Fjordman schrieb im Dezember 2010, dass der Westen alle Muslime nachhaltig raus schmeißen sollte!

Auch problematische Autoren wie Andrew Bostom, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer u.a. werden kritisiert. Jüngst stellten sich Geller und Spencer gar hinter den nun wegen illegaler Einreise in die USA verurteilten Kopf der rechtsextremen English Defence League (EDL), Tommy Robinson. Für Spencer und seine Seite Jihadwatch ist Robinson ein “politischer Gefangener.”

Im Oktober 2012 berichtete das extrem rechte Agitationsportal Politically Incorrect (PI) freudestrahlend über eine Solidaritätskundgebung der German Defence League (für die auch auf PI geworben wird) in Berlin-Mitte vor der britischen Botschaft für Robinson, der mit bürgerlichem Namen Stephen Yaxley-Lennon heißt. Ein Grund mehr für den Staatsschutz sich PI in Zukunft näher anzuschauen.

Es geht auch um die rechtsextreme Parei pro NRW, die von manchen US-Autoren gerne als harmlos, anti-Islam und “konservativ” vorgestellt wird, ohne zu sagen, dass ihr bekanntester Vertreter von 2010 bis Sommer 2012 der Neonazi Andreas Molau war, der eine antisemitische Karikatur zum iranischen Holocaust Cartoon Contest im Dezember 2006 einreichte…Sprich: Es geht gegen Salafismus und gegen pro NRW!

Im zweiten Teil meines Textes geht es dann um linke oder liberale Mainstream-Forscher aus England, wie Eric Hobsbawn, Jacqueline Rose, David Feldman, Steven Beller, Donald Bloxham und andere. Wie ich bereits im November 2012 zeigte, ist Feldman nicht nur Direktor des Pears Instititute for the Study of Antisemitism in London, vielmehr auch ein Bewunderer der sehr unwissenschaftlichen und anti-israelischen Autorin Jacqueline Rose, die eine blühende Fantasie bezüglich der Kindheit von Adolf Hitler hat. Feldman ist auch federführend bei einem Konsortium von ein paar wenigen Antisemitismusforschern, dem zwar kein international renommierter Antisemitismusforscher angehört (Namen wie Alvin Rosenfeld, Robert Wistrich, Jeffrey Herf, Yehuda Bauer, Omer Bartov, Dan Michman, Robert Rozett oder Anthony Julius sucht man vergebens), dafür unter anderem die Leiterin des Zentrums für Antisemitismusforschung an der TU Berlin (ZfA), Stefanie Schüler-Springorum.

In den Fußnoten meines unten stehenden englischen Textes über die rechten und linken trojanischen Pferde gibt es zudem Hinweise auf den antisemitischen Superstar der Anhängerinnen und Anhänger postkolonialer Theorie, Edward Said, dessen Fan Gurminder Bhambra, eine junge, aufstrebene post-koloniale Agitatorin aus England, aber auch zu Vidal Sassoon und der Group 43 in England Ende der 1940er Jahre und die Beziehung von englischen Faschisten und pro-Nazis wie Oswald Mosely zu deutschen Nazis wie Arthur Ehrhardt, dem politischen Ziehvater des neu-rechten Vordenkers Henning Eichberg…

Auch der modische englische Jurist David Seymour wird wenigstens am Rande kritisiert, ebenso Dave Rich, der für die Sicherheit der Jüdischen Gemeinden in UK mit verantwortlich ist als Mitarbeiter des Community Security Trust (CST), der aber meines Erachtens analytisch dürftig argumentiert und z.B. den Vergleich von Israel mit Nazi-Deutschland keineswegs als immer und grundsätzlich problematisch, geschweige denn als antisemitisch empfindet.

Ein zentraler Aspekt des Textes ist die Kritik an der Ontologisierung oder Essentialisierung des Islamismus. Sehr viele sog. Islamkritiker meinen den Islam und nicht den Islamismus. Kein seriöser Forscher würde antijüdische Suren im Koran leugnen oder die Geschichte der Judenfeindschaft in der Geschichte des Islam rundweg negieren. Doch der christliche Judenhass im Mittelalter und der Neuzeit war weit gefährlicher für Juden. Damit wird mit keiner Silbe der heutige islamistische Antisemitismus verharmlost. De facto ist der islamistische Antisemitismus heutzutage die gefährlichste Form des Antisemitismus, Stichwort iranische Gefahr. Doch die iranische Revolution von 1979 ist ein modernes Phänomen und wurde nicht vor 1400 Jahren geplant, wie viele Agitatoren gegen den Islam quasi insinuieren. Ähnlich verhält es sich mit dem sunnitischen Islamismus und dessen Antisemitismus, zumal seit 1928, als die Muslimbrüder von Hasan al-Banna gegründet wurden.

Ganz am Ende erwähne ich zudem jüdische Koscherstempel für Jakob Augstein und den linken Antisemitismus von Salomon Korn, Michael Wolffsohn, oder auch Julius H. Schoeps sowie die meines Erachtens faszinierende Kritik an Hannah Arendt, Tony Judt, J Street oder auch Peter Beinart (der sehr einflussreich und beliebt ist bei Obama-Fans und auch von jüdischen Gemeinden in USA als Redner eingeladen wird) und anderen jüdisch-amerikanischen Intellektuellen von dem in USA sehr bekannten Professor Emeritus für Englische Sprache aus Washington State (Seattle), Edward Alexander.

Es ist meines Erachtens ein großer Fehler der pro-Israel-Szene in den USA, Deutschland, UK und Israel bzw. Europa auf diese Widersprüche und problematischen Tendenzen nicht oder kaum einzugehen und zu schweigen.

Rechtsextreme oder neu-rechte Agitatoren gegen die Beschneidung und gegen Henryk M. Broder sind keine Freunde, nur weil sie taktisch und sprachlich mitunter geschickt gegen Islamismus reden und schreiben. In Wahrheit sind sie gegen alle Einwanderer, vor allem Muslime, und sie sind Freunde der Wehrmacht oder von Carl Schmitt und Ernst Jünger. Die aktuellen Tendenzen der extrem rechten Szene um “Identität”, wie sie sich im Wiederentdecken der rassistischen Ethnopluralismus-Strategie von Henning Eichberg und Alain de Benoist zeigt und in der sog. “identitären Bewegung” ein rechtsextremes Sprachrohr findet, zeigen sich auch in der angeblichen Äquidistanz dieser “Bewegung”, die sich jenseits von “Pälästinensertuch” und “Kippa” wähnt und doch nur den Antisemitismus neu verpackt und Juden wie arabische Judenfeinde in eine Kiste packt.

Autoren und Autorinnen oder Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten, die sich als Islamismuskritiker verkleiden, aber Rassisten wie Fjordman oder Bücher gegen Henryk M. Broder publizieren, sind zu bekämpfen.

Dass zu den linken problematischen Forschungstendenzen von Liberalen und selbsternannten Antisemitismusforschern ebenso geschwiegen wird, ist weniger verwunderlich, aber genauso problematisch.

Einige Beispiele des zweiten Teils des unten stehenden Beitrags werden etwas ausführlicher in meinen soeben erschienen Buch Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon untersucht.

Right-wing and Left-wing Trojan Horses

Troubling tendencies in the pro-Israel and anti-Islamism tent and among scholars in the field of research on antisemitism

This article was first published here and here.

The new year 2013 will be a very important year in the struggle against the Iranian threat. Israel is facing international pressure and silence about the Iranian as well as the Islamist threat is prevailing. However, the situation is even more complicated if we look at supposedly pro-Israel and pro-Jewish individuals as well as at supposedly high-profile scholars in the field of research on antisemitism. Americans who support Israel should know about the German and European situation when it comes to Israel, Judaism, antisemitism, and Islamism. This article raises truly relevant questions (in my view) about pro-Israel, pro-Judaism and anti-Islamism activism and scholarship. Too many people support tremendously dangerous groups in Germany and Europe because there is not much discussion about troubling tendencies in these fields, both on the Left and on the Right.

This piece consists of two parts. Firstly it deals with the troubling connection of many people in the pro-Israel tent to right-wing extremist, neo-Nazi and New Right or right-wing populist groups and individuals in Europe and Germany. Secondly it focuses on left-wing or liberal scholars in the field of research on antisemitism and how they distort research on antisemitism and the Holocaust. I fear that many right-wingers and many left-wingers or liberals use Trojan Horses to destroy solidarity with Israel and research on antisemitism, Islamism and the Holocaust from within.

There are not many outspoken pro-Israel people in Europe, let alone scholars. Many liberal or left-wing scholars are instead anti-Zionist activists. However, this may not lead to support of German and European racists and right-wingers, many of them in support of anti-Muslim agitators, fans of the German Wehrmacht, Holocaust distortion if not affirmation, and antisemitic authors and supporters of Nazi Germany like Carl Schmitt or Ernst Jünger. The Finnish website Tundra Tabloids, for example, is promoted as a pro-Israel website and many authors from the pro-Israel tent refer to that website or publish there. The very same website, though, agitates against Roma from Bulgaria and Romania in a typical neo-Nazi-style way. Even worse, Tundra Tabloids also promotes Norwegian racist and anti-Muslim extremist Fjordman on its website with a constant link to his work. Fjordman urges the Western world to expel ALL MUSLIMS, as I will document in this piece.

I know this kind of racism from my doctoral dissertation on the German New Right from 1970-2005, published in 2007 in German (509 pages). Hatred of immigrants, including Muslims, is a core element of their agitation for a pure and “German Germany.” Talking about “Islamization” is highly problematic, because this term most often does not aim at Islamism and Islamists, rather at Muslim immigrants as such (in Europe in particular).

In 2012 the entire German Right and many left-wingers and the majority of the German population agitated against Judaism and circumcision, including a substantial number of pro-Israel activists (!). A leading voice for the Right was the website Politically Incorrect or PI. That website is the leading voice for Dutch politician Geert Wilders, too. They promote his events, and publish articles in favor of him, for example.

Eleven years of support for Israel, since 9/11 in particular, was maybe a misunderstanding in some regard. Some left-wingers and most right-wingers detest Judaism and Jews as Jews. They want an Israel without circumcised Jews and Jewry without circumcised Jews. Most people in the tiny pro-Israel tent are ignoring these very troubling tendencies. The leading German left-wing mainstream monthly, Konkret, though, remains pro-Jewish and pro-Israel, thanks to publisher Hermann L. Gremliza. They urged their fellow sisters and brothers from the left to stop giving Jews instructions (e.g. about circumcision) for a couple of years, “let’s say for the next 1000 years”…

This piece is a wake-up call. Otherwise support for supposedly pro-Israel right-wing groups and individuals from American philanthropists in particular prevails. At the end of the day these philanthropists will recognize that they supported anti-Jewish groups and people. These right-wing groups in fact embrace European history and German history and love the German Wehrmacht and have not really a problem with the Shoah.

Again: Most left-wingers and liberals have no problem with hatred of Israel, rather they spread anti-Zionist antisemitism. The same holds for mainstream Europe. Therefore many in the pro-Israel tent have a blind eye to very troubling tendencies in the self-declared anti-Jihad tent, where many right-wingers are active. Since 9/11 many neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists in Germany and Europe are agitating against Islam. Other neo-Nazis and right-wingers collaborate with Islamism, too, e.g. based on the decades old German-Islamist collaboration, which goes back to the German Empire and Kaiser Wilhelm II. But those who prefer resentment against Muslims deny that Islamism is a highly modern phenomenon, e.g. based on the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna in Egypt.

As early as 1998 historian, Islamic Studies scholar and President of the Middle East Forum (MEF) in Philadelphia, Daniel Pipes, analyzed Islamism as a specific modern, 20th century-style phenomenon:

“Islamism is an ideology that demands man’s complete adherence to the sacred law of Islam and rejects as much as possible outside influence, with some exceptions (such as access to military and medical technology). It is imbued with a deep antagonism towards non-Muslims and has a particular hostility towards the West. It amounts to an effort to turn Islam, a religion and civilization, into an ideology.

The word “Islamism” is highly appropriate, for this is an “-ism” like other “-isms” such as fascismand nationalism. Islamism turns the bits and pieces within Islam that deal with politics, economics, and military affairs into a sustained and systematic program. As the leader of the Muslim Brethren put it some years ago, “the Muslims are not socialist nor capitalist; they are Muslims.” I find it very telling that he compares Muslims to socialists and capitalists and not to Christians or Jews. He is saying, we are not this “-ism,” we are that “-ism.” Islamism offers a way of approaching and controlling state power. It openly relies on state power for coercive purposes.”

Today, in the year 2013, neither the mainstream in the Western world and elsewhere, nor self-declared anti-jihadist activists and authors in Europe or the US do understand or follow this analysis of Islamism. Rather they deny the problem and danger of Islamism. Those who pretend to be talking about Islamism often distort its ideological background and prefer to talk about Islam as such, Muslims as such, and not about Islamism and Islamists.

Many neo-Nazis use fear of Islamist terrorism to spread lies about all Muslims. In Germany we have a legacy of neo-Nazi activities against immigrants and left-wingers. Since 1989/90 and the end of the GDR some 160 people have been killed by neo-Nazis in Germany, most of them immigrants, Turks and Muslims. The neo-Nazi group Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (NSU) (National Socialist Underground) killed nine immigrants between 2000 and 2006. The group was revealed in 2011 and the German police or secret service played a very troubling role and may have been involved in some of the crimes of that group.

German activist Felix Strüning is a hardcore right-wing activist and was “Schriftführer,” someone who writes the protocols, of the tiny but aggressive right-wing party Die Freiheit until 2011. He also gave a friendly interview to the leading extreme right-wing, anti-Muslim (and not anti-Islamist), German nationalistic blog Politically Incorrect (PI). PI says that it is the biggest political European blog. The head of Die Freiheit in Bavaria, Michael Stürzenberger, on July 17, 2012 wrote on that blog, that Germany “cannot tolerate” “Jewish organizations” in that country“if Jewish organizations keep on doing this archaic rule,” aiming at circumcision. I mention and criticize this anti-Jewish agitation in my 2013 book Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon.

German right-wingers of all kind as well as Islamists know very well that there is no First Amendment in Germany and no free speech. Therefore they are obliged to hide their extremism, opening the door to using guilt by association as a typical form of political analysis in the German landscape. This includes left-wing extremists and their Islamist and mainstream friends, too.

Right-wingers cannot deny or praise the Holocaust, for example, without being punished. On October 6, 2012, Felix Strüning presented his foundation – Stresemann Foundation – at a meeting of all kinds or right-wing, New Right, right-wing populist and extreme right-wing authors, journals, activists, organizations, groups and publishing houses. Leading extreme right-wing weekly Junge Freiheit, the blog Politically Incorrect (PI), the party Die Freiheit, German nationalist fraternities, among many other right-wingers were present at the event. The gathering – called “Zwischentag” – was organized by a Götz Kubitschek, who is the owner of the extreme right-wing publishing house Antaios. Antaios praises the German Wehrmacht and therefore – the Holocaust. But the book does of course not say “We embrace the Holocaust” – rather “We embrace the Nazi Wehrmacht’s war against the Soviet Union,” which is the same, but in other words.

The author Soeren Kern, based in Madrid, portrays the right-wing extremist German party pro NRW as “conservative” and “opposed to the further spread of Islam in Germany.” As if the very existence of Islam is the problem, and not Islamism. Worse, Kern does not tell the story behind pro NRW. This is not at all a more or less harmless conservative party. It is a very nationalistic and anti-Muslim party and from 2010 until July 2012 it was mainly represented by neo-NaziAndreas Molau, who submitted an antisemitic cartoon to the Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest in December 2006! Promoting a hardcore nationalistic German, pro-Islamist, pro-Jihadist and pro-Ahmadinejad party like pro NRW as harmless and as opposed to Islamism and terror, is not serious journalism, rather a distortion of facts. Pro NRW detests non-Germans or Germans with a Muslim background, too. They do not deal with Islamism and Islamist antisemitism as modern and new phenomena. The party itself was represented by antisemite Molau and everyone in Germany who is dealing with these topics knows this. Pro NRW are racists and the German domestic intelligence service is watching them, thanks to their right-wing extremism, which is against the German constitution. A German court supported the decision to call pro NRW a right-wing extremist party.

In 2012 Felix Strüning enthusiastically reviewed a book by German extreme right-wing and anti-Muslim author Manfred Kleine-Hartlage (and interviewed the author as well), who is published in Germany by Antaios. Kleine-Hartlage contributed to Fjordman’s book in German, also published by Antaios in 2011. As mentioned, a book by a Stefan Scheil about the German war against the Soviet Union – Unternehmen Barbarossa – as “preventive war,” embraces the Nazi Wehrmacht. Antaios also publishes and promotes self-declared fascists like Armin Mohler (1920-2003), who was a wannabee member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and then the leading propagandist of the Conservative Revolution in the FRG, antisemites and Nazi legal scholars like Carl Schmitt, books from and about antisemite and author Ernst Jünger as well as leading French New Right author and activist Alain de Benoist.

This antisemitic and pro-Nazi Wehrmacht agitation is mainstream for most parts of the right-of center pro-Israel trend in Germany. Several right-wing activists from PI, the German Defence League (who are friends of the English Defence League, the blog Gates of Vienna supported a pro-Tommy Robinson rally in Berlin in front of the British Embassy by the German Defence League), members of Die Freiheit, and even neo-Nazis from the National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD) joined a pro-German rally on October 3, 2012, the German Unity Day, in Berlin, agitating against Muslims and immigration as well as against the Euro and Brussels.

In July 2012, Strüning was at an event in the European Parliament in Brussels organized by the far-right “International Civil Liberties Alliance.” Another speaker was Austrian Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff. She said that the spread of sharia law in Europe is much more successful compared with policies of Nazis Germany or Stalinism, concentration camps and the Gulag, respectively, because sharia is implemented silently. This trivialization of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust is typical for right-wing extremist agitation. Sabaditsch-Wolff has a high standing among some extremist circles in the pro-Israel or rather anti-Islam tent. She is a close friend of English right-wing extremist leader of the English Defense League (EDL) (here is a fact sheet about the EDL and some pics of their fans with a “Sieg Heil” or Hitler salute, for example), Tommy Robinson, previously a member of the extreme right British National Party (BNP). On Facebook I came across several people promoting the ideas of Meir Kahane and other extremists around the Jewish Defence League (JDL). Author and pro-Israel activist Sam Westrop mentioned the JDL in an article in May 2012:

“One group sacrifices liberal principles for the futile hope of appearing morally superior, while on the other side, the supremacism of the Jewish Defence League, who view the murderer Baruch Goldstein “as a martyr”, needs little explanation. Both groups work to demonise others, and consequently contribute towards the delegitimisation of Israel by providing a great deal of ammunition to its enemies. At first glance, it would appear that these two groups could not be more different; but in reality they enjoy a symbiotic relationship, whereby the dogma of each gives confidence to the hysteria of both. The JDL describe us as treacherous ‘leftists’ while the Jewish loons claim we are treacherous – as Darren Cohen spoke of my Jewish and Muslim colleagues - ‘fascists’.”

And now we are facing close allies of the JDL like the English Defence League and their friend Sabaditsch-Wolff, who is often portrayed as a hero or harmless “Viennese housewife,” who just insulted Muhammed and was convicted at an Austrian court. If Sabaditsch-Wolff ever had a problem with hatred of Jews she would never have given a talk at an academy of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), the leading right-wing party in Austria, formerly headed by extremist and antisemite Jörg Haider, who praised the “politics of employment” of the Nazis! Ironically Haider died in a car, a Volkswagen Phaeton, which is a product of Nazi policies, because Volkswagen is the product of the “KDF-Stadt bei Fallersleben,” founded by the Nazis in 1938, or “Autostadt” as Tuvia Tenenbom calls Wolfsburg in his bestseller Allein unter Deutschen (English edition was published in 2011, I sleep in Hitler’s Room), the headquarter of Volkswagen or VW in Germany.

German Islamic Studies scholar Rainer Glagow (1941–2010) was both a “critic of Islam” as well as a German nationalist. He signed a petition about the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945, saying that that day was not a day of liberation, rather of German defeat. People like Glagow were not happy that Nazi Germany was defeated and the Holocaust stopped. They frame May 8, 1945, as the “defeat of the German Wehrmacht.”

It is hard to understand why many Americans and American or Western institutions should support that kind of German propaganda by promoting websites like Politically Incorrect, despite the fact that the American Army was among those who liberated Europe from German National Socialist rule. Many portray German nationalism like that of Politically Incorrect as the one and only way to criticize Islamism. In fact, those right-wingers do not criticize Islamism; they hate immigrants as such, and Islam as such. They are most often proud Christians who never dealt with the fact that Nazi Germany was a Christian country and that Christian antisemitism prior to 1933 was an important element in the evolution of German-style antisemitism, too. These German or European (or American) people around websites like Politically Incorrect detest the circumcision and Judaism (as well as Islam) and they promote all kinds of right-wing, nationalist groups on their homepage. Politically Incorrect’s take on the end of the Second World War and Glagow is typical. May 8, 1945, was a day of liberation for Europe, but not for the Nazis and the German population. Politically Incorrect (PI) honored Glagow as a “fighter against Islamization,” including an article by representative of the „peoples movement Pax Europe” or „Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE),” Conny Axel Meier. Meier was another speaker, alongside with Sabaditsch-Wolff and Strüning, at the Brussels event in July 2012.

Fjordman, his real name is Peder Jensen, is a notorious Norwegian blogger. On December 17, 2010 he wrote:

“The truth is that there is no such thing as a moderate Islam; that nobody has yet managed to come up with a credible theoretical way to reform Islam; and that there are no practical indications of any softening or modernization of Islam actually taking place. Since the adherents of this creed in its present form are waging a war of annihilation against us and the civilization we have created, this leaves only one possible conclusion if we wish to retain our culture and freedom: Physical separation. Islam and those who practice it must be totally and permanently removed from all Western nations.
Potential objections can be raised to this solution. One is that it might provoke Muslims and trigger a world war. To this I will say that our mere existence as free and self-ruled peoples constitutes a provocation to them. Besides, we are already in a world war. Technically speaking, it started 1400 years ago, the mother of all wars.”

This is neo-Nazi-style ideology and hatred of Muslims. Contrary to scholarship like that of historian Robert Wistrich or historian Daniel Pipes, both experts on Muslim antisemitism, Fjordman states that Islam has been at war with ‘the West’ for some 1400 years, since the time of Muhammed. It is important to emphasize that Daniel Pipes, among many other scholars, distinguishes between Islamism and Islam, as quoted earlier in this piece.

Fjordman’s call for the removal of all Muslims from Europe is a hardcore racist slogan, following decades of neo-Nazi agitation in Europe. Fjordman, who is a hero for many rather racist self-declared anti-jihad activists and other fans of bigotry, is arguing in an unscholarly fashion. He denies that Islamism is a specific and modern phenomenon. He is supported by a scholar in medicine, Andrew Bostom, who mostly does not focus on Islamism as a modern topic. In August 2011, after Fjordman called for the removal or expulsion of all Muslims from Western countries, Bostom called the writing of Norwegian preacher of hate, “prolific,” very productive or rich. Bloggers like Atlas Shrugs (Pamela Geller) promote Fjordman and share his hatred of Muslims and Islam, which damaged the anti-Islamist tent a lot in recent years. Fjordman talks about “the mother of all wars” when dealing with Islam (!), therefore he denies the specifics of European history, and the Holocaust, for example.

Well-known American blogger Charles Johnson (the New York Times Magazine reported about him, in a pejorative way) runs the blog Little Green Footballs (LGF). He is an anti-jihadist author, e.g. known as critic of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR). On August 1, 2011 Johnson (LGF) analyzed the case of Fjordman and his allies:

“1) I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I linked to Fjordman’s articles in the years before 2007. In fact, I clearly acknowledged it in this post about the Norway terrorist: The Oslo Terrorist’s ‘Counter-Jihad’ Ideology.

2) My posts about Fjordman were deleted years ago, because I realized that the person who had represented himself as a rational critic of Islam was, in reality, a white nationalist of a particularly sneaky and nasty sort. I didn’t remove those posts to hide anything — I removed them because I wanted his crap off my site, and wanted nothing to do with him or his followers.

3) I’ve never hidden any of this. I’ve spent the last four years refuting, debunking, and arguing against Fjordman and his associates, and I invite anyone to have a look through my archives and confirm this fact. And I did this precisely because I saw something like the Oslo atrocities coming, when Fjordman, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and the rest began dropping their masks and hooking up with European fascist groups like Vlaams Belang, the EDL, Sweden Democrats, Geert Wilders, etc., etc.”

Why are people like Fjordman obsessed with Muslims while being most often very silent on secular and Christian and other antisemites in Europe, for example? Most antisemites in Europe are Christian or secular. Of course, Islamist antisemitism is a very serious problem, but rather in Iran, Egypt or the Gaza-Strip compared with Norway, without ignoring horrible trends in Scandinavian Jew-hatred, mostly deriving from the Muslim Islamist communities (including teenagers). We had horrible antisemitic rallies in Germany and Europe, organized by Islamists, yes. I published many articles about Islamist antisemitism in Germany and Europe. Mainstream media are most often in denial of Islamist antisemitism.

However, remember: most anti-Israel articles and books in Western countries are written by non-Muslims. Left-wing, liberal as well as mainstream defamation of Israel is a huge problem, too. For example, in my 2011 book Schadenfreude. Islamic Studies and Antisemitism after 9/11 in Germany (410 pages, in German), I focused on representative German scholars in the field of Islamic Studies. Most of them are not Muslims. Take Islamic Studies scholar and head of the Department of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Gudrun Krämer, as an example. In 2010 she was awarded the Gerda Henkel Prize of the Düsseldorf-based Gerda Henkel Foundation (€ 100,000). Krämer is a fan of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna and she portrays leading Sunni Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a “moderate.” She also contributed to the highly disturbing book in 2009, “Global Mufti. The Phenomenon of Yusuf al Qaradawi.”

Focusing on Muslims as the main and almost only cause for antisemitism in Europe or the Western world is racist in nature and completely inaccurate to boot. German Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature Günter Grass defamed Israel as a threat to world peace in a poem in 2012. His agitation against the Jewish state and his downplaying of Ahmadinejad and the Iranian threat was published in the leading German daily, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and he was immediately interviewed by the leading TV news show ARD-Tagesthemen. Grass, who became a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) age 17 in 1944, was then provided a platform at ARD, to read his poem.

The German and European Right has no problem with Jew-hatred. Otherwise they would focus on ordinary Europeans and Germans who are promoting antisemitism in different forms (anti-Zionism, Holocaust distortion, anti-Judaism, among other forms of antisemitism like anti-Mammonism, anti-Molochism, anti-Ahasver, the ‘eternal Jew’ etc.). The German and European Right pretends to be scared about antisemitism and hatred of Israel. Therefore they use Israel as a tool to fight Muslims and the Left. People like Fjordman make it very easy for the Left to dismiss pro-Israel activism if it is based on racism Fjordman-style.

Fjordman reported about the July 2012 meeting on “free speech” in Brussels for Frontpage Magazine, a leading online website in the US in the pro-Israel or rather anti-Islam tent. Solidarity with Israel is very much damaged by such websites as long as they publish neo-Nazi-style people like Fjordman who pleads for the expulsion of all Muslims from Western countries!

Conny Axel Meier, a German anti-Muslim activist, said the following at the July 2012 Brussels event of the Civil Liberties Alliance:

“A study from the University of Hamburg in 2007 reveals that 14% of Muslims in Germany prefer Sharia instead of democracy. That means, that at least half a Million persons in Germany are supporters of Sharia. Half a Million followers of Islamic Supremacism. And what are those appeasers continue telling us? That it might be only a tiny minority of misunderstanders among all the Millions of peaceful muslims? Islamization seems only a fantasy and we are simply islamophobes and bigots? In the year 1928 – only five years before Hitler seized power in Germany, his Nazi-Party NSDAP numbered about 100 000 memberships, a fifth of the actual number of Sharia-supporters. It was a tiny minority than, too.”

Portraying the support of sharia law as five times more dangerous than Nazi activities in the late 1920s, is a trivialization of Nazi terror in the Weimar Republic and a well known strategy of right-wing extremism in Germany since 1945. In fact, neo-Nazis killed dozens of Muslims in recent years, since 1989 in particular, in Germany (!), not vice versa. No one denies the threat posed by Salafi Islamists and many other Islamist groups in Germany, including Turkish groups like Milli Görüs, the biggest Islamist group in Germany. They promote antisemitism, too. But German nationalists like Meier and Politically Incorrect are promoting antisemitism as well, plus hatred of Muslims and pride in being German.

Geert Wilders is highly problematic, too. He opposes Judaism and ritual slaughter, thanks to his hardcore anti-Islam – and not at all anti-Islamist – stance. The Chief Rabbi of Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Center as well as former activist of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Manfred Gerstenfeld, criticized Wilders for his rather antisemitic stance towards Judaism. Already in 2007 Wilders obfuscated Nazi ideology of Adolf Hitler when comparing Hitler’s Mein Kampf with the Quran. This kind of ridiculous agitation is highly dangerous. Hitler’s book and ideology led to the Holocaust! Unfortunately Manfred Gerstenfeld himself, who is a highly respected scholar on antisemitism in all its forms, started to publish with a website dedicated to spread the agitation of Fjordman in recent months (Tundra Tabloids), I mentioned this website earlier in this article.

We know that most left-wingers and liberals are silent about Islamist antisemitism and hatred of Israel. But publishing with right-wing extremist people who spread lies about “the mother of all wars,” distort the Holocaust and agitate against all Muslims like neo-Nazis in Europe do is no better.

In Austria there is a law that forbids pro-National Socialist activism. As mentioned, there is no free speech in Europe in general, because the first to embrace free speech are Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, and other antisemites, including Islamists of course. Parts of the Austrian Akademikerbund, an association of academics, pleaded in 2010, if not earlier, for an end to that anti-Nazi law in Austria. Sabaditsch-Wolff is a member of that Akademikerbund (its Vienna section) and known as a supporter of free speech.

Since 2012 Sabaditsch-Wolff is a board member of the peoples movement Pax Europe (Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa). In 2009, Robert Spencer was a speaker at a Pax Europa event in Germany. They are known as nationalists, often waving German flags at their events.

Most left-wingers and liberals turn a blind eye towards Islamism and hatred of Israel. However, having a legacy of anti-neo-Nazi activism in the 1990s, I was a co-author of a brochure about left-wing antisemitism as early as 2001, before 9/11, and as a result of the Second Intifada in September 2000. For most people like Strüning or Fjordman antisemitism is not a real problem. They hate Muslims as such and want a Muslim or immigrant-free Europe. They pretend to be pro-Israel, but this lip service is just necessary because they need funding from the US.

They are not scared about what happens to Jews and they never dealt emphatically with the six million Jews who were killed by Germans, Austrians and their allies (including Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Croats, Dutch, some Islamists and pan-Arabists, among many others) during the Shoah.

People have to be extremely careful when dealing with proud Christian Europeans. None of these people is shocked by the Holocaust; it is not a topic for research for them. They hate Islam as such and not just Islamism. They love Israel not because it is a Jewish state, rather because it is seen as a hotbed for anti-Muslim policies. Those who claim the wonderful “Christian-Jewish symbiosis” in history distort what happened in Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. Many German right-wing movements and parties like Die Freiheit or Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa promote the fantasy of a “Christian-Jewish symbiosis.”

At the end of the day the right-wing anti-Islam agitators are spreading Jew-hatred, too. This became crystal clear in 2012, as documented in this piece. Die Freiheit, the German party spreading antisemitism when aiming at Judaism and circumcision, is a symbol of right-wing tactics to destroy the pro-Israel tent from within. They use a Trojan Horse and will fight Jews in the pro-Israel tent as soon as they can. In Germany they already left their Trojan Horse in summer 2012.

Robert Wistrich, too, distinguishes between Christian antisemitism in the Middle Ages and Islamist antisemitism, which became a major threat for Jews in the 20th and 21st centuries in particular, without ignoring antisemitic tendencies in early Islam, too. But Christian Jew-hatred was by far a much more dangerous phenomenon compared with the history of Islam.

No one can take people who claim to be against antisemitism seriously, as long as they are downplaying, obfuscating or embracing the entire history of Christianity, including Christian antisemitism. In my second book, published in 2009, I dealt, for example, with the Catholic Bund Neudeutschland and their anti-liberalism and antisemitism before and after 1933.

The pro-Israel as well as the anti-jihad tents or discussions need to focus on serious authors and scholars. The Iranian threat is the most dangerous threat Jews and Israel are currently facing, without ignoring Arab anti-Zionism and other forms of anti-Zionism like Western anti-Zionism. Right-wingers of many kinds in Europe and Germany are not concerned about the Iranian threat in the first place. They are concerned about immigration as such. They detest Muslims as such, as shown in the case of Fjordman. No surprise, then, that those right-wingers do not focus on German antisemitism from the mainstream. The Holocaust is not an important field of research for them. As shown in the case of Mr. Glagow and his friends from the big network of Politically Incorrect and Conny Axel Meier, those people portray May 8, 1945, as the “defeat of the German Wehrmacht.”

If this is the common ground for Americans to support these right-wing groups in Germany and Europe, I am wondering what they will tell the GIs who fought against Germany and National Socialism.

People like Fjordman, Strüning, Sabaditsch-Wolff, Meier and many others of that kind of agitators are part of the problem. They are not in the pro-Israel tent, they build an anti-Muslim tent. They are proud of Europe and Germany and ignore that the worst crime on earth ever, the Holocaust, was made by Germans and their European allies.

On January 3, 2013, Strüning’s ally, Götz Kubitschek, the new-right or extreme right-wing activist and publisher, backed German left-wing journalist Jakob Augstein. Augstein is no. 9 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “2012 Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs.” Currently, there is a huge debate going on in Germany about the antisemitism of Augstein (who was born in 1967, and is a multimillionaire, co-owner of the weekly Der Spiegel and owner of the small weekly Freitag). Augstein also promoted anti-American tropes and defamed US Troops because “79 elite soldiers” killed the “unarmed” and “old man” Osama Bin Laden, who was “surrounded by females and children.” In his tirade against America on May 5, 2011, he followed the anti-Americanism of Indian left-wing activist Arundhati Roy, who after 9/11 compared Bin Laden to George W. Bush.

For example, Augstein wrote on April 6, 2012, on his column for the leading German news website Spiegel Online (SPON):

“Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world. This statement has triggered an outcry. Because it’s true. And because it was made by a German, Guenter Grass, author and Nobel Prize winner. That is the key point. One must, therefore, thank him for taking it upon himself to speak for us all.”

This is how the new antisemitism works: “Jew’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world.” Replace “Jews” with “Israel” and that’s it. Replacing Jew’s with Israel’s is the transformation we witnessed from the 1930′s and 40′s to the 21st century. Most people, though, not only but particular Germans, have not the intellectual strength and power to understand this crucial analysis. Resentment prevails, and analysis and scholarship on antisemitism is defamed. Scholars like Juliane Wetzel from the Center for Research on Antisemitism at Technical University Berlin, or her colleague Klaus Holz, a leading protestant activist and scholar on antisemitism, denied that Augstein is an antisemite because they themselves have no problem with the defamation of Israel in the way I quoted Augstein.

Extreme right-wing Kubitschek argued that the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrongly bases his decision on German-Jewish journalist Henryk M. Broder. Klaus Holz defamed Broder, too. The extreme right and Kubitschek has no problem with the defamation of Israel or the conspiracy thinking, promoted by left-wing Jakob Augstein and documented by the SWC.

Thus, Kubitschek announced that in February 2013 his publishing house Antaios will publish a small book, entitled “Forget about Broder! Are we still Antisemites?” (in German), written by a Günter Scholdt. They aim at Broder because he is the best known pro-Israel journalist in Germany. Most, if not all German dailies who reported about the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Top Ten list of antisemitic/anti-Israel slurs attacked Broder and/or backed Augstein. But it is particularly remarkable that the extreme right, which is eager to portray herself as pro-Israel and anti-Islamist, defames the leading pro-Israel and anti-Islamist journalist.

Antisemitism, racism, rejection of Holocaust remembrance, and (German) nationalism go hand in hand with people like Götz Kubitschek, Fjordman or Felix Strüning.

The leading German platform for Geert Wilders and all these people around Wilders mentioned in this article is – as already quoted – the German blog Politically Incorrect. Germany “cannot tolerate” “Jewish organizations” in that country “if Jewish organizations keep on doing this archaic rule,” aiming at circumcision, is the slogan of these antisemites in 2012. Who can take the pro-Israel lip-service of these people and groups seriously anymore?

As Commentary’s Ben Cohen wrote in November 2012, Wilders anti-ritual slaughter stance in the Netherlands should open eyes in the pro-Israel tent. Wilders and the likes are so obsessed with being anti-Islam – and not just anti-Islamism – that they oppose ritual slaughter, knowing that Jews will be a target, too.

People have to recognize that being anti-Islamism and pro-Israel does not mean being proud of Germany, silent about the Holocaust, and being anti-circumcision.

German and European right-wingers tried to pretend to be pro-Jewish ever since 9/11. The year 2012 has shown that they are antisemitic. They are also racist and anti-Islam and have to be fought for all these reasons and many more.

Scholarship on antisemitism has to be aware of left-wing, cosmopolitan anti-Zionism as well as of right-wing anti-Judaism/antisemitism or Holocaust distortion and trivialization. Neither Fjordman, Wilders or Politically Incorrect, nor people like Judith Butler, Günter Grass or Edward Said (I deal with Butler, Grass, and Said in my 2013 book Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon) are friends of serious scholarly research on antisemitism in all its forms. They have all to be analyzed and criticized for their promotion of different forms of antisemitism, left-wing or right-wing. Supporting people who want to expel all Muslims from Western countries is not tolerable. Fjordman crossed a red line and spreads neo-Nazi-style ideology.

Let us now turn to the rather left-wing or liberal Trojan Horse in the field of research on antisemitism and the Holocaust. I take scholars from the UK as an example. Scholarship in the Western world, particularly in Europe and North America, in the humanities and the social sciences in the fields of history of antisemitism, contemporary antisemitism, Middle East Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies, comparative literature, sociology, political science, law, cultural studies and related fields, is dominated by liberal or left-wing scholars. I’ll focus on several troubling tendencies of a couple of typical and representative scholars in some of these fields.

Legal scholar Lesley Klaff from the Sheffield Hallam University in England wrote about contemporary anti-Zionism and hate speech in the UK:

“The last few years have witnessed an explosion of anti-Zionist rhetoric on university campuses across the United Kingdom. Encouraged by the University and College Union’s annual calls for discriminatory measures against Israeli institutions and academics, the rhetoric has become even more strident since Operation Cast Lead. (…) There has been a proliferation of anti-Zionist expression on UK university campuses since 2002 when, on 6 April, 125 British academics published an open letter in The Guardian calling for an EU moratorium on funding for grants and research contracts for Israeli universities (…) This letter marked the official start of the British ‘academic boycott of Israel’ and acted as a catalyst for the use of the British university campus as a platform for the expression of anti-Zionist views.”[1]

Historian of antisemitism Robert Wistrich criticized the BBC, the Guardian, and the weeklyLondon Review of Books, the perhaps “most widely circulated of European literary magazines” for its constantly anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, or post-Zionist, approach and its defamation of Israel in recent years.[2]

Analyzing and criticizing scholars is an important field of research, take Campus Watch, an organization of the Middle East Forum (MEF) in Philadelphia, which deals with scholars in the field of Islamic and Middle East Studies in North America.[3]

Wistrich, head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA)[4]at HebrewUniversity, said in August 2009 at a conference in Montréal, Canada:

“George Orwell said: ‘There are some things which only an intellectual would be stupid enough to believe.’” Wistrich went on: “Intellectuals invented modern antisemitism. They were the pioneers of it and therefore we need to be particularly attentive and vigilant to the ways in which contemporary intellectuals are contributing to new and more modern, or postmodern, in some cases, forms of antisemitism.”[5]

British historian Arnold Toynbee produced an antisemitic trope when equating Israel and the Jews to Nazis in the 1950s, as literary critic Anthony Julius[6] and Robert Wistrich have shown.[7] The Israel-equals-Nazism-and-the-Holocaust comparison and equation has been part of leftist agitation for decades,[8] just have a look at such an antisemitic cartoon in the issue of the Labour Herald from June 25, 1982.[9]

Let’s have a look at contemporary scholars and authors and listen to a leading voice in the UK when it comes to anti-Zionism and antisemitism, Jacqueline Rose, a scholar in English at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a wonderful example and maybe George Orwell had her in mind when he analyzed intellectuals and their relationship to stupid things many decades ago. Jacqueline Rose wrote in 2005:

“It was only when [Richard] Wagner was not playing at the Paris opera that he [Theodor Herzl, CH] had any doubts as to the truth of his ideas. (According to one story it was the same Paris performance of Wagner, when – without knowledge or foreknowledge of each other – they were both present on the same evening, that inspired Herzl to write Der Judenstaat, and Hitler Mein Kampf.)”[10]

First of all, one must wonder about the scholarly standard of Princeton University Press. This is not a spelling mistake, because otherwise the editors would have told Rose to correct it. Everyone knows that Hitler was born in 1889 (a few days after British historian Arnold Toynbee was born). Rose needs the parallelization of Hitler and Zionism to defame Zionist Jews in the most shocking way possible, so she invented an extremely ridiculous and absurd constellation in Paris. Every serious historian and intellectual must recognize this, regardless if someone favors anti-Zionism or not. This is simply not scholarship anymore, not even controversial scholarship, this is clap-trap.

Theodor Herzl indeed finished the manuscript of Der Judenstaat in May 1895. We do not know which concert Rose is talking about, but it could not have been later than May 1895. At that time, young Adolf was 6 years old and in fact only visited Paris in 1940 when he conquered France during the Second World War, as Wistrich recalls in his critique of Jacqueline Rose. Wistrich wrote in his A Lethal Obsession. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad(2010), that “no contemporary platitude about the Jewish state is left unmentioned” in Rose’sThe Question of Zion.[11]

Rose also compared Israel to Nazi Germany, a hardcore antisemitic slur, as Anthony Julius,[12]documented in 2010 in his masterly study Trials of the Diaspora. A History of Antisemitism in England.[13]

The Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, based in London, and its director David Feldman are obviously rather fascinated by Rose as they invited her to present her new book on June 19, 2012. I dealt with this and several other kosher-stamps for post- and anti-Zionism at the Pears Institute and its allies like Jonathan Judaken in an article, published on November 9, 2012.

What are other troubling examples of scholars in the UK when it comes to research on antisemitism?

- take Zygmunt Bauman, the world famous sociologist, who did not simply ignore the unprecedented character of the Shoah when framing antisemitism as part of modernity. Worse, as early as 1989 in his Modernity and the Holocaust he accused Israel and the Jews of emphasizing the uniqueness of the Shoah and the anti-Jewish character of the Holocaust.[14]His obsession with downplaying antisemitism and the specificity of National Socialism and the Shoah and his defamation of Israel culminated in an interview he gave on August 16, 2011 to the influential Polish weekly Polityka, where he compared the Warsaw Ghetto with the security fence in Israel.[15] According to the “Working definition of Antisemitism” of the former European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) ”antisemitism manifests itself” by “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”[16]

- or take Steven Beller who wrote in his small book Antisemitism: A very short introduction, published in the UK by a leading publishing house, Oxford University Press, that

“Antisemitism, in the form of a political movement aimed at persecuting, discriminating against, removing, or even exterminating Jews, is no longer a major threat in our globalized world.”[17]

This is denying reality; tell the Israeli population in Sderot, Ashkelon, Beersheba, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem about this, or Jews in the Netherlands or Sweden! Beller goes on to claim that “the answer to antisemitism is ultimately not a Jewish state, but the establishment of a truly global system of liberal pluralism.”[18] Anti-Zionism is mainstream in the UK and Oxford University Press is eager to print and distribute this in a small book supposedly dedicated to analyzing antisemitism. German publisher Reclam translated the book into German and the OxfordUniversity series claims that its books have been translated in many languages.

- or take British historian Tony Judt (1948–2010), and his infamous article “Israel: The Alternative” from 2003[19], where Judt wrote:

“The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews.”[20]

Ahmadinejad or the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas are grateful to Judt for defaming the Jewish state of Israel. Although scholars like sociologist Werner Cohn,[21] Judaic Studies scholar Alvin H. Rosenfeld[22], literary critic Anthony Julius,[23] or Manfred Gerstenfeld,[24]formerly from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), analyzed the antisemitism of Tony Judt, there are a huge number of scholars and students who still take Judt seriously. British historian Timothy Garton Ash, for instance, gave the first Tony Judt Memorial lecture on September 27, 2011 at New York University.[25] For historian David Cesarani, who is familiar with Judt’s anti-Israel position, Judt was a “superstar” and his “social and political agenda is resolutely moderate.”[26] Moderate! Cynically spoken: Maybe Judt, was “moderate” in terms of a UK standard of hatred of Israel.

- or take Eric Hobsbawn. Eric Hobsbawn (1917–2012) alongside with many other anti-Israel academics signed a letter in the Guardian during Operation Cast Lead aiming at the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state since 1948.[27] We can see the close relationship of downplaying or trivializing the Holocaust and anti-Zionist activism in the work of Eric Hobsbawn. In his worldwide bestseller Age of Extremes, first published 1994, which supposedly is a history of the 20th century, there is no chapter on the Holocaust. Auschwitz is not worth mentioning in the book or index, either.[28] Hobsbawn mentions the Holocaust only in passing. There are 68 photographs in that book, not one about the Holocaust.[29] Anthony Julius analyzed the problematic approach of Hobsbawn and anti- or post-Zionist Jews or Jewish publications in the UK like the “Independent Jewish Voice.”[30]

- or take British historian Donald Bloxham from Edinburgh. In 2009 he wrote:

“Aimé Césaire, mentor of the anti-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon, was one of the first to formulate the verdict that Nazi Germany did to Europe what Europeans had been doing to Africans and others for a long time. The judgment has since become a commonplace in the scholarship of genocide and colonialism.”[31]

Remember: this is a quote from Bloxham’s Oxford University Press book about The Final Solution, the Holocaust. There was nothing like the Holocaust in Africa, as scholarship has shown, but Bloxham ignores recent research on that topic. He mainly refers to one highly controversial German scholar, Jürgen Zimmerer.[32] I deal with him and the debate about German South-West Africa in my new book, based, for example, on findings of historian and expert on African history Jakob Zollmann, who is critical about Holocaust distortion.[33] If the Shoah was more or less the same as colonial crimes then there would not be a need for Holocaust Studies.

Donald Bloxham then accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” without giving the slightest context and without referring to scholarly literature on the Arab-Israeli war 1947/48 and the establishment of Israel. Bloxham writes – again, in a book about the Final Solution:

“In the ensuing years, in another former Ottoman province, Palestine, the nascent Israeli state forced the dispersal of large numbers of Arabs and went on to deny them the right to return.”[34]

Donald Bloxham applies the Islamist and secular anti-Zionist position of ”right of return,” which is still today a main obstacle to peace in the Middle East, and a core ideology of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine in the Near East (UNWRA).[35]

These are just a few outstanding examples of scholars from the UK and their relationship to antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Holocaust distortion, and post-colonial ideology.[36]

Finally, almost all scholars in the social sciences and humanities – I just focused on a few outstanding examples from the UK – reject or ignore research on Islamism and Muslim antisemitism. This is not so much different to the 1930s when the Western world ignored, if it did not embrace, Nazi antisemitism. Just look at the Ivy League in the United States and its pro-Nazi policies after 1933, for example, as historian Stephen Norwood has convincingly shown in recent years.[37]

The strange increase in research centers, consortiums and events about antisemitism is rather an indication that serious scholarship is being hijacked by newcomers who have no interest in analyzing antisemitism. Rather, the obfuscation or affirmation of antisemitic tropes is prevalent, often based on post-colonial and post-Orientalist ideology (following Edward Said), Holocaust distortion and anti-Zionism or post-Zionism.

On the other side we have right-wing activists, particularly in Germany and Europe like Fjordman, who agitate against Muslims and who argue against Judaism and ritual slaughter or the circumcision like Geert Wilders or the German blog Politically Incorrect and the extreme right-wing party Die Freiheit and its Bavarian head Michael Stürzenberger. Activists like Felix Strüning are collaborating with Politically Incorrect and the entire right-wing club of agitators against Muslims as such. As documented, those right-wingers embrace Antaios publisher Götz Kubitschek, who published Fjordman in 2012 and portrays the Holocaust and the National Socialist war against the Soviet Union as a “preventive war.” As shown, Strüning was part of a conference in Berlin that was organized by Kubitschek, and the antisemitic blog Politically Incorrect and its agitator Stürzenberger were part of the event, too. For economic reasons Strüning and other European activists don’t tell their American donors or friends about their German extreme right-wing bedfellows.

I tried to show in this article that serious scholarship and activism in the field of antisemitism, Islamism, Israel, and the Holocaust, has to be aware of dangerous tendencies from the left and from the right.

Promoting post- and anti-Zionism as a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict is suicide for Jews and Israel. Collaborating with self-declared friends of Israel from the (extreme as well as new) right will be a failure, too. At the end of the day it turns out that those right-wingers, as well as many German left-wingers, even pro-Israel ones, detest Judaism and argue aggressively against the circumcision or ritual slaughter.

This is the rather complicated situation we will be facing in 2013 and the following years and decades.

Islamism is a modern phenomenon. People have to stop talking about the supposedly continuity of some 1400 years of Islamism from the very beginning of Islam. This is ridiculous and distorts the history of antisemitism, too. Christian antisemitism was by far more dangerous compared with Islamic Jew-hatred in the Middle Ages in particular. The Holocaust was a German project, embedded in the long history of European and Christian antisemitism.

I know about organized Islamism and the threat it poses to Germany, Europe and the entire world and wrote the entry about Islamism in Germany in the first ever World Almanac of Islamism, published by the American Foreign Policy Council in 2011.

However, the ontologization or essentialization of Islamism has to be stopped. Framing Islamism as a 1400 (or 1500) years old project[38] denies that the Muslim Brotherhood was established in 1928 and that its antisemitism and Islamism are highly modern phenomena. The collaboration of the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Hussaini with Hitler, the Nazis and the Germans during National Socialism and the Holocaust was a highly modern phenomenon, and not mentioned or advocated in the Quran, too!

Like every religious book, take the Bible as an example, the Quran depends on modern interpretation. This is what believers like Irshad Manji, a moderate, lesbian Muslim, do. She was a speaker, for example, at the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) at YaleUniversity, several years ago. She dealt with Muslim antisemitism without framing the entire history of Islam as antisemitic, of course

The same holds for the very new and modern phenomenon of Iranian Islamism. The Iranian Revolution took place in 1979 and the following years and not 1400 years ago!

Israel needs support from serious scholars, authors, and activists, as well as politicians and the public in Western countries. Israel does not need advice from post-Zionist people who base their judgment on lies like those of Jacqueline Rose who wrote that Hitler was inspired to write Mein Kampf age six in 1895 in Paris, while Theodor Herzl was inspired to write Der Judenstaat during the very same concert!

Finally, Israel does not deserve support from right-wingers who base their judgment on pure hatred of Muslims as such and who distort if not embrace the Shoah and German nationalism in particular. For good reason, no one will take the pro-Israel as well as the anti-Islamism tents seriously if people like Fjordman or Strüning, who stand pars pro toto for the entire right-wing scene in Europe, are considered allies. Left-wing as well as right-wing Trojan Horses are a serious threat to Jews, Israel, the anti-Islamist scene and serious scholarship and activism on these topics.

Even Jews in Germany are reluctant to call antisemites antisemites. Several leading Jewish voices in Germany backed Jakob Augstein and criticized the Simon Wiesenthal Center for putting Augstein on the SWC 2012 Top Ten antisemitic/anti-Israel Slurs list. Salomon Korn, Vice-President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Julius H. Schoeps, historian of German-Jewish history, and historian Michael Wolffsohn, backed the anti-Zionist antisemitism of Jakob Augstein by framing it as “rubbish” or stupid, but not as antisemitic. The German media was extremely happy to quote Jews that their darling Jakob Augstein is not an antisemite, in this distorted and supposedly kosher view. Many debates about Israel would change entirely without the very few but extremely influential – because the non-Jewish German journalists are eager to find Jews who downplay, ignore, obfuscate or support forms of antisemitism – Jewish voices who often frame anti-Zionist antisemitism as “criticism of Israel.” Historian Wolffsohn, a well known figure in the political landscape of Germany, who once served in the IDF, went so far as to claim that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is “irrelevant,” saying to a leading daily, based in Berlin, Der Tagesspiegel: “I believe the Simon Wiesenthal Center is analytically and intellectually irrelevant.”

As literary critic Edward Alexander has shown recently, in his fascinating, timely, and tremendously important article about “Past and Present: Some Reflections on American-Jewish Intellectuals,” and the role people (and groups) like Hannah Arendt, Martin Jay, Tony Judt, George Steiner, J Street, Michael Lerner, and Peter Beinart played and play since the 1960s in denouncing Israel and/or the Jewish people from within, the problem of Trojan Horses goes beyond the left/right specter in the gentile world. German and Norwegian right-wingers use their being anti-jihad to promote hatred of immigration and hatred of Jews. A few Jews in the US and Europe use their being Jewish to give kosher-stamps for gentile antisemites. Iran loves these activities in Western countries because it detracts attention from the Iranian and Islamist threat.

[1] Lesley Klaff (2010): “Anti-Zionist Expression on the UK Campus: Free Speech or Hate Speech?,” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 22, Nos. 3–4, 87–109, online http://jcpa.org/article/anti-zionist-expression-on-the-uk-campus-free-speech-or-hate-speech/ (visited November 22, 2012).

[2] Robert Wistrich (2011): From Blood Libel to Boycott: Changing Faces of British Antisemitism, Posen Papers on Contemporary Antisemitism 13, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University, online http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/robert%20pp13.pdf (visited November 22, 2012), 1-2.

[3] ”Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds,” http://www.campus-watch.org/ (visited November 22, 2012).

[4] Let me say a few positive things about the UK and its relation to antisemitism. Perhaps the best known research center on antisemitism today is the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, established in 1982. It is named after Vidal Sassoon, who died this year. I posted an entry on my homepage to commemorate him. Vidal Sassoon first got in touch with politics in London after the Second World War. In 1947 he became a member of the famous group 43, a Jewish group fighting antisemitism in London and England, particularly Oswald Mosley and the Union Movement, and his pro-Nazi fascists, the Blackshirts. Antisemitism and hatred of Jews did not end on May 8, 1945, as we all know. Mosley was friends with Arthur Ehrhardt, himself a Nazi, member of the Waffen-SS and a SS-Hauptsturmführer, responsible for fighting “partisans.” Arthur Ehrhardt was then supported by Mosley and others after 1945 to reorganize SS activities under another name and he founded the journal Nation Europa, following the pan-European SS-ideology. Ehrhardt was the political father of Henning Eichberg, the leading theorist of German New Right ideology since the late 1960s. In 2006 I finished my doctoral dissertation about Henning Eichberg, the New Right and German ideology from 1970–2005, including the analysis of anti-Americanism, national identity, and antisemitism, Clemens Heni (2007): Salonfähigkeit der Neuen Rechten. ‘Nationale Identität, Antisemitismus und Antiamerikanismus in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1970–2005: Henning Eichberg als Exempel, Marburg: Tectum [also doctoral dissertation University of Innsbruck, July 2006].)

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIZKoYcP_vY&lr=1 (visited November 22, 2012; transcript by CH).

[6] Anthony Julius (2010): Trials of the Diaspora. A History of Anti-Semitism in England, Oxford/New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 412–414;

[7] Wistrich 2011, 7: “The intellectual pioneer in the 1950s of the idea that Zionism is a form of Nazism was, however, another eminent member of the British establishment, the renowned philosopher of history Arnold J. Toynbee. His monumental A Study of History unequivocally and relentlessly indicted the Zionists as ‘disciples of the Nazis.’ According to Toynbee, they had chosen ‘to imitate some of the evil deeds that the Nazis had committed against the Jews.’”

[8] Even critics of antisemitism like Dave Rich from the Community Security Trust (CST) argue sometimes not so convincingly. He said in 2011 at a conference about the EUMC Working Definition on Antisemitism: “For example, the Working Definition’s list of examples of antisemitism relating to Israel – which includes describing Israel’s existence as “a racist endeavour” and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany – is preceded by the crucial sentence: “Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israeltaking into account the overall context could include…” [emphasis by Dave Rich]. This leaves an obvious question which is not often asked, much less answered: what is the context in which these examples may not be antisemitic? For example, does a statement daubed on a wall differ from the same statement, made in a lecture theatre or written on an internet blog? At what point does the manner and context in which the statement is made demand intervention, either by a website moderator or by the police?” (Dave Rich (2011): Reactions, Uses and Abuses of the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, http://kantorcenter.tau.ac.il/sites/default/files/
proceeding-all_3.pdf (visited November 23, 2012)). WELL, if we take the comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany as an example, as Rich did as well, one should state that every single comparison of Israel with the worst regime on earth ever, National Socialism, is antisemitic, regardless if this comparison is made on a wall, in a lecture theatre or in a book, during daylight, at night, on a Wednesday afternoon, or on a Sunday morning. Such a comparison is obfuscating the Holocaust and defaming the Jewish state in the worst way possible. It projects the German guilt onto the Jews. Sigmund Freud, who died in London in 1939, could have written about this kind of antisemitic projection in some length. I do not understand why Rich asks if there might be a situation where the comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany (which is one of the examples of comparisons he refers to) “may not be antisemitic.”

[9] Wistrich 2011, 8.

[10] Jacqueline Rose (2005): The Question of Zion, Princeton and Oxford: PrincetonUniversity Press, 64–65.

[11] Robert Wistrich (2010): A Lethal Obsession. Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, New York: Random House 2010, 536.

[12] There are other examples of people in the UK who analyze, criticize and fight antisemitism in all its forms, including Muslim, left-wing and academic antisemitism. These activists and authors include, among many others, Ronnie Fraser and the Academic Friends of Israel (http://www.academics-for-israel.org/, visited November 23, 2012), and Douglas Murray, an outstanding voice against the Western and British denial of the Iranian threat. Murray spoke against the affirmation of Islamism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism at the Cambridge Political Union in March 2011, http://www.cus.org/connect/debates/2011/this-house-would-rather-a-nuclear-iran-than-war (visited July 9, 2012); or see the Zionist Federation, its Vice President Jonathan Hoffman, http://www.zionist.org.uk/ (visited November 23, 2012) or young activists and authors like Sam Westrop. It would be interesting, by the way, to learn why a Muslim member of British Muslims for Israel was disinvited to speak at an event of the Union of Jewish Students (and the possible involvement of the Community Security Trust, CST, in that decision). I think it is important and tremendously timely to support pro-Israel Muslims. Maybe many Muslims are pro-Israel but do not dare to speak out. Therefore it is imperative to give pro-Zionist Muslims a forum and to support their cause; in May 2012 Westrop reported the following: “Pro-Israel Muslims are especially feared. Kasim Hafeez – my Muslim friend and Israel advocate whom I mentioned earlier – was recently banned from speaking to Jewish students by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS). The UJS stated that Kasim’s presence would be dangerously provocative during the annual ‘Israel Apartheid Week’, because his speaking tour was: ‘very controversial and could potentially backfire on the J-Socs, exacerbating tensions and disrupting interfaith relations. We are concerned that he will stir up unnecessary anti-Israel & anti-Jewish sentiment among several hostile groups on campus’ This proscription was supported by a number of Jewish organisations within Britain,” Sam Westrop (2012): “Fool to the left of me, Neo-Nazi to the right…,” May 24, 2012, http://blogs.jpost.com/content/fool-left-me-neo-nazi-right (visited November 23, 2012). Westrop is also criticizing right-wing extremist Jewish groups like the Jewish Defense League (JDL), as well as rather anti-Zionist Jewish groups, both of which defamed the British Israel Coalition (http://bicpac.co.uk/, visited November 23, 2012), where Westrop and Hafeez are members.

[13] Julius 2010, 557.

[14] Zygmunt Bauman (1989): Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity Press, ix.

[15] For translations from this interview see Elvira Grözinger (2011): “Zygmunt Baumanns Verirrungen,” October 3, 2011, http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=8380 (visited May 18, 2012).

[16] EUMC: “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/material/pub/AS/AS-WorkingDefinition-draft.pdf (visited May 17, 2012). The EUMC existed between 1998 and 2007; the successor of the EUMC in 2007 is the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), which is still providing this definition today.

[17] Steven Beller (2007): Antisemitism – A Very Short introduction, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 119.

[18] Beller 2007, 119. Beller is also known for challenging critics of antisemitism like political scientist and sociologist Andrei S. Markovits from the University of Michigan. In the UK based peer-reviewed journal Patterns of Prejudice, which published several highly controversial articles in recent years (I analyze a couple of them in my new book, Heni 2013), Beller wrote: “Andy Markovits similarly loses perspective when discussing the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism of his erstwhile friends in the European left. He states, for example, that the BBC, Guardian and Independent share a ‘hostility towards Israel, Jews, and the USA’ (222). Israel and the USA perhaps, but Jews? As an online reader of the Guardian and BBC, I do not think their criticism of the United States and of Israel is based on a distorting ‘hostility’ so much as an astute objectivity and a refreshing outsider’s perspective, although I can see why many Americans I know are, like Markovits, antagonized by it. But why would Markovits claim that the BBC, Guardian and Independent are hostile to ‘Jews’, that they are effectively antisemitic? That is a grievous misrepresentation of these institutions, ignoring their decades of combating prejudice and championing the rights of individuals and minorities, Jews very much included,” Steven Beller (2007a): “In Zion’s hall of mirrors: a comment on Neuer Antisemitismus?,”Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 41, No. 2, 215–238, 219–220. Beller equally rejects the analysis of the “new antisemitism” by Omer Bartov, Michael Walzer, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Alain Finkielkraut, Thomas Haury, Jeffrey Herf, Robert Wistrich and Matthias Küntzel, ibid., 217.

[19] Tony Judt (2003): “Israel: The Alternative,” October 23, 2003, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/
oct/23/israel-the-alternative/ (visited May 23, 2012).

[20] Judt 2003.

[21] Werner Cohn (2011): “Prolegomena to the Study of Jews Who Hate Israel. Not to Weep or to Laugh, but to Understand,” http://www.wernercohn.com/Prolegomena%20to%20the%20Study%20of%20Jews%20Who%20Hate
%20Israel.htm (visited May 23, 2012); “Broadly speaking, Jews who hate Israel fall into three categories: a) the famous, of which Noam Chomsky is about the only one; b) the well-known, like Norman Finkelstein and Tony Judt, and c) others who are not known beyond their immediate circles but who do lurk in various crevices of the Internet. Altogether, as I will explain below, it is not likely that there are more than a few thousand of these haters active worldwide, say fewer than 10,000 and probably no more than half that number. Considering that there are more than 13 million Jews in the world at the moment, the proportion of those who actively hate Israel, about 0.04 of one percent, might well be considered to be modest indeed,” Cohn 2011.

[22] Alvin H. Rosenfeld (2006): ”Progressive” Jewish Thought and the new anti-Semitism, New York City: The American Jewish Committee, http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF%7D/
PROGRESSIVE_JEWISH_THOUGHT.PDF (visited March 27, 2012), 15–16.

[23] ”In a speech at Chicago University, given in October 2007, Tony Judt said: ‘If you stand up here and say, as I am saying and someone else will probably say as well, that there is an Israel lobby (…) you are coming very close to saying that there is a de facto conspiracy or if you like plot (…) and that sounds an awful lot like, you know, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the conspiratorial theory of the Zionist Occupational Governments and so on – well if it sounds like it it’s unfortunate, but that’s just how it is. We cannot calibrate the truths that we’re willing to speak, if we think they’re true, according to the idiocies of people who happen to agree with us for their reasons.’ Judt’s odd, misconceived remarks bring me to the Jewish anti-Zionistcontributions to anti-Semitism – in summary, both to affirm the truth of certain anti-Semitic positions (or positions with anti-Semitic implications) and to protect the holders of those positions from charges of anti-Semitism,” Julius 2010, 557.

[24] ”Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York University, delegitimizes Israel in a more sophisticated way,” than others who are against Zion, Manfred Gerstenfeld (2005): “Jews against Israel,” Nativ, Vol. 8, October 2005, http://www.acpr.org.il/English-Nativ/08-issue/gerstenfeld-8.htm (visited May 23, 2012).

[25] http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2011/09/15/timothy-garton-ash-to-deliver-tony-judt-memorial-lecture-muslims-in-europe-the-challenges-to-liberalism-sept-27-at-nyu.html (visited May 23, 2012).

[26] David Cesarani (2012): “Thinking the Twentieth Century, by Tony Judt, with Timothy Snyder,” February 10, 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/thinking-the-twentieth-century-by-tony-judt-with-timothy-snyder-6699572.html (visited June 24, 2012).

[27] Paul Gilroy, Ted Honderich, Étienne Balibar, Ilan Pappé, Gilbert Achcar, and Slavoj Zizek, among many others, were also signatories of that inflammatory letter. This remarkable letter, published in the Guardian, defamed the very existence of Israel and said: “The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel’s ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel’s war against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of gigantic political prisons,” “Growing outrage at the killings in Gaza,” January 16, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/
2009/jan/16/gaza-israel-petitions (visited March 29, 2012). Sociologist Gurminder Bhambra from the University of Warwick hosted Walter Mignolo from Duke University in the US. Mignolo is known as a supporter of the “one-state-solution,” read: the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, which would result in the killing of Jews, no doubt about this. Bhambra bases her own work on post-colonial ‘superstar’ Edward Said (Gurminder K. Bhambra (2007): Rethinking Modernity. Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination, Basingstoke (UK): Palgrave Macmillan). Bhambra compared the Holocaust to the history of slavery and the United States Holocaust Memorial to the Museum of Slavery in Liverpool. This is a distortion of the Shoah and a denial of its unprecedented character. Edward Said was a leading voice of anti-Israel scholarship since the late 1960s. He portrayed Arabs as the ‘new Jews’ as early as 1969 (Edward Said (1969): “The Palestinian Experience,” in: Moustafa Bayoumi/Andrew Rubin (eds.) (2001), The Edward Said Reader, London: Granta Books, 14–37, 34). He equated Israel with South-African apartheid in 1979 (Edward Said (1979): “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,” in: Bayoumi/Rubin (eds.) (2001), 114–168) and denounced Israel as the leading Orientalist, imperialist and racist power in his bestselling book Orientalism in 1978 (Edward Said (1978): Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books). The chapter on Israel is the last and longest chapter in this anti-Western and antisemitic book. In an interview in 1987 Said said that Israelis had not learned the lessons from their own suffering under Nazi Germany. In his view, Jews have become perpetrators now in the same way the Nazis were perpetrators against the Jews (The interview reads: “[Question to Said] Given the history of the Jews and the creation of the Israeli state, because of their historical experience with persecution and suffering and holocaust [small ‚h' in the original, CH] and death camps, should one feel that Israelis and Jews in general should be more sensitive, should be more compassionate? Is that racist? [Said] No, I don’t think it’s racist. As a Palestinian I keep telling myself that if I were in a position one day to gain political restitution for all the suffering of my people, I would, I think, be extraordinarily sensitive to the possibility that I might in the process be injuring another people,” Edward Said (2010): The Pen and the Sword. Conversations with Edward Said by David Barsamian.Introductions by Eqbal Ahmad and Nubar Hovsepian, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 42 (this interview was first published 1987)). In 1999 Said said that, if he could choose, he would opt for a kind of renewed Ottoman Empire. Jews could become an accepted minority, but Israel would be destroyed (Edward Said (1999): “An Interview with Edward Said,” in: Bayoumi/Rubin (eds.) (2001), 419–444, 430).

[28] Eric Hobsbawn (1994): Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914 – 1991, London: Michael Joseph.

[29] These pictures have no page numbers, and follow page 212 in the book, Hobsbawn 1994.

[30] Julius analyzed the anti-Zionist approach of Eric Hobsbawn and the “Independent Jewish Voice” (IJV): “The anti-Zionist is not just a Jew like other Jews; his dissent from normative Zionist loyalities makes him a better Jew. He restores Judaism’s good name; to be a good Jew one has to be an anti-Zionist. Eric Hobsbawn, for example, explained when IJV was launched: ‘It is important for non-Jews to know that there are Jews … who do not agree with the apparent consensus within the Jewish community that the only good Jew is one who supports Israel.’ This refusal to ‘support’ Israel leads to the formulation: ‘Israel is one thing, Jewry another.’ So far from Zionism being inextricably implicated in Jewish identity, fidelity to Judaism demands that Israel be criticized and one’s distance from Zionism be affirmed. The public repudiation of the ‘right of return’, guaranteed to Jews by Israel in one of its earliest pieces of legislation, was considered to be one important such affirmation,” Julius 2010, 548.

[31] Donald Bloxham (2009): The Final Solution. A Genocide, New York: Oxford University Press, 20, emphasis added.

[32] Bloxham 2009, 324–325.

[33] Heni 2013, 132–150, the chapter is entitled: “From Windhoek to Auschwitz” – “Kaiser’s Holocaust.” I am analyzing and criticizing these expressions, which in fact are book titles of contemporary historians!

[34] Bloxham 2009, 108.

[35] For a comprehensive analysis and critique of UNWRA and the right of return of Palestinian ‘refugees’ see Steven J. Rosen (ed.) (2012): UNWRA, Part of the Problem. Special Issue of Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4.

[36] I could also ask why David Seymour, a scholar in law from the University of London, denied the antisemitism in the early work of Karl Marx and did not even deal in detail with the remarkable scholarship on the antisemitism in “On the Jewish Question” of Marx from 1844. I would go further and say that Marx actually changed his position and started analyzing the value form of capitalism instead of defaming Jews and the field of distribution, finance, and money lending and so on. However, there is a horrible legacy of the early Marx until today if we look at left-wing and right-wing as well as mainstream anti-capitalist tropes, which defame one aspect of capitalism like Wall Street or the financial sector, while embracing the labour movement and the production of goods as such. Antisemitism among groups like Occupy Wall Street has been analyzed in recent years. I was astonished that Seymour omitted an analysis of Giorgio Agamben’s anti-Americanism and his distortion of the Holocaust when comparing the Shoah to Guantanamo Bay, for example. Finally, but not surprisingly, Seymour did not deal with the maybe most troubling aspect of Hannah Arendt’s scholarship: her anti-Zionism, which predates most of her political writing on other topics like “totalitarianism.” See David M. Seymour (2007): Law, Antisemitism and the Holocaust, Abingdon, Routledge-Cavendish.

[37] Stephen H. Norwood (2009): The Third Reich in the ivory tower: complicity and conflict on American campuses, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press; Stephen H. Norwood (2011): Antisemitism in the contemporary American university: parallels with the Nazi era, Jerusalem: The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), Acta, No. 34.

[38] Take one of the editors of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA), Steven K. Baum, as an example. He is doing very good work with that journal, and I am a Board Member, too. But framing contemporary Muslim antisemitism as “1500″ years old, is not convincing and not scholarly in nature; “Baum relates some of his experiences: “I carried out a study on 100 North American Muslims and 100 Christians who were given tests on the topics of anti-Semitism and other psychological phenomena. Their scores were then added up regarding levels and types of anti-Semitic beliefs. The results were that mainstream Christian anti-Semitism scores were low, while most Muslim scores were high. Threat to one’s social identity emerged as the strongest predictors of anti-Semitism in the Muslim samples. I sent my study to the Journal of Contemporary Religion. Its editor said that a reviewer wanted me to explain those religious differences in terms of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians. I replied that 1,500 years of anti-Semitic Muslim culture were the most likely source. The editor said that she would not publish the article until this issue was resolved with the reviewer,” Interview with Steven K. Baum by Manfred Gerstenfeld, December 28, 2012, Israelnationalnews.com.

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit "preventive war", "Zwischentag", Adolf Hitler, Allein unter Deutschen, Andreas Molau, Andrew Bostom, Antaios Verlag, Anthony Julius, anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, Antisemitism: A Specifc Phenomenon, Antisemitismus, Antizionismus, Arnold Toynbee, Arthur Ehrhardt, Atlas Shrugs, Ben Cohen, Campus Watch, Charles Johnson, Christian antisemitism, circumcision, Commentary, Community Security Trust (CST), Conny Axel Meier, Daniel Pipes, Dave Rich, David Feldman, Donald Bloxham, EDL, Edward Alexander, Edward Said, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, English Defence League, Eric Hobsbawn, essentialization of Islamism, Felix Strüning, Fjordman, Frontpage Magazine, Geert Wilders, Gerda Henkel Preis, Götz Kubitschek, Group 43, Gudrun Krämer, Günter Grass, Günter Scholdt, Hannah Arendt, Henning Eichberg, Henryk M. Broder, Holocaust, Hotel Adlon, identitäre Bewegung, Iran, Islamismus, Israel, J Street, Jacqueline Rose, Jakob Augstein, Jewish Defence League, Judith Butler, Lesley Klaff, Little Green Footballs, Manfred Gerstenfeld, Michael Wolffsohn, Middle East Forum (MEF), Muslimischer Antisemitismus, Nationalsozialismus, ontologization of Islamism, Oswald Mosley, Pamela Geller, Politically Incorrect (PI), pro NRW, Richard Wagner, Robert Spencer, Robert Wistrich, Salomon Korn, Salonfähigkeit der Neuen Rechten, Sam Westrop, Second World War, Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), Soeren Kern, Stephanie Schüler-Springorum, Steven Beller, Theodor Herzl, Tony Judt, Tundra Tabloids, Tuvia Tenenbom, Unternehmen Barbarossa, Vidal Sassoon, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Zygmunt Bauman | Kommentare deaktiviert

Jakob – der Liebling der deutschen Volksgemeinschaft

Publiziert am 5. Januar 2013 von admin

Ein Wintermärchen, 2013

Auch ohne Schnee und Sonnenschein kuschelt das Land wieder, Anfang Januar 2013, es ist wie im Wintermärchen: Deutschland kennt keine Parteien mehr und nur noch Deutsche. Die Volksgemeinschaft im Jahr 2013 stellt sich hinter einen Journalisten, der auf Platz 9 der berüchtigtsten Antisemiten unserer Welt bzw. in die Top Ten der aus Sicht des Simon Wiesenthal Centers (SWC) “erwähnenswertesten antisemitischen respektive antiisraelischen Verunglimpfungen des vergangenen Jahres” geraten ist. Was stört die Deutschen am meisten daran? Der Antisemitismus des Jakob Augstein und die Diffamierung, Dämonisierung und Ausgrenzung Israels? Das Schweigen der Augsteins dieser Welt über die wirklichen Gefahren und Kriege auf dieser Welt?

Oder stört eher die Kritik am Antisemitismus und an Deutschland? Lassen wir das „gesunde Volksempfinden“ zu Wort kommen:

„Mich interessieren nur die Macht-Mechanismen, die Broder mit seiner Empfehlung offenlegt: Wie kann eine Institution wie das Wiesenthal-Zentrum, das als seriös bewertet wird und großen politischen Einfluß besitzt, die persönliche Antipathie einer Revolverschnauze aufgreifen und aus der eigenen Arbeit eine Karikatur machen? Wird durch die Nominierung Augsteins nicht die ganze Liste überdeutlich zu dem, was sie wohl zuvor schon war: eine Farce?“

Von wem ist dieses Zitat? Von Christian Bommarius und der Frankfurter Rundschau, die Broder lieber im Knast oder Schlimmerem sähe denn als Bürger in Freiheit, von Juliane Wetzel vom sog. „The German Edward Said Center for Holocaust distortion and post-colonial Antisemitism“ an der Technischen Universität (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, ZfA), vom evangelischen Antisemitismusverharmloser Klaus Holz, dem Deutschlandradio und WDR5 und seiner Journalistin Liane von Billerbeck („Berlinerin mit ausgeglichener Klimabilanz, zwei erwachsenen Kindern, dem Hang zu märkischen Seen und Dichterfürsten“), vom Deutschen Journalistenverband (was soll man von dem auch sonst erwarten?), von Michael Wolffsohn, der Antisemitismus als eher läppischen und harmlosen „Unsinn“ umetikettiert und womöglich das Ansehen Deutschlands gefährdet sieht wenn Augstein wahrheitsgetreu kategorisiert wird, immerhin ist Augstein der anerkannte Sohn eines der seinerzeit mächtigsten Medienmänner, Rudolf Augstein, der mit Herzblut alten SS- und anderen Nazimännern im Spiegel Unterschlupf bot, sowie der leibliche Sohn von Martin Walser, dessen antisemitische Paulskirchenrede im Oktober 1998 die Abwehr der Erinnerung an den Holocaust und die Jagdsaison auf jene, die erinnern, zumal Juden, inoffiziell in der Frankfurter Paulskirche eröffnete;

oder ist das obige Zitat von der ex-Weinkönigin und stellvertretenden CDU-Bundesvorsitzenden Julia Klöckner, ihrem Kollegen im Geiste, Gregor Gysi von der antizionistischen Partei Die Linke, dem Journalisten Michel Friedman, für den weder Augstein noch Günter Grass auf so eine Liste gehören, oder doch eher von der konservativen Zeitung für Deutschland (FAZ), ihrem Feuilletonchef Nils Minkmar oder auch ihrem Interviewpartner, einem Vizepräsidenten des Zentralrats der Juden Salomon Korn, der Augstein zwar so gut wie noch nie gelesen hat, aber sicher weiß, dass er zu Unrecht auf diese Liste des Simon Wiesenthal Centers gehört. Oder ist das repräsentative Zitat gar, Gottseibeiuns, von der jungen Welt, dem Neuen Deutschland, der taz, dem Freitag oder dem Vorzeige-Journalisten der ZEIT in solchen Fragen, Jörg Lau?

Nein, obiges Zitat ist von Götz Kubitschek, Autor der neu-rechten Postille Sezession, Geschäftsführer des Antaios Verlages, Co-Gründer des neu-rechten Instituts für Staatspolitik und ex-Redakteur der ebenso neu-rechten Jungen Freiheit. Selbst der Bundeswehr war sein Treiben zu bunt und er wurde 2001 vorübergehend wegen „rechtsextremistischen“ Aktivitäten entlassen. Kubitschek ist ein in der extrem rechten Szene beliebter Netzwerker, der im Oktober 2012 ein von bis zu 700 Leuten besuchtes Treffen (inklusive Politically Incorrect, PI) – „Zwischentag“ – organisierte.

Am 3. Januar 2013 stellte sich Kubitschek hinter Jakob Augstein und pries ein Büchlein an, das im Februar 2013 in seinem Verlag erscheinen soll:

„Günter Scholdt Vergeßt Broder! Sind wir immer noch Antisemiten? 96 seiten, gebunden, 8.50 € Schnellroda 2013.“

Der neu-rechte Aktivist Felix Strüning bewarb Kubitscheks extrem rechtes Netzwerk-Treffen im Oktober 2012 und lobt auch ein Antaios-Buch von Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, „Warum ich kein Linker mehr bin.“ Im selben Verlag erscheint auch einer der Superhelden der anti-muslimischen Liga, der norwegische Blogger Fjordman, der alle Muslime aus dem Westen schmeißen möchte, und zwar gründlich und langfristig (schrieb er im Dezember 2010). Antisemitismus, deutscher oder norwegischer Nationalismus, fast immer christlich grundiert, sowie Hass auf Muslime geben sich die Hand im Antaios-Verlag, der auch die Wehrmacht lobt und preist in ihrem „präventiven“ Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion, wie ein weiterer Titel dieser Propagandaschmiede verspricht. Schließlich, auch das ist Mainstream, wird der Antisemit und Käferaufspießer Ernst Jünger in diesem Verlag gefeiert.

Der Antisemitismus der rechten Szene (von neu-rechts bis rechtspopulistisch und rechtsextrem, je nach Lust und Laune soziologischer Differenzierung oder Appetit auf politikwissenschaftlichen Jargon) wird in dieser Hetze gegen Broder salonfähig. Denn obiges Zitat hätte von jedem anderen Augstein-Verteidiger kommen können. Nicht Augstein sei der Skandal, sondern Kritik am deutschen Antisemitismus, den der Sohn Martin Walsers gleichsam Pars pro toto verkörpert. Alle fühlen sich in Deutschland getroffen vom Simon Wiesenthal Center und kuscheln, von ganz links bis extrem rechts und mittendrin, wie im Wintermärchen.

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit "Vergeßt Broder", "Zwischentag", 2012 Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs, Antaios Verlag, anti-muslimische Liga, Antisemitismus, Antizionismus, Bundeswehr, CDU, Christian Bommarius, Der Spiegel, Deutscher Journalistenverband, Deutschlandradio, Die Linke, Die Zeit, Ernst Jünger, ex-Weinkönigin, Felix Strüning, Fjordman, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Frankfurter Rundschau, Götz Kubitschek, Gregor Gysi, Günter Scholdt, Hass auf Muslime, Henryk M. Broder, Holocaust, Institut für Staatspolitik, Jakob Augstein, Jakob der Liebling, Jörg Lau, Julia Klöckner, Juliane Wetzel, Junge Freiheit, junge Welt, Käferaufspießer, Klaus Holz, Klimabilanz, Liane von Billerbeck, Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, Martin Walser, Michael Wolffsohn, Nationalismus, neu-rechts, Neue Rechte, Neues Deutschland, Nils Minkmar, Norwegen, Paulskirchenrede, Politically Incorrect (PI), politikwissenschaftlicher Jargon, Rechsextremismus, rechtsextrem, rechtspopulistisch, Rudolf Augstein, Salomon Korn, Sezession, Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), Sowjetunion, soziologische Differenzierung, SS, taz, The German Edward Said Center for Holocaust distortion and post-colonial Antisemitism, Volksgemeinschaft, WDR5, Wehrmacht, Wintermärchen, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (ZfA) | Kommentare deaktiviert

New Book: Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (Berlin: Edition Critic, 2013)

Publiziert am 4. Januar 2013 von admin

Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon

Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism -
Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

by Clemens Heni

Order the book via e-mail to editioncritic[at]email.de or BUY the book via Amazon as a softcover copy or as an ebook!

This entry provides the following information:

1) The Book: bibliographical information

2) Cover pictures

3) About the book

4) About the author

5) Praise for the book

6) Foreword

7) List of Contents

1) The Book: Bibliographical information

Clemens Heni

Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon

Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

ISBN 978-3-9814548-5-7

Berlin: Edition Critic, 2013

Studies in Antisemitism/Studien zum Antisemitism Vol. 3/Band 3

33 € ($ 42) (£ 26)

xi + 648 pages 6” x 9” (15.2cm4x22.86cm) *Bibliography *Index

2) Cover pictures

3) About the book

This book analyzes the specifics of antisemitism and Jew-hatred in the 21st century. It includes a groundbreaking assessment of the political leanings of many prominent scholars in the field. Today’s antisemitism extends far beyond right-wing circles and can be found among liberals, leftists, anti-racist communities, Islamists, and post-colonial scholars in the Western world. Using English and German sources, the author demonstrates the need to oppose Holocaust trivializiation as well as other ‘modern’ forms of antisemitism like anti-Zionism and the defamation of the Jewish state of Israel.

4) About the Autor

Clemens Heni holds a PhD in political science from the University of Innsbruck, Austria (“summa cum laude,” 2006). In 2008/2009 he was a Post-Doctoral Associate at Yale University. He is the Director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), founded in 2011. Click here for more information.

5) Praise for Antisemitism A Specific Phenomenon

“A thorough, objective and intelligent analysis of the principal form taken by contemporary anti-Semitism.”

Dr. Anthony Julius, London, author of Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (2010, 2012); Deputy Chairman, Mishcon de Reya; Chairman, London Consortium; Visiting Professor, Birkbeck College, University of London; Vice-President of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund; in 1992 he wrote a doctoral dissertation at University College London (UCL) about T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form

***

“A fascinating research, an important book, an alarming perspective.”

Dr. Simon Epstein, Historian, Jerusalem; latest publication 1930. A Year in the History of the Jewish People (2011, in French)

***

“Clemens Heni’s monumental book is a timely reminder of the central role of Jews’ hatred in Jewish and world history. What began in antiquity, and continued in the Middle Ages, as hostility to the Jewish “other” of the pagan and, later Christian world, turned in the 19th century to rejection of the Jews’ attempts to shed their uniqueness and become like the rest of the people among whom they lived. European antisemitism led to the Holocaust, and post-Holocaust guilt feelings camouflaged it for several decades. Meanwhile, the Jewish problem moved from Europe to the Middle East, and was elevated from the personal and communal level to the national one. The Jewish State faces the problem of acceptance as much as the Jewish individual faced it before the Holocaust. As Heni meticulously shows, present antisemitism – sometimes disguised as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism – is carried by a peculiar coalition: successors of European pre-war right-wing antisemites, the post-colonial radical left and fundamental Islamists, Suni and Shi’ite alike. Only Jew-hatred could unite these conflicting elements. This is an important book, published in a crucial time.”

Prof. Dr. Yoav Gelber, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel; Professor, Department of Land of Israel Studies, Haifa University, author of many books on the Second World War, Israeli history, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

***

Clemens Heni’s “Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon” is a masterful and very sobering analysis of global anti-Semitism. It is an academically respectable “call to arms;” a passionate and yet dispassionate account of virulent Jew hatred in the Islamist world and its “politically correct” counterpart in the West. Read it and weep. Read it and join those among us who have not lost our moral sanity or historical post-Holocaust memory.

May we join Heni–who excels in the nuances of contemporary German and European anti-Semitism and in its North American counterpart–in standing up to the ruthless Lies. Heni understands that comparing alleged discrimination against Muslims with the genocidal extermination of the Jews is itself one of the many new forms of Jew hatred. He also understands that the entire western academic enterprise is endangered by its cowardly and opportunistic refusal to tell the truth about the Jews, Israel, and antisemitism.

Prof. Dr. Phyllis Chesler, Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies, City University New York, author of 15 books, including her bestseller Women and Madness (1972), The New Anti-Semitism (2003) and The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle For Women’s Freedom (2005)

***

“Clemens Heni understands the insidiousness and perfidy of contemporary antisemitism, hiding as it does behind many veneers of respectability. Drawing on a superb background and experiences on several continents, he exposes many deceitful aspects of contemporary Holocaust denial, Muslim antisemitism, and hatred emanating from the extreme right and left. He is a man of great courage endowed with a strong sense of mission. Heni fights a battle to restore integrity to academia and the left. He fights against antisemitism in all its forms, and he does so with outstanding intellectual expertise. Bravo!”

Prof. Dr. Neil Kressel, William Paterson University, Department of Psychology, Author of “The Sons of Pigs and Apes:” Muslim Antisemitism and the Conspiracy of Silence (2012) and Bad Faith: The Danger of Religious Extremism (2007)

***

“This is a courageous work on a problem of great contemporary relevance. Antisemitism is once again emerging as a major threat in many locations today. Fueled by a variety of dark causes, and present in groups on both the political right and the political left, as well as among Islamists, it again poses a fundamental threat not only to Jews but also to western civilization. Heni’s work forces all of us to think deeply about the matters of prejudice and hatred and is a contribution to all those who are seeking ways to combat these plagues.”

Prof. Dr. Steven Katz, Slater Professor of Holocaust and Judaic Studies, Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University; author of numerous books on the Holocaust, Judaism, Jewish Thought, Religious Thought, Post-Holocaust Dialogues; National Jewish Book Award runner-up for Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust (2007)

***

“Clemens Heni is a young scholar with true courage. He has taken on a subject that is uncomfortable for academics. By turning a mirror at the academic world he has shown that the evil of anti-semitism has a strong foothold in the academy. The new anti-semitism does not wear the same clothes as its Christian, rightwing and Nazi fore bearers. It wears a new mantle of anti-Israelism and Islamic Judeophobia. Whereas Islam’s mythic fear of Jews is unwarranted and unsubstantiated; the reality based Jewish fear of Islam has been reified and replicated over and over again from Iran to North Africa to Europe by real facts of murder, terror and intimidation and threat. If only 10% of the Islamic world embraces anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred then that means more than 100 million people have the potential to act on their fears. Heni points this out in a well-documented fashion. Of special note for anyone is his description of the destruction of the Yale Anti-Semitism center. This is a must read book.”

Prof. Dr. Samuel Edelman, Professor Emeritus, Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies, and Communication Studies, California State University (CSU), Chico; Founder of the program in Modern Jewish and Israel Studies at the California State University Chico in Northern California; Former Executive Director, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME); Director and CEO, Center for Academic Engagement and, Faculty Affairs Advisor, Israel on Campus Coalition, Washington, DC

***

“In Clemens Heni’s Anti-Semitism: A Specific Phenomenon we have a rare combination of courage and acumen, much needed in the study of this highly volatile topic. Basing his findings on a vast range of research, Heni’s analysis of German anti-Semitism, its ties to contemporary Islamism, and implications for anti-Zionism is penetrating and deeply insightful. His assessment of the current scholarship on anti-Semitism, with all the controversies that go with it, is eye-opening, exhaustive, and indispensable to contemporary and future scholars. It is a ‘must read’ for students and scholars alike.”

Prof. Dr. David Patterson, Hillel Feinberg Chair, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, The University of Texas at Dallas; A winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the Koret Jewish Book Award, Patterson has published more 30 books; author of A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (2010)

***

“Antisemitism is a not a breakaway territory in the mainland of modernity; nor is its illogical aberration. Whether we like it or not, but the unpleasant truth is that antisemitism is a significant and inescapable part of modernity. By no means were demonization of the Jews and the charge of maleficium for their supposed collective participation in occult evil just a marginal trait in Christian Europe. Incredible as it sounds, it was its substantial and essential feature which did not contradict the greatest cultural and intellectual accomplishments of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The same may be said about modern antisemitism which was practiced in the most civilized European societies and sophisticated scholarly circles. Antisemitism did not deny the modern project with its promises of equality, pursuit of happiness, just society, and better life. Likewise, modernity did not deny antisemitism until the Catastrophe of Humanity which we know as the Holocaust.Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Clemens Heni, in his profound and painstaking study, aptly describes antisemitism as a specific, strange, awkward, and paradoxical phenomenon, which departs from our modern sensibilities and fails us as human beings, which leaves us devastated, disenchanted, yet which stays… It is still there whatever we say and whatever we do. It changes its forms over time, it walks in disguise as an honest and liberal criticism of Israel, it masquerades as a perfectly legitimate and consistent fight for human rights, it lends itself to philosophy and cultural studies, it misleads politicians, and it misguides scholars, yet it does not disappear.Why is it so? Clemens Heni’s timely and important book will help us throw more light on antisemitism – this specific phenomenon, as the author would have it.”

Prof. Dr. Leonidas Donskis, Department of Political Science, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania; Member of European Parliament (MEP), ALDE (2009–2014)

***

“Clemens Heni’s important book is both necessary and disturbing. His laser-like focus on the specificity of antisemitism, the longest lasting social pathology in Western civilization, is a much needed reminder that Jew-hatred combines with Holocaust denial and trivialization are linked in the ongoing attempt to demonize, delegitimize and, ultimately, destroy the State of Israel. Heni’s nuanced and informed analysis confirms the ‘treason of the intellectuals’ on both the right and left wing, while revealing the extent to which Islamic fundamentalism is bent on destroying Israel.”

Prof. Dr. Alan Berger, Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies; Director, Center for the Study of Values and Violence after Auschwitz; Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida; author or numerous books on Holocaust Literature

***

“Coming to the defense of Jews and Israel has never been an exercise for faint-hearted people. Clemens Heni undertakes that defense with skill and consummate scholarship as well as courage.”

Prof. Dr. Edward Alexander, Professor emeritus, Department of English, Washington State University, Seattle, author of The State of the Jews. A Critical Appraisal (2012)

***

“Clemens Heni says: ‘A scholar on antisemitism who is not doing advocacy for Jews is fooling him‐ or herself. A doctor who is looking for new medicine is doing advocacy ― for mankind ― as well as scholarship.’ Heni espouses Antisemitism Studies as a rigorous academic field in its own right while rejecting a bogus neutrality toward the subject matter. By synthesizing extensive scholarship, an incisive critical faculty, and good old fashioned chutzpah, Heni has produced a major work that is so individual that any stray page would tell you who its author is. By intrepidly taking on some of the most famous historians of the generation and demonstrating where they have fallen right into trendy mindsets lavishly underwritten by powerful forces of Left and Right (in roughly equal measure), Heni sensationally unmasks and dethrones a number of today’s icons. He does it in a freewheeling style that captivates the reader. One doesn’t have to agree with him on everything to appreciate that this book is a foremost and invaluable contribution to the debate, not least in Holocaust Studies, which continue, along with Israel, to occupy center stage of the European debate.”

Dr. Dovid Katz, Dovid Katz was visiting professor in Judaic studies at Yale University in 1989–1999. From 1999 to 2010 he was professor of Yiddish language, literature and culture at Vilnius University, Lithuania. He is based in Vilnius, where he edits
www.DefendingHistory.com

***

“At a time when anti-Semitism is on the upsurge around the world, and Iran is threatening to destroy the one Jewish state, Clemens Heni provides a vital analysis of the threat and the need to act to fight this scourge before it is allowed to spread further and cause the type of catastrophe that Jews have experienced all too often in their history.”

Dr. Mitchell Bard, Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and author of The Arab Lobby (2010)

***

Clemens Heni’s book “Antisemitism – a Specific Phenomenon” sheds important light on a problem which characterizes societies in crises. The deeper a crisis in a society is, the stronger is its need for someone to blame, and the Jew is always there to serve as a scapegoat; there are Jews in Europe, and there is – voilà – Israel, the state of the Jews. Classic anti-Jewish attitude which is deeply rooted in Christianity, found its way to classic Islamic discourse and immigrated to Europe to amplify the local, original, version. People in the media, academia and the arts compete as to who will wage a better covert war against the Jew, by using, or rather abusing, Israel and its struggle for survival, as a means to blame the Jew for all the world’s problems.

Horrible events such as the Holocaust are denied, minimized, justified and even posed as a Zionist plot, and the Jew who is depicted as controlling the world’s economy, media and politics becomes the common enemy, the cause of all problems of societies in crises.

Clemen’s Heni’s book is a very important document for anyone who wants to understand how Jews became the scapegoat of Europe in particular and the declining West in general.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Lt. Col. (res.) Israel Defense Forces (IDF), The Begin-Sadat-Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan (Israel)

***

“Only by taking the Holocaust as a unique and unprecedented crime against the Jewish people can its full historical implications be understood, so that steps may be taken to avoid its recurrence. No one is safe. Clemens Heni uses his deep study of German National Socialism and Neo-Nazi activity to uncover the depths of contemporary anti-Semitism, a disease exponentially growing both on the left and on the right, in Western civilization and in Islam, often under the thin veil of anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism. This virulent plague of our times attacks individuality, enlightened reason, scientific thought and democracy—all the freedoms we hold dear. I cannot praise this book too highly.”

Prof. Dr. Norman Simms, Associate Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Humanities and English at University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, author of Alfred Dreyfus: man, milieu, mentality and midrash (2012)

***

“This penetrating study systematically exposes the intertwining of anti-Zionism and contemporary antisemitism and Western academia’s papering over the Islamist threat to Jews and the West. Heni analyses the pernicious trend to universalize and trivialize the Holocaust and minimize the role of antisemitism. He reveals Germany’s continuing refusal to grapple honestly with antisemitism and the meaning of the Holocaust.”

Prof. Dr. Stepehn H. Norwood, University of Oklahoma, Department of History, author of The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses (2009)

6) Foreword

When I started working on this book project several years ago, I did not anticipate the significant and specific rise of antisemitism in the year 2012 alone, when this study was finished.

This book was written for the interested public, for scholars in the field, for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students, for journalists, decision-makers, politicians, philanthropists, and public intellectuals, among others. In this study, I deal in particular with scholars in Western countries and their take on antisemitism, Islamism, and the Holocaust. This is quite an unusual approach in research. Many authors do not discuss the work of their colleagues, regardless of how bad or mistaken their research and/or activism are. Thus, not much has changed for the better in the last years and decades, when it comes to research on antisemitism.

Most scholars think of the consequences, taking into consideration who will have power on search committees, peer journals and at professional conferences. Taking all this into account, they almost never dare to discuss problematic aspects or tropes of leading colleagues in the field. Even they disagree, they do not go public.

Therefore, I think it is imperative to finally start focusing on prevailing problems with past and current scholarship. Most decision-makers, politicians, journalists, think-tank experts, and the public base their judgments on antisemitism on the expertise of scholars. Whether those experts are on TV, radio, the Internet, published in newspapers, interviewed, or on campus, many people indirectly or directly are influenced by leading scholars in the field. Mainstream media often interview scholars after an antisemitic attack, or an anti-Jewish slur at a rally. Criticizing antisemitism is rarely controversial as long as the antisemitic slur or attack was made by a right-wing extremist or neo-Nazi, whether in the style of the KKK, the Front National in France, the British National Front in the UK, the NPD in Germany, or the FPÖ in Austria, for example.

But what about antisemitism disseminated by a German Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, who singles out Israel as a “threat to world peace?” (Günter Grass)
What if the rejection of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is a core ideology of a Yale historian, who was awarded in Germany in 2012 (Timothy Snyder), as well as of newly elected President of that country? What if the new German President additionally accused those who emphasize the unprecedented nature of the Shoah of doing so because they are just looking for an “absolute” in a godless world? (Joachim Gauck)
What if in 2012 a leading European and German center like the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at Technical University in Berlin employs a follower of anti-Israel superstar Edward Said? What if that Center prefers to talk about “Islamophobia,” instead of analyzing the Iranian threat and Islamist antisemitism? (Achim Rohde)
What if a leading expert in literature, gender studies and philosophy from California is awarded a very prestigious prize in Germany, when she is known as a leading voice in calling the Jewish state “apartheid” and urging the world to “boycott” Israel? (Judith Butler)
What if her close friend, another American professor from Yale known for her anti-Zionist stance and who accused Israel of possible “crimes against humanity” during the anti-Hamas war in 2008/2009, and who has denounced Israel for being a nation-state was also awarded a highly respected prize in the very same country in 2012? (Seyla Benhabib) Who are the professors and members of such prize-search-committees?

Antisemitism, as I shall argue in this study, is a specific phenomenon and not just an instance of generic racism or prejudice. Many people of good will and scholars all too often confuse antisemitism, which led to the Shoah and is today aiming at the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, with racist policies, colonialism, or simple prejudice. I was very much involved in anti-racist and anti-neo-Nazi activism in Germany in the 1990s, when dozens of immigrants, punk-rockers, left-wingers, homeless, and others were murdered by German neo-Nazis. The political climate, the political culture at the time, was equally horrible and racist. Antisemitism, though, is different. Even today’s racist state policies (and we have had plenty in Germany in recent decades) which led to expulsions of refugees never led to genocide.

Scholars may not fool themselves when it comes to antisemitism and pretend to be ‘neutral.’ Ignoring the Iranian threat is taking a position, not remaining neutral. Remaining silent on Islamist antisemitism is not being neutral either. Islamist antisemitism is the most dangerous form of antisemitism in our 21^st century world. What would this Islamist threat look like if the West confronted it? What if Western politicians, diplomats, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize Winners, opinion- and decision-makers, scholars, activists, NGOs, and the public rallied against, discussed and confronted antisemitism on a regular basis? What if Islamist antisemitism were included in the curricula of high-schools in Germany and Europe and on campuses around the world, as is Nazi antisemitism and other forms of this “longest hatred?” This could be a game-changer, as silence would no longer prevail.

Germans love to portray themselves as a model for the world when it comes to remembering the Holocaust. In fact, many Germans have a predilection for dead Jews, while defaming living ones. I said this in a lecture at Hebrew University ten years ago in December 2002. Sadly, this phrase has maybe never been truer than in 2012.

Cosmopolitanism is a nice idea and anti-cosmopolitanism was a core element of right-wing antisemitic Europe in the 19^th century through Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc and its left-wing followers in the West defamed cosmopolitanism and Jews, too.

Today, though, left-wing and liberal cosmopolitanism has sometimes turned into a tool to denounce the Jewish state of Israel. Even Islamists (like at Columbia University) follow the Western idea of cosmopolitanism and argue against Zionism and Israel. Philosophically, several rather troubling aspects of cosmopolitanism go back to Immanuel Kant, as well as to Hannah Arendt.

I have been involved in research on antisemitism since 1996, when I was still a student. Today, though, I fear that the field is being hijacked by scholars who use research on antisemitism as a tool to spread not the analysis and criticism of antisemitism but rather the opposite: post-colonial ideology, anti-Zionism, Holocaust trivialization, and the denial of Islamist antisemitism.

Scholarship on antisemitism needs to change. It is my hope that this book will serve as a catalyst for that change. And, for change to happen, scholarship itself must also become the subject of scholarship: we need to analyze what our colleagues are saying and writing on antisemitism. We cannot continue to accept distortions and inversions of the past or the present – or that is all that we will have left in the future.

7) List of Contents

List of Contents Antisemitism A Specific Phenomenon by Clemens Heni

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Kommentare deaktiviert

Von Weimar nach Berlin – Antisemitismus vor Auschwitz und im Jahr 2012

Publiziert am 1. Oktober 2012 von admin

Von Weimar nach Berlin

Antisemitismus vor Auschwitz und
im Jahr 2012

Von Susanne Wein und Clemens Heni

Das Jahr 2012 ist so dicht an antisemitischen Ereignissen, dass ein vorgezogener Jahresrückblick lohnt. Das Jahr zeigt wie flexibel, vielfältig, codiert und offen sich Antisemitismus äußern kann. Drei Forschungsfelder seien hier knapp vorgestellt, um schließlich ein besonders markantes und schockierendes Beispiel von 2012 mit einem Fall aus dem Jahr 1925 zu vergleichen.

1) Holocaustverharmlosung.

Im Januar wurde in Leipzig bekannt gegeben, dass der amerikanische Historiker Timothy Snyder den Leipziger Buchpreis 2012 erhalten wird.

Snyder hat 2010 das Buch Bloodlands publiziert, worin er leugnet, dass der Holocaust ein spezifisches Verbrechen war, ohne Vergleich in der Geschichte. Vielmehr konstruiert der „Genozid“-Forscher, der dem sog. spatial-turn folgt (eine Modeerscheinung der Kulturwissenschaft, die den Raum als zentrale Größe postuliert), einen Raum in Osteuropa zwischen dem Baltikum und der Ukraine, den er Bloodlands nennt und in dem zwischen 1932 (!) und 1945 ca. 14 Millionen Menschen starben bzw. ermordet wurden. Hitler und Stalin sind für ihn gleich schlimme historische Figuren. Snyder bemüht die veraltete Great Man Theory und hat keinen Blick für die sehr ausdifferenzierte Forschung zum Nationalsozialismus und zum Holocaust.

Vielmehr kooperiert er mit dem litauischen Staat und unterstützt eine dortige, weltweit in Misskredit geratene historische Kommission, die die Verbrechen von Hitler und Stalin wiederum gleichsetzt. Dramatisch ist, dass selbst die israelische Holocaust-Gedenkstätte Yad Vashem und ihr wissenschaftliches Personal in Person der neuen Chefhistorikerin Dina Porat mit dieser Kommission in Litauen kooperiert, was zu scharfen Protesten von Holocaustüberlebenden führte.

Kurz gesagt: Timothy Snyder ist ein geistiger Enkel Ernst Noltes, er möchte die Deutschen entschulden und die Präzedenzlosigkeit von Auschwitz verwischen oder leugnen. Historiker wie Omer Bartov (Brown University), Dan Michman (Yad Vashem) oder Jürgen Zarusky (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München) haben Snyder dezidiert kritisiert. Der Jiddisch-Forscher Dovid Katz dokumentiert und analysiert seit Jahren den Antisemitismus in Osteuropa, insbesondere in Litauen, auch er hat sich intensiv mit Snyders Bloodlands befasst und zeigt, warum extrem rechte Kreise in Osteuropa Snyder feiern.

Die Wahl von Joachim Gauck zum Bundespräsidenten im März 2012 verstärkt die Holocaustverharmlosung, da Gauck die „Prager Deklaration“ vom Juni 2008 unterzeichnet hat, die – ganz im Sinne von Snyder – rot und braun gleichsetzt und die Verbrechen des Holocaust trivialisiert. Die Unterzeichner wollen als gesamteuropäischen Gedenktag den 23. August (der Tag des Ribbentrop-Molotow Paktes von 1939) etablieren und schmälern damit implizit die Bedeutung des Holocaustgedenktages am 27. Januar, wenn sie diesen Gedenktag nicht sogar ganz abschaffen wollen. Gauck sprach zudem 2006 davon, dass jene, die die Einzigartigkeit des Holocaust betonen, nur einen Religionsersatz suchen würden. Auch Neonazis, Holocaustleugner, manche christliche Aktivisten, Forscher oder auch Autoren der tageszeitung (taz) frönen einer solchen Sprache und reden von der „Holocaust-Religion“ oder einer „Pilgerfahrt“, wenn es um Auschwitz geht. Ohne den Dammbruch durch Martin Walsers Paulskirchenrede von Oktober 1998 wäre das alles nicht so ohne Weiteres im Mainstream der deutschen Gesellschaft denk- und sagbar.

2) Antizionismus.

Der zweite Aspekt des Antisemitismus ist der seit der zweiten Intifada im September 2000 und nach dem islamistisch motivierten Massenmord vom 9/11 weltweit bei den wenigen Kritikern im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit stehende antizionistische Antisemitismus bzw. die Israelfeindschaft.

Am 4. April 2012 publizierte der Literaturnobelpreisträger Günter Grass in der größten deutschen Tageszeitung (nach der Boulevardzeitung BILD), der Süddeutschen Zeitung aus München, ein Gedicht mit dem Titel „Was gesagt werden muss“. Darin schreibt der deutsche Denker:

„Warum sage ich jetzt erst, gealtert und mit letzter Tinte: Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden?“

Nicht der Iran droht Israel mit Vernichtung, die Juden („Atommacht Israel“) seien die Gefahr. Diese Leugnung der Wirklichkeit, die Derealisierung, Schuldprojektion und die Schuldumkehr sind ein typisches Muster des neuen oder Post-Holocaust Antisemitismus. Israel gefährde den Weltfrieden und nicht der „Maulheld“ Ahmadinejad, wie er vom deutschen Dichter verniedlichend genannt wird; dabei haben die Verharmlosung der iranischen Gefahr bzw. das klammheimliche Liebäugeln mit dem vulgären, iranischen, islamistischen aber natürlich auch dem arabischen Antisemitismus Konjunktur. Die Diffamierung Israels ist auch unter deutschen Wissenschaftlern, Journalisten, Politikern, NGO-Aktivisten und der Bevölkerung gern gesehen. Die ARD jedenfalls war von Grass so begeistert, dass der Tagesthemen-Anchorman Tom Buhrow ein Exklusivinterview mit dem Schriftsteller führte und tags darauf Grass das Gedicht in der ARD vortragen durfte.

Das wird ergänzt durch die Verleihung des Adorno-Preises der Stadt Frankfurt am Main am 11. September 2012 an die amerikanische Literaturwissenschaftlerin und Philosophin Judith Butler von der University of California in Berkeley. Butler ist als antiisraelische Agitatorin weltweit berüchtigt, wenn sogar der Präsident der Harvard University im Jahr 2002, Lawrence Summers, unter anderem sie meinte als er den Hass auf Israel und die Boykottaufrufe gegen den jüdischen Staat thematisierte. Butler steht für einen Antizionismus, der sich in der Tradition von Martin Buber und Hannah Arendt verortet und die Gründung eines explizit jüdischen Staates (der zudem so tolerant ist und 20% Araber und Muslime und andere zu seiner Bevölkerung zählt) ablehnt. Mit fast vollständig homogenen islamischen Staaten wie Saudi-Arabien, Iran oder Jordanien und ihren antidemokratischen, homophoben und misogynen politischen Kulturen hat Butler selbstredend kein Problem. Die Wochenzeitung Die Zeit publizierte gar einen Text der BDS-Unterstützerin Butler und unterstützt somit den Aufruf zum Boykott Israels. Früher wäre das fast nur in der jungen Welt oder der Jungen Freiheit propagiert worden, doch längst sind solche antisemitischen Positionen Mainstream.

Eine Vertraute und Freundin von Butler, die Politikwissenschaftlerin Seyla Benhabib (Yale University) wurde 2012 in Deutschland ebenfalls geehrt. Sie erhielt am 8. Mai den Dr. Leopold Lucas-Preis der Universität Tübingen für ihren Einsatz für Hospitalität und „universelle Menschenrechte“ – auch dieser Preis ist mit 50.000€ dotiert, was ja von der schwäbischen Alma Mater freundlich ist, wenn man bedenkt, wie schlecht bekanntlich die Yale University ihre Professoren bezahlt. Benhabibs Vorbilder sind Immanuel Kant („Der Ewige Frieden“ von 1795) und Hannah Arendt. Die problematischen Aspekte dieser Art von Kosmopolitanismus oder vielmehr die anti-israelische Dimension bei Arendt, kehren bei Benhabib verstärkt wieder. 2010 diffamierte sie Israel indem sie es mit der südafrikanischen Apartheid und mit den „1930er Jahren in Europa“ (sie erwähnt den Slogan „Eine Nation, Ein Land, Ein Staat“ und spielt offensichtlich auf Nazi-Deutschland an) verglich – während selbstverständlich auch sie den Jihadismus z.B. der Gaza Flottille ignorierte und ihn bis heute ausblendet. Dies sind die eigentlichen Gründe für die Ehrungen und den Beifall aus Deutschland für Personen wie Butler und Benhabib. Kritik an Arendt, Kant und der europäischen Ideologie (wie sie auch Jürgen Habermas vertritt) eines Post-Nationalstaats-Zeitalter, wie sie von dem israelischen Philosophen Yoram Hazony bekannt ist, wird in Deutschland entweder gar nicht zur Kenntnis genommen oder abgewehrt. Aufgegriffen und promotet wird sie höchstens von problematischen, nicht pro-israelischen, vielmehr deutsch-nationalen, rechten und konservativen Kreisen wie der Zeitschrift Merkur (dessen Autor Siegfried Kohlhammer den Islam mit seinen Dhimmi-Regelwerken für Nicht-Muslime schlimmer findet als den Nationalsozialismus und die Nürnberger Gesetze, und der zudem gegen Israel argumentiert).

3) Antijudaismus.

Diese älteste Form des Antisemitismus spielt auch im nachchristlichen Zeitalter eine zunehmende Rolle. 2012 tritt ein in seiner Vehemenz seit 1945 ungeahnter und ohne Vergleich dastehender Angriff auf Juden und das Judentum auf: Hetze gegen die Beschneidung und religiöse Rituale. Alles, was Juden im Post-Holocaust Deutschland dachten, als selbstverständlich annehmen zu können, steht jetzt in Frage: Juden als Juden werden hinterfragt. Wie im Holocaust sollen männliche Juden die Hosen runter lassen, damit die arischen Deutschen nachschauen, ob er ein Jude ist oder nicht; sie durchleuchten Juden auf ihre Gesundheit, sexuellen Praktiken und Fähigkeiten und finden diese Art von Zurschau-Stellung von Juden notwendig und emanzipatorisch. Heute wird diese antijüdische Propaganda nicht unter dem Schild der SS oder der Wehrmacht durchgeführt, nein: heute geht es um „Kinderrechte“ und die angebliche Freiheit, nur als nicht-beschnittener Mann im Erwachsenenalter über die Religionszugehörigkeit entscheiden zu können.

Am 7. Mai 2012 befand das Kölner Landgericht in einem die politische Kultur in Deutschland für immer verändernden Urteil die Beschneidung von Jungen als gegen „dem Interesse des Kindes“ stehend und somit als nicht vertretbar. Die Beschneidung von jüdischen Jungen am achten Tag bzw. die Beschneidung von muslimischen Jungen im Alter zwischen 0 und 10 Jahren, sei somit nicht legal. Ein deutsches Gericht urteilt über das Judentum, das die Beschneidung vor über 4000 Jahren einführte. Der Volksgerichtshof des Nationalsozialismus hätte seine Freude gehabt an diesem 7. Mai 2012. 600 Ärzte und Juristen, angesehene normale Deutsche, agitierten sodann unter Federführung des Mediziners Matthias Franz von der Universität Düsseldorf am 21. Juli 2012 in einem Offenen Brief in der Zeitung für Deutschland (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, FAZ) gegen die Beschneidung und forderten politische und rechtliche Konsequenzen aus dem Kölner Urteil. Selbst pro-israelische Aktivisten zeigen nun ein ganz anderes Gesicht und machen sich über das Judentum lustig. Offenbar hatten diese Leute schon immer ein Israel ohne Judentum im Sinn. Die Zeitschrift Bahamas

aus Berlin folgte dem Ruf aus Köln, der FAZ und dem Zeitgeist und sprach sich gegen eine Kundgebung für Religionsfreiheit/für die Beschneidung aus und forderte ihre 23 oder 34 Anhänger auf, dieser ohnehin kleinen Manifestation vorwiegend deutscher Jüdinnen und Juden am 9. September 2012 in Berlin fern zu bleiben, da sie „den kulturellen und religiösen Traditionen von Kollektiven grundsätzlich misstraut“. Autoren dieses Sektenblattes wie Thomas Maul und Justus Wertmüller bezeichnen die Beschneidung als „archaisch“ und diffamieren dadurch mit Verve das Judentum. Derweil kringeln sich die Neonazis, die NPD und autonome Nationalisten, da doch der deutsche Mainstream das Geschäft des Antisemitismus (bis auf die Verwüstungen jüdischer Friedhöfe und von Gedenktafeln, bis heute eine typisch neonazistische Form des Antisemitismus) übernommen hat. Die Wochenzeitung jungle world

mit ihrem Autor Thomas von der Osten-Sacken machte gegen die Beschneidung mobil und stellte Bezüge zur kriminellen Klitorisverstümmelung bei Mädchen, der Female genital mutilation (FGM), her. Sein Kollege Tilman Tarach war auf Facebook nicht weniger obsessiv dabei,

die Beschneidung und somit das Judentum zu schmähen. Eine Internetseite, Politically Incorrect (PI), die aus dem Umfeld von Parteien wie Die Freiheit, der Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE), der Pro-Bewegung und anderen Gruppierungen der extremen Rechten oder des Rechtspopulismus kommt, droht Juden:

„Wenn sich aber jüdische Verbände und Organisationen beispielsweise so an die uralte Vorschrift der Beschneidung klammern, zeigen sie damit, dass sie sich in diesem Punkt nicht vom Islam unterscheiden. So etwas können wir nach meiner festen Überzeugung in unserem Land nicht zulassen.“

Die Giordano Bruno Stiftung (GBS) mit ihrem Vorbeter Michael Schmidt-Salomon (übrigens sitzt Hamed Abdel-Samad im wissenschaftlichen Beirat der GBS),

die Deutsche Kinderhilfe, Evolutionäre Humanisten Berlin Brandenburg e.V., der Zentralrat der Ex-Muslime, die Freidenkervereinigung der Schweiz, der pflegeelternverband.de und einige andere Organisationen und Gruppen agitieren besonders aggressiv gegen Juden (und Muslime) und starten im Herbst 2012 die perfide Anzeigenkampagne

„Mein Körper gehört mir“. Zu sehen ist das Bild eines Jungen, der sich völlig verängstigt in den Schritt fasst und darunter steht: „Zwangsbeschneidung ist Unrecht – auch bei Jungen.“ Damit wird nicht nur die kriminelle und zumal islamistische Praxis der Klitorisverstümmelung mit der harmlosen Beschneidung von Jungen gleichgesetzt, vielmehr wird in Stürmer-Manier gesagt: vor allem das Judentum basiert auf Unrecht! Hieß es 1879 bei Heinrich von Treitschke „Die Juden sind unser Unglück“, was zu einem der Propagandasprüche des Nationalsozialismus avancierte, so wird im Jahr 2012 von Atheisten, Positivisten und anderen Aktivisten (die sich teils anmaßend Humanisten nennen) die Beschneidung als das Unglück für Kinder dargestellt oder Juden (und Muslime) gar als Kinderschänder diffamiert. Das liest sich wie eine post-christliche Version der Blutbeschuldigung, der antisemitischen Blood Libel.

Der Professor für Religionsgeschichte und Literatur des Judentums an der Universität Basel, Alfred Bodenheimer, ist zutiefst schockiert über den Anti-Beschneidungsdiskurs und hat im Sommer 2012 ein kleines Büchlein dazu verfasst: „Haut-Ab! Die Juden in der Besschneidungsdebatte“ (Göttingen: Wallstein). Darin analysiert er:

„Aus christlich-theologischer Sicht war die Kreuzigung ein sehr ähnliches Vergehen wie das Beschneiden der Kinder aus der heutigen säkularen: Denn die Taufe als unmittelbare Partizipation des einzelnen Gläubigen an der Kreuzigung Christi (und der damit verbundenen Sündenvergebung) machte letztlich jeden Getauften zum partiell von den Juden Gekreuzigten – und damit jenes Ereignisses, in dem gerade Paulus die Beschneidung aufgehoben hatte. Der säkulare Ausgrenzungsdiskurs folgt dem christlichen auf dem Fuße, er ist kultur- und mentalitätsgeschichtlich so leicht abrufbar, dass insbesondere den dezidierten Säkularisten die Ohren sausen dürften, wären sie sich der Sensoren gewahr, die ihren Furor geweckt haben. Der säkularistische Anspruch, Gleichheit in allen Belangen zur Ausgangslage eines frei auslebbaren Individualismus zu machen, trägt mehr vom Paulinischen Universalismus in sich (dessen Gegenbild die auf defensiver Differenz bestehenden Juden waren), als dem Gros seiner Vertreter klar ist.“ (ebd., 58f.)

Die Internetseite HaOlam mit ihrem Vertreter Jörg Fischer-Aharon, die sich jahrelang als pro-israelisch gab, hat den Anti-Beschneidungsvorkämpfer Schmidt-Salomon exklusiv interviewt und macht damit Werbung für obige Anzeigenkampagne.

Manche Organisationen, die häufig mit HaOlam bzw. deren Umfeld und vielen anderen aus der nie näher definierten „pro-Israel-Szene“ kooperierten, werden ins Grübeln kommen.

Sei es Ressentiment auf Religion oder kosmopolitisch inspirierte Universalität, jedenfalls wird mit bestem Gewissen jedwede Partikularität – wie die des jüdischen Staates Israel und des Judentums, inklusive seiner religiösen Traditionen, die auch von nicht-gläubigen Juden mit überwältigender Mehrheit praktiziert werden – abgelehnt.

Es ist unerträglich, mit welcher Arroganz, Obszönität und Dreistigkeit ausgerechnet deutsche Areligiöse, Christen, selbsternannte Israelfreunde und „Antifas“ sich de facto zu den islamistischen und neonazistischen Judenfeinden gesellen und völlig geschichtsvergessen das Nachdenken einstellen.

Kaum jemand hat heute in Deutschland noch Beißhemmungen wenn es um Juden geht.

Dieser hier skizzenhaft aufgezeigte neu-alte Antisemitismus zeigt sich in dramatischer Form in vier antisemitischen Vorfällen in wenigen Wochen bzw. Tagen allein in Berlin:

Am 28. August 2012 wurde in Berlin-Friedenau am helllichten Tag der Rabbiner Daniel Alter von mehreren vermutlich arabischen Jugendlichen und Antisemiten krankenhausreif geschlagen. Er trug eine Kippa und wurde gefragt, ob er Jude sei. Das „Ja“ führte zu einem Jochbeinbruch und Todesdrohungen gegen seine 6-jährige Tochter. Die Täter sind bis heute nicht ermittelt.
Am 3. September wurde gegen 10 Uhr vormittags eine Gruppe von jüdischen Schülerinnen vor der Carl-Schuhmann-Sporthalle in der Schlossstraße in Berlin-Charlottenburg von vier ca. 15-16-jährigen Mädchen muslimischer Herkunft (eine der Antisemitinnen trug ein Kopftuch) diffamiert und u.a. als „Judentussen“ beleidigt.
Am höchsten jüdischen Feiertag, Yom Kippur, am Mittwoch, den 26. September 2012, rief Esther Dobrin aus Berlin gegen 11 Uhr ein Taxi, um mit ihrer 11-jährigen Tochter und zwei weiteren Personen zur Synagoge in die Pestalozzistraße zu fahren. Der Taxifahrer verhielt sich reflexhaft feindselig, als der genaue Bestimmungsort als „Synagoge“ benannt wurde; er warf die vier Fahrgäste sozusagen aus dem Wagen.
Wenig später, gegen 18 Uhr an diesem 26. September, wurden drei andere Juden in Berlin verbal attackiert. Der Generalsekretär des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland, Stephan Kramer, kam gerade mit seinen beiden Töchtern im Alter von 6 und 10 Jahren von der Synagoge, ebenfalls in Charlottenburg, unweit des Kurfürstendamms, als er offenbar wegen eines klar ersichtlichen jüdischen Gebetsbuches beleidigt wurde. Im Laufe eines aggressiven Wortgefechts hat Kramer nicht nur die Polizei zu Hilfe gerufen, vielmehr auch auf seine Waffe gezeigt, die er seit acht Jahren zum Selbstschutz und als ausgebildeter Sicherheitsbeauftragter bei sich trägt. Die Polizei hat nun zwei Anzeigen zu bearbeiten, Kramer zeigte die Beleidigungen des Antisemiten an, während derselbe Kamer wegen Bedrohung anzeigte, wozu er, nach unbestätigten Informationen, von der Berliner Polizei durchaus ermutigt worden war.

Kramer kennt die Zusammenhänge des GraSSierenden Antisemitismus in Deutschland und weiß, dass sich die geistigen Zustände und Debatten in gewalttätigen Straßenantisemitismus entladen können – darum ist er bewaffnet. Welche zwei komplett disparaten Lebensrealitäten – eine jüdische und eine nicht-jüdische – werden von nichtjüdischen Deutschen tagtäglich stillschweigend hingenommen? Wie fühlt es sich an, ständig in den Einrichtungen der eigenen Religion/Gruppe, Kindergarten, Schule, Synagoge etc. unter Polizeischutz stehen zu müssen?

1925, einige Jahre vor NS-Deutschland, im demokratischen Rechtsstaat der Weimarer Republik passierte in Stuttgart Folgendes:

„An einem Sonntag im November 1925 las der Kaufmann Ludwig Uhlmann in der Gastwirtschaft Mögle Zeitung und trank ein Bier. In provozierender Absicht beleidigte ihn der am Nachbartisch sitzende Franz Fröhle mit spöttischen Bemerkungen und ließ mehrfach die Bezeichnung ‚Jude Uhlmann‘ fallen. Dieser reagierte nicht. Daraufhin sagte Fröhle: ‚Was will der Judenstinker hier, der Jude soll heimgehen‘, was Uhlmann sich verbat. Als die Pöbeleien anhielten, zog Uhlmann eine Pistole, mit der Bemerkung, dass Fröhle damit Bekanntschaft machen könne, falls er nicht aufhöre. Schließlich setzten der Wirt und die Polizei den Beleidiger vor die Tür. Die Staatsanwaltschaft beantragte nicht nur einen Strafbefehl gegen Fröhle wegen Beleidigung in Höhe von 50 RM Geldstrafe, sondern auch einen gegen Uhlmann wegen Bedrohung und abgelaufenen Waffenscheins. Bei der Hauptverhandlung des Amtsgerichts wurde er zwar von der Anklage der Bedrohung freigesprochen, aber wegen der Bagatelle des abgelaufenen Waffenscheins von wenigen Monaten zu einer Geldstrafe von 30 RM verurteilt.“ (Martin Ulmer (2011): Antisemitismus in Stuttgart 1871–1933. Studien zum öffentlichen Diskurs und Alltag, Berlin: Metropol, S. 350)

Dieses Schlaglicht zeigt die Normalität antisemitischer Beleidigungen, die in der deutschen politischen Kultur bereits damals, wie sich an unzähligen Beispielen aufzeigen lässt, tief verankert und sedimentiert war.

Heute nun, im Jahr 2012, über 67 Jahre nach dem Holocaust und Auschwitz – welch ein Unterschied ums Ganze! –, müssen sich Juden wieder bewaffnen. Sie sind fast täglich Angriffen, Beleidigungen und Hetzkampagnen ausgesetzt und es kann sich eine Szene abspielen, die der in einer Stuttgarter Kneipe von 1925 gruselig ähnelt.

Auf der einen Seite haben wir diese Vorfälle aus dem Jahr 2012 und insbesondere die „Beschneidungsdebatte“ mit all ihren antisemitischen Internet-Kommentaren -und Forenbeiträgen, die einen an Max Liebermanns Ausspruch zum 30. Januar 1933 denken lassen. Auf der anderen sucht man vergebens die arrivierten Antisemitismusforscherinnen und -forscher, die sich der skizzierten Forschungsfelder annehmen. Werner Bergmann schrieb 2011 in einer Festschrift für einen Kollegen:

„Im historischen Vergleich mit der Zeit vor 1945, aber auch in den letzten 60 Jahren in Deutschland [...] war Antisemitismus gesamtgesellschaftlich wohl selten so sehr an den Rand gedrängt wie heute.“

Antisemitismus ist in Deutschland nicht erst, aber insbesondere im Jahr 2012 gesamtgesellschaftlich so weit verbreitet wie vielleicht noch nie seit 1945.

Susanne Wein ist Historikerin und promovierte im September 2012 an der Freien Universität Berlin mit einer Arbeit über „Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur der Weimarer Republik. Eine Untersuchung anhand der Debatten im Reichstag“.

Clemens Heni ist Politikwissenschaftler und promovierte im August 2006 an der Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck mit einer Arbeit über die „Salonfähigkeit der Neuen Rechten. ‚Nationale Identität‘, Antisemitismus und Antiamerikanismus in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1970 – 2005: Henning Eichberg als Exempel“.

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit "Der Ewige Frieden", Adorno-Preis, Alfred Bodenheimer, antisemitische Gewalt, antisemitischer Taxifahrer Berlin, Antisemitismus, Antizionismus, ARD, Bahamas, BDS, Beschneidung, Bloodlands, Dan Michman, Die Freiheit, Dina Porat, Dovid Katz, Dr. Leopold Lucas-Preis, Facebook, Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung, Günter Grass, Hamed Abdel-Samad, Hannah Arendt, HaOlam, Heinrich von Treitschke, Holocaustverharmlosung, Homophobie, Immanuel Kant, Iran, Islam, Israel-Boykott, Joachim Gauck, Jordanien, Jörg Fischer-Aharon, Judentum, jüdisches Gebetsbuch, Judith Butler, jungle world, Jürgen Habermas, Jürgen Zarusky, Justus Wertmüller, Kippa, Kölner Landgericht, Kosmopolitanismus, Lawrence Summers, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Martin Buber, Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Misogynie, Omer Bartov, Politically Incorrect, politische Kultur, Post-Nationalstaats-Zeitalter, pro-Bewegung, Saudi-Arabien, Seyla Benhabib, Siegfried Kohlhammer, SS, Stephan Kramer, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Super-GAUck, Thomas Maul, Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, Tilman Tarach, Timothy Snyder, Tom Buhrow, Uni Tübingen, Universalismus, University of California (Berkeley), Weimarer Republik, Werner Bergmann, Yad Vashem, Yale University, Yoram Hazony | Kommentare deaktiviert

Laudatio für Judith Butler wird von einer antiamerikanischen Verharmloserin des Nationalsozialismus und des Holocaust gehalten: Eva Geulen

Publiziert am 10. September 2012 von admin

Laudatio für Judith Butler wird von einer antiamerikanischen Verharmloserin des Nationalsozialismus
und des Holocaust gehalten:
Eva Geulen

Von Dr. Clemens Heni

The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

Am 11. September 2012 wird der Adorno-Preis der Stadt Frankfurt verliehen. An diesem Tag im Jahr 1903 wurde Theodor W. Adorno geboren. Was liegt nun näher, für ganz normale Deutsche, als an diesem Tag, dem 11. Jahrestag des islamistisch motivierten Massenmordes von 9/11, eine antiamerikanische, den Holocaust und den Nationalsozialismus verharmlosende Frau die Laudatio auf die Israelhasserin Judith Butler, die sich als zärtliche Freundin von Seyla Benhabib, Martin Buber und Hannah Arendt vorstellt und Israel im Sinne eines (deutsch-jüdischen) “kulturellen Zionismus” zerstört wissen möchte, halten zu lassen?

Eva Geulen heißt die Laudatorin

und in meinem Buch Schadenfreude. Islamforschung und Antisemitismus in Deutschland nach 9/11 schrieb ich über sie.

Sie hat ein Büchlein zur Einführung in das Denken des italienischen Philosophen Giorgio Agamben geschrieben. Darin wendet sie sich wie der modische Vorzeigeverniedlicher des Nationalsozialismus im Suhrkamp-Verlag gegen “biopolitische Interventionen im Alltag” und findet es total angemessen mit der “Auschwitz-Insinuation” herum zu fuchteln. Daher schrieb ich also im August 2011:

2004 wurde deutlich, wie Antiamerikanismus, eine Verharmlosung des Antisemitismus sowie die Rede vom ubiquitären ‚Lager‘ bei Agamben jeglichen Realitätsbezug vermissen lassen. Denn ein Buch der Literaturwissenschaftlerin Eva Geulen[i] zur Einführung in das Denken Agambens stellt sich unverhohlen hinter diesen modischen, antimodernen und antisemitischen Vordenker. Es ist eine typische Antwort heutiger Gegenintellektueller auf den Islamismus und den 11. September. Ein Gegenintellektueller ist in der Tradition der Mandarine zu sehen, also der früheren chinesischen Berater des Kaisers. Gegenintellektuelle wenden sich gegen Herrschaftskritik und Gesellschaftsanalyse im aufklärerischen Sinn, eher stehen sie für Gegenaufklärung und Restauration.[ii] Viele Wissenschaftler und von der Öffentlichkeit als „Intellektuelle“ wahrgenommene Personen sind eher Gegenintellektuelle, so kritisch sie sich auch gerieren mögen. Ein antiwestliches Ressentiment ist häufig grundlegend, so etwa die Diffamierung der USA als eine Art ‚Nazi-Land‘ bei Agamben; seine Verteidigerin Eva Geulen kokettiert damit:

„Viel Ärger und viel Lob hat sich Agamben eingehandelt, als er unter skandalträchtigem Verweis auf die Tätowierung von KZ-Häftlingen im Frühjahr 2004 eine Gastprofessur an der New York University nicht antrat, weil er sich exemplarisch und öffentlich der von den USA nach den Terroranschlägen am 11. September 2001 von allen Einreisenden verlangten Abnahme eines DNA-Fingerabdrucks verweigerte (wer im Besitz einer green card ist, hat ihn längst hinterlegt). (…) Ihm einen direkten Vergleich zwischen der Immigrationszone des New Yorker Kennedy-Flughafens und einem Konzentrationslager zu unterstellen ist offensichtlich verfehlt. Schockiert könnte man sich aber darüber zeigen, dass wir uns an biopolitische Interventionen im Alltag offenbar schon so sehr gewöhnt haben, dass es der Auschwitz-Insinuation bedarf, um die Lethargie zu unterbrechen. Was in solchen Räumen geschieht, ist nicht mehr rechtlich abgesichert, sondern hängt ‚von der Zivilität und dem ethischen Sinn der Polizei‘ ab, die vorübergehend in solchen Räumen als Souverän agiert.“[iii]

Es ist antisemitisch, eine Kontinuität von den Lagern und den KZs hin zu vergleichsweise harmlosen DNA-Fingerabdrücken im 21. Jahrhundert zu imaginieren. Letztere sind zudem als Reaktion auf den von Islamisten verübten Massenmord im World Trade Centereingeführt worden. Die Forschung redet jedoch lieber von „Bio-Politik“ statt von antimodernem Islamismus.

Wurde das Gedenken an Theodor W. Adorno jemals so sehr in den Dreck gezogen wie am 11. September 2012 in Frankfurt am Main in der Paulskirche? Das deutsche Establishment, nicht nur Axel Honneth und Micha Brumlik, wird klatschen und innerlich johlen und frohlocken ob soviel Antisemitismus, Hass auf Amerika und Israel, Banalisierung von Auschwitz und Abscheu vor Theodor W. Adorno.

[i] Geulen ist Professorin am Institut für Germanistik, Vergleichende Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, Abteilung für Neuere deutsche Literaturwissenschaft der Universität Bonn, http://www.zfkw.uni-bonn.de/zentrumsrat/mitglieder/profile/geulen.html (21.02.2011).

[ii] Zum Begriff des Gegenintellektuellen vgl. Heni 2007, 87–89.

[iii] Eva Geulen (2005): Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius, 101. Auch an anderer Stelle verharmlost die Autorin selbst den Nationalsozialismus, wenn sie in Anlehnung an Agamben die „Schutzhaft im Nationalsozialismus“ mit der Situation „der Gefangenenlager in Guantanamo Bay“ gleichsetzt und jeweils als „Ausnahmezustand“ bezeichnet (vgl. ebd., 96f.); Letzteres ist eine Begrifflichkeit des Nazijuristen Carl Schmitt, einer Referenzquelle Agambens.

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit 9/11, Adorno-Preis, Antiamerikanismus, Antizionismus, Axel Honneth, Bio-Politik, Eva Geulen, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Israelhass, Judith Butler, kultureller Zionismus, Martin Buber, Micha Brumlik, Schadenfreude, Suhrkamp-Verlag, Verharmlosung des Holocaust, Verharmlosung des Nationalsozialismus | Kommentare deaktiviert

Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) in Germany appointed anti-Israel activist

Publiziert am 1. August 2012 von admin

Center for Research on
Antisemitism (ZfA) in Germany appointed anti-Israel activist

Islamic Studies scholar Achim Rohde
promotes Edward Said and
anti-Zionist antisemitism

By Dr. Clemens Heni, The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), August 1, 2012 (another version of this article was published July 31, 2012, with algemeiner.com in New York City)

The Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Berlin Technical University in April 2012 appointed as a co-worker an outspoken supporter of antisemite Edward Said: Achim Rohde. A scholar in Islamic Studies, Rohde was hired because he conducts research to evaluate the similarities of “antisemitism” and “Orientalism” “in the sense of Edward Said,” as the ZfA newsletter of May 2012 declares. In addition, he will be working on the ZfA’s big project on “Islamophobia in European societies.”[1] “Islamophobia” as a research project of a Center for Research on Antisemitism? This is unscholarly in nature and politically scandalous.

The appointment of Achim Rohde is shocking for scholars on antisemitism, though a big coup for enemies of the Jewish state of Israel. Responsible for this is newly appointed head of the ZfA, historian Stefanie Schüler-Springorum. Hired in June 2011, she is a newcomer to scholarship on antisemitism. She has not published a single book on that topic – nor has Rohde.

Edward Said becomes even more mainstream
in German academia

Edward Said (1935–2003) was the leading academic anti-Zionist voice in the last decades, achieving global fame. He portrayed Arabs as the ‘new Jews’ as early as 1969.[2] He equated Israel with South-African apartheid in 1979[3] and portrayed Israel as the leading Orientalist, imperialist and racist power in his bestselling book Orientalism in 1978.[4] The chapter on Israel is the last and longest chapter in this anti-Western and antisemitic book. In an interview in 1987 Said said that Israelis had not learned the lessons from their own suffering under Nazi Germany. In his view Jews have become perpetrators now in the same way Germans or Nazis were perpetrators against the Jews.[5] In 1999 Said said that, if he could choose, he would opt for a kind of renewed Ottoman Empire. Jews could become an accepted minority, but Israel would be destroyed.[6]

Now, in 2012, Edward Said is mainstream[7] at the only German University based research center on antisemitism. They are promoting antisemitism instead of analyzing it.

Achim Rohde and the equation of antisemitism
and Orientalism

Rohde was published in 2010 by then head of the ZfA, controversial historian Wolfgang Benz.[8] Rohde promotes the fantasy that Muslims and Arabs had been victims of Germany since the 19^th century, if not long before. He follows the ideology of “the Orient within.” This means: while Orientalists aim at Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East, they aim at Jews in Europe. Jews are victims of Orientalism within the homeland of the empire, Europe, so to speak, while Arabs and Muslims are victims abroad, in the Middle East and in the fantasies of artists, authors, writers, politicians, intellectuals, the public, art historians, painters etc. etc.

This equation of antisemitism and Orientalism is a denial of antisemitism, which is based on conspiracy theories, blood libels, anti-liberalism, anti-capitalism, anti-communism, anti-Westernism and many other aspects of that “longest hatred,” a term of historian Robert S. Wistrich.[9] The “lethal obsession” (Wistrich)[10] of antisemitism cannot be compared or equated with supposedly or real Orientalism and allegedly or really problematic views vis-à-vis the Arabs and Muslims. Particularly after 9/11 it has become fashionable and useful to ignore Islamism and Muslim antisemitism and to talk about Arabs, Muslims and Jews as victims of Orientalism. Anti-Zionist antisemitism is a core element of this post-Orientalist ideology, as I have shown in the work of Edward Said.

Rohde and many colleagues, who are obsessed with post-colonial ideology and Edward Said, ignore or deny the close friendship of German Emperor Wilhelm II, who traveled to the Ottoman Empire in 1898 and portrayed himself as friend of the Muslims. German Islamists remember this German-Muslim friendship until today.[11] In 1914, during the First World War, Wilhelm II initiated the Jihad of the Ottoman Empire, as Middle East Studies scholar and historian Wolfgang G. Schwanitz has shown.[12] Subsequently, the Arab Muslim Brotherhood developed close ties with the Nazis even before the Holocaust. During the Shoah, the Arab and Muslim leader at the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, collaborated with Hitler and the Germans. Nazi Germany was pro-Arab and pro-Muslim, and anti-Jewish.[13] Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal documented the close relationship of the Grandmufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, and the Axis (Nazi Germany and fascist Italy) in 1947.[14]

Nazi scholar Hans Lindemann published a work about Islam in 1941, urging the Germans to see the similarities of the Muslim world and National Socialism.[15] A leading Nazi agitator, Johann von Leers, was happy about Islamism and converted to Islam after the defeat of Nazi Germany and went to Egypt, like many former Nazis, to spread Jew-hatred and antisemitism in that leading Arab country. Egyptian President Nasser welcomed these Nazis and collaborated with them, as the American Jewish Committee documented as early as 1957.[16] Historian Robert Wistrich analyzed the antisemitism of Egypt and von Leers in 1985.[17]

During the 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany became a hotbed for Islamism (supported by Federal agencies), thanks to anti-communist hysteria of the time, as Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson[18] and historian Stefan Meining[19] have shown in recent years. Finally, 9/11 inflamed German Schadenfreude, anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-Islamist tendencies.[20]

Rohde, from the younger generation (born 1969), is equally aggressive against critics of antisemitism as is Benz. Rohde’s thesis was about the Ba’ath Party, Saddam Hussein, gender-relations in Iraq, and the ideology of pan-Arabism.[21] He submitted his work in 2006 at the Institute for Islamic Studies at Free University Berlin. His first reader was the controversial (in Germany: prize winning) scholar Gudrun Krämer, who is known for portraying the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, as a nice guy with great ideas to promote Islam.[22] She is also known for her support of the leading Sunni Islamist in the world, Yusuf al-Qaradawi,[23] who praised Adolf Hitler in January 2009 in Al-Jazeera TV, aired from Qatar, where he lives.[24]

For Rohde, Iraq Ba’ath party style pan-Arabism failed. He urges the Arab world to look for a stronger and more successful way of pan-Arab ideology and action.[25] He is against the “hegemony of globalization”[26] and refers to Edward Said, Daniel Boyarin and anti-Zionist Jacqueline Rose.[27] Why did Rohde refer to anti-Zionist and antisemitic authors in a doctoral dissertation dedicated to the analysis of Iraq, gender relations and pan-Arabism?

Boyarin and Rose have been analyzed as examples of progressive Jewish antisemitism by scholar in literature and Jewish Studies Alvin H. Rosenfeld in 2006.[28] It is telling that Rohde deleted these references at the very end of his study to Boyarin,[29] Rose and Said in his published book in 2010 on the same topic.[30]

Rohde refers to German historian Jürgen Zimmerer, a leading voice in distorting the Holocaust by universalizing it and framing colonial crimes as forerunners of the Shoah. For Rohde, imperialism, racism, and Orientalism are closely related to Nazi Germany.[31] He also compares German and Nazi “sexual politics” with those of the United States and Israel in the 20^th century.[32]

The ZfA, Hazem Saghiyeh and Saleh Bashir and the Universalizing of the Holocaust

Achim Rohde is not a direct Holocaust denier; instead he trivializes and distorts the Shoah by referring to Arab authors like Hazem Saghiyeh and Saleh Bashir. Saghiyeh and Bashir published an article in 1997 in which they argued against Holocaust denial, characterizing it as too stupid an argument to be useful in their fight against Zionism.[33] Indeed, even Said is against hard-core Holocaust denial, but he said in the very same article Rohde refers to that “Zionism” is based on “apartheid.”[34]

The same holds for the article Universalising the Holocaust by Hazem Saghiyeh and Saleh Bashir.[35] They accused Israel of not having learnt the lessons from history; they distorted and trivialized the Shoah completely by equating it with racism and colonialism:

“The dissociation between the acknowledgment of the Holocaust and what Israel is doing should be the starting point for the development of a discourse which says that the Holocaust does not free the Jewish state or the Jews of accountability. On the contrary, the Nazi crime compounds their moral responsibility and exposes them to greater answerability. They are the ones who have escaped the ugliest crime in history, and now they are perpetrating reprehensible deeds against another people. Modern Jewish consciousness can no longer look at the world from the exclusive perspective of the Holocaust, in spite of the magnitude of the event and its enormity. Within these parameters, it becomes pressing to (re)present the event as a trial for human suffering more than a purely and exclusively Jewish one, especially since the Jews in recent decades have started losing their long-standing “monopoly” over the tragic. The Turk in Germany, the Algerian in France, and always the black in every place, head the columns of victims of racism in the world and in them, albeit in different proportions and degrees, is the continuation of the suffering of the Jews of which the Holocaust was the culmination.”[36]

This antisemitic argumentation which universalizes the Holocaust and therefore trivializes it is a basic assumption of Islamic Studies scholar Achim Rohde. For him, like for Saghiyeh and Bashir, Turkish, Algerian or Black people are seen in a “continuation of the suffering of the Jews of which the Holocaust was the culmination.”

This is a denial of the Holocaust if we look at the situation of Turks in Germany or Arabs and Algerians in France at any time. It is unscholarly in nature to equate the situation of immigrants or citizens with an immigrant background and the Holocaust.

In an article in 2005, Rohde thanks[37] anti-Zionist authors Moshe Zuckermann from Israel and German sociologist and anti-Zionist Klaus Holz“[38] for helpful comments and support. Holz was on the short-list for the job as head of the ZfA and Zuckermann knows Schüler-Springorum, too.[39]

For Rohde Zionism is based on „central aspects of modern antisemitism;” for him it is „a kind of identification with the aggressor.”[40] He attacks Israel and remembrance of the Shoah in Israel and urges the Arab and Muslim world not to deny the Holocaust, but to attack “Shoah remembrance in Israel”[41] from a ‘higher ground.’ This ‘higher ground’ is the distortion or trivialization of the Holocaust and not hard-core denial of it.

Achim Rohde and the campaign in support of German anti-Zionist Ludwig Watzal

In December 2008 Rohde supported an Internet campaign by a German anti-Israel and antisemitic website in support of German political scientist and anti-Zionist activist Ludwig Watzal.[42] Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer, attacked the “antisemitic clichés” of Watzal in April 2008. Then, the Central Council of Jews in Germany pleaded to dismiss Watzal as co-worker of a Federal Agency.[43] Political scientist and expert on Islamism, Iran, and antisemitism, Matthias Küntzel, criticized Watzal in 2005 as well.[44]

In his support of Watzal, Rohde was joined by Palestinian Abdallah Frangi, Ramallah, from the PLO, antisemitic author Norman Finkelstein, left-wing politician Inge Höger, who joined the terrorist Gaza flotilla in 2010 (she was on the Mavi Marmara), and over 300 other anti-Zionist activists, scholars etc. Watzal is a particularly aggressive anti-Zionist voice in Germany. Due to many of his anti-Israel articles, critics like Social Democrat Franziska Drohsel, then head of the youth organization of the Social Democrats in Germany (Jusos), supported Jewish organizations who urged the Federal Agency for Education to take a clear stand against their co-worker Watzal. German daily Die Welt reported about the anti-Israel stand of Watzal.[45] While ZfA co-worker Achim Rohde supported Ludwig Watzal in 2008, even his colleague at the ZfA, Juliane Wetzel, criticized Watzal’s writing and his fantasies about “Jewish capital” and “Jewish power,” according to an article in 2006.[46]

Rohde, Gil Anidjar and poststructuralist,
linguistic Holocaust denial:
Jews were not killed as Jews in Auschwitz…

Rohde also sides with Middle East Studies scholar Gil Anidjar from Columbia University and his study The Jew, The Arab. A History of the Enemy from 2003,[47] because Anidjar equates antisemitism with Orientalism and portrays Muslims as victims of Nazism and the Holocaust.[48] For Anidjar, Zionism is antisemitic, because it aims at Judaism, Jews, Arabs, and Islam. He applies Said’s ideology of the “Semite” and accuses “Orientalism” of being antisemitic, including being anti-Arab.[49] This is a denial of antisemitism, of its term and ideology. Islam has a legacy of antisemitism, although on another level as Christian antisemitism. Portraying Muslims and Arabs as victims of European history is beyond reality. Islam is an imperialist religion, like Christianity. For centuries, Jews have been oppressed and murdered by Christians and also by Arabs and Muslims (on a lower scale). Since 1945 and particularly since 9/11 Islamism and Arab anti-Zionism are the biggest threat to Jews and Israel. Iran seeks nuclear weapons and its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is known for his incitement to genocide; he pleads for a “World without Zionism,”[50] and is followed by the entire Iranian regime and substantial parts of Western academia and activists as well. Edward Said fought for a world without Zionism, too, decades before Ahmadinejad, and even before the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Anidjar makes fun of Jews and the Holocaust and equates the fate of Jews with the history of the word “Muslim.” For him, like for fashionable Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben Jews died as “Muslims” and not as Jews in Auschwitz.[51] This is linguistic antisemitism. These horrible games with language are mainstream in many poststructuralist, postmodern and antisemitic circles. It is shocking, though, that a scholar from the ZfA refers favorably to this parody of scholarship.

In reality Muslims were allies of the Nazis, we know of SS-Imams, Muslims in the German army, the Wehrmacht, SS-units and so on. Rohde follows Anidjar and says that both Jews and Muslims have been victims of Europe since the crusades.[52] In an interview about his book Anidjar rejects any scholarly analysis of the “new antisemitism” and equates antisemitism with racism or the situation of Muslims.[53] In 2009 Anidjar published another article and equated (and mentioned the “link” between) colonialism and the Holocaust;[54] he attacked Israel, the US and the War on Terror, in order to portray the poor and innocent Arabs (and Muslims) as victims of Israel and the US.[55] Already in his 2003 book and then in his 2009 article, Anidjar applied the grotesque distinction between “The Jew, the Arab: good Semite, bad Semite.”[56] Like Edward Said and many protagonists of post-colonial theory, he denies that antisemitism was an anti-Jewish ideology from the very beginning (and not a kind of Orientalism), starting with Wilhelm Marr’s agitation in Germany in 1879.[57] Consequently, Anidjar was a speaker in 2009 at the Israel Apartheid Week and promoted boycotting Israel and therefore Jews.[58] This is no problem and not worth mentioning for German academics like Achim Rohde or Felix Wiedemann, also a scholar from the younger generation; as quoted, Achim Rohde referred to Anidjar very positively in 2005 as well as in 2010, Wiedemann refers to Anidjar’s scandalous book from 2003 (The Jew, The Arab) in 2012, and promotes Rohde’s approach, too, embedded in esoteric, cotton-ball-style criticism.[59]

Conclusion

What is the problem with Achim Rohde’s appointment to Germany’s premier, tax-supported Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at Technical University in Berlin?

1) He supports antisemitic, anti-Zionist, post-colonial and post-Orientalist superstar Edward Said;

2) He supports German anti-Zionist and highly controversial activist Ludwig Watzal;

3) He supports antisemitic, anti-Zionist authors like Daniel Boyarin and Jacqueline Rose;

4) He supports authors who make fun of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, who defame Israel as apartheid and promote the boycott of Israel like Gil Anidjar;

5) He supports the trivialization and in fact denial of the Holocaust by equating it with the situation of Turks in Germany today with reference to Hazem Saghiyeh and Saleh Bashir;

6) He equates antisemitism with “Orientalism” and denies the genocidal ideology of antisemitism;

7) He ignores or affirms the Iranian and Islamist threat;

8) He dwells on the fantasy of “Islamophobia” and is employed to do so by the ZfA.

The Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technical University Berlin should finally change its name: it is

The German Edward Said Center for
Holocaust distortion
and post-colonial Antisemitism

[1] Newsletter, No. 42, Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA), Technical University Berlin, May 2012, http://zfa.kgw.tu-berlin.de/newsletter/Newsletter42.pdf (visited July 21, 2012).

[2] Edward Said (1969): The Palestinian Experience, in: Moustafa Bayoumi/Andrew Rubin (eds.) (2001), The Edward Said Reader, London: Granta Books, 14–37, 34.

[3] Edward Said (1979): Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims, in: Bayoumi/Rubin (eds.) (2001), 114–168.

[4] Edward Said (1978): Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books.

[5] The interview reads: “[Question to Said] Given the history of the Jews and the creation of the Israeli state, because of their historical experience with persecution and suffering and holocaust [small ‚h’ in the original, CH] and death camps, should one feel that Israelis and Jews in general should be more sensitive, should be more compassionate? Is that racist? [Said] No, I don’t think it’s racist. As a Palestinian I keep telling myself that if I were in a position one day to gain political restitution for all the suffering of my people, I would, I think, be extraordinarily sensitive to the possibility that I might in the process be injuring another people“ (Edward Said (1987)/2010: The Pen and the Sword. Conversations with Edward Said. David Barsamian, introductions by Eqbal Ahmad and Nubar Hovsepian, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 42).

[6] Edward Said (1999): An Interview with Edward Said, in: Bayoumi/Rubin (eds.) (2001), 419–444, 430.

[7] In Cultural Studies, Islamic Studies, Middle East Studies, comparative literature and related fields, Said has been mainstream for a long time. See, for example, among his followers in Germany Markus Schmitz (2008): Kulturkritik ohne Zentrum. Edward W. Said und die Kontrapunkte kritischer Dekolonisation, Bielefeld: transcript (Schmitz defames the Middle East Forum’s project Campus Watch and says it is a reminder to the times of “McCarthy,” ibid., 227); Stefan Wild (2003a): Rezension von Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand. The Failure of MiddleEastern Studies in America, Washington D.C. 2001, ISBN 0-94 4029-49-3, 130 S., U.S. $ 19,95, Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 43, Nr. 2, 290–292 (this is a particularly aggressive and ironic review of Martin Kramer’s famous study Ivory Towers on Sand from 2001); Birgit Schäbler (2008): Post-koloniale Konstruktionen des Selbst als Wissenschaft: Anmerkungen einer Nahost-Historikerin zu Leben und Werk Edward Saids, in: Alf Lüdtke/Reiner Prass (Hg.) (2008): Gelehrtenleben. Wissenschaftspraxis in der Neuzeit, Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 87–100; Schäbler is an anti-Israel author and defamed the security fence in Israel, Birgit Schäbler/Ute Behr/Stephanie Dumke (2004): The Israel-Palestinian Conflict as Result of Colonial Border-Making, Tagungsbericht, June 18, 2004, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=499 (visited July 23, 2012); Stefan Weidner (2011): Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Islamkritik für das Leben, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ), Nrs. 13–14/2011, 9–15; for historian Ulrich Sieg, who was on the short-list for the job as head of the ZfA, Edward Said’s Orientalism was a „master-piece,“ Ulrich Sieg (2006): Rezension von Ian Buruma, Avishai Margali, Okzidentalismus. Der Westen in den Augen seiner Feinde, WerkstattGeschichte, Vol. 15, No. 43, 137–139, 137.

[8] Achim Rohde (2010): Unter Südländern. Zur Geschichte der Orientalistik und Judaistik in Deutschland, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Vol. 58, No. 7/8, 639–652. Benz edited this issue personally, in addition he is the editor of the journal, too; he introduced Rohde in his article in that issue, Wolfgang Benz (2010): Zur Genese und Tradition des Feindbildes Islam. Einleitende Bemerkungen zum Themenheft Islambilder vom Mittelalter bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Traditionen der Abwehr, Romantisierung, Exotisierung, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Vol. 58, No. 7/8, 585–590.

[9] Robert S. Wistrich (1991): Antisemitism. The Longest Hatred, London: Methuen.

[10] Robert S. Wistrich (2010): A Lethal Obsession. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, New York: Random House.

[11] Fritz Ahmad Gross (no year of publication indicated): Kaiser Wilhelm II. – Deutschland und der Islam, Islamische Zeitung, online http://www.enfal.de/grund44.htm (visited July 22, 2012).

[12] Wolfgang G. Schwanitz (2003): Djihad „Made in Germany“: Der Streit um den Heiligen Krieg 1914–1915, Sozial.Geschichte, No. 2/2003, 7–34; Wolfgang G. Schwanitz (2004): Die Berliner Djihadisierung des Islam. Wie Max von Oppenheim die islamische Revolution schürte, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Auslandsinformationen, No. 10/2004, 17–37; Wolfgang G. Schwanitz (2004a): Max von Oppenheim und der Heilige Krieg. Zwei Denkschriften zur Revolutionierung islamischer Gebiete 1914 und 1940, Sozial.Geschichte, Vol. 19, No. 3, 28–59.

[13] Jeffrey Herf (2009): Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, New Haven: Yale University Press; Jeffrey Herf (2010): Hitlers Dschihad. Nationalsozialistische Rundfunkpropaganda für Nordafrika und den Nahen Osten, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 58, No. 2, 259–286; Matthias Küntzel (2002): Jihad und Judenhaß. Über den neuen antijüdischen Krieg, Freiburg: ça ira; Matthias Küntzel (2003): Ein Deutsches Schweigen. Die Vorfahren der islamischen Hamas arbeiteten gern mit den Nazis zusammen. Ein Umstand, den die deutsche Linke in ihrer Nahostsolidarität gerne ausblendet, taz, April 12, 2003, http://www.taz.de/?id=archiv&dig=2003/04/12/a0225 (visited July 23, 2012); Matthias Küntzel (2004): Von Zeesen bis Beirut. Nationalsozialismus und Antisemitismus in der arabischen Welt, http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/von-zeesen-bis-beirut (visited July 23, 2012); Klaus-Michael Mallman/Martin Cüppers (2010): Nazi Palestine. The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine, New York: Enigma Books.

[14] Simon Wiesenthal (1947): Großmufti – Großagent der Achse, Salzburg/Wien: Ried-Verlag.

[15] Hans Lindemann (1941): Der Islam im Aufbruch, in Abwehr und Angriff. Mit 1 Karte und 4 Kunstdrucktafeln, Leipzig: Friedrich Brandstetter.

[16] American Jewish Committee (1957): The Plight of the Jews in Egypt, New York: American Jewish Committee, online: http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/551.PDF (visited July 23, 2012).

[17] “The most prominent of these former collaborators of Hitler and Goebbels was the notorious antisemite Johann von Leers, invited to Cairo by Haj Amin el-Husseini. Von Leers had initially settled after the war in the Argentine where he edited the neo-Nazi monthly Der Weg. The Grand Mufti had repeatedly sent messages of encouragement to von Leers and his fellow Nazis in Buenos Aires and in August 1956 he had publicly complimented Der Weg for having ‚always championed the Arabs’ righteous cause against the powers of darkness embodied in World Jewry’’. An exalted figure in Nasser’s entourage, the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem obtained a post for von Leers as political adviser in the Egyptian Information Department, where, according to the Manchester Guardian, he exercised ‚considerable influence on the nature of the current anti-Jewish measures’. Von Leers continued to be active as an antisemitic propagandist in Cairo under his Muslim name, Omar Amin, until his death in 1965,” (Robert Wistrich (1985): Hitler’s Apocalypse. Jews and the Nazi Legacy, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 176).

[18] Ian Johnson (2005): The Beachhead. How a Mosque for Ex-Nazis became Center for Radical Islam, The Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2005; Ian Johnson (2010): A Mosque in Munich. Nazis, the CIA and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, San Diego (CA): Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

[19] Stefan Meining (2011): Eine Moschee in Deutschland. Nazis, Geheimdienste und der Aufstieg des politischen Islam im Westen, Munich: C.H.Beck.

[20] For a comprehensive critique of German Islamic Studies, scholars in antisemitism and the public in Germany after 9/11 see my book Clemens Heni (2011): Schadenfreude: Islamforschung und Antisemitismus in Deutschland nach 9/11, Berlin: Edition Critic.

[21] Achim Rohde (2006): Facing Dictatorship. State-Society Relations in Ba’Thist Iraq. Zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades eingereicht am Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin im April 2006, manuscript, Free University Berlin, Institute for Islamic Studies.

[22] Gudrun Krämer (2010): Hasan al-Banna, Oxford/New York: Oneworld Publications.

[23] Gudrun Krämer (2006): Drawing Boundaries. Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Apostasy, in: Gudrun Krämer/Sabine Schmidtke (eds.) (2006): Speaking for Islam. Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 181–217; Gudrun Krämer (2009): Preface, in: Bettina Gräf/Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (eds.) (2009): Global Mufti. The Phenomenon of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, London: Hurst & Company (2009), ix–xi.

[24] For an overview on many more antisemitic statements of al-Qaradawi see http://www.memri.org/report/en/print5020.htm (visited July 23, 2012).

[25] Rohde 2006, 425; see also Achim Rohde (2005): Der Innere Orient. Orientalismus, Antisemitismus und Geschlecht im Deutschland des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts, Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 45, Nr. 2, 370–411; Achim Rohde (2009): The Orient Within. Orientalism, Anti-Semitism and Gender in 18th to early 20th Century Germany, in: Benjamin Jokisch/Ulrich Rebstock/Lawrence I. Conrad (eds.) (2009): Fremde, Feinde und Kurioses. Innen- und Außenansichten unseres muslimischen Nachbarn, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 147–165; Achim Rohde (2010a): State-Society Relations in Ba’Thist Iraq Facing Dictatorship, London/New York: Routledge (this is his shortened 2006 dissertation).

[26] Rohde 2006, 425.

[27] See footnote 12 (which belongs to the chapter „Conclusions“), Rohde 2006, 428: „Edward Said, Freud and the Non-European (London: Verso, 2003), 49, 53/54. See also Stephen Sheehi, ‚Failure, Modernity, and the Works of Hisham Sharabi: Towards a Post-Colonial Critique of Arab Subjectivity,’ Critique 10 (1997): 39–54; Daniel Boyarin, ‚The Colonial Drag: Zionism, Gender, and Mimikry,’ in the Pre-Occupation of Post-Colonial Studies, eds. Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks (Durham/London: Duke Univ. Press, 2000), 234–265; Jacqueline Rose, The Question of Zion (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2005).“ Remember: these are quotes from the end of Rohde’s doctoral dissertation, which is about Iraqi history, gender relations, dictatorship and pan-Arabism. He quotes antisemites in such a study: this indicates his hatred of Israel as a Jewish state.

[28] Alvin H. Rosenfeld (2006): „Progressive“ Jewish Thought and the new anti-Semitism, http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF%7D/PRO
GRESSIVE_JEWISH_THOUGHT.PDF (visited July 22, 2012).

[29] Rohde refers to above quoted article of Daniel Boyarin; the dedication of Boyarin’s article reads like this: „To Michel Warschawsky and Tikva Parnas, tireless fighters against the Zionist occupation in all Palestine,” (Daniel Boyarin (2000): ‚The Colonial Drag: Zionism, Gender, and Mimikry,’ in: Fawzia Afzal-Khan/Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks (eds.) (2000): The Pre-Occupation of Post-Colonial Studies, Durham/London: Duke University Press, 234–265, 234). The expression „All Palestine” aims at the destruction of Israel. Furthermore one can find the close relationship of antisemites like Boyarin and post-colonial superstars like Bhabha, who share this antisemitism: „I wish to express gratitude to Homi K. Bhabha, who read a much earlier and a very recent version of this essay and whose influence is felt on every page, even where I have not been able to assimilate it completely,” (Boyarin 2000, 259).

[30] Rohde 2010a, 161.

[31] See Rohde 2005, 389, footnote 40, reference to Zimmerer. For a close analysis of the scholarly failure of Jürgen Zimmerer see Jakob Zollmann (2007): Polemics and other arguments – a German debate reviewed, Journal of Namibian Studies, [Vol. 1], No. 1, 109–130 and my forthcoming book Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon.

[32] Rohde 2010a, 209, footnote 84.

[33] Rohde 2010a, 213, footnote 4.

[34] Edward Said (1998): Der dritte Weg führt weiter. An die arabischen Unterstützer von Roger Garaudy, Le Monde Diplomatique, German version: http://www.monde-diplomatique.de/pm/1998/08/14/a0226.text.name,askOg6bPY.n,36 (visited July 23, 2012).

[35] Hazem Saghiyeh/Saleh Bashir (1997)/1998: Universalizing the Holocaust. How Arabs and Palestinians relate to the Holocaust and how the Jews relate to the Palestinian victim, Palestine-Israel Journal, Vol. 5, Nos. 3 & 4, 1998, online: http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=382 (visited July 22, 2012). The Arab original has been published in 1997.

[36] Saghiyeh/Bashir 1997.

[37] Rohde 2005, Rohde 2009.

[38] Rohde 2005, 370, footnote 1.

[39] For example, Schüler-Springorum and Zuckermann were part of a small symposium in Berlin in May 2010, http://www.jmberlin.de/main/DE/02-Veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen-2010/2010_05_22_symposium.php (visited July 22, 2012).

[40] Rohde 2005, 410.

[41] Rohde 2005, 411.

[42] http://www.arendt-art.de/deutsch/palestina/Honestly_Concerned/watzal_ludwig_aktion.htm (visited July 21, 2012): „307 Dr. Achim Rohde D Hamburg wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung.“

[43] „Zentralrat fordert Entlassung eines Redakteurs der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung,“ April 5, 2008, http://www.zentralratdjuden.de/de/article/1625.html (visited July 22, 2012).

[44] http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/tag-watzal-darf-ich-sie-antisemit-nennen (visited July 22, 2012).

[45] Richard Herzinger (2008): Mitarbeiter schreibt israelfeindliche Texte. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, Die Welt, April 10, 2008, http://www.welt.de/politik/article1885758/Mitarbeiter
_schreibt_israelfeindliche_Texte.html (visited July 23, 2012).

[46] Alexandra Makarova (2006): Neutrales Haus in Erklärungsnot. Bei der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung häufen sich Israel-kritische Peinlichkeiten, June 2006, http://www.j-zeit.de/archiv/artikel.361.html (visited July 22, 2012).

[47] Gil Anidjar (2003): The Jew, The Arab. A History of the Enemy, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

[48] Rohde refers several times to Anidjar, see Rohde 2010, 645 (with reference to Anidjar 2003); Rohde 2005, 385, 400f.

[49] Anidjar 2003, 192–193, endnote 51.

[50] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005): Speech at the Conference „A World Without Zionism,“ October 26, 2005, Teheran, translation by Nazila Fathi, New York Times, 30.10.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 (visited July 23, 2012).

[51] Gil Anidjar (2003a): Interview „The Jew, the Arab,” http://asiasociety.org/countries/religions-philosophies/jew-arab-interview-gil-anidjar (visited July 22, 2012).

[52] Rohde 2010, 645.

[53] Anidjar 2003.

[54] Gil Anidjar (2009): Can the walls hear?, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 43, Nos. 3/4, 251–268, 266.

[55] Anidjar 2009, 267.

[56] Anidjar 2009, 255.

[57] Wilhelm Marr (1879): Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet, Bern: Rudolph Costenoble; Wilhelm Marr (1879a): Vom jüdischen Kriegsschauplatz. Eine Streitschrift, Bern: Rudolph Costenoble.

[58] „At Columbia University (CU), a recently formed group called the Columbia Palestine Forum (CPF) hosted a teach-in on March 4 that featured CU professors and students that are members of CPF, a group advocating for the university to divest from Israel. Speakers compared the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to apartheid in South Africa and one professor, Gil Anidjar, an Assistant Professor in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) department, advocated for a boycott as an ‚exercise of freedom‘“ (http://www.adl.org/NR/exeres/2F101AAE-F472-450F-8C13-53825A79D075,DB7611A2-02CD-43AF-8147-649E26813571,frameless.htm (04.08.2010)).

[59] It is disturbing and problematic that historian Felix Wiedemann refers to Anidjar 2003 positively, without the slightest analysis of his antisemitism. In an overview article for a online encyclopedia about Edward Said, Orientalism, and the Orientalism debate, Wiedemann also sides with Achim Rohde, Felix Wiedemann (2012): Orientalismus, Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, April 19, 2012, https://docupedia.de/zg/Orientalismus?oldid=82032#cite_ref-69 (visited July 23, 2012). Wiedemann ignores one of the most updated overviews on Edward Said, a critique of Said’s antisemitism, and particularly the portrayal of Muslims and Arabs as the new Jews, an ideology of Said from the late 1960s (if not earlier): Heni 2011, 76–136. The most shocking aspect of Wiedemann’s piece, though, is his positive reference to antisemite and anti-Israel activist Gil Anidjar. Wiedemann is also not mentioning the antisemitic ideology of Said in its entirety, although he pretends to be a bit skeptical about him; he does quote a few other works of Said than Orientalism but does not mention that Said introduced the concept of Arabs as the ‘new Jews’ as early as 1969, a core element of today’s antisemitism and anti-Zionism and distortion of history. It is remarkable that a young historian like Wiedemann does not even mention that Said equated Israel with apartheid (although, in a completely other context, apartheid South Africa is mentioned in Wiedemann’s piece!), for example. Following an antisemitic author like Gil Anidjar is indicating a failure of scholarship.

Veröffentlicht unter Allgemein | Verschlagwortet mit 9/11, Achim Rohde, American Jewish Committee, anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Apartheid, Auschwitz, Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA), Central Council of Jews in Germany, Daniel Boyarin, Edward Said, Egypt, Felix Wiedemann, gender relations, Gil Anidjar, Grand Mufti al-Husseini, Gudrun Krämer, Hans Lindemann, Hazem Saghiyeh, Hitler, Holocaust distortion, Iranian threat, Iraq, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jacqueline Rose, Jeffrey Herf, jihad 1914, Johann von Leers, Klaus Holz, Ludwig Watzal, Martin Kramer, Matthias Küntzel, Moshe Zuckermann, Nasser, National Socialism, Nazi Germany, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, pan-Arabism, post-colonialism, post-orientalism, Robert Wistrich, Saleh Bashir, Simon Wiesenthal, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Stephan Kramer, Technical University Berlin, The Orient within, trivialization of the Shoah, Wilhelm II, Wolfgang Benz, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz | Kommentare deaktiviert

Flanierend die Verbrechen des Nationalsozialismus goutieren

Publiziert am 15. Juli 2012 von admin

Die WELT huldigt der „Topographie des Terrors“
und propagiert Antikommunismus

Ein Text zur Erinnerung an Käthe („Katja“) Niederkirchner (07.10.1909 – 28.09.1944)

„Also wird es wohl heute abend passieren. Ich hätte doch so gern die neue Zeit erlebt. Es ist so schwer, kurz vorher gehen zu müssen. Lebt alle wohl. …“

(„Diese Worte schrieb Käthe Niederkirchner … in ihren letzten Kassibern aus dem Bunker im KZ Ravensbrück.“)

Käthe Niederkirchner

In einem Text, der sich vorgeblich mit der „Topographie des Terrors“ in Berlin beschäftigt, einem Gedenkort an die Täter des Nationalsozialismus (am Beispiel der Gestapo-Zentrale, des Reichsführers SS und des Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), heißt es:

„Mit der Eröffnung des Dokumentationszentrums der Berliner Stiftung Topographie des Terrors bin ich zu einem Flaneur in der Welt des Totalitären geworden. Fast jede Woche zieht es mich zu einer der regelmäßigen Abendveranstaltungen in den nahe gelegenen Neubau der Architektin Ursula Wilms, der wie eine große Ritter Sport auf dem Gelände liegt: quadratisch, praktisch, grau. In den zwei Jahren seines Bestehens habe ich hier mehr über den Nationalsozialismus gelernt als in den vierzig Jahren, seit denen er kein Schulstoff mehr für mich ist. Im Wochenrhythmus flaniere ich mit offenen Ohren und manchmal, wenn es Lichtbilder oder Filme gibt, auch mit offenen Augen durch eine Welt der Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit, die ich aus immer neuem Blickwinkeln kennenlerne.“

Dieser Text aus der Tageszeitung DIE WELT vom 4. Juli 2012 von Rainer Bieling ist in vielfacher Hinsicht bemerkenswert. Das eventzentrierte Geschwätz sowie das lifestylemäßige Kokettieren des promovierten Philosophen, ja die Internalisierung von Werbeimperativen bei der Darstellung eines Gedenkortes des Nationalsozialismus und des Holocaust wird durch den Ausdruck „Flaneur in der Welt des Totalitären“ noch verschärft.

Vom Jargon des Totalitarismus, der Leugnung der Einzigartigkeit des Holocaust, hin zum Zeitgeist der Werbeindustrie oder des „quasselindustriellen Komplexes“, wie es der Publizist Ralf Frodermann nennt, ist es nicht weit. Ein Flaneur schlendert und genießt und der Autor schreibt tatsächlich, als ob er Spaß dabei hätte, im „Wochenrhythmus“ das „Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit“ „aus immer neue[n] Blickwinkeln“ kennenzulernen. Bieling weiter:

„Das Team der Topographie ist ausgesprochen rührig und vermag dem Schrecken ständig neue Facetten abzugewinnen.“

Als ob es was Tolles oder Spannendes sei, dem „Schrecken ständig neue Facetten abzugewinnen.“

Doch der Kern des Artikels liegt wo anders. Holocausterinnerung als Event ist nur der Rahmen für eine andere Attacke. Die letzten Jahre sind durch ein Revival der Thesen Ernst Noltes von 1974 bzw. 1986 gekennzeichnet, nachdem die Shoah nicht einzigartig und nicht präzedenzlos war. Was für Nolte die „asiatische Tat“ war und dann ab 1986 zum Historikerstreit führte, den damals noch Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Ulrich Wehler und Richard Evans gewinnen konnten, ist heute für preisgekrönte Bestsellerautoren wie Timothy Snyder aus Yale („Bloodlands“ heißt sein Buch) die Hungersnot in der Ukraine 1932/33 und andere Ereignisse oder für den Professor an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Jörg Baberowski die „Verbrannte Erde“, womit er gerade nicht die Verbrechen der Wehrmacht und der Deutschen sondern jene Stalins meint.

Es gibt zudem viele Millionen Deutsche, die die ach so „schönen Seiten des Nationalsozialismus“ suchen (Familienpolitik, Autobahnen etc.) wie die ehemalige Tagesschau-Sprecherin Eva Herman oder die Historikerin Christiane Eisenberg, die von der Olympiade 1936 schwärmt.

Seit einigen Jahren ist darüber hinaus ein erneuter, aggressiver Diskurs zu beobachten, der die Deutschen als Opfer sieht, wahlweise von Vertreibung, Bombenkrieg oder den Nazis, die keine ganz normalen Deutschen gewesen sein sollen.

Der Text von Bieling hat Anflüge von unfreiwilliger Komik, wenn er schreibt – völlig ernsthaft:

„Mit Stolz nehmen wir zur Kenntnis, dass unsere Erinnerungsarbeit im Ausland genauso geschätzt wird wie deutsche Wertarbeit.“

Diese vor Überheblichkeit und einem Erinnerungsnationalismus nur so triefenden Sätze und Auslassungen sind jedoch wiederum nur die Ouvertüre für den Kern des Textes.

Welcher historische Hintergrund wird in der WELT nicht thematisiert?

Ein Aspekt des Zweiten Weltkriegs war der Einsatz von besonders mutigen und entschlossenen Anti-Nazis, Antifaschisten oder Kommunisten, die mit Fallschirmen hinter der Front absprangen um in Deutschland, dem nationalsozialistischen Kernland inklusive Österreich, Aufklärungs- oder Sabotageoperationen durchzuführen. Dazu gab es ein Abkommen zwischen dem Special Operations Executive (SOE), einer britischen Einrichtung, die dem Ministry of Economic Warfare unterstand, und dem sowjetischen Geheimdienst NKWD. Der Historiker Hans Schafranek berichtete 1996 darüber:

„Am 30. September 1941 unterzeichneten nach mehrwöchigen Beratungen der NKWD-General B. Nikolajew und – als Vertreter der SOE – Oberstleutnant D.R. Guinness in Moskau ein Geheimabkommen, das als Basis für eine Zusammenarbeit der beiden Organisationen bei der Unterstützung von Sabotage- und Subversionstätigkeit in Deutschland und den von den Nazis besetzten europäischen Ländern dienen sollte.“[i]

Diese Aktionen liefen unter dem Tarnnamen „Pickaxe“. Das Duo Käthe (genannt Katja) Niederkirchner und Theo Winter wurde am 6. Oktober 1943 auf die Reise geschickt, über Polen sprangen die beiden ab. Am nächsten Tag wurde Niederkirchner im Zug nach Berlin von den Deutschen gefasst. Das Tragische ist: Wie Schafranek berichtet, war die Vorbereitung nicht nur dieses Einsatzes mehr als fragwürdig. Die sowjetischen Behörden arbeiteten sehr unprofessionell. Winter war der Schwiegersohn des KPD-Vorsitzenden Wilhelm Pieck, letzterer hatte sich schon vor der Abreise der beiden bei den sowjetischen Behörden massiv beschwert:

„[Pieck] sah sich veranlaßt, den Direktor des NII Nr. 100 bzw. dessen Beauftragten mit der Binsenweisheit zu konfrontieren, die ‚auf qualif. Handelsangestellte einer Handelsfirma im Osten‘ laufenden Papiere müßten mit der Ausrüstung korrespondieren, ‚sonst fällt es auf‘. Theo Winter mußte zunächst mit einem russischen Anzug von schlechter Qualität vorliebnehmen, ‚erst auf Protest‘ wurde ein Maßanzug in Aussicht gestellt. Katja Niederkirchners Handtasche war nicht zu gebrauchen (‚schlechte Ausschußtasche, entzwei‘). Eine andere sei nicht vorhanden, hatte man ihr kühl erklärt. Dasselbe Problem beim Rucksack bzw. Koffer, was Morosow zu der schnoddrigen Bemerkung veranlaßte: ‚fahren doch nicht an einen Kurort‘. Es haperte buchstäblich an allem (…). Pieck forderte die Absetzung Zulikows, für dessen Verhalten er harte Worte fand: ‚bürokratisch‘, ‚verletzend‘, ‚unkameradschaftlich‘, ‚bösartig‘. Mit welchen Gefühlen mochten wohl die beiden Fallschirmagenten Moskau verlassen haben?“[ii]

Seien es Schludrigkeit, Überforderung oder doch eher stalinistische Tendenzen in Moskau, die deutsche Kommunisten womöglich besonders mies und hinterhältig trafen: offenbar war schon die Vorbereitung dieser Fallschirmaktion alles andere als erfolgversprechend. Katja Niederkirchner wurde kurz nach ihrem Absprung über Polen in einem Zug nach Berlin verhaftet, von der Gestapo verhört und gefoltert und am 28. September 1944 im KZ Ravensbrück von der SS erschossen.

Was macht nun die Tageszeitung Die WELT daraus? Rainer Bieling schreibt:

„Das erste, das die Topographie des Terrors erkennen könnte, ist, dass sie eine falsche Adresse hat. Die Gestapo, auf deren Hausnummer 8 sie sich bezieht, lag in der Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. Nach dem Sieg über Sozial- und alle anderen Demokraten benannte die DDR-Führung die Straße nach einer Märtyrerin um, die ihr Leben der Diktatur geopfert hatte. Sie hieß Käthe Niederkirchner und war eine so fanatische Kommunistin, dass sie aus dem sicheren Exil in Moskau heraus hinter den feindlichen Linien über Polen mit dem Fallschirm absprang, um durch Untergrundarbeit der Roten Armee den Weg nach Berlin zu bahnen. Dafür bezahlte sie mit dem Leben; die Gruppe Ulbricht revanchierte sich, als sie schon Staat geworden war, 1951 mit der Umbenennung der Prinz-Albrecht-Straße in Niederkirchnerstraße.“

Wer sich die Niederkirchnerstraße in Berlin-Mitte anschaut sieht drei Straßenschilder, doch keines erwähnt die Geschichte der Käthe Niederkirchner. Ihr Mut und ihr kommunistisches und antifaschistisches Kämpfen werden also ohnehin verleugnet.

Doch das reicht der Springerpresse wohl nicht, denn Katja Niederkirchner war KPD-Mitglied, wurde in der DDR geehrt und das geht zu weit. Die Straßenschilder die an dieser Stelle dominieren sind der „Mauerweg“ (der die ganze Stadt durchzieht mit einer ungeheuren Penetranz), der unweit entfernt liegende „Checkpoint Charlie“ (ein relativ harmloser Grenzübergang zu DDR-Zeiten, kein Ort von Massakern oder präzedenzlosen Menschheitsverbrechen) und die Topographie des Terrors.

Für Bieling war Käthe Niederkirchner eine „fanatische Kommunistin“. Fanatisch, weil sie gegen den Nationalsozialismus kämpfte? Fanatisch weil sie eine Antifaschistin war, die ihr zumindest vor den Deutschen recht sicheres Exil in Moskau freiwillig aufgab um eine äußerst gefährliche militärische Aktion gegen die elenden Nazis zu unternehmen? Was der Autor unter „fanatisch“ versteht, erläutert er nicht.

Wer das Gelände der Topographie des Terrors in Berlin im Jahr 2012 kennt,

Troubling invitations spark controversies about the Global Forum in Jerusalem, to be held end of May 2013

”Tuvia, es ist alles noch viel schlimmer!”

Bericht über eine Veranstaltung zu Tuvia Tenenboms Allein unter Deutschen

Right-wing and left-wing Trojan Horses

Troubling tendencies in the pro-Israel and anti-Islamism tent and among scholars in the field of research on antisemitism

German abstract, including additional information/deutsche Kurzfassung plus einiger ergänzender Informationen – Trojanische Pferde von links und rechts:

Right-wing and Left-wing Trojan Horses

Troubling tendencies in the pro-Israel and anti-Islamism tent and among scholars in the field of research on antisemitism

Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon

Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism - Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

Order the book via e-mail to editioncritic[at]email.de or BUY the book via Amazon as a softcover copy or as an ebook!

1) The Book: Bibliographical information

2) Cover pictures

3) About the book

4) About the Autor

5) Praise for Antisemitism A Specific Phenomenon

6) Foreword

7) List of Contents

Von Weimar nach Berlin

Antisemitismus vor Auschwitz und im Jahr 2012

1) Holocaustverharmlosung.

2) Antizionismus.

3) Antijudaismus.

Susanne Wein ist Historikerin und promovierte im September 2012 an der Freien Universität Berlin mit einer Arbeit über „Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur der Weimarer Republik. Eine Untersuchung anhand der Debatten im Reichstag“.

Laudatio für Judith Butler wird von einer antiamerikanischen Verharmloserin des Nationalsozialismus und des Holocaust gehalten: Eva Geulen

Eva Geulen heißt die Laudatorin

und in meinem Buch Schadenfreude. Islamforschung und Antisemitismus in Deutschland nach 9/11 schrieb ich über sie.

Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) in Germany appointed anti-Israel activist

Islamic Studies scholar Achim Rohde promotes Edward Said and anti-Zionist antisemitism

Edward Said becomes even more mainstream in German academia

Achim Rohde and the equation of antisemitism and Orientalism

The ZfA, Hazem Saghiyeh and Saleh Bashir and the Universalizing of the Holocaust

Achim Rohde and the campaign in support of German anti-Zionist Ludwig Watzal

Rohde, Gil Anidjar and poststructuralist, linguistic Holocaust denial: Jews were not killed as Jews in Auschwitz…

Conclusion

The German Edward Said Center for Holocaust distortion and post-colonial Antisemitism

Die WELT huldigt der „Topographie des Terrors“ und propagiert Antikommunismus

Ein Text zur Erinnerung an Käthe („Katja“) Niederkirchner (07.10.1909 – 28.09.1944)

Bericht über eine Veranstaltung zu Tuvia Tenenboms
Allein unter Deutschen

Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism -
Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

Antisemitismus vor Auschwitz und
im Jahr 2012

Laudatio für Judith Butler wird von einer antiamerikanischen Verharmloserin des Nationalsozialismus
und des Holocaust gehalten:
Eva Geulen

Center for Research on
Antisemitism (ZfA) in Germany appointed anti-Israel activist

Islamic Studies scholar Achim Rohde
promotes Edward Said and
anti-Zionist antisemitism

Edward Said becomes even more mainstream
in German academia

Achim Rohde and the equation of antisemitism
and Orientalism

Rohde, Gil Anidjar and poststructuralist,
linguistic Holocaust denial:
Jews were not killed as Jews in Auschwitz…

The German Edward Said Center for
Holocaust distortion
and post-colonial Antisemitism

Die WELT huldigt der „Topographie des Terrors“
und propagiert Antikommunismus