Estratto del contributo di Esther Webman, “The Challenge of Assessing Arab/Islamic Antisemitism”

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Historically, the study and assessment of antisemitism in the Middle East and the Muslim world was considered as treading on dangerous ground (1). In Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies today, asserted German scholar of Islamic studies Gudrun Kramer, there are few topics more sensitive and controversial than antisemitism in the Muslim world. Researchers in the field, she continued, ‘have long hesitated to touch it, be it out of fear to be branded as enemies of Islam, or alternatively, as antisemites’ (2). Indeed, Arab/Islamic antisemitism in the twenty-first century might be conceived as a threatening phenomenon, yet despite the wide interest, systematic study of the subject is surprisingly limited (3).

The late historian of antisemitism Shmuel Almog argued in 2001 that the study of European antisemitism was not deemed a proper subject for academic research. ‘It belonged to the street, to everyday politics and was not respectable enough to justify more than a polemic approach’ (4). A similar claim against both academia and Israeli policy makers was raised in the mid-1960s by Israeli political scientist Yehoshafat Harkabi, who conducted the first pioneering study of Arab attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict and pointed to an emerging antisemitic discourse in Arab countries and its Islamization (5).

Since then the only comprehensive study on Arab/Islamic antisemitism was carried out by Bernard Lewis in the 1980s, and updated in the mid-1990s (6). The works of other scholars of Middle Eastern history and Islam highlighted specific aspects of this phenomenon in certain periods of time. The proliferation of the Arab/Islamic antisemitic discourse in the 1990s prompted a growing interest in the topic and it became a more legitimate subject for research, although in-depth historical studies are still lacking. To a certain extent, this lacuna is being filled by works of self-styled specialists or scholars of European antisemitism who, however, are unfamiliar with Middle Eastern languages and derive their knowledge from translated or secondary sources (7).

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Notes:

(1) The term Arab/Islamic antisemitism is used in this article because of the strong affinity between the two but focuses mainly on antisemitism in the Arab world.

(2) G. Kramer, ‘Antisemitism in the Muslim World. A Critical Review’, Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Nov. 2006), p. 243.

(3) To the best of my knowledge, the only academic institute involved in monitoring and analyzing contemporary Arab/Islamic antisemitism since the early 1990s has been the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University. The Anti Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), and other Jewish and Israeli organizations that monitor the Arab media are not academic institutions although they occasionally publish scholarly studies. The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem also publishes occasional papers on the topic.

(4) Shmuel Almog, ‘Theorizing about Antisemitism, the Holocaust and Modernism’, SICSA Annual Report 2001 (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 2002), p.12.

(5) Y. Harkabi, Arab Attitudes toward Israel (Jerusalem: Keter Press, 1972). Daniel Pipes and Gary Rosenblatt also argued that Israelis ‘have clearly chosen to de-emphasize or even ignore’ the phenomenon of Arab rejectionism and rhetoric. D. Pipes, ‘Israel’s Moment of Truth’, Commentary (Feb. 2000), p. 23; The Jewish Week, 20 Dec. 2000.

(6) B. Lewis, Semites and Antisemites (London: Phoenix Giant, 1997).

(7) See, for example, R.S. Wistrich, Muslim Antisemitism. A Clear and Present Danger (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 2001); A.G. Bostom (ed.), The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008). An earlier book in the same vein is B. Ye’Or, The Dhimmi. Jews and Christians under Islam (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985).