It's the Middle East conflict again. A moment ago all were virologists, now all are Middle East experts. Infographics are diligently shared on social media, even if you don't know exactly what the difference between the West Bank and Gaza is. Or that the videos and posts sometimes come from Islamists, it doesn't matter - it's everything. "Child murderer Israel" is being shouted on German streets again, and a Jew-free Middle East is being dreamed of with "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free". Sometimes it says “Chaibar, Chaibar, you Jews, Mohammed's army is coming back soon”, then again “Bombing Tel Aviv”. Cross-fronts are being formed, Islamists run alongside anti-imperialist leftists, alongside pan-Arab nationalists, alongside Turkish right-wingers. Also on display are: Saddam Hussein T-shirts, symbols of the gray wolves, Iranian flags.Sometimes these anti-Semitic marches are labeled as criticism of Israel or decolonization. One asks oneself: if criticism of Israel, why in front of synagogues and not in front of the Israeli embassy?
Anti-Semites are always the other. Right-wing, left-wing, bourgeois, migrant and German anti-Semites accuse each other of being the real anti-Semites. One can doubt whether Beatrix von Storch is really interested in anti-Semitism if she only locates it in migrants. One may also wonder where all the people are that one sees on the street today when Erdogan has invaded Syria again, bombed Kurds or Islamists carry out massacres in Baghdad, Shingal and Kabul. One may ask why, if it really is about civilians, there are no demonstrations against Hamas as well. And why Nakba Day is remembered all over the world, but not the Jews who were expelled from the Middle East and North Africa, and pogroms like the Farhud in Baghdad. And what kind of strange word is that:"Israel criticism"? Have you ever heard of criticism of Iran, criticism of Syria or criticism of Saudi Arabia? These countries are dictatorships. As if he had ever been away, the question is again asked where anti-Semitism suddenly came from. Is it home-grown or is it imported? Both are true.
For Jews in the Islamic world, life meant poverty and exclusion. As "dhimmi" they were second class citizens. The pre-colonial Middle East was not a paradise where Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully. German anti-Semitism met Islamic anti-Judaism in the 20th century. Nazis exported hatred of Jews. Arab anti-Semitic propaganda was broadcast on Radio Zeesen. Fritz Grobba, a German diplomat who converted to Islam, began to publish “Mein Kampf” in a Baghdad newspaper in 1934. The Nazis found an ally in el-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was a member of the SS and who recruited Muslims for them in the Balkans. He also prevented thousands of Jewish children from emigrating to Palestine. They were murdered in German extermination camps.The founding of the state of Israel is often seen as a reason for anti-Jewish politics and pogroms in the Arab states. That's not true. The Aleppo pogrom of 1947, like the Farhud of 1941, took place before the state was founded.
You don't need Jews for anti-Semitism
To this day, “Mein Kampf” and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are bestsellers in the Arab world, Turkey and Iran. Even if there are hardly any Jews left there. But you don't need Jews for anti-Semitism. Jews are projection surfaces for something that Samuel Salzborn calls the “negative central idea of modernity”. Anti-Semitic propaganda is now also being broadcast in German living rooms via the Hamas television station al-Aqsa TV, the Hizbullah station al-Manar, and the Turkish state broadcaster TRT and distributed via numerous social media channels. Also in German. These days you see pictures of destroyed houses and dead children in Gaza, sometimes in Syria - you don't take it too seriously. That Hamas doesn't just throw stonesThere is no mention of civilians being used as shields and some of their own rockets striking Gaza. There is no mention of the victims on the Israeli side. You also look in vain for classification. In return, in addition to verses from the Koran, you are served conspiracy myths, as we already know from the anti-Semites of Pegida and from lateral thinking: The western media are all controlled by Zionists.
Anti-Semitism is at the core of all Islamist movements, including the pan-Arab ones.
In Syria, anti-Semitism is practically state doctrine.
In Iran, Israeli flags are only made to be burned again.
Erdogan fantasizes about Israel as part of his neo-Ottoman empire and says: "Jerusalem is ours."
When I wanted to write about anti-Semitism a while ago, I had Sarah Idan in my head, Miss Iraq, whose family had to flee after taking a selfie with Miss Israel and who are now being attacked again for taking a stand against anti-Semitism, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood .
I wanted to write about the Lebanese pop singer Elissa, who said, "That Israel is our enemy is the greatest lie we live in." There is nothing to add to that.