Noam (Norman) A. Stillman
The Origins, Evolution, and Spread of Anti-Semitism in the Arab World

Noam (Norman) A. Stillman - The Origins, Evolution, and Spread of Anti-Semitism in the Arab World

- Good evening to everybody, or good day, depending where you are in the world. In our last session together, I discussed the first political and sociocultural import from Europe into the Arab world, namely, nationalism. And I noted that no other aspect of Western modernity proved to be more disastrous for the non-Muslim minorities in the Islamic world. Now, in today’s session, I would like to discuss another cultural import from Europe, which was adopted by both Arab nationalists and Islamic nationalists, namely, anti-Semitism. And this ideology was, of course, directed against one specific non-Muslim minority, namely, the Jews. Now, although negative images and stereotypes of Jews could be found in various forms in the Islamic world from its very beginnings, in the foundational scripture of Islam, the Quran, could I have the first slide, please? Here, by the way, is an early manuscript of the Quran, and, of course, from Arabic literature and folklore, including theological, historical, and belletristic works. However, we must keep in mind that Islam, like all major religions, and I repeat, all major religions, especially those that developed over time, says many contradictory things, and that there were also positive images of Jews in Islamic literature and law. More negative than positive, but definitely positive as well. Just a proverb that lasted through the ages, one was, in the negative side, “Don’t trust a Jew, even if he’s been a Muslim for the last 40 years.” But on the other side, there is a proverb that says, “A good Jew is certainly better than a bad Muslim.” Jews, like Christians and Zoroastrians, were considered , people of the scripture, with valid religions, albeit not in pristine form, and that they should be tolerated, and indeed, given a great deal of communal, religious, and economic freedom as long as they submitted to the of Islam, paid their taxes, and maintained the humility of subjects.

Says in the Quran, in surah 9, verse 29, , “Until they pay tribute out of hand and are humble.” And as I described in our first webinar, there were centuries of great intercultural symbiosis, and even in the twilight years of the later Middle Ages and early modern times, which we surveyed in the second webinar, when the Islamic renaissance was on the decline, and so was tolerance of non-Muslims, the full force of much of the anti-Jewish sentiment was diffused within a broader anti-dhimmi context, in other words, all of the tolerated non-Muslim religions were really, the people were really the same. Again, a proverb that says , “All of the unbelievers are one big religious community.” Now, although, specifically, anti-Semitic ideas only begin to appear in Arabic literature in the last three decades of the 19th century, we can see Syrian Christians beginning to adopt some of these European Christian fantasies from their contacts with European merchants and Catholic missionaries, and particularly, French missionaries, and this goes back as far as the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, the Eastern churches always held that the Jews were deicides, and that they were cursed, but they didn’t have the great storehouse of classic anti-Jewish horror stories, such as the blood libel and host desecration. Can I have the next two slides, please? Here’s, of course, a famous one of the blood libel, actually, the story of Simon of Trent from England, who supposedly was killed for, to obtain his blood.

And to the next one, please. And the other, the host desecration that, and this only comes in as of the 13th century, when the Council of Trent declares that the host and wine in the mass ceremony becomes the actual blood and body of Christ during the mass, when it’s blessed, and although it still maintains just the appearances, what the, in philosophy, they call the accidents of bread and wine, this led almost immediately to accusations that Jews sneaked into churches to steal the wafers of the host, to stab them, and have Christ suffer and bleed again. Again, these notions simply didn’t exist among Christians in the Islamic world, but they began to circulate in Syria in the 18th century, particularly, the blood libel. But the first serious blood libel accusation was the famous Damascus affair of 1840. In that year, a Italian Capuchin friar, Father Thomas, and his native assistant, can I have the next one, please? They were last seen before they disappeared at the entrance to the Jewish quarter of Damascus, a scene here from a 19th century painting. Can I have the next one, please? And there is a picture of Father Thomas and his assistant. They disappeared on February the fifth of that year, very close to the Jewish holiday of Purim, and local Christians and the French consul in Damascus, Ulysse de Ratti-Menton, accused the local Jews of having kidnapped and killed them to use their blood for matzah for the coming Pesach, Passover, in just another month and a half.

A Jewish barber was arrested, and under torture, confessed and implicated seven leading members of the Jewish community, all of whom were arrested and tortured. Two died under the torture, one embraced Islam, he was actually the son of one of the rabbis of Damascus, and the others confessed. Next picture, please. And here is actually a contemporary picture of one of the, of course, imagined, of one of the Jewish prisoners in prison before his interrogation, and by the way, with a Capuchin friar watching him through the door. 63 Jewish children were taken hostage by the governor of Damascus to force their parents to reveal the location of the martyr’s blood. Could I have the next one, please? Hold for a second, hold back for a second. Now, news of the affair spread throughout the Levant, and there were incidents of mob violence by both Christians and Muslims against Jews, and not just in Damascus. And I should note that the Damascus affair became a cause celebre for Jews in Europe and America. It’s the first time we see united action of American Jewry, which at that time was only in the entire country, about 1,500 people. And it was the first time that US Jews organised politically to help their brethren in distress. And again, it was the first time in trying to influence US foreign policy, and they succeeded in persuading President Van Buren to issue an official statement condemning the blood libel and this particular anti-Jewish case. Now, the Damascus affair also engendered considerable solidarity among Jewish communities in Western Europe. Among other things, it gave birth to the modern Jewish press, in France, which, that was founded in, right afterwards in 1840, and continued to exist up until 1935. And The Jewish Chronicle in London was founded in the following year, and of course, exists to this day. England and Austria, which were rivals of France internationally, intervened diplomatically on behalf of the Jews, and could you go back one slide, please?

And Sir Moses Montefiore, whom you see here, who was the leading Jewish figure in England at the time, friend of Queen Victoria, among other things, a leading philanthropist, he, and next slide, please, Adolphe Cremieux, the leading Jewish figure in France, who, by the way, was acting on his own because the French government supported its consul in the accusation. What’s very interesting, I found in the archives, there is a letter from the British consul in Damascus, writing to the British ambassador in Constantinople, “Do you know what these terrible Jews have done? Apparently, they’ve killed a Catholic friar and his assistant for blood for their matzah.” He gets a letter back from the ambassador, saying, “This is absolute madness, it’s nonsense, it’s evil, and your job there is to support the community at this time.” It’s very interesting to see the reaction, the different reaction, of the British ambassador. In any case, these two leading figures go on a personal mission, partially supported by the British, to Egypt, which ruled Syria at that time, and got the khedive, the semi-autonomous ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, next slide, please. They got him to condemn what happened and to order that the Jews imprisoned in Damascus be freed. Cremieux and Montefiore then go on to Constantinople. Technically, Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, but ever since 1799, when Napoleon was thrown out of Egypt, the general that came in became a semi-autonomous ruler, but, technically, it still was part of the Ottoman Empire, and so they also go to Constantinople, and they succeeded in obtaining a firman, an imperial decree, from the sultan, Abdul Majeed, against the blood libel. And could I have the next slide, please?

And here you see Abdul Majeed, who was a modernising sultan and wanted to be on the right side of things. But the Damascus affair was only the beginning, and blood libel accusations crop up again in Cairo in 1844, in Deir El Qamar in Lebanon in 1847, and even in Jerusalem in that same year, but they, again, the authorities, this time, put an end to them very quickly. However, the blood libel makes very little headway in the Arab world among Muslims until well in the 20th century, when it becomes a standard, in fact, ubiquitous, theme following the establishment of the State of Israel. And one of the reasons why Muslims at first did not accept this at all, is, you have to remember, Muslims, from firsthand observation of Jews, knew Jewish, Jews did not consume meat with blood in it, as Muslims also did not. And, for example, kosher meat is halal for Muslims. And so the very notion of putting blood into their unleavened bread was totally absurd for most Muslims at the time, Reports of blood libels appear occasionally in the Arab press in the 19th century, but one has to remember that the Arab press was founded overwhelmingly by Christians. And, again, the audience that read this was mostly, again, a Christian audience, but later on, the blood libel, as I said, after the establishment of the State of Israel, becomes a ubiquitous theme. For example, even ostensibly, academic treatments of the Jewish faith and practise, such as Dr. Ali Abd Al-Wahid Wafi’s “al-Yahudiyya wa'l-Yahud,” the “Judaism and the Jews,” which was published in Cairo in 1970, present the blood libel matter-of-factly in a section of the book dealing with Purim and the Passover rituals.

And Dr. Hasan Laba, another academic, in his “al-Fikr al-Dini al-Isra'ili,” “Israelite Religious Thought,” which was published in Cairo in 1971, devotes a learned discussion to the blood libel, and he points out that such practise is forbidden by Jewish law. But then, he notes that people often do things that their religion forbids, either out of ignorance or out of malice. And then he comes to the conclusion that the accusation that Jews practise this is justified on the basis of the confessions of the murderers in the Damascus affair. And I could cite many, many more examples of the blood libel since then. I would also point out, I hasten to point out, that there have been less examples of it printed in, the two main places it was printed was in Egypt and in Cairo and in Beirut, and after Sadat made peace with Israel, there was much less publication, occasional in newspapers and so on, but much less, and certainly, many less books on the subject printed there as well. But in any case, there were many more examples in the years that come of pseudo-academic, political, and literary works promoting the blood libel in Arabic, but I would be particularly remiss not to mention the bestseller on the subject, “Fatir Sahyun,” “The Matzo of Zion.” Can I have the next one, please? Oh, no, sorry, skip ahead to number 17. One more. There we go. This was a book by Mustafa Tlass. Can I have his picture, please, next? Who was none other than the Syrian defence minister from 1972 to 2004.

And he was a prolific writer. He had a PhD, which, by the way, was given to him by the Sorbonne but was taken away when it was found out how much anti-Semitic writing he was doing. He was a prolific writer. And this book, “The Matzo of Zion,” the first edition published in 1983, and then a more scholarly edition in 1986 with footnotes and photocopies of documents from various archives around the world, and even an English translation appeared in 1991. Can I have the next slide, please? Published, this was published in Beirut, and by the way, it’s available online for free on the internet, and I noticed that a number of book dealers also are still selling secondhand copies. The blood libel also appeared, by the way, in dramatic entertainment form. In 2003, a Syrian-produced dramatic television series for the nights of Ramadan, when people can only eat at night and then stay up late, appeared in a number of countries. And it was shown in Iraq, it was shown in Lebanon, it was shown in Syria, of course, where it was originally produced, it was shown in Jordan and in Egypt. And this series, entitled “Ash-Shatat,” “The Diaspora,” had a scene in one episode in which the Jews killed a Christian child to obtain his blood for matzah. And I will show a clip of this at the end of the talk. I don’t want to interrupt now. This 30-part series also included another important anti-Semitic stereotype that came into the Arab world at the end of the 19th century, namely, the modern, as opposed to the mediaeval, blood libel, the modern post-Enlightenment notion of the clandestine Jewish cabal that rules the international economy and plots to take over the entire world. Now, already, books with these ideas, which had appeared in French, are translated into Arabic in the 1890s. But these, again, are mostly read by these, translated by Christians, mostly read by Christians, and have, at first, little impact on the larger Islamic public.

The classic expression of this notion of the Jewish cabal that plots to take over the world is, of course, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which was a book produced at the end of the 19th century in Paris for the czarist secret police. And was actually based on an anti-Freemason polemic, that the Freemasons were such a secret cabal trying to take over the world. And by 1920, “The Protocols,” which was available in many languages, not yet in Arabic, but in English and French, were being cited by Palestinian nationalists for propaganda, and was picked up by anti-Zionist Arab nationalist agitators in Iraq and in Syria. And then it spread even more rapidly throughout the Arab world after it was translated into Arabic by a Maronite priest, Antun Yamin, in 1925 under the title “Mu'amarat al-yahudiyya ‘ala'l-Shu'ub,” “The Conspiracy of Judaism Against the Nations.” And “The Protocols” came to be cited frequently in the Arab nationalist press. In 1938, it was distributed at the World Parliamentary Congress for the Defence of Palestine, which was held in Cairo in 1938. And it came to have enormous popularity in the Arab world and has been translated into Arabic no less than nine times, nine different times, and has appeared in numerous editions. Can you jump back to slides 12, 13 and 14?

There, this one is from, the title, the cover is in part taken from a classic French anti-Semitic tract, the octopus that is there, taking over things, was originally one of the Rothschilds in the French one. This one is one of the later editions of “The Protocols,” and its title in Arabic is , “The Jewish Danger.” Can I have the next one, please? And here is yet another one, of course, again, with a very powerful, powerful cover. This one says, just in Arabic, “The Protocols of the Elders of the Wise Men of Zion,” and shows a serpent with his fangs exposed, coming through a Star of David. And can I have the next one, please? And this theme becomes, as I said, becomes universal in the Arab world. Here is a political cartoon from Palestinian political cartoon, showing an Israeli soldier reading “The Protocols” as he’s busy stabbing an Arab who’s in front of him. Now, “The Protocols” came to have enormous popularity in the Arab world, and as I said, was translated no less than nine times. And with the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe, it was further enhanced, this idea of an anti-Semitic conspiracy, all throughout the Arab world. The Germans, who were much admired in the Arab world for their militancy, also, many officers from the First World War had been, remember, the Ottoman Empire was an ally of Germany. Many of the officers in the army had had German instructors. And as the historian Bassam Tibi pointed out, there was a Germanophilia among Arab nationalists, founders of the Baath Party, for example, one of them, Samir al-Jundi, in his book, writes that they’ve read everything German, all of German philosophy, the works of Nietzsche and so on, and admired it tremendously.

And he says, “We were racialists. We believed in the superiority of race.” Furthermore, you have to remember that the Germans were the enemies of the British and French colonial powers that dominated the Arab world. And this is the time when Arab nationalism is beginning to turn more and more against the imperialist powers that control their countries. The conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine were, in the words of the Polish historian, Lukasz Hirszowicz, quote, “As if made to order for the needs and aims of Nazi propaganda.” And Berlin radio began daily broadcasts to the Arab world, Arabic translations of “Mein Kampf,” with, by the way, the anti-Arab passages carefully expurgated, were available throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Can I have the next one, please? And, I would just also point out that it appeared in many additions, and still does, and recently, during the Gaza War, a number of copies were found in different places, but the most interesting of which was in a child’s bedroom, near his bed, with notes written in the margins as well. And you have to remember that Hitler was looked up to as a potential saviour, the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni, who had already adopted a great deal of anti-Semitic rhetoric in his opposition to Zionism, and who eventually had to flee because he was advisor to the Iraqi government, which became a, for six short months, an ally of the Nazis. And then, can I have the next one, please?

He took refuge, along with several other nationalist leaders, in Germany. Here he is with Adolf, meeting with Adolf Hitler, and, in fact, began to broadcast daily on German radio and also helped to organise an SS unit in the Muslim Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Balkans. Now, unfortunately, many of these elements, as I said, have become standard in the polemic against Israel, which very often is against Jews in general, is anti-Semitic. And I would like to, and sometimes, by the way, these, the two, the blood libel and the worldwide conspiracy, are combined, as they are in this Ramadan, it was 30-part series, one for each night of Ramadan. One of the scenes, which I’m not going to show, is of a meeting of the Elders of Zion plotting, as they do. And I would like now to, if we could, could we, can we show the scene which would sort of wrap this up?

• By the way, one Egyptian movie maker wanted to make an entire film of the Damascus affair. This was back in 1990, '93. After the appearance of the film, “Schindler’s List,” he thought it would be a good response. The film never got made, but in any case, this became a far-reaching, a far-reaching anti-Semitic notion. And, unfortunately, in some countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, and Iraq, it still has a great deal of currency. Okay, we could open this up to questions now. Let’s see.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: I have, from Jacob, I have, “Weren’t 'The Protocols’ a czarist forgery rather than initiated in France?”

A: The czarist secret police, the Okhrana, had a bureau in France. They get this to be written, but for the Czar, it’s first printed in Russia, but it actually is based on, as I said, an anti-Freemason work in French, and several others as well, but it was, yes, of course, it’s a forgery because supposedly, it’s the minutes from the secret meetings of the Elders of Zion.

Q: One is from Naomi, “Bearing this in mind, do I see any chance for peace?”

A: Although I am an optimist by nature, and I, the, obviously, this does not help bring in peace, I also am not naive, and I worked for a period of 20 years in the Arab world, so I’m familiar with it on a firsthand basis. I would only say that, look, there, first of all, such horrible notions exist even in the Americas and in Western Europe. Secondly, I would say that there are good people who do not accept these things. I was interviewed for a, it’s actually up on, it’s in English with these Arabic subtitles, they decided they wanted it in English, for an Arab, an Egyptian organisation called Pacifia, that wanted to know, actually, why there was so much anti-Semitism in the Arab world. And I discussed this with them. Secondly, I would also point out that there are, all throughout, for example, ever since the 7th of October and the War in Gaza, I receive emails from both colleagues, students in the Arab world and elsewhere, A, expressing their concerns, B, that is for me and mine, B, condemning Hamas, and the, as this obviously is an impediment, there’s no doubt about it. But is it possible, under perhaps the right circumstances? Yes. My usual thing, when asked to be a talking head and to predict the future, is to say I’m an historian, I have enough trouble figuring out the past and describing it. I don’t predict the future. But in any case, that's…

Q: And then from Rosemarie Cohen, “Can’t the lies that are being spread now against Israel be considered as a blood libel?”

A: Absolutely, and there are other versions of this. There’s one cartoon that I didn’t show of, that was in one of the Arab papers of the, of a woman crucified on a cross. She’s Palestine, her blood is dripping all over, Jews sitting on the ground below are drinking it, drinking it up, and so on. So that, yes, these stereotypes are even used even at the very moment. And, just remember, there are people, who are not in the Arab world, who repeat these blood libels and so on and so forth. So all we can do is to try and expose it, to try and teach people otherwise. And, again, know that there are good people in many parts of the Arab world. I would just point out that a group, a large group of Moroccan young people, Muslim young people, just came here to Israel to see firsthand, things and so on. They received death threats from fanatics, but they’re here nonetheless. And so, again, there, one has to look at also the good and hope that that will, in the end, prevail.

And I think that now, that really is, we’ve answered them all. So, in that case, if there are any more, thank you very much. And, as they say all the time here in Israel nowadays, in my, the Sephardic side of my family, every serious conversation ended with , “We should hear good tidings.” And today, people, even when they’re checking out at the supermarket, very often, at the cash register, say, , and people, by the way, standing nearby, often respond, “Amen, amen.” So, may we hear good tidings.