It’s Not So Easy to Distinguish Attitudes toward the Jewish State from Attitudes toward Jews

Walter Laqueur’s illuminating essay on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion reminds us that, while Jewish life has changed greatly in the last centuries, demonization of Jews remains a constant. Jews no longer live in compact and isolated communities as was typical during the post-exilic era, and in the democratic West the majority of their members have abandoned the regulations and rituals that once distinguished them from their neighbors. Many have even left behind their belief in the one God whose revelation at Sinai was the cardinal source and principle of their contribution to human history and development. And yet the Jewish people continues to be feared, envied, and despised.

As Laqueur suggests, the anti-Jewish animus is expressed in both new and old forms. The raw version put forth in the Protocols, much debunked elsewhere in the world, remains regnant in Arab lands where that text is widely sold, read, cited, and believed. That the Jews who had once been an integral element of Arab societies were expelled almost to the last one a couple of generations ago seems only to have increased the prevalent animus and paranoia.

The first target of these sentiments is of course the Jewish state of Israel—the bugaboo of the Arabs; but it is not the last. In Egypt, now 40 years at peace with Israel, anti-Semitism is ubiquitous in domestic politics, as has been brought to light by the indispensable Samuel Tadros. Thus, after being ousted from power by the military led by General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the Muslim Brotherhood bruited about the story that Sisi is himself a Jew, allegedly born of a Maghrebian Jewess. In turn, Sisi’s backers countered not by damning the Brotherhood for its absurd allegation but by promoting the counter-accusation that the Brotherhood itself was created by a Jewish conspiracy to undermine Egypt.