Some background on anti-semitism

Paul Johnson: The Anti-Semitic Disease

While looking around for material on the Internet by Paul Johnson about Israel, I found the above long essay from 2005 about anti-semitism.

He's a great writer, and as a conservative, entirely trustworthy. (Actually, I'm sure that I once heard Labor brainiac Barry Jones complimenting one of his books, so he can't be too bad.)

Johnson blames much of the current anti-semitism on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, recognised by everyone in the West(except complete neo Nazi nutters) as pure fantasy - a fact first clearly identified nearly 90 years ago, but still given currency in the Arab world. Johnson says that the book influenced not only Hitler, but also Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, who went on to become the Mufti of Jerusalem. Johnson writes that he was:

....head of the biggest landowning family in Palestine. Al-Husseini was already tinged with hatred of Jews, but the Protocols gave him a purpose in life: to expel all Jews from Palestine forever. He had innocent blue eves and a quiet, almost cringing manner, but was a dedicated killer who devoted his entire life to race-murder. In 1920 he was sentenced bv the British to ten years' hard labor for provoking bloody anti-Jewish-riots.

But in the following year, in a reversal of policy for which I have never found a satisfactory explanation, the British appointed a supreme Muslim religious council in Palestine and in effect made al-Husseini its director.

The mufti, as he was called, thereafter created Arab anti-Semitism in its modern form. He appointed a terrorist leader, Emile Ghori, to kill Jewish settlers whenever possible, and also any Arabs who worked with Jews. The latter made up by far the greater number of the mufti's victims. This pattern of murdering Arab moderates has continued ever since, and not just among Palestinians; we see it in Iraq today.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, the mufti rapidly established links with the Nazi regime and later toured occupied Europe under its auspices. He naturally gravitated to Heinrich Himmler, the official in charge of the Nazi genocide, who shared his extreme and violent anti-Semitism; a photo shows the two men smiling sweetly at each other. From the Nazis the mufti learned much about mass murder and terrorism. But he also drew from the history of Islamic extremism: it was he who first recruited Wahhabi fanatics from Saudi Arabia and transformed them into killers of Jews,— another tradition that continues to this day.

For a more detailed history of the Mufti, see his Wikipedia entry here.

Johnson's conclusions about the effect of anti-semitism on the Arabs are tough but hard to disagree with:

...by allowing their diseased obsession to dominate all their aspirations, the Arabs have wasted trillions in oil royalties on weapons of war and propaganda and, at the margin, on ostentatious luxuries for a tiny minority. In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law. Despite all their advantages, they are now being overtaken decisively by the Indians and the Chinese, who have few natural resources but are inspired by reason, not hatred.

Go read it all, as they say.