There are most certainly valid criticisms of Israel that have no roots in anti-Jewish sentiments. Unfortunately, many criticisms against Israel are simply veiled anti-Semitic remarks, and they are often times fairly direct.
Israel was created in large part in response to the Holocaust, where anti-Semitism gripped Europe and led to the death of six million Jews. And now, that same number is, give or take, the Jewish population in Israel.
While the location of those millions of Jews has shifted from Europe and into the heart of the Middle East, anti-Semitism remains just as vibrant and the same tactics are used.
The Hamas charter, for example, includes several anti-Semitic statements and fabrications, such as an allusion to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged document that was used to implicate Jews and led to the deaths of innocent people. Excerpts from the charter include:
“The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him…”
“The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people’s livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor … They took advantage of key elements in unfolding events, and accumulated a huge and influential material wealth which they put to the service of implementing their dream ….”
“(Jews) control of the world media (and use their) wealth to stir revolutions … They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions.”
“There was no war that broke out anywhere without their (Jews’) fingerprints on it.”
Hamas isn’t alone. Hezbollah has tens of thousands of young children enlisted in a pseudo boy scout club where they learn to love the Islamic Revolution, which has led to oppression and countless human rights violations. The Hezbollah scouts are not solely learning to hate Israel, as a recent Foreign Policy article explains:
“But the overwhelming substance of the scout manuals, like the programming itself, wasn’t about spreading hatred of Israel — that was already taken care of out in the community. It was geared toward constructing an identity in which a child’s entire moral sense flowed from a strict interpretation of Islam administered by the jurist, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and his conduit, Hezbollah.”
The children are receiving the anti-Israel, and likely anti-Semitic, sentiments from their communities and they are receiving their structure, order and indocternation from the scouts.
This paradigm has been used before, in the 1930s and 40s, in a place where millions of Jews once lived. This paradigm of establishing order, pushing an ideology and inciting hatred of Jews from all sides is very familiar to Israel and the country’s founders.
Let’s make no mistake that criticisms we hear today are colored by the prejudice and hatred of the past.
And in some instances, as this photo clearly demonstrates, the similarities are too prominent to overlook.
