I just came across a tweet by Andrew Bennett about the notorious “historian” and ardent Israel-hater Ilan Pappé, who claims that “a shadowy Jewish elite deceives the world with a false ‘peace process’ to mask its true intent: the imprisonment of Palestinians.” Indicating his disdain for Pappé’s views, Bennett added a quote from the Nazi publication Der Stürmer: “This is the freedom they promise us/The freedom we see where Judah rules/Behind prison walls and bars/Within a dark prison sits/A humanity that longs for true freedom/And longs for rescue and release.”
I found the quote striking because of the line “where Judah rules.” Of course, the Nazis imagined the oppressive rule of “Judah” everywhere; but all too obviously, today’s anti-Israel activists remain indebted to the Nazi idea that Jewish rule is intolerable, even if it extends only over a tiny sliver of the Middle East.
When I looked up the quote, I found that it had appeared in the issue of 17 June 1943 of Der Stürmer, together with an image of a (white/”Aryan”) prisoner behind bars; the image and the original German text can best be seen here.
It is arguably a particularly chilling image, given that at the time it was published, hundreds of thousands of Jews languished as prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
In our time, it’s of course Palestine that is imprisoned by “Judah”/Israel – here are two examples from Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff; the image on the right won him second prize at Iran’s 2006 “International Holocaust Cartoon Contest,” and tellingly, he shared this prize with far-right French cartoonist Françoise Pichard.
However, while the Nazis vividly imagined the viciousness and cruelty of Jewish rule, even they might have shuddered to learn from Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar that these days, “Judah”/Israel doesn’t just claim the “right to kill” its hapless prisoners, but also insists on “the right to maim” in order to “enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies.”
Another motif from Der Stürmer that remains very popular is the idea that the Jew is behind – and benefits from – violence and bloodshed anywhere the world, as Der Stürmer reminded its readers in the 18 May 1944 issue.
Pretty much the same idea is behind the “Deadly Exchange” campaign of the Orwellian-named Jewish Voice for Peace, which – as Andrew Bennett has shown in a detailed analysis – “alleges a moneyed Jewish conspiracy to kill innocent Americans.”
But of course, people who always find a way to blame the Jews are a dime a dozen: a reporter interviewing an Egyptian who had lost several relatives in the recent terror attack on a mosque found that “he blames Israel for the massacre, saying that Israel created and controls #ISIS.” Palestinian religious leaders in Gaza also quickly concluded that the “Zionists” were somehow involved, while ardent Israel-hater Miko Peled offered a slightly different version, insisting that the terrorist atrocity was “a direct result of the regional instability caused by #Sisi and his criminal collaboration w #Israel.” Veteran anti-Israel propagandist Ali Abunimah liked Peled’s take and promptly re-tweeted it.
However, no worries: as you can learn later this week at The New School, it’s not antisemitism if you change the old Der Stürmer slogan “The Jews are our misfortune” to “The Jewish state is our misfortune.”
