Part III

In the estimation of historian Robert S. Wistrich, practically “no other single text in the annals of antisemitism would have such a deadly effect as the Protocols in preparing the Holocaust or inspiring hatred of the Jewish state in 1948.” No one could have envisioned that such an obvious forgery would become such a major success.

Today, new editions and reprints of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” are still published throughout Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as on the internet, where there are thousands of sites that distribute the Protocols or expose them as canards. The notion of Jews as a demonic character is still prevalent in these areas, allowing antisemites to use the Protocols to incite hatred against Jews, particularly during times of political and social unrest when there exists an environment of anxiety, uncertainty and an obsession with conspiracy theories.

Article 32 of Hamas Charter

The sheer popularity in the Muslim media of the form of antisemitism practiced by Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah including the Protocols. Article 32 of the Hamas Charter states: “The Islamic Resistance Movement calls on Arab and Islamic nations to take up the line of serious and persevering action to prevent the success of this horrendous plan, to warn the people of the danger emanating from leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism. Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”

Antisemitism Is Part of the Ideological Center of Modern Jihadism

As far back as 2008, Wistrich warned that Islamism can no longer be viewed as merely an “extreme,” for it is becoming more and more mainstream.

Antisemitism is part of the ideological center of modern jihadism, and not simply an additional component, asserts Matthias Küntzel, a German political scientist and historian. He argues that “during and after the World War II, the center of global antisemitism shifted from Nazi Germany to the Arab world, above all to the radical Islamist currents in and around the Moslem Brotherhood of Egypt.” This shift did not occur only because of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Quite the reverse. The “ideology of and policy of radical Islamists” actually made the clash worse.

Küntzel describes how since 1937, the Germans disseminated antisemitic propaganda throughout the Middle East in the Arabic language and how this antisemitism played a “decisive factor,” leading the Arab armies to attempt to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, explained why Israel’s 1948 War of Independence was a war against the Jews. “Our battle with world Jewry,” he said, “is a question of life and death, a battle between two conflicting faiths, each of which can exist only on the ruins of others.”

Küntzel points out he was not alone in recognizing the parallels between German antisemitism and that found in the Middle East. Thirty years before, Bernard Lewis, an expert on the history of Islam and Islam’s interaction with the West, said, “Since 1945, certain Arab countries have been the only places in the world where hard-core, Nazi style anti-Semitism is publicly endorsed and propagated.” This profound German influence can be seen in a number of areas: the similarities between the Arab anti-Jewish caricatures and those found in Julius Streicher’s antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer; the millions of copies in Arabic of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; many editions of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” and the pro-Hitler attitude among Arab youth.

Blood Libel

Historian Raphael Israeli has documented the use of Christian blood libel, which he calls a form of warfare employed “as part of the ongoing Arab war against Israel.”

Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the American Center for Democracy and its Economic Warfare Institute, and an expert on terrorism and corruption, including terror financing, economic warfare and narcoterrorism, “Antisemites never ceased using the blood-libels of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ But its popularity has seen a tremendous increase throughout the world following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Its lies are now used, seemingly successfully, not only to influence European nations careworn by millions of illegal Muslim migrants, but even change the Biden administration’s asserted support of Israel in its fight against Hamas and Hezbollah.”

A Final Note

“One might be inclined simply to shrug one’s shoulders as such madness, in the same way as Adolph Hiter’s ravings were once met with a pitying smile,” Küntzel says. “But it is precisely this delusion that inspires the Palestinian enthusiasm for the suicidal mass murder of Israeli civilians and provides the phantasmagorical motive for Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel. Through its Charter, Hamas follows faithfully in the steps of Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem.”

Küntzel asks: How can the West fight against its enemies when they feel compelled to describe terrorism as a consequence of its own conduct? “If we do not challenge the ideological roots of Islamism, it will be impossible to confront the Muslim world with the real alternative: Will it choose an orientation towards life or towards death? Will it stand up for individual and social self-determination or submit to the program of uniformity of a death-obsessed clique of Mullahs and its integral Jew-hatred?”

Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and on the advisory board of the National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.