Skip to content

Where different views on Israel and Judaism are welcome.

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • [email protected]! video

Search

Archives

Recent Posts

  • חמש שנים לעבודה מהבית
  • הקוביד תפס גם אותי
  • Thirteen calls for action
  • Immersive art experience
  • Games, fun and serious
  • Welcome back, TUTS!
  • Play tackles Israeli/Palestinian conflict
  • Averbach reaches Kamloops
  • Israel’s new Ethiopian airlift
  • Remembering the Great Roundup
  • Walking tours celebrate Pride
  • Living their values daily
  • Fighting racism, terrorism
  • Diverse allies critical
  • An afternoon of music
  • Community milestones … awards, honours, weddings, releases
  • STEAM-powered schooling
  • A composer for the Queen
  • Different horror, same hell
  • Never waste life’s many gifts
  • Reuse, recycle, make anew
  • נסיעה שנייה לישראל
  • Dreamy Midsummer’s Night
  • A story of two families
  • New era in U.S. politics
  • Folk festival returns to park
  • Standing up against hatred
  • Good reads, good talks
  • Tofino mustard maven
  • Journey from prison to power
  • Ben-Gurion goes global
  • The romance of good bagels
  • Hitting the high seas & citrus
  • Enjoy summer treats

Recent Tweets

Tweets by @JewishIndie

Blaming the victims

0 Flares 0 Flares ×

In a speech to the governing body of the Palestine Liberation Organization last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rambled off a host of textbook antisemitic myths. He reiterated the refrain that Jews have no historical connection to the land of Israel, unearthed a legendary trope about Ashkenazi Jews actually being descended from Khazars and accused European Zionists of collaborating with the Nazis.

Abbas went on to say that the tragedies of Jewish history were not a result of antisemitism, but of Jews’ own behaviours. “The Jewish question that was widespread throughout Europe was not against their religion,” he said, “but against their social function, which relates to usury and banking and such.”

One of the things Abbas has in common with other elected leaders is the willingness to try to get away with something and then to apologize when called out. Though his wasn’t much of an apology: “If people were offended by my statement … especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them.”

The speech gave Israeli and other commentators the opportunity to once again insist that the Palestinian leader is no partner for peace, something that is no more or less true today than it was last month. Abbas has been saying things like this most of his adult life. His doctoral dissertation, which was later published as a book, quibbled over the number of Jewish victims of the Shoah and advanced the perverse conspiracy theory he returned to last week: that Zionists were Nazi collaborators for whom six million (or, on Abbas’s abacus, fewer) Jewish lives were a small price to pay for advancing the Zionist cause.

Inherent to most antisemitic suppositions is the defence that Jewish particularities, habits, traditions, identities – in other words, whatever stereotypes the purveyor is advancing – are the legitimate causes of Jewish woes. In Abbas’s telling, all European Jews were usurers and bankers. (Consider the corollary: That, if true, being bankers and usurers would seemingly justify genocide.)

It is appalling that a man who is accepted as a legitimate figure on the international stage can claim, with minimal consequence, that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. So, the most salient point from this terrible incident may be what it says about his audience.

Consider this in the context of the widespread global interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. One can disagree with the policies or approaches of an Israeli government or any number of historical and contemporary developments. But, by no fair reading of history can the full blame for 70 years of conflict be laid at the feet of Israelis. Yet, at almost every point in history – when a pizzeria blows up in Tel Aviv or Jews are stabbed walking down the street in Jerusalem or when Hamas sends thousands to the Israeli border and floats firebombs that set the Israeli landscape aflame – there will be a sizable number of people who will conclude that Jews brought it on themselves.

Whatever else his speech may have accomplished, and despite his apology, Abbas has succeeded in bolstering the stereotype that cunning Jews will sacrifice whatever is necessary to reach their devious aims, and that any horrors that befall them are their own fault. That suits the contemporary popular narrative neatly.

Print/Email
0 Flares Twitter 0 Facebook 0 Google+ 0 0 Flares ×
Posted on May 11, 2018May 9, 2018Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags antisemitism, Holocaust denial, Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinians

Post navigation

Previous Previous post: Giro d’Italia begins!
Next Next post: Big dreams, challenges
Proudly powered by WordPress